Free Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino Page B

definitamente e distintamente ec, come quello di una folia, o di un gran numero di formiche o del mare agitato ec. Similmente una moltitudine di suoni irregolarmente mescolati, e non di-stinguibili Puno dall'altro ec. ec. ec. (20 Settembre 1821). *
    By contrast, the sight of the sun or moon in a vast, airy landscape, and in a clear sky, etc., is pleasing for the vast-ness of the sensation. And also pleasing, for the reason mentioned above, is the sight of the sky dotted with little clouds, in which the light of the sun or the moon produces
varied
effects, indistinct, out of the ordinary, etc. Most pleasing and full of feeling is the light seen in cities, whereit is slashed by shadows, where darkness contrasts in many places with light, where in many parts the light little by little grows less, as on rooftops, where a few secluded places hide the luminous body from our sight, etc., etc. Contributing to this pleasure is the variety, the uncertainty, the not-seeing-everything, and therefore being able to walk abroad using the imagination in regard to what one does not see. I say similar things of similar effects produced by trees, rows of vines, hills, pergolas, outlying houses, haystacks, wrinkles in the soil, etc., of the landscape. On the contrary, a vast level plain, where the light sweeps and spreads without variety or obstacle, where the eye loses itself, etc., is also highly pleasurable, for the idea of infinite extension that results from such a sight. The same is true of a cloudless sky. In this regard I observe that the pleasure of variety and uncertainty is greater than that of apparent infinity and immense uniformity. And therefore a sky dotted with small clouds is perhaps more pleasurable than a totally clear sky; and to look at the sky is perhaps less pleasurable than to look at the earth and the landscape, etc., because it is less varied (and also less like us, less of our own, belonging less to things that are ours, etc.). In fact, if you lie down on your back so that you see nothing but the sky, separated from the earth, you will have a far less pleasing feeling than if you look at a landscape, or look at the sky in proportion and relation to the earth, integrating them from the same point of view.
    Highly pleasing also, for the above-mentioned reasons, is the sight of an innumerable multitude, as of stars, people, etc., a multiple motion, uncertain, confused, irregular, disordered, a vague rising and falling, etc., which the mind cannot conceive definitely or distinctly, etc., like that of acrowd, or a swarm of ants, or a rough sea, etc. Similarly a multitude of sounds, irregularly mingled together, not to be distinguished one from another.
    Here we touch on one of the nerve centers of Leopardi's poetics, as embodied in his most famous and beautiful lyric, “L'infinito.” Protected by a hedge, on the far side of which he sees only the sky, the poet imagines infinite space and feels pleasure and fear together. The poem dates from 1819. The notes I read from the
Zibaldone
date from two years later and show that Leopardi went on thinking about the problem aroused by the composition of “L'infinito.” In his reflections, two terms are constantly compared: the “indefinite” and the “infinite.” For Leopardi, unhappy hedonist that he was, what is unknown is always more attractive than what is known; hope and imagination are the only consolations for the disappointments and sorrows of experience. Man therefore projects his desire into infinity and feels pleasure only when he is able to imagine that this pleasure has no end. But since the human mind cannot conceive the infinite, and in fact falls back aghast at the very idea of it, it has to make do with what is indefinite, with sensations as they mingle together and create an impression of infinite space, illusory but pleasurable all the same: “E il naufragar m'e dolce in questo mare” (And sweet to me is foundering in this sea). It is not only in the