The rediscovered frescoes in the Leopardi Library
“My view of things and of people, and the way I attribute everything – or almost everything – to nature, and very little – or nothing at all – to reason, that is to say to the work of man or of a creature, is not at odds with Christianity”.
This is the opening passage of a short essay from the *Zibaldone*, written between 9 and 15 December 1820, in which Leopardi analyses the role of nature as God, using formulations close to Spinoza’s philosophy.
This is a lengthy examination in which the effort to defend Christianity is evident, as he seeks to reconcile it with his own thinking. This intense dialogue with himself and with the religion’s apologists centres on a fundamental point in biblical exegesis, on which the young Leopardi was educated, but which was essential to the subsequent development of his thinking: the Fall, that is, the sin that led to the expulsion of Adam and Eve.
The young Leopardi’s lengthy discourse focuses, in fact, not so much on the sin committed by our first parents and their expulsion from the original Eden, but rather on the moment when Adam and Eve opened their eyes: ‘et aperti sunt oculi amborum’ (Genesis 3:7).
To open one’s eyes is to know, and to know as God knows. The divine prohibition therefore consists in limiting the possibilities of knowledge, the fullness of which belongs to God alone. To know beyond this limit means, on the one hand, opening oneself up to the suffering of the truth, carefully veiled by nature; but it also means embarking on a path – that of excessive cognition and knowledge – which, according to Leopardi, will lead to individual unhappiness and to an anthropological and moral catastrophe.
