You don’t necessarily expect inspiration to come from a box of chocolates (apart from maybe that Forest Gump scene), yet my first experience of Baci Perugina chocolates was not only pleasant for edible reasons. Each individually wrapped chocolate – a kind of Perugian Ferrero Rocher – has a little quote wrapped with it. Amongst the luvvy duvvie smush there are some really interesting nuggets:
- To live is so startling it leaves time for little else – Emily Dickinson
- We can understand ourselves when we see ourselves in someone else – Leo Tolstoy
- Sometimes we encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight – Fedor Dostoevski
Quite what their selection process is would be interesting to know. Amongst these little thought worms though was my personal favourite:
People who laugh are masters of the world.
Giacomo Leopardi
The full quote, which changes it a fair bit is: ‘He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much a master of the world as he who is ready to die’. This gives laughter more weight than usual. There are some things we are confronted with where to laugh is a brave response; it is a response which might seek to put a challenge we face into perspective. Maybe the quote is a distant cousin of ‘if you didn’t laugh, you’d cry’. A closer relation may be laughing in the face of death.
I’d never heard of Giacomo Leopardi. With a little bit of research I discovered that he was quite a seminal Italian poet, with a massive intellect and a tragic biography. In a stiflingly strict and sheltered life, Leopardi found solace and escape in studies. So much so, his studies became obsession which, along with his paternally dominated home environment, took a toll on Leopardi’s physical health. By the time he was a young man he was fluent in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. His languages gave him an exceptional grounding in the classics.
Leopardi’s love of classical culture was to turn to disappointment: a trip to his uncle in Rome left his disheartened and depressed about the squalor and corruption that he found all around him in the ancient city. In his twenties Leopardi became an itinerant scholar, visiting the great Italian cities including Milan, Pisa, Bologna and Florence. During this time, declining health hampered his work and he also turned down professorships in Prussia. A turn of fortune saw him publish one of his major works, which in turn gave him some financial freedom to stay away from the confines of his family home.
Leopardi moved to Naples to try and benefit from the healthier climate. Instead he fell victim to the city’s cholera epidemic of 1837, dying at the age of just 38. Despite his relatively early death, Leopardi has a reputation as one of the most radically original thinkers of the nineteenth century and a major literary figure.
Commonplace 