title: The Betrothed (Manzoni novel)

text: But in fact, Lucia is already recuperating. Renzo and Lucia are reunited by Fra Cristoforo, but only after Renzo first visits and forgives the dying Don Rodrigo. The friar absolves her of her vow of celibacy. Renzo walks through a rainstorm to see Agnese at the village of Pasturo. When they all return to their native village, Lucia and Renzo are finally married by Don Abbondio and the couple make a fresh start at a silk-mill at the gates of Bergamo.


title: The Betrothed (Manzoni novel)

text: The novel is commonly described as "the most widely read work in the Italian language." It became a model for subsequent Italian literary fiction. Scholar Sergio Pacifici states that no other Italian literary work, with the exception of the "Divine Comedy", "has been the object of more intense scrutiny or more intense scholarship."


title: The Betrothed (Manzoni novel)

text: Many Italians believe that the novel is not fully appreciated abroad. In Italy the novel is considered a true masterpiece of world literature and a basis for the modern Italian language, and as such is widely studied in Italian secondary schools (usually in the second year, when students are 15). Many expressions, quotes and names from the novel are still commonly used in Italian, such as "Perpetua" (meaning a priest's house worker) or "Questo matrimonio non s'ha da fare" ("This marriage is not to be performed", used ironically).


title: The Betrothed (Manzoni novel)

text: The novel is not only about love and power: the great questions about evil, about innocents suffering, are the underlying theme of the book. The chapters 31–34, about the famine and the plague, are a powerful picture of material and moral devastation. Manzoni does not offer simple answers but leaves those questions open for the reader to meditate on. The main idea, proposed throughout the novel, is that, against the many injustices that they suffer in their life, the poor can only hope, at best, in a small anticipation of the divine justice, which can be expected in its entirety only in the afterlife: therefore life should be lived with faith and endurance, in the expectation of a reward in the afterlife.


title: The Betrothed (Manzoni novel)

text: "The Betrothed" has similarities with Walter Scott's historic novel "Ivanhoe", although evidently distinct.


title: The Betrothed (Manzoni novel)

text: "I promessi sposi" was made into an opera of the same name by Amilcare Ponchielli in 1856 and by Errico Petrella in 1869. There have been many film versions of "I promessi sposi", including "I promessi sposi" (1908), "The Betrothed" (1941) "The Betrothed" (1990), and "Renzo and Lucia", made for television in 2004. A "modern opera" version, called "", was written and produced by Michele Guardi with music by Pippo Flora, and first performed in 2010.


title: The Betrothed (Manzoni novel)

text: In May 2015, at a weekly general audience at St. Peter's Square, Pope Francis asked engaged couples to read the novel for edification before marriage.


title: The Betrothed (Manzoni novel)

text: Reviewing previous translations in 1972, Bruce Penham found that the vast majority of English translations used the first unrevised and inferior 1827 edition of the novel in Italian and often cut material unannounced.


title: Tupi people

text: A subdivision of the Tupi-Guarani linguistic families, the Tupi people were one of the largest groups of indigenous Brazilians before its colonization. Scholars believe that while they first settled in the Amazon rainforest, from about 2,900 years ago the Tupi started to migrate southward and gradually occupied the Atlantic coast of Southeast Brazil.


title: Tupi people

text: Many Tupi people today are merged with the Guaraní people, forming the Tupi–Guarani languages. Guarani languages are linguistically different from the Tupian languages.


title: Tupi people

text: The Tupi people inhabited almost all of Brazil's coast when the Portuguese first arrived there. In 1500, their population was estimated at 1 million people, nearly equal to the population of Portugal at the time. They were divided into tribes, each tribe numbering from 300 to 2,000 people. Some examples of these tribes are: "Tupiniquim", "Tupinambá", "Potiguara", "Tabajara", "Caetés", "Temiminó", "Tamoios". The Tupi were adept agriculturalists; they grew cassava, corn, sweet potatoes, beans, peanuts, tobacco, squash, cotton and many others. There was not a unified Tupi identity despite the fact that they spoke a common language.


title: Tupi people

text: Upon discovering the existence of the Tupi people, it was assumed by Portuguese settlers that they lacked any sort of religion, a belief that began the process of assimilating the Tupi to Christianity. The settlers began erecting villages for the Tupi, known as aldeias, with the intention of more disciplined religious conversion and institutionalization of European customs. Aside from being assimilated, the Tupi were found to be of use to the Portuguese, who required laborers for cultivating and shipping their exports. This use in harvesting resources led to their eventual enslavement and in turn, the spread of fatal European diseases on the plantations they worked at. This combination of factors nearly led to their complete annihilation, with the exception of a few isolated communities. The remnants of these tribes are today confined to indigenous territories or acculturated to some degree into the dominant society.


title: Tupi people

text: According to primary source accounts by primarily European writers, the Tupi were divided into several tribes which would constantly engage in war with each other. In these wars the Tupi would normally try to capture their enemies to later kill them in cannibalistic rituals.


title: Tupi people

text: The warriors captured from other Tupi tribes were eaten as it was believed by them that this would lead to their strength being absorbed and digested; thus, in fear of absorbing weakness, they chose only to sacrifice warriors perceived to be strong and brave. For the Tupi warriors, even when prisoners, it was a great honor to die valiantly during battle or to display courage during the festivities leading to the sacrifice. The Tupi have also been documented to eat the remains of dead relatives as a form of honoring them.


title: Tupi people

text: The practice of cannibalism among the Tupi was made famous in Europe by Hans Staden, a German soldier, mariner, and mercenary, traveling to Brazil to seek a fortune, who was captured by the Tupi in 1552. In his account published in 1557, he tells that the Tupi carried him to their village where it was claimed he was to be devoured at the next festivity. There, he allegedly won the friendship of a powerful chief, whom he cured of a disease, and his life was spared.


title: Tupi people

text: Cannibalistic rituals among Tupi and other tribes in Brazil decreased steadily after European contact and religious intervention. When Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish conquistador, arrived in Santa Catarina in 1541, for instance, he attempted to ban cannibalistic practices in the name of the King of Spain.


title: Tupi people

text: Because our understanding of Tupi cannibalism relies mostly on primary source accounts of primarily European writers, the very existence of cannibalism has been disputed by some in academic circles. William Arens seeks to discredit Staden's and other writers' accounts of cannibalism in his book "The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology & Anthropophagy", where he claims that when concerning the Tupinambá, "rather than dealing with an instance of serial documentation of cannibalism, we are more likely confronting only one source of dubious testimony which has been incorporated almost verbatim into the written reports of others claiming to be eyewitnesses".


title: Tupi people

text: Most Brazilian scholars, however, attest to the cultural centrality of cannibalism in Tupian culture. Anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro who had deeply studied the historical accounts about the Tupi, reported that the Ka'apor people of the Tupi-Guarani linguistic and cultural family, confirmed that their ancestors had practiced anthropophagical rituals similar to the ones described in the 16th century. Other Brazilian scholars have criticized Arens for what they perceived as historical negationism, and for ignoring important sources (Jesuit letters) and historical and anthropological studies (Viveiros de Castro, Florestan Fernandes, Estevão Pinto, Hélène Clastres), many of them dealing directly with indigenous peoples, that point to the direction of anthropophagy being well established as a social and cultural practice. He was particularly criticized for trying to discredit the association of the Tupi with savagery, not by realizing that the Europeans failed to comprehend the meaning of traditional practices such as cannibalism, but by promptly negating their existence altogether.


title: Tupi people

text: Many indigenous peoples were important for the formation of the Brazilian people, but the main group was the Tupi. When the Portuguese explorers arrived in Brazil in the 16th century, the Tupi were the first indigenous group to have contact with them. Soon, a process of mixing between Portuguese settlers and indigenous women started. The Portuguese colonists rarely brought women, making the native women the "breeding matrix of the Brazilian people". When the first Europeans arrived, the phenomenon of ""cunhadismo"" (from Portuguese "cunhado", "brother in law") began to spread by the colony. "Cunhadismo" was an old native tradition of incorporating strangers to their community. The Natives offered the Portuguese an Indigenous girl as wife. Once he agreed, he formed a bond of kinship with all the Natives of the tribe. Polygyny, a common practice among South American Indigenous people, was quickly adopted by European settlers. This way, a single European man could have dozens of indigenous wives ("temericós").


title: Tupi people

text: "Cunhadismo" was used as recruitment of labour. The Portuguese could have many "temericós" and thus a huge number of Indigenous relatives who were induced to work for him, especially to cut pau-brasil and take it to the ships on the coast. In the process, a large mixed-race (mameluco) population was formed, which in fact occupied Brazil. Without the practice of "cunhadismo", the Portuguese colonization was impractical. The number of Portuguese men in Brazil was very small and Portuguese women were even fewer in number. The proliferation of mixed-race people in the wombs of indigenous women provided for the occupation of the territory and the consolidation of the Portuguese presence in the region.


title: Tupi people

text: Although the Tupi population largely disappeared because of European diseases to which they had no resistance or because of slavery, a large population of maternal Tupi ancestry occupied much of Brazilian territory, taking the ancient traditions to several points of the country. Darcy Ribeiro wrote that the features of the first Brazilians were much more Tupi than Portuguese, and even the language that they spoke was a Tupi-based language, named Nheengatu or Língua Geral, a lingua franca in Brazil until the 18th century. The region of São Paulo was the biggest in the proliferation of Mamelucos, who in the 17th century under the name of Bandeirantes, spread throughout the Brazilian territory, from the Amazon rainforest to the extreme South. They were responsible for the major expansion of the Iberian culture in the interior of Brazil. They acculturated the indigenous tribes who lived in isolation, and took the language of the colonizer, which was not Portuguese yet, but Nheengatu itself, to the most inhospitable corners of the colony. Nheengatu is still spoken in certain regions of the Amazon, although the Tupi-speaking Natives did not live there. The Nheengatu language, as in other regions of the country, was introduced there by Bandeirantes from São Paulo in the 17th century. The way of life of the "Old" "Paulistas" could almost be confused with the Natives. Within the family, only Nheengatu was spoken. Agriculture, hunting, fishing and gathering of fruits were also based on indigenous traditions. What differentiated the "Old Paulistas" from the Tupi was the use of clothes, salt, metal tools, weapons and other European items.


