Probably composed between the end of 1820 and the beginning of 1821 at Recanati, Il sogno first appeared, anonymously, in the Bolognese paper “Il Caffè di Petronio” (13 August 1825), with the title Il sogno. Elegia (inedita); then in the “Nuovo Ricoglitore” in Milan in January 1826 and the Bologna 1826 collection with the subtitle Idillio (which it lost with the Florence 1831 edition).
In the text in hendecasyllables, in which Leopardi recalls his meeting in a dream with a dead young girl, we see traces of Petrarch (the detail of the Triumph of Death and the canzone Quando il soave, mio fido conforto), and similarities with his Del fingere poetando un sogno/Upon a feigned poetic dream, of December 1820.
More generally, the figure of the girl who dies young is present in all of Leopardi’s work, such as in the splendid verses of A Silvia and Ricordanze and the later Canto Sopra un basso rilievo antico sepolcrale/Upon a bas-relief of an ancient sepulchre. In years close to when he composed the Sogno, it can also be found in Ricordi d’infanzia e di adolescenza/Memories of youth and adolescence, where Leopardi tells of Teresa Fattorini and her premature death, and where he tells of another girl, Teresa Brini, and how he had kissed her hand in a dream (exactly as described in the Sogno in vv. 79-86):
... sogno di quella notte e mio vero paradiso in parlar con lei ed esserne interrogato e ascoltato con viso ridente e poi domandarle io la mano a baciare ... e io baciarla senza ardire di toccarla con tale diletto ch’io solo allora in sogno per la primissima volta provai che cosa sia questa sorta di consolazioni con tal verità ...
... dream of that night and my true paradise in speaking to her and being by her questioned and listened to with smiling face and then asking her hand and kissing it ... and I kissed her without daring to touch her with such delight that I then alone in dream felt what is this sort of consolation with such force ...
To be noted in this Canto is the “confession” attributed to the girl of not having been insensitive, during her life, to the poet’s love:
... dimmi: d’amore
favilla alcuna, o di pietà, giammai
verso il misero amante il cor t’assalse
mentre vivesti? ...
... E quella: ti conforta,
o sventurato. Io di pietade avara
non ti fui mentre vissi, ed or non sono,
che fui misera anch’io. ... (vv. 61-4, 71-4)
Il sogno or The dream
