The War of the Mice and the Crabs by Giacomo Leopardi

First published:I paralipomeni della batracomiomachia, 1842 (English translation, 1976)

Type of work: Poetry

Type of plot: Mock epic

The Work:

Italians consider Giacomo Leopardi one of the great poets of the nineteenth century, although his work is relatively unknown in the English-speaking world. His life was short and bitter, and he was crippled by disease, usually in need of money, and cut off from the world around him. Most of the poetry for which he is praised is his lyric poetry, which is marked by the beauty, concreteness, and exactness of its language. Leopardi’s language is, in itself, an assertion and creation of human value, yet in all of his work, both prose and poetry, he expresses a realistic, pessimistic view of human existence. Leopardi believed that human belief in happiness is an illusion: Happiness is not now, but always to come. This illusion of happiness and good applies not only to individual lives but also to human institutions.

Leopardi, a great scholar, wrote not only lyric poetry but also remarkable philosophic essays and political satires, one of which is the narrative poem The War of the Mice and the Crabs. This work came late in Leopardi’s career, and originally even some of his closest supporters disapproved of it; one of them called it “a terrible book.” It was so widely criticized because it is a scathing satire not only of the European intellectual and political world of the early nineteenth century but also of the rhetoric, pretensions, and posturings of those Italian patriots who wanted an independent, unified Italy. Italy at that time was a collection of small, often mutually antagonistic, states; most of the north, including Milan and Venice, was directly or indirectly controlled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which many Italians considered alien and uncivilized.

Leopardi was an Italian patriot, and two of his earliest poems were patriotic. He believed that Italy had been a leader in civilizing the world and perhaps could be again. He hated the emptiness of bluster, however, and thought that certain kinds of patriotism were simply refusals to face reality. He also believed that most political and social theories were intellectual daydreams.

The War of the Mice and the Crabs builds on the ancient Greek poem The Batrachomyomachia, once attributed to the poet Homer. The poem—the title literally means “the war of the frogs and the mice”—is a mock epic in the form of a beast fable, using animals in order to satirize the heroic values of the Homeric poems Iliad (c. 750 b.c.e.; English translation, 1611) and Odyssey (c. 725 b.c.e.; English translation, 1614). Leopardi’s Italian title can be translated as “the additions to” (or “the things left out of”) “the war of the frogs and the mice.” He modernizes the satire in order to speak of Italy, its warring factions, and the overriding power of the intruding Austro-Hungarian Empire. At the same time, he comments on the political, historical, and universal theorizing that asserts order. The political world that Leopardi’s poem depicts is essentially chaotic; the only thing that matters in the end is brute force. The natural world is also chaotic, purposeless, leading only to motionless death.

Leopardi’s satire is found not solely in subject matter but also in form. For example, The War of the Mice and the Crabs is in cantos (longer divisions) and octaves (eight-line stanzas)—divisions and stanzas used by the Renaissance Italian writers of romantic epics, such as Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1516, 1521, 1532; English translation, 1591). A number of later mock-epic poems deliberately used the same form in order to satirize the elevated tone of the standard romantic epic. Leopardi chose the form in order to emphasize the satirical note.

In the Greek poem, the mice attack the frogs to get revenge for the accidental drowning of their prince; they are winning the war when the gods decide that they do not want the frogs to be destroyed and so send an army of crabs to help the frogs. Leopardi’s poem begins with the mice in frightened retreat from the terrible crabs. The king of the mice has been killed, and the mice are utterly demoralized.

The mice obviously represent the Italians, and the crabs represent the armies sent by the Austro-Hungarians, but there is no straightforward allegory here. The history is generalized, and only rarely can the reader identify what exact historical figures Leopardi had in mind in his leaders of the mice and the crabs. This is deliberate, for he is commenting on the political oppression and the foolish hopes common to many eras.

The mice finally notice that the crab army has stopped pursuing them. They regroup, elect a new leader, Rubatocchi (Chunk-Stealer), and decide to send an envoy to the crabs, choosing Count Leccafondi (Bottom-Licker) to ask why they have been attacked. There is a long characterization of Leccafondi, who represents the best of progressive thought but is essentially shallow because that thought is shallow. He arrives at the camp of the crabs, is taken to the headquarters of General Brancaforte (Strong-Claw), and tries to soothe the cruel crabs with his diplomatic skills. Brancaforte consults with his king, Senzacapo (Without-Head, or Headless)—representing Emperor Francis I of Austria-Hungary—who dictates harsh terms, including stationing troops in Rat City, the mice’s capital. Indeed, the Austrians had troops in all of the major cities they had occupied. Brancaforte defends the crabs’ actions by arguing that the crabs are right because they have power, although he seems to think that this is natural law.

Rat City is based on Naples, a city that Leopardi despised as corrupt and vicious. Here the poet digresses to a savage attack on the decay of European civilization. Meanwhile, the mice have elected a new king. Surprisingly, Rubatocchi had refused the throne, so the mice turn to Rodipane (Bread-Muncher), the son-in-law of the old king. This is acceptable to the crabs because the new king belongs to an established royal family. Here Leopardi mocks the readiness to believe that virtue resides in certain families.

