Laudator Temporis Acti

Giacomo Leopardi, letter to his brother Carlo (December 6, 1822; tr. Prue Shaw):

In a big city man lives without having any relationship at all to what surrounds him, because the sphere is so large that the individual cannot fill it, cannot feel it around him, and so there is no point of contact between it and him. From this you can surmise how much greater and more terrible is the tedium experienced in a big city than that experienced in small cities: since indifference, that horrible feeling, or rather absence of feeling, in man, truly and necessarily has its headquarters in big cities, that is in communities which are very extensive. Man's sense faculties, in these places, are limited just to sight. This is the only sensation individuals have, and it is not reflected in any way within them. The only way of being able to live in a big city — and everybody, sooner or later, is forced to adopt it — is by creating a small sphere of relationships for oneself, while remaining completely indifferent to the rest of society. That is to say by constructing around oneself so to speak a small city within the big one, with all the rest of the big city remaining useless and indifferent to the person in question. To do this, there is no need to leave small cities.