Paolina Leopardi

Paolina Leopardi (5 October 1800 – 13 March 1869) was an Italian writer. She was the author of several translations from the French and a biography of Mozart.

Biography

Paolina Leopardi was born in Recanati. She was the third child — after Giacomo and Carlo — and the only daughter of the ten children of Count Monaldo Leopardi and his wife Adelaide Antici.

Early life

She was baptised in the church of Santa Maria di Montemorello with the name Paolina Francesca Saveria Placida Blancina Adelaide. She was born seven weeks old, according to what she herself wrote, because her mother, "seven months pregnant, fell down the stairs, and I hastened to go outside to enjoy this beautiful world, which I would now hurry to get out of, if I could".

She was "small and frail, with short brown hair, eyes of an uncertain blue, an olive-coloured, rounded face: she was ugly, but with a kindness, a goodness, which could make her seem pretty to those who knew her intimately". In the presence of strangers, she spoke very little, giving them an impression of unfriendliness, but she was in fact very shy and "had lived too far from society to know how to be there with ease: but in the circumstances in which she saw herself the object of delicate and loving attention, her gratitude was deep and lasting. She was not lavish with her friendship; but when she granted it, she was trustworthy and secure".

A playmate of her older brothers, she was nicknamed Don Paolo by them because, as she was always dressed in black and wore her hair short, she was given the character of the parish priest. As an adult, she collaborated with her father on the editorial staff of the magazines La Voce della Ragione (The Voice of Reason) and La Voce della Verità (The Voice of Truth): she was in charge of reviewing and translating articles from French newspapers. Like her siblings, she too was subjected by her parents to a reclusive life in the Leopardi household.

Marriage proposals

As was the custom at the time, the parents soon set themselves the problem of accommodating their daughter, also assessing the expenses necessary for her marriage. Giacomo was also well aware of this, and on 5 January 1819 he wrote to his friend Pietro Giordani that her parents would reserve for her a dowry of no more than 40,000 lire — a respectable sum — and would raise no objection to a husband of non-noble lineage, provided he was of "competent civilisation". The news of the first engagement and the planned marriage, however, was not given by Giacomo to Giordani until two years later, on 13th July 1821: "My Paolina this January will be married in a town in the Urbino area, not a big one, not a beautiful one, but to a comfortable, very free and human person".

In view of her marriage to a certain Pier Andrea Peroli, from Sant'Angelo in Vado, already a widower with a one-year-old son, Giacomo composed the song Nelle nozze della sorella Paolina (In the Wedding of Sister Pauline), which is actually, as was the rhetorical custom of the time, a pretext for celebrating the supposed virtues of a past that is only alive in the history books. This is indirectly admitted by the poet himself, when he gave Giordani on 1st February 1823 the news of the failure of the marriage project: "Paolina was no longer a bride. She wanted, and this (I confess) on my and Carlo's advice, to make a fashionable marriage, that is to say, of interest, taking that gentleman who was very ugly and of no spirit, but by nature very pliable and esteemed rich. It then transpired that this last quality was wrongly attributed to him, and the treaty, which had already been concluded, was broken".

The possibility of a new marriage agreement came about after a few weeks: her brother Carlo met a certain Ranieri (or Raniero) Roccetti, a handsome, elegant, cultured and well-mannered young man, and proposed him as a possible fiancé to Paolina, who liked him very much, even though she feared his reputation as a libertine and perhaps also felt unflattered in his presence: and in fact Roccetti chose another party the following month, a wealthy widow, "young, however, and beautiful".

After another suitor, Osvaldo Carradori, had vanished, apparently due to opposition from Paolina's parents, it was the turn of Cavaliere Luigi Marini, director-general of the land registry in Rome, in his fifties, a widower with already grown-up children by a "lame and ugly" wife, whom he loved "sincerely". Having ascertained Marini's moral and economic qualities, as usual Paolina was not even asked to meet him, but the girl was very ready for marriage, "enchanted" by the idea of going to live in Rome and looking forward to getting away from Recanati.

In July it was all over, because Marini concluded a marriage contract with a widow, Barbara Clarelli, daughter and heiress of Giuseppe Clarelli, 3rd Marquis of Vacone. For Paolina, the possibility of marriage to that Andrea Peroli, which seemed to have vanished at the beginning of the year, was re-opened, but negotiations dragged on in vain for three years, also because the Leopardi family had difficulty in raising a dowry that could convince Peroli.

