Editing Giacomo Leopardi (section)

====''Aspasia''====
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 an able manipulator whose perfect body hides a corrupt and prosaic soul. She is the demonstration that beauty is dishonest.

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 behaviour 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.