Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  Most of Chiabrera’s finest canzoni are no more than very beautiful sketches.

  Redi also writes in his letters3 that Filicaia followed the prophetic style (as did the two writers whom I am about to quote). Similarly, Crescimbeni, in his Life, says of Guidi that however much he seems, like Chiabrera, to have drunk from the Greek spring, “nevertheless he seems to have drawn much from Hebrew; so that he appears to be rather more Prophetic than Pindaric,” [27] and he adds that in a certain book it is said of him that “he has taken his style from some forms from Dante and Chiabrera coupled with certain modes of the Oriental languages.” And he immediately adds: “And this without doubt is the reason that Guidi’s style is appreciated for its novelty in our Language.” And finally Crescimbeni refers to the views of Guidi himself, which he heard from his own mouth, and in particular with regard to the six Homilies that Guidi translated in order to leave “for posterity at least the shadow of a perfect imitation” of prophetic style “also in relation to the subject matter; in other words, a kind of sacred poetry, which is seen to be treated in the manner of David, and with the enthusiasm of the Prophets.”1

  Guidi, an impotent imitator of Pindar, sought greatness, and in order to find it, he also drew on the East and borrowed many forms and images from Scripture, but he lacked sufficient power of imagination, and I find nothing new in him, except in regard to his century, for he did escape, though not entirely, from seventeenth-century style. Though he is entirely devoid of feeling, in truth one cannot say that he was inconsistent because every single poem is, one might say, equally covered with a layer of perfect formal mediocrity and frigidity. I do not know how it can be said that he brought Pindar’s fire and enthusiasm to his verses (as suggested in Biblioteca Italiana, no. 8, Bibliography)2 when, having read all of his poems, I am left feeling like marble. We see clearly how he tries to stand out and to exalt himself, but his grandeur does not communicate itself to the reader and raise him up, nor does it strike or astonish him, and it remains I won’t say inflated (because in truth his defect is not pomposity) but empty and without effect, and this for two reasons. The first is the weakness of an imagination that did not provide him with a spontaneous and abundant source of great ideas. The second (which relates in whole or in part to the first and is simply more specific) is that his sublime thoughts, which are spread broadly across all of his Canzoni, are not formed at speed from the choice τῶν ἄκρων λημμάτων [of sublime ideas], as Longinus says, as Pindar and Homer and Chiabrera do, by which they come to ἐπιπλήττειν [strike] the reader and carry him away and hurl him here and there, leaving him dazed and confused just as they please.3 Guidi’s sublime is placidly composed of long lists of things, parts, and images, brought together and placed one after the other in orderly and symmetrical fashion, without rapidity of style, coldly, so that even if the images, metaphors, etc., are correct and free of pomposity, they just leave us cold, because sublimity cannot be formed in this way. In short, he needs a whole page to create any kind of sublime piece or picture, which Pindar and Chiabrera can do in a few lines; they are like Dante in their descriptions, while he is like Ovid. His writing has no other quality apart from competent correctness, without a shadow of originality or effectiveness; [28] nor does it have even those bold expressions which are so often unsuccessful, but are yet sometimes effective in Chiabrera, or obscurity or any of those defects which, although they are such, yet seem to be connected with the lyric and to be almost natural to a true lyric poet, such as Pindar. I say the same about his style proper, with regard to both obscurity and boldness, for in Guidi the only boldness to be found is a few things taken from Scripture, as I said above, and when I refer to these things taken from Scripture I am talking about the canzoni, not the translation of the six Homilies, where he took a bit more, following the texts, indeed he chose them purposely in order to follow the Davidic style (although he did so without a shadow of energy, in a very washed-out way). This translation is truly appalling (by reason of its thoughts, manner, etc., being Homilies in verse, complete with the feeblest, most stilted, and nauseous quotations from the Fathers) and unworthy of further comment, and yet it is the last and most accomplished thing that he did. In any case, the verse is sonorous, and I say sonorous because I cannot say harmonious, if by harmonious we mean that refinement of the art of versifying later found by the Italians,1 rhythm analogous to feelings, variety, etc. etc.

