Aspasia

The Canto, in a hundred and twelve hendecasyllables, was composed in Naples after 1833, perhaps in the spring of 1835, and first published in the Naples 1835 edition.

It is the conclusive Canto of the so called “Aspasia cycle”, and reflects the distance that Leopardi by then felt, or believed he did, from the experience of love for Fanny Targioni Tozzetti (now designated the injurious name of the Greek courtesan the lover of Pericles). The attempt at rationalisation of passion by means of recourse to a “platonic approach” (his love was not for Fanny but for the “amorous idea” she incarnated), distant from the serenity of the Canzone Alla sua Donna/To his woman, does not manage to hide the retrospective disappointment and the sense of betrayal experienced by Leopardi, which also finds expression in a violent misogynist polemic (“to that exalted image / rarely rises female genius”, “Does not penetrate into those / obscure brows such a concept”, “And as softer / and more tenuous are the members, so their minds / are less capable and receptive”, vv. 48-9, 52-3, 58-60).

Worthy of note is the unusual recourse to a realistic representation, and even tinted with sexuality, of a meeting between Leopardi and the woman:

ch’io non ti vegga ancor qual eri il giorno

che ne’ vezzosi appartamenti accolta,

tutti odorati de’ novelli fiori

di primavera, del color vestita

della bruna viola, a me si offerse

l’angelica tua forma, inchino il fianco

sovra nitide pelli, e circonfusa

d’arcana voluttà; quando tu, dotta

allettatrice, fervidi sonanti

baci scoccavi nelle curve labbra

de’ tuoi bambini, il niveo collo intanto

porgendo, ... (vv. 13-24)

And splendid are the final verses, in which Leopardi expresses, at the end of his amorous passion, a reborn serenity, albeit consuming and bitter:

... Che se d’affetti

orba la vita, e di gentili errori,

è notte senza stelle a mezzo il verno,

già del fato mortale a me bastante

e conforto e vendetta è che su l’erba

qui neghittoso immobile giacendo,

il mar la terra e il ciel miro e sorrido. (vv. 106-12)