Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  Furthermore, my remarks about perfection of style in sixteenth-century authors should be taken to refer to writers of prose, and not to poets. Indeed, I marvel at the fact that such gravity and dignity as shines in the writers of prose may be sought in vain in almost all the poets of that century, and very often even in the best of them. The faults in the poetic style of that century, even in the best poets, are innumerable, in particular redundancy, or the piling up of epithets and synonyms (by contrast with prose), etc., let alone the more important fault of indulging in witticisms and banalities, etc., even in Ariosto and in Tasso. And there is no doubt that Dante and Petrarch (although not without major faults in style) were closer to perfection [701] in their style than were the sixteenth-century authors, so that the poetic style of the fourteenth century (as represented by those two poets) is superior to that of the sixteenth (all the more so in that with poetry the best is the oldest, as distinct from prose, where there is more space for art). And after the fourteenth century, Italian poetic style did not go back to the old models, especially the Latin ones, or to a perfect and polished form, until Parini and Monti. See my other thoughts on this theme [→Z 10, 59–60]. I refer here, however, to poetic style, because otherwise, if we leave aside Metastasio and Alfieri as far as feelings are concerned (but Alfieri was more of a philosopher than a poet), and some (seldom original) images in Parini and Monti (who are literary men of exquisite judgment rather than poets), Italy from the sixteenth century onward has not only made no progress in poetry but has merely had [702] verses and not poetry. Indeed, it could be said that from the sixteenth century onward the true creative faculty in poetry, whether of the heart or of the imagination, was no longer to be seen in Italy, and that no one deserving the name of poet (except perhaps for Metastasio) was born in Italy after Tasso. (27 Feb. 1821.)

  Camillo Porzio, La congiura de’ Baroni del Regno di Napoli contra il Re Ferdinando I, third edition, that is to say, Lucca, 1816, Francesco Bertini, p. 23: “E vedeva ciascuno che indugiava più l’occasione che il lor animo, ad offendersi, e che ogni picciola scintilla di fuoco infra di loro si poteva eccitare grandissimo incendio” [“And each man saw that it was circumstance more than his heart that kept him from being sorely offended; and that the slightest spark between them could set off a mighty conflagration”]. What does circumstance kept him from being offended mean? Apart from the fact that his heart was already offended, and most grievously, as he has just said. Read ad accendersi [from being set alight], a reading confirmed by what follows the passage quoted above.1

  Ibid., p. 24: “Affermando il Re essergli stato rimesso da’ suoi predecessori” (the tribute owed the Church) [703] “e che si doveva per il regno di Napoli e di Sicilia; ma che egli allora solo quello di Napoli possedeva” [“With the King asserting that it had been remitted by his predecessors and that it was owed for the kingdom of Naples and of Sicily; but that he then ruled over Naples alone”]. Rimesso could mean “remitted” and predecessori refer to the Pope; it could also mean “dispatched” and predecessori refer to the King. In any case, the sense is exceedingly obscure. I would read predecessori che e’, or ch’e’ [predecessors that he]. See p. 708, paragraph 2.

  Ibid., p. 37: “Suavissima riputo e verissima la sentenza che c’insegna li costumi de’ soggetti andar sempre dietro all’usanze de’ dominatori” [“I hold to be most elegant and most true the saying that instructs us that the customs of subjects always follow the practices of the masters”]. Read savissima [most wise].

  We can neither count all those who are unfortunate nor grieve for a single one of them as we should.

  For the development and exercise of the imagination, we need happiness, whether habitual or of the present moment and fleeting; for the development and exercise of feeling, misfortune. Take my own case, and my passing from the imaginative to the sensitive faculty, the former being all but extinguished in me.1 (28 Feb. 1821.)

  [704] A man must be frank and free in handling his language, not like the plebeians, who conduct themselves freely and uninhibitedly in the public squares because they do not know how to behave with decency and decorum, but like those who, experienced and accustomed to the exchange of civilities, act frankly and effortlessly in company, thanks to this same experience and knowledge. Wherefore a free use of language must stem from perfect learning and not from ignorance. Yet almost all writers today lack such a proper and fitting liberty. For those who wish to abide by the purity, nature, and laws of the language do not behave freely but rather like slaves. Because they do not master it fully and with conviction, and are always wary of causing offense, so they hobble along as though they were walking on eggshells. And those whose conduct is free and easy have the freedom of plebeians, which comes from ignorance of the language, from not knowing how to handle it, and from not caring about it. And the latter, by contrast [705] with the others mentioned above, are very often praised for being writers who lack presumption. As if on the one hand it were presumptuous to write well (and so by the same token acting well, and anything one sought to do in a fitting manner, would be presumption), and, on the other, anyone who showed that he presumed to write well did write well. When, indeed, showing it, in relation not only to the correct use of language but to any other feature of writing, is the worst sin a person can commit when writing. Because, in short, presumption is the same thing as affectation; and affectation is the plague of all beauty and excellence, since the first and most necessary gift of writing, as of everything we do in life, is naturalness. (28 Feb. 1821.)

