Composed in Naples probably about 1835, in two hundred and seventy nine hendecasyllables, this palinode was first published in the Naples 1835 edition.

The title, “contrary canto”, that is a “retraction”, should of course be intended in the ironic sense. It is a false recantation of his pessimistic and materialistic doctrines through which Leopardi, in effect (see vv. 190-7), confirms all his disagreement for  the progressivist optimism of his “Tuscan friends” (among them Capponi), and against which he had already expressed himself in a letter to Pietro Giordani dated 24 July 1828 (“in the end I begin to feel disgust for the arrogant contempt  professed for all that is fair and of all literature: it seems that the summit of human knowledge is in knowing about politics and statistics”).

In this Canto, a satirical epistle, composed in a style that cleverly mixes ancient and modern (boa, cholèra, pamphlet, etc.), thematically akin to the Paralipomeni and Dialogo di Tristano e di un amico, Leopardi denounces with corrosive irony the myths of “progress” (XIX century and not only): science, socio-economic studies, industry and the “market”,  the “gazettes” (“the soul and life / of the universe, is to know this / and future ages as the only font”, vv. 151-3).

And the third and fourth verses are extraordinarily powerful, the ones in which Leopardi lists the “reliquaries” of passed ages that will continue to infest the future: murder, fraud, mediocrity, tyranny (“E già dal caro / sangue de’ suoi non asterrà la mano / la generosa stirpe: anzi coverte / fien [= “saranno”] di stragi l’Europa e l’altra riva / dell’atlantico mar, fresca nutrice / di pura civiltà, ...”, vv. 59 ff.). juxtaposing them against the things “more grave” that will produce the future happiness of mankind: new clothes, new furniture, new utensils, new means of transport.