Abstract

Leopardi expresses in the highest forms the sense of «distance», in space and time, cultivating a bewilderment placed on the edge of the abyss. Here I intend to follow Leopardi’s reflection on the experience of the spatial and temporal distance between humans and in their psyche. The spatial experience of distance can be exemplified in Leopardi’s conception of travel. It is a psychological experience that aims to favor «distraction» and in it we can already find the temporal component of remembrance that characterizes both poetic predilections and Zibaldonic reflection in Leopardi. Remembrance corresponds to travel, it is a journey into memory that solicits a pleasure like the «distraction» produced by travel in various and open spaces, up to the limits of the indefinite. The experience of distance is one of the deepest resources that the individual can hoard to maintain his vitality, his illusion, strongly experienced, of pleasure. In space and time, the experience of distance is for Leopardi a relief from the tragic appearance of the «arid truth» and a melancholy expression of a feeling that becomes powerful imagination and lofty poetry