WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.700 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today I want to 00:00:02.700 --> 00:00:04.940 take you to a very specific place. It's not a 00:00:04.940 --> 00:00:08.679 happy place necessarily, but it is an intensely 00:00:08.679 --> 00:00:10.960 beautiful one. I like that framing. Imagine, 00:00:11.019 --> 00:00:14.460 if you will, a library. But not the kind with 00:00:14.460 --> 00:00:17.399 beanbags and, you know, reliable Wi -Fi. No, 00:00:17.399 --> 00:00:21.839 no. We are picturing a freezing cold, high -ceilinged 00:00:21.839 --> 00:00:25.379 room in a stone palace. We're in the early 1800s. 00:00:25.399 --> 00:00:28.420 And the air is just thick with dust and the smell 00:00:28.420 --> 00:00:32.000 of old paper. And inside this library is a prisoner. 00:00:32.460 --> 00:00:34.759 Prisoner who is also the warden, in a sense. 00:00:34.759 --> 00:00:36.740 A self -imposed sentence, almost. Right. And 00:00:36.740 --> 00:00:40.429 this prisoner is a young boy. And he is physically 00:00:40.429 --> 00:00:42.310 broken. And I don't mean just a little frail. 00:00:42.310 --> 00:00:44.590 I'm talking about a guy who becomes a hunchback, 00:00:44.630 --> 00:00:46.929 who can barely see, who lives in constant... 00:00:47.710 --> 00:00:50.170 Constant pain. Yeah, debilitating pain. He almost 00:00:50.170 --> 00:00:52.090 never leaves his small, suffocating provincial 00:00:52.090 --> 00:00:55.509 town. And yet this man, Giacomo Leopardi, possesses 00:00:55.509 --> 00:00:57.490 a mind that is currently roaming the cosmos, 00:00:57.689 --> 00:01:00.030 dismantling every single illusion that human 00:01:00.030 --> 00:01:01.570 beings use to get out of bed in the morning. 00:01:01.710 --> 00:01:03.909 It's just such a striking paradox, isn't it? 00:01:03.929 --> 00:01:07.489 You have this extreme physical constraint. A 00:01:07.489 --> 00:01:09.489 life lived in, you know, a few square meters 00:01:09.489 --> 00:01:12.950 in what were then the papal states, contrasted 00:01:12.950 --> 00:01:16.049 with an intellectual boundlessness that is, frankly... 00:01:16.939 --> 00:01:19.799 Well, it's terrifying. We are talking about Giacomo 00:01:19.799 --> 00:01:22.319 Leopardi. Now, if you're Italian, you probably 00:01:22.319 --> 00:01:24.560 just had a visceral flashback to high school, 00:01:24.739 --> 00:01:27.680 memorizing his poems and maybe rolling your eyes 00:01:27.680 --> 00:01:29.680 at his gloominess. Oh, for sure. He's required 00:01:29.680 --> 00:01:32.159 reading. But if you aren't Italian, you might 00:01:32.159 --> 00:01:34.459 never have heard of him. And that's a shame because 00:01:34.459 --> 00:01:37.239 he is often called the father of modern nihilism. 00:01:37.260 --> 00:01:39.000 He's the guy who looked at the universe and said, 00:01:39.060 --> 00:01:42.420 it doesn't care about you at all. Which, on the 00:01:42.420 --> 00:01:44.159 surface, sounds like the most depressing topic 00:01:44.159 --> 00:01:46.760 we could possibly choose for a deep dive. Hey 00:01:46.760 --> 00:01:49.379 everyone, tune in to hear why existence is futile. 00:01:49.439 --> 00:01:51.659 I know, right? It's a hard sell. But here is 00:01:51.659 --> 00:01:53.799 the hook, the mission, if you will, for this 00:01:53.799 --> 00:01:57.060 exploration. We want to understand why reading 00:01:57.060 --> 00:01:59.959 Leopardi, despite his reputation as the absolute 00:01:59.959 --> 00:02:02.900 king of gloom, doesn't actually feel depressing. 00:02:03.319 --> 00:02:06.739 No, it doesn't. It feels strangely life -affirming. 00:02:06.859 --> 00:02:10.300 Deeply human. We're going to dig into his massive 00:02:10.300 --> 00:02:13.659 notebook, Zibaldone, his major poems, the Conti, 00:02:13.659 --> 00:02:16.120 his philosophical dialogues, the operette Morali, 00:02:16.199 --> 00:02:19.199 and his life story to understand this whole concept 00:02:19.199 --> 00:02:22.189 of cosmic pessimism. And we'll see why thinkers 00:02:22.189 --> 00:02:24.150 like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and even Samuel 00:02:24.150 --> 00:02:26.270 Beckett later looked back at this frail Italian 00:02:26.270 --> 00:02:29.009 man and said, OK, he got it. He understood the 00:02:29.009 --> 00:02:31.750 fundamental problem of existence before any of 00:02:31.750 --> 00:02:35.110 us really did. So let's set the scene. We are 00:02:35.110 --> 00:02:37.289 in Reconati. It's a hilltop town in the March 00:02:37.289 --> 00:02:40.710 region of Italy. At the time, early 1800s, this 00:02:40.710 --> 00:02:43.750 isn't exactly a booming metropolis. No, and context 00:02:43.750 --> 00:02:45.870 is everything here. Reconati was part of the 00:02:45.870 --> 00:02:48.030 Papal States. This wasn't the Italy of the Renaissance 00:02:48.030 --> 00:02:49.930 or the Risorgimento that was just around the 00:02:49.930 --> 00:02:54.129 corner. It was a stifling, conservative, reactionary 00:02:54.129 --> 00:02:56.289 environment. So the church is in charge, basically. 00:02:56.449 --> 00:02:58.990 The church is in charge, and the mood is very 00:02:58.990 --> 00:03:01.389 much anti -Enlightenment. You know, the revolutions 00:03:01.389 --> 00:03:04.250 in France and America, the focus on reason. Reconati 00:03:04.250 --> 00:03:06.330 was trying very, very hard to pretend the last 00:03:06.330 --> 00:03:08.460 hundred years just hadn't happened. And sitting 00:03:08.460 --> 00:03:11.520 at the top of this stifling town is the Plotocilia 00:03:11.520 --> 00:03:14.620 Party. This is where Giacomo was born in 1798. 00:03:15.120 --> 00:03:17.139 And if you think your family holidays are tense, 00:03:17.400 --> 00:03:20.360 wait until you meet the Leopardis. Let's start 00:03:20.360 --> 00:03:23.240 with the father. Count Minaldo. Count Minaldo 00:03:23.240 --> 00:03:26.180 is a fascinating contradiction. He was a nobleman, 00:03:26.180 --> 00:03:29.099 a committed reactionary who absolutely hated 00:03:29.099 --> 00:03:31.860 the French Revolution, hated the very idea of 00:03:31.860 --> 00:03:34.860 progress. And he just wanted the world to stay 00:03:34.860 --> 00:03:38.060 anchored in traditional feudal values. A real 00:03:38.060 --> 00:03:40.240 traditionalist. A diehard traditionalist. He 00:03:40.240 --> 00:03:42.139 once wore a sword in public just to make a point 00:03:42.139 --> 00:03:45.319 about how things used to be. But he loved literature. 00:03:45.379 --> 00:03:48.759 He loved books so much. basically bankrupt the 00:03:48.759 --> 00:03:51.719 family buying them. He built this massive, famous 00:03:51.719 --> 00:03:53.680 library in the house. It had something like 20 00:03:53.680 --> 00:03:55.960 ,000 volumes. Which was an enormous private collection 00:03:55.960 --> 00:03:58.300 for the time. It became Giacomo's entire world. 00:03:58.520 --> 00:04:01.180 But then you have the mother, Martianus Adelaide 00:04:01.180 --> 00:04:03.919 in Ticimete. And if Manaldo was the book -loving 00:04:03.919 --> 00:04:07.139 dreamer, Adelaide was the iron fist. The sources 00:04:07.139 --> 00:04:10.400 describe her as cold and authoritarian. And honestly, 00:04:10.500 --> 00:04:12.479 that might be an understatement. It really might, 00:04:12.539 --> 00:04:14.580 because Manaldo had squandered the family fortune 00:04:14.580 --> 00:04:17.379 not just on books, but also on gambling. She 00:04:17.379 --> 00:04:19.779 took over the management of the entire estate, 00:04:19.879 --> 00:04:23.680 and her one single -minded obsession was restoring 00:04:23.680 --> 00:04:26.879 the family wealth and reputation. There's this 00:04:26.879 --> 00:04:29.019 detail in the biographies that she imposed a 00:04:29.019 --> 00:04:31.800 rigorous discipline of religion and economy. 