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Leopardi's "To His Dame"



Text of entire original Poem at https://www.giacomoleopardi.it/?page_id=6371




Irony in Leopardi’s "Alla Sua Donna" (To His Dame): Final Stanza of Leopardi’s hymn to Lady Poetry


The final stanza of Leopardi’s hymn to Lady Poetry as otherworldly Beloved One in a modern world lost in mortal superficialities:


If of ideas eternal

you’re the one that of sensible form

eternal wit disdains to be clothed,

and, amidst ephem’ral spoils,

to experience woes of funebral life;

Or if another earth in the supernal wheels

amidst innumerable worlds does host you

And fair, more than the Sun, neighb’ring star

upon you shines, and more benign ether blows;

Hither, on shore of years adverse and brief,

This hymn, from unknown lover, do you receive.


Se dell’eterne idee

L’una sei tu, cui di sensibil forma

Sdegni l’eterno senno esser vestita,

E fra caduche spoglie

Provar gli affanni di funerea vita;

O s’altra terra ne’ superni giri

Fra’ mondi innumerabili t’accoglie,

E più vaga del Sol prossima stella

T’irraggia, e più benigno etere spiri;

Di qua dove son gli anni infausti e brevi,

Questo d’ignoto amante inno ricevi.


Composed in the tradition of Dante’s Renaissance, Leopardi’s 1823 poem to Lady Poetry bemoans the modern exile of classical Lady Poetry, in the very act of surreptitiously reintroducing her. Why is Lady Poetry important? She offers us—Socratically—the only way out of utter barbarism in our Fallen World.


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