Leopardi and Plato (Drama vs Philosophy)

The aim of the article is to frame the composition of the Operette Morali – a bizarre combination of poetry and philosophy, of comedy and tragedy, of orality and writerliness – within the complex, somehow ambivalent, relationship that Leopardi had with Plato. On the one hand, Leopardi found in Plato a familiar psychic and intellectual disposition: a ‘poetic’ ardour extinguished by philosophy, an ‘oral’ mind converted to writerliness. On the other hand, he engaged himself in a battle against the platonic censure of poetry and theatre, which he appreciated with exactly the same arguments that Plato used to condemn them – that is, their corporeal, irrational and democratic dimension. This will be argued through a comparison with the “Prologue in Theatre” of Goethe’s Faust and with Tocqueville’s observations of the relationship between dramatic and democratic institutions.