Bologna
After a brief stop over in Bologna during a trip to Milan (he found it “most tranquil, very jolly, highly hospitable”: letter to his father, 22nd July 1825), Leopardi went to live there for over a year, from the end of September 1825 till November 1826 (he was there again from April till June ’27). Leopardi enjoyed his stay there, even if the lack of public order did cause him “a touch of fear”:
Qui si fa continuamente un ammazzare che consola: l’altra sera furono ammazzate quattro persone in diversi punti della città. Il governo non se ne dà per inteso. Io finalmente sono entrato in un tantin di paura; ho cominciato ad andar con riguardo la notte, e ho cura di portar sempre denaro addosso, perché l’usanza è, che se non vi trovano denaro, vi ammazzano senza complimenti. (Lettera a Paolina, 23 giugno 1826).
Here there’s so much killing that it is disquieting: the other evening four were killed in different parts of town. The government is unconcerned. I feel a touch of fear; I have started to go out with care at night, and am careful to always have money with me, because it happens that if they find you without they kill you without much ado. (Letter to Paolina, 23rd June 1826).
In Bologna Leopardi made some important friends, such as Carlo Pepoli; and he continued to work for the Milan publisher Stella, working on the comment to Petrarch and translating the Manuale di Epitteto.
The public event that was for him the most significant was the meeting of the Accademia dei Felsinei on 28th March 1826, during which he recited Epistola al conte Carlo Pepoli. On 4th April he wrote about it to Carlo: “The evening of Easter Monday I recited at the Casino of the Accademia dei Felsinei, in the presence of the Legate and the best of Bolognese nobility, male and female ... They tell me that my verses were of great effect, and that everyone, men and women, wishes to read them” (there are other testimonies that would seem to indicate that the interest of “the best of Bolognese nobility” was not that lively, or at least not as much as believed by Leopardi).
Above all, in Bologna in 1826 Leopardi published with the Stamperia delle Muse his Versi or verses, in which he put texts that were not in the Canzoni collection of 1824: six Idylls, two Elegies, the Sonetti di ser Pecora, the Epistola al Pepoli, and the vernacularised Guerra dei topi e delle rane / War of rats and frogs and Satira di Simonide sopra le donne/Simonide’s satire on women.
