... That reconciliation
between the old and new, tolerated as a temporary political necessity,
seemed at bottom a profanation of science, a moral weakness.... Faith
in revelation had been wanting; faith in philosophy itself was now
wanting. Mystery re-appeared. The philosopher knew as much as the
peasant. Of this mystery, Giacomo Leopardi was the echo in the
solitude of his thought and his pain. His skepticism announced the
dissolution of this theologico-metaphysical world, and inaugurated the
reign of the arid True, of the Real. His songs are the most profound
and occult voices of that laborious transition called the nineteenth
century. That which has importance is not the brilliant exterior of
that century of progress, and it is not without irony that he speaks
of the progressive destinies of mankind. That which has importance is
the exploration of one's own breast, the inner world, virtue, liberty,
love, all the ideals of religion, of science, and of poetry--shadows
and illusions in the presence of reason, yet which warm the heart, and
will not die. Mystery destroys the intellectual world; it leaves the
moral world intact. This tenacious life of the inner world, despite
the fall of all theological and metaphysical worlds, is the
originality of Leopardi, and gives his skepticism a religious stamp.
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