Renowned literary critics have long been discussing the issue of Giacomo Leopardi’s pessimism, whether it was authentic to the core and not instead the effect of a mad love, strong in spite of itself, for life and his disillusioned hopes. Likewise the question arises about his religious feeling for life, although he himself has made it known that he does not believe in eternity. A little-known topic, despite the popularity of one of Italy’s greatest literary geniuses, is the tender, surprising intimate bond that he never loosened with the Virgin Mary. A bond sparked in Loreto. Giacomo went from nearby Recanati to the Holy House several times, even as a child, led not only by his father Monaldo, passionate about the mystery of the translation of Mary’s home, on which he conducted detailed and prolonged studies, but also by his erudite preceptor, Joseph Anton Vogel , who was an honorary canon in Loreto. The poet also brought his friend Pietro Giordani to that place, so dear to him, when, in September 1818, after their first exchanges of letters, he obtained permission to take him to his father’s house. On November 23, 1825, at the age of twenty-seven, the poet wrote a prayer to the Madonna for his sister Pauline in prose:«To Mary. It’s true that we are all evil, but we don’t enjoy it, we are so unhappy. It is true that this life and these evils are short and insignificant, but we too are small and they seem very long and unbearable. You who are already great and secure, have mercy on so many miseries.” Certainly in writing this prayer he will have thought back to the moments of reflection that he shared as a child, with Paolina, in front of the Madonna Comforter of the afflicted, whose effigy dominated in the noble chapel of the Leopardi counts. It was a painting created in 1737 in Vienna and brought to Recanati by the Capuchin Giovanni Biscia. The words of Leopardi’s Marian prayer will touch the heart of Monsignor Luigi Giussani, the founder of the Communion and Liberation movement, when he was a high school student. Giussani himself will reveal: «And it was so much. Giussani himself will reveal: «And this emotion was so much (for Leopardi, ed.) that for a period of my life I recited passages of his poems as thanks for Holy Communion».
Two prayers to Mary
Leopardi also left two prayers dedicated to the Madonna. The first is the invocation contained in the fifth canto of the poem in Dante’s tercets, Approaching deathwritten in December 1816, at the age of 18:
O Virgin Diva, if ever prostrated
I fell into limbs, to this low world,
if I ever called you Mother and if I loved you,
ah, you help the lax spirit
when the last sound of the hour will be heard,
oh you help me in the horrendous step.
The reference to Dante, therefore, was not limited to metrics, because the conclusion, just as in the Comedy of Alighieri, centered on an invocation to the Holy Virgin. Giacomo invokes the Madonna to help him at the hour of death, an impetus of the heart that is also expressed in the drafts of the Christian Hymns, planned and never implemented by Leopardi in the summer of 1819. The critic Giovanni Getto commented on it thus: «They are few lines, but of such fullness and sincerity that they make it a unique prayer, such as is not easily found in devotional literature.” An invocation that invites us to pray. And noIt’s not a gamble to think that the poet really asked the Celestial Mother to watch over him at the end of his life.. Today it is known, in fact, that he formed close relationships with the Jesuits during his stay in Naples from 1833 to 1837, the year of his death. One of them, father Francesco Scarpa, left a precious written testimony on the fact that Leopardi «confessed and was reconciled with God through the Sacrament of Penance». In the long letter to Carlo Curci, Scarpa also recounts his meeting with the poet: «In the year 1836, while I was confessing in the Gesù of Naples, for several mornings I saw this young man standing in front of my confessional, looking at me fixedly for a certain time, almost as if he wanted to show himself to me, and then he went away. One morning when he saw me cleared of penitents, he approached me, and with a sweet smile and kind manner spoke to me in this sentence: “Father, I would like to confess to you, because you have kidnapped me with your beautiful ways in welcoming the penitents; but before coming to the moment of confession, I would like to have a long discussion with you in some remote place””. On the other hand, to subvert the image of “an anti-Christian Leopardi, who died without faith” it is enoughLeopardi’s death certificate, signed by the parish priest of the Santissima Annunziata a Fonseca in Naples, in whose territory was the house where the poet died on 14 June 1837. It reads: «A 15 said (that is, June 1837, ed.), D. Giacomo Leopardi Conte, son of D. Monaldo and Adelaide Antici, aged 38equipped with the SS. Sag.ti (holy sacraments, ed.), died at 14 AD. buried idem (i.e., in the Cholera Cemetery) dom.to Vico Pero, n. 2″. And the notary Leonardo Anselmi wrote: «I found myself in the Ranieri house on the day of the Count’s death. Around four in the afternoon, Leopardi called Antonio Ranieri’s sister, who, quickly getting dressed, left the house and returned with the parish priest, who brought him the viaticum around six in the afternoon. Death occurred at eight or nine in the evening. I was present at all this and retired around midnight.” Giacomo’s father, Monaldo, stopped writing his diary when his son passed away. The last news you read there was written by his daughter Pauline: «On the nineteenth of June 1837, this beloved brother of mine died in the city of Naples. He had become one of the first men of letters in Europe. He was buried in the church of San Vitale on the Via di Pozzuoli. Goodbye dear Giacomo, when will we see each other again in Heaven?»
