A “hodgepodge,” indeed. But as the reader acclimates to the Zibaldone, it becomes clear that Leopardi’s concerns are far less miscellaneous than they might first appear. The poet and the philosopher, Leopardi writes elsewhere in the notebook, are not as different as we think they are; both types of genius depend on the ability to see connections between unlike things. “In different circumstances,” he insists, “the great poet could have been a great philosopher…. All faculties of a great poet [are] contained in and deriving from the ability to discover relations between things, even the most minimal, and distant, even between things that appear the least analogous, etc. Now this is the philosopher through and through: the faculty of discovering and recognizing relations, of binding particulars together, and of generalizing.”

Giacomo Leopardis is apparently largely unknown to the English-speaking world, thanks to his work having never been translated. That changed with the recent publication of his masterwork Zibaldone, which is a whopping 4,000 pages (and a whopping $47 on Amazon).

He seems a bit too like Rousseau for my tastes, but his is a fascinating mind nonetheless, and the book is written mostly as a journal, which makes for some candid insights.

Giacomo Leopardi’s Zibaldone, reviewed By Adam Kirsch