Operette morali

“Book of poetic songs, of invention and capricious melancholy” (says Tristan, Leopardi’s alter-ego), the Operette morali, were almost all composed at Recanati in 1824 as testified to by the manuscript), and went through several editions.

Some of the fundamental characteristics of the work are indicated in a letter of 16 June 1826 to the editor Stella: Leopardi wrote about “that ironic thundering that reigned within it”, and the fact that Timandro ed Eleandro was “a sort of preface, and an apologue for the work against modern philosophers” in which is “declared” “the spirit of the whole work”.

“Ironic thundering”, then, and also comic, but this certainly does not minimise the depth of his thoughts (in another letter to Stella Leopardi defines the Operette “a philosophical thing, even though written in apparent lightness”); of a thought, indeed a  “polemic” with “modern philosophers”, against which is addressed “the whole of the work’s wirtings”: “my brian is out of fashion” indeed says Timandro, and Tristano will rise against “the XIX century”, the “deep philosophy of the newspapers”, “statistics”, “the economic, moral and political sciences” (against which Leopardi lodged a further attack in Palinodia), vindicate instead the “painful philosophy, but true” expressed in the Operette.

In the various Operette (the major part are dialogues, written in prose now “peregrine” now “familiar”, “reasoned” but full of irony; and very distant from the style of the contemporary “historic novel”), indeed, against the contemporary and spiritual progressivism and optimism (Proposed prizes, Elf and Gnome), Leopardi encases his reflections upon the existential condition of man, on the relationship between man and indifferent Nature, on unhappiness, glory and death. And his “philosophy”, by then entirely materialistic, denounces the impossibility of having happiness and the need for evil (Malambruno e Farfarello, Tasso, Natura e Islandese).