00:04:32.620 --> 00:04:34.579 Just doesn't sound like a warm, fuzzy home. It 00:04:34.579 --> 00:04:36.600 sounds like a place of rules. It was a place 00:04:36.600 --> 00:04:40.000 of extreme austerity. She was deeply religious, 00:04:40.079 --> 00:04:42.920 but in a severe, almost punitive way. There's 00:04:42.920 --> 00:04:44.699 a really chilling detail where she is described 00:04:44.699 --> 00:04:47.480 as envying parents whose children died young. 00:04:47.740 --> 00:04:49.920 Envying them. Why? Because those children went 00:04:49.920 --> 00:04:51.720 straight to heaven without having the chance 00:04:51.720 --> 00:04:54.220 to sin. She viewed life on Earth essentially 00:04:54.220 --> 00:04:56.819 as a risk management problem for the soul. The 00:04:56.819 --> 00:04:59.160 less time you spent here, the less chance you 00:04:59.160 --> 00:05:01.850 had to mess up and go to hell. That is, wow. 00:05:02.089 --> 00:05:05.290 Okay, so you have a home ruled by a father who 00:05:05.290 --> 00:05:08.050 retreats into the past, into his books, and a 00:05:08.050 --> 00:05:10.410 mother who runs the present like a prison warden, 00:05:10.410 --> 00:05:12.269 obsessed with balancing the books. Not just the 00:05:12.269 --> 00:05:14.089 financial books, but the spiritual ones, too. 00:05:14.269 --> 00:05:16.850 And in the middle of this is young Giacomo. Exactly. 00:05:16.930 --> 00:05:20.790 And where does a sensitive, brilliant child go 00:05:20.790 --> 00:05:23.009 in that environment? He goes to the one place 00:05:23.009 --> 00:05:25.490 where he has any kind of freedom. He climbs the 00:05:25.490 --> 00:05:28.089 ladder in his father's library. This brings us 00:05:28.089 --> 00:05:30.839 to part one of our story. The Cage and the Mad 00:05:30.839 --> 00:05:34.279 and Desperate Studies. This phrase, Studimati 00:05:34.279 --> 00:05:37.420 et Desperatissimi, is Leopardi's own description 00:05:37.420 --> 00:05:40.730 of his youth. We're talking about the years roughly 00:05:40.730 --> 00:05:44.769 between 1809 and 1816. He's a child prodigy, 00:05:44.769 --> 00:05:47.470 but prodigy feels too small a word. It doesn't 00:05:47.470 --> 00:05:49.370 capture the intensity of it. And he was mostly 00:05:49.370 --> 00:05:51.069 self -taught, right? His parents didn't really 00:05:51.069 --> 00:05:53.730 guide this. Effectively, yes. He had some tutors, 00:05:53.730 --> 00:05:56.850 local priests mostly, but he outpaced them so 00:05:56.850 --> 00:05:59.170 quickly by the time he was 10 or 12, they had 00:05:59.170 --> 00:06:00.930 nothing left to teach him. So he just sat in 00:06:00.930 --> 00:06:02.870 the library and read everything. And when I say 00:06:02.870 --> 00:06:04.269 everything, I mean, he taught himself Latin, 00:06:04.430 --> 00:06:06.870 Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, and some English. 00:06:07.050 --> 00:06:10.069 On his own. On his own, in a cold room in Reconadi. 00:06:10.269 --> 00:06:12.449 And he wasn't just reading, he was producing. 00:06:13.149 --> 00:06:16.550 By age 14 or 15, he's writing a history of astronomy. 00:06:16.870 --> 00:06:19.490 He writes an essay on the popular errors of the 00:06:19.490 --> 00:06:21.930 ancients. I mean, these aren't like... High school 00:06:21.930 --> 00:06:24.189 book reports. These are serious philological 00:06:24.189 --> 00:06:27.209 works. Philology, the study of language and historical 00:06:27.209 --> 00:06:30.230 texts. That was his first obsession. He's translating 00:06:30.230 --> 00:06:33.709 ancient manuscripts, correcting errors in Latin 00:06:33.709 --> 00:06:35.870 texts that had stumped professional scholars 00:06:35.870 --> 00:06:38.829 for centuries. He is doing the work of a seasoned 00:06:38.829 --> 00:06:42.110 academic at Oxford or the Sorbonne, but he's 00:06:42.110 --> 00:06:43.949 a teenager. It's unbelievable. It's like his 00:06:43.949 --> 00:06:46.350 mind was a muscle and he was working it out 16 00:06:46.350 --> 00:06:49.569 hours a day every day for seven years. But let's 00:06:49.569 --> 00:06:51.750 talk about the cost of that. Because you can't 00:06:51.750 --> 00:06:53.930 just download that much data into a human brain, 00:06:54.129 --> 00:06:56.610 especially a developing one, without consequences. 00:06:56.850 --> 00:06:59.550 He calls them mad and desperate for a reason. 00:06:59.769 --> 00:07:02.370 The physical toll was catastrophic, absolutely 00:07:02.370 --> 00:07:05.790 devastating. Imagine a growing boy sitting hunched 00:07:05.790 --> 00:07:08.069 over parchment by candlelight for seven years, 00:07:08.230 --> 00:07:10.889 barely moving, barely eating, just reading and 00:07:10.889 --> 00:07:13.589 writing. His health completely collapsed. This 00:07:13.589 --> 00:07:16.560 is when the spinal deformity develops. Yes. The 00:07:16.560 --> 00:07:18.759 sources suggest it was likely Pott's disease, 00:07:19.120 --> 00:07:21.379 which is a form of tuberculosis affecting the 00:07:21.379 --> 00:07:24.379 spine, or possibly ankle -losing spondylitis. 00:07:24.720 --> 00:07:27.540 Whatever the specific diagnosis, the result was 00:07:27.540 --> 00:07:30.459 a severe curvature. He became a hunchback. And 00:07:30.459 --> 00:07:32.899 it stunted his growth. Yes. He stopped growing. 00:07:33.060 --> 00:07:35.459 He was only about 4 foot 8 inches tall as an 00:07:35.459 --> 00:07:38.779 adult. His eyesight began to fail from the constant 00:07:38.779 --> 00:07:41.699 strain of reading tiny print in bad light. He 00:07:41.699 --> 00:07:44.220 developed chronic gastrointestinal problems. 00:07:44.879 --> 00:07:46.720 It's so important to sit with this image. He 00:07:46.720 --> 00:07:49.000 is a teenager with a mind of genius, trapped 00:07:49.000 --> 00:07:51.480 in a body that is visibly deformed and constantly 00:07:51.480 --> 00:07:54.540 excruciatingly painful. And his father, Manaldo. 00:07:55.339 --> 00:07:57.560 He was proud of this, wasn't he? In a way. In 00:07:57.560 --> 00:07:59.519 the worst possible way. He didn't seem to see 00:07:59.519 --> 00:08:01.800 the cost. He would hold public exams to show 00:08:01.800 --> 00:08:04.339 off Giacomo like a circus pony. Look at my brilliant 00:08:04.339 --> 00:08:07.079 son. He can translate Hebrew on the spot. But 00:08:07.079 --> 00:08:09.019 he completely ignored the fact that the mad studies 00:08:09.019 --> 00:08:10.680 were destroying the boy. It's heartbreaking. 00:08:11.279 --> 00:08:13.060 Giacomo writes about looking out the library 00:08:13.060 --> 00:08:15.319 window at the village kids playing in the square 00:08:15.319 --> 00:08:17.680 and feeling like a ghost haunting his own life. 00:08:17.939 --> 00:08:20.709 That isolation is key. He wasn't just lonely 00:08:20.709 --> 00:08:23.230 in a social sense. He was severed from normal 00:08:23.230 --> 00:08:25.730 human experience. He never had a childhood. Which 00:08:25.730 --> 00:08:29.290 probably explains why he tried to escape. In 00:08:29.290 --> 00:08:31.509 1818, right? He did. It was a pretty pathetic 00:08:31.509 --> 00:08:34.049 attempt, honestly. He planned a runaway attempt 00:08:34.049 --> 00:08:37.509 at age 20. He managed to secretly obtain a passport. 00:08:37.649 --> 00:08:39.889 He wrote a letter to his father explaining why 00:08:39.889 --> 00:08:43.610 he had to leave. But Manaldo found out. And he 00:08:43.610 --> 00:08:46.320 was caught. He was caught! It's a humiliating 00:08:46.320 --> 00:08:49.159 moment. Here's a man who is intellectually miles 00:08:49.159 --> 00:08:51.700 ahead of his parents. He's already corresponding 00:08:51.700 --> 00:08:54.440 with some of the top minds in Europe. But in 00:08:54.440 --> 00:08:56.919 his own house, he's treated like a naughty child 00:08:56.919 --> 00:08:59.470 who tried to steal a cookie. His father literally 00:08:59.470 --> 00:09:02.289 intercepts him. But you mentioned he was corresponding 00:09:02.289 --> 00:09:04.230 with people. There was a friendship that started 00:09:04.230 --> 00:09:06.070 around this time that was just crucial for him. 00:09:06.210 --> 00:09:08.710 Yes, Pietro Giordani, a very important figure. 