«Vaghe, fantastiche, chimeriche, impossibili». Leopardi, Benjamin and the «opere di genio»

Abstract

At first sight Benjamin’s thought reveals many themes in common with Leopardi’s philosophy and, above all, it shows the same critical perspective toward contemporary models. This paper intends to explore this common ground, studying especially the analysis that Leopardi and Benjamin dedicated to the work of art: since both looked with disillusion at the European cultural environment, it’s just natural that the questions around the work of art and its reception occupy a fundamental role in their thoughts. In this perspective, Leopardi’s meditation seems on the same page of Benjamin’s most famous work, The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction: studying the deep contradiction between the aura of «opere di genio» and the trace of an acritical work of art, this paper tries to investigate some key points of Leopardi’s thought, like the role of the image (and so, of the imagination) within Zibaldone’s gnoseological structure, and the phylogenetical propriety of «immagini antiche».