Pick two poets who seem to have nothing to do with each other — a Gothic American and a pastoral Englishman, say — and see where the catalogue actually joins them: overlapping years, shared ground, distinctive themes, and the poems that secretly rhyme.
Gabriele D'Annunzio
Giacomo Leopardi
A random pair who overlapped in time and whose poems already rhyme in the catalogue — a way into poets you may not have met.
On March 12, 1863, in the coastal city of Pescara in the Abruzzi region of Italy, a child was born who would come to embody the restless, turbulent spirit of his age like no other writer of his generation. Baptized Gaetano, he would forever be known by the name his family gave him in childhood—Gabriele—a name that seemed to foreshadow the angelic, almost otherworldly presence he would project throughout his life. Gab…
“Bisogna fare della propria vita come si fa un’opera d’arte.”
Giacomo Leopardi was born in Recanati, in the Marches, then part of the Papal States, on 29 June 1798, and died in Naples on 14 June 1837, only weeks before his thirty-ninth birthday. His short life produced one of the most searching bodies of poetry and prose in modern European literature. He is often introduced as Italy’s supreme poet of pessimism, and there is truth in the description, but it is insufficient if it…
“Words like "far away" and "ancient" are intensely poetic and pleasing because they awaken vast, indefinite, indeterminate and hazy ideas.”
About 126 km separate Pescara, Abruzzo, Italy from Recanati, Marche, Italy. Shared ground: Italy.
Distinctive words drawn from each poet’s critiqued poems — what they keep writing about, not just what their biographies mention.
Gabriele D'Annunzio: pescara, abruzzi, maria hardouin di gallese, eleonora duse, il piacere, canto novo, laudi del cielo del mare della terra e degli eroi, alcyone. Giacomo Leopardi: recanati, naples, count monaldo leopardi, adelaide antici, l'infinito, alla luna, operette morali, zibaldone di pensieri.
The closest poem-to-poem matches in critique space — the sort of kinship a listener hears before the catalogue admits it.
Gabriele D'Annunzio: Wonder, Spirituality, Longing. Giacomo Leopardi: Longing, Sorrow, Spirituality.
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