Alla Primavera, o delle Favole antiche
Canzone, To Spring or of Ancient Fables, composed at Recanati in January 1822, and first published in the Bologna 1824 edition. It is an exaltation of imagination that, in antiquity and the childhood of every man, makes it possible to make “live” “every thing”. This theme had already been addressed several times by Leopardi, for example in the Discorso intorno alla poesia romantica/Discourse on romantic poetry and in several parts of the Zibaldone (essential references for the Canto), for example:
Che bel tempo era quello nel quale ogni cosa era viva secondo l’immaginazione umana e viva umanamente cioè abitata o formata di esseri uguali a noi, quando nei boschi desertissimi si giudicava per certo che abitassero le belle Amadriadi e i fauni e i silvani e Pane ec. ed entrandoci e vedendoci tutto solitudine pur credevi tutto abitato e così de’ fonti abitati dalle Naiadi ec. e stringendoti un albero al seno te lo sentivi quasi palpitare fra le mani credendolo un uoo o donna come Ciparisso ec. e così de’ fiori ec. come appunto i fanciulli. (Zib., pp. 63-4)
What fine times were those when all was live according to human imagination and humanly live, that is lived in or formed by beings the same as us, when in the absolutely deserted woods it was believed there lived the beautiful Hamadryads and the fauns and the Sylvans and Pan etc. and entering them and seeing there total solitude you still believed it to be all inhabited and so the springs inhabited by the Naiads etc. and hugging a tree to your breast you could almost feel it palpitate in your hands, believing it to be a man or a woman such as Cyparissus etc. and so the flowers etc. as is indeed the case with children (Zib., pp. 63-4).
In the poem we read that the return of spring, albeit provoking the resurgence of the heart and the memory of past joy, cannot alas provoke the resurgence of the illusions of ancient mythology and youth, because the wept for “ancient fables” of the classical world have by now been destroyed by the “true” (“poscia che vite / son le stanze d’Olimpo, vv. 81-2):
Perché i celesti danni
ristori il sole ... (= “Per il fatto che il sole ripara i danni provocati dal cielo invernale”)
forse alle stanche e nel dolor sepolte
umane menti riede (= “torna”)
la bella età, cui la sciagura e l’atra
face (= “fiaccola”) del ver consunse
innanzi tempo? ... (vv. 1-2, 10-4)
For the celestial damages to be restored by the sun ... (for the fact that the sun repairs the damage caused by the winter sky) might in the tired and in pain buried minds return the beauteous age, which disaster and the torch of truth have consumed afore time?