Rodipane agrees to a constitution, but this is repellent to the crabs. The Austrian emperor and the other rulers of Europe had rejected the idea that a people have the right to elect their king. More important, they thought no king should agree to a constitution. Such acts imply that rulers can be enthroned and dethroned by the people, that they have no absolute right to their power.

In the opening of canto 4, Leopardi digresses again with an attack on a priori theories of human behavior, mocking romantic ideas of the natural human being destroyed by civilization and conservative ideas that a golden age was lost through human sinfulness. Leccafondi returns with the crabs’ terms, which the mice reluctantly accept. Rodipane gives free cheese and polenta—bread and circuses—to the mice and gains popularity. The crabs set up their garrison, but the mice revive their prosperity and recover their courage. Leccafondi is named minister of the interior, and all seems well. The crabs, however, feel threatened. Emperor Senzacapo sends orders to the head of his garrison, Boccaferrato (Iron-Mouth), to order the mice to abrogate the constitution.

The mice resist and decide to fight, but as soon as the crab army appears, they run away. Leopardi is mocking what he regarded as the Italian impulse to swagger but not to fight. Only Rubatocchi is brave, and he dies slaughtering crabs.

The crabs seize Rat City with the help of their garrison there. They keep Rodipane as puppet king; their envoy, Camminatorto (Crooked-Walker), rearranges the government in the image of the crab world. Camminatorto is based on a number of people, but in particular Prince Klemens von Metternich (1773-1859), the powerful Austrian minister who led the European reactionaries against all democratic ideas after the final defeat of Napoleon I of France.

Leccafondi, although hardly a revolutionary, is caught up in intrigues. The crabs exile him, and he wanders the world looking for help for the mice, getting promises but no real help, just as happened to the Italian exiles of the time. One night, he takes refuge in the house of a man named Daedalus. This Daedalus may not be the Daedalus of Greek legend, but he is a great inventor. Wishing to help the mice, he suggests that he and Leccafondi visit the residence of the dead animals. There Leccafondi can consult the dead mice, who are reputed to know more than the living. Daedalus makes wings for Leccafondi, and the two of them fly around the globe until they come to their destination, an island in the Pacific. Leccafondi goes alone to the underground abode of the dead mice and finds them staring silently and blankly ahead: Death itself is neither reward nor punishment for one’s actions in this world; religious beliefs concerning the afterlife are false. The dead mice are apparently emotionless, forbidden to laugh. When Leccafondi asks if the mice will get the promised help, there is a great stir as the dead mice repress their laughter.

For the moment they speak, telling him that upon his return he should consult a general named Taster. Taster will tell the mice how to recover their lost honor. Most commentators consider Taster to be Leopardi’s image of himself. Leccafondi and Daedalus return to Rat City, where the mouse immediately visits Taster. Taster at first refuses to give advice because he has no stomach for vain plots. At last he speaks, but the reader never hears his good advice. Leopardi ends his poem with the excuse that the ancient manuscripts he has been “translating” ran out here and that he cannot finish his story. No doubt Leopardi himself had no real solution to the Italian problem. The very abruptness of the poem’s ending emphasizes the major themes: The natural and human worlds are morally purposeless, and people must not rely on empty words.

Bibliography

Barricelli, Gian Piero. Giacomo Leopardi. Boston: Twayne, 1986. Provides complete and intelligent discussion of Leopardi’s work, with detailed treatment of individual poems and prose works. Includes a short but informative section on The War of the Mice and the Crabs. Supplemented with notes, references, selected bibliography, and index.

Bloom, Harold. Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds. New York: Warner Books, 2002. Leopardi is one of the literary “geniuses” whose work is discussed in this volume. Provides a brief introductory overview of his life, his major works, and his significant literary achievements.

Caserta, Ernesto G. Introduction to The War of the Mice and the Crabs. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, Department of Romance Languages, 1976. Caserta’s introduction to his prose translation of the poem and his presentation of the historical situation of the time are useful for helping readers understand The War of the Mice and the Crabs and Leopardi’s achievement as more than a lyric poet. Includes selected bibliography.

Origo, Iris. Leopardi: A Study in Solitude. 2d ed. 1953. Reprint. New York: Helen Marx Books, 1999. Standard introduction to Leopardi includes discussion of his life and his works.

Perella, Nicolas James. Night and the Sublime in Giacomo Leopardi. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970. Presents superb discussion of Leopardi the poet. A three-stanza quotation from The War of the Mice and the Crabs in the original Italian may be informative for readers with some knowledge of the language. The quotation is offered as part of an analysis of Leopardi’s use of the sublime. Includes notes.

Press, Lynne, and Pamela Williams. Women and Feminine Images in Giacomo Leopardi, 1798-1837: Bicentenary Essays. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999. Examines the role of female characters and feminine imagery in Leopardi’s work, focusing on his cantos. Discusses the influence of contemporary women writers on Leopardi’s literary and intellectual development.

Singh, Ghan Shyam. Leopardi and the Theory of Poetry. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1964. Provides thorough discussion of Leopardi’s aesthetic ideas and practices, including the influence of the ideas of the English Romantics on his work.

Veronese, Cosetta. The Reception of Giacomo Leopardi in the Nineteenth Century: Italy’s Greatest Poet After Dante? Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008. Examines the reception for Leopardi’s work within the context of the Risorgimento, the movement for Italian unification, and the context of nineteenth century European culture generally.