La quiete dopo la tempesta

Canzone entitled The Calm after the Tempest composed in  Recanati between 17 and 20 September 1829 and first published in the Florence 1831 edition, it constitutes a “diptych” with the almost contemporary Il sabato del villaggio/Village Saturday.

The Canto is in its first part full of “idyllic” images of life in Recanati, which are not presented as remembrances of the past (as in A Silvia and Ricordanze) but as descriptive “portraits” of the borgo: the “augelli” or birds that, the storm over, burst into song, the “artisan”, the “young girl”, the “greengrocer” and the “traveller” are well known characters of Leopardi’s poetry, and express the joy at returning to one’s daily toil after the passing of “tempest”.

Such positive images cannot however hide the bitter theme that Leopardi addresses in the second part of the Canto, that is the inconsistency and fragility of that pleasure, caused merely by an end to pain, and more generally Nature’s hostility towards all living things:

O natura cortese,

son questi i doni tuoi,

questi i diletti sono

che tu porgi ai mortali. Uscir di pena

è diletto fra noi.

Pene tu spargi a larga mano; il duolo

spontaneo sorge: e di piacer, quel tanto

che per mostro (= “prodigio”) e miracolo talvolta

nasce d’affanno, è gran guadagno. Umana

prole cara agli eterni! assai felice

se respirar ti lice (= “ti è concesso”)

d’alcun dolor: beata

se te d’ogni dolor morte risana. (vv. 42-54)

It is to be noted how Leopardi’s thoughts are expressed in this Canto more than elsewhere through the use of some “epigrammatic” verses, not by chance remembered by many even if out of context (“Passed is the tempest: / I hear birds burst into song”, “Pleasure born of toil”, “To be freed of plight / is for us a joy”, “Children of humanity / dear to those eternal!  Lucky are you / if you are allowed to breath / without suffering”; vv. 1-2, 32, 45-6, 50-3).