  I used to say it was mad to believe and write that any poet resembling Anacreon existed in Italy or anywhere else. But reading Zappi I really do find in him the seeds of an Anacreon, and the invention and also in part the style of Sonnets 24, 34, and 41, and of the scherzo “Museo d’Amore”2 are entirely Anacreontic. His other poems, too, are admirable in no small measure for the novelty of their ideas (since nearly all his compositions have some flash of fine novelty), with a dignified charm and restrained liveliness and a certain grace all his own (as Rubbi also observes),3 so that he can be called original, even though his originality is small in scale. The love sonnets both possess the above-mentioned qualities and resemble the Anacreontic to a greater or lesser degree.

  In Manfredi, one finds nothing more than clarity, ease, gentility, and elegance, without the faintest sign of power anywhere, so that when the subject requires it, he remains truly pitiful, wretched, and impotent, as in the Quatrains for Louis XIV. In any case, the gentility I’m talking about is different from grace and charm and beauty, which is something more internal and intimate in a composition and indefinable. Nor does Manfredi have anything to do with the style of Anacreon, and he demonstrates the aforementioned gentility in all types of subject, serious, sweet, graceful, sublime, etc. In the “Canti del Paradiso,” there is admirable clarity and ease in expressing and describing and allowing us to understand complex and difficult ideas in verses of great lucidity, without becoming prosaic. In his Canzoni particularly, he imitated Petrarch, and sometimes with affectation and servility, such as where he writes in the Canzone “O tra quante il sol mira altera e bella. Pel giorno natalizio di Ferdinando di Toscana”: “Rade volte addivien, ch’altrui sublimi / Fortuna ad alto onor senza contrasti” [“Rarely does it happen that Fortune raises someone to high honor without hindrance”], (“Rade volte addivien ch’all’alte imprese Fortuna ingiuriosa non contrasti” [“Rarely does it happen that in great endeavors injurious Fortune brings no hindrance”], Petrarch in “Spirto gentil,” etc.) and elsewhere.4

  Of the four lyric poets I have mentioned above, apart from Manfredi and Zappi, who are in another class, while the others belong to the class of Pindaric, Alcaic, Simonidean, and Horatian poets, that is, principally Heroic and Moral, I give first place to Chiabrera and second place to Testi, of whom, if they had had more learning and finer taste, and more exact judgment, the first could effectively have been the Italian Pindar, and the second the Italian Horace. Between Filicaia and Guidi, I do not know which to prefer. It is enough for me that both come last and a long way behind the other two, while, in my view, even if they had lived in better times, their qualities as lyric poets were no more than mediocre, and indeed perhaps they would not have gained the reputation they had and, to some extent, still have.

  [29] Everything is or can be happy, except man, which goes to show that his existence is not limited to this world, as is that of other things.

  Popular songs that were sung in my time in Recanati. (December 1818.)1

  Fácciate alla finestra, Luciola,

  Decco che passa lo ragazzo tua,

  E porta un canestrello pieno d’ova

  Mantato colle pampane dell’uva.

  [Come to the window, Luciola,

  Here’s your boyfriend passing by,

  He’s carrying a basketful of eggs

  Covered with vine leaves.]

  I contadì fatica e mai non lenta

  E ‘l miglior pasto sua è la polenta.

  [The peasant toils and never slows

  And his best meal is polenta.]

&n
bsp; È già venuta l’ora di partire

  In santa pace vi voglio lasciare.

  [It is already time to go

  In blessed peace I want to leave you.]

  Nina, una goccia d’acqua se ce l’hai:

  Se non me la vôi dà padrona sei.

  [Nina, a drop of water if you have it:

  If you don’t want to give it, you’re in charge.]

  (April 1819.)

  Io benedico chi t’ha fatto l’occhi

  Che te l’ha fatti tanto ’nnamorati.