First translations

Thus the years passed, along with the suitors, and Paolina continued her life of domestic seclusion. It was not by chance did she translate from French a book such as Xavier de Maistre's A Journey Around My Room. Her only outlet, while her correspondence with Giacomo thinned out, were the letters she exchanged, from 1829, with the sisters Marianna and Anna Brighenti.

Also in Recanati, in 1837, news of Giacomo's death reached her. As a tribute to the Carradori-Simonetti wedding, the Compagnoni Marefoschi family published an elegantly numbered version of her Life of Mozart. In a letter to Anna Brighenti, Paolina let her writing be understood as a translation and reduction of a French work, which in the course of printing, to her great disappointment, the Bolognese family had emended from the most spicy episodes.

Ten years later, in 1847, her father died — about whom she wrote a memoir, Monaldo Leopardi and His Children — and in 1857 her mother Adelaide.

Later life and death

It was a significant change in Paolina's life: having shed her black clothes, she left Recanati for Ancona, then Grottammare: in 1863 she was in Florence, the following year she visited Emilia and finally met the Brighenti sisters in person, in Modena. There was no year in which she did not travel to the most diverse Italian cities: in 1867 she paid her respects at her brother's tomb, in Naples, and the following year she settled at the Hotel Royal Victoria in Pisa, Giacomo's favourite city, where she visited its places and met a friend of his, Teresa Lucignani.

From Pisa she occasionally travelled to nearby Florence. In February 1869, Paolina returned to Pisa with a fever: there was talk of bronchitis and it was perhaps pleurisy from which she did not recover. She died at two o'clock in the morning on 13 March, assisted by her sister-in-law Teresa: her remains, brought back to Recanati, are interred in the church of Santa Maria di Varano, near the civic cemetery.

Works

• Mozart (1837; edited by Alessandro Taverna, 2010; edited by Elisabetta Benucci, 2018)
• Paolina Leopardi, Viaggio notturno intorno alla mia camera. Traduzione dal francese dell’opera di Xavier de Maistre e altri scritti (2000; edited by Elisabetta Benucci)
• Opere (2020; edited by Elisabetta Benucci)

References

Abbate, Lorenzo (2016). Carteggi leopardiani inediti. Prospero Viani e la famiglia Leopardi. Macerata: Eum.

Abbate, Lorenzo; Laura Melosi (2019). Lettere di Paolina Leopardi a Teresa Teja dai viaggi in Italia (1859-1869). Firenze: Leo S. Olschki.

Antona-Traversi, Camillo (1898). Paolina Leopardi. Note biografiche condotte su documenti inediti recanatesi. Lapi: Città di Castello.

Arrieta, R. A. (1923). "Paulina Leopardi". In: Las hermanas tutelares. Buenos Aires: Babel, pp. 69–89.

Baldini, Antonio (1943). Antonio Baldini, Il Sor Pietro, Cosimo Papareschi e tuttaditutti. Firenze: Le Monnier.

Bellucci, Novella (2010). "Scritture di donne nell'etá della Restaurazione," Dimensioni e Problemi della Ricerca Storica, Vol. XXIII, No. 1, pp. 7–20.

Benucci, Elisabetta (2000). "Giacomo Leopardi, sua sorella Paolina e Stendhal." In: Giuseppe Marcenaro & Pietro Boragina, eds., Italie, il sogno di Stendhal. Catalogo della mostra (Genova, 23 marzo-20 maggio 2000). Milano: Silvana editoriale, pp. 186–88.

Benucci, Elisabetta (2009). "Donne colte dell'Ottocento: la lettura e lo studio per Paolina Leopardi, Caterina Franceschi Ferrucci, Emilia Toscanelli Peruzzi." In: G. Tortorelli, ed., Una sfida difficile. Studi sulla lettura nell’Italia dell’Ottocento e del primo Novecento. Bologna: Comune di Bologna, pp. 85–118.

Benucci, Elisabetta (2018). "Una vita attraverso le lettere." In: Paolina Leopardi, Lettere (1822-1869). Sesto Fiorentino: Apice libri, pp. 7–32.

Benucci, Elisabetta (2019). "Paolina Leopardi. Per i 150 anni dalla morte. Storia e destino di una «sorella»," Nuova Antologia, Vol. 620, No. 2290, pp. 233–46.

