From microtext to macrotext: The genesis of Giacomo Leopardi’s Operette Morali.

An antecedent to A?

The first nucleus (20)[1] of what Leopardi would go on to call the Operette Morali was composed by the writer in 1824 and from what can be gleaned from the dating on the pages of A (a manuscript made up of 69 paper bifolia without a watermark, re-bound in the early 1900s with a covering of vellum and held at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples, Fondo Leopardiano, P.IX) between 15^th January and 13^th December of the same year. Nevertheless, F. Moroncini in his 1928 critical edition, based on the assumption that Leopardi was in the habit of destroying the early drafts of his work, put forward the hypothesis that there might have existed an earlier version than A. Moroncini’s essay is included, albeit in relation to different issues, in O. Besomi’s 1979 edition of the Operette[2]. Between 2004 and 2007 an ‘autopsy’ of the autograph was carried out, resulting in a conclusion quite divergent from that of Besomi and Moroncini. In the following pages, through explaining the findings of this research, the problem of the genesis of the 1824 text will be approached from various angles. An attempt will be made to reconstruct the genetic development of the text along a diachronic axis while an attempt to cast some light on certain leopardian stylistic choices will be made along the synchronic axis. Both the materials used by Leopardi in the preparation for the writing of the Operette[3] and also the relationship with the Abbozzi, the Zibaldone and the Epistolario will be analysed as well as a study of his inks, which although not easy to manage will nevertheless provide much useful information to help provide a better understanding of the order of the successive corrections by Leopardi.

The ‘edification of Italian literature’ project

In 1820 Leopardi, following a long period passed on a daily basis with the great and good of the Italian literary tradition, came to the conclusion (letter no. 280, 20^th March 1820 to P. Giordani) that the genres of Italian literature should be founded ex novo:

[...] the lyric to create (and this is in all nations, because even the French say that the ode is the sonata of literature), lots of types of tragedy, because we have only one Alfieri; poetical, literary and political eloquence, a philosophy which really is of the time, satire, poetry of every genre fitting to our age; right through to a language and style which, since it is classical and ancient seems modern and is easy to understand and so delightful to both the educated and the masses. Basically, there is a long way to go and I myself, who perhaps by my very nature have been blessed with very little stamina to pursue a career and reach a particular goal, am always imprisoned by fortune to the extent that I have lost all hope of showing Italy things which she currently can’t even dream of. But you, my dear, take heart, allowing the comparison of your wealth with the poverty of others to comfort you, as well as the great view of the field which you have before you, and all completely empty. You ask me what I think and write. But for a long time now I haven’t thought or written or read a thing thanks to the obstinate imbecility of the nerves in my eyes and head: and perhaps I will leave nothing behind but the outlines of the works which I’m mulling over [...]

This letter is relevant to Leopardi’s project to edify Italian literature through its discussion of the establishment of various different literary genres and then, consequently, with a ‘disegno letterario’ or ‘literary plan’ which Besomi[4] dates to around 1819-20:

[...] Satirical dialogues in the manner of Lucian, but without the characters and with the ridiculous deriving from present, modern customs and not focusing on the dead so much, because there is already an abundance of dialogues between the dead, just as there are between characters who pretend to be alive and also between animals; (as I’ve heard that Monti has done, imitating Lucian in the ‘Diaologo della Bibl. Italiana’ and in the ones which he has put into his work on language); so, anyway, little comedies or comedy scenes [...] which could help me give Italy an essay on the true language of comedy which there really is an absolute need to create and also some satire, somehow [... ]

According to Mestica, the ‘Disegno letterario’ dates to 1821. However, it is certainly earlier than page 1393 of the Zibaldone:

[…] In my dialogues I’m going to try to take comedy into that space which has hitherto been occupied by tragedy, in other words the vices of the great and the good, the fundamental principles of calamity and human misery, the absurdities of politics, the improprieties which form part of the moral universe and philosophy, the course and the general spirit of the century, the sum total of things, of society, current civilization, disgrace and revolutions and the condition of the world, the vices and infamies not of men but of man, the state of the nation etc. And I believe that the arms of the ridiculous, at their greatest in this most ridiculous and cold of times, and also thanks to their natural strength, could be more useful than those of passion, affection, imagination, eloquence; and also more than those of reason, although they are quite strong today. And so by shaking my poor country and century, I will find myself having used the arms of affection and enthusiasm and eloquence and imagination in lyric poetry and those pieces of literary prose that I’m going to be able to write; the arms of reason, logic, philosophy, in the philosophical tracts that I set out; and the arms of the ridiculous in the dialogues and Lucian short stories which I am preparing […]

