Resumen de Leopardi e la polemica classico-romantica
In the Discorso di un Italiano intorno alla poesia romantica (1818) the discovery of the ‘prosaic’ order of the modern world is not enough to authorise new aesthetic paradigms going beyond classicism and to question the imaginative poetry of the ancients. Leopardi still considers such poetry the term of comparison for authentic poetry, capable of restoring an intense, vital relationship with nature. The ‘shift from the old condition to the modern one’ occurs in 1819 – just one year after the Discorso – and leads to a new kind of poetry, namely that of the Canti. With their ‘philosophical’ or ‘sentimental’ character, the Canti annex the territory of truth, which is the domain of prose. At the same time, far from being cancelled, the inventive, imaginative force of poetry is called for and in a way strengthened by such language of ‘truth’.
