L'Infinito

"L'Infinito" is a short poem by the Italian writer Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837), probably written in the autumn of 1819, when the poet was about twenty-one and living in his restrictive hometown of Recanati. It grew out of his longing to escape that confined world and experience something of the wider reality he had long studied through books.

The poem begins with a simple scene: the speaker sits on a lonely hill and looks at a hedgerow that blocks much of the horizon. That partial view does not stop him from imagining boundless spaces, superhuman silences and a stillness so deep it nearly frightens him. When he hears the wind moving through the plants, he sets that endless quiet against the actual sound, and from this comparison arise thoughts of eternity, of seasons long dead, and of the living present. His mind sinks into this vastness, and being lost in it feels sweet.

The work appeared in 1826 among the «Idilli» and in 1831 in the collection «I Canti». Critics regard it as one of Leopardi's most perfect poems and one of the finest in Italian and world poetry, and it remains one of the best-known texts in Italy, widely taught in schools.