SOURCE: Castronuovo, David. “The Apostrophic Prayer: A Guiding Figure in Leopardi's Earliest Poetry.” Romance Languages Annual 10, no. 1 (1999): 216-24.

In the following essay, Castronuovo explains Leopardi's use of rhetorical apostrophe in his classically-inspired poems and translations, as well as in his early verses on Christian themes.

Which now of islands, what hill finds most favour with thee? What haven? What city? Which of the nymphs dost thou love above the rest, and what heroines hast thou taken for thy companions? Say, goddess, thou to me, and I will sing thy saying to others.

—Callimachus, “Hymn to Artemis” (l. 183-186)

This article proposes that the figure of “apostrophe” (and more specifically, that of “apostrophic prayer”) can be used as a guide to the analysis of a substantial amount of Giacomo Leopardi's earliest poetry—beginning with the juvenile verse and ending at about the point when he began to abandon a...