The film tells the short life of the great Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi. Giacomo, however, possessing an inquisitive, restless spirit, would like to know to travel abroad to widen his views and enrich his knowledge, as was usual for European landed gentry in the 19th century.

Still this desire of his lies at odds with his parents (his father, while possessing a sensibility akin to his, is too bound by the social conventions and the expectations tied to his role as 'Pater Familias'; his mother, on the other hand, is too busy shoring up the household declining fortunes to even care about intellectual aspirations). So the poet begins to write his first works, reflecting about human condition, coming to the conclusion that unhappiness is a costant factor of human existence, and that in life there is no way to remedy this problem.

In 1820s, Leopardi can finally leave the native Recanati, and travels to Rome and Florence where, however, his high expectations of intellectual rewards and public recognition are frustrated. Suffering from repeated instances of unrequited love: chiefly that he felt towards the Countess Fanny Targioni Tozzetti, contribute to Leopardi's negative view of life and human experience. Finally he moves to Naples, where a physical decadence led him to death.