This is the first poem in Giacomo Leopardi’s monumental Canti, in which he laments the fallen 300 Spartans battling at Thermopylae against Persia’s million-man army. He is using the contrast of the bravery and love of country of those mere 300 Greeks, and the memory of ancient Roman glory, with the disorder and chaos Italy found itself in at the time (1818) before Italy was a united country.
This was an extremely influential poem in Italy and, along with the other poems in the Canti, established him as the greatest modern Italian poet. Unfortunately, it also captured the psychology of humiliation and memory of past grandeur that ultimately led to Mussolini rising a hundred years later.
My Translation
To Italy
By Giacomo Leopardi
Oh my homeland, I see the walls and arches,
The columns and statues, the hermetic
Towers of our ancestors,
But the glory I don’t see,
I don’t see the laurels and the iron carried
By our fathers of old. Or made impotent,
Bared with brow and bared chest exposed.
Alas, how many wounds,
The bruises, what blood! Oh, what you behold,
Most shapely lady! I ask the heavens
And the earth: tell me, tell me;
Who reduced her to this? And what’s worse,
That chain has bound both the arms;
And yes, her hair is scattered without a veil,
And she sits on the earth neglected, forlorn,
Hiding her face
Between her knees, and weeping.
Crying, for how great you’ve been, my Italy,
These people that were born to conquer
Through good and bad fortune, both.
If your eyes were two living springs,
Never could the tears
Equal your harm and shame;
That you were a lady, and now a poor servant.
Who will speak or write of you,
recalling your past glories,
That will not say: she was great, but now is not?
Why, why? Where is the ancient force,
Where are the arms, the valor, and the constancy?
Who took your sword?
Who betrayed you? What art or toil
Or how much might
Was enough to undress the cloak and the golden dressings?
How or when did you fall
From such a height to so low a spot?
No battle for you? Of yours, you do not defend
Anything? The arms, here –the arms:
I alone will fight, I alone will die fighting.
Give the Italian breasts, oh heavens,
That fire that’s in my blood.
Where are your children? I hear the sound of arms
And chariots and the voice of drums:
In foreign lands
Your children battle.
Wait, Italy, wait. I see, I perceive,
A wave of cavalry and infantry,
And smoke and dust, and gleaming swords
Between the bursts of fog.
Does this not comfort? As the light trembles
And clears will you not suffer at the doubtful event?
Why battle in those fields,
Italian youth? Oh gods, oh gods:
Italian steel fights for other lands.
Oh wretched man who’s off to war,
Not for the native shores or pious
Wives or children dear,
But for the enemies of others,
For other people, unable to say while dying:
This soul, my native land,
That life that you gave me, I give back to you.
Oh venturous and dear and blessed
Were the ancients, for the homeland
The people raced to death together;
And you, always honored and glorious,
Oh narrow Thessalian passes,
Against Persia where fate was weak,
At least there were a few souls, magnificent and stout!
I believe that the plants and rocks and waves
And mountains of yours are fleeting,
With a voice faintly
Telling of all the banks
Covered with invincible armies,
Their bodies devoted to Greece.
Then, cowardly and cruel,
Xerxes fled by Hellespont,
Giving ridicule to his last descendent;
And on the Antela hill, where by dying
That holy flock escaped their death,
And Simonides rose,
Watching over the sea and the sky and the earth.
And tears shed on both the cheeks,
And the chest was heaving, the foot was faltering,
Cutting in as the lyre:
You are blessed,
That offered your chests to those enemy spears
For love of her that gave you to the Sun;
You whom the Greeks worship, and the world admires.
In arms and in peril
How much love in their young hearts,
Drew them to that bitter loving fate?
How joyful, oh sons,
Did the last hour seem, when laughing
And running apace, tearful and tough?
You seemed as if going to a dance, not to death,
Each of you, or to a splendid feast:
But each went to dark
Tartarus, and the wave of death;
Neither wife nor child gathered beside,
When on that rugged shore
You died without a kiss and without a tear.
But not without the horrible Persian pain
And immortal anguish.
As a lion enters a herd of bulls
Or leaps on the one behind and bores into
Its back with the teeth,
Now this one’s side it bites, now that one’s thigh;
So lost among the swarms that raged
In the wrath of beasts and Greek virtue.
See the horses with riders on the back;
See the vanquished flee, hindered
By the chariots and tents tumbling down,
And running first of all
That pale and dissolute tyrant;
See how they, infused and stained
With barbarian blood, those heroic Greeks,
Cause of the Persians’ infinite grief,
Were little by little overwhelmed by their wounds,
And the one above the other fell. Oh live, live:
You most blessed
While the world speaks or writes.
The stars will be torn, falling in the sea,
Screeching, extinguished in the abyss,
Before that the memory of your
Loving passes or dwindles away.
Your grave is an alter; and here the mothers
Will show the little children the beautiful
Footsteps of your blood. Behold, I cast myself,
Oh blessed ones, to the soil,
And kiss the stones and sod,
Forever praised and eternally bright
From pole to pole.
Alas that I were with you below, and my blood
Forming a spring in this soulful earth.
That I die for Greece, candle
Burned out, prostrated by war,
Let the modest
Fame of your poet affix to the future,
Gods be willing,
So long as yours endures.
Original Italian
All’Italia
O patria mia, vedo le mura e gli archi
E le colonne e i simulacri e l’erme
Torri degli avi nostri,
Ma la gloria non vedo,
Non vedo il lauro e il ferro ond’eran carchi
I nostri padri antichi. Or fatta inerme,
Nuda la fronte e nudo il petto mostri.
