Leopardi e la filosofia by Gaspare Polizzi (review)

Abstract

MLR, 97.4, 2002 995 tory of materialism is edited in accordance with his fastidious standards. Sections comprise: 'Sources anciennes', ranging from Homer and Lucretius to Parmenides; 'De la renaissance aux libertins', covering Bruno's cosmology, Descartes's celebrated letter to the abbe Picot, La Mothe Le Vayer, and Cyrano; 'Gassendi, Hobbes, Locke'; 'Sur Spinoza et le Spinozisme'; 'Les philosophes du xvme siecle et l'histoire du materialisme', on diverse aspects of the theme; 'La philosophie clandestine', comprising , among other things, an intriguing previously unpublished document on the conception of the Virgin Mary, insights into how Voltaire relished the alternating roles of author, historian, and propagandist, and into TyWolbzcYi s Ethocratie, a bestseller in Poland; then, after an overview of 'Les livres, les idees et la censure', the final section 'L'histoire et les contemporains' investigates the role of Merleau-Ponty, and Collingwood's Afezu Leviathan, ending appropriately with Brotteaux, the flippant protagonist of Anatole France's Les dieux ont soif. Selection is invariably invidious: I single out for breadth of scope Jean Salem's article on the Euripidean 'Qui sait si vivren'est pas mourir . . .'. Theformula'srepercussions are traced through Plato, Pyrrho, the Christian moralistic memento mori, the libertine Sextus Empiricus and Gassendi, Calderon, and Shakespeare's plangent 'We are such stuffas dreams are made of, right up to the doom-laden existentialist reflections of Chestov's essay on Dostoevskii. Salem balances the composing strands of materialism: rational spiritualism, scepticism, baroque, parodic, and necrophiliac wit. Equally successful is the close analysis of discrete texts, such as a fragment of Parmenides by Antimo Negri, Lucretius by Alain Gigandet, or Madeleine Alcover's pertinent probing of the unexpected appearance of a Jesuit emblem (a sign of censure) on the CEuvres diverses of Cyrano. Theo Verbeek's 'L'impossibilite de la theologie' in Meyer and Spinoza probes the broader epistemological dilemma well, while Frederic Deloffre's painstaking detective work traces the itinerary of an exemplary clandestin Robert Challe. Genevieve Artigas-Menant raises the issue ofhow to categorize collec? tions of motley clandestine philosophical manuscripts, concluding that, for example, MS Mazarine 1192 on the parodic Saiil should be read in the light of a visible or hidden unity betraying subversive intent. Post-1760, Voltaire's works suddenly ap? pear alongside the Evangile de la raison, and other disparate titles; always our virtuoso aims to 'provoquer la raison par la derision' (p. 582), adding his savage discordant twist to rational demolition of orthodoxy. Jeroom Vercruysse on the Catalogue des livres defendus de 1788 shows that the arbitrary list is explicable only by the Emperor Joseph's taste. Marie-Helene Cotoni stresses that all materials are grist to Voltaire's peculiar 'sorte de syncretisme [qui ne] se soucie[. . .] [pas] des nuances, ni meme des differences' (p. 654). The history of materialism, abundant in dissimulation, paradox, and contradictions, should be read as a totality,bearing witness to the contemporary Zeitgeist. What is true of Voltaire is shown in this volume to hold good for most clandestins: 'Celui qui ecrit pour agir [. . .] et qui veut cacher la main qui ecrit, n'a pas scrupule a masquer les particularites des ouvrages qu'il diffuse, pour n'en conserver que ce qui peut servir sa mission, a laquelle il ramene, abusivement peut-etre, celle de tous les freres philosophes' (p. 655). One major cavil: the absence of an index must seriously lessen the usefulness of this mine of invaluable research information. Glasgow Elizabeth Moles Leopardie lafilosofia. Ed. by GasparePolizzi. Florence: Polistampa. 2001. 232 pp. ?14.46. In the Italian critical field, Giacomo Leopardi is considered the unsurpassed repre? sentative of nineteenth-century Italian poetry. However, for more than a century he 996 Reviews has also been at the centre of a philosophical and theoretical debate with respect to his position as one of the most original Italian thinkers of his time. Since the first authoritative opinions expressed by Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer (who praised the originality of Leopardi's position with reference to his 'cosmological pessimism'), and then the radically polarized positions expressed by Benedetto Croce and Emanuele Severino, the definition of Leopardi's philosophy has been a matter of fierce debate. Very revealingly, the twentieth century opened...