Probably composed in spring-summer 1819 at Recanati, L’infinito (The Infinite) was published as the first of the six Idilli or idylls(all composed between 1819 and 1821) in the “Nuovo Ricoglitore”, Milan, (December 1825 and January 1826), and then in the Versi (Bologna 1826) edition.
Leopradi’s definition of “idilli” (indeed distant from the “precedent” that are the Idilli by Mosco, which Leopardi translated in 1815) is given in a later Disegno letterario/Literary Design (1828): “Idylls expressing situations, affections, historic adventures of my soul”: thus poems of an intimate character, juxtaposed against the “militant” Canzoni (and the fact that the Idilli remained unpublished for years says a lot about the “public” image that Leopardi wanted to give of himself in the first part of his life); and also distant from the Canzoni for their distended style, the “simple” vocabulary, and the meter (hendecasyllables).
The poem is immensely famous (it contains some of Leopardi’s most famous lines, like the last three: “And so in this / immensity does my thought drown: / and it is for me sweet to be shipwrecked in this sea”), and has led to many, also discordant, interpretations. On the concept of the “infinite” Leopardi was also reflected in the Zibaldone, for example in a page shortly after the lyric (Zib., 171, 12-13 luglio ’20):
... alle volte l’anima desidererà ed effettivamente desidera una veduta ristretta e confinata in certi modi, come nelle situazioni romantiche. La cagione è la stessa, cioè il desiderio dell’infinito, perché allora il luogo della vista lavora l’immaginaz., e il fantastico sottentra al reale. L’anima s’immagina quello che non vede, che quell’albero, quella siepe, quella torre gli nasconde, e va errando in uno spazio immaginario, e si figura cose che non potrebbe se la sua vista si estendesse da per tutto, perché il reale escluderebbe l’immaginario.
... at times the soul will desire and effectively desires a restricted and in some ways confined view, as in romantic situations. The reason is the same, that is a desire for the infinite, because then in the place of eyesight works the imagination, and the fantastic replaces the real. The soul imagines that which it cannot see, which that tree, that hedge, that tower hides to its sight, and goes wandering in an imaginary space, and figures things that it could not if its sight were to extend everywhere, because the real would exclude the imaginary.
Among the “precedents” to the Canto, suggestions include Young’s Nights, Alfieri’s Vita and Rousseau’s Discourses.
L’infinito