title: Tupi people

text: When these areas of large Tupi influence started to be integrated into the market economy, Brazilian society gradually started to lose its Tupi characteristics. The Portuguese language became dominant and Língua Geral virtually disappeared. The rustic indigenous techniques of production were replaced by European ones, in order to elevate the capacity of exportation. Brazilian Portuguese absorbed many words from Tupi. Some examples of Portuguese words that came from Tupi are: "mingau, mirim, soco, cutucar, tiquinho, perereca, tatu". The names of several local fauna – such as "arara" ("macaw"), "jacaré" ("South American alligator"), "tucano" ("toucan") – and flora – e.g. "mandioca" ("manioc") and "abacaxi" ("pineapple") – are also derived from the Tupi language. A number of places and cities in modern Brazil are named in Tupi ("Itaquaquecetuba," "Pindamonhangaba," "Caruaru", "Ipanema"). Anthroponyms include "Ubirajara", "Ubiratã", "Moema", "Jussara", "Jurema", "Janaína". Tupi surnames do exist, but they do not imply any real Tupi ancestry; rather they were adopted as a manner to display Brazilian nationalism.


title: Tupi people

text: The "Tupinambá" tribe is fictitiously portrayed in Nelson Pereira dos Santos' satirical 1971 film "How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman" ("Como Era Gostoso o Meu Francês"). Its name is also adapted by science: "Tupinambis" is a genus of tegus, arguably the best-known lizards of Brazil.


title: Tupi people

text: The large offshore Tupi oil field discovered off the coast of Brazil in 2006 was named in honor of the Tupi people.


title: Tupi people

text: The Guaraní are a different native group which inhabits southern Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and northern Argentina and speaks the distinct Guaraní languages, but these are in the same language family as Tupi.


title: Mary Ann Vecchio

text: Mary Ann Vecchio (born December 4, 1955) is an American respiratory therapist and one of two subjects in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph by photojournalism student John Filo during the immediate aftermath of the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970.


title: Mary Ann Vecchio

text: The photograph depicts the 14-year-old Vecchio kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller, who had been fatally shot by the Ohio National Guard moments earlier. Vecchio had joined the protest while visiting the campus, where she befriended two of the other students hit by gunfire that day: Sandra Scheuer, who was killed, and Alan Canfora, who was wounded in the right wrist.


title: Mary Ann Vecchio

text: Vecchio was from an Italian immigrant family who lived in Opa-locka, Florida, where she attended Westview Junior High School at the beginning of 1970. She states that her home life was volatile, and that she and her siblings would leave the house for long periods when their parents fought. Vecchio soon got in trouble for smoking marijuana and skipping school. In February 1970, the police told Vecchio, then 14 years old, that they would send her to jail if she skipped school again. She then ran away from home. Vecchio says that she was not rebelling or intending to make a political statement: "I just wanted to be anywhere that wasn't Opa-locka." Vecchio began hitchhiking her way across the country, sleeping in fields and hippie crash pads with other transient youth, while occasionally working odd jobs for food.


title: Mary Ann Vecchio

text: On May 4, 1970, Vecchio was at Kent State University in northern Ohio. On April 30, President Richard Nixon had announced a U.S. invasion into Cambodia and students were having an anti-war protest. As she walked towards a field on campus where protesters were gathering, Vecchio struck up a conversation with a male student. The two watched as a student waving a black flag taunted a line of the Ohio Army National Guard, who seemed to fall back and then fired more than 60 shots at the students.


title: Mary Ann Vecchio

text: Vecchio dropped to the ground during the firing. When she looked up, the student she had been talking to, Jeffrey Miller, lay beside her, shot through the mouth. She fell to her knees by his body, though nearby students appeared too stunned or confused to react. The other photos released 49 years later show Vecchio running to Miller's body from a distance, she was not with him when he was shot (see Getty file of photos by John Filo). Vecchio recalls crying, "Doesn't anyone see what just happened here? Why is no one helping him?" Three other students lay dead nearby. Vecchio remembers running from the scene until she saw National Guardsmen herding students onto a bus. Dazed and wanting to get away, she got on the bus, which drove two hours to Columbus, Ohio, where parents were waiting for their children who were attending Kent State. Vecchio, who had never heard of the city of Columbus before arriving, wandered the streets looking for food and shelter.


title: Mary Ann Vecchio

text: Student photographer John Filo, who was taking photos of the protest, had narrowly avoided being shot. After rising to his feet, he saw a girl drop to her knees by a body on the ground ten feet away. He said, "I knew the boy was dead, but I could tell she didn't know. I could see something building in her, and all of a sudden she lets out this scream and I shoot. I shoot one more picture, and I’m out of film." When he saw the National Guard cutting electric wires on campus, Filo ran to his car, hid the film inside his hubcap, and drove two hours to the offices of his hometown newspaper "Valley Daily News" in Tarentum, Pennsylvania to develop the film. He sent his photo by wire to the "Associated Press" and the next morning it appeared on the front pages of newspapers around the world. Filo identified the girl simply as "coed." Vecchio cannot recall the first time that she saw the photo, sometimes called the Kent State Pietà.


title: Mary Ann Vecchio

text: Decades later, Filo would state, "It was "because" she was 14, because of her youth, that she ran to help, that she ran to do something. There were other people, 18, 19, 20 years old, who didn't get close to the body. She did because she was a kid. She was a kid reacting to the horror in front of her. Had she not been 14, the picture wouldn't have had the impact it did."


title: Mary Ann Vecchio

text: Vecchio hitchhiked out of Columbus. She had heard that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was looking for the girl in the photo, so she didn't tell anyone who she was, imagining that she could disappear if she got to California. However, another kid at a crash pad in Indianapolis recognized her and tipped off a reporter at "The Indianapolis Star". Vecchio talked to the reporter, hoping he would give her bus fare to get to California. Instead, he reported her to local police, who detained her in juvenile detention as a runaway before sending her back to Opa-locka. She said, "I would have stayed anonymous forever. But that guy from the "Indianapolis Star", he knocked out my future."


title: Mary Ann Vecchio

text: Following publication of the photograph through the "Pittsburgh Tribune-Review" satellite paper "Valley Daily News" and its subsequent pickup internationally, Florida governor Claude Kirk labelled Vecchio a dissident communist, stating that she was "part of a nationally organized conspiracy of professional agitators" that was "responsible for the students’ death." Many people refused to believe that Vecchio, who was nearly six feet tall, was actually 14. She was followed whenever she left her house by reporters and hecklers, and the family received many death threats. Messages received included, "What you need is a good beating until you bleed red," "I hope you enjoyed sleeping with all those Negroes and dope fiends," and "The deaths of the Kent State four lies on the conscience of yourself." Some anti-war figures expressed resentment that she was receiving so much publicity but had not even been a protester.


title: Mary Ann Vecchio

text: Vecchio's father sold t-shirts with her image on them, which she signed, along with the occasional autograph. Her family reportedly later sued T-shirt companies for 40 percent of the profits from sales of apparel featuring Filo's photograph.


title: Mary Ann Vecchio

text: Vecchio ran away from home again, got caught and was sent to juvenile detention. She ran away from juvenile detention, but was caught again. When she eventually was released from juvenile detention, she was constantly followed by police, who arrested her for loitering and smoking marijuana. In 2017, she described herself at this time: "I was a mess, like I was trying to punch my way out of a paper bag." She was profiled in a 1977 broadcast of "60 Minutes", where she was described as a "maladjusted kid."


title: Mary Ann Vecchio

text: At age 22, Vecchio moved to Las Vegas, Nevada, married Joe Gillum in 1979, and became a clerk at a casino coffee shop. She lived in Las Vegas for nearly 20 years, eventually being promoted to the casino floor. In 1995, Vecchio and John Filo met for the first time, when both were scheduled to appear at an Emerson College conference commemorating the 25th anniversary of the shootings. She also appeared at Kent State University in May of the same year for the 25th annual commemoration. She returned to Kent State University again for the 36th commemoration in May 2006 and for the 37th commemoration in May 2007.


title: Mary Ann Vecchio

text: In 2001, Vecchio earned her high school diploma at the age of 46. She ended her marriage and moved back to Florida to live in a camper trailer while she worked at the spa at Trump National Doral Miami and took classes at Miami Dade Community College to become a respiratory therapist. After graduating, she worked at the Veterans Affairs Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, though she never disclosed that she was the girl in the famous Kent State photo. Vecchio states that she did not realize that she displayed behaviors characteristic of post-traumatic stress disorder until she worked with veterans.


title: Mary Ann Vecchio

text: Since retirement, she has been living near the Everglades, growing avocados and oranges on a small plot. Vecchio reported that she was greatly affected by watching the video of the murder of George Floyd in 2020.


title: Mary Ann Vecchio

text: Vecchio's image was ubiquitous on magazine covers and posters in the aftermath of the Kent State shootings. Humor magazine "National Lampoon" ran a fake ad for a "204 pc. Kent State Disturbance set" of play figures with "1 kneeling student" and, in 2006, satiric newspaper "The Onion" published a fake report under the title, "Kent State Basketball Team Massacred By Ohio National Guard In Repeat Of Classic 1970 Matchup," with Vecchio's face photoshopped over the body of a cheerleader.


title: Mary Ann Vecchio

text: Vecchio has been portrayed in several stage performances depicting the Kent State shootings. The character Vekeero in Halim El-Dabh's 1971 "Opera Flies" is based on Vecchio. Her role was played by Kelley Lepsik in the 2000 performance of "Kent State: A Requiem." Janet Ruth Heller published a poem entitled "For Mary Vecchio, August, 1973," which portrays Vecchio as a modern Mary praying for the fallen Kent State students.


title: Mary Ann Vecchio

text: Before being published, the photograph was retouched to remove the distracting background fencepost that appeared over Vecchio's head in the original image. The unretouched original was stored in the archives of "Life" magazine.


