Canti

The Canti are the best-known body of verse by Giacomo Leopardi, gathered around 1831 and later expanded and revised in successive editions. The poems were written between 1818 and 1836, so the collection spans nearly two decades of the author's life and thought. The first edition appeared in Florence in 1831, and in 1835 a enlarged version with later poems was published in Naples, in which Leopardi himself introduced corrections. The definitive edition came out posthumously in 1845, edited by his friend Antonio Ranieri.

The poems are usually grouped into several phases. The earliest, written at Recanati, dwell on heroic themes, nature, the meaning of life and the question of suicide, with pieces as famous as L'infinito. Idylls and the so-called Pisan-Recanatese cantos followed, composed during his years in Pisa and Florence. A third group, known as the Aspasia cycle, is inspired by Fanny Targioni Tozzetti, with whom Leopardi fell in love in Florence. The final phase, from 1834 to 1836, includes the funereal cantos, the Palinode and La ginestra, written in Naples.

Taken together, the work moves from an evocation of antiquity and of great civic ideals toward an increasingly disenchanted meditation on suffering, the transience of illusions and the indifference of the universe. The poetic voice becomes more sober and direct, without giving up the musicality of its verse.

The Canti had a considerable influence both in Italy and abroad. They were translated into Spanish from the late nineteenth century onward, and writers such as Miguel de Unamuno, Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo and Juan Valera engaged with them. Their echo can also be heard in twentieth-century Spanish poets such as Luis Cernuda, Rafael Alberti and Jorge Guillén.