Benucci, Elisabetta (2019). "Paolina Leopardi, la sorella dimenticata," Leggere Donna, No. 185, pp. 25–26.

Benucci, Elisabetta (2020). Vita e letteratura di Paolina Leopardi. Firenze: Le Lettere.

Boghen Conigliani, Emma (1898). "Paolina Leopardi." In: La donna nella vita e nelle opere di Giacomo Leopardi. Firenze: Barbera, pp. 59–115.

Cavazzuti, Giuseppe (1938). Monaldo Leopardi e i redattori della Voce della verità. [Lettere di Monaldo e Paolina Leopardi a B. Veratti e L. Palmieri.] Modena: Società tipografica modenese.

Chemello, Adriana (2020). "Paolina Leopardi: il mettersi al mondo di una donna," Leggendaria, No. 139, pp. 64–65.

Dalla Vecchia, Umberto (2021). "Gli ultimi anni di Paolina Leopardi. Notizie inedite," Letteratura e pensiero, Anno III, No. 9, pp. 5–58.

Edo, Miquel (2014). "La figura de Paolina en el Leopardismo argentino," Acta literaria, No. 48, pp. 65–82.

Ferretti, Giampiero (1979). Lettere inedite di Paolina Leopardi. Milano: Bompiani.

Irti, Rosèlia (2011). Pilla. Bologna: Cenacchi Editrice.

Lanterna, Marco (2015). "Paolina Leopardi." In: Il caleidoscopio infelice. Note sulla letteratura di fine libro. Firenze: Clinamen.

Leopardi, Giacomo (1998). Epistolario. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.

Leopardi, Monaldo (1889). "Memorie della Voce della Ragione." In: Camillo Antona Traversi, ed., Nuovi studj letterarj. Milano: Tip. Bartolotti di G. Prato, pp. 37–52.

Lorenzetti, Sara (2001). "Lettere pesaresi (Lettere di Paolina Leopardi a Bianca Mosca, lettera di Pierfrancesco Leopardi ad Annesio Nobili)." In: Microcosmi leopardiani. Pesaro: Metauro Edizioni, pp. 603–14.

Marcon, Loretta (2017). Paolina Leopardi. Ritratto e carteggi di una sorella. Venosa: Osanna Edizioni.

Marcon, Loretta (2017). "Un marito per Paolina Leopardi e il sogno di Roma." In: Infinito Leopardi, Vol. 2. Pagani: Media Leaner, pp. 29–55.

Marcon, Loretta (2021). "Paolina Leopardi e l'Abate Giovanni Battista Dalla Vecchia. La riscoperta di un rapporto e di alcune lettere "dimenticate,"" Letteratura e Pensiero, Anno III, No. 9, pp. 5–16.

Montanari, Maria (1926). Un carteggio inedito di Paolina Leopardi. Parma: La Bodoniana.

Pascal, Carlo (1921). La sorella di Giacomo Leopardi. Milano: Treves.

Press, Lynne; Pamela Williams (1999). Women and Feminine Images in Giacomo Leopardi, 1797-1837: Bicentenary Essays. Lewiston: Mellen.

Ragghianti, Manuela (2002). Io voglio il biancospino. Lettere 1829-1869. Milano: Rosellina Archinto Editore.

Teja-Leopardi, Teresa (1882). Note biografiche sopra Leopardi e la sua famiglia. Milano: Dumolard.

Testi, Elettra (1992). La sorella. Vita di Paolina Leopardi. Palermo: La Luna.

Trepaoli, Anna Maria (2019). Cara Contessa. Lettera a Paolina Leopardi. Perugia: Fabrizio Fabbri Editore.

Urraro, Raffaele (2008). Giacomo Leopardi. Le donne, gli amori. Firenze: Olschki.

Vercellone, Guido Gregorio Fagioli (2005). "Leopardi, Paolina." In: Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Vol. 64. Roma: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana.

Vigliar, Giovanni (1997). "Paolina Leopardi e Mozart in un dimenticato documento recanatese", Studi leopardiani, No. 9, pp. 67–98.

Vigliar, Giovanni (2019). "Paolina Leopardi e la musica." In: Elisabetta Benucci & Alessandro Panajia, eds., Paolina e Giacomo Leopardi a Pisa. Pisa: ETS, pp. 59–71.

External links

• Works by Paolina Leopardi at Gallica
• Works by Paolina Leopardi at Open Library