/lit/ - Literature

shut up cuck

It's one of the best.

kek nice try

>implying you didn't read this

>>9179985
To be fair literally every Leopardi's poem is 10/10.
Here's To Silvia:


Silvia, do you remember then
That time of your life
When beauty glistened
In your laughing and darting eyes,
And you, joyful and pensive, climbed over
The threshold of your youth?

Ringing through the quiet chamber
Resounding all the way around
Was your perpetual song.
Then when intent at your womanly task
You sat – content enough
With those hazy thoughts of things to come.
It was that scented May, when you
Thus passed the day.

I at my trifling studies
At times left off my sweaty papers
Where the commencement of my first youth
And youthful brilliance of my better days I spent
On the balconies of my paternal home
Lending my ears to the sound of your voice
And to your swift-moving hand
Across the wearying threads.
I gazed at the sky serene
The golden byways, and the courtyard-gardens
And there the far-off sea and here the hills.
No mortal tongue could speak
The feelings in my breast.

What lovely dreams,
What hopes, what hearts O my Silvia.
How they appeared to us
This human life – and fate!
When I recall to myself how grand those hopes
A tenderness takes me
Bitter and disconsolate
And turns me to deplore my baneful fate.
O Nature, O nature,
Why do you not then give
That which you promised then? Why to such a degree
Do you beguile your children?

You, before the grass withered in winter
Were locked in the malady which assailed and overcame you,
You perished, O tender one, and never glimpsed
The very flower of your years.
Nor was your heart to soften
At the praise now of your raven hair
And of your glance, demure, enamoured,
Nor with your girlfriends on a festive day
Were you to speak of love.

It perished too with me,
My sweet hopes of younger years
And too, the Fates negated
My time of youth. Alas, how –
How have you passed away
Dear companion of my early days.
My tear-soaked hopes
Here in this world – and there
The joys of love, of work, and of events
About which we talked so much together?
Is such the destiny of us human beings?
For when the truth appeared
You, poor abject one, succumbed: and with the hand
Of frosty death, to a naked tomb
From afar pointed the way.

>>9179985
spanish looks so fucking silly with these Ys everywhere

>>9179992
Fuck...

>>9179992

>>9179864
Ayyyyyyy

>>9179992
>It perished too with me,
>My sweet hopes of younger years

I actually got teary reading this.
Poor Giacomo, what a terrible life he had to live.
Here are my favourite verses from ''Night Song Of A Wandering Shepherd In Asia'':

>From these eternal rounds,
>And from my being frail,
>Others, perchance, may pleasure, profit gain;
>To me life is but pain.

>>9179833
Keats is sentimental garbage

>>9179992
>translation
Might as well watch the movie version

>>9180053
Why? Just because he thinks the vase is beautiful?

>>9180060
>implying you know Italian

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_o'_Bedlam

>>9180060
I'm Italian and I've had the pleasure to read them in their original form. I'm pretty sure that most people here are not used to 19th century lyric italian, that's why I've posted a translation.

>>9180053
What's wrong with that?

>>9180080
>19th century lyric italian
How do you deal with the fact that it's so different from contemporary Italian? Doesn't it affect your reading, making it sound excessively high and lyrical?

>>9180053
ur retarded

>>9180115
If you actually study in high school you will be able to read anything that has been written in italian in the last 800 years with ease (the same applies for basic republican latin).
Of course from time to time you will need a dictionary, but it doesn't get much harder than that.

I'm pretty sure educated English lads feel the same way when it comes to Shakespear (Dante) and Blake (Leopardi).

do you fags even praise limestone?

>>9180135
Yeah but what about the feelings? You understand Leopardi, but isn't his style far from your sensibility of modern man? There's clearly a contrast between that lyricism and our triviality, or informality

>>9180174
>Yeah but what about the feelings?
Have you read those poems? I don't see how I could not relate to them.

>but isn't his style far from your sensibility of modern man?
I got used to lyrical and petrarchian Italian in my early teenagehood (when I was around 11-12), at his point it's a second tongue. I feel no distance.

>and our triviality, or informality
I've lived a pretty secluded life. The plagues of our times haven't influenced me that much, if I have to be honest.

A M P H O R A

>>9179833

one night making love Dr. Zuck
in his ear got his wife's tit stuck
rammed his fist up her bum
which made em both cum
and invented the telephone fuck

>>9180037
>From these eternal rounds,
>And from my being frail,
>Others, perchance, may pleasure, profit gain;
>To me life is but pain.

What was wrong with Leopardi?

