ABSTRACT
Expressing what is vague and indefinable — for Giacomo Leopardi, the only source of aesthetic pleasure — can be, sometimes, like chasing butterflies; thus states a metaphor appearing in the Zibaldone as early as 1819. Leopardi's style confirms this impression of immediacy, as if it aimed to capture a fading and indefinable sensation. The fragment shows an asyndetic construction, using no full stops, as if meaning to grasp multiple and concurrent stimuli in which no chronological progression can be detected, nor any further analysis is possible. On 16 August he describes a certain kind of grace as: The closeness in terms of style and metaphors employed creates an inner reverberation between this passage and the ones describing the effects of Anacreon's poetry. In both cases, grace is a glimpse of otherness that escapes every attempt of analysis; the experience of the ineffable is located within a spring-like setting, whose gaiety is doomed to be lost an instant later.
