Today we read Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell’Asia, by Giacomo Leopardi. A friend of mine once told me that (good) Literature and Philosophy are much more difficult to tell apart than one usually thinks, because the only difference lies in the sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller emphasis on the form given to the content. This never sounded particularly right to me, but what do I know: she’s the classicist. Still, I kept thinking about it while I was preparing this poem by Leopardi. It is probably my favourite poem ever, full stop. I have always been partial to the poetic tradition of using only simple words and plain constructs, in a restrained and controlled way, hiding the extreme refinement of the language in plain sight, drawing the reader in with subdued musicality. But depth in simplicity works here also at the level of the content. We are in front of a philosophical treaty on meaning, happiness, the place of humanity in the cosmos, and of the cosmos itself, clothed in a plain-spoken discussion between a shepherd, his sheep, and the Moon. The first stanza describes the placid life of the Moon herself: she raises at night, travels the same paths, sees the same scenery, sets. Every day. Isn’t she bored yet? And then compares her life to that of the shepherd: similarly repetitive, similarly boring, though on completely different time scales. As if to highlight this incommensurability, the second stanza hits us with a dramatic shift in tone: Leopardi relates the hurried life of an old man that runs here and there, carrying along a heavy burden, tired, bloodied, only to end by falling into an abyss. The last two verses return to the previous quiet calm, saying “Moon: this is the life of man”. In the third stanza Leopardi returns to describing mortal life to the Moon, explaining that being born is ironically at high risk of death; how the first thing we do when born is to cry; that the first thing parents do with their offspring is to console them, as if of being born. But maybe the moon doesn’t care, because she isn’t mortal. The fourth stanza, by far the longest, is all centered on the assumption that he, a mere shepherd, doesn’t know what the point of a life of suffering is, but surely she, the Moon, knows everything, including the reason for the seasons, the stars. Perhaps she even know to whom, if anyone, the shepherd’s life counts as something good. But he knows that, to him, his life is a burden. In the fifth stanza the shepherd talks to his sheep: he is envious of them, because they forget every pain, every fear soon after they experience it. But most of all because, when they just lie in the grass, they are happy. He, on the other hand, always has this feeling of noia, that something is always gnawing away at him, that something is missing, even though there’s nothing specific he desires. In the final stanza, the shepherd wonders. Maybe if I also had, like the Moon, perfect knowledge, and I could fly and count the stars: maybe then I’d be happy. But no, probably not. Probably life, under whatever form, animal human or even celestial, is a source of pain. The original: Che fai tu, luna, in ciel? dimmi, che fai,
silenziosa luna?
Sorgi la sera, e vai,
contemplando i deserti; indi ti posi.
Ancor non sei tu paga
di riandare i sempiterni calli?
Ancor non prendi a schivo, ancor sei vaga
di mirar queste valli?
Somiglia alla tua vita
la vita del pastore.
Sorge in sul primo albore;
move la greggia oltre pel campo, e vede
greggi, fontane ed erbe;
poi stanco si riposa in su la sera:
Altro mai non ispera.
Dimmi, o luna: a che vale
al pastor la sua vita,
la vostra vita a voi? dimmi:ove tende
questo vagar mio breve,
il tuo corso immortale?
Vecchierel bianco, infermo,
mezzo vestito e scalzo,
con gravissimo fascio in su le spalle,
Per