Leopardi's and Beckett's Dianoetic Laugh: The Intermediate Space of Desire in the Operette Morali and Krapp's Last Tape

Abstract

The desire not to desire is crucial to Samuel Beckett's and Giacomo Leopardi's oeuvre. Beckett would delve at length into the ablation of desire in Proust, in which context Leopardi's poem “A Se Stesso” is quoted. Beckett catalogues Leopardi as one of the philosophers who proposed the only impossible solution — the removal of desire — to living. This apparently negative outlook in both authors has received critical attention. My contention, nonetheless, is that while both Leopardi and Beckett initially aspire to the nothingness that results out of the dissolution of desire, neither Leopardi nor Beckett are nihilists. It is through their humor that the two authors introduce a paradoxical intermediate space for desire, where the humorous moment simultaneously contains its repression and release. It is through the Leopardian and Beckettian dianoetic laugh, analyzed in the Operette Morali, Zibaldone di pensieri and Beckett's play Krapp's Last Tape, that this paradoxical desire is expressed.