Porfirio nella «Vita di Plotino». Note a una traduzione di Giacomo Leopardi

Abstract

In the opening to the Dialogo di Plotino e di Porfirio, Leopardi translates cum variatione a passage from Porphyry’s Vita Plotini (XI 11-15). While respecting the words and syntax of the original Greek text with elegant rigour and heightened semantic competence, Leopardi makes a few deliberate changes, thereby giving rise to an exchange that plays upon Porphyry’s rational ethos and Plotinus’ ‘feeling of the soul’ [‘il senso dell’animo’]. The original passage is not cited in its entirety; actually, the disciple could not be present at his master’s death, thus depriving the latter of the very consolatory affections to which Leopardi’s Plotinus refers in his moving speech at the end of the dialogue. His words therefore convey an illusion, one which Leopardi knowingly withholds from the reader.