In this article I explore the main themes of Antonio Negri’s interpretation of Giacomo Leopardi’s work, published in his essay Lenta Ginestra. Saggio sull’ontologia di Giacomo Leopardi (1987). Negri’s reading focusses on the notions of imagination, illusion, second nature, power, so as to sketch the portrait of Leopardi as a philosopher and a politician. In this sense, poetry becomes an ethics to build the future, a materialistic praxis through which the construction of common forms of life, within history and nature, becomes possible.
