Count Giacomo Leopardi, the Italian poet and prose writer, was one of five children born to Count Monaldo Leopardi and Marquise Adelaide Antici, in Recanati, near Ancona. His brief and anguished existence was plagued both by continuous illnesses (among them rachitis, which made him a hunchback) and the bigotry of his parents, who refused him financial support. A liberal and an agnostic, he yearned to leave the "bodiless, soulless, lifeless" ancestral abode where he had spent all his time devouring books; learning Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and a number of modern languages; and translating and writing critical essays on the classics, history, and astronomy. A fellow philologist, Pietro Giordani, opened to him the world beyond his "savage native town." Afterward, he traveled to Rome, Milan, Bologna, Pisa, Florence, and Naples, never venturing beyond the Alps because of his frail constitution, and even refusing...