Consalvo

Composed (in one hundred and fifty-one hendecasyllables) perhaps in 1832 at Florence, and first published in the Naples 1835 edition, the Consalvo is part of the so called “Aspasia cycle”, the Cantos inspired to the poet’s love for Fanny Targioni Tozzetti (apart the Consalvo, Il pensiero dominante, Amore e Morte, A se stesso, Aspasia); but distances itself from the others in various ways, not least for the “pathetic” and melodramatic character and the narrative tone (Consalvo, dying, asks Elvira, he has since long loved in vain, for a kiss; and he obtains it).

It is not by chance that Leopardi moved the Consalvo, in arranging the Canti, to seventeenth place, after the Idilli and before Alla sua Donna: for its “sentimental” proximity to some of the Idylls. In particular, the link to Il sogno is somewhat obvious: the only other Canto in which Leopardi describes a kiss:

... concedi, o cara,

chela tua destra io tocchi. Ed ella, in atto

soave e tristo, la porgeva. Or mentre

di baci la ricopro, e d’affannosa

dolcezza palpitando all’anelante

seno la stringo, di sudore il volto

ferveva e il petto, nella fauci stava

la voce, al guardo traballava il giorno. (Il sogno, vv. 79-86)

E quel volto celeste, e quella bocca,

già tanto desiata, e per molt’anni

argomento di sogno e di sospiro,

dolcemente appressando al volto afflitto

e scolorato dal mortale affanno,

più baci e più, tutta benigna e in vista

d’alta pietà, su le convulse labbra

del trepido, rapito amante impresse. (Consalvo, vv. 67-74)

Critics, almost all in agreement, starting with Giosue Carducci, in demeaning the Canto, recall how the idea of the kiss to a dying man is  a recurrent theme in the work of many authors, from Theocritus to the Provencal poet Jaufré Rudel and also Torquato Tasso; also underlining the link with the XVIII century poem Il conquisto di Granata by Girolamo Graziani, anthologised by Leopardi in the Crestomazia poetica.