This page from the Zibaldone presupposes Leopardi’s reflections as noted both in the Epistolario and also in the ‘disegno letterario’. Leopardi is developing the idea of a comic-satire prose on the model of Lucian, closely connected to his own very personal sense of satire and the ridiculous. The Operette Morali are anything but ‘prosette’ and in fact Besomi (p.XVIII) notes this point:

[…] It is necessary, however, to wait a little longer before the proposed works to be collected in the Operette are better defined or at least more precisely outlined. […]

In order to better understand the characteristics of this idea of Lucian prose, outlined by Leopardi on page 1393,  it is useful to investigate Leopardi’s ideas on the concept of the ridiculous as annotated in the Zibaldone (p.7):

[…] On the ridiculous and dissolute etc. Bernesca poetry, satire, comedy etc. […]

This annotation should be taken alongside Leopardi’s reflections found on pages 41 and 42 of the Zibaldone. Here, Leopardi writes that the comic and ridiculous of antiquity consisted of ‘things’, of which examples can be found in Goldoni, Berni and Lucian:

[…] that of the ancients was truly substantial, it always expressed something and it always put in front of your very eyes, so to speak, a body of the ridiculous, while the moderns put forward a shadow, spirit, wind, breath, smoke. The former filled you with laughs, the latter just allows you to taste it and smile. The former was solid, the latter is fleeting, the former a lasting material of inextinguishable laughter, the latter the opposite. The former consisted of images, contrasts, comparisons, tales, in short, ridiculous things, the latter consists of words, generally and summarily speaking, and is born from that composition of voices, from that ambiguity, from that allusion of words, that play on words, precisely from that very word, in a way which if you remove that allusion, break it down and put those words into a different order, take away that ambiguity and put one word in place of another, the ridiculous disappears. […]

A reader accustomed to the flavour of Leopardi’s prose cannot fail to be struck by the freshness of the images and the original use of deixis. In this phase, the concept of the ridiculous is connected to the distinction Leopardi makes between the ancients and the moderns, in other words between the age of nature and the age of reason. Following this discussion of the ridiculous, Leopardi recognises within it a function of social criticism (Zib. 63):

[…] Principally, then, comedy is useful when it allows you to know the world better, its dangers, vices, vanities […]

Comedy sets out to highlight the vices and vanity of the world; refections on the ridiculous are inserted into a design for the renewal both of literary genres and also the country itself. Leopardi, it seems, cannot conceive of a literary regeneration distinct from a political and social re-awakening. It is in this context that satire and the ridiculous take on a new significance for Leopardi and that the project to divide his own literary output into more genres is born.

The texts which form the drafts of the Operette

Besomi, arguing that it is a little premature to date the earliest ideas of the Operette Morali to 1819-20, tends to move the earliest drafts to after 1821[5], in line with the reflections of Leopardi expressed in the Zibaldone 1393. Leopardi writes in a letter to Pietro Giordani, dated 4^th September 1820 (no. 330) that:

[…] Care for me. Let us console ourselves about the unworthiness of fortune. These last few days, almost to vindicate myself to the world, and almost out of virtue too, I’ve been dreaming up and noting down a few short satirical prose pieces. Look at what comes into my head to write. For no other reason than to converse more fully with you. Goodbye, goodbye. […]

It is difficult to relate the expression ‘prosette satiriche’ or ‘short satirical prose pieces’ to the Operette. It is, rather, more likely that it should be interpreted as an attempt to create the Lucian novella. On 20^th October 1820, Leopardi would confide in Pietro Giordani that he had written ‘lots of things, but all of them shapeless’ (no. 341):

[...] In these last few months, at times I’ve been able to use my mind  and I’ve written lots of things, but none of them with any real form and nothing more than material to include in some work or other sometime in the future. […]

