Leopardi’s Thoughts on Pleasure

            Reading through the many essays and poems of Giacomo Leopardi, he discusses how the human mind views life. Leopardi proclaims that life roots from the imagination and without imagination there would be no hope for happiness. He states “life without imagination, is a death”(Leopardi 91).  Imagination allows us to grow and search for happiness in our lives. It allows us to achieve greatness because it pushes us to want to make our lives better. Imagination is the backbone of the human mind.

Leopardi has many ideas on life but another idea that relates to imagination was his idea of pleasure. In the commentary of his poem, “ Saturday in the Village.” Leopardi states that, “pleasure in itself cannot be grasped.”  (Leopardi 99).  His statement is completely valid. He describes pleasure as a state where every thing is perfect in life and no change is necessary. As humans we will never be completely content because we need change. Our imaginations push us to make goals to better our lives. If we hit the state of absolute pleasure we would lose our imaginations, which, as Leopardi had stated would be death of the human mind.  Humans are better when they are not perfect; struggle in life is good and makes humans stronger. In the poem, “The calm after the storm”, Leopardi states that without the tough things in life we would be unable to appreciate the good.  He even goes on to say that, “without ills, the good things would hardly be good, since after a time they would annoy us” (Leopardi 94).  If we by some chance found complete pleasure we still would not be happy because we would become jaded by the perfection of our lives and motivated to make it better. Life is more interesting because we are striving to be better in as many aspects of our lives. As humans we should not be striving for pleasure but striving to never lose hope in a brighter future.

Leopardi, Giacomo, Thomas Goddard Bergin, and Anne Paolucci.   Selected Poems:

               (Italian Text Included) with Excerpts from the Poet's Journals, Letters, and         

               Notes. Smyrna, DE: Published for The Bagehot Council by Griffon House

               Publications, 2003. Print.