Old notebook, young Leopardi
A notebook by the young Giacomo Leopardi is the new, and unexpected, surprise that comes from the Leopardi collection held in the National Library of Naples. It most probably dates back to 1814, when the poet was 16 years old. The early manuscript, which went unnoticed and until now unpublished, was intercepted by Marcello Andria and Paola Zito who edited it for the publisher Le Monnier Università, in the volume Leopardi e Giuliano imperatore. Un appunto inedito dalle carte napoletane (Leopardi and emperor Julian: unpublished notes from Naples. This 'notebook' is made up of four half sheets, folded in the middle so as to obtain eight sides, bearing a long and dense alphabetical list of ancient and late ancient authors (about 160 headwords), each of which followed by a series of numerical references (over 550 overall). We are looking at writing by Leopardi at just sixteen years old, who often spent time in his father's library, and who makes an accurate and detailed examination of the Opera omnia by Emperor Julian, using the authoritative edition by Ezechiel Spanheim, which appeared in Leipzig in 1696.
Giacomo, had begun to teach himself Greek just the year before, diligently searches the best examples in his father's library: the notes show us how, although very young, Leopardi was already a well-trained and curious scholar and with an accurate working method, which continued to be a constant feature in Leopardi's life.
The years in which the young Leopardi begins reading Julian’s work represent a significant stage in the path of re-evaluation of the figure of the Apostate, for a long time tarnished by the almost unanimous condemnation of historians up to the middle of the sixteenth century and rediscovered in the eighteenth century especially of the enlighteners (Montesquieu, Diderot, Voltaire) but welcomed in Italy, amidst attestations of esteem and declared hostility. References to the work of the Neoplatonic philosopher emperor were also made later in Leopardi's work: in particular in the Operette Morali (in the Memorable Sayings about Filippo Ottonieri) and in the Zibaldone, in some philological exercises.
The volume explores the meaning of the binomial of Giacomo Leopardi and the Apostate, in an interdisciplinary perspective through essays by Marcello Andria, Daniela Borrelli, Maria Luisa Chirico, Maria Carmen De Vita, Stefano Trovato and Paola Zito, whose historical and philosophical reflections range from the 4th century AD to the Enlightenment and beyond, also including philological investigation into the folds of a dense and significant lexical and conceptual fabric.
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