By the expression ‘materia informe’, which is clearly not traceable to the Operette, Leopardi seems to be referring to literary outlines or rough notes. There is another, similar letter dated 5^th January 1821 and addressed to Pietro Giordani (no. 369):

[…] I’m reading, writing and coming up with lots of different plans to the extent that just to give colour to and finish the few I’ve already got, which are not just outlined but have taken shape, I’ve realised that another four lifetimes wouldn’t be enough. Although I understand, or rather I feel intensely, the uselessness of human things on a daily basis, nevertheless the thought of how much there is to do and how little I can do hurts and worries me. […]

More circumstantial references are also to be found in a missive of the 11^th May 1821 (no. 401) to Pietro Brighenti:

[…] Please say hello to and thank dear Giordani for me and beg him, from me, to be brave and tell him, if you want to, that I’m preparing a short work (operetta) in prose which perhaps he wouldn’t mind looking over […]

Here the question arises of how ‘operetta’ should be interpreted. It has such a vague meaning that it is easy to make the mistaken assumption that it could refer to the Operette or to other of Leopardi’s works. In fact, according to Brioschi, it should be read as a nod towards Leopardi’s intention to compose the Parallelo delle cinque lingue.[6] Leopardi writes the following to Giordani on the 18^th June 1821 (no.406):

[…] Tell me all your news, even though I’m afraid to ask, as I fear it might be the usual, unhappy story. But tell me, couldn’t you change from Heraclitus into Democritus? That’s just what’s happened to me, which I thought was completely impossible. It’s true that Desperation pretends to be smiling. But laughing at men and at my own troubles, which I am becoming accustomed to, though it doesn’t derive from hope, doesn’t come from pain either. Instead it comes from carelessness, the last refuge of the unhappy, subjugated by the need to strip themselves not of the courage to fight it, but of the last hope of being able to win it, ‘it’ being the hope of death. My health is not great but good enough and is such that I should not despair of living a while longer. I’m slowly reading, studying and jotting things down. I spend the rest of the time thinking and laughing to myself. I have in my hands the plan and the material for one which I’d like to call an ‘operetta’ but this material is growing day on day, to such and extent that I’ll be forced to call it an ‘opera’. Once I’ve finished preparing it, God willing, I’ll start producing it and I think this will happen soon […]

He notes that Leopardi refers to an ‘operetta’ rather than ‘operette’ and perseveres with the  accumulation of materials and a preparatory stage preceding that of the composition itself. This distinction is made clear through the use of the verbs ‘preparare’ and ‘fabbricare’. The creative act is linked to the verb ‘fabbricare’ while by ‘preparare’ the writer seems to mean planning and the accumulation of materials, clearly, therefore, something quite distinct from the actual writing itself. This ‘operetta’ is part of a literary plan which is not clearly distinct from the satirical dialogues. On 13^th July (no. 409) of the same year, he once again writes to Giordani (no. 409)[7]:

[…] I’m going to write about languages and especially those five languages which make up the family of southern languages; Greek, Latin, Italian, French and Spanish. Language in Italy has been much disputed and is still disputed today. But the best, as far as I am concerned, have recorded and predicated the philosophy, rather than using it. Now this subject demands as great a depth of concepts as the human mind is capable of, owing to the fact that language, man and nations are not the same thing, but only just. I’m not flattering you and I have no cause to do so, because no one would take pleasure from my flattery. All I mean to say is that your letter to Monti seems to me the most philosophical of all the writings printed in Italy in these last few years which deal with language and perhaps the most beautiful Italian prose of this century with the exception of a small defect which you have in common with almost all the greatest ancient writers

[…]

Going back to my proposal, it is useless to build something if you don’t start from its foundations. Anyone who wants to help Italy, first of all must show her a philosophical language, without which I believe she will never really have modern literature which is truly her own, and without her own modern literature she will never be a nation. Therefore, the effect which I mainly want to convey is that Italian writers can be philosophers, inventive and of the time, which basically means writers and not copyists, but nor, in terms of language, must they be barbarians, but Italians. Many have set out to achieve this effect, but none has succeeded and no one, as far as I am aware, has really got it. What is certain is that the book will never be able to achieve it which, other than exhorting, isn’t a good example not just of good language but of subtle and profound philosophy; Not just of philosophy but of good language, since the effect needs both of these things. I’m also aiming with this writing to smooth the way to then be able to deal with philosophical matters in this language which has never dealt with them; I mean philosophical matters as they are today, not as they were at that time of innate ideas. […]

