Does anyone know what specific work this Leopardi quote is from?

Iv finished Canti and Operatta Morali what more I can read preferably short

My dearest lonesome hill you always were,

And you, my precious hedge, which from the gaze

The greatest part of the Beyond preclude.

But sitting waiting, endless neath the eye

Within my soul I figure spaces wide,

The bliss unspoiled of superhuman calm,

The deepest peacefulness: oh hasty fright!

My heart unbound submitted to the Void!

And as the wind I hear among the leaves

I now compare that infinite amount

Of soundlessness to this calm rustling flow;

And in my mind I suddenly conceive

Eternal time, the long gone centuries,

The live and present one, its voice. And thus

In such immensity submerge my thoughts:

O charming drift to me in such a sea!

All human things last only a short time;
The old blind man of Chios
Spoke but the simple truth:
As are the lives of leaves,
So are the lives of men.
But few there are who take
Those words to heart; while everyone receives
Unruly hope, the child
Of youth, to live with him.
As long as our first age
Is fresh and blooming still,
The vacant headstrong soul
Will nourish many pleasant dreams, all vain,
Careless of death and age; the healthy man
Has no regards for illness or disease.
But he must be a fool
Who cannot see how rapidly youth flies,
How close the cradle lies
To the funereal fire.
So you who are about
To step into the land
Where Pluto holds his court,
Enjoy, since life is short,
The pleasure hard at hand.

Source: Giacomo Leopardi (translated by J. G. Nichols), in The Canti: With a Selection of His Prose

What is certain and no laughing matter is that existence is an evil for all the parts which make up the universe (and so it is hard to think it is not an evil for the whole universe as well, and even harder to make, as philosophers do, “Des malheurs de chaque être un bonheur général” [“Of the misfortunes of each being a general happiness”]. Voltaire, Épître sur le désastre de Lisbonne. It is incomprehensible how out of the suffering of every individual without exception, can come a universal good; how from the whole of many misfortunes and nothing else, a good can come). That is made manifest when we see that everything in its own way necessarily suffers, and necessarily does not enjoy any pleasure, because pleasure does not exist strictly speaking. Now given that that is the case, how can you not say that existence is in itself an evil?

— Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone, 4175

As above. I heard somewhere he was really fond of Puccini and listened to his operas but apart from that, I didn't think any specific information. Do you know anything more in that regard?

And, furthermore, I tell you frankly that I don’t resign myself to unhappiness, nor do I bow my head to destiny, nor do I come to terms with it, as other men do; and I dare desire death, and desire it above everything else, with such ardor and such sincerity as I believe it is desired in this world only by a very few. I would not speak to you in this manner if I were not completely certain that, when the hour comes, the facts will not belie my words; for, although I don’t see yet an end to my life, I have a profound feeling which almost assures me that this hour is not far off. I am too ripe for death; and I think it to be too absurd and incredible for me—so dead I am spiritually, so altogether concluded as the fable of life is for me in all its parts—to have to last for another forty or fifty years, that is as many as Nature threatens me with. At the mere thought of this I shudder. But as happens with all those, evils, which go beyond, so the speak, the power of imagination, so this seems to be like a dream and an illusion, impossible to realize. Indeed, if someone talks to me about the distant future as of something belonging to me, I can’t help but smile to myself—so confident am I that the space of life remaining to me is not long. And this, I can say, it is the only thought that sustains me. Books and studies, which I am often surprised I have loved so much, projects of great deeds, and hopes of glory and immortality are all things at which I can no longer even laugh. At the hopes and the projects of this century I don’t laugh; with all my soul I wish them the greatest possible success, and highly and most sincerely do I praise, admire and honor their good intentions; however, I don’t envy posterity, nor those who still have long to live. In the past I used to envy the fools and the stupid, and those who have a high opinion of themselves; and I would have gladly changed places with one of them. Now I envy neither the stupid nor the wise, neither the great nor the small, neither the weak nor the powerful. I envy the dead, and only with them I would change places. Every pleasant fantasy, every thought of the future in which I indulge, as happens, in my solitude, and with which I spend my time, consists of death, and nothing else. And in this desire I am no longer troubled, as I used to be, by the memory of dreams of my early age and by the thought of having lived in vain. If I obtain death, I will die so peaceful and so content as if I had never hoped for, or desired, anything else in the world. This is the only good that can reconcile me with destiny. If I were offered, on one hand, the fortune and the fame of Caesar or Alexander, pure of all stains, and, on the other, to die today, and if I were to make a choice, I would say, to die today, and I would not want to think it over.