00:09:08.769 --> 00:09:11.149 He was a famous classicist and writer who visited 00:09:11.149 --> 00:09:14.529 the Leopardi estate in 1817. And Giordani was 00:09:14.529 --> 00:09:16.850 the first person to look at Giacomo and see a 00:09:16.850 --> 00:09:20.389 peer. Not a freak, not a child prodigy, but an 00:09:20.389 --> 00:09:22.490 intellectual equal. That must have been like 00:09:22.490 --> 00:09:25.330 oxygen to him. It was a lifeline. Giordani told 00:09:25.330 --> 00:09:27.809 him, you are brilliant. There is a whole world 00:09:27.809 --> 00:09:29.529 out there waiting for you. You can't stay in 00:09:29.529 --> 00:09:33.409 Ricconati forever. He offered him hope. But that 00:09:33.409 --> 00:09:35.909 hope has a dark side, doesn't it? It does, because 00:09:35.909 --> 00:09:38.330 ironically, it also made the cage feel smaller. 00:09:38.629 --> 00:09:41.129 Once you know what's outside, the walls feel 00:09:41.129 --> 00:09:43.470 that much closer. And right around this time, 00:09:43.590 --> 00:09:47.629 roughly 1816 to 1819, Leopardi undergoes this 00:09:47.629 --> 00:09:50.610 massive internal change. Scholars call it the 00:09:50.610 --> 00:09:53.919 shift. So previously he was doing this philology, 00:09:53.940 --> 00:09:57.059 studying words, history, facts. He was an erudite. 00:09:57.320 --> 00:10:00.179 What happens in the shift? He moves from erudition 00:10:00.179 --> 00:10:03.480 to beauty. He stops being just a scholar of ancient 00:10:03.480 --> 00:10:05.620 texts and decides to become what he was always 00:10:05.620 --> 00:10:08.470 meant to be, a poet. But it's not just a career 00:10:08.470 --> 00:10:11.250 change. It's a profound spiritual crisis. Because 00:10:11.250 --> 00:10:13.730 he loses his faith, right? The rigid Catholicism 00:10:13.730 --> 00:10:15.850 of his mother? Completely. He abandons it. He 00:10:15.850 --> 00:10:17.649 starts looking at the world through a much colder, 00:10:17.750 --> 00:10:20.250 more scientific, materialistic lens, heavily 00:10:20.250 --> 00:10:22.710 influenced by empiricist philosophers like John 00:10:22.710 --> 00:10:24.769 Locke. He starts looking for comfort in faith 00:10:24.769 --> 00:10:26.730 and starts staring at what he calls the arid 00:10:26.730 --> 00:10:31.350 truth. La rida vera. The arid truth. But, and 00:10:31.350 --> 00:10:33.590 this is the weird part, the beautiful paradox. 00:10:34.619 --> 00:10:37.139 This is also when he writes one of the most sublime 00:10:37.139 --> 00:10:40.840 poems ever written, L 'Infinito, The Infinite. 00:10:41.039 --> 00:10:44.279 Written around 1819, it is a tiny poem, just 00:10:44.279 --> 00:10:47.460 15 lines in the original Italian, but it contains 00:10:47.460 --> 00:10:50.600 the seed of his entire philosophy. It's a universe 00:10:50.600 --> 00:10:53.019 in a grain of sand. Let's visualize it for the 00:10:53.019 --> 00:10:54.679 listener because the setting is so important. 00:10:54.840 --> 00:10:57.320 The speaker is sitting on a solitary hill in 00:10:57.320 --> 00:11:00.259 Reconati. It's a real place, Mount Tabor. He's 00:11:00.259 --> 00:11:02.419 looking out at the view, but there is a hedge. 00:11:02.889 --> 00:11:05.190 A simple row of bushes blocking the horizon. 00:11:05.450 --> 00:11:07.529 Now, hold on. Most of us, if we went to a scenic 00:11:07.529 --> 00:11:09.230 viewpoint and there was a hedge blocking the 00:11:09.230 --> 00:11:10.870 view, we'd be annoyed. We'd try to find a better 00:11:10.870 --> 00:11:13.269 spot, right? Yeah, I'd move. Leopardi does something 00:11:13.269 --> 00:11:15.750 brilliant here. He says that the hedge is essential 00:11:15.750 --> 00:11:18.269 because it blocks his physical sight. It forces 00:11:18.269 --> 00:11:20.889 his mind to work. It forces him to imagine. He 00:11:20.889 --> 00:11:23.490 writes, but sitting and watching, I imagine in 00:11:23.490 --> 00:11:26.870 my thought, spaces without limits. Exactly. If 00:11:26.870 --> 00:11:29.049 he could see the actual horizon, it would be 00:11:29.049 --> 00:11:31.830 a specific, finite landscape. It would end somewhere. 00:11:32.190 --> 00:11:34.210 But because he can't see it, he constructs the 00:11:34.210 --> 00:11:36.809 infinite in his head. The infinite isn't a real 00:11:36.809 --> 00:11:39.690 place. It's a mental construct born from limitation. 00:11:40.169 --> 00:11:42.409 So the limitation, the hedge, is what triggers 00:11:42.409 --> 00:11:44.509 the imagination. It's the catalyst. And then 00:11:44.509 --> 00:11:47.049 the wind picks up. He hears the wind rustling 00:11:47.049 --> 00:11:50.049 in the leaves nearby. And he compares that finite 00:11:50.049 --> 00:11:53.190 present sound to the infinite silence of eternity 00:11:53.190 --> 00:11:56.289 of past and future ages. And the clash between 00:11:56.289 --> 00:11:58.129 the finite sound of the wind and the imagined 00:11:58.129 --> 00:12:00.649 infinite silence of eternity just overwhelms 00:12:00.649 --> 00:12:03.379 him. But he loves it, the famous last lines. 00:12:03.539 --> 00:12:05.860 And shipwreck seems sweet to me in this sea. 00:12:06.080 --> 00:12:11.480 The sweet shipwreck. It's the dissolution of 00:12:11.480 --> 00:12:14.480 the self, the ego. For a brief, blissful moment, 00:12:14.559 --> 00:12:17.480 the pain of being Giacomo Leopardi, the hunchback, 00:12:17.759 --> 00:12:19.940 the prisoner, the lonely young man disappears. 00:12:20.440 --> 00:12:23.039 It's annihilated in the vastness of his own imagination. 00:12:23.340 --> 00:12:25.940 It's a moment of transcendence achieved not through 00:12:25.940 --> 00:12:28.399 faith, but through poetry. This connects directly 00:12:28.399 --> 00:12:30.960 to his theory of pleasure, doesn't it? We need 00:12:30.960 --> 00:12:32.720 to unpack this because I feel like this is the 00:12:32.720 --> 00:12:35.580 engine of his whole worldview. It absolutely 00:12:35.580 --> 00:12:38.019 is. And to understand it, we have to look at 00:12:38.019 --> 00:12:41.120 the Zibaldone. The Zibaldone. Let's pause and 00:12:41.120 --> 00:12:43.620 explain what this thing is because notebook doesn't 00:12:43.620 --> 00:12:46.320 quite do it justice. No, notebook is way too 00:12:46.320 --> 00:12:49.720 small a word. The Zibaldone is a monster. It's 00:12:49.720 --> 00:12:52.980 over 4 ,500 handwritten pages kept from 1817 00:12:52.980 --> 00:12:57.389 to 1832. The word means hodgepodge or a mixture 00:12:57.389 --> 00:12:59.389 of things in Italian. And that's exactly what 00:12:59.389 --> 00:13:01.610 it is. It's his intellectual laboratory. Perfect 00:13:01.610 --> 00:13:03.710 description. He wrote about everything. Philosophy, 00:13:03.950 --> 00:13:06.649 linguistics, astronomy, literary criticism, anthropology, 00:13:07.190 --> 00:13:09.889 personal memories, cynical aphorisms. It's all 00:13:09.889 --> 00:13:11.850 in there. It wasn't meant for publication. It 00:13:11.850 --> 00:13:15.190 was him thinking on paper for 15 years. It's 00:13:15.190 --> 00:13:16.610 like if you printed out the Internet history 00:13:16.610 --> 00:13:19.429 of a depressed genius for 15 years. A genius 00:13:19.429 --> 00:13:22.669 who is incredibly, incredibly sharp. And in these 00:13:22.669 --> 00:13:25.470 thousands of pages, he works out his theory of 00:13:25.470 --> 00:13:28.350 pleasure. Here is the core idea, and it's deceptively 00:13:28.350 --> 00:13:31.190 simple. Leopardi argues that the human mind is 00:13:31.190 --> 00:13:33.769 structurally designed to desire infinite satisfaction. 