We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

"LA GINESTRA" (Dark Ambient Suite)

by Succi

/

about

The Broom ("La ginestra"), composed in 1836, is the last, definitive masterpiece by Giacomo Leopardi, the greatest Italian poet of Romanticism, who was born in Recanati (at that time still part of the Papal States) in 1798 and died at 39 in Naples, at the foot of the Vesuvius (during a cholera epidemic).

Leopardi’s last poem, the testament of an authentic genius, comes from the poet’s amazement at the encounter with a broom on the bare slopes of the Vesuvius, the volcano that buried Pompeii in 78 AD.
Rich in internal parts, antithetical to each other, and flashbacks, this poem is a perfect representation of Leopardi’s style and themes. A demanding text in a high literary register, sometimes also very difficult for today’s reader.

The relationship between Man and Nature is a recurring theme in Leopardi’s work since his early writings. In the definitive manifesto of his poetics, the broom, the only fragrant flower on the arid stone of the Vesuvius volcano, is not opposed to Nature. The flower chosen by Giacomo as a symbol of humble resistance and composure (both human and poetic) is still Nature, as much as the volcano, as much as man, that "race of men" and its "progeny", the descendants (the proliferation of the species), as much as the ants.

The broom is Nature from which an example is to be drawn: nothing to do with the so-called “titanism” (a misleading, often abused term), no swaggering pride; the broom resists by being "at home" (at ease) in the desert, it is weak, it bends ("pliant"), it is fragile, "unresisting", yet it does not surrender, even in the face of the evidence of its inevitable fate.

It already knows; after all, its fate is clearly witnessed by the deadly aridity of the surrounding scenery, by the perennial threat of a “destroyer”, and it stands there, resisting on “the dry flank of the terrifying mountain” that was lava once. One thousand and eight hundred years earlier, one thousand and eight hundred years later. The mountain is an unwitting and innocent exterminator, simply moving so slowly that it looks completely motionless to us.

Nature is unaware and indifferent to man and to itself, it has no end and no purpose, if not the mere fragile survival of what, simply by chance, is in the condition of existing in a given instant, in a scene that is fatally tragic but completely devoid of any sense.

Here's man. An infinitesimal fruit of Nature too, just as much as the broom; however, man usually - and foolishly - considers and declares himself superbly elected as the end and purpose of the entire Universe.

Nature is completely unmindful of the sufferings it inflicts on living beings; if a little apple falls and devastates an ants’ nest, the result of such a long labor of a noble population of insects, the reason is only the ripeness of the apple, nothing else. No intentionality.

So, by looking closely, the whole composition, as well as all of Leopardi's work, is not so much about Nature, but rather about EXISTENCE. This is why it affects the individual: it is about him, about being in the world without any end, “startled” by an elusive and painful existence.

In Western culture, Giacomo Leopardi is the first to pose the question in such terms - poetic, not philosophically systematic - that he seems to anticipate the existentialism of the twentieth century. How could his message not be misunderstood, underestimated, ridiculed, isolated, rejected - also because of the physical appearance of the poet, marked by illness?

Yet Leopardi has a combative, belligerent, aggressive, sometimes even defiant nature: in this poem, for example, he affirms without modesty he knows well that "... oblivion/obscures him who was too disliked in his own time". As if to say, I am too far ahead, I know. He knows perfectly well that he is not contemporary to anyone, because Leopardi is contemporary to everyone.

Broom consists of a linear discourse, in the most classic of oratory traditions, deliberately archaic and complex in form, conducted in an inexorably lucid way with arguments, examples, escapes in time, very powerful images, which alone would be eloquent, though language makes them difficult for us to grasp.

It is not possible to talk about Italy in general without encountering a paradox. Leopardi's paradox is evident: the most romantic of the Italian poets of Romanticism is a convinced classicist, declares himself to be anti-romantic, materialist, and anti-spiritualist. His compositions always start from reasoning, from a mental, rational act, to reach the most irrational of all conclusions: nothingness as the only true substance of all that is. 

credits

released December 3, 2020
poem: Giacomo Leopardi
voice and music: Giovanni Succi

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Succi Asti, Italy

Artista di nicchia. Succi is the MADRIGALI MAGRI (1994-2002) and Bachi DA PIETRA (2005-today) frontman founder and songwriter. Side project: LA MORTE (2012), APOCALYPSE LOUNGE (2019). FUORI DI TESTO (Patreon.com/giovannisucci)

contact / help

Contact Succi

Streaming and
Download help

Report this track or account

Succi recommends:

If you like Succi, you may also like: