"In questo formidabile deserto del mondo" : solitudini leopardiane

Analyzing the multiple occurrences of the lemma ‘desert’ in Leopardi’s work, the article shows how, from an initial and general predisposition for desolate and inhospitable settings, filtered through heterogeneous reading (Alfieri, Cervantes), Leopardi from time to time attributes to those places new and different meanings: a privileged space for philosophical reflection, a metaphor of existence devoid of illusions, a representation of nothingness. The desert is then the ultimate goal of the poet’s geography, both in the prose of the Operette (the «desert of life» of Tristan) and in the verses of the Ginestra, with its landscape on the slopes of Vesuvius, the figure of man’s fragil- ity and the relentless power of nature.