00:13:34.149 --> 00:13:37.210 Infinite, as in limitless. Infinite, limitless, 00:13:37.230 --> 00:13:40.350 undefined, perpetual happiness. That is our default 00:13:40.350 --> 00:13:44.129 setting. But... We live in a physical finite 00:13:44.129 --> 00:13:47.389 world. And the physical world only offers finite 00:13:47.389 --> 00:13:50.210 things. Okay, let's use an example. I desire 00:13:50.210 --> 00:13:53.870 a new car. Right. A perfect shiny new car. Right. 00:13:53.889 --> 00:13:56.830 You desire the car. And in your head, before 00:13:56.830 --> 00:13:59.649 you get it, the idea of the car represents a 00:13:59.649 --> 00:14:02.889 huge, vague, potentially infinite happiness. 00:14:03.269 --> 00:14:05.350 It's shiny. It smells new. It will change your 00:14:05.350 --> 00:14:07.450 life. People will admire you. That desire is 00:14:07.450 --> 00:14:10.299 enormous. Okay. Then you buy the car. And for 00:14:10.299 --> 00:14:12.600 three days, I love it. It's amazing. And on day 00:14:12.600 --> 00:14:14.899 four. It's just my car. And I have to get gas. 00:14:14.899 --> 00:14:16.600 And I'm worried about scratching it. The object 00:14:16.600 --> 00:14:19.039 itself is finite. It has limits. It gets dirty. 00:14:19.240 --> 00:14:21.980 But your desire for happiness was infinite. So 00:14:21.980 --> 00:14:24.139 the moment you actually possess the thing, the 00:14:24.139 --> 00:14:26.120 gap between what you wanted and what you got 00:14:26.120 --> 00:14:29.059 becomes painfully obvious. Leopardi calls this 00:14:29.059 --> 00:14:32.539 feeling noia. Not just boredom, but a deep existential 00:14:32.539 --> 00:14:36.179 tedium. So we are structurally doomed to be unsatisfied 00:14:36.179 --> 00:14:38.720 because we want more than reality can physically 00:14:38.720 --> 00:14:42.200 provide. Correct. Reality is small. Desire is 00:14:42.200 --> 00:14:44.419 huge. That is the fundamental tragedy of human 00:14:44.419 --> 00:14:47.840 consciousness. So what's the solution? I mean, 00:14:47.860 --> 00:14:50.580 how do we not go completely crazy? Illusions. 00:14:51.399 --> 00:14:55.080 Distance. Vagueness. This is where the hedge 00:14:55.080 --> 00:14:58.009 from Linfonito comes back. If a thing is far 00:14:58.009 --> 00:15:00.629 away or hidden or indistinct or in the future, 00:15:00.830 --> 00:15:03.789 we can project our infinite desire onto it because 00:15:03.789 --> 00:15:06.350 we can't see its disappointing, finite edges 00:15:06.350 --> 00:15:08.889 yet. This is why anticipation is almost always 00:15:08.889 --> 00:15:11.549 better than the event itself. Always. This is 00:15:11.549 --> 00:15:13.570 why he loved the ancients, the Greeks and Romans. 00:15:13.690 --> 00:15:15.389 He had this whole theory that they were happier 00:15:15.389 --> 00:15:17.669 than us. Why? Because they had better stuff? 00:15:17.909 --> 00:15:19.889 No, because they had better illusions. They had 00:15:19.889 --> 00:15:22.309 myths. They looked at a forest and saw dryads 00:15:22.309 --> 00:15:24.250 in the trees. They looked at the sea and saw 00:15:24.250 --> 00:15:27.120 Poseidon. Their world was enchanted by imagination. 00:15:27.240 --> 00:15:29.779 They didn't know everything. And us moderns? 00:15:29.779 --> 00:15:32.879 We are cursed with reason. L 'arido vero, the 00:15:32.879 --> 00:15:35.179 arid truth. We have analyzed the world to death. 00:15:35.279 --> 00:15:37.919 We know the dryad isn't there. It's just chlorophyll 00:15:37.919 --> 00:15:40.500 and bark and photosynthesis. We've stripped the 00:15:40.500 --> 00:15:43.220 world of the very illusions that made life bearable. 00:15:43.419 --> 00:15:45.980 That is actually a really powerful way to look 00:15:45.980 --> 00:15:49.000 at it. It explains why a world of total information 00:15:49.000 --> 00:15:51.799 where everything is known is kind of a bummer. 00:15:51.899 --> 00:15:54.730 Truth is the enemy of happiness. That is a core 00:15:54.730 --> 00:15:58.250 Leo Pardi tenet. And beauty, for him, is almost 00:15:58.250 --> 00:16:01.610 always linked to the vague, the indefinite, the 00:16:01.610 --> 00:16:04.669 remembered, or the anticipated. So initially 00:16:04.669 --> 00:16:07.750 in this early phase of his philosophy, he sees 00:16:07.750 --> 00:16:11.250 nature as kind of benevolent. She's a mother 00:16:11.250 --> 00:16:13.490 who gave us these illusions to hide the ugly 00:16:13.490 --> 00:16:15.850 truth. Here, have a myth about Zeus so you don't 00:16:15.850 --> 00:16:18.029 worry about the abyss of death. Precisely. He 00:16:18.029 --> 00:16:20.710 calls this his historical pessimism phase. He 00:16:20.710 --> 00:16:23.929 thinks... I am unhappy because I am modern. If 00:16:23.929 --> 00:16:26.549 I had been born in Sparta in 500 BC, I would 00:16:26.549 --> 00:16:27.990 have been happier because I would have had more 00:16:27.990 --> 00:16:30.169 illusions. But I have a feeling that doesn't 00:16:30.169 --> 00:16:32.850 last. No. That blanket is about to get ripped 00:16:32.850 --> 00:16:35.590 away. As we move into part three of our deep 00:16:35.590 --> 00:16:38.470 dive, he moves from historical pessimism to something 00:16:38.470 --> 00:16:42.490 much darker. Cosmic pessimism. And nature stops 00:16:42.490 --> 00:16:44.730 being the nice mom who tells you bedtime stories. 00:16:44.929 --> 00:16:47.669 She becomes a monster. Or worse, a machine that 00:16:47.669 --> 00:16:49.350 doesn't care if it grinds you up in its gears. 00:16:49.759 --> 00:16:52.620 This shift is perfectly captured in his work, 00:16:52.679 --> 00:16:56.399 Operate Morali, or Small Moral Works. These are 00:16:56.399 --> 00:17:00.139 these brilliant, strange prose dialogues. And 00:17:00.139 --> 00:17:03.039 there's this one story in particular, the dialogue 00:17:03.039 --> 00:17:06.539 of nature and an Icelander. This is a key text 00:17:06.539 --> 00:17:10.059 written in 1824. Imagine a man from Iceland. 00:17:10.319 --> 00:17:13.500 He spends his entire life trying to avoid suffering. 00:17:14.059 --> 00:17:16.380 He's not asking for much. He's not chasing infinite 00:17:16.380 --> 00:17:18.640 pleasure. He just doesn't want to be in pain. 00:17:18.819 --> 00:17:21.039 He's the ultimate risk -averse traveler. Totally. 00:17:21.059 --> 00:17:23.660 He runs from volcanoes in Iceland. He runs from 00:17:23.660 --> 00:17:26.619 storms at sea. He runs from the cold. He figures 00:17:26.619 --> 00:17:29.019 I'll go somewhere else where nature is kinder. 00:17:29.039 --> 00:17:30.660 He travels all over the world. And where does 00:17:30.660 --> 00:17:33.440 he end up? He travels to the interior of Africa 00:17:33.440 --> 00:17:36.279 to escape nature's wrath. And there in the middle 00:17:36.279 --> 00:17:39.180 of a vast desert, he sees a giant bust, like 00:17:39.180 --> 00:17:41.779 a huge terrifying statue that turns out to be 00:17:41.779 --> 00:17:44.779 a giant woman. It is nature personified. And 00:17:44.779 --> 00:17:46.400 he finally gets to ask the manager a question. 00:17:46.539 --> 00:17:48.500 He gets his chance. He unloads on her. He says, 00:17:48.559 --> 00:17:50.779 why? Why do you torment us? Why did you create 00:17:50.779 --> 00:17:52.559 us if we're just going to suffer? I didn't do 00:17:52.559 --> 00:17:54.200 anything to you. Why do you hate me so much? 00:17:54.480 --> 00:17:57.500 And nature's response is just absolutely chilling. 00:17:57.880 --> 00:18:00.400 She basically yawns. She says, did you think 00:18:00.400 --> 00:18:03.769 I did this for you? Ouch. It's a brutal takedown 00:18:03.769 --> 00:18:06.369 of human self -importance. She explains that 00:18:06.369 --> 00:18:08.869 the universe is a perpetual cycle of production 00:18:08.869 --> 00:18:12.349 and destruction. Life, suffering and death are 00:18:12.349 --> 00:18:15.329 just necessary parts of the engine. She says, 00:18:15.410 --> 00:18:17.869 and this is a paraphrase, the world is not made 00:18:17.869 --> 00:18:21.069 for humanity. If destroying the whole human race 00:18:21.069 --> 00:18:23.609 would benefit the universal cycle, I would do 00:18:23.609 --> 00:18:25.690 it without a second thought. So it's not that 00:18:25.690 --> 00:18:27.690 she hates him. No, that would almost be comforting. 