Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  So I don’t know what to say. We could conclude that grace consists in a certain irritant in things that pertain to beauty and pleasure. This would enable us to exclude a monstrous face, etc., and, on the other hand, pleasures that are too extreme or shameful like those of beauty, physical enjoyment, and satisfied desire: allowing us to describe grace as something that whets the appetite rather than satisfying it. (4–9 August 1820.)

  Affectation detracts from the wonder that is the primary source of delight in the arts. First, recognizing what is being aimed at takes away [204] the surprise. Then, and this is the main point, you see not the supreme difficulty of a very lifelike figure but the effort it has cost. Apart from the fact that effort detracts from the truth, because only naturalness is truthful, there is no wonder in your achieving what you wanted by making an effort. And there is not such wonder in your making something that you wished to make as in your making it without others realizing that that was what you wished. It is not difficult to do something difficult with difficulty, it is difficult to make it look easy. Hence the contrast between the obvious difficulty of the end and the apparent difficulty of the means. Affectation removes this contrast, etc. etc. See, if you will, Montesquieu, Essai sur le goût, Amsterdam 1781, “Du je ne sais quoi,” pp. 396–97. (9 August 1820.)

  With reference to what I said on p. 197, I know of a woman longing for a child who would savagely beat a pregnant mare and say, “Why are you pregnant, and not me?” Envy and hatred of others for the happiness they enjoy usually involves those benefits which we want to have but don’t, or which we would like to be the sole proprietors and exemplars of. People are not normally envious of other things even where the benefits are considerable. However, despite the fact that envy for the most part concerns people like ourselves, who are the only ones with whom we are likely to compete, nevertheless the intensity of this emotion can lead us into envy and hatred of other things as well. (10 August 1820.)

  All the main characteristics of the spirit of antiquity that you find in Homer and the other Greeks and Romans can also be found [205] in Ossian and his countrymen. The same appreciation of health, youth, courage, and physical fitness. The same divinization of beauty. The same enthusiasm for glory and the homeland. In short, all the happy attributes of a civilization that has achieved the right balance between nature and reason. In addition, filial duty, paternal care, and all the other natural emotions and obligations were strongly felt among the Caledonians. The difference between the Greeks and Ossian consists mainly in a melancholy caused not by a philosophy of despair but by exceptional misfortunes, and more properly and generally by climate.1 The effect of this is something you not only recognize but feel in Ossian, and it makes his melancholy seem much inferior to that of southerners, Petrarch, Virgil, etc., in whom, as in Homer, etc., you also see and feel a power of joy, which is necessary for variety and breadth in many different types of poetry, and almost for feeling itself.

  Ossian predicted the deterioration of mankind and of his nation. See Cesarotti’s final observation on the poem about the war of Caros.2 Certainly when he said, etc. (see the last lines of the poem),3 he did not foresee that less warlike generations should be called civilized while his own and others like it would be regarded as barbarians.

  Oste: landlord, and also guest, or lodger, in old Italian. See the Crusca. Hostis had the second meaning in ancient Latin. See Forcellini. [206] Here we have a Latin word that had fallen into disuse in Cicero’s time reappearing in the early days of our language. And perhaps hostis would also have meant landlord, like oste today, as hospes and ospite in Latin and Italian have the same double meaning of landlord and lodger. (10 August 1820.) The word straniero [foreigner], that is ospite, also meant nemico [enemy] in the ancient Celtic language. See Cesarotti’s notes on Fingal, first canto, Bassano 1789, tome 1, p. 17. So little by little, the meaning of hostis must also have changed, that is, foreigners being considered enemies.

  Cleobulus, Diogenes Laertius says, “συνεβούλευε … γυναικὶ” (uxori) “μὴ φιλοφρονεῖσθαι μηδὲ μάχεσθαι ἀλλοτρίων παρόντων · τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἄνοιαν, τὸ δὲ μανίαν σημαίνει” [“advised … against flattering one’s wife, and against arguing with her before strangers, because the first shows foolishness, the second madness”].1 See p. 233.