title: Mary Ann Vecchio

text: A modification of the photograph was painted by Victor Kalin as cover art for a 12-inch vinyl phonograph record "Murder at Kent State", released by Flying Dutchman Records in 1970. The painting makes a cultural statement by adding a National Guard unit in the background. Written commentary by Nat Hentoff places the incident in a context of national malaise.


title: Andy Wallace (producer)

text: Andy Wallace (born 1947 in New Jersey) is an American music studio producer, audio and mixing engineer with a long track record of productions. Over the years, he focused exclusively on mixing. Wallace is known for his "sonically influential presence on the current music scene", and has "helped to make some of the most brutal, aggressive music released and also some of the most beautiful".


title: Andy Wallace (producer)

text: In 1974, Wallace began his career as a chief engineer in his own studio in Los Angeles. After a few years of moderate success, he returned to New York City during the emergence of hip-hop in the early 1980s.


title: Andy Wallace (producer)

text: Following the breakout success of the 1986 production of the Run-DMC–Aerosmith collaboration on "Walk This Way" with Rick Rubin, Wallace went on to work with The Cult, Slayer, Prince, Bruce Springsteen, Sepultura, Nirvana, Jeff Buckley, Sonic Youth, Rage Against the Machine, Guns N' Roses, Linkin Park, Paul McCartney, Avenged Sevenfold, and many others.


title: Andy Wallace (producer)

text: In February 1999, Wallace shared a Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical with Tchad Blake and Trina Shoemaker, for their work on Sheryl Crow's album "The Globe Sessions".


title: Andy Wallace (producer)

text: As of May 2021, over 120 million album units had been sold worldwide that contained a credit to Wallace.


title: Elaine Irwin

text: Elaine Irwin (born August 26, 1969) is an American model. She was the face of Almay Cosmetics and Ralph Lauren.


title: Elaine Irwin

text: Elaine Irwin was born in Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania. She left home when she was 16 to pursue a modeling career and was discovered by photographer Paul Pelak and his wife Margaret while enrolled at John Casablancas in 1985. After her photo appeared in "Seventeen" in 1985, the Boyertown honor student and varsity letter-winner in track and cross country was a much sought-after face for magazine covers, advertisements and commercials.


title: Elaine Irwin

text: In 1989 she appeared in the music video for New Order's "Round and Round" off their 1989 album "Technique". Within a few years, she became one of the Ford Models and had appeared on the cover of dozens of fashion magazines, including "Cosmopolitan", "Glamour", "Self" and "Elite". Her American Beauty "Vogue" cover was shot by Richard Avedon.


title: Elaine Irwin

text: She made her move onto the runway for Victoria's Secret and Calvin Klein and soon became a favorite subject of photographers Herb Ritts, Irving Penn, and Steven Meisel for her natural, soft look.


title: Elaine Irwin

text: Irwin became the first woman to drive the pace car at the Indianapolis 500 in May 2001. She was also an at-large delegate to the 2004 Democratic National Convention.


title: Elaine Irwin

text: Elaine was 23 years old when she married musician John Mellencamp on September 5, 1992. The two met when she was hired to appear on the cover of Mellencamp's "Whenever We Wanted" album (and appear in the music video for "Get A Leg Up"). Within 10 weeks, they were engaged. They have two sons.


title: Elaine Irwin

text: On December 30, 2010, it was announced that she and Mellencamp were separating after eighteen years of marriage, but both chose to stay in Indiana to raise their two children. On January 14, 2011, John Mellencamp filed for divorce and requested that Elaine be returned to her maiden name 'Irwin'. On August 12, 2011, their divorce was finalized.


title: Elaine Irwin

text: In October 2012, Irwin became engaged to racecar team owner and media businessman Jay Penske. They had a daughter in May 2013. She has resided in California since 2013.


title: Joseph Corré

text: Joseph Ferdinand Corré (born 30 November 1967) is a British activist and businessman, who co-founded Agent Provocateur in 1994.


title: Joseph Corré

text: Corré was born in Clapham, south London, the son of British fashion designer Dame Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, former manager of Sex Pistols.


title: Joseph Corré

text: Corré's surname, which was not adopted but given at birth, derives from his father's maternal grandmother, a Sephardic Jew from Portugal. As a child, he wore his mother's designs and regards the Sex Pistols as his favourite band, despite a poor relationship with frontman/singer John Lydon.


title: Joseph Corré

text: Agent Provocateur was established in 1994 after Serena Rees, Corré's wife and co-founder, grew tired of seeing drab undergarments. The couple opened a shop in which they originally sold other designers' pieces. Corré had no desire to design lingerie but, after not finding enough of the type they wished to sell, decided to create their own lingerie line. Since then, the company has expanded to 30 shops in 14 countries.


title: Joseph Corré

text: Rees left Corré for ex-Clash bassist Paul Simonon in 2007, and in the same year the to-be divorced couple agreed to sell Agent Provocateur to private equity house 3i for £60m.


title: Joseph Corré

text: In June 2007, Corré was awarded the MBE for his services to the fashion industry in the Queen's Birthday Honours list. He rejected the award in protest at Prime Minister Tony Blair's actions in Iraq and Afghanistan which Corré said had caused suffering and at the erosion in civil rights in the UK during Blair's term.


title: Joseph Corré

text: In 2008 Corré founded the opening of the independent boutique "A Child of the Jago", named after the 19th century novel by Arthur Morrison. The venture was a partnership with British street-wear fashion entrepreneur Simon "Barnzley" Armitage, modelled on the retail outlets run by Corré's parents in the 1970s/80s. Armitage left the business in 2013 and is no longer referenced in the company's history.


title: Joseph Corré

text: In 2010 Corré was recruited to "edgy" British cosmetics company Illamasqua as brand director by founder Julian Kynaston. The company has an expanding chain of outlets in the UK and an international presence.


title: Joseph Corré

text: On McLaren's death in a Swiss medical centre from a rare form of cancer in April 2010, Corré said: "It was hard for me because he never wanted to do the emotional stuff that comes with being a parent. He ran away from it and I found that hard to take. We had a difficult relationship, but it was all right in the end. I went to Switzerland and we said what we had to say and we made our peace. I'm really glad I did that. It was such a release for both of us".


title: Joseph Corré

text: Corré organised his father's funeral, at which McLaren was buried in a coffin sprayed with the slogan "Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die" (the title of one of his shops). The ceremony was attended by celebrities including Bob Geldof and Tracey Emin, and accompanied by a public procession to punk songs, including the Sid Vicious version of "My Way". In 2012 probate was granted to Young Kim, McLaren's girlfriend during the last 16 years of his life, by McLaren's will, which Corré had contested because he was excluded from it.


title: Joseph Corré

text: Corré is registered as the administrative officer of malcolmmclaren.com. In 2012 he bought the domain name from Paul August Nordstrom of Singapore for $750; August had worked for McLaren and in 1997 registered the domain to himself without McLaren's knowledge. August, who said in 2013 he could "no longer recall specifically why he placed his own name as registrant", had previously refused to pass the domain to the Malcolm McLaren Estate.


title: Joseph Corré

text: Prior to the 2015 general election, he was one of several celebrities who endorsed the parliamentary candidacy of the Green Party's Caroline Lucas. Together with his mother, he has publicly campaigned for the release of WikiLeaks publisher and journalist Julian Assange.


title: Joseph Corré

text: In November 2016 in a staged protest to encourage use of renewable energy, Corré and Vivienne Westwood burned an estimated £6,000,000 worth of his punk rock memorabilia archive on a barge on the River Thames. When asked about the incident by "The Sunday Telegraph", "Did this feel like burning a Picasso?", Corré replied "I don’t know what burning a Picasso feels like," adding, "but I thought that was great. Punk rock is not important. Punk has become another marketing tool to sell you something you don’t need".


title: Joseph Corré

text: Musician Henry Rollins wrote in response to the incident, "Corré and Westwood might think they have taught everyone a lesson in what punk’s all about, but all they did was show off their massive egos and how much they’ve lost the plot. Maybe it was something else, too. Perhaps it was an emotional response to the fact that McLaren cut Corré out of his will. It doesn’t matter now. It’s yesterday’s garbage. Ooh, how punk."


title: Spring green

text: Spring green is a color that was traditionally considered to be on the yellow side of green, but in modern computer systems based on the RGB color model is halfway between cyan and green on the color wheel.


title: Spring green

text: The modern spring green, when plotted on the CIE chromaticity diagram, corresponds to a visual stimulus of about 505 nanometers on the visible spectrum. In HSV color space, the expression of which is known as the , "spring green" has a hue of 150°. Spring green is one of the tertiary colors on the RGB color wheel, where it is the complementary color of rose.


title: Spring green

text: The first recorded use of "spring green" as a color name in English was in 1766, referring to roughly the color we now call "spring bud".


title: Spring green

text: "Medium spring green" is a web color. It is close to but not right on the color wheel and it is a little closer to cyan than to green.


title: Spring green

text: The color "mint cream" is a representation of the color of the interior of an after dinner mint (which is disc shaped with mint flavored buttercream on the inside and a chocolate coating on the outside).


title: Spring green

text: Sea green is a shade of cyan color that resembles the hue of shallow seawater as seen from the surface.


title: Spring green

text: "Sea green" is notable for being the emblematic color of the Levellers party in the politics of 1640s England. Leveller supporters would wear a sea-green ribbon, in a similar manner to the present-day red AIDS awareness ribbon.


title: Spring green

text: Aquamarine is a color that is a pale bright tint of spring green toned toward cyan. It represents the color of the aquamarine gemstone. Aquamarine is the birthstone for those born on January 21 to February 20 in tropical zodiac, and February 14 to March 15 in sidereal zodiac.


title: Spring green

text: Spring bud is the color that used to be called "spring green" before the X11 web color spring green was formulated in 1987 when the X11 colors were first promulgated. This color is now called "spring bud" to avoid confusion with the web color.


title: Spring green

text: The first recorded use of "spring green" as a color name in English (meaning the color that is now called "spring bud") was in 1766.


title: Spring green

text: "Emerald", also called "emerald green", is a tone of green that is particularly light and bright, with a faint bluish cast. The name derives from the typical appearance of the emerald gemstone.