00:18:28.049 --> 00:18:30.950 Hate implies a relationship. She is completely, 00:18:31.109 --> 00:18:33.829 utterly indifferent. He is an ant on a sidewalk. 00:18:34.049 --> 00:18:36.609 His happiness, his suffering is all completely 00:18:36.609 --> 00:18:39.269 irrelevant to the grand mechanical process. That 00:18:39.269 --> 00:18:41.769 is cosmic pessimism. It's not about history or 00:18:41.769 --> 00:18:44.069 culture or your personal health. It's about the 00:18:44.069 --> 00:18:46.029 fundamental mechanics of the universe. And to 00:18:46.029 --> 00:18:47.990 prove the point, the dialogue has this slapstick 00:18:47.990 --> 00:18:50.500 horrifying. ending just as the icelander is processing 00:18:50.500 --> 00:18:52.599 this that his entire life of suffering means 00:18:52.599 --> 00:18:54.960 absolutely nothing what happened two famished 00:18:54.960 --> 00:18:57.779 lions show up two famished lions show up and 00:18:57.779 --> 00:19:00.730 eat him And the narrator notes, with this cold 00:19:00.730 --> 00:19:03.670 scientific precision, that the lions, having 00:19:03.670 --> 00:19:05.750 eaten him, were able to live a little bit longer 00:19:05.750 --> 00:19:08.069 that day. That is so dark. It's brutal irony. 00:19:08.529 --> 00:19:11.150 Or there's an alternative ending that Leopardi 00:19:11.150 --> 00:19:13.410 wrote where a sandstorm buries him and he becomes 00:19:13.410 --> 00:19:15.470 a perfectly preserved mummy who ends up in a 00:19:15.470 --> 00:19:18.410 museum in Europe. Either way, he is consumed 00:19:18.410 --> 00:19:21.390 by the system. He becomes an object. So this 00:19:21.390 --> 00:19:23.430 is where we move from I am unhappy because I 00:19:23.430 --> 00:19:26.259 am sick. which is, you know, personal pessimism, 00:19:26.259 --> 00:19:29.640 to we are unhappy because we are modern, which 00:19:29.640 --> 00:19:33.220 is historical pessimism, to the final awful stage. 00:19:33.920 --> 00:19:36.740 Everyone and everything is unhappy simply because 00:19:36.740 --> 00:19:39.710 it is born. Correct. Existence itself is a flaw. 00:19:40.250 --> 00:19:42.390 Leopardi argues that unhappiness is the default 00:19:42.390 --> 00:19:44.930 state of all living things. Animals, he thinks, 00:19:45.009 --> 00:19:46.890 suffer less only because they don't have the 00:19:46.890 --> 00:19:49.250 consciousness to reflect on the past or worry 00:19:49.250 --> 00:19:50.890 about the future. They just exist in the moment. 00:19:50.930 --> 00:19:53.630 We have the curse of thinking about our own suffering. 00:19:53.910 --> 00:19:55.410 Okay, hold on. I have to play devil's advocate 00:19:55.410 --> 00:19:59.609 here for a second. Isn't this just teenage angst 00:19:59.609 --> 00:20:03.349 elevated to a grand philosophy? I didn't ask 00:20:03.349 --> 00:20:07.420 to be born. Life sucks. It sounds like something 00:20:07.420 --> 00:20:09.859 a goth kid writes in their journal. Is it really 00:20:09.859 --> 00:20:12.420 deeper than that? That is the most common criticism. 00:20:12.579 --> 00:20:15.299 For 100 years, people dismissed him as exactly 00:20:15.299 --> 00:20:18.339 that. The bitter hunchback who hated life because 00:20:18.339 --> 00:20:20.279 he couldn't get a date. They said, oh, if he'd 00:20:20.279 --> 00:20:21.700 been handsome and healthy, he would have been 00:20:21.700 --> 00:20:24.480 an optimist. Right. Fix the bag, fix the philosophy. 00:20:24.720 --> 00:20:27.400 But Leopardi anticipated that critique. He wrote 00:20:27.400 --> 00:20:29.960 about it in Zabaldone. He argued that his physical 00:20:29.960 --> 00:20:32.599 suffering didn't create the truth. It just stripped 00:20:32.599 --> 00:20:34.720 away the illusions that healthy people use to 00:20:34.720 --> 00:20:37.599 blind themselves to it. He said, my sickness 00:20:37.599 --> 00:20:40.559 acted like a magnifying glass. So you say his 00:20:40.559 --> 00:20:43.779 pain gave him clarity. Exactly. He believed that 00:20:43.779 --> 00:20:45.880 even if he were the most handsome, successful, 00:20:46.180 --> 00:20:49.039 wealthy man in Italy, the theory of pleasure 00:20:49.039 --> 00:20:51.339 would still hold. He would still get bored. He 00:20:51.339 --> 00:20:54.140 would still get old. He would still die. The 00:20:54.140 --> 00:20:56.539 void is there for everyone. He just didn't have 00:20:56.539 --> 00:20:58.779 the energy or the distractions to look away from 00:20:58.779 --> 00:21:01.140 it. That's a fair counterpoint. He's saying, 00:21:01.240 --> 00:21:03.819 I'm not the pessimist. You guys are just delusional. 00:21:03.920 --> 00:21:06.539 Pretty much. And he's got a point. So he takes 00:21:06.539 --> 00:21:09.299 this leaden, heavy philosophy and somehow... 00:21:09.549 --> 00:21:12.809 In part four of our story, he transmutes it into 00:21:12.809 --> 00:21:15.730 pure gold. We're talking about the great Canty, 00:21:15.730 --> 00:21:18.309 his major poems written in his maturity. This 00:21:18.309 --> 00:21:21.769 is the period roughly between 1823 and 1832. 00:21:22.089 --> 00:21:24.309 He actually manages to leave Ricconotti for a 00:21:24.309 --> 00:21:28.210 while. He goes to Florence, Pisa, Bologna, but 00:21:28.210 --> 00:21:30.130 the world often disappoints him. It's not the 00:21:30.130 --> 00:21:32.720 magical place he read about in books. And eventually, 00:21:32.920 --> 00:21:35.460 due to worsening illness and lack of money, he 00:21:35.460 --> 00:21:37.740 has to go back to the cage of his father's house. 00:21:37.920 --> 00:21:41.259 But the poetry he writes in this period. It's 00:21:41.259 --> 00:21:44.019 not angry or bitter. It's heartbreakingly gentle 00:21:44.019 --> 00:21:46.140 and full of memory. Let's talk about a Sylvia 00:21:46.140 --> 00:21:49.180 to Sylvia. A Sylvia, written in 1828. It's one 00:21:49.180 --> 00:21:51.319 of the most famous poems in the Italian language, 00:21:51.480 --> 00:21:53.960 for good reason. Sylvia is likely based on a 00:21:53.960 --> 00:21:56.740 real person, Teresa Fattorini, the daughter of 00:21:56.740 --> 00:21:59.539 the Leopardi family's coachman. She died of tuberculosis 00:21:59.539 --> 00:22:02.420 in her late teens. In the poem, Leopardi remembers 00:22:02.420 --> 00:22:04.559 her singing at her loom when they were both young. 00:22:04.740 --> 00:22:07.740 She represents hope and youth itself. But notice 00:22:07.740 --> 00:22:10.190 what the central tragedy is here. It isn't just 00:22:10.190 --> 00:22:12.750 that she died. That's sad, of course. But the 00:22:12.750 --> 00:22:15.750 real tragedy for Leopardi is that she died before 00:22:15.750 --> 00:22:18.569 she lost her illusions. He talks about the appearance 00:22:18.569 --> 00:22:21.849 of truth, before the arid truth could show itself. 00:22:22.069 --> 00:22:24.869 Right. Sylvia died while she still believed the 00:22:24.869 --> 00:22:27.410 future would be wonderful. She died in the springtime 00:22:27.410 --> 00:22:30.430 of her life, full of anticipation. Leopardi survived. 00:22:30.849 --> 00:22:33.589 He grew up. He lived long enough to learn the 00:22:33.589 --> 00:22:35.710 truth that life is suffering and disappointment. 00:22:36.289 --> 00:22:39.220 In a way, he envies her. But he also mourns the 00:22:39.220 --> 00:22:41.400 fact that nature creates such beautiful potential 00:22:41.400 --> 00:22:44.980 only to destroy it. He asks nature, why do you 00:22:44.980 --> 00:22:47.299 not keep what you promised? But he knows the 00:22:47.299 --> 00:22:49.359 answer by now. Nature never promised anything 00:22:49.359 --> 00:22:51.480 in the first place. We just thought she did. 00:22:51.700 --> 00:22:54.000 Exactly. It's a poem about the death of hope, 00:22:54.119 --> 00:22:57.000 both hers and his. Then there's Il Sabato del 00:22:57.000 --> 00:22:59.500 Viraggio, Saturday in the Village. This one resonates 00:22:59.500 --> 00:23:01.559 with me so much because it feels so profoundly 00:23:01.559 --> 00:23:04.140 psychological. It's a masterclass in observation 00:23:04.140 --> 00:23:06.799 and a perfect illustration of his theory of pleasure. 