In this letter, Leopardi is insistent about the need for a good language to appear philosophical and vice versa. This is a condition of language which cannot be laid aside if Italy is to have ‘her very own modern literature’. On the 6^th August (no. 412) 1821, Leopardi, writing once again to Giordani, argues for differing styles of writing for the genres of philosophy, drama and satire.

[…] Almost innumerable genres of writing are missing either completely or almost completely for Italians, but the main ones, the fruitful ones or rather the necessary ones are, I believe, are the genres of philosophy, drama and satire. I have come up lots of things, perhaps even too many, in the first and last genre: And of these (A prose treaty in the manner of Lucian and dealing with much more serious subjects, which are not the grammatical trifles for which Monti adopted it.) I need to give colour to a few essays as soon as possible. But, thinking about things further, I’ve decided to wait. We will try to fight the negligence of the Italians in every possible way, with three kinds of arms, which are the most robust: reason, affection, laughter […]

In this passage there is a reference to the above cited line of thought in the Zibaldone p. 1393. At the end of the passage, in reference to his own literary plans, Leopardi states that it is too early to venture into the writing of ‘a prose piece in the style of Lucian’. In the line of thought found in the Zibaldone, Besomi identifies a compositional intentionality, and by referring to the emphasis placed on ‘colorire’ or ‘give colour to’ doesn’t exclude the possibility that some scripts might have existed in draft form. It is certainly true that there is less than a month between the thought of the Zibaldone and the letter in question and that Leopardi uses the verb ‘preparando’ or ‘preparing’ to delimit a specific phase for the gathering of material before the writing phase itself. In any case, even if the hypothesis that Leopardi had already created some drafts by 1821 is accepted, this does not mean that they were necessarily used in the context of the Operette. Rather, they are ‘literary prose compositions and Lucian-style short stories’ and there is no reference at all to the composition of any kind of text which, even remotely, appears to be the Operette Morali. Leopardi’s output between 1821 and 1823 can only indirectly be seen to lead to the Operette. Rather it is a thin body of work, of a predominantly epistolary or diaristic nature, which, given its vagueness, also relates to other of his works and which should be read as traces of his constant and daily composition, written by Leopardi in order to give shape to his own literary prose. It seems likely that his output in this phase took the form of a series of writings (dialogues and Lucian short stories) which can be connected with the ‘satirical writings’ which Leopardi refers to in his letter of the 4^th September to Giordani, completely reworked at a later date after Leopardi’s own change of idea in relation to the ridiculous and literature. Leopardi’s idea of writing Lucian-style short stories came about following his development of an idea of the comic which V. Placella[8] has termed ‘heroic’:

[…] Another Leopardi-Alfieri coincidence in the little mirror I’ve proposed: that the ridiculous, the comic, must strike men in general to be effective in the long term. Therefore [there is] a ‘heroic’, ‘constructive’, ‘comic’ concept both in Alfieri and in Leopardi, a comedy which must reshape customs through the power of laughter (for Leopardi his insensitive century could be shaken by laughter). This new constructive laughter, quite different to that of contemporary comedies, Leopardi would realise in the Operette, in almost all the operette (except in ‘Storia del genere umano’, a solemn reflection on the origins and destiny of man, in the following ‘Stratone’, in ‘Gallo Silvestre’, extremely lyric and solemn and in ‘Tristano’ which is from 1831 and represents, in my opinion, the absence of the concept of a constructive ridiculous: by this point, for Leopardi, there was no way of mending the ways of man. […]