>>9180624
He was the proto- teenage /lit/ neet.
>lived in a secluded house in a secluded town
>had shitty parents, no social skills, no gf, no friends
>was probably gay and attracted by traps
>started with the Greeks
>learned like 15 languages
>read from morning till night
>was conservative and slightly ironic
>was near to Schopenhauer
But he sublimated all that in his perfect poetry.

>>9180053
Idiot

>>9180624

This guy >>9180668 is 100% wrong.
Leopardi probably got tubercolosis in his infancy. When he reached his adulthood he was 4''5, devastated by a atriocious hump and various other illnesses (he could not leave his house during the day because the Sun would hurt immensely his eyes, and at times his body would hurt so much that he would have to spend entire weeks at bed, crying for the pain). He also had manic depression, and in his Zibaldone he clealy describes what it seems to be BPD.

He lived an actually tragic life, devastated by illnesses and social isolation, and channeled all of his suffering into the best poetry of his century.

Also, apart from that, he was also one of the leading philologist in Europe, a true authority when it came to Greek, Latin, French and Italian poetry. He has literally spent his entire childhood and teenagehood studying science, literature, poetry and philosophy (and for his entire life he thought that that was the reason for his illness). He of course used this knowledge o attain true virtuosity in his craft.

>>9179833
ITT: Anon's first Literature class.

>it's a monolingual anglo faps to his barbaric language's "poetry" episode
Auto sage.

>>9180702
>This guy is 100% wrong
Calm down you underage scholar, I was not that serious. You're purely singing the praises of him, while I was trying to reframe his figure in our days and find similarities.
>100% wrong
>100%
Kill yourself

>>9180823
>in our days and find similarities.
Your critique was as banal as it gets, it doens't get deeper than simple projecting.
He was not the proto-teenage /lit/ neet, he was one of the most erudite and influential intellectual of his time, who had real problems (not a simple ''tfw no gf because I'm shy :('').

It sounds as stupid as me saying ''Shakespeare? yeah, he's just the proto-/poetry/ hipster neet :)''.

Has anyone on /lit/ read the whole of the Zibaldone? Anyway, one of my favourite passages from /ourguy/ Leo:

E tu, lenta ginestra,
Che di selve odorate
Queste campagne dispogliate adorni,
Anche tu presto alla crudel possanza
Soccomberai del sotterraneo foco,
Che ritornando al loco
Già noto, stenderà l'avaro lembo
Su tue molli foreste. E piegherai
Sotto il fascio mortal non renitente
Il tuo capo innocente:
Ma non piegato insino allora indarno
Codardamente supplicando innanzi
Al futuro oppressor; ma non eretto
Con forsennato orgoglio inver le stelle,
Nè sul deserto, dove
E la sede e i natali
Non per voler ma per fortuna avesti;
Ma più saggia, ma tanto
Meno inferma dell'uom, quanto le frali
Tue stirpi non credesti
O dal fato o da te fatte immortali.

>>9180844
t. butthurt Leopardi lover

>Your critique was as banal as it gets
It's totally clear I didn't mean to trivialize in any way his works, since I wrote
>But he sublimated all that in his perfect poetry
What do you think? That his problems were much more tragic and serious than the ones of a today's young person? No, the only difference is that he was able and enough willing to put that suffering in great verse, while today everyone's lazy and unmotivated. My post was fucking clear about that.

>>9179833
To Melancholy is better, desu

>>9180890
>That his problems were much more tragic and serious than the ones of a today's young person?

They actually were. He lived a life of actual, at times unbearable pain, and his body started failing him when he was 16, making him later on an actual deformed cripple.
He lived a tragic life in the same way child soldiers lived a tragic life. To people like us what he had to go through is almost unthinkable.

>>9180884
>Tell me, O moon, what signifies his life
>To him, thy life to thee? Say, whither tend
>My weary, short-lived pilgrimage,
>Thy course, that knows no end?

>And old man, gray, infirm,
>Half-clad, and barefoot, he,
>Beneath his burden bending wearily,
>O'er mountain and o'er vale,
>Sharp rocks, and briars, and burning sand,
>In wind, and storm, alike in sultry heat
>And in the winter's cold,
>His constant course doth hold;
>On, on, he, panting, goes,
>Nor pause, nor rest he knows;
>Through rushing torrents, over watery wastes;
>He falls, gets up again,
>And ever more and more he hastes,
>Torn, bleeding, and arrives at last
>Where ends the path,
>Where all his troubles end;
>A vast abyss and horrible,
>Where plunging headlong, he forgets them all.
>Such is mortal life.

>>9180931
Indeed I was not talking about his physical illness, but his loneliness and isolation.

