The form of the paradox: Giacomo Leopardi as an early romantic thinker

GIACOMO LEOPARDI AS AN EARLY GERMAN ROMANTIC THINKER

Abstract

In this paper we aim to approach Giacomo Leopardi's theory of imagination, one of the keystones of the theory of literature developed in the Zibaldone di pensieri (2016), by reading it through the lens of early german romantic philosophy. The effort to think poetry, in the Zibaldone, is responsible for fascinating speculations which, according to recent studies, such as Dido (2020), Givone (2003), Garcia (2019), mark the limits of the materialistic nihilism as an hermeneutical paradigm. Therefore, by reading three different passages of the Zibaldone di pensieri (2016), we analyze how the problem of imagination is structurally connected with those of the final cause and of Geist. This exegetical step then leads us to read the three passages by comparing them with Friedrich Schlegel's (1973) notions of Witz and Ironie, as well as with Kant's (1974) remarks on determinative and reflective judgment. We conclude that Leopardi's speculation on imagination could be better understood if read from the post-kantian and early german romantic perspective, a tradition with which the leopardian theory of literature has been hitherto rarely compared.