title: Spring green

text: Ireland is sometimes referred to as the "Emerald Isle" due to its lush greenery. The May birthstone is emerald. Seattle is sometimes referred to as the "Emerald City", because its abundant rainfall creates lush vegetation. In the Middle Ages, "The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus" was believed to contain the secrets of alchemy. "Emerald City", from the story of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", by L. Frank Baum, is a city where everything from food to people are emerald green. However, it is revealed at the end of the story that everything in the city is normal colored, but the glasses everyone wears are emerald tinted. The Green Zone in Baghdad is sometimes ironically and cynically referred to as the "Emerald City". The "Emerald Buddha" is a figurine of the sitting Buddha, made of green jade (rather than emerald), clothed in gold, and about 45 cm tall. It is kept in the "Chapel of the Emerald Buddha" (Wat Phra Kaew) on the grounds of the Grand Palace in Bangkok. The Emerald Triangle refers to the three counties of Mendocino, Humboldt, and Trinity in Northern California, United States because these three counties are the biggest marijuana producing counties in California and also the US. A county-commissioned study reports pot accounts for up to two-thirds of the economy of Mendocino. "Emerald Cities: Urban Sustainability and Economic Development" is a book published in 2010 by Joan Fitzgerald, director of the law, policy and society program at Northeastern University, about ecologically sustainable city planning.


title: Spring green

text: Emerald was invented in Germany in 1814. By taking acetic acid, mixing and boiling it with vinegar, and then by adding some arsenic, a bright blue-green hue was formed. During the 19th century, the arsenic-containing dye Paris green was marketed as emerald green. It was notorious for causing deaths due to it being a popular color used for wallpaper. Victorian women used this bright color for dresses, and florists used it on fake flowers.


title: Spring green

text: The first recorded use of viridian as a color name in English was in the 1860s (exact year uncertain).


title: Spring green

text: The color defined as "green" in the CMYK color system used in printing, also known as "pigment green", is the tone of green that is achieved by mixing process (printer's) cyan and process (printer's) yellow in equal proportions. It is displayed at right.


title: Spring green

text: The purpose of the CMYK color system is to provide the maximum possible gamut of color reproducible in printing.


title: Spring green

text: The color defined as "green" in the NCS or Natural Color System is shown at right (NCS 2060-G). The natural color system is a color system based on the four unique hues or psychological primary colors red, yellow, green, and blue. The NCS is based on the opponent process theory of vision.


title: Spring green

text: The color defined as "green" in the Munsell color system (Munsell 5G) is shown at right. The Munsell color system is a color space that specifies colors based on three color dimensions: hue, value (lightness), and chroma (color purity), spaced uniformly in three dimensions in the elongated oval at an angle shaped Munsell color solid according to the logarithmic scale which governs human perception. In order for all the colors to be spaced uniformly, it was found necessary to use a color wheel with five primary colors—red, yellow, green, blue, and purple.


title: Spring green

text: The Munsell colors displayed are only approximate as they have been adjusted to fit into the sRGB gamut.


title: Spring green

text: The source of this color is the "Pantone Textile Paper eXtended (TPX)" color list, color # green C, EC, HC, PC, U, or UP—green.


title: Spring green

text: "Dark green" is a dark shade of green. A different shade of green has been designated as "dark green (X11)" for certain computer uses.


title: Spring green

text: This color is actually a medium tone of "spring green". Spring green colors are colors with an h code (hue code) of between 135 and 165; this color has an h code of 140, putting it within the range of spring green colors on the .


title: Spring green

text: Ceramic tiles in a similar color, often with a contrasting black border, were a popular choice for bathroom, kitchen and upmarket hotel swimming pool décor during the 1930s.


title: Spring green

text: Other colors associated with Persia include Persian red and Persian blue. The color "Persian green" is named from the green color of some Persian pottery and is a representation of the color of the mineral malachite. It is a popular color in Iran because the color green symbolizes gardens, nature, heaven, and sanctity. The first recorded use of "Persian green" as a color name in English was in 1892.


title: Spring green

text: This is the Crayola version of the above color, a much brighter and lighter shade. It was introduced in 2001.


title: Spring green

text: The first recorded use of "shamrock" as a color name in English was in the 1820s (exact year uncertain).


title: Spring green

text: It is customary in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States to wear this or any other tone of green on St. Patrick's Day, 17 March.


title: Spring green

text: The Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association use this shade for their uniforms, logos, and other memorabilia.


title: Spring green

text: "Sap green" is a green pigment that was traditionally made of ripe buckthorn berries. However, modern colors marketed under this name are usually a blend of other pigments, commonly with a basis of Phthalocyanine Green G. Sap green paint was frequently used on Bob Ross's TV show, "The Joy of Painting".


title: Spring green

text: "Jade", also called "jade green", is a representation of the color of the gemstone called jade, although the stone itself varies widely in hue.


title: Spring green

text: "Malachite", also called "malachite green", is a color that is a representation of the color of the mineral malachite.


title: Spring green

text: The first recorded use of "malachite green" as a color name in English was in the 1200s (exact year uncertain).


title: Spring green

text: It is a pale shade of cyan that is reminiscent of the color of an opal gemstone, although as with many gemstones, opals come in a wide variety of colors.


title: Spring green

text: "Brunswick green" is a common name for green pigments made from copper compounds, although the name has also been used for other formulations that produce a similar hue, such as mixtures of chrome yellow and Prussian blue. The pigment is named after Braunschweig, Germany (also known as Brunswick in English) where it was first manufactured. It is a deep, dark green, which may vary from intense to very dark, almost black.


title: Spring green

text: The first recorded use of "Brunswick green" as a color name in English was in 1764. Another name for this color is "English green". The first use of English green as a synonym for Brunswick green was in 1923.


title: Spring green

text: "Deep Brunswick green" is commonly recognized as part of the British racing green spectrum, the national auto racing color of the United Kingdom.


title: Spring green

text: A different color, also called "Brunswick green", was the color for passenger locomotives of the grouping and then the nationalized British Railways. There were three shades of these colors and they are defined under British Standard BS381C – 225, BS381C – 226, and BS381C – 227 (ordered from lightest to darkest). The Brunswick green used by the Nationalised British Railways – Western Region for passenger locomotives was BS381C – 227 (rgb(30:62:46)). RAL6005 is a close substitute to BS381C – 227. A characteristic of these colors was the ease for various railway locations to mix them by using whole pots of primary colors – hence the ability to get reasonably consistent colors with manual mixing half a century and more ago.


title: Spring green

text: The color used by the Pennsylvania Railroad for locomotives was often called "Brunswick green", but officially was termed "dark green locomotive enamel" (DGLE). This was a shade of green so dark as to be almost black, but which turned greener with age and weathering as the copper compounds further oxidized.


title: Spring green

text: "Castleton green" is one of the two official colors of Castleton University in Vermont. The official college colors are green (PMS 343) and white. The Castleton University Office of Marketing and Communications created the Castleton colors for web and logo development and has technical guidelines, copyright and privacy protection; as well as logos and images that developers are asked to follow in the college's guidelines for using official Castleton logos. If web developers are using green on a university website, they are encouraged to use Castleton green. It is prominently used for representing Castleton's athletic teams, the Castleton Spartans.


title: Spring green

text: "Bottle green" is a dark shade of green, similar to pine green. It is a representation of the color of green glass bottles.


title: Spring green

text: "Bottle green" is a color in Prismacolor marker and pencil sets. It is also the color of the uniform of the Police Service of Northern Ireland replacing the Royal Ulster Constabulary's "rifle green" colored uniforms in 2001. It is also the green used in uniforms for South Sydney High School in Sydney.


title: Spring green

text: "Bottle green" is also the color most associated with guide signs and street name signs in the United States.


title: Spring green

text: Bottle green is also the background color of the Flag of Bangladesh, as defined by the government of Bangladesh. Another name for this color is "Bangladesh green".


title: Spring green

text: "Dartmouth green" is the official color of Dartmouth College, adopted in 1866. It was chosen for being the only decent primary color that had not been taken already. It is prominently used as the name of the Dartmouth College athletic team, the Dartmouth Big Green. The Dartmouth athletic teams adopted this new name after the college officially discontinued the use of its unofficial mascot, the Dartmouth Indian, in 1974.


title: Spring green

text: "GO green" was the color used for the brand of GO Transit, the regional commuter service in the Greater Toronto Area.


title: Spring green

text: Between 1967 and 2013, the brand and color that has adorned each of its trains, buses, and other property generally remained unchanged. It also matched the shade of green used on signs for highways in Ontario. In July 2013, GO Transit updated its look to a two-tone color scheme.


title: Spring green

text: "Gotham green" is the official color of the New York Jets as of 4 April 2019. The name is a reference to one of the Nicknames of New York City.


title: Spring green

text: "Pakistan green" is a shade of dark green, used in web development and graphic design. It is also the background color of the national flag of Pakistan. It is almost identical to the HTML/X11 dark green in sRGB and HSV values.


title: Spring green

text: In 2004, California State University, Sacramento rebranded itself as Sacramento State, while keeping the official name as the long form. In the process of rebranding a new logo was selected, and in 2005 it formalized the colors which it would use.


title: Spring green

text: "Paris green" is a color that ranges from pale and vivid blue green to deeper true green. It comes from the inorganic compound copper (II) acetoarsenite and was once a popular pigment in artists' paints.


title: Spring green

text: "Spanish green" is the color that is called ""verde"" (the Spanish word for "green") in the "Guía de coloraciones" ("Guide to colorations") by Rosa Gallego and Juan Carlos Sanz, a color dictionary published in 2005 that is widely popular in the Hispanophone realm.


title: Spring green

text: UNT green is one of three official colors used by the University of North Texas. It is the primary color that appears on branding and promotional material produced by and on behalf of the university.


title: Spring green

text: At the right is one of the official colors used by the University of the Philippines, designated as "UP forest green". It is based on the approved color specifications to be used for the seal of the university.