Oimè quante ferite,
Che lividor, che sangue! oh qual ti veggio,
Formosissima donna! Io chiedo al cielo
E al mondo: dite dite;
Chi la ridusse a tale? E questo è peggio,
Che di catene ha carche ambe le braccia;
Sì che sparte le chiome e senza velo
Siede in terra negletta e sconsolata,
Nascondendo la faccia
Tra le ginocchia, e piange.
Piangi, che ben hai donde, Italia mia,
Le genti a vincer nata
E nella fausta sorte e nella ria.
Se fosser gli occhi tuoi due fonti vive,
Mai non potrebbe il pianto
Adeguarsi al tuo danno ed allo scorno;
Che fosti donna, or sei povera ancella.
Chi di te parla o scrive,
Che, rimembrando il tuo passato vanto,
Non dica: già fu grande, or non è quella?
Perchè, perchè? dov’è la forza antica,
Dove l’armi e il valore e la costanza?
Chi ti discinse il brando?
Chi ti tradì? qual arte o qual fatica
O qual tanta possanza
Valse a spogliarti il manto e l’auree bende?
Come cadesti o quando
Da tanta altezza in così basso loco?
Nessun pugna per te? non ti difende
Nessun de’ tuoi? L’armi, qua l’armi: io solo
Combatterò, procomberò sol io.
Dammi, o ciel, che sia foco
Agl’italici petti il sangue mio.
Dove sono i tuoi figli? Odo suon d’armi
E di carri e di voci e di timballi:
In estranie contrade
Pugnano i tuoi figliuoli.
Attendi, Italia, attendi. Io veggio, o parmi,
Un fluttuar di fanti e di cavalli,
E fumo e polve, e luccicar di spade
Come tra nebbia lampi.
Nè ti conforti? e i tremebondi lumi
Piegar non soffri al dubitoso evento?
A che pugna in quei campi
L’Itala gioventude? O numi, o numi:
Pugnan per altra terra itali acciari.
Oh misero colui che in guerra è spento,
Non per li patrii lidi e per la pia
Consorte e i figli cari,
Ma da nemici altrui,
Per altra gente, e non può dir morendo:
Alma terra natia,
La vita che mi desti ecco ti rendo.
Oh venturose e care e benedette
L’antiche età, che a morte
Per la patria correan le genti a squadre;
E voi sempre onorate e gloriose,
O tessaliche strette,
Dove la Persia e il fato assai men forte
Fu di poch’alme franche e generose!
Io credo che le piante e i sassi e l’onda
E le montagne vostre al passeggere
Con indistinta voce
Narrin siccome tutta quella sponda
Coprìr le invitte schiere
De’ corpi ch’alla Grecia eran devoti.
Allor, vile e feroce,
Serse per l’Ellesponto si fuggia,
Fatto ludibrio agli ultimi nepoti;
E sul colle d’Antela, ove morendo
Si sottrasse da morte il santo stuolo,
Simonide salia,
Guardando l’etra e la marina e il suolo.
E di lacrime sparso ambe le guance,
E il petto ansante, e vacillante il piede,
Toglieasi in man la lira:
Beatissimi voi,
Ch’offriste il petto alle nemiche lance
Per amor di costei ch’al Sol vi diede;
Voi che la Grecia cole, e il mondo ammira.
Nell’armi e ne’ perigli
Qual tanto amor le giovanette menti,
Qual nell’acerbo fato amor vi trasse?
Come sì lieta, o figli,
L’ora estrema vi parve, onde ridenti
Correste al passo lacrimoso e duro?
Parea ch’a danza e non a morte andasse
Ciascun de’ vostri, o a splendido convito:
Ma v’attendea lo scuro
Tartaro, e l’onda morta;
Nè le spose vi foro o i figli accanto
Quando su l’aspro lito
Senza baci moriste e senza pianto.
Ma non senza de’ Persi orrida pena
Ed immortale angoscia.
Come lion di tori entro una mandra
Or salta a quello in tergo e sì gli scava
Con le zanne la schiena,
Or questo fianco addenta or quella coscia;
Tal fra le Perse torme infuriava
L’ira de’ greci petti e la virtute.
Ve’ cavalli supini e cavalieri;
Vedi intralciare ai vinti
La fuga i carri e le tende cadute,
E correr fra’ primieri
Pallido e scapigliato esso tiranno;
Ve’ come infusi e tinti
Del barbarico sangue i greci eroi,
Cagione ai Persi d’infinito affanno,
A poco a poco vinti dalle piaghe,
L’un sopra l’altro cade. Oh viva, oh viva:
Beatissimi voi
Mentre nel mondo si favelli o scriva.
Prima divelte, in mar precipitando,
Spente nell’imo strideran le stelle,
Che la memoria e il vostro
Amor trascorra o scemi.
La vostra tomba è un’ara; e qua mostrando
Verran le madri ai parvoli le belle
Orme del vostro sangue. Ecco io mi prostro,
O benedetti, al suolo,
E bacio questi sassi e queste zolle,
Che fien lodate e chiare eternamente
Dall’uno all’altro polo.
Deh foss’io pur con voi qui sotto, e molle
Fosse del sangue mio quest’alma terra.
Che se il fato è diverso, e non consente
Ch’io per la Grecia i moribondi lumi
Chiuda prostrato in guerra,
Così la vereconda
Fama del vostro vate appo i futuri
Possa, volendo i numi,
Tanto durar quanto la vostra duri.