Between Finite and Infinite. The Astronomical Cognition of Giacomo Leopardi

Abstract

The assiduous observation of the starry sky profoundly marked the young Leopardi's soul, contributing to develop in him that intense cosmic dimension that pervades his entire poetic and philosophical work. A careful reading of his writings - from the youthful Storia dell'astronomia, through the Zibaldone, to the Ginestra - reveals how the great poet from Recanati maintained, throughout his life, a lucid awareness of the progress of astronomy in his time. Thus, for Leopardi, the shocking vastness of the universe revealed by the great telescopes of the early 19th century became on the one hand an emblem of man's apparent insignificance in the face of nature, and on the other a mirror of the immeasurable greatness of human desire. The extension of physical space, in his intuition, nevertheless remains finite: this is shown both by his critical observations on the Newtonian system and by certain lexical choices in the celebrated song The Infinite. Finally, it is interesting to compare Leopardi's intuition with the vision of the universe offered by contemporary cosmology, according to which the region of space-time accessible to us is vast, expanding, but finite. The question of the infinity or finitude of space on a global scale, however, remains open, although measurements of the curvature parameter have now reached the precision of 0.1 per cent. Cosmic space remains - perhaps definitively - suspended on the border between finite and infinite: a threshold so dear to Giacomo Leopardi.