title: Spring green

text: "Hooker's green" is a dark green color created by mixing Prussian blue and gamboge. It is displayed on the right. Hooker's green takes its name from botanical artist William Hooker (1779–1832) who first created it particularly for illustrating leaves.


title: Spring green

text: Aero blue is a fluorescent greenish-cyan color. Aero blue was used as rainshower in one of the Sharpie permanent markers but not as bright on the marker. However, there is no mechanism for showing fluorescence on a computer screen.


title: Spring green

text: "Feldgrau" (field grey) was the color of the field uniform of the German Army from 1937 to 1945, and the East German NVA armies. Metaphorically, "feldgrau" used to refer to the armies of Germany (the Imperial German Army and the Heer [army] component of the "Reichswehr" and the "Wehrmacht").


title: Discourse on Inequality

text: Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (), also commonly known as the "Second Discourse", is a 1755 work by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.


title: Discourse on Inequality

text: Rousseau first exposes in this work his conception of a human state of nature, broadly believed to be a hypothetical thought exercise and of human perfectibility, an early idea of progress. He then explains the way in which, in his view, people may have established civil society, and this leads him to conclude that private property is the original source and basis of all inequality.


title: Discourse on Inequality

text: The text was written in 1754 in response to a prize competition of the Academy of Dijon answering the prompt: "What is the origin of inequality among people, and is it authorized by natural law?" Rousseau did not win with his treatise (as he had for the "Discourse on the Arts and Sciences"); a canon of Besançon by the name of François Xavier Talbert (l'abbé Talbert) did. Rousseau published the text in 1755.


title: Discourse on Inequality

text: Rousseau's text is divided into four main parts: the dedication, the preface, an extended inquiry into the nature of the human being and another inquiry into the evolution of the human species within society. It also includes an appendix that elaborates primarily on eighteenth century anthropological research throughout the text. Rousseau discusses two types of inequality: natural, or physical inequality, and ethical, or moral inequality. Natural inequality involves differences between one human's body and that of another—it is a product of nature. Rousseau is not concerned with this type of inequality because he claims it is not the root of the inequality found in civil society. Instead, he argues moral inequality is unique to civil society and is evinced in differences in "wealth, nobility or rank, power and personal merit." This type of inequality is established by convention. Rousseau appears to take a cynical view of civil society, where man has strayed from his "natural state" of individual independence and freedom to satisfy his individual needs and desires.


title: Discourse on Inequality

text: His discussion begins with an analysis of a natural man who bears, along with some developed animal species, instincts for self-preservation—a non-destructive love of self ("amour de soi même")—and a "natural repugnance" to suffering—a natural pity or compassion. Natural man acts only for his own sake and avoids conflicts with other animals (and humans). Rousseau's natural man is more or less like any other animal, with "self-preservation being his chief and almost sole concern" and "the only goods he recognizes in the universe" being food, a female, and sleep... Rousseau's man is a "savage" man. He is a loner and self-sufficient. Any battle or skirmish was only to protect himself. The natural man was in prime condition, fast, and strong, capable of caring for himself. He killed only for his own self-preservation.


title: Discourse on Inequality

text: Natural man's anthropological distinction (from the animal kingdom) is based on his capacity for "perfectibility" and innate sense of his freedom. The former, although translated as "perfectibility," has nothing to do with a drive for perfection or excellence, which might confuse it with virtue ethics. Instead, perfectibility describes how humans can learn by observing others. Since human being lacks reason, this is not a discursive reasoning, but more akin to the neurological account of mirror neurons. Human freedom does not mean the capacity to choose, which would require reason, but instead the ability to refrain from instinct. Only with such a capacity can humans acquire new habits and practices.


title: Discourse on Inequality

text: The most important feature of Rousseau's natural man is that he lacks reason, in contrast to most of the Western intellectual tradition. Rousseau claims natural man does not possess reason or language (in which reason's generation is rooted) or society—and these three things are mutually-conditioning, such that none can come into being without the others.


title: Discourse on Inequality

text: Rousseau's natural man significantly differs from, and is a response to, that of Hobbes; Rousseau says as much at various points throughout his work. He thinks that Hobbes conflates human being in the state of nature with human being in civil society. Unlike Hobbes's natural man, Rousseau's is not motivated by fear of death because he cannot conceive of that end; thus fear of death already suggests a movement out of the state of nature. Also, this natural man, unlike Hobbes's, is not in constant state of fear and anxiety. Rousseau's natural man possesses a few qualities that allow him to distinguish himself from the animals over a long period of time.


title: Discourse on Inequality

text: The process by which natural man becomes civilized is uncertain in the "Discourse", but it could have had two or three different causes. The most likely causes are environmental, such that humans came into closer proximity and began cohabitation, which in turn facilitated the development of reason and language. Equally, human "perfectibility" could explain this change in the nature of the human being. Rousseau is not really interested in explaining the development, but acknowledges its complexity.


title: Discourse on Inequality

text: What is important is that with primitive social existence (preceding civil society), humans gain "self-esteem" ("amour propre") and most of the rest of Rousseau's account is based on this. Rousseau's critique of civil society is primarily based on psychological features of civil man, with amour propre pushing individuals to compare themselves with others, to gain a sense of self corresponding to this, and to dissolve natural man's natural pity.


title: Discourse on Inequality

text: The beginning of part two dramatically imagines some lone errant soul planting the stakes that first establish private property: "The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society". But Rousseau then clarifies that this moment was presaged by a series of environmental and rational conditions that made it possible. For Rousseau, even the "concept" of private property required a series of other concepts in order to be formed.


title: Discourse on Inequality

text: The work is dedicated to the state of Geneva, Rousseau's birthplace. On the face of the dedication, he praises Geneva as a good, if not perfect, republic. The qualities he picks out for praise include the stability of its laws and institutions, the community spirit of its inhabitants, and its good relations with neighboring states, neither threatening them nor threatened by them, and the well-behaved women of Geneva. However, this is not how Geneva truly was. This is the type of regime Rousseau wished for. The epistle dedicatory is a highly ironic and idealized version of the Geneva Rousseau really wanted. Also, his description is in great contrast with Paris, where he had spent many years previous to writing this discourse, and which he had left bitterly. Thus, his description of Geneva is in part a statement against Paris.


title: Maleic acid

text: Maleic acid or "cis"-butenedioic acid is an organic compound that is a dicarboxylic acid, a molecule with two carboxyl groups. Its chemical formula is HOCCH=CHCOH. Maleic acid is the "cis"-isomer of butenedioic acid, whereas fumaric acid is the "trans"-isomer. It is mainly used as a precursor to fumaric acid, and relative to its parent maleic anhydride, maleic acid has few applications.


title: Maleic acid

text: Maleic acid has a "heat of combustion" of -1,355 kJ/mol., 22.7 kJ/mol higher than that of fumaric acid. Maleic acid is more soluble in water than fumaric acid. The melting point of maleic acid (135 °C) is also much lower than that of fumaric acid (287 °C). Both properties of maleic acid can be explained on account of the intramolecular hydrogen bonding that takes place in maleic acid at the expense of intermolecular interactions, and that are not possible in fumaric acid for geometric reasons.


title: Maleic acid

text: In industry, maleic acid is derived by hydrolysis of maleic anhydride, the latter being produced by oxidation of benzene or butane.


title: Maleic acid

text: Maleic acid may be used to form acid addition salts with drugs to make them more stable, such as indacaterol maleate.


title: Maleic acid

text: Maleic acid is also used as an adhesion promoter for different substrates, such as nylon and zinc coated metals e.g galvanized steel, in methyl methacrylate based adhesives.


title: Maleic acid

text: The major industrial use of maleic acid is its conversion to fumaric acid. This conversion, an isomerization, is catalysed by a variety of reagents, such as mineral acids and thiourea. Again, the large difference in water solubility makes fumaric acid purification easy.


title: Maleic acid

text: The isomerization is a popular topic in schools. Maleic acid and fumaric acid do not spontaneously interconvert because rotation around a carbon carbon double bond is not energetically favourable. However, conversion of the "cis" isomer into the "trans" isomer is possible by photolysis in the presence of a small amount of bromine. Light converts elemental bromine into a bromine radical, which attacks the alkene in a radical addition reaction to a bromo-alkane radical; and now single bond rotation is possible. The bromine radicals recombine and fumaric acid is formed. In another method (used as a classroom demonstration), maleic acid is transformed into fumaric acid through the process of heating the maleic acid in hydrochloric acid solution. Reversible addition (of H) leads to free rotation about the central C-C bond and formation of the more stable and less soluble fumaric acid.


title: Maleic acid

text: Some bacteria produce the enzyme maleate isomerase, which is used by bacteria in nicotinate metabolism. This enzyme catalyses isomerization between fumarate and maleate.


title: Maleic acid

text: Although not practised commercially, maleic acid can be converted into maleic anhydride by dehydration, to malic acid by hydration, and to succinic acid by hydrogenation (ethanol / palladium on carbon). It reacts with thionyl chloride or phosphorus pentachloride to give the maleic acid chloride (it is not possible to isolate the mono acid chloride). Maleic acid, being electrophilic, participates as a dienophile in many Diels-Alder reactions.


title: Maleic acid

text: The maleate ion is the ionized form of maleic acid. The maleate ion is useful in biochemistry as an inhibitor of transaminase reactions. Maleic acid esters are also called maleates, for instance dimethyl maleate.


title: Maleic acid

text: Many drugs that contain amines are provided as the maleate acid salt, e.g. carfenazine, chlorpheniramine, pyrilamine, methylergonovine, and thiethylperazine.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Count Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi (, ; 29 June 1798 – 14 June 1837) was an Italian philosopher, poet, essayist, and philologist. He is considered the greatest Italian poet of the nineteenth century and one of the most important figures in the literature of the world, as well as one of the principals of literary romanticism; his constant reflection on existence and on the human condition—of sensuous and materialist inspiration—has also earned him a reputation as a deep philosopher. He is widely seen as one of the most radical and challenging thinkers of the 19th century but routinely compared by Italian critics to his older contemporary Alessandro Manzoni despite expressing "diametrically opposite positions." Although he lived in a secluded town in the conservative Papal States, he came into contact with the main ideas of the Enlightenment, and, through his own literary evolution, created a remarkable and renowned poetic work, related to the Romantic era. The strongly lyrical quality of his poetry made him a central figure on the European and international literary and cultural landscape.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Leopardi was born into a local noble family in Recanati, in the Marche, at the time ruled by the papacy. His father, Count Monaldo Leopardi, who was fond of literature and a committed reactionary, remained an advocate of traditional ideals. His mother, Marchioness Adelaide Antici Mattei, was a cold and authoritarian woman, obsessed with rebuilding the family's financial fortunes, which had been destroyed by her husband's gambling addiction. A rigorous discipline of religion and economy reigned in the home. However, Giacomo's happy childhood, which he spent with his younger brother Carlo Orazio and his sister Paolina, left its mark on the poet, who recorded his experiences in the poem "Le Ricordanze".


