'Adds Something to This Fragment of Life'

Never lose the capacity to be surprised. The hip and ultra-sophisticated happily suffer from this malady, one that leaves life and art deflated. Giacomo Leopardi was no cheerleader and one wouldn’t normally read him looking for a pep talk, but here he writes in his Zibaldone (eds. Michael Caesar and Franco D’Intino, 2013) on Feb. 1, 1829:

“It can be said of reading a piece of true contemporary poetry, in verse or in prose (but verse gives a more effective impression), and perhaps more aptly (even in such prosaic times as these), what Sterne said about a smile; that it adds ‘a thread to the brief fabric of our life.’ It refreshes us, so to speak; and it increases our vitality. But pieces of this sort are extremely rare today.”

Still true, 190 years later. Just when I was concluding that poetry, like movies and popular music, was dead, I was refreshed by reading Aaron Poochigian’s “The Living Will” in the March issue of The New Criterion. You can’t go looking for such experiences because surprise is essential to their charm. I felt better after reading Poochigian’s poem. The way he uses language, without being cloyingly mannered, is a joy. His words are animated and animate this reader.

Leopardi’s allusion to Sterne was puzzling. The editors explain that the “brief fabric” line is translated from the first page of Ugo Foscolo’s preface to his translation of A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768). “The text,” they write, “from the dedication to Pitt of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, reads differently: ‘. . . being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles,--but much more so, when he laughs, that it adds something to this Fragment of Life.”