SOURCE: Perella, Nicolas J. “Translating Leopardi?” Italica 77, no. 3 (autumn 2000): 357-85.

In the following essay, Perella ponders Leopardi's relative obscurity outside his native Italy despite the poet's influence on Anglo-American literary culture.

E chiaro nella valle il fiume appare

—“La quiete dopo la tempesta”

“Giacomo Leopardi is a great name in Italy among philosophers and poets, but is quite unknown in this country.” So wrote Octavius Brook Frothingham in 1887 at the outset of his prefatory remarks to the first English translation of a truly representative number of the Canti, done by Frederick Townsend.¹ Surely, the statement would have to be qualified today, more than one hundred years later. Or would it? Actually, it continues to be a complaint registered over and over by Leopardi's admirers, Italian and non-Italians alike, frustrated that beyond Italy's confines the name of so great a poet and thinker does not often appear save in...