Even though it is undeniable that Leopardi inherits from Alfieri an idea of ‘strong’ comedy, it is also true that in the Operette it is never used constructively. Rather, the spirit of alfierian comedy is captured by Leopardi in a negative way, in a biting discourse on human morals to affirm, even in those dialogues which have a Lucian feel to them, the total lack of any kind of hope of ‘progress’ or of ‘redemption’ for mankind. Leopardi conceived the writing of the Lucian short stories following his movement towards a more liberal position as a result of his time spent with Giordani. The Operette represent the failure of such ideas in as much as, in order to successfully realise this idea of comedy, Leopardi would have had to believe whole-heartedly in the possibility of the moral growth of mankind through civilisation. In the years following 1820 this hope is definitively destroyed as a result of Leopardi’s habitual reading of other authors, especially Speroni. In Speroni’s philosophical Dialoghi, Leopardi would find the concepts of ‘love’, ‘nature’ and ‘virtue’ all discussed through the canonical works of Aristotelian philosophy. Some linguistic and conceptual similarities with the Operette indicate that Leopardi examined these themes in some depth. Leopardi would go on to take linguistic elements and a taste for literary invention, as well as the discussion of philosophical ideas from Speroni’s prose model. (In Dialogo della Discordia, paradoxically, an imaginary discussion takes place between Jupiter and Discord which could have influenced Leopardi during his writing of his ‘dialogo della moda e della morte’.) The dialogues, along with Speroni’s texts, studied from 1821 to 1824, contribute to the formation of Leopardi’s pessimism and helps to shift his interest from comic discourse to philosophical and moral discussions.

Any references to the Operette in the Zibaldone and in the Epistolario both before and after 1824 are so vague that it is difficult to imagine and support the hypothesis that Leopardi was already planning the Operette in 1820. In fact, it could be misleading to connect the well thought out planning before the writing of the Lucian short stories with the Operette Morali. It runs the risk of searching for elements which do not really exist. The writing of the Operette is born from a maturing and then overcoming on Leopardi’s part between 1823 and 1824 of the themes which he had developed in earlier years, even after his Roman sojourn. The literary plans, the concept of ‘strong’ comedy, the lack of faith in reason, the sense of disillusionment, the knowledge of a total failure of any kind of moral liberalism, are re-elaborated in the light of an exclusive interest in moral science, outlined by Leopardi in a letter to Vieusseux dated 2^nd February 1824 (no. 612):

[…] But the books published in Italy today are nothing more than prattle, barbarity and, above all, junk, copies and repetitions. A newspaper which cannot publish anything except some sonnet or other, or an unpublished or reissued language text, or some commentary on an ancient book, or stone, coin or something like that, cannot contribute much to the improvement either of the human spirit or the nation. Amongst the many excellent things of some importance in your preface letter, some of which deserve to be carved in marble, I have found one which a Newspaper should really promote, namely the advancement and propagation of the moral sciences. Now, these sciences and all those which are included under the umbrella of philosophy, a major part of present thinking in the whole of the rest of Europe, and particularly of our own century, are actually, as you know, the least pursued study in Italy, or better would be totally unknown if it were not for foreign books and translations. Thus, if one wanted to take into account the recent output of Italian writers, there would never be a space to discuss either morality or philosophy. […]

This letter was sent by Leopardi to Vieusseux while he was working on his ‘Storia del genere umano’. The aim of writing is no longer to stir the country with the arms of the ridiculous but rather the promotion and nurturing of moral sciences. Leopardi’s is a ‘ruined’ morality, a morality of nothingness, of a knowledge of unhappiness, of the non-redemption of man and the decadence of the human race. Leopardi’s interest in philosophers and moralists becomes his daily preoccupation and results in a revisiting of some parts of the Storia del genere umano, the Dialogo d’Amore di Speroni[9] (on page 10 of the A autograph, relating to the passage ‘He sent in amongst them ghosts [...], justice, virtue [...]’ there appear annotated in the margins the variants ‘He sent down to earth, on the earth and divine, celestial, immortal. Committed. Entrusted. (Speroni)’ and, more explicit in his intention, expressed by the author in a letter dated 22^nd December 1824 to Giuseppe Melchiorri (no.657) to translate Teofrasto’s I Caratteri:

[…] I thank you for the literary news, and I urge you not to tire of relaying it to me, because it always gives me great pleasure to receive it. I’ve thought of asking De Romanis whether he might like to work on an elegant little edition of Teofrasto’s Catatteri, translated from Greek into pure, good Italian. […]

