Bøker av Giacomo Leopardi

First published in 1827 and here presented in a new translation by J.G. Nichols along with Thoughts, Leopardi's own selected pearls of wisdom and gems of social observation, this volume will enchant both those who are familiar with and those who are new to the works of Italy's last great polymath.

'So my mind sinks in this immensity:and foundering is sweet in such a sea'Revisited and reorganized over his lifetime, this extraordinary work was described by Leopardi as a 'reliquary' for his ideas, feelings and deepest preoccupations. It encompasses drastic shifts in tone and material, and includes early personal elegies and idylls; radical public poems on history and politics; philosophical satires; his great, dark, despairing odes such as 'To Silvia'; and later masterworks such as 'The Setting of the Moon', written not long before Leopardi's death. Infused with classical allusion and nostalgia, yet disarmingly modern in their spare, meditative style and their sense of alienation and scepticism, the Canti influenced the following two centuries of Western lyric poetry, and inspired thinkers and writers from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche to Beckett and Lowell.Jonathan Galassi's direct new translation sensitively responds to the musicality of the Canti, while his introduction discusses the paradoxes of Leopardi's life and work.