  [I bless him who made your eyes

  That he made them so full of love.]

  (May 1819.)

  Una volta mi voglio arrisicare

  Nella camera tua voglio venire.

  [I want to take a chance one time

  And come into your room.]2

  (May 1820.)

  Paciaudi excellently described prose as the nourisher of poetry, as Alfieri recounts with admiration in his Life,3 for if someone who wrote verse were to obtain nourishment from poetry alone, it would be like someone feeding only on fat in order to put on weight when animal fat is the least suitable thing to form our own, and the most suitable things are succulent lean meats, and substances obtained from the drier parts, which is how prose can be considered in comparison with poetry.

  A young woman, unmarried, educated partly in a convent and partly at home with convent precepts, urged the sister of a young man, who was also unmarried, to love him, and repeated this several times, insistently. When I heard about it, I thought that this might be a trick of love, which, being unable, because of her religious upbringing, to operate directly, operated indirectly, making her recommend rightful love to another, toward that object which she perhaps felt drawn to love with a love that she must have thought was wrong.4

  A farmer in the Recanati area sold one of his bulls and took it for slaughter to the butcher who had bought it. As the job was about to be done, he hesitated at first, uncertain whether to stay or leave, whether to watch or look away. Finally, overcome by curiosity, and seeing the bull crash to the ground, he burst into tears. I heard about this from an eyewitness.

  If I were to be asked what I think is the most eloquent piece of Italian, I would say Petrarch’s two canzoni “Spirto gentil,” etc., and “Italia mia,” etc.,5 and if I allowed something to Tasso, it would be because he was truly eloquent, especially when writing about himself, and apart from Petrarch he is the only truly eloquent Italian writer. Misfortune did much to make him so, and he often had to defend himself, etc., and anyway to write about himself, for I will always maintain that great men become greater when they speak of themselves, and small men become something, this being a field where passions, interest, and deep understanding, etc., leave no space for affectation and sophistry—the greatest corruptor of eloquence and poetry—because it is not possible to use commonplaces when talking about oneself, where nature and the heart necessarily rule, and we speak readily and with a full heart. Hence, when people speak about the benefit that writers gain from dealing with current events, it should be said that it is even more useful for them to talk about themselves, however much it seems at first sight that talking about oneself cannot be of great interest to listeners, [30] which is quite untrue. Look at the effect in Bossuet’s best and most famous passage, at the end of the Oration for Condé,1 which is created by his introduction of himself, a passage that I compare with Cicero’s Oration for Milo2 (which is perhaps his finest, just as this is perhaps the finest passage in it), likewise at the end as it happens, where, in order to win over the judges, he introduces mention of himself, and he seems to me to produce an incredible effect, in the same way as (and more than) Bossuet, such is the power of introducing oneself into eloquent discourses, contrary to what is believed.

  The pliability of the French language is limited to the possibility of being understood, the ease of expression in the Italian language has in addition the advantage of sculpting things with expressive efficacy, so that French can say what it means, and Italian can make us see it. French has great ease in being understood; Italian in showing. But the language that, provided it is understood, looks no further and has no concern for weakness of expression, or the paucity of certain tours [turns of phrase] (for which the malleability of the language is praised), which express the thing but with extreme coldness and vapidity and blandness, is good for the mathematician and the sciences, but worthless for the imagination, which is the true province of the Italian language. In the latter, however, it is clear that effectiveness does not compromise precision, indeed it increases it, as it were placing before the senses what the French place before the intellect alone, so that it is no less suitable for the sciences than it is for eloquence and poetry, as can be seen in the precise effect and evident distinctness of Redi, Galileo, etc.

