Humanity has been created for eternal beauty but the majority has forgotten it or never knew it

Leopardi was able to (fore-)see how in the "progress" of poetry a human distortion was hidden, in the sense of a detachment from the sacred bond that unites man to natural life, i.e. to creation. And this distortion was clearly seen in romantic poetry, which was a further step, such as Humanism and the French Revolution, for example, which led humanity over the centuries to detach itself from what is its role, of being created in the image of creation, and therefore of its Creator. And today we see the outcome: the immense devastation caused by the tenets of globalism.

The civilization that romantic poets sang has led to love the "vezzi terreni" (the earthly ones of the translation beneath) and to despise the eternal works instead so that the eternal values have decayed to such an extent that they became mere polytheistic adoration of money, earthly wealth, eternal human youth, etc... And humanity has now established itself as a candidate for immortality through AI, finally embodying the role of surrogate creator of a new world where are no longer recognized the "works of God" and the "beauties universal and perpetual"

Because, finally, one of the principal differences between the Romantic poets and ours, within which difference are contained an infinite number of others, is the following: that ours generally sing nature in the best way they can, and the Romantics, instead, sing civilization in the best way they can; ours, eternal and immutable matters and forms and beauties, and theirs, the transitory and the mutable ones; ours, the works of God, and theirs, the works of man... Thus it is clearer than the light of day that our poets look in every way for the primitive, even when they speak of modern things, and the Romantics, by contrast, look in every way for modernity, even when they speak of things ancient and primitive... What say you to this, o Readers? Is this not an admirable exchange? Do you not see that they are tired of nature’s celestial manners and seek earthly ones? Do you not see that those delights that they no longer find – or claim not to find – in the works of God and in beauties universal and perpetual, and that they dismiss as old-fashioned, they must then beg from the particulars, the ephemera, from fashions and from things made by men? [1]

[1] GIACOMO LEOPARDI, DISCOURSE OF AN ITALIAN ON ROMANTIC POETRY 87-91 passim

Translated by Gabrielle Sims and Fabio A. Camilletti

Follow me on Substack