An autograph letter by Giacomo Leopardi found in Germany

The letter is known to scholars because it contains one of Leopardi’s most famous statements on the publication of the “Operette morale”. Responding to Stella, who had suggested publishing some passages in a magazine, the poet firmly opposes the idea of ​​a fragmentary diffusion of the work, as is done with “works of a moment, and made to last just as long”. The writing, of which Lucrezia Arianna has now published the edition, bears witness to a decisive moment in the publishing history of one of the masterpieces of Italian literature.

Originally the document was part of a group of Leopardi’s letters kept by Stella’s heirs and subsequently transmitted to Prospero Viani for the preparation of Leopardi’s Epistolario. From this moment on, the autograph gradually left the traditional archival circuits, following the fate of many Leopardi papers that passed onto the antiquarian market. At the beginning of the twentieth century the letter appears to have belonged to Arturo Toscanini, who allowed its consultation through copies to scholars engaged in the edition of Leopardi’s correspondence. In all likelihood, the document remained in the collection of the famous conductor’s family for several decades. Only at the beginning of the 2000s did the autograph re-emerge, appearing in a series of international auctions between London, Boston and finally from Bolaffi in Turin, the last stop on the letter’s journey before the German doctor and bibliophile Reiner Speck, through the Berlin company JA Stargardt, purchased it starting in 2017 and kept it at his foundation in Cologne.

The discovery therefore allows us to restore a precise location to an original autograph that the most recent editions of the letters considered missing and, at the same time, allows us to reconstruct almost two centuries of the document’s history, following its path from the archives of the publisher Stella to contemporary private collections. The edition and study of the autograph appeared by Lucrezia Arianna in the essay “Leopardi and his editor: a rediscovered autograph letter” in the magazine “Studi di philologia italiana, 83” (2025).

Lucrezia Arianna is studying Italian studies and modern philology at the Scuola Normale, in particular she is a scholar of Italian Renaissance literature. His research project includes the critical edition of “L’Espositione ai Trionfi” by Francesco Petrarca (composed between 1466 and 1469), the monumental commentary by the Sienese humanist and doctor Bernardo Ilicino (Bernardo Lapini) dedicated to Borso d’Este, a research with repercussions also on the reception side of Petrarch’s poem, of which he also describes the contexts of use.