Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 October 1887 — Casa Leopardi. [ARTICLE]

Casa Leopardi.

Casa Leopardi is stately, cold and grim. As a summer residence it would be agreeable, but Arctic in winter, with its outlook at the Apennines, whose breath blows straight upon it. A small piazza is before the house, with the towers of two or three dingy red churches within a stone’s throw of the gate. Some inferior houses form the rest of the square, and it was at the windows of one of these houses that young Leopardi, peering from his own bedroom window, used to see the two girlish faces (Nerina and Silvia) which first stirred his boyish heart A high, white wall forms part of the long facade of Casa Leopardi, and the tops of orange trees and other greenery peering over the wall show that here is the garden wherein the young Leopardis used to play. Tbe memory of Giacomo Leopardi is magnificently enshrined within Casa Leopardi by the present Count and his family. One sees the suite of rooms which compose the rare old library of the house, preserved as they were when Giacomo spent his days in them. The very tables on which he wrote are as they were, with his inkstand, pen, favorite writing pad, and so on. But there is, besides, a superb room decorated with rich marbles and with much upholstery in crimson velvet, which is devoted to the manuscripts, published works and bibliography of the poet. These are displayed, amid a glitter of brass and glass, in ebony mounted cases. From the first childish scribblings to the last of his manuscripts, one sees them all. Knowing the history of Giacomo Leopardi and the history of his parents, both of whom survived him, it is easy to animate this old house with imaginative shapes that are not wholly unreal. —All the Year Round.