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Modern Italy
Journal of Modern Italian Studies
RIVISTA DI STUDI ITALIANI
Anno XVI , n° 2, Dicembre 1998 ( Contributi ) pag. 243-257
LEOPARDI'S CANTO NOTTURNO DI UN PASTORE ERRANTE DELL'ASIA AND THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN
SPATIAL SIGNIFIERS AND DRAMATIS PERSONAE
CORRADO FEDERICI
Brock University,
St. Catharines, Ontario
Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell'Asia is, in many respects, a typical Leopardi poem and yet it is one of the most complex from a structural and dramatic standpoint. As he does in many other compositions, especially the "grandi idilli", the poet utilizes spatial designators as vehicles for the communication of his celebrated "pessimismo cosmico". This technique is evident, for example, in L'infinito where he situates the poetic subject within a space that is
divided between the foreground and the background - a division which allows Leopardi to develop the spatio-temporal dialectic that, in turn, lies at the heart of his metaphysical dilemma: rejection of the ephemeral and/or attachment to the same. In the same poem, a distinction is made between "questa siepe" (the here and now) and "quello infinito silenzio" (the sweet hereafter). Angelo Marchese offers an extremely insightful interpretation of the poem in which this feature is his central interpretive premise (Marchese, 1981: pp. 237-49). In Il passero solitario this same tendency to privilege spatial representation assumes a vertical directionality, with the "passero" occupying the upper elevation, "d'in su la vetta della torre antica" (Leopardi: 257), while the poetic subject is located below, from which vantage point he directs his soliloquy or apostrophe towards the heavens. What is at play in this and in other Leopardi poems is what Marchese calls "biplanarità lirico-narrativa" (Marchese, 1985: p. 180) - a term introduced in his study of Pascoli's poem, X agosto. However, the space in Canto notturno is articulated along several planes, not merely the horizontal and vertical ones evident in the two poems cited here, and the dramatis personae are several; therefore the poem represents a more complete expression of the poet's artistic vision. [...]
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