Fanny Targioni Tozzetti
Fanny Ronchivecchi, born in Florence in 1801 (and who died there in 1889), the wife of the doctor and botanist Antonio Targioni Tozzetti, played an important role in the social and cultural life of that city.
Leopardi met her in May 1830, and fell in love at once. The true relationship between the two was not worthy of note: more interested in her relationship with the charming Antonio Ranieri, Fanny could not certainly express a passion akin to Leopardi’s (indeed after the poet’s death, it would appear she even pretended that she had never understood his true feelings, addressing Ranieri a question on the identity of Aspasia; a question he answered in a letter dated 13 January 1838: “Aspasia is you, and you know it, or at least you should, and at any rate I imagined you knew”).
But for us readers the real consistency of the Giacomo-Fanny relationship is not so important as is instead the extraordinary literary transposition of this amorous experience that Leopardi accomplished in the Canti. Fanny is indeed immortalised with the name of Aspasia in the Canti of the Florentine and Neapolitan periods, the so called “Aspasia cycle”, which gave birth to “Leopardi’s new poetics” (as defined by Walter Binni): Consalvo, Il pensiero dominante/Dominant Thought, Amore e Morte/Life and Death, A se stesso/To Himself and Aspasia. In particular in this last work, composed after the end of this amorous experience, Leopardi gives us an unforgettable portrait of the lady:
Torna dinanzi al mio pensier talora
il tuo sembiante, Aspasia. ...
Quanto adorata, o numi, e quale un giorno
mia delizia ed erinni! E mai non sento
mover profumo di fiorita piaggia,
né di fiori olezzar vie cittadine,
ch’io non ti vegga ancor qual eri il giorno
che ne’ vezzosi appartamenti accolta,
tutti odorati de’ novelli fiori
di primavera, del color vestita
della bruna viola, a me si offerse
l’angelica tua forma, inchino il fianco
sovra nitide pelli, e circonfusa
d’arcana voluttà; quando tu, dotta
allettatrice, fervidi sonanti
baci scoccavi nelle curve labbra
de’ tuoi bambini, il niveo collo intanto
porgendo, e lor di tue cagioni ignari
con la man leggiadrissima stringevi
al seno ascoso e desiato. ...