  For p. 694. Because the language was as yet neither fully formed nor fixed, nor was its structure well ordered, nor even its grammar. The writers of the fourteenth century shaped it, but by virtue of time, and [706] accidental and extrinsic circumstances, not like Homer, who shaped the Epic by virtue of his own talent. (I except, however, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and, in the second of these three especially, I find an admirably stable, complete, well-ordered, mature, consistent, and nearly perfect form of language, altogether worthy to serve as a model for every age and in almost every respect.) We should therefore not be astonished if different fourteenth-century authors should have chosen different paths; if there is nothing harder than to get them to agree with one another, and with the structure of the language, even in essential matters, and to model the form and precepts of the language on these authors; if imperfections and errors abound; if they are not even consistent, even with themselves, in any way, etc. etc. etc. Once the language was fully formed, the perfecting of it became possible, necessary, and very difficult, and that perfection never attained such heights, nor such universality, as in the sixteenth century. [707] And it is in this sense and for these reasons that I say that the sixteenth century was the real, and only, golden age for our language; that is to say, with regard to the use of it, where the fourteenth century had prepared it, and with regard to the spending of the treasure that the fourteenth century had magnificently and most lavishly accumulated, and in a manner such that anyone who does not immediately stock up on that treasure will forever be impoverished in matters of language, since the fourteenth century really and truly is the most rich, inexhaustible, and perennial source of our language, a source upon which every age can and must draw. (28 Feb. 1821.)

  Because the golden age of a language or of any other discipline is not, in fact, the age that prepares it but the one that uses it, assembles it from materials that are to hand, and shapes it, for the age that shaped and fixed the Italian language was more truly the sixteenth than the fourteenth century, apart from the fact that the first precepts of our language, if I’m not mistaken, were laid down in that century, by Bembo. But the sixteenth century [708] shaped and fixed the Italian language in such a way that, as it gained refinement and order, it lost nothing at all in naturalness, abundance, variety, power, or even freedom (or as much as is compatible with clarity and beauty, and with the need to be understood, and hence to be suitably organized for speech). In short, and above all, it in n
o way altered its original character and nature, whereas French changed utterly, in the molding and fixing of the language effected by the Academy and by the age of Louis XIV. (1 March 1821.)

  Camillo Porzio, loc. cit. (p. 702), p. 80: “In un tratto di ciascuno il sacco, il fuoco e la morte si temeva.” Read da ciascuno [by everyone].1 (1 March 1821.)

  For p. 703. For if rimesso [remitted] should seem odd in this sense (of traditum, which in Latin comes both metaphorically and also almost literally to mean just this), it would seem only so to those who are not familiar with the usage [709] and the style of this writer. (2 March 1821.)

  For p. 120. Add that in monarchies, or governments by a single person or by a few (and indeed every monarchy may really be termed government by a few, since not everything can actually depend upon, originate from, and be regulated by the will of just one person, and all the more so the larger that monarchy is), the causes of events are far more minuscule and multiple than in free and popular states, even though the opposite would seem to be the case. Because the causes that are operative in a whole people, or in the majority, or in a good part, or in short in many, are neither so minor, nor so plentiful, nor so various, nor so hard to divine, even if they are hidden, as those which are operative in one or several individuals in particular. And anyone who knows the slightest thing about the history of kingdoms will in fact observe that the most major events often stem from the most fleeting and unconsidered impulses of some king or minister, etc., from trifling circumstances, from a whim, a stray word, a recollection, an individual habit, [710] from a particular personality, from inclinations, from attributes, accidents in the course of a life, friendships forged or animosities incurred, etc., by a prince or minister, etc., in his private capacity. Hence it may be seen just how obscure and difficult history is for a writer these days, and how it must so often turn out to be in large part false, and therefore of no use to readers, when the key to momentous events, and the explanation of matchless marvels, lies in being familiar with anecdotes that are always hard and sometimes impossible to know about. And so it is that today the writers of court anecdotes and tittle-tattle are perhaps more worthy of esteem by history than are the most eminent historians and writers on the greatest matters. (2 March 1821.)

