"Non che la speme, il desiderio è spento": Giacomo Leopardi, Samuel Beckett, and the Quietist Tradition. (March 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: C -S, R
• Is Part Of: Italian culture. Volume 33:Number 1(2015:Mar.)
• Page Start: 39
• Page End: 54
• Publication Date: 2015-03
• Subjects: Quietism -- suffering of being -- souffrance -- desire -- Leopardi -- Beckett; Arts, Italian -- Periodicals; Italian philology -- Periodicals; Italy -- Civilization -- Periodicals; 700.945
• DOI: 10.1179/0161462214Z.00000000032
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0161-4622

Abstract

Abstract : Samuel Beckett quotes Giacomo Leopardi when discussing the ablation of desire in his monograph Proust. In this context, the two authors have been read as key thinkers within the Quietist tradition. I argue that while the two writers' attempt to reach the respective existential cores of Beckettian "suffering of being" and Leopardian " souffrance " might seem to point towards the celebrated nothingness and desire-free state of their existential quest, closer examination reveals that the attempt to still desire common to both authors is frustrated and outdone by a combative desire that remains pivotal. Hence, while the desire to cease desiring is at the philosophical kernel of both authors' oeuvre, it also draws attention to and exacerbates the inextinguishable quality of desire. Indeed, despite having been brought together because of their similar aspiration for stoic ataraxic bliss and its aesthetic potential, it is an interesting occurrence that both Leopardi and Beckett go beyond the question of the ablation of desire. The two authors can thus only partially be read within a secular Quietist tradition.