Abstract

This article analyses Giacomo Leopardi's portrait of the 'young man excluded by life' drawn in the Zibaldone page of 5 November 1823 in relation to (1) Leopardi's correspondence; (2) the scapegoat complex; (3) the poetic potential of the theme of solitude and isolation. Leopardi's correspondence and the Zibaldone page suggest that he derived from his upbringing a 'scapegoat complex', a psychological condition controlled by conflicting feelings and moods, such as difference, exclusion, undeserved punishment, and heroism. A way out of these conflicts was offered to Leopardi by poetry, which, as evidenced by 'Il passero solitario', soothed the experience described in the Zibaldone page through the mediation of compassion.

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