  As to the question whether one should say be ce de, etc., or bi, etc., and abbiccì or abbeccè (on which see Manni’s Lezioni di lingua toscana),3 without searching for the usage in whatever city should set the rules, but looking for the most reasonable, I prefer abbeccè, which is also what we use in the Marche, for reasons taken from nature, which seems to have given the e alone that vocal rest because of whose necessity names are given only to consonants, the vowels being left simply as they are (even though the ancient Greeks, Hebrews, etc., named the vowels as well). Try to pronounce only a consonant, e.g., the f or the n (I refer to those about which there is no argument or custom favoring one pronunciation rather than another), and you will see that, because the pronunciation cannot be suspended and completed in a simple consonant, and must fall onto a vowel, it falls on the e, so we see that children when they read, and anyone who drags his words, add a half e to those letters that have no vowel, such as in, etc., aredenetemenete ine pace. But Hebrew (and I believe this is the case in all the Oriental languages) places a rest after each consonant, whether express or implied, when the vowel is missing, and inserts or supposes a schwa4 both in the middle and at the end of words, which is sometimes pronounced, sometimes not, and can generally be quite properly compared with the silent e used by the French, who have no other silent vowel than the e, which is further proof of what I say.

  In order to express the indefinable effect that the odes of Anacreon have upon us, Ia can find no better comparison and example than a [31] passing breath of fresh breeze in the summer, fragrant and cheering, that all at once restores you in a way and seems to open your lungs and heart with a kind of gaiety. But before you are able to fully satisfy that pleasure or study its quality and understand why you feel so refreshed, that breath has passed, exactly as happens in Anacreon, for that indefinable sensation is almost instantaneous, and if you want to study its quality it eludes you, you no longer feel it, you return to reading, only the dry words remain in your hand; that little breeze, so to speak, has vanished, and you can barely recall, confusedly, the sensation that the same words in front of your eyes produced just a moment before.1 I seem to have felt this sensation only when reading (apart from Anacreon) Zappi.

  The present taste for philosophy must not be thought of as either transient or casual, as it was in various ancient times, e.g., for the Greeks in the time of Plato after Socrates, and the Romans in yet other times, and among nobles and know-it-alls in the time of Lucian (as today), when they regarded the philosopher as a necessary part of the court or illustrious family, and they conversed with him (though foolishly), etc. See Lucian in, among other works, his essay De mercede conductis.2 In those times, it was a matter of fashion and, because it was not originally rooted in the state of the peoples, it was able to pass, and did pass, like every other fashion, so that it was a matter of accident whether this taste took over rather than another. But today the mutual commerce between peoples, printing, etc., and everything that has brought about such advances in civilization is the cause of this love of learning and, consequently, of philosophy, and this philosophic taste, which is found in the most fashionable works, and that spirit without which no moder
n work can be said to make an impact. This is why this taste, firmly rooted as it is in the present condition of the peoples, must be regarded as lasting and not a matter of chance, or transient, and very different from a fashion.

  For prose to be truly beautiful (as the ancients’ was) and for it to retain the softness and malleability that is made up of nobility and gentility, among other things, and is found in all ancient prose and almost nowhere today, it must always have some poetic quality, not necessarily some particular thing, but a general half-tint. This is why there are, for example, certain technical expressions that are dreadful in poetry and bad in prose (since I am not referring here to ones that are absolutely bad and vulgar, which may also sometimes be less inappropriate to good prose than those I am speaking about here), as there are others that are bad in poetry but not at all inappropriate to prose—for example, those verses of Voltaire: “Je chante le héros qui régna sur la France / Et par droit de conquête, et par droit de naissance” [“I sing the hero who ruled over France both by right of conquest and by right of birth”].3 The technical language, which is terrible in these lines, is not unbecoming in prose. From what I have said it can be seen how the prose currently in use, especially in France, littered with technical metaphors, expressions, phrases, words, constructions, must and does become geometric, arid, emaciated, hard, dry, bony, resembling I might say a thin man with bones sticking through his skin, and how distant it is from that freshness and soft, healthy, rosy, luxuriant, florid fleshiness, and the flexibility, the dignity that we admire in all prose that smacks of antiquity.