La ginestra, o il fiore del deserto
Canzone in seven verses of various lengths (for a total of a hundred and seventeen between hendecasyllables and seven-syllables), composed at Torre del Greco in the spring of 1836 in the posthumous edition of the Canti overseen by Antonio Ranieri in 1845.
A true “spiritual testament” and Leopardi’s masterpiece, the Canto, which reworks in a dry language the eighteenth century theme of the “ruins”, which testify to the destructiveness of nature (in this case the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, raised to the ground by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD), launches a violent attack (in part already advanced in Amore e Morte/Love and Death, in the Palinodia, in the Paralipomeni and the Nuovi credenti) upon the “salvific” doctrines of his “arrogant and foolish century” (v. 53): Catholic spiritualism and liberal-moderate progressivism (in particular vv. 307-17), each “optimistically” denying man’s constitutional infelicity, and our “lowly and fragile state” (v. 117).
Leopardi’s “materialistic” pessimism, which here expresses itself forcefully, does not however impede him from producing, at the end of poetic life, as example of good conduct the humble ginestra or broom bush, capable of accepting its fragility with dignity:
ma più saggia, ma tanto
meno inferma dell’uom, quanto le frali
tue stirpi non credesti
o dal fato o da te fatte immortali. (vv. 314-7);
and it does not even stop him from expressing the hope that there might be a pact of solidarity among men, a “social chain” addressed at reciprocal support in the fight against “merciless nature” (vv. 148-9):
... quella
che veramente è rea, che de’ mortali
madre è di parto e di voler matrigna.
Costei chiama inimica; e incontro a questa
congiunta esser pensando,
siccome è il vero, ed ordinata in pria
l’umana compagnia,
tutti fra se confederati estima
gli uomini, e tutti abbraccia
con vero amor, porgendo
valida e pronta ed aspettando aita
negli alterni perigli e nelle angosce
della guerra comune. ... (vv. 123-35)
