“Thoughts” by Giacomo Leopardi

2 September 2009 · Reading · Comments { 4 }

leopardiI had never heard of Leopardi before picking up this book – to be honest, I was seduced by the beautiful desert picture on the cover, and also the blurb’s promise of amazing philosophical and psychological insights. What I got was basically the notebook of an intelligent, thoughtful person. There were some interesting ideas, but nothing was fully formed or developed enough to be particularly interesting to me. The book did a good job of skewering social pretensions and shallowness, but that was nothing particularly new. The book was unfinished in Leopardi’s lifetime, and perhaps the finished version would have been brilliant. This sequence of half-formed thoughts and bons mots, however, was just a quick and not particularly satisfying read.

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4 Responses to “Thoughts” by Giacomo Leopardi

  1. claire 2 September 2009 at 10:05 pm #

    Hi Andrew. Have you read any other Hesperus books? And if so, what did you think of them?

    Reply
  2. Lady Glamis 3 September 2009 at 3:28 pm #

    That’s too bad about it being unfinished. I would hate to have any of my unfinished work published. That’s a scary thought.

    Thanks for the insights and review!

    Reply
  3. Andrew Blackman 4 September 2009 at 3:01 pm #

    Hi Claire! Not that I know of, although when I’m reading a book I don’t tend to pay a lot of attention to who the publisher is. I love the concept, though, of publishing short classic works by “neglected” authors. And, as I said, the book was beautifully put together. So I’d love to read more Hesperus books – any recommendations?

    Lady Glamis, I know exactly what you mean. If somebody published my current work-in-progress novel right now I would be truly mortified! I’ve read quite a few unfinished books published posthumously and they are rarely satisfying – even if most of the material was completed in the writer’s lifetime, the final editing process is missing, and that’s very important. I heard there’s a “new” Kerouac book coming out next year, and can’t help wondering why it was unpublished for 50 years and why it’s being published now. On the other hand, I’m glad that Kafka’s instruction in his will to burn all of his manuscripts was ignored – sometimes writers are not the best judges of the merits of their work!

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  4. claire 7 September 2009 at 10:03 am #

    I haven’t read any Hesperus myself, but I just browsed through their catalog and there are so many wonderful authors featured, with their lesser know works. (Dickens, Flaubert, Dostoevksy, James, Tolstoy, Woolf, etc!) I’m eyeing Rabindranath Tagore’s Boyhood Days, a memoir seen through his younger self.

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