Leopardi mocked progress optimism by setting civilization against Vesuvius’s threat.

Evidence

Giacomo Leopardi (1798 1837). The reference is to his great poem La Ginestra , written in 1836, in which he derides the optimism of progress (“le magnifiche sorti e progressive ”) and counterposes the advance of civilisation to the threat of an eruption of Vesuvius. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2536

Categorization

• XREF: Gramsci’s poem-against-progress-triumphalism echoes the critical-theory habit of puncturing Enlightenment narrative, a move the Islamophobia readings repeat against ‘civilizational’ progress claims.
• SHARE: A niche literary fact — Leopardi’s La Ginestra as an anti-progress poem naming Vesuvius — suited to a classicist or Italian-literature friend.
• CANDY: Leopardi answered the phrase ‘magnificent and progressive destinies’ with a poem about a volcano erasing civilization — an easy conversational hook.