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Following a family tradition, Leopardi began his studies under the tutelage of two priests, but his thirst for knowledge was quenched primarily in his father's rich library. Initially guided by Father Sebastiano Sanchini, Leopardi undertook vast and profound reading. These "mad and most desperate" studies included an extraordinary knowledge of classical and philological culture – he could fluently read and write Latin, ancient Greek and Hebrew – but he lacked an open and stimulating formal education.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Between the ages of twelve and nineteen, he studied constantly, driven also by a need to escape spiritually from the rigid environment of the paternal palazzo. His continual studies undermined an already fragile physical constitution, and his illness, probably Pott's disease or ankylosing spondylitis, denied him youth's simplest pleasures.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In 1817 the classicist Pietro Giordani arrived at the Leopardi estate. He became a lifelong friend of Giacomo, who derived from this a sense of hope for the future. Meanwhile, his life at Recanati weighed on him increasingly, to the point where he attempted to escape in 1818, but he was caught by his father and brought home. Thereafter relations between father and son continued to deteriorate, and Giacomo was constantly monitored by the rest of the family.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: When in 1822 he was briefly able to stay in Rome with his uncle, he was deeply disappointed by its atmosphere of corruption and decadence and by the hypocrisy of the Church. He was impressed by the tomb of Torquato Tasso, to whom he felt bound by a common sense of unhappiness. While Foscolo lived tumultuously between adventures, amorous relations, and books, Leopardi was barely able to escape from his domestic oppression. To Leopardi, Rome seemed squalid and modest when compared to the idealized image that he had created of it. He had already suffered disillusionment in love at home, with his cousin Geltrude Cassi. Meanwhile, his physical ailments continued to worsen.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In 1824, a bookstore owner, Stella, called him to Milan, asking him to write several works, including "Crestomazia della prosa e della poesia italiane". He moved during this period between Milan, Bologna, Florence and Pisa. In 1827 in Florence, Leopardi met Alessandro Manzoni, although they did not see things eye to eye. He paid a visit to Giordani and met the historian Pietro Colletta.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In 1828, physically infirm and worn out by work, Leopardi had refused the offer of a professorship in Bonn or Berlin, made by the Ambassador of Prussia in Rome. In the same year, he had to abandon his work with Stella and return to Recanati. In 1830, Colletta offered him a chance to return to Florence, thanks to a financial contribution from the "Friends of Tuscany". The subsequent printing of the "Canti" allowed him to live away from Recanati until 1832. Leopardi found kindred company among the liberals and republicans seeking to liberate Italy from its feudal yoke to Austria. Although his idiosyncratic and pessimistic ideas made him a party of one, he railed against Italy's "state of subjection" and was "in sympathy with the ideals of constitutionalism, republicanism and democracy, and supportive of movements urging Italians to fight for their independence."


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Later he moved to Naples near his friend Antonio Ranieri, hoping to benefit physically from the climate. He died during the cholera epidemic of 1837, the immediate cause probably being pulmonary edema or heart failure, due to his fragile physical condition. Thanks to Antonio Ranieri's intervention with the authorities, Leopardi's remains were not buried in a common grave (as the strict hygiene regulations of the time required), but in the atrium of the Church of San Vitale at Fuorigrotta. In 1898 his tomb was moved to the Parco Virgiliano (Mergellina) and declared a national monument.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: There have been speculation in academic circles that Leopardi may have had homoromantic tendencies. His intimate friendships with other men, particularly Ranieri, involved expressions of love and desire beyond what was typical even of Romantic poets. In an account of his time in Tuscany, it was written that he "became frenzied about love" whenever in the presence of the handsome younger brother of a woman he and Ranieri both admired (Fanny Targioni-Tozzetti), and that when so frenzied he would direct his sentiments towards Ranieri. In 1830, Leopardi received a letter from Pietro Colletta, nowadays interpreted as a declaration of masonic brotherhood. Leopardi's close friend Antonio Ranieri was a Master Mason. In the course of his life, Leopardi had more than twenty-five sentimental female friendships, such as the ones with Teresa Carniani Malvezzi or Charlotte Napoléone Bonaparte.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: The Leopardi's family share the origin of Tomasi's family, at the time of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: These were rough years for Leopardi, as he started developing his concept of Nature. At first he saw this as "benevolent" to mankind, helping to distract people from their sufferings. Later, by 1819, his idea of Nature became dominated by a destructive mechanism.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Up to 1815, Leopardi was essentially an erudite philologist. Only thereafter he began to dedicate himself to literature and the search for beauty, as he affirms in a famous letter to Giordani of 1817. "Pompeo in Egitto" ("Pompey in Egypt", 1812), written at the age of fourteen, is an anti-Caesar manifesto. Pompey is seen as the defender of republican liberties. "Storia dell'Astronomia" ("History of Astronomy", 1813) is a compilation of all of the knowledge accumulated in this field up to the time of Leopardi. From the same year is "Saggio sopra gli errori popolari degli antichi" ("Essay on the popular errors of the ancients"), which brings the ancient myths back to life. The "errors" are the fantastic and vague imaginings of the ancients. Antiquity, in Leopardi's vision, is the infancy of the human species, which sees the personifications of its myths and dreams in the stars.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: The year 1815 saw the production of "Orazione agli Italiani in Occasione della Liberazione del Piceno" ("Oration to the Italians on the liberation of Piceno"), a paean to the 'liberation' achieved by Italy after the intervention of the Austrians against Murat. In the same year he translated "Batracomiomachia" (the war between the frogs and mice in which Zeus eventually sends in the crabs to exterminate them all), an ironic rhapsody which pokes fun at Homer's "Iliad", once attributed to the epic poet himself.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In 1816 Leopardi published "Discorso sopra la vita e le opere di Frontone" ("Discourse on the life and works of Fronto"). In the same year, however, he entered a period of crisis. He wrote "L'appressamento della morte", a poem in "terza rima" in which the poet experiences death, which he believes to be imminent, as a comfort. Meanwhile, there began other physical sufferings and a serious degeneration of his eyesight. He was acutely aware of the contrast between the interior life of man and his incapacity to manifest it in his relations with others.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Leopardi abandoned his philological studies and moved increasingly toward poetry by reading Italian authors of the 14th, 16th and 17th centuries, as well as some of his Italian and French contemporaries. His vision of the world underwent a change: he ceased to seek comfort in religion, which had permeated his childhood, and became increasingly inclined toward an empirical and mechanistic vision of the universe inspired by John Locke among others.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In 1816 the idylls "Le rimembranze" and "Inno a Nettuno" ("Hymn to Neptune") were published. The second, written in ancient Greek, was taken by many critics as an authentic Greek classic. He also translated the second book of the "Aeneid" and the first book of the "Odyssey". In the same year, in a letter to the compilers of the "Biblioteca Italiana" (Monti, Acerbi, Giordani), Leopardi argued against Madame de Staël's article inviting Italians to stop looking to the past, but instead study the works of foreigners, so as to reinvigorate their literature. Leopardi maintained that "knowing", which is acceptable, is not the same thing as "imitating", which is what Madame de Stael demanded, and that Italian literature should not allow itself to be contaminated by modern forms of literature, but look to the Greek and Latin classics. A poet must be original, not suffocated by study and imitation: only the first poet in the history of humanity could have been truly original, since he had had no one to influence him. It was therefore necessary to get as close to the originals as possible, by drawing inspiration from one's own feelings, without imitating anyone.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Thanks to his friendship with Giordani, with whom, in 1817, he had begun a prolific correspondence, his distancing from the conservatism of his father became even sharper. It was in the following year that he wrote "All'Italia" ("To Italy") and "Sopra il monumento di Dante" ("On the Monument of Dante"), two very polemical and classical patriotic hymns in which Leopardi expressed his adherence to liberal and strongly secular ideas.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In the same period, he participated in the debate, which engulfed the literary Europe of the time, between the classicists and the romanticists, affirming his position in favour of the first in the "Discorso di un Italiano attorno alla poesia romantica" ("Discourse of an Italian concerning romantic poetry").


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In 1817 he fell in love with Gertrude Cassi Lazzari and wrote "Memorie del primo amore" ("Memories of first love"). In 1818 he published "Il primo amore" and began writing a diary which he would continue for fifteen years (1817–1832), the "Zibaldone".


