Bruto minore
This Canzone, Brutus Minor, was composed at Recanati in December 1821 and first published in the Bologna 1824 edition, preceded by a Comparison between Brutus Minor and Theophrastus’ sentences, both men close to death (eliminated in the subsequent edition).
A first reference to Brutus is made in the draft that gave origin to the Canto Nelle nozze della sorella Paolina/In occasion of sister Paolina’s wedding, and also in a letter to Pietro Giordani dated 26 April 1819.
In this Canzone (that is in the so called “ardito” or brave style and rich in Latinisms) Leopardi imagines the words spoken by Marcus Junius Brutus before committing suicide, after the second battle of Philippi, fought and lost in 42 BC by him and Cassius, Paladins of the Republic, against Octavian and Antony: bitter words of criticism and accusation towards the gods and “foolish virtue”:
Stolta virtù, le cave nebbie, i campi
dell’inquiete larve
son le tue scole, e ti si volge a tergo
il pentimento. A voi, marmorei numi
(se numi avete in Flegetonte albergo
o su le nubi), a voi ludibrio e scherno
è la prole infelice
a cui templi chiedeste, e frodolenta
legge al mortal insulta.
Dunque tanto i celesti odii commove
la terrena pietà?dunque degli empi
siedi, Giove, a tutela? ... (vv. 16-27)
Foolish virtue, the misty quarries, the fields of the disquieted larva are your school, and to you is addressed pentiment. To you, marmoreal gods (if gods there be up above) is addressed the scorn of our youth. Are the gods thus so moved by earthly pity? Do you then preside over the wicked Jove, in their defence?
Considerations on suicide (present here especially in the third verse, vv. 46 sgg.: “Spiace agli dei chi violento irrompe / nel Tartaro. ...”) are frequent in Leopardi, above all in the Zibaldone, and reach their creative apex in the Operetta Dialogo di Plotino e Porfirio.
It should be noted how again in 1832, in a letter to his friend De Sinner in which he protests against certain readings of his Canti in which his “desperate philosophy” was attributed to his physical handicaps, the poet made reference to Bruto minore as the synthesis of his thoughts: “Mes sentimens envers la destinée ont été et sont toujours ceux que j’ai exprimés dans Bruto minore” (= “my sentiments as to destiny are and have always been those expressed in the Bruto minore”; letter of 24 May 1832).
