ABSTRACT
The year 2013 is now a landmark in the field of Leopardi studies in the English-speaking world, because of the publication of the first complete translation of the Zibaldone into English. This rendition of a notebook of over four thousand pages that embodies the genius and erudition of the Italian poet is in fact both the epitome and culmination of an increasing interest in the author of the Canti, conspicuously exceeding the scholarly curiosity that emerged in the course of the twentieth century. For other Leopardi scholars it has been a problem related to the Italian poet's materialistic philosophy; a view which indeed betrays a twofold appreciation of the poet's lyricism and thought. In the cases of both Leopardi and Shelley the authors encounter instances of poet-translators and translator-reviewers establishing throughout the nineteenth century two divergent patterns which, equally, colour the poets' afterlives; that is, the idea of translation as alteration and embodiment vis-a-vis the notion of translation as interpretation.
