All of Leopardi’s life was in the sign of melancholy, as we can see reading, amongst his other works, his autobiographical writings. It should however be pointed out that he considered this sentiment in a duplicitous way: if on the one hand he condemned “modern” melancholy, caused by an excess of civilisation (that melancholy that afflicts the English gentleman in the Operetta La scommessa di Prometeo, and which leads him to kill his children and commit suicide), on the other, as we can read in numerous pages of the Zibaldone, he underlines the cognitive value of “tranquil and sweet” melancholy, to the point of identifying it as the “friend of truth”:

 

Melancholy is at the base of romantic poetry [15-23, 725-35] – “the development of sentiment and melancholy has come above all from the progress of philosophy and the cognisance of man and the world” [76-9] – “The best moments of love are those of a tranquil and sweet melancholy” [142] – “he who intimately knows the human heart and the world knows the vainness of the illusions, and inclines toward melancholy” [324-5] – he who is melancholy cannot bear to have round him frivolity and incipient joy [931] – ancient and modern melancholy, in the people of the south and the north [931-2] – “the friend of truth, the light with which to uncover it, the least likely to err is melancholy and above all boredom” [1690-1] – “All that which is finished” brings melancholy [2242-3, 2251-2] – all the good Italian poets of the last two centuries have been melancholy [2363-4] – on melancholy inspired by music, “albeit sweet, but very different to joy” [3310-1].