Ultimo canto di Saffo

A canzone composed at Recanati in May 1822, “Opera di 7 giorni”, and for the first time published in the edition known as the Bologna 1824 (in the eighth place, whilst in the editions that were the Florence 1831 and Naples 1835 it was moved to after the Inno ai Patriarchi/Hymn to the Patriarchs).

In the Canto the poet imagines the final words spoken by the poetess Sappho before she committed suicide (situation similar to that of the Bruto minore), due to her unrequited love for Phaones.

Leopardi, in the Preamble to the reprint of the Annotations to the ten Canzoni in “Nuovo Ricoglitore” of September 1825, wrote that the text “was intended to represent the unhappiness of a delicate, tender, sensitive, noble and warm  soul, placed within an ugly and young body”; and it is impossible not to read into these words an autobiographical element: it is certain that through the figure of Sappho Leopardi expressed his own desperation, and the character’s laments against unhappiness and the injustice of life (in which beauty is better appreciated than virtue), and against nature, indifferent to man’s pain, are also the protestations of the young Leopardi (vv. 23-7, 46-54):

Bello il tuo manto, o divo cielo, e bella

sei tu, rorida terra. Ahi di cotesta

infinita beltà parte nessuna

alla misera Saffo i numi e l’empia

sorte non fenno. ...

... Arcano è tutto,

fuor che il nostro dolor. Negletta prole

nascemmo al pianto, e la ragione in grembo

de’ celesti si posa. Oh cure, oh speme

de’ più verd’anni! Alle sembianze il Padre,

alle sembianze eterno regno

diè nelle genti; e per virili imprese,

per dotta lira o canto,

virtù non luce in disadorno ammanto (= “in un corpo senza bellezza”).

This Canzone is significant, as compared to those that precede it, over and above for the presence of more “sentimentalism”, also for the greater “freedom” of style (which however never distances itself greatly from the “peregrine” that distinguishes this text).