This Canzone, the title of which translates as To a Winner in the Ball, was “Finished the last day of November 1821” at Recanati, and first published in the Bologna 1824 edition.

Dedicated to the athlete (and later patriot) Carlo Didimi, a contemporary of Leopardi born at Treia (near Recanati), the Canzone is a development of a draft by the same title (the “pallone” or ball is not the one used for today’s football, but the one for the ancient game of “palla a muro” or wall ball, that had already been sung by Gabriello Chiabrera in the XVII century), and is above all linked to several reflections in the Zibaldone concerning the importance of physical vigour, courage, an active life and play: values and customs that in antiquity were considered propaedeutic for heroism (verses 13-26 are indeed dedicated to the battle of Marathon, in which the Athenians, who had already won the Olympics, vanquished the Persians) and are today instead a remedy for unhappiness and boredom.

Highly involving is the fourth verse, in which Leopardi looks to a desolate future in which Italian civilisation will have disappeared, in tones that seem to anticipate those even more coarse than some from the Ginestra:

Tempo forse verrà ch’alle ruine

delle italiche moli

insultino (= “saltino sopra”) gli armenti, e che l’aratro

sentano i sette colli; e pochi Soli

forse fien (= “saranno”) volti, e le città latine

abiterà la cauta volpe, e l’atro

bosco mormorerà fra le alte mura;

se la funesta delle patrie cose

obblivion delle perverse menti

non isgombrano i fati, e la matura

clade (= “catastrofe”) non torce dalle abbiette genti

il ciel fatto cortese

del rimembrar delle passate imprese. (vv. 40-52)

 

There will perchance come a time when the ruins of the great buildings of Italy shall be overrun by herds, and the seven hills (Rome) shall feel the plough; and shortly after will the cautious fox live in the Latin cities, and the dark woods shall murmur among the high walls; if the sad fate of the things of the nation obliterated from perverse minds fate does not remove, and the mature catastrophe does not stop the abject people the sky made courteous from remembering the past deeds.