Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  In order to flush out the petty criminals in a district of Paris, Bonaparte employed clowns and jugglers to draw the people in and spend time there. (See Lady Morgan, France, bk. 5, beginning.)1 A few months ago, the Pope, intending to flush out some bandits from Sonnino, their hiding place on the borders of his territory near Naples, ordered the destruction of the town.2 Bonaparte filled up the thieves’ lair in order to drive them out and achieved [252] what he wanted; the Pope decided he could not succeed except by destroying the whole place. Cicero says that enemy cities are devastated and destroyed, but destroying our own is like gouging out our own eyes.1

  Tyranny founded upon the absolute barbarism, superstition, and complete bestiality of its subjects benefits from ignorance, while any attempt at enlightenment inevitably causes it irreparable damage. Because of this, Mohammed with good reason forbade studying. In tyrannies exercised over populations that are civilized up to a certain point—up to that point which represents a perfect balance of civilization and nature—an increase and diffusion of learning, arts, trades, luxury, etc., not only does no harm but greatly benefits, even assures and consolidates, the tyranny. This is because the subjects pass from that middling state of civilization which still leaves nature free, and illusions and courage and love of glory and love of one’s country and other incentives to great deeds, to one of selfishness, idleness with respect to work, inactivity, corruption, indifference, weakness, etc. Nature alone is the mother of greatness and disorder. Reason quite the opposite. A tyranny is secure only if the populace is incapable of great deeds. It can never be capable of these through reason but only by nature. Augustus, Louis XIV, and others like them demonstrate that they understood the truth of this proposition very well.2 (28 Sept. 1820.)

  [253] Infer from the 2nd thought on p. 116 that, even in terms of this consideration alone, Christianity must have made mankind inactive and reduced it instead to being contemplative, and that, as a consequence, it encouraged despotism, not in principle (because Christianity neither praised tyranny nor forbade people to fight it, flee from it, or oppose it) but in its material consequences. Because if man thinks about this world as an exile and cares only about a kingdom in the next world, why should he bother about tyranny? And peoples who are accustomed (especially ordinary folk) to hoping for reward in the next life become impotent in this, or at least unresponsive to the great stimuli that produce great deeds. In general terms, therefore, even leaving aside despotism, it can be argued that Christianity has contributed, not a little, to the destruction of what is beautiful, great, alive, and varied in this world, by reducing men from action to thought and prayer, or indeed to action intended solely to further their own sanctification, etc., and over this kind of men it is impossible that no master will rise. It isn’t really the case that the Christian religion condemns or does not praise activity. Take, for example, St. Carlo Borromeo or St. Vincent de Paul. But in the first place the activities of these saints, [254] even if they led to actions both heroic (and to that extent great) and useful, did not add much vitality to this world, because the grandeur of their deeds was relative to themselves rather than absolute, and intimate and metaphysical rather than material. In the second place, since Christianity seems to hold that perfection consists mostly in obscurity and silence, and so in total forgetfulness of everything belonging to this exile, it produced, and had to produce, a hundred Pachomiuses and Macariuses1 for one St. Carlo Borromeo, and it is clear that since the spirit of Christianity in general leads people, as I have said, to be unconcerned with this world, so if they are consistent they will necessarily become inactive in everything that concerns this life, and the world will become dull and dead. Now compare these consequences to those of ancient religions, according to which the earth is our kingdom, and the next world the exile.2 (29 Sept. 1820.)

  The custom and maxim of mortifying the flesh and weakening the body to reduce it, as St. Paul says, to servitude3 must inevitably have dulled passions and enthusiasm and also subdued the spirits of those trying to subjugate their bodies. So on the one hand it must have contributed significantly to extinguishing the life of this world, and on the other to smoothing the path for despotism, because there are perhaps few people so liable to domination [255] as those weak in body, whatever the source of this weakness, whether it be lasciviousness and softness, as among the Persians, who after Cyrus’s reign became the exemplars of humiliation and servitude, or mortification, etc. Courage, fervor, lofty emotions, powerful illusions, etc., do not dwell in a weak body. (30 Sept. 1820.) In a servile body, the soul, too, is servile.

