ABSTRACT
Giacomo Leopardi, eighteen years old and living in a provincial backwater where he was cut off from any contact with metropolitan cultural and literary life, on privately printing a translation of Book two of the 'Aeneid' wrote to a number of established men of letters, hoping to arouse their interest and initiate a correspondence. One of them was Pietro Giordani, a leading Milanese intellectual. The letter to him, though formal and rather stilted, is the beginning of what was quickly to become a remarkable exchange between the older established writer and the aspiring young poet twenty-five years his junior. This chapter focuses on these letters. Moved by Giordani's continuing interest and concern, Leopardi unburdened himself in a long letter in which for the first time he talked directly about his frustration and his sense of isolation living in Recanati. Giordani was still unaware of the true state of his health and of his family's impoverished circumstances.
