Laudator Temporis Acti

Iris Origo, Leopardi: A Study in Solitude (Chappaqua: Helen Marx Books, 1999), pp. 15-16:

Conte Monaldo, the poet’s father, prided himself on his ancestry, on his palace, and on his town—further than that, he considered, a man’s pride should not extend. ‘One’s patriotism is not due to the whole nation,’ he wrote, ‘not even to the state; one’s true country is only that morsel of the earth in which one is born and spends one’s life. That alone should awaken any interest in its citizens.’ In this view, if there was a genuine local patriotism, there was also a keen awareness that it is pleasanter to be a large frog in a small pond. ‘Being very proud’, he himself wrote, ‘of my abilities and personal independence, I neither want nor need a great town. I would always choose a hut, a book, and an onion at the top of a mountain, rather than hold a subordinate position in Rome.’

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