00:23:07.339 --> 00:23:09.759 He describes the village preparing for Sunday, 00:23:09.980 --> 00:23:12.640 the day of rest. The young girl comes back from 00:23:12.640 --> 00:23:15.039 the countryside with a bundle of flowers. The 00:23:15.039 --> 00:23:17.180 carpenter is hurrying to finish his work before 00:23:17.180 --> 00:23:19.960 the sun sets. Everyone is bustling and happy 00:23:19.960 --> 00:23:22.700 on Saturday evening. Why? Because they are looking 00:23:22.700 --> 00:23:24.299 forward to the holiday. They are anticipating 00:23:24.299 --> 00:23:27.339 the rest, the pleasure. Exactly. Saturday is 00:23:27.339 --> 00:23:30.160 a day of hope. But then Sunday comes. And what 00:23:30.160 --> 00:23:33.420 does Sunday bring? Boredom and the dread of Monday 00:23:33.420 --> 00:23:36.599 morning. Sunday is sad and tedious. The reality 00:23:36.599 --> 00:23:39.660 of the holiday never, ever matches the beautiful 00:23:39.660 --> 00:23:42.200 expectation of the holiday. So takeaway is, the 00:23:42.200 --> 00:23:44.940 expectation of happiness is the only real happiness 00:23:44.940 --> 00:23:47.420 we ever actually get. Pleasure is the son of 00:23:47.420 --> 00:23:49.920 misery, he writes elsewhere. The only real pleasure 00:23:49.920 --> 00:23:52.539 is the temporary absence of pain or the anticipation 00:23:52.539 --> 00:23:55.380 of a future joy that will, by definition, disappoint 00:23:55.380 --> 00:23:58.759 you when it finally arrives. Man. That hits hard. 00:23:58.900 --> 00:24:01.599 But the peak for me, the absolute heavy hitter 00:24:01.599 --> 00:24:04.619 in this period, is the canto nocturno de un pastore 00:24:04.619 --> 00:24:07.359 errante dell 'Asia, the night song of a wandering 00:24:07.359 --> 00:24:10.279 shepherd in Asia. This is perhaps his most profound 00:24:10.279 --> 00:24:13.500 philosophical poem. He was inspired by a travelogue 00:24:13.500 --> 00:24:15.859 he read about Kyrgyz shepherds in the Asian steppe 00:24:15.859 --> 00:24:17.920 who would sit alone with their flocks at night 00:24:17.920 --> 00:24:21.359 and, apparently, sing songs to the moon. So he 00:24:21.359 --> 00:24:24.339 imagines a shepherd. alone in this vast, empty 00:24:24.339 --> 00:24:27.599 landscape. No Reconati, no library, no hedge, 00:24:27.759 --> 00:24:31.059 just earth and sky. And the shepherd is talking 00:24:31.059 --> 00:24:33.720 to the moon. He asks, what do you do, moon, in 00:24:33.720 --> 00:24:36.119 the sky? Tell me, what do you do, silent moon? 00:24:36.559 --> 00:24:39.359 The moon here represents nature again, but notice 00:24:39.359 --> 00:24:41.920 the difference. It's not a giant, monstrous woman. 00:24:42.059 --> 00:24:45.410 It's... The indifferent witness. The moon is 00:24:45.410 --> 00:24:47.809 immortal. It's silent. It wanders the same path 00:24:47.809 --> 00:24:49.789 forever. It doesn't suffer. It doesn't get bored. 00:24:50.029 --> 00:24:52.369 It just watches. And the shepherd is mortal, 00:24:52.529 --> 00:24:55.349 tired, and full of questions. He asks the moon, 00:24:55.450 --> 00:24:58.650 if life is misfortune, why do we endure it? He 00:24:58.650 --> 00:25:00.250 compares the human life cycle to the life of 00:25:00.250 --> 00:25:02.269 the moon, and it just seems so pointless. And 00:25:02.269 --> 00:25:03.890 then he looks down at his flock of sheep, and 00:25:03.890 --> 00:25:06.329 this is the crucial comparison. He envies the 00:25:06.329 --> 00:25:09.069 sheep. Why does he envy the sheep? He says, you 00:25:09.069 --> 00:25:11.650 rest in the shade and you are calm. I sit in 00:25:11.650 --> 00:25:14.049 the shade and I am filled with a spur with anxiety. 00:25:15.269 --> 00:25:17.470 The sheep doesn't know it exists in time. It 00:25:17.470 --> 00:25:19.130 doesn't know it's going to die. It feels hunger. 00:25:19.230 --> 00:25:21.490 It eats. It's happy. It feels tired. It sleeps. 00:25:21.690 --> 00:25:25.069 It's content. The man knows. Consciousness is 00:25:25.069 --> 00:25:29.269 the curse. Yes. The ability to ask why is the 00:25:29.269 --> 00:25:31.589 source of all our unhappiness. And the conclusion 00:25:31.589 --> 00:25:33.329 the shepherd reaches after all this questioning. 00:25:33.549 --> 00:25:36.799 It's devastatingly bleak. he wonders for a moment 00:25:36.799 --> 00:25:39.539 if maybe if he could fly like a bird or wander 00:25:39.539 --> 00:25:41.640 like the moon he would be happy but he catches 00:25:41.640 --> 00:25:44.440 himself he says perhaps my thought is wandering 00:25:44.440 --> 00:25:47.900 from the truth he concludes that for every single 00:25:47.900 --> 00:25:50.500 being that is born whether it's in a cradle or 00:25:50.500 --> 00:25:56.069 in a den the day of birth is black Birth itself 00:25:56.069 --> 00:25:58.190 is a tragedy. Yes, it is the ultimate expression 00:25:58.190 --> 00:26:00.910 of that cosmic pessimism for man, for sheep, 00:26:01.029 --> 00:26:03.210 for everything that lives. Now, you might think 00:26:03.210 --> 00:26:05.190 a guy who believes birth is a tragedy would just 00:26:05.190 --> 00:26:07.589 give up on all human connection. He'd just sit 00:26:07.589 --> 00:26:10.509 in a room and stare at the wall. But Leopardi 00:26:10.509 --> 00:26:13.670 didn't. He was desperate for love. This brings 00:26:13.670 --> 00:26:18.609 us to part five. Love, death, and satire. He 00:26:18.609 --> 00:26:21.410 fell in love constantly. He had this immense 00:26:21.410 --> 00:26:24.410 capacity for feeling, but it was almost always 00:26:24.410 --> 00:26:27.650 unrequited. His physical appearance, the hunchback, 00:26:27.750 --> 00:26:30.269 the shortness, the shabby clothes made him feel 00:26:30.269 --> 00:26:32.829 totally undesirable, especially in the sophisticated 00:26:32.829 --> 00:26:35.569 salons he started to frequent. There's a specific 00:26:35.569 --> 00:26:37.970 episode in Florence where he falls deeply in 00:26:37.970 --> 00:26:41.920 love with a woman named Fanny Targiani. He calls 00:26:41.920 --> 00:26:44.619 her Aspasia in his poems after the companion 00:26:44.619 --> 00:26:47.859 of Pericles. She was beautiful, charming, intelligent, 00:26:48.259 --> 00:26:50.579 socially active. She ran a salon where all the 00:26:50.579 --> 00:26:53.460 intellectuals gathered. And Leopardi just projected 00:26:53.460 --> 00:26:56.059 all his ideals onto her. He fell in love with 00:26:56.059 --> 00:26:58.539 a platonic ideal that he stuck onto Fanny's face. 00:26:58.700 --> 00:27:01.039 And Fanny, how did she feel about him? Fanny 00:27:01.039 --> 00:27:04.099 was polite. She was flattered. She liked having 00:27:04.099 --> 00:27:07.160 a famous genius in her salon, but she wasn't 00:27:07.160 --> 00:27:09.640 interested romantically at all. In fact, years 00:27:09.640 --> 00:27:12.000 later, she gave his autograph to someone as a 00:27:12.000 --> 00:27:14.539 souvenir, like a celebrity trinket. It's not 00:27:14.539 --> 00:27:16.500 clear she ever really understood she was the 00:27:16.500 --> 00:27:18.819 subject of some of the greatest love poetry in 00:27:18.819 --> 00:27:21.119 the Italian language. So when the rejection finally 00:27:21.119 --> 00:27:22.920 hits him, when he realizes it's never going to 00:27:22.920 --> 00:27:26.079 happen, he writes Esistesso to himself. This 00:27:26.079 --> 00:27:30.019 poem is the crash. It is short, brutal, and final. 