Nell’alveo dell’immaginazione: Leopardi e Nietzsche tra poesia e filosofia

This essay investigates the intellectual affinity between Leopardi and Nietzsche through their shared interest in the relationship between poetry and philosophy. It argues that both thinkers assign the imagination a central cognitive role, presenting it as the creative power underlying concepts, language, and every claim to truth. Nietzsche’s early admiration for Leopardi as a philosopher of tragic knowledge gradually gives way to criticism of his pessimism, yet Leopardi’s influence continues to emerge in Nietzsche’s reflections on beauty, illusion, and the life-enhancing function of art. By examining their ideas on poetic knowledge, philosophical creation, and the limits of rational thought, the essay shows how imagination makes it possible to unite truth and illusion, thought and feeling, and knowledge and life.