Editing Giacomo Leopardi (section)

===First academic writings (1813–1816)===
[[File:Leopardi - Puerili e abbozzi vari, 1924 - 1859280 C.jpeg|thumb|upright|''Puerili e abbozzi vari'', a collection of Leopardi's early writings from 1809]]

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.

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.

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 [[Joachim Murat|Murat]]. In the same year he translated ''[[Batrachomyomachia|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.

In 1816 Leopardi published ''Discorso sopra la vita e le opere di Frontone'' ("Discourse on the life and works of [[Marcus Cornelius Fronto|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.

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.

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'' ([[Vincenzo Monti|Monti]], [[Giuseppe Acerbi|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.

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 Alighieri|Dante]]"), two very polemical and classical [[patriotic]] hymns in which Leopardi expressed his adherence to [[Liberalism|liberal]] and strongly [[Secularity|secular]] ideas.

In the same period, he participated in the debate, which engulfed the literary Europe of the time, between the [[Classicism|classicists]] and the [[Romanticism|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").

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''.