L'Italia come non-Nazione nello "Zimbaldone" di Giacomo Leopardi

Leopardi, in his Zibaldone, describes a certainty: Italy is not a nation. Italians were once very active for their enthusiasm, while in 1820, the poet found them distracted by a sort of dream or by a dreamlike state from which they could not go out if not trying to imitate foreign national contexts. In Italy, according to this analysis, there was a continuous and mutual misunderstanding that nobody could emerge for his own real value. Instead, foreigners do not respect others if not respected in their turn, and they spared the criticism of others and succeed. While in Italy there was the struggle of an individual against another individual. Therefore, Leopardi wrote in 1827: "The present progress of civilization, it still a resurgence, and it still consists, in large part, to recover the lost". It was a secular vision of the reacquisition the lost credit towards other people and the chance to be a nation again.