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: "All'Italia" and "Sopra il monumento di Dante" marked the beginning of the series of major works. In the two "canti", the concept of "excessive" or "over-civilization" which is deleterious for life and beauty first makes it appearance. In the poem "All'Italia", Leopardi laments the fallen at the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC, fought between the Greeks under Leonidas and the Persians under Xerxes), and evokes the greatness of the past. In the second "canto", he turns to Dante and asks from him pity for the pathetic state of his fatherland. In the great "canti" which follow (forty-one, including fragments), there is a gradual abandonment of the reminiscences, of literary allusions and of conventionalisms.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In 1819, the poet attempted to escape from his oppressive domestic situation, travelling to Rome. But he was caught by his father. In this period, his personal pessimism evolves into the peculiar philosophical pessimism of Leopardi. "Le Rimembranze" and "L'appressamento della morte" also belong to this early period of the art of Leopardi.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: The six "Idilli" ("Idylls"), namely "Il sogno" ("The dream"), "L'Infinito" ("The Infinite"), "La sera del dì di festa" ("The evening of the feast day"), "Alla Luna" ("To the Moon"), "La vita solitaria" ("The solitary life") and "Lo spavento notturno" ("Night-time terror"), followed hard upon the first canti. "Il sogno" is still Petrarchesque, while the others which followed are the fruit of a more mature and independent art. Leopardi establishes with nature a sort of accord which attenuates the pain and discomfort.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In all of the idylls, the initial sparks, offered by memory or by the sweetness of nature, transmute their colors into the intuition of universal pain, of the transience of things, of the oppressive weight of eternity, of the inexorable passing of time, of the blind power of nature.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: The highest expression of poetry is reached in Leopardi in "L'Infinito", which is at once philosophy and art, since in the brief harmony of the verses are concentrated the conclusions of long philosophical meditations. The theme is a concept, which mind can only with extreme difficulty conceive. The poet narrates an experience he often has when he sits in a secluded place on a hill. His eyes cannot reach the horizon, because of a hedge surrounding the site; his thought, instead, is able to imagine spaces without limits:


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Another interpretation suggests that this hill represents the heights human thought achieves, but at the top there is a hedge that prevents one from seeing the ultimate horizon, beyond death and existence. Thus this hedge can be interpreted as signifying the limits of human understanding regarding human existence in the Universe. This is why the poem begins with "Sempre caro mi fu" which can be translated as "It was always precious for me". The silence is deep; when a breath of wind comes, this voice sounds like the voice of present time, and by contrast it evokes all times past, and eternity. Thus, the poet's thought is overwhelmed by new and unknown suggestions, but "il naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare" ("shipwreck / seems sweet to me in this sea." English translation by A. S. Kline).


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Leopardi returns to the evocation of ancient eras and exhorts his contemporaries to seek in the writings of the classics the noble ancient virtues.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In occasion of the discovery of the "De Republica" of Cicero on the part of Mai, Leopardi wrote the poem "Ad Angelo Mai" ("To Angelo Mai") in which he invokes the figures of many Italian poets, from Dante and Petrarch to Torquato Tasso whom he felt so near to himself, to his contemporary Vittorio Alfieri.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In the lyrical "Nelle nozze" ("On the marriage of my sister Paolina"), an event that failed to happen, in the course of wishing happiness for his sister, the poet uses the opportunity to exalt the strength and the virtue of the women of antiquity and to denigrate his own time because it did not allow one to be virtuous and happy, since only after death are those who have lived a morally good life praised.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: The canto "Ad un vincitor di pallone" ("To the winner of a game of football") expresses disdain for the tedium of a life that is nothing but a monotonous repetition of human affairs and to which only danger can restore value: only he who has been near the gates of death is able to find sweetness in life.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In "Bruto minore" ("Brutus the Younger"), Brutus the assassin of Caesar is depicted as a man who has always believed in honor, virtue and liberty and who has ultimately sacrificed everything for these ideals. He has come to the realization, too late to change things, that everything was done in vain, that everything has been pointless, that he will even die dishonoured and disgraced for his well-intentioned actions.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: His meditations bring him to the conclusion that morality is meaningless; Jove rewards only the selfish and plays arbitrary games with hapless mankind. Man is more unhappy than the rest of the animal kingdom because the latter do not know that they are unhappy and therefore do not meditate on the question of suicide and, even if they could, nothing would prevent them from carrying out the act without hesitation.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Sappho is also a tragic figure. In fact, she is a great and generous spirit, an exceptional mind and a sublime character trapped in a miserable body. Sappho loved the light (the loved one, according to the legend, was named Phaon, in Greek Φάων, from φῶς, light) but her life was made of shadow; she loved nature and beauty, but nature has been like an evil stepmother to her and she, who is sensitive, cultured and refined, is closed in the prison of a deformed body. Nor can the greatness of her genius help to release her from this horror.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In Sappho, Leopardi sees himself retarded, but in reality the poet of Lesbos was neither deformed nor unhappy as she is depicted by Leopardi, who based his depiction on a false traditional belief. Sappho knew, tasted, and sang of beauty and love more than was possible for Leopardi. But the resignation to unhappiness, to pain and to solitude, and the renunciation of the joys of life, sounds in the verses of Leopardi like the sincere sigh of a feminine soul.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: The canto begins as a sweet apostrophe to the placid nights, once dear to the serene poet, but the words turn rapidly to a violent evocation of nature in tempest which echoes her inner turmoil. The anguishing and accusative questions which Leopardi poses to a destiny which has denied beauty to the miserable Sappho are cut short by the thought of death. After having wished to the man she has loved in vain that little bit of happiness which is possible to attain on this earth, Sappho concludes by affirming that of all the hopes for joy, of all the illusions, there remains to await her only Tartarus.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: The canti "Alla primavera" ("To Spring") and "Al conte Carlo Pepoli" ("To Count Carlo Pepoli") emerge from the same spiritual situation. The first laments the fall of the great illusions ("gli ameni inganni") and the imaginary mythological worlds of the past, which embellished and enriched the fantasy of man. The second decries the loss of happiness that has resulted.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In "Alla primavera", Leopardi praises the ancient times when the nymphs populated the fields, the woods, the springs, the flowers and the trees. Although the lyrical style is apparently classical, it is also pervaded by the characteristic dissatisfaction with the present of the romantics. Leopardi, here, romanticizes the pure intentions of the Greeks, since he was actually romantic in his sentiments and classical in his imagination and intellect.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In the "Epistolario a Carlo Pepoli", Leopardi attempts to prove to his friend the thesis (reminiscent of Buddhism) according to which, since life has no other aim but happiness and since happiness is unattainable, all of life is nothing but an interminable struggle. But he who refuses to work is oppressed by the tedium of life and must seek distraction in useless pastimes. Moreover, those who dedicate themselves to poetry, if they have no fatherland, are tormented more than those who do by a lack of freedom because they fully appreciate the value of the idea of nationhood.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: At this point, a disillusioned Leopardi considers abandoning poetry for philosophy, but without any hope of glory. He has resigned himself to the certainty of pain and of boredom to which mankind is condemned and he therefore believes it necessary to abandon the illusions and poetry in order to speculate on the laws and destiny of the universe.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In 1823, he wrote the canto "Alla sua donna" ("To his woman"), in which he expresses his ardent aspiration for a feminine ideal which, with love, might render life beautiful and desirable. During his youth, he had dreamt in vain of encountering a woman who embodied such a feminine ideal: a platonic idea, perfect, untouchable, pure, incorporeal, evanescent, and illusory.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: It is a hymn not to one of Leopardi's many "loves," but to the discovery that he had unexpectedly made—at that summit of his life from which he would later decline—that what he had been seeking in the lady he loved was "something" beyond her, that was made visible in her, that communicated itself through her, but was beyond her. This beautiful hymn to Woman ends with this passionate invocation:


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Between the years 1823 and 1828, Leopardi set aside lyric poetry in order to compose his prose magnum opus, "Operette morali" ("Small Moral Works"), which consists (in its final form) of a series of 24 innovative dialogues and fictional essays treating a variety of themes that had already become familiar to his work by then. One of the most famous dialogue is: "Dialogo della Natura e di un Islandese", in which the author expresses his main philosophical ideas.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: After 1823, Leopardi abandoned the myths and illustrious figures of the past, which he now considered to be transformed into meaningless symbols and turned to writing about suffering in a more "cosmic" sense.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In 1828, Leopardi returned to lyric poetry with "Il Risorgimento" ("Resurgence"). The poem is essentially a history of the spiritual development of the poet from the day in which he came to believe that every pulse of life had died out in his soul to the moment in which the lyrical and the sentimental were reawakened in him. A strange torpor had rendered him apathetic, indifferent to suffering, to love, to desire, and to hope. Life had seemed desolate to him until the ice began to melt and the soul, reawakening, finally felt the revivification of the ancient illusions. Having reconquered the gift of sentiment, the poet accepts life as it is because it is revived by the feeling of suffering which torments his heart and, so long as he lives, he will not rebel against those who condemn him to live. This recovered serenity consists in the contemplation of one's own conscience of one's own sentiments, even when desolation and despair envelop the soul.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Leopardi rejoices to have rediscovered in himself the capacity to be moved and to experience pain, after a long period of impassibility and boredom. With "Risorgimento", lyricism is reawakened in the poet, who composes canti, generally brief, in which a small spark or a scene is expanded, extending itself into an eternal vision of existence. He reevokes images, memories and moments of past happiness.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In 1828, Leopardi composed perhaps his most famous poem, "A Silvia" ("To Silvia"). The young lady of the title—possibly the daughter of a servant in the Leopardi household—is the image of the hopes and illusions of the young poet, destined to succumb far too early in the struggle against reality, just as the youth of Silvia is destroyed by tuberculosis, the "chiuso morbo". It is often asked whether Leopardi was actually in love with this young woman, but to seek confirmation in biographical evidence is to miss the point of the poem. "A Silvia" is the expression of a profound and tragic "love of life" itself, which Leopardi, despite all the suffering, the psychological torments and the negative philosophizing, could not suppress in his spirit. This poem demonstrates why Leopardi's so-called "nihilism" does not run deep enough to touch the well-spring of his poetry: his love of man, of nature, and of beauty. However, the accusation Leopardi makes against Nature is very strong, as being responsible for the sweet dreams of youth and for the subsequent suffering, after "the appearance of truth" ("l'apparir del vero", v.60) has shattered them.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: The canto "Il passero solitario" ("The Lonely Sparrow") is of a classical perfection for the structure of the verses and for the sharpness of the images. Leopardi contemplates the bounty of nature and the world which smiles at him invitingly, but the poet has become misanthropic and disconsolate with the declining of his health and youth and the deprivation of all joy. He senses the feast which nature puts forth to him, but is unable to take part in it and foresees the remorse which will assail him in the years to come when he will regret the youthful life that he never lived. In this sense, he is alone just like, or worse than, the sparrow, since the latter lives alone by instinct, while the poet is endowed with reason and free will.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In 1829, at Recanati, where he was constrained to return, against his wishes, because of increasing infirmity and financial difficulties, the poet wrote "Le Ricordanze" ("Memories"), perhaps the poem where autobiographical elements are the most evident. It narrates the story of the painful joy of the man who feels his sentiments to be stirred by seeing again places full of childhood and adolescence memories. These sentiments now confront a horrible and merciless reality and deep regret for lost youth. The ephemeral happiness is embodied in Nerina (a character perhaps based on the same inspiration as Silvia, Teresa Fattorini).


