Canti

Leopardi’s masterpiece, the book of Canti, with its carefully studied architecture (Canzoni, Idilli, Canti pisano-recanatesi, ciclo di Aspasia, sepolcrali, last Canti), took the author a long time to write. The principle editions which led to what is today considered the definitive text (but the process of rewriting was stopped only by Leopardi’s death) are the following: Canzoni – Sull’Italia, Sul Monumento di Dante che si prepara in Firenze, Bourlié, Rome 1818; Canzone ad Angelo Mai, Marsigli, Bologna 1820; Canzoni, Nobili, Bologna 1824; Versi, Stamperia delle Muse, Bologna 1826; Canti, Piatti, Florence 1831; Canti, Edizione corretta, accresciuta e sola approvata dall’autore, Starita, Naples 1835. But we cannot forget at least the editions of the Idilli in the Milanese journal “Nuovo Ricoglitore” (December 1825 and January 1826 issues) and a very important document, the so-called “Starita corretta”: an unbound sample of the Naples 1835 edition (today at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples), still with some printing errors later corrected, to which Leopardi added and made corrections (partly in person, in part dictating them to Ranieri) in view of the planned publication of his complete works by the Parisian publisher Baudry, which then actually never took place. And we must also mention the posthumous edition of the Opere di Giacomo Leopardi, edition enlarged, ordered and corrected, according to the author’s last wishes, by Antonio Ranieri, vol. I, Le Monnier, Florence 1845 (where Il tramonto della luna/The setting of the moon and La ginestra were first published).

Of many of the Cantos we also have the manuscripts, most of which are at the  Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples, but also at the Biblioteca Leopardi in Recanati, in the Archives of the Municipality of Visso (MC) and the Museo “Garibaldi” in Como. Unfortunately, we have no manuscripts from the Florentine and Neapolitan periods.

Of the Canti we have as many as four editions, drawn up with different methods, by Francesco Moroncini (Cappelli, Bologna 1937), Emilio Peruzzi (Rizzoli, Milan 1981), Domenico De Robertis (Il Polifilo, Milan 1984), and Franco Gavazzeni (Accademia della Crusca, Florence 2006).