  Also, “μὴ ἐπιγελᾷν τοῖς σκωπτομένοις· ἀπεχθήσεσθαι γὰρ τούτοις” [“against ridiculing someone who was the object of scorn, because one would thereby earn his hatred”].2

  With reference to what I said in the thought on p. 68, beginning “Watch,” Chilon, according to Laertius, “προσέταττε … λέγοντα μὴ κινεῖν τὴν χεῖρα · μανικὸν γὰρ” [“advised … against gesticulating, because that is how the mad behave”].3 See Isaac Casaubon’s note on Laertius, Life of Polemo, bk. 4, § 16.4

  Grace belongs essentially to the sort of pleasure associated with beauty. Something new, a fascinating story or spicy gossip, anything that strikes or excites us or arouses our curiosity gives a frisson of pleasure that has nothing to do with grace. The pleasures derived from food and the appetites resemble grace and might be examples of it, but they should not be confused with it. So grace should simply be defined as an irritant in things that pertain to the beautiful, whether of the senses or the intellect, such as beauty in poetry, etc.

  [207] The graces of a language are even more relative to those who understand it perfectly, etc., and are never absolute. Thus, the graces of Attic, Tuscan, etc., the latter perhaps more apparent to other Italians than to Tuscans themselves, because of the element of surprise, etc., but hardly or not at all apparent to foreigners.

  Nowadays it is very common for a really outstanding or great man to be distinguished by a very lively or expressive face, but then a physique that is slight or very spare or even defective. Pope, Canova, Voltaire, Descartes, Pascal. So it is: intellectual greatness cannot be achieved today without the constant mental activity wearing out the body, like a sword the sheath. It was not so in ancient times, where genius and greatness occurred naturally and spontaneously, and with fewer obstacles to their development, besides the weaker impact of the destructive search for truth—which today is inseparable from great talent—and with the greater use of physical exercise, regarded as noble and necessary and as such practiced even by great geniuses, such as Socrates, etc. And Chilon, one of the seven wise men, did not believe that it was irrelevant to wisdom to advise, as he did, “εὖ τὸ σῶμα ἀσκεῖν” [“to train the body well”] (Laertius),1 and this advice can be found in documents recording his wisdom. And then, especially where politics is concerned, nowadays it seems that statesmen are just like men of letters, constantly struggling with the very unhealthy demands of their study. But in ancient republics, anyone aspiring to civic office would in his youth have trained his body through physical exercise and military service, and it would have been almost shameful to do otherwise; and politics itself involved a great deal of physical exertion, because it entailed interacting with the public, and clients, commitments, etc. etc. Similarly, the life of any other man of genius was always filled with activity in the very exercise of his talents. [208] Homer is a good example of this, according to what is told about his life, travels, etc. Cicero made astonishing demands of his mind and his pen, and was born with that unique nature and intelligence which we all know, but no one says his body was sickly or weak, qualities that today are regarded as typical, if not indispensable, conditions for any moderate, let alone great, intellect, and especially for those who devote their minds to writing and literary pursuits, even to half the extent that Cicero did. What I say about Cicero applies also to Plato and almost all the great minds and the most productive scholars and writers of antiquity. See, however, Plutarch’s Life of Cicero.1 (11 August 1820.) See p. 233, paragraph 3.

  I believe the French can have scarcely any real conception of
grace. Their writers certainly do not. Thomas admits as much in Essai sur les éloges, ch. 9.2 In fact, they lack “cette sensibilité tendre et pure” [“that pure, tender sensibility”], in other words unaffected and natural (they might have it by nature, but society chooses not to preserve it; their early writers had it) and “cet instrument facile et souple” [“that versatile, flexible tool”], that is to say a language like Greek or Italian. See without fail this passage from Thomas. (13 August 1820.)

