Essay
Moral Fables
Operette morali
Giacomo Leopardi · 1827
Opening lines
Narrasi che tutti gli uomini che da principio popolarono la terra, fossero creati per ogni dove a un medesimo tempo, e tutti bambini, e fossero nutricati dalle api, dalle capre e dalle colombe nel modo che i poeti favoleggiarono dell’educazione di Giove.
It is told that all the men who peopled the earth in the beginning were created everywhere at one and the same time, and all of them children, and that they were nursed by bees, goats and doves, in the way the poets told the tale of the upbringing of Jupiter.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from it.wikisource.org
Synopsis
A series of prose pieces, dialogues and narratives, in which figures from mythology, historical characters, animals and personified ideas meet. In a tone of irony and satire, the author questions the unhappiness of men, the impossibility of happiness, and the illusions that take its place; in one of the dialogues, an Icelander addresses Nature, a deity indifferent to the well-being of men.
Context
Most of the book was written in 1824; the first edition appeared in Milan in 1827 with the publisher Antonio Fortunato Stella, for whom the author was then working. The collection mixes dialogues, philosophical tales and prose poems. In French, Joël Gayraud translated it for Allia, completing it with eight previously unpublished small moral works; in English, Giovanni Cecchetti translated it in 1982 under the title “Operette Morali: Essays and Dialogues”, then J. G. Nichols under that of “Moral Fables”.
Who it is for
Short pieces, dialogues and tales, which can be read separately and in any order one likes.
Prizes and reception
The book has no direct precedent in Italian letters.