The fact that the philosophical-moral problem has now become the true core of Leopardi’s thoughts is also shown in a letter of 15^th January 1825 to Carlo Antici (no. 661)

[…] I’m currently killing time and keeping boredom at bay with a translation of moral works chosen from the most classical Greek authors, written in an Italian which I hope is guilty neither of impurity nor obscurity. So far I’ve translated three of them in as many days. […]

This raises the question of why, when talking about translating from Greek, Leopardi doesn’t make reference to the 1824 A autograph. It is likely that, although the ‘operette’ had already been written, the idea of the Operette had not yet come about, in the sense that the individual texts did not fit into the literary designs of 1821 but also didn’t have a part to play in his new literary project. The lack of numbering and the division of the ‘operette’ into booklets suggests that manuscript A does not show the result or organisation of texts resulting from a literary plan worked out years before or of a lost draft, but rather a work in fieri, alive, put down on the page straight off, which represents the convergence of various different nuclei of Leopardi’s literary interests which, as is well known, stretched from philosophy to satire. It is a mistake from a codicological point of view to read in the autograph held at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples the book of the Operette. A is testimony to the birth, due to a ‘catastrophic’ writing style, of texts which, thanks to their multiform and ‘bitty’ nature could be published individually as philosophical, comic or dramatic texts. Towards the end of 1824, with the writing of an index, Leopardi reorganises the texts contained within the Operette in a uniform way, even if only following a chronological order with only a few re-orderings, which in their constituent parts reflected a moral-philosophical tension which swung between conceptual nuclei which were not easily reconcilable with each other and which did not always result in the emergence of one over the other. Leopardi, in 1826, writing to Antonio Papadopoli (letter no. 820) would define the Operette gemerically as Dialoghi:

[…] My Dialoghi are soon going to print, because if Giordani, who has the manuscript in Florence, doesn’t get on with it, which I think he will, I’ll get it back from him and I’ll send it to Milan […]

By choosing a title which recalls that of the works of Speroni, Leopardi seems to be making an indirect reference to the philosophical-moral content of those works[10]. Leopardi would always refer to them as ‘dialoghi’ even when he would politely tell Vieusseux not to publish the other texts (4^th March 1826 no.855) in the collection:

[...] I thank you for the honour which you have given to my dialogues by publishing them, [...] However I understand that you are not planning to publish any further dialogues and that indeed you do not even have a copy of them, having already sent the manuscript back to me, a very punctual return for which I thank you kindly [...]

In both letters Leopardi refers to a manuscript. Does this therefore mean that Giordani and Vieusseux had the entire corpus of the Operette? Leopardi probably gave a copy to Giordani in 1825 when they met in Bologna or Parma[11]. Between 1825 and 1826, once the first reworking of the Operette had been completed, the shape the book was to take had been decided. Leopardi was thinking in terms of a publication of the work in its entirety. (Letter to Stella dated 12^th March 1826, no. 861):

[...] Have you seen number 61 of the Anthology, January 1826? Has it got into and circulated around those parts? Have you seen the essay from my Operette Morali? I spoke to you in Milan about my manuscript. We published this essay in Florence to see if the manuscript would make it to Lombardy. I ask you to read, if you will, that essay in some detail and to let me know your thoughts on it. Because if you like it, I will reject any other opportunity […] All the other operette are similar to the essay, although many are of a more pleasing tone. […]

The decision to replace the title ‘dialoghi’, recalling as it does the treatise writing tradition of the 1500s, with that of Operette Morali represents a deliberate desire, on the part of the author, to express unequivocally a philosophical-moral break and refer indirectly to the great Greek moralists. It shouldn’t be ruled out that Leopardi developed the idea of such a reading of his dialogues after 1825, following his translation of ‘moral works chosen from Greek authors’. The reading of these Greek models must once again have encouraged him to re-think the purpose of his dialogues, encouraging him to invest all his energies in this project and make the Operette an open work which, through incessant editing, interacts in a circular manner with the Zibaldone, gaining, after the 1827 edition, new textual meaning through a continual shift between ‘catastrophic’ and well-structured writing.