The bitter truth must I investigate,

The destinies mysterious, alike
Of mortal and immortal things;
For what was suffering humanity,
Bowed down beneath the weight of misery,
Created; to what final goal are Fate
And Nature urging it; to whom can our
Great sorrow any pleasure, profit give;
Beneath what laws and orders, to what end,
The mighty Universe revolves—the theme
Of wise men's praise, to me a mystery?

— Giacomo Leopardi, "To Count Carlo Pepoli" (trans. Frederick Townsend)

Only immortal in the world,

Terminus of all things living,

Our nature--naked as it is--

Comes, Death, to rest in you;

Happy, no, but safe

From that sorrow

Old as time. Deep night keeps

The dark thought of you

From the rambling mind;

Spent, the spirit feels

Its springs of hope and of desire

Dry up: fears and sorrows slip away

And it passes with no pain

Through the long slow vacant

Ages of eternity.

Once we were alive:

As the infant at the breast

Remembers in a kind of mist

Its spectral frights and nightsweats,

We remember, but free from fear,

Our own lives. What were we?

What was that bitter instant

We called life? Life to us now

Seems a strange astonishment,

As death, all unknown,

Seems mysterious to the living.

And as in life our naked

Unaccommodated nature

Sought shelter from death,

So now it flies life’s quickening flame:

Happy, no, but safe--since fate

Forbids the state of bliss

Both to the living and the dead.

Can anyone recommend a good Italian edition of the Zibaldone? I am looking for a complete text which is also a readable copy, in a practical size.

I have the two-volume Oscar Classici Mondadori paperback, which is unfortunately (moronically) incomplete (edited and "scelta" by Anna Maria Moroni). I also have the affordable but unwieldy Newton Compton "Tutto" which IS complete (for the Zib. text: my printing is missing about 20 pages of other material); but it is huge, heavy, and in fine print on very fragile paper.

Do you know of a good edition? I'm open to recommendations.

Admire all you will the providence and benevolence of nature for having made antidotes, for having, so to speak, put them next to poisons, for having placed the remedy in the country producing the disease. But why make poisons in the first place? Why arrange to have diseases? And if poisons and diseases are necessary or useful to the economy of the universe, why make the antidotes? Why have the remedies ready and then put them within reach?

— Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone (Bologna, 1826, 26 Sept.)

We conceive more easily of accidental evils than of regular and ordinary evils. If there were disorders in the world, evils would be exceptional, accidental; we would say: “the work of nature is imperfect, as are the works of man”; we would not say: “it is bad.” We would regard the author of the world as a limited reason and power, not wondrous, since the world itself (which is the effect from which, alone, we argue the existence of the cause) is limited in every sense. But what epithet should we give to that reasoning and power which includes evil in the order, which founds order on evil? Disorder would be a lot better: disorder is variable, changeable; if today there is evil, tomorrow there may be good, all could be well. But what hope is there when evil is ordinary? I mean, in an order where evil is essential?

Zibaldone, 17 May 1829

The majority of people live according to habit, without pleasure or real hopes, without sufficient reason for continuing to live or doing what is necessary to stay alive. If they thought about it, apart from religion they would find no reason for living and, though unnatural, it would be rational to conclude that their life was absurd, because although having begun life is, according to nature, justification for continuing it, according to reason it is not.

— Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone

Just curious to know how many of you read Leopardi primarily in Italian, and how many of you are looking for texts in English. I notice most of the posts here refer to English-language articles or translations, and it made me wonder if that's actually the main focus (or at least a focus) of the subreddit.

Me? I translate Leopardi, into English. I'm finalizing my Cantos now; projected publication is spring 2020. What about you: what is your interest in Leopardi? Are you studying him? Teaching him?

My friend will be visiting Naples at the end of November, I was wondering if any of you know whether it's possible to find something related to him, magnets, bookmarks or whatever there so that I could ask him to bring it for me?