  Cheerfulness is very often the mother of generosity and kindliness, unlike worries and bad temper. This is such an obvious and recognized fact that I will not stop to look for the reason, which is easy to find. I want only to consider the harmony of nature, which, because it is always aiming for the happiness of beings, and therefore cheerfulness has to be the most frequent condition of life in the natural system, intended cheerfulness to go along with being pleasing to one’s fellows, the highest virtue in society, and, as a consequence, to be useful not only for the individual but for others as well, and to serve the interests of society, ensuring that people treat others as they should.

  The superior man, with knowledge and experience of the world, one could say, although it might seem a paradox, is these days more likely to praise than to disparage. I mean with regard to real things. Because [256] as long as he lacks experience of the world, small merits, signs of virtue, little examples of beauty, goodness, or greatness, in whatever kind of thing, will seem contemptible when he compares others with himself, as people usually do, or compares things with his imagination. But, with experience, finding himself always surrounded by excessive pettiness, wickedness, foolishness, ugliness, etc., he gradually learns to appreciate those small virtues which he used to despise, to be content with a little, to give up hoping for the best or the good, and to abandon the practice of comparing people and things with himself and with his own imagination. As a result, while before he valued only distant things, which, in the way he conceived them, were not real, you could say that the number of real things that he values goes on increasing, even if the standard of absolute value diminishes along with the finite number of things that he used to value. Because there are many more things that he used to appreciate from a distance and thinks little of close up than those that at first he did not care about but now is obliged to appreciate. (30 Sept. 1820.)

  He put on a pair of glasses made from half the meridian with the two polar circles.1

  A house hanging in the air suspended by ropes from a star.2 (1 October 1820.)

  [257] At times, vivacity (whether of a face, movements, or actions, etc.), at others, languor or calm, is the mother of grace. And some are more taken with one, and some with the other.

  In the arts it is necessary to distinguish enthusiasm, imagination, warmth, etc., from invention, especially in subject matter. The sight of the beauty of nature arouses enthusiasm. If this enthusiasm infects someone who already has a subject in mind, it will give power to the execution and also to invention and originality at the secondary level of parts, style, images, in other words everything concerned with execution. But it scarcely or never serves in the invention of a subject. In order for enthusiasm to serve in this way, it needs to be inspired by and focused upon the subject itself, like the enthusiasm of a passion. But the sort of abstract, vague, indefinite enthusiasm that men of genius often feel on listening to music, at the spectacle of nature, etc., in no way contributes to the invention of a subject, and hardly even to its parts, because at such moments the person is almost outside himself, abandoned as if to an external force by which he is transported, and is incapable of gathering together or fixing his ideas, everything he sees is infinite, indeterminate, fleeting, and so varied and overflowing that it does not allow order, or rules, or [258] the ability to enumerate, arrange, choose, or merely to conceive things clearly and completely, much less saisir [to seize upon]
a point (a subject in other words) around which he can concentrate all the sensations and images he is experiencing, which have no center. Indeed, even experiencing, as I have said, the enthusiasm of passion, and wishing to take this same passion as your subject, if the enthusiasm is really intense and genuine, you will not be able to fix upon any realizable form of that subject. In essence, for the invention of precise, formal subjects, at their most original and primitive (I mean in the first moments of conception), the moment of enthusiasm, warmth, and fevered imagination is not what is required, and in fact it is harmful. You need a time of strength, but strength that is tranquil, a time of actual genius rather than of actual enthusiasm (that is, an act of genius rather than of enthusiasm), the influence of past, future, or habitual enthusiasm rather than its presence, and we might even say its twilight rather than its midday. Often, the best time is the moment that follows the experience of enthusiasm or feeling, when the soul, though calm, goes back and rides the waves once more after the storm, and recalls with pleasure that past sensation. This is perhaps the most suitable and most frequent time for the conception of an original subject, or the original parts of a subject. And generally, [259] one could say that in the arts and poetry, demonstrations of enthusiasm, imagination, and sensibility are more the immediate fruit of the memory of enthusiasm than of enthusiasm itself, where the author is concerned.1 (2 October 1820.) So whereas popular opinion, which at face value seems to be true, regards enthusiasm as the father of invention and conception, and calm as necessary for the execution, I say that enthusiasm is harmful, or rather that it actually impedes invention (which has to be focused, and enthusiasm is very far removed from any sort of focus), and rather benefits execution, fueling the poet or artist, enlivening his style, and, most of all, helping him in the formation, arrangement, etc., of the parts, all of which can easily become cold and monotonous when the author has lost the initial spur of originality. (3 Oct. 1820.)