00:27:30.759 --> 00:27:33.240 He stops talking to the moon. He stops talking 00:27:33.240 --> 00:27:36.079 to Sylvia. He stops talking to women. He talks 00:27:36.079 --> 00:27:38.579 directly to his own heart. He tells his heart 00:27:38.579 --> 00:27:41.500 to stop beating. He says, rest forever, my tired 00:27:41.500 --> 00:27:45.720 heart. The last cheat is dead. The one I believed 00:27:45.720 --> 00:27:49.079 eternal. The last cheat Langano Estremo being 00:27:49.079 --> 00:27:52.299 love. Yes. He thought love was the one exception 00:27:52.299 --> 00:27:54.700 to the rule of universal suffering. He thought 00:27:54.700 --> 00:27:56.599 love was the one thing that was real that could 00:27:56.599 --> 00:27:59.480 save him. Now he sees that even love is an illusion, 00:27:59.579 --> 00:28:01.619 a biological trick to keep the species going. 00:28:01.799 --> 00:28:04.839 He concludes with that famous line, and the infinite 00:28:04.839 --> 00:28:09.799 vanity of the whole. Meaning everything is pointless. 00:28:10.079 --> 00:28:12.559 Everything. The politics, the poetry, the struggle, 00:28:12.640 --> 00:28:14.660 the desire. It's all vanity. It's a declaration 00:28:14.660 --> 00:28:17.480 of emotional death. But, and here's where it 00:28:17.480 --> 00:28:19.740 gets really interesting. He doesn't just wallow. 00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:23.099 After the crash, he gets angry. And he gets funny. 00:28:23.519 --> 00:28:25.920 Sarcastically funny. People often forget Leopardi 00:28:25.920 --> 00:28:27.920 was a brilliant satirist. He wrote this very 00:28:27.920 --> 00:28:30.980 strange, very long poem called Peralupomeni della 00:28:30.980 --> 00:28:33.900 Batracomio Macia. Which is a mouthful. It translates 00:28:33.900 --> 00:28:36.799 to The Things Left Out of the War of the Frogs 00:28:36.799 --> 00:28:40.400 and Mice. It's a mock epic. A sequel to an ancient 00:28:40.400 --> 00:28:43.359 Greek parody of Homer. Okay, so mice and crabs. 00:28:43.900 --> 00:28:45.460 Explain this to me because this sounds like a 00:28:45.460 --> 00:28:47.619 fever dream. You have to understand the political 00:28:47.619 --> 00:28:51.119 context of the 1830s. Italy is partly occupied 00:28:51.119 --> 00:28:54.619 by Austria. The Italian liberals, the revolutionaries 00:28:54.619 --> 00:28:57.299 of the Risorgimento, want to unite Italy and 00:28:57.299 --> 00:29:01.250 bring in a modern liberal democracy. Leopardi 00:29:01.250 --> 00:29:04.890 casts the liberals as mice. Why mice? Because 00:29:04.890 --> 00:29:06.990 they are noisy, they scurry around with big ideas, 00:29:07.170 --> 00:29:09.410 they are full of revolutionary fervor, but they 00:29:09.410 --> 00:29:12.349 are ultimately small, weak, and powerless against 00:29:12.349 --> 00:29:14.829 the crabs. The crabs represent the Austrians. 00:29:14.930 --> 00:29:17.039 And why crabs? Because they are armored, slow, 00:29:17.279 --> 00:29:19.279 they move sideways, and they are brutally effective. 00:29:19.700 --> 00:29:21.660 But here is the kicker. He isn't just making 00:29:21.660 --> 00:29:23.920 fun of the Austrian oppressors. He is mocking 00:29:23.920 --> 00:29:27.200 the mice, the Italian liberals, even more viciously. 00:29:27.279 --> 00:29:29.180 Wait, isn't he Italian? Shouldn't he be on the 00:29:29.180 --> 00:29:31.880 side of the liberals? You'd think so. Most romantics 00:29:31.880 --> 00:29:35.759 were. But Leo Pardi despised the naive optimism 00:29:35.759 --> 00:29:38.619 of the liberals. This was the 19th century, the 00:29:38.619 --> 00:29:41.529 century of progress with a capital P. People 00:29:41.529 --> 00:29:44.349 genuinely believe that steam engines, constitutions, 00:29:44.349 --> 00:29:46.569 democracy, and the printing press were going 00:29:46.569 --> 00:29:49.769 to solve human unhappiness forever. They thought 00:29:49.769 --> 00:29:52.230 they were building a utopia on Earth. And Leopardi 00:29:52.230 --> 00:29:54.250 looks at all this excitement and says, He says, 00:29:54.250 --> 00:29:56.950 you are all delusional. Imagine you were on the 00:29:56.950 --> 00:29:59.210 Titanic and the ship has hit the iceberg. The 00:29:59.210 --> 00:30:01.329 water is rising. That is the human condition. 00:30:01.950 --> 00:30:04.009 Mortality, suffering, the indifference of nature. 00:30:04.289 --> 00:30:07.069 The mice are running around arguing about electing 00:30:07.069 --> 00:30:08.970 a new captain or rearranging the deck chairs. 00:30:09.250 --> 00:30:11.609 Lee parties the guy standing in the corner screaming, 00:30:11.789 --> 00:30:13.910 the ship is sinking. Who cares about the chairs? 00:30:14.150 --> 00:30:16.049 So he thought political progress was just another 00:30:16.049 --> 00:30:19.250 hedge, another illusion to distract us from the 00:30:19.250 --> 00:30:21.960 arid truth. The biggest illusion of them all. 00:30:22.059 --> 00:30:24.339 He believed that even if you have a perfect democracy 00:30:24.339 --> 00:30:27.279 and a steam engine in every house, you are still 00:30:27.279 --> 00:30:29.119 going to get old, you are still going to die, 00:30:29.220 --> 00:30:31.259 and your heart is still going to be broken, and 00:30:31.259 --> 00:30:33.220 you are still going to be bored on a Sunday afternoon. 00:30:34.079 --> 00:30:36.880 A steam engine doesn't fill the void in the soul. 00:30:37.160 --> 00:30:40.119 He despised the arrogance of his century. He 00:30:40.119 --> 00:30:42.640 called it the century of tall tales. He thought 00:30:42.640 --> 00:30:45.819 it was smug and childish. So he's dismantled 00:30:45.819 --> 00:30:49.730 religion, nature. love, and politics. He has 00:30:49.730 --> 00:30:52.730 stripped the house down to the bare studs. What 00:30:52.730 --> 00:30:55.049 on earth is left? That brings us to the final 00:30:55.049 --> 00:30:58.269 chapter, the final stance. It's unexpected, and 00:30:58.269 --> 00:31:01.230 it's beautiful. In the 1830s, Leopardi moves 00:31:01.230 --> 00:31:03.470 to Naples. He goes with his best friend, Antonio 00:31:03.470 --> 00:31:05.829 Ranieri. We should spend a moment on Ranieri. 00:31:06.009 --> 00:31:08.990 He was a handsome, dashing, somewhat unreliable 00:31:08.990 --> 00:31:11.819 Neapolitan exile. But he became Leopardi's devoted 00:31:11.819 --> 00:31:14.240 caretaker and constant companion in his final 00:31:14.240 --> 00:31:16.440 years. The sources mention there is some academic 00:31:16.440 --> 00:31:18.220 debate about the nature of this relationship. 00:31:18.539 --> 00:31:20.559 There is. They lived together for seven years. 00:31:20.880 --> 00:31:23.140 Ranieri's sister, Paulina, lived with them, too, 00:31:23.279 --> 00:31:25.960 as a sort of chaperone. Leopardi wrote letters 00:31:25.960 --> 00:31:28.539 to Ranieri that are incredibly intimate, calling 00:31:28.539 --> 00:31:31.920 him my soul, my everything. Whether the relationship 00:31:31.920 --> 00:31:34.900 was sexual is debated by scholars and we'll likely 00:31:34.900 --> 00:31:37.549 never know for sure, but emotionally. Ranieri 00:31:37.549 --> 00:31:39.650 was the love of his life. He was the rock that 00:31:39.650 --> 00:31:42.170 allowed him to keep writing. So they are in Naples. 00:31:42.430 --> 00:31:46.650 And Naples is noisy, chaotic, full of life, everything 00:31:46.650 --> 00:31:49.529 Leopardi usually hates. But they eventually move 00:31:49.529 --> 00:31:52.349 to a villa on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. Living 00:31:52.349 --> 00:31:54.849 on an active volcano, it is the perfect, most 00:31:54.849 --> 00:31:57.450 potent setting for his final philosophical stand. 00:31:57.730 --> 00:32:01.569 And here, in 1836, shortly before he dies, he 00:32:01.569 --> 00:32:04.789 writes his poetic testament, La Ginestra, The 00:32:04.789 --> 00:32:08.150 Broom. The broom refers to the genestra, a small, 00:32:08.190 --> 00:32:11.130 humble yellow flower that grows tenaciously on 00:32:11.130 --> 00:32:13.910 the solidified, barren lava fields of Vesuvius. 