Laudator Temporis Acti

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Noten und Abhandlungen zu besserem Verständniß des West-östlichen Divans" (tr. Martin Bidney):

Poetry if you would know,
To its country you must go;
If the poet you would know,
To the poet's country go.

Wer das Dichten will verstehen,
muß ins Land der Dichtung gehen;
wer den Dichter will verstehen,
muß in Dichters Lande gehen.

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Dear Mike,

Herewith another instance perhaps of Goethe's dictum about knowledge of a poet's country:

Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, Vol. II (London: Perspectiva Press, 2021), p. 830:

Always dear to me has been this lonely hill,
    and this line of trees which, from so much
    of the furthest horizon, hides my view.
Yet as I sit and gaze, in my thoughts
    I conjure up boundless spaces far beyond it,
    and superhuman silences,
    and deepest quiet — until my heart
    almost grows afraid. And I hear the wind push
Through the trees, I cannot help setting its sound against
    that infinite silence; and the eternal envelops me
    with the thought of seasons long past
    And of all the living present and its sounds.
Then in this immensity my thought goes under,
    And sweet is it to me to drown in such a sea.⁶³

63 Leopardi, 'L'infinito', trans Nigel McGilchrist [the author's brother], who comments: 'it is conventional to translate siepe as a hedgerow, which is exactly what it means in current Italian usage. But in older garden-design tracts siepe is often used to mean a "break of trees". Since the land drops sharply below the spot in Recanati where Leopardi is said to have composed the poem, only a line of tall trees rising from further down the slope, rather than a hedgerow, would effectively occlude his view.'

The Italian original:

Sempre caro mi fu quest'ermo colle,
e questa siepe, che da tanta parte
dell'ultimo orizzonte il guardo esclude.
Ma sedendo e mirando, interminati
spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani
silenzi, e profondissima quïete
io nel pensier mi fingo; ove per poco
il cor non si spaura. E come il vento
odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello
infinito silenzio a questa voce
vo comparando: e mi sovvien l'eterno,
e le morte stagioni, e la presente
e viva, e 'l suon di lei. Così tra questa
immensità s'annega il pensier mio:
e 'l naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare.

Luca Morri, I Luoghi leopardiani (Il Colle dell'Infinito):

Il colle, celebrato nell'idillio omonimo, era meta delle passeggiate di Giacomo che vi accedeva direttamente dal giardino di casa, passando attraverso l'orto del convento di Santo Stefano e lì usava soffermarsi per godere lo splendido vastissimo panorama, dal monte al mare.

I've never been to Recanati unfortunately but the photograph here gives a hint of the declivity involved. Siepe as a break of tall trees would seem to make more sense too in the context of "odo stormir tra queste piante". Best wishes,
Eric [Thomson]

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I see that Jonathan Galassi translates siepe here as hedgerow.