  It is a property of works of genius that, even when they represent vividly the nothingness of things, even when they clearly show and make you feel the inevitable unhappiness of life, even when they express the most terrible despair, nevertheless to a great soul that finds itself in a state of extreme dejection, disenchantment, nothingness, boredom, and discouragement about life, or in the most bitter and deathly misfortune (whether on account of lofty, powerful passions or something else), such works always bring consolation, [260] and rekindle enthusiasm, and, though they treat and represent nothing but death, they restore, albeit momentarily, the life that it had lost. And so, while that which is seen in the reality of things grieves and kills the soul, when seen in imitation or any other form in works of genius (e.g., in lyric poetry, which is not, properly speaking, imitation), it opens and revives the heart. In fact, just as the author who described and felt so powerfully the vanity of illusions, but still preserved a great fund of them and gave ample proof of this by conveying their vanity so accurately (see pp. 214–15), in the same way, the reader, however disillusioned both about himself and about what he reads, is yet drawn by the author into the same deception and illusion that he experienced and that are hidden in the most intimate recesses of his spirit. And the recognition of the irredeemable vanity and falsity of all beauty and all greatness is itself a kind of beauty and greatness that fills the soul when it is conveyed by a work of genius. And the spectacle of nothingness is itself a thing in these works, and seems to enlarge the reader’s soul, to raise it up and to make it take satisfaction in itself and its despair. (A great thing, and sure mother of pleasure and enthusiasm, and magisterial effect of poetry when it succeeds in enhancing the reader’s concept of himself, and of his misfortunes, and of his own dejection and annihilation of spirit.)1 In addition, [261] the feeling of nothingness is the feeling of something dead and deathly. But when this feeling is vivid, as in the case I am describing, its vividness prevails in the reader’s mind over the nothingness of the thing that it makes him feel, and the soul receives life (if only fleetingly) from the very force with which it feels the perpetual death of things, and its own death. For no small effect of knowing the great nothing, and no less painful, is the indifference and insensibility that it very commonly inspires, and must naturally inspire, toward nothingness itself. This indifference and insensibility is removed by the reading or contemplation of a work of genius: it makes us sensitive to the nothingness of things, and this is the main cause of the phenomenon I have discussed.

  I will note that it is much more difficult to experience this phenomenon in the dark and gloomy poems of the north, especially the modern sort like Lord Byron’s, than in southern poems, which retain a measure of light in their most somber, painful, and desperate themes. Reading Petrarch, e.g., his Triumphs, or the meeting of Achilles and Priam, and I will also add Werther, produces this effect much more than The Giaour or The Corsair,1 etc., despite the fact that they treat and demonstrate the same human unhappiness, and the vanity of everything. (4 Oct. 1820.) I know that when I read Werther, I was heated in my despair. Reading Byron, I was left completely cold and devoid of enthusiasm, let alone consolation. [262] And Lord Byron certainly didn’t make me any more sensitive to my desperation: if anything, he probably made me more insensitive and stone-cold than before.

  Man counters boredom by his keen feeling of necessary and universal boredom.

