Various poems and translations
Apart from the “major” works, the Canti and Paralipomeni, Leopardi composed, above all in youth, another series of “random” poetic texts, also very important (some printed in the Versi, Stamperia delle Muse, Bologna 1826: not by chance the most “sacrificed” collection at the time of the composition of the book of the Canti in 1831).
First and foremost the translation of the classics, through which Leopardi experimented various registers in style, of which we here recall the most engaging (together with the texts for the Simonide published in the Starita edition of the Canti, Naples 1835): to 1815 date back the Poesie di Mosco, accompanied by the Discorso sopra Mosco; to 1816 the Saggio di traduzione dell’Odissea (the Canto primo is a fragment of the second) and the Traduzione del libro secondo della Eneide (much liked by Giordani); to 1817 the Titanomachia di Esiodo (which corresponds to vv. 664-723 of the Teogonia), with Preface. Above all we should remember (also for its propaedeutic function the Paralipomeni) the reiterated work on the pseudo-Homeric Batracomiomachia: translated in 1815 (with a Discorso sopra la Batracomiomachia), then in 1821-22, and lastly in 1826 (and published in the Versi, together with the Volgarizzamento della satira di Simonide sopra le donne, of 1823).
But together with the translations (and by them stimulated) Leopardi in those years also composed original works: among them, in 1816 the Inno a Nettuno and the Odae adespotae, refined counterfeits, the idyll Le rimembranze and the complex Cantica Appressamento della morte (part of the first Canto was published in the Starita edition (Naples 1835) as Frammento XXXIX); in 1817 the five Sonetti in persona di ser Pecora fiorentino beccaio (published in the Versi) and the sonnet Letta la vita dell’Alfieri scritta da esso; in 1818 the Elegia II (published in the Versi; the vv. 40-54 were to then constitute in the Starita edition the Frammento XXXVIII).
Later on, Leopardi composed his “random” texts, which are probably more interesting: the so called “canzoni rifiutate/Songs refused” and I nuovi credenti (which was alas only sketched out in the anthem Ad Arimane, the Zoroastrian spirit of evil, of 1833).