00:32:14.109 --> 00:32:15.890 I love this image so much. You have the black, 00:32:15.910 --> 00:32:18.309 desolate, dead lava. That's the arid truth. That's 00:32:18.309 --> 00:32:20.170 destruction. That's indifferent nature. And then 00:32:20.170 --> 00:32:22.150 you have this tiny, stubborn, fragrant yellow 00:32:22.150 --> 00:32:24.289 flower just growing out of it. And this flower 00:32:24.289 --> 00:32:27.029 becomes Leopardi's model for how human beings 00:32:27.029 --> 00:32:31.069 ought to live. How so? Is it about hope? Is the 00:32:31.069 --> 00:32:34.240 flower a symbol of rebirth? No. That would be 00:32:34.240 --> 00:32:36.299 too simple, too optimistic for him. It's about 00:32:36.299 --> 00:32:38.980 dignity. The flower isn't arrogant. It doesn't 00:32:38.980 --> 00:32:40.799 believe it's immortal or that it can defeat the 00:32:40.799 --> 00:32:43.380 volcano. It knows the lava could come back tomorrow 00:32:43.380 --> 00:32:45.539 and incinerate it. It doesn't beg the volcano 00:32:45.539 --> 00:32:48.059 for mercy and it doesn't foolishly pretend the 00:32:48.059 --> 00:32:51.259 volcano isn't there. It just persists. It offers 00:32:51.259 --> 00:32:54.079 its sweet scent to the desert to console the 00:32:54.079 --> 00:32:57.740 lonely traveler. And in this poem, Leopardi offers 00:32:57.740 --> 00:33:00.680 a solution to the problem of existence. And it's 00:33:00.680 --> 00:33:05.390 not God and it's not progress. Solidarity. This 00:33:05.390 --> 00:33:07.369 is the social chain, and this is the most important 00:33:07.369 --> 00:33:09.450 part of the entire deep dive. He says, look, 00:33:09.630 --> 00:33:12.029 nature is our common enemy. The universe is indifferent 00:33:12.029 --> 00:33:14.789 and cruel. We are all soldiers in an army fighting 00:33:14.789 --> 00:33:17.190 a war against mortality that we are guaranteed 00:33:17.190 --> 00:33:19.549 to lose. So why on earth are we fighting each 00:33:19.549 --> 00:33:22.609 other? Exactly. If we are all on the same sinking 00:33:22.609 --> 00:33:25.150 ship, why are we stabbing each other over who 00:33:25.150 --> 00:33:28.299 gets the best cabin? He calls for a confederation 00:33:28.299 --> 00:33:30.880 of mankind. He says we must stop fighting each 00:33:30.880 --> 00:33:33.140 other, stop the wars, the nationalism, the petty 00:33:33.140 --> 00:33:36.400 conflicts, and band together. We must hold hands 00:33:36.400 --> 00:33:38.240 and comfort each other because there is no other 00:33:38.240 --> 00:33:40.819 help coming from the sky. It's us against the 00:33:40.819 --> 00:33:42.900 volcano. It is. It was what you could call a 00:33:42.900 --> 00:33:46.420 heroic pessimism. We fight the darkness not by 00:33:46.420 --> 00:33:48.740 pretending it's light, but by lighting a candle 00:33:48.740 --> 00:33:51.319 for the person standing next to us. It's an alliance 00:33:51.319 --> 00:33:53.960 of the victims against the executioner. That 00:33:53.960 --> 00:33:57.990 is surprisingly... Warm and deeply moving for 00:33:57.990 --> 00:34:00.210 a guy who started with a man getting eaten by 00:34:00.210 --> 00:34:02.569 lions. It is. It's a secular humanism born out 00:34:02.569 --> 00:34:05.230 of total despair. It's the radical idea that 00:34:05.230 --> 00:34:07.450 because life is fundamentally hard and tragic, 00:34:07.710 --> 00:34:10.389 kindness is the only rational response. Leopardi 00:34:10.389 --> 00:34:13.750 dies the next year, 1837. During a cholera epidemic 00:34:13.750 --> 00:34:17.420 in Naples. He was only 38 years old. His heart 00:34:17.420 --> 00:34:20.139 or his lungs, his fragile body finally just gave 00:34:20.139 --> 00:34:23.000 out. He likely died of pulmonary edema or heart 00:34:23.000 --> 00:34:25.219 failure. And there's a final, touching twist 00:34:25.219 --> 00:34:27.980 with his burial, isn't there? Yes. Because of 00:34:27.980 --> 00:34:29.780 the cholera epidemic, there were strict public 00:34:29.780 --> 00:34:33.039 health laws. Bodies were being thrown unceremoniously 00:34:33.039 --> 00:34:35.980 into mass graves and covered in quicklime. But 00:34:35.980 --> 00:34:38.719 Ranieri, faithful Ranieri, fought the authorities. 00:34:39.159 --> 00:34:42.380 He likely bribed someone, hid the body, and pulled 00:34:42.380 --> 00:34:44.960 strings to get him a proper burial in a church 00:34:44.960 --> 00:34:48.650 crypt. Saving him from the anonymity, the oblivion 00:34:48.650 --> 00:34:52.409 he feared so much. Saving him from being consumed 00:34:52.409 --> 00:34:55.369 by the infinite vanity of the whole. So let's 00:34:55.369 --> 00:34:57.369 bring this all home. We called this deep dive 00:34:57.369 --> 00:35:00.099 the prisoner of the library. But by the end, 00:35:00.119 --> 00:35:02.960 listening to you, he seems like the freest man 00:35:02.960 --> 00:35:04.840 in Europe. I think that's right, in a way. He 00:35:04.840 --> 00:35:07.639 is the supreme interrogator. He stripped away 00:35:07.639 --> 00:35:10.000 every single comfortable illusion. He took away 00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:12.219 the comfort of religion, the comfort of progress, 00:35:12.519 --> 00:35:14.960 the comfort of romantic love. He showed us the 00:35:14.960 --> 00:35:17.260 bare, cold walls of the universe. Which sounds 00:35:17.260 --> 00:35:19.659 absolutely terrifying. It is. But there is a 00:35:19.659 --> 00:35:22.320 strange, profound dignity in it. He refused to 00:35:22.320 --> 00:35:24.619 lie to himself. And in the end, with La Genestra, 00:35:24.840 --> 00:35:27.780 he found a way to be kind in a cruel world. He 00:35:27.780 --> 00:35:29.579 teaches us that we can look directly at the void 00:35:29.579 --> 00:35:32.380 and still choose to hug our friend. So here's 00:35:32.380 --> 00:35:35.519 our final thought for you, the listener. Leopardi 00:35:35.519 --> 00:35:38.059 spent his entire life dismantling illusions. 00:35:38.320 --> 00:35:40.860 He called them hedges, things that block our 00:35:40.860 --> 00:35:43.960 view of the terrifying, incomprehensible infinite. 00:35:44.280 --> 00:35:46.639 But he also admitted, especially in his early 00:35:46.639 --> 00:35:48.739 work, that without those hedges, without those 00:35:48.739 --> 00:35:52.340 illusions, we can't survive. Imagination needs 00:35:52.340 --> 00:35:55.059 limits. We live in an age where we have torn 00:35:55.059 --> 00:35:58.059 down a lot of hedges. We have information overload. 00:35:58.300 --> 00:36:01.340 We see the arid truth on our screens every single 00:36:01.340 --> 00:36:04.239 day. We know too much about everything. The question 00:36:04.239 --> 00:36:07.320 Leopardi leaves us with is this. Can we live 00:36:07.320 --> 00:36:09.980 with the unvarnished truth? Or do we need to 00:36:09.980 --> 00:36:12.960 start consciously planting our own hedges? Do 00:36:12.960 --> 00:36:15.460 we need to cultivate limits? put down the phone, 00:36:15.599 --> 00:36:18.079 ignore the 24 -hour news cycle, create a little 00:36:18.079 --> 00:36:20.420 mystery in our lives so that our minds have a 00:36:20.420 --> 00:36:22.800 space to imagine the infinite again. Maybe the 00:36:22.800 --> 00:36:24.940 shipwreck is only sweet if you don't know exactly 00:36:24.940 --> 00:36:27.840 how deep and cold the water is. Or maybe, as 00:36:27.840 --> 00:36:29.960 his final poem suggests, the sweetness comes 00:36:29.960 --> 00:36:32.380 from knowing the ship is going down and turning 00:36:32.380 --> 00:36:34.320 to hold the hand of the person next to you anyway. 00:36:34.539 --> 00:36:37.039 Something to think about as you look at your 00:36:37.039 --> 00:36:39.619 own horizon. Thanks for diving deep with us. 00:36:39.699 --> 00:36:41.280 We'll see you next time. Goodbye, everyone.