La vita solitaria or Solitary life

An Idyll in hendecasyllables, it was composed at Recanati in the course of the summer and autumn of 1821, and first published in the “Nuovo Ricoglitore” in Milan in January 1826, and in the Bologna 1826 edition.

The theme of solitary life is recurrent in our literary tradition (from Petrarch to various poets of the Settecento), and Leopardi himself reflected upon it more than once, first and foremost in the Zibaldone (for example, pp. 678-83), but also in the Operette morali/Moral Operettas (for example in the Dialogo della Natura e di un Islandese/Dialogue of Nature and an Islander and in the Elogio degli uccelli/Eulogy of birds) or in the Discorso sopra lo stato presente dei costumi degl’Italiani/Considerations upon the current customs of Italians, not to mention the Passero solitario/Solitary sparrow.

La vita solitaria begins with the description of the solitude of nature and sadness for the lost hopes of youth: among them also love, upon which Leopardi dwells in the third verse. Almost, however, as if to deny the definitive loss of such a sentiment, in some verses the poet seems to want to beguile himself of the possibility – alas immediately and painfully denied – of one last amorous palpitation, a thrust of vitality and joy caused by hearing a female sing (and one cannot here but mention the importance of the songs of young girls in A Silvia, vv. 7-12, and in the Ricordanze, vv. 144-8):

... Ma non sì tosto,

amor, di te m’accorsi, e il viver mio

fortuna avea già rotto, ed a questi occhi

non altro convenia che il pianger sempre.

Pur se talvolta ...

... di fanciulla

che all’opre di sua man la notte aggiunge

odo sonar nelle romite stanze

l’arguto canto; a palpitar si move

questo mio cor di sasso: ahi, ma ritorna

tosto al ferreo sopor; ch’è fatto estrano

ogni moto soave al petto mio. (vv. 52-6, 63-9)

The Canto, which had opened with the “morning rain”, ends (vv. 70-107) with a hymn to the “dear moon”, “benign / of the nights the queen”.