The activity of essay writing was certainly not secondary for Leopardi: in particular during youth, he wrote a lot on literary subjects and also cultural.
Compositions of a scholastic nature are the Dissertazioni filosofiche (metafisiche, fisiche e morali) of 1811-12 and the eleven Discorsi sacri composed in 1809-1814.
Two bulky works, the Storia dell’Astronomia (1813) and Saggio sopra gli errori popolari degli antichi (1815), were written in the period of “crazy and most desperate study”: the first contains a vast collection of data, most of it second-hand (but we cannot forget how important the “stars” were to be in Leopardi’s future works); the second is a defence of Christian religion against the errors of the ancient (Leopardi however often lets himself be charmed by the “errors” he would like to hide).
Between 1816 and 1818 Leopardi tried to insert himself into the classical-romantic debate, with his Lettera ai compilatori della Biblioteca Italiana and the very important Discorso intorno alla poesia romantica, and in 1824 he composed the Discorso sugli Italiani, an extreme attempt at addressing to the public “speeches” in which his vision of society could be expressed in a direct and explicit way, without the mediation of ironic and satirical filters.
A particular form of cultural address is the one concerning “popular” works done for the Milanese publisher Stella: the comment to Petrarch’s (1826), and above all the two fundamental anthologies of our literature (as important Prefaces): Crestomazia italiana de’ prosatori (1827) and Crestomazia italiana de’ poeti (1828).
Most worthy of note is also the Preambolo to “Lo Spettatore fiorentino” (1832), the “useless” paper planned by Leopardi not “to do good for the world, but be of enjoyment to the few who will read it”: a “reasonable” proposition “in a century in which all books, all pieces of printed paper, all visiting cards are useful” (The polemic irony aimed against the “Antologia” is obvious).
Speeches and essays
