Palinodia al marchese Gino Capponi

Composed in Naples probably about 1835, in two hundred and seventy nine hendecasyllables, this palinode was first published in the Naples 1835 edition.

The title, “contrary canto”, that is a “retraction”, should of course be intended in the ironic sense. It is a false recantation of his pessimistic and materialistic doctrines through which Leopardi, in effect (see vv. 190-7), confirms all his disagreement for  the progressivist optimism of his “Tuscan friends” (among them Capponi), and against which he had already expressed himself in a letter to Pietro Giordani dated 24 July 1828 (“in the end I begin to feel disgust for the arrogant contempt  professed for all that is fair and of all literature: it seems that the summit of human knowledge is in knowing about politics and statistics”).

In this Canto, a satirical epistle, composed in a style that cleverly mixes ancient and modern (boa, cholèra, pamphlet, etc.), thematically akin to the Paralipomeni and Dialogo di Tristano e di un amico, Leopardi denounces with corrosive irony the myths of “progress” (XIX century and not only): science, socio-economic studies, industry and the “market”,  the “gazettes” (“the soul and life / of the universe, is to know this / and future ages as the only font”, vv. 151-3).

And the third and fourth verses are extraordinarily powerful, the ones in which Leopardi lists the “reliquaries” of passed ages that will continue to infest the future: murder, fraud, mediocrity, tyranny (“E già dal caro / sangue de’ suoi non asterrà la mano / la generosa stirpe: anzi coverte / fien [= “saranno”] di stragi l’Europa e l’altra riva / dell’atlantico mar, fresca nutrice / di pura civiltà, ...”, vv. 59 ff.). juxtaposing them against the things “more grave” that will produce the future happiness of mankind: new clothes, new furniture, new utensils, new means of transport.