On the Impossibility of Translating Giacomo Leopardi October 5, 2012: Alan Williamson at The Los Angeles Review of Books claims that Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi "is so notoriously difficult to translate that, as Italo Calvino once complained, 'beyond the borders of Italy, Leopardi simply doesn’t exist.'" However, Williamson is happy to point out a recent translation by Jonathan Galassi that will suffice for [...] by Harriet Staff