Giacomo Leopardi “Memoirs of a First Love” – ​​Culture

Giacomo Leopardi, son of a count from a small town in the Marche, was nineteen years old when he first met love. or more precisely: a feeling which gradually increased and then subsided under such remarkable conditions as insomnia and anorexia, and which Leopardi called “love”: “for more than a year” he desired to talk to him well-formed women and chat as all do, and when one of them smiled at me , which is so rare, struck me as something incredibly strange, immeasurably sweet and seductive.

Yet what the young Leopardi does in three long notes from December 1817 and a poem titled “Il primo amore” – “First love” – ​​is also sweet: he describes how he falls in love and who falls in love with love, carefully observing every event and every excitement for feelings. At the same time, he speaks of himself with an indifferent affection, which in love traces the will of love and recognizes its arbitrariness, without abandoning it to ridicule or even criticism.

The poem “Il primo amore” is Leopardis’s earliest “Canti” poem, but it was not included in the first edition of “Gesänge”, published in 1824. Nor was it ever as popular as the patriotic songs “All’Italia” (“To Italy”). ) and “Sopra il monumento di Dante” (“On Dante’s Monumento”), written a little later, or the wonderful aria “L’infinito” (“The Infinite”) from the fall of 1819, the favorite poem of many Italians. However, the 34 three-line stanzas of “Il primo amore”, following the example of Petrarch, constitute a significant work.

The translator wisely dispenses with rhymes and their scheme: “For I always turned my eyes to the ground / And yet I looked at her who was in my heart / She was the first to pave the way in ignorance…”. Unbridled passion seizes the young man. He doesn’t know what that means. She has not yet found the desire, clearly does not feel relief, lingers somewhere in the atmosphere, so it is almost a relief when, after three days, the beloved woman leaves with the memory of a strange intensity of feeling.

In the diary version, the event reads as follows: “I think of the feelings in my heart, and I went to bed, and it was basically: a vague restlessness, dissatisfaction, sadness, a little sweetness and desire, I didn’t and don’t know why, among the possible things I don’t see anything that can do that.” An older cousin had visited the family at their modest mansion in Recanati, and the young man had noted the fine features, black eyes, and alert wit, but nothing came of it.

It cannot be easy to find a German translation of this intertwining of feeling and reason

Diaries and poems tell of such experiences, and what is striking in them is not only the suitor’s innocence, but also the absence of any fixed vocabulary. How much everything about love has been framed in predetermined images and progressive forms, in formulaic phrases and sentiments of at least two hundred years: one realizes this only when these routines break down and are blunt, but the seemingly melancholic inclination of wit begins to bend over one’s heart. It couldn’t be easy to find a German translation of this tangle of feeling and reason, especially since the original Italian text comes with long, thoughtful sentences and Latin performances: Marianne Schneider succeeds.

and the publisher had the good fortune to bring the rather neglected poem and accompanying texts out and present them as a separate publication: there is more to be learned from them than from literary history. The idea of ​​entrusting writer Frank Wetzel with the closing word was also a happy one: he not only provides the positive knowledge needed to understand Canto, but also develops the character of a loud, sensitive enlightener who knows exactly what to ask and why you should rebel against what, but who always knows too much in The end – which also applies to love. It was as if two sister souls had met in these circular motions.