Inno ai Patriarchi, o de’ principii del genere umano
Canzone entitled Ode to the Patriarchs or of the origins of mankind that (as Leopardi himself wrote in the Annotazioni published with the Bologna 1824 edition: “Chiamo quest’Inno, Canzone, per esser poema lirico, benché non abbia stanze né rime/I call this an ode, Canzone, as it is a lyrical poem despite not having either stanzas or rhymes”) has one hundred and seventeen hendecasyllables and was composed at Recanati in July 1822, then to be published in the Bologna 1824 edition in ninth place, in chronological order of composition, but then brought forward to the eighth in the Firenze 1831 and Napoli 1835 editions, immediately after the Alla Primavera (to which it is thematically linked: sadness for the loss of Greek myth there and for the biblical age here) and before the Ultimo canto di Saffo.
The only one ever executed of the planned (in 1819) Inni cristiani or Christian Odes, of tormented elaboration and “peregrino” or peregrine style, the Inno ai Patriarchi gains particular strength in the juxtaposition of modern corruption with primordial innocence, a characteristic of who could one time benefit of the “ameno error” or “mundane error”, that is the patriarchs of the biblical age, or the only ones that can now benefit from this error: the savages of the “californie selve” or Californian woods:
Fu certo, fu ...
... amica un tempo
al sangue nostro e dilettosa e cara
questa misera piaggia, ed aurea corse
nostra caduca età. Non che di latte
onda rigasse intemerata (= “incontaminata”) il fianco
delle balze materne (= “che producevano il latte”), o con le greggi
mista la tigre ai consueti ovili
né guidasse per gioco i lupi al fonte
il pastorel; ma di suo fato ignara
e degli affanni suoi, vota d’affanno
visse l’umana stirpe; alle secrete
leggi del cielo e di natura indutto (= “sovrapposto”)
valse l’ameno error, ...
Tal fra le vaste californie selve
nasce beata prole, a cui non sugge
pallida cura il petto, a cui le membra
fera tabe non doma; ...
... inopinato il giorno
dell’atra (= “nera”) morte incombe. ... (vv. 87-110)
It was certain ... a friend once to our people and joyful and dear this miserable state, where once we lived free of all plight in innocence, as do the savage Indians, as the day of dark death comes upon us
