SOURCE: Bini, Daniela. “Introduction: A Synthesis for Leopardi.” In A Fragrance from the Desert: Poetry and Philosophy in Giacomo Leopardi, pp. 1-21. Saratoga, Calif.: ANMA Libri, 1983.

In the following excerpt, Bini discusses Leopardi's writings as a synthesis between poetry and philosophy, maintaining that earlier critics have mistakenly considered the two aspects of his work incompatible.

The imagination takes its flight only after the void, the inauthenticity of the existential project has been revealed; literature begins where the existential demystification ends.

(Paul de Man, Blindness & Insight)¹

Life itself … has no meaning. But so what? “What are the meanings in our lives?” is the only question.

(Robert Solomon, The Passions)²

Tout ce qui est beau et tout ce qui est grand, ne soit qu'une illusion. Mais si cette illusion était commune … n'en serait-on pas plus heureux? … En effet il n'appartient qu'à l'imagination de procurer à l'homme la seule espèce de...