  Not only beauty but perhaps nearly all those concepts and ideas which we regard as absolute and universal are relative and particular. Habit is a second nature and develops almost unconsciously, adding or destroying innumerable qualities, which, once they are acquired or lost, we quickly persuade ourselves that we cannot have or that we cannot not have, and we ascribe to eternal, immutable laws, to a natural system, to Providence, etc., what is actually the work of chance and arbitrary and accidental circumstances. If, in addition to habit, you include opinions, climate, physical and spiritual temperament, you will realize that very, very few truths are absolute or inherent in the nature of things. Besides the independence from these truths which may be found in other systems of things.3 (13 August 1820.)

  Thus, from the above and a thousand other [209] things that could be said, we can deduce how right the modern ideologues were to have abolished innate ideas. According to Diogenes Laertius, Archelaus said that “τὸ δίκαιον καὶ τὸ αἰσχρὸν” [“the just and the shameful”]1 is determined not by nature but by law. So natural law can also be regarded as an illusion. We have what might be called an innate abstract idea of propriety, but what is deemed to be proper in the realm of morals belongs to relative ideas. Consider the morals of different populations, particularly barbarians. And imagine yourself in the situation of primitive man. You will see that harming others for your own good does not repel you. Your fellows in the natural state are not as inviolable as you might think. Solitary, savage man is a law unto himself, and his fellow is like any wild animal.2 Although man is naturally better disposed toward his own kind, as other animals are to theirs. But lions fight with other lions, and bulls with other bulls for pleasure and advantage. I said on p. 178 that nature has given living beings certain characteristics that may or may not develop depending on the circumstances. For example, the capacity for feeling compassion. It is much less active in a state of nature. But it is not confined to man.3 My family used to have a dog that dropped bread from a balcony to another dog in the street. See Magalotti’s story about a bitch in his Lettere sull’ateismo.4 In the natural state, we care only about the creatures that matter to us most. Like birds with their young when they see them snatched away, etc. If they see [210] another bird of the same species injured or dying, they won’t spare it a thought. The development of certain characteristics to suit different circumstances gives rise to what is known as a law of nature. There is no absolute law of nature against robbing others. It was customary for the Spartans.1 Differences between ancient laws and modern ones. Society is not peculiar to human beings. Ants form one to move things about. Bees have their own government. In short, considering the nature of man and of things, we can see that, apart from a certain number of ideas that are abstract and indeterminate (i.e., that are not applied but could be), all the rest is relative and dependent on circumstances; and that in other beings as in man there are different inborn qualities that, depending on whether they are developed or not, lead us into vain judgments about the absolute similarity between our race and others. (14 August 1820.)

  It is a mistake to talk about a desire being satisfied. Desires are not satisfied when we have reached their goal, but extinguished, that is, they are lost or abandoned in the certain knowledge that they can never be satisfied. And all that is gained from reaching the desired goal is to know this wholly. (14 August 1820.)

  Hatred, like love, is directed mainly toward those like ourselves, nor do we ever want revenge against an animal as much as against an enemy. And note: when other people harm us inadvertently, nevertheless the resentment this [211] provokes in us is much greater than what we would feel toward an animal that had deliberately caused us much greater harm.

  Add this to the first paragraph on p. 196. We are much more moved by a swallow that sees its young being snatched away and makes a futile effort to defend them than we would be by a tiger or other wild animal in the same situation. See Virgil, Georgics 4: “Qualis populea moerens philomela sub umbra” [“Even as the nightingale, lamenting beneath the poplar’s shade”], etc.1

  It is curious that people (particularly foreigners) criticize Michelangelo for wanting to demonstrate his knowledge of anatomy in his sculptures, and make it a rule that in sculpture or painting this science should always be disguised, and that it is better to ignore it entirely than make it too obvious (as I think they used to say about Raphael, who never troubled to study the subject);2 in the meantime, foreigners, especially, are never as happy as when they have filled their poetry with technicalities, formulas, abstract and metaphysical notions, psychology, ideology, natural history, science, travel, geography, politics and erudition, science, and every sort of occupation. And while they reject the erudition of ancient times, they praise and shamefully abuse the modern version. (15 August 1820.) See p. 238, paragraph 1.