{"product_id":"leopardi-selected-poems-9780691016443","title":"Leopardi: Selected Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003eThese translations of the major poems of Giacomo Leopardi (1798--1837) render into modern English verse the work of a writer who is widely regarded as the greatest lyric poet in the Italian literary tradition. In spite of this reputation, and in spite of a number of nineteenth-and twentieth-century translations, Leopardi's poems have never \"come over\" into English in such a way as to guarantee their author a recognition comparable to that of other great European Romantic poets. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e By catching something of Leopardi's cadences and tonality in a version that still reads as idiomatic modern English (with an occasional Irish or American accent), \u003ci\u003eLeopardi: Selected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e should win for the Italian poet the wider appreciative audience he deserves. His themes are mutability, landscape, love; his attitude, one of unflinching realism in the face of unavoidable human loss. But the manners of the poems are a unique amalgam of philosophical toughness and the lyrically bittersweet. In a way more pure and distilled than most others in the Western tradition, these poems are truly what Matthew Arnold asked all poetry to be, a \"criticism of life.\" The translator's aim is to convey something of the profundity and something of the sheer poetic achievement of Leopardi's inestimable \u003ci\u003eCanti\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eEamon Grennan\u003c\/b\u003e has published three collections of poetry: \u003ci\u003eWhat Light There Is \u0026amp; Other Poems\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eAs If It Matters\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eSo It Goes\u003c\/i\u003e. He has a degree in English and Italian from University College, Dublin, and a doctorate in English from Harvard University. A native of Ireland, he divides his time between there and Poughkeepsie, New York, where he is the Dexer M. Ferry, Jr., Professor of English at Vassar College.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Princeton University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50327118446866,"sku":"9780691016443","price":28.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_4c724fb1-305f-4ad7-aa12-cc30e9cfbae9.jpg?v=1727710170","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/leopardi-selected-poems-9780691016443","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}