SOURCE: Bonadeo, Alfredo. “Death in Leopardi's Prose.” Italian Quarterly 70 (1974): 3-19.

In the following essay, Bonadeo discusses Leopardi's concept of death in the Zibaldone, maintaining that the poet was more concerned with life and its purpose than with death.

“What meaning and significance can be attached to the fact that man must die?”¹ What meaning and significance, consequently, can be attached to life in view of its extinction? These are the questions that may help to understand Leopardi's concept of death embodied in the prose of the Zibaldone. If one bears in mind the pessimism and the unhappiness that pervaded the life and work of the poet from Recanati, one would be inclined to think that he held life into little account, and viewed death as a welcome and liberating event. The glorification of death is indeed said to be part and parcel of romantic thought and sensibility;² death...