A se stesso

Verse in hendecasyllables and seven-syllables, A se stesso (To Himself)  was composed in1833 and 1835 at Naples, and first published in the Naples 1835 edition.

This Canto springs from delusion for the end of his love for Fanny Targioni Tozzetti, and is an apostrophe that Leopardi addresses directly to his own heart, inviting it to renounce to all illusion, indeed also love, the same illusion that in the Pensiero dominante at the beginning of the Cantos of the “Aspasia cycle”, he felt could make him happy and “endorse him with nobility”:

... Ben sento,

in noi di cari inganni,

non che la speme, il desiderio è spento.

Posa per sempre. Assai

palpitasi. Non al cosa nessuna

I  moti tuoi, ... (vv. 3-7)

This Canto (characterised by short phrases and the many enjambements, which together with a studied alternation of hendecasyllables and seven-syllables and a clear use of repetition reveal all of Leopardi’s stylistic talent) reaches culmination with some of the most desperate verses the poet ever composed:

...Amaro e noia

la vita, altro mai nulla; e fango è il mondo.

... Omai disprezza

te, la natura, il brutto

Poter che, ascoso (= “nascosto”), a comun danno impera,

e l’infinita vanità del tutto. (vv. 9-10, 13-6)

There are obvious links between A se stesso and the draft of the anthem Ad Arimane (the Zoroastrian spirit of evil), composed during the first half of 1833 (where we read: “concede that I should not pass my thirty fifth birthday”):

Re delle cose, autor del mondo, arcana

malvagità, sommo potere e somma

intelligenza, eterno

dator de’ mali e reggitor del moto.

King of all things, author of the world arcane evil, greatest power and greatest intelligence, eternal giver of the ills and lord of all that moves.