  We need to remind ourselves that the invention of gunpowder contributed in no small measure to the weakening of successive generations: (1) by discouraging the carrying of arms and armor (see Montesquieu, ch. 2 on the great vigor of Roman soldiers);1 (2) by making the conduct of war no longer a matter of individual or general strength but almost entirely of art, certainly by making the art of war a much greater arbiter in warfare than it had previously been; (3) by reducing or removing as a consequence the necessity for those exercises which, whether directly or indirectly, as in the case of athletic games, served to make men vigorous and prepared them for war.

  Fright and terror, although of a greater magnitude than fear, are nevertheless very often much less cowardly, and sometimes not cowardly at all. They can affect even the most courageous people, unlike fear. E.g., the fright occasioned by the prospect of a life awaiting us that will be very unhappy, or very long and dull, etc. The fear of ghosts, so childish, and based on such a childish notion, was very common (and remains so) among very courageous people. See pp. 531 and 535.2

  [263] Intricacy can often be clear, as lack of intricacy can be obscure. Intricacy can arise either from the author or from the subject matter, when clarity is difficult for the writer and the passage can, in turn, be difficult for the reader, even though it is clear. But very often intricacy is confused with obscurity, and something is called obscure when it is only intricate, and intricate when it is only obscure. Apply this observation to 16th-century writers, who were very often intricate but nevertheless clear, and those of the 14th century, who on the whole are not at all intricate but often obscure, and also to scientific, technical, and grammatical writing, etc.

  Something worthy of esteem can be appreciated only by those who know its value. Thus rarity is no guarantee of esteem but often a hindrance. Among ignorant people, a man of great intelligence is either despised or acknowledged without admiration, enthusiasm, or any of those emotions which seem invariably to be associated with something extraordinary, and which ought to increase relatively the more extraordinary the thing is. The value attached to him is similar to what is felt for someone who has a better tool than others, which they sometimes ask to borrow or use in the owner’s house, without this making them think that the owner [264] is special or superior to anyone else on account of that small advantage, which can be compensated by and compared with many others. Likewise with writings of good taste in a century or a country that is corrupt or ignorant, likewise especially sensitivity and enthusiasm, which the average person regards as μειονέκτημα [disadvantage] rather than πλεονέκτημα [advantage] and derides as madness. So it can be
seen that, apart from obvious attributes or those which everyone naturally knows how to judge, all the rest have been much less esteemed in the periods and places where they were most rare. And it is quite clear that a person of great intellect cannot be intimately understood or, therefore, properly appreciated and admired, except by another great intellect, and the same is true of his works. This applies to everything concerned with particular disciplines, arts, skills, etc., so, for example, a great warrior will command the appropriate respect only from another great man of the same profession. (5 Oct. 1820.) See p. 273.

  In ancient times, searching for and learning in different schools did not enable you, as it does now, to learn more and more, since now all schools follow the same rules and vary only in the different disciplines they offer. But in those times, to learn the doctrine of one school meant unlearning those [265] of the others and choosing which one you wanted to follow, because they all contradicted each other. So men of average intelligence would attach themselves to a sect, learn the dogma of a single school, and be content with that, identifying themselves with the name of their sect. Those with a little more intelligence or presumption would introduce a few changes into the doctrine of their teachers, or add something to it, and make themselves head of a new branch of the same sect. Men with superior intellects used the instruction they received in different schools only to choose the best of it, or what they considered such, and blended the dogmas chosen from the different sects to form, either from these alone or with the addition of their own or another system evolved from the various and discordant ideas they had acquired, a new school and sect. As Plato did who liked to educate himself in different schools and listened to Socrates (and, immediately after Socrates’s death, two others whom Laertius mentions at the beginning of his life of Plato), the Pythagoreans, and the Egyptians and also wanted to listen to Persian wise men but was unable to do so because of the wars in Asia.1 And [266] with the various doctrines he learned and chose from these sects, he composed his new system. (6 October 1820.)