Zibaldone
Diary, collection of philological and linguistic notes, philosophical and literary tracts, autobiographical and socio-anthropological reflections, a container of themes and concepts for his creative work, but at the same time an autonomous “work” that we can today read as a testimony of the most diverse ways of writing (from aphorisms to true and proper short treatises) and the extraordinary force of the non-systematic thought, in constant ferment, of Leopardi: all this is the Zibaldone di Pensieri, a unique work in Italian literature.
Begun, perhaps upon a suggestion from the old family friend Giuseppe Antonio Vogel, in July 1817, and continued till December 1832 (particularly fecund were the years 1821-1823; the pages are dated from the 100th on), the Zibaldone is composed of 4526 pages, currently gathered into six volumes kept at the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli.
Leopardi himself, more than once, predisposed some “navigation” tools to help readers orient themselves within the “immense mass of papers”: we today have two so-called “proto-indexes”, Pensieri di varia filosofia e di bella letteratura/Thoughts on a variety of philosophy and fine literature and Danno del conoscere la propria età/Damage at knowing one’s own age (composed in function of the preparation of the last six Operette of 1824); some brief notes “recalled” and “not recalled” in the index; and a 555 card index, which is the preceding version of the true and proper Indice del mio Zibaldone di Pensieri/Index to my Zibaldone of thoughts (pgs. 1-4295are indicated), drawn up between July and October 1827 (probably in preparation for a Dizionario filosofico e filologico/Philosophical and Philological Dictoniary, that he then never did).
The first edition (entitled Pensieri di varia filosofia e bella letteratura) was only published in 1898-1900 by Le Monnier (7 vol, Florence), under the care of a Commission chaired by Carducci. The edition that is today the point of reference is the one edited by Giuseppe Pacella (Garzanti, Milan 1991), alongside which there is the one edited by Rolando Damiani for Mondadori (Milan 1997) and with a photographic reproduction of the manuscript done by Emilio Peruzzi (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, 1989-94).