>>9180884
I haven't read it in Italian, but La Ginestra has way better passages, filled with true (seminal) existential, infinitely intense dread. why have you picked the prelude in particular?
The part you've picked just describe the setting of the poem.

>>9180954
Living in loneliness means that you're a proto /lit/ teenager NEET?
Just admit that the comparison was far-fetched.

>>9180970
You've busted my balls, shut up

>>9180964
This part is great:

Oft, on these hills, so desolate, Which by the hardened flood, That seems in waves to rise, Are clad in mourning, do I sit at night, And o'er the dreary plain behold The stars above in purest azure shine, And in the ocean mirrored from afar, And all the world in brilliant sparks arrayed, Revolving through the vault serene. And when my eyes I fasten on those lights, Which seem to them a point, And yet are so immense, That earth and sea, with them compared, Are but a point indeed; To whom, not only man, But this our globe, where man is nothing, is Unknown; and when I farther gaze upon Those clustered stars, at distance infinite, That seem to us like mist, to whom Not only man and earth, but all our stars At once, so vast in numbers and in bulk, The golden sun himself included, are Unknown, or else appear, as they to earth, A point of nebulous light, what, then, Dost thou unto my thought appear, O race of men?

>>9180999
>You've busted my balls, shut up

nice quads, but that won't cut it for your lack of arguments :)

>>9180999
Sorry, wrong alignment

Oft, on these hills, so desolate,
Which by the hardened flood,
That seems in waves to rise,
Are clad in mourning, do I sit at night,
And o'er the dreary plain behold
The stars above in purest azure shine,
And in the ocean mirrored from afar,
And all the world in brilliant sparks arrayed,
Revolving through the vault serene.
And when my eyes I fasten on those lights,
Which seem to them a point,
And yet are so immense,
That earth and sea, with them compared,
Are but a point indeed;
To whom, not only man,
But this our globe, where man is nothing, is
Unknown; and when I farther gaze upon
Those clustered stars, at distance infinite,
That seem to us like mist, to whom
Not only man and earth, but all our stars
At once, so vast in numbers and in bulk,
The golden sun himself included, are
Unknown, or else appear, as they to earth,
A point of nebulous light, what, then,
Dost thou unto my thought appear,
O race of men?

>>9181013
I already told you I was not 100% serious in my first post. I also already knew everything you wrote in your posts. What's the problem then? Stop arguing about nothing

>>9180135
Shakespeare isn't as old as Dante. That would probably be more like reading Chaucer, unless Italian hasn't changed as much as English.

>>9179833
To Autumn is better if we're talking about Keats' odes of 1819.

Lycidas is the best poem in the English language anyway.

What's a Graecian Urn?
About 6.50 an hour.

>>9179833
There once was a man from peru

Where should I start with Leopardi? I can't speak Italian.

>implying

>>9181512
Learn Italian or read this

http://dlx.bookzz.org/foreignfiction/758000/a7218c2080740cb55b226a520fa1470e.htm/_as/[Leopardi_Giacomo]_The_Poems_of_Giacomo_Leopardi(BookZZ.org).htm

Also don't forget the Zibaldone

>>9179833

Watch this:

Fucking some bitch with my 9 inch dick
I see a flea and I prepare to flick
But the flea jumps away before I can do so
I hate the book "Robinson Caruso"

Everybody except for me is a fag
Excuse my while I fart into this rag
And press it against your face cuz you're gay
A needle, a bottle, paint some hay

I like to get around
No not like that you see
I'll put my benis in your vagoogoo
and then I'll pee.

>>9179833

it stinks

>>9179833
What the fuck is it even about?

>>9181254
False, Peru only has manlets.

Solo una cosa no hay, es el olvido
dios que guarda el metal, guarda la escoria
y cifra en su profetica memoria
las lunas que seran y las que han sido

ya todo está. los miles de reflejos
que entre los dos crepusculos del dia
tu rostro fue dejando en los espejos
y los que irá dejando todavía

Y todo e parte del diverso
cristal de esa memoria, el universo
no tienen fin sus arduos corredores

y las puertas se cierran a tu paso
solo del otro lado del ocaso
verás los arquetipos y esplendores

might not be verbatim

>>9181218
>Implying To Melancholy isn'y the best Keats ode

>>9181722
Maybe after I finish Japanese. Thanks.

>>9181512
Read "I Canti", with annotations.
Read the Zibaldone only if you're interested in writing poetry.

>>9180115
it was his intention

>>9180964
That's the ending my man

>>9181166
Dante kinda set a lot of what modern Italian is. English doesn't actually have an equivalent -- Chaucer wrote just BEFORE modern English became vaguely modern.