University of the Arts,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Tal cosa è la vita, che a portarla, fa di bisogno ad ora ad ora,
deponendola, ripigliare un poco di lena e ristorarsi con un gusto e quasi una particella di morte.
(Cantico del gallo silvestre)
Composed between and 1835, Leopardi's late hymn Sopra un bassorilievo antico sepolcrale represents a kind of final caesura in his work between the great meditative laments - Le ricordanze, Canto notturno, and Aspasia - and the heroic philosophical resignation of Il tramonto della luna and La ginestra1. The poem gets its peculiar transitional status from the fact that its theme, the untimely death of a beautiful young woman, though familiar from Silvia and Le ricordanze, is handled in a way that more closely resembles the distanced, impersonal perspective of the last poems. [...]