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Nerina and Silvia are both dreams, evanescent phantasms; life for Leopardi is an illusion, the only reality being death. The woman, Silvia, Nerina, or "la sua donna" are always only the reflection of the poet himself, since life itself is, for him, an elusive and deceptive phantasm.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In 1829, Leopardi wrote "La quiete dopo la tempesta" ("The Calm After the Storm"), in which the light and reassuring verses at the beginning evolve into the dark desperation of the concluding strophe, where pleasure and joy are conceived of as only momentary cessations of suffering and the highest pleasure is provided only by death. It also delegates with his dignities onto the crowd nor grieving himself on the sorrows he obsessed and afterwards, his prowess dominates.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: The same year's "Il sabato del villaggio" ("Saturday in the village"), like "La quiete dopo la tempesta", opens with the depiction of the calm and reassuring scene of the people of the village (Recanati) preparing for Sunday's rest and feast. Later, just as in the other poem, it expands into deep, though brief and restrained, poetic-philosophical considerations on the emptiness of life: the joy and illusion of expectation must come to an unsatisfactory end in the Sunday feast; likewise, all the sweet dreams and expectations of youth will turn into bitter disillusion.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Around the end of 1829 or the first months of 1830, Leopardi composed the "Canto notturno di un pastore errante dell'Asia" ("Night-time chant of a wandering Asian sheep-herder"). In writing this piece, Leopardi drew inspiration from the reading of "Voyage d'Orenbourg à Boukhara fait en 1820", by the Russian baron Meyendorff, in which the baron tells of how certain sheep-herders of central Asia belonging to the Kirghiz population practiced a sort of ritual chant consisting of long and sweet strophes directed at the full moon. The canto, which is divided into five strophes of equal length, takes the form of a dialogue between a sheep-herder and the moon. The canto begins with the words ""Che fai tu Luna in ciel? Dimmi, che fai, / silenziosa Luna?"" ("What do you do Moon in the sky? Tell me, what do you do, / silent Moon?"). Throughout the entire poem, in fact, the moon remains silent, and the dialogue is transformed therefore into a long and urgent existential monologue of the sheep-herder, in desperate search of explanations to provide a sense to the pointlessness of existence. The two characters are immersed in an indeterminate space and time, accentuating the universal and symbolic nature of their encounter: the sheep-herder represents the human species as a whole and his doubts are not contingent—that is, anchored to a here and now—but are rather characteristic of man at all times; the moon, on the other hand, represents Nature, the "beautiful and terrible" force that fascinates and, at the same time, terrifies the poet.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: The sheep-herder, a man of humble condition, directs his words to the moon in a polite but insistent tone, seething with melancholy. It is precisely the absence of response on the part of the celestial orb which provokes him to continue to investigate, ever more profoundly, into the role of the moon, and therefore into that of humanity, with respect to life and the world, defining ever more sharply the "arid truth" so dear to the poetry of Leopardi. In the first strophe, in fact, the sheep-herder, even while defining the moon as silent, actually expects a response from it and discovers many analogies between his own condition and that of the moon: both of them arise in the morning, follow their always self-identical paths and finally stop to rest. The life of the moon, as much as that of the sheep-herder, seems completely senseless. There appears, however, in the middle of this strophe, a very important distinction: the course of human life is finite and its passage, similar to that of a "vecchierel bianco" (Petrarch, "Canzoniere", XVI), terminates tragically in the "horrid abyss" of death. Such a condition, which is defined in the second strophe as a condition of profound suffering ("se la vita è sventura, perché da noi si dura?") is extremely different from that of the Moon, which seems instead to be eternal, "virgin", and "intact".


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In the third strophe, the sheep-herder turns again to the moon with renewed vigor and hope, believing that the orb, precisely because of this privileged extra-worldly condition, can provide him the answers to his most urgent questions: what is life? What could possibly be its purpose since it is necessarily finite? What is the first cause of all being? But the moon, as the sheep-herder learns quickly, cannot provide the answers to these questions even if it knew them, since such is nature: distant, incomprehensible, mute if not indifferent to the concerns of man. The sheep-herder's search for sense and happiness continues all the way to the final two strophes. In the fourth, the sheep-herder turns to his flock, observing how the lack of self-awareness that each sheep has allows it to live out, in apparent tranquillity, its brief existence, without suffering or boredom. But this idea is ultimately rejected by the sheep-herder himself in the final strophe, in which he admits that, probably, in whatever form life is born and manifests itself, whether moon, sheep or man, whatever it is capable of doing, life is equally bleak and tragic.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In this period, Leopardi's relations with his family are reduced to a minimum and he is constrained to maintain himself on his own financially. In 1830, after sixteen months of "notte orribile" (awful night), he accepted a generous offer from his Tuscan friends, which enabled him to leave Recanati.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In the last "canti", philosophical investigation predominates, with the exception of "Tramonto della Luna" ("Decline of the Moon") which is a decisive return to idyllic lyricism.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In 1831, Leopardi wrote "Il pensiero dominante" ("The Dominating Thought"), which exalts love as a living or vitalizing force in itself, even when it is unrequited. The poem, however, features only the desire for love without the joy and the vitalizing spirit and, therefore, remaining thought, illusion. Leopardi destroys everything, condemns everything, but wishes to save love from the universal miasma and protect it at least within the profundity of his own soul. The more desolate the solitude which surrounds him, the more tightly he grasps onto love as the faith in his idealized, illusory, eternal woman ("sua donna") who placates suffering, disillusion and bitterness. The poet of universal suffering sings of a good which surpasses the ills of life and, for an instant, seems to become the singer of a possible happiness. But the idea of death as the only hope for man returns, since the world offers only two beautiful things: love and death.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: "Il pensiero dominante" represents the first ecstatic moment of love, which almost nullifies the awareness of human unhappiness. It is worth the price of tolerating the suffering of a long life in order to experience the joy of such beauty. "Il pensiero dominante" and "Il risorgimento" are the only poems of joy written by Leopardi, though even in those two poems there always reappears, inextinguishable, the pessimism which sees in the object of joy a vain image created by the imagination.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: The concept of the love-death duality is taken up again in the 1832 canto "Amore e Morte" ("Love and Death"). It is a meditation on the torment and annihilation which accompanies love. Love and death, in fact, are twins: the one is the generator of all things beautiful and the other puts an end to all ills. Love makes strong and cancels the fear of death and when it dominates the soul, it makes it desire death. Some, who are won over by passion, will die for it happily. Others kill themselves because of the wounds of love. But happiness consists in dying in the drunkenness of passion. Of the two twins, Leopardi dares to invoke only death, which is no longer symbolized by the horrid Ade of Saffo, but by a young virgin who grants peace for eternity. Death is the sister of love and is the great consoler who, along with her brother, is the best that the world can offer.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Also in 1832, inspired by a 17th-century poem by Girolamo Graziani titled "Il Conquisto di Granata" ("The Capture of Granada"), Leopardi wrote "Consalvo". Consalvo obtains a kiss from the woman he has long loved unrequitedly only when, gravely injured, he is at the point of death. Consalvo is different from the other canti in that it has the form of a novella in verse or of a dramatic scene. It is the fruit of the sentimental and languid literature which characterized much of the romanticism outside of Italy.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Written in 1834, "Aspasia" emerges, like "Consalvo", from the painful experience of desperate and unrequited love for Fanny Targioni Tozzetti. Aspasia-Fanny is the only real woman represented in the poetry of Leopardi. Aspasia is the able manipulator whose perfect body hides a corrupt and prosaic soul. She is the demonstration that beauty is dishonest.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: The poet, vainly searching for love, takes his revenge on destiny and the women who have rejected him, above all Targioni, whose memory continues to disturb the poet after more than a year away from her. The memory of the woman loved in vain constantly returns, but the canto, inspired by disdain for the provocative and, simultaneously, distancing behavior of the woman also expresses resignation to one's fate and the pride of having been able to recover one's own independence. Aspasia, in her limitedness as a woman cannot grasp the profundity of masculine thought.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: "A se stesso" (To himself) is an 1833 canto in which Leopardi talks to his heart. The last deceit, love, is dead too. He thought that love was one of the few things that makes life worth living but he changed his mind after his beloved Fanny's refusal. She, moreover, was in love with Antonio Ranieri, Leopardi's best friend, who remained with the poet until the end. His desire, his hope, his "sweet deceits" are ended. His heart has beaten all his life but it's time for it to stop beating and staying still. There is no place for hope anymore. All he wants is dying, because death is the only good gift nature has given to human beings. In "Love and Death", love was still considered a good thing because when you are in love you have stronger feelings, you feel alive in an always new way. Now he has become skeptical also about love, because if he can't have Fanny, nothing remains for him in life. He just wants to die, to make all the suffering end. Death is a gift as it is the end of all human pain, which is inevitable because it's in the essence of men, it's in the cruel project of nature. The last verse is "e l'infinita vanità del tutto" which means "and the infinite vanity of the whole" and it indicates the inanity of human life and human world.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: In the canto "Sopra un bassorilievo antico sepolcrale" ("Over an Ancient Sepulchre Bas-relief"), a young woman has died and is represented in the act of saying goodbye to her loved ones. The poet weighs the pros and cons of death, remaining in doubt about whether the young woman's destiny is good or bad.


title: Giacomo Leopardi

text: Leopardi, even while being highly conscious of the indifference of nature, never ceased entirely to love it. In these verses, the poet poses challenging and pointed questions to nature, enumerating the ills and sufferings which, because of death, are inflicted on humanity. Under the influence of love, the poet had apparently found happiness at least in death ("Il pensiero dominante", "Amore e morte"). Now, instead, even this last illusion has fallen and he sees nothing but unhappiness everywhere.