GNOME. But how did those rascals come to an end?
SPRITE. Some by making war against each other; some by sailing and drowning; some by eating one another; some, and quite a few, by killing themselves; some by rotting in idleness; some by racking their brains over books; some by debauchery and by reveling in a thousand excesses; and, finally, some by finding all kinds of ways to act against their own nature and go to their own destruction.
GNOMO. Ma come sono andati a mancare quei monelli?
FOLLETTO. Parte guerreggiando tra loro, parte navigando, parte mangiandosi l'un l'altro, parte ammazzandosi non pochi di propria mano, parte infracidando nell'ozio, parte stillandosi il cervello sui libri, parte gozzovigliando, e disordinando in mille cose; in fine studiando tutte le vie di far contro la propria natura e di capitar male.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Tuesday, May 13, 2025
The End of the Human Race
Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), "Dialogo di un Folletto e di uno Gnomo," Operette Morali (tr. Giovanni Cecchetti):