  For p. 81, end. Man is wicked, neither more nor less, in the measure to which his actions clash with his principles. The more, then, on the one hand, principles (1) are fully established, settled, broadly known, clarified, specified, and elaborated, (2) the more man is profoundly imbued with them, and radically convinced by them; on the other hand, the more deeds clash with these same principles, [711] the more wicked he is. And the more universal the said circumstances are in producing both principles and actions, as through Christianity, and especially in its first centuries, they were, the worse peoples and centuries prove to be. This is the measure we must use to define the wickedness of individuals, nations, and eras, and to reflect on the hatred that they deserve and that they actually inspire. And on this count our century may be judged to be less wicked. (2 March 1821.)

  Letters that differ from those in our alphabet include the Greek θῆτα [theta] and the Spanish cedilla, which are analogous with one another but which cannot be mistaken for our z, t, or s, and which are pronounced by means of a conformation of the vocal apparatus appropriate to them. And there is a greater difference evident between this conformation of the organs and that required for pronouncing our z, t, or s than that evident between the conformation of the organs used in pronouncing d, and that required for pronouncing t; and yet no one doubts [712] that these are different letters, although tongue and teeth produce both of them with the most minimal and all but imperceptible divergence in the positioning adopted. Thus, simply because the difference in positioning is small, one cannot deduce that two or more letters are the same, because the tiniest thing suffices to render them distinct, as other examples might serve to show. Moreover, I would say the same of the Hebrew thau and the English th. (3 March 1821.)

  It serves no purpose to say that the pleasures, blessings, and delights of this world are all illusions. Once these illusions have been dispelled, what is left? And what else can someone enjoy or hope for here below, if he lacks these pleasures and blessings, however illusory?1 In short, the unhappy man is really and truly unhappy, even when his misfortune lies only in the absence of blessings; whereas it is unfortunately true that there is no true or well-grounded happiness, and that the happy man is not really such. (3 March 1821.)

  For p. 370. But note how all too many times this impatience jeopardizes the goal. Because, wanting to see the outcome no matter [713] what, and in order to rid yourself of the fear of not achieving your goal, you lose what you would have obtained if you had not been afraid, and if you had therefore behaved more calmly, with less confusion, etc., in short, if you had gone on waiting for events to unfold as they should, within the proper time span, etc. In short, all too often in ventures that are dubious, even though not of the utmost importance, our forcing of the pace, not so much out of eagerness to achieve the outcome as out of impatience with worrying about it, leads us to fail in our purpose: and this may happen to us even in life’s most trivial, everyday, and matter-of-fact activities. Note the words not so much out of eagerness, etc., in which the originality and the peculiarity of this thought consists, because the aforesaid effect of impatience has been widely noted, but it is attributed to our impatience to achieve something. (3 March 1821.)

  [714] Too much, or excess, is often the father of nothing. The dialecticians themselves observe that what proves too much proves nothing.1 But this characteristic of excess may also be observed in everyday life. An excess of sensations, or their superabundance, turns into insensibility. It gives rise to indolence and inactivity, indeed, a habitual inactivity in individuals and in peoples; and see what I have said on this point, together with Mme. de Staël, Florus, etc., pp. 620, end–625, beginning. A poet at the height of enthusiasm, passion, etc., is not a poet, that is, he is not able to compose poetry. Faced with nature, while his whole soul is preoccupied with the image of the infinite, while ideas crowd in on his mind, he is incapable of distinguishing, choosing, or seizing hold of any of them; in short, he is incapable of doing anything, or of plucking any fruit from his sensations, either in theory, in the shape of an observation and maxim, or in practice, as something to be put to use in writing. The infinite [715] can be expressed only when it is not felt, or rather only after it is felt;1 and when the greatest poets wrote those things which awaken the wonderful sensations of the infinite in us, their minds were not possessed by any infinite sensation, and when they were depicting the infinite they did not feel it. The most extreme bodily pains are not felt, because either they cause you to faint or they kill you. The most extreme sorrow is not felt, at any rate so long as it is the most extreme; its characteristic rather is to stun a man, and to so confuse, submerge, and darken his mind that he does not know himself, or the passion that he is experiencing, or its object. He remains motionless, with no sign of outward activity or, one might say, of inner activity, either. And the most extreme pains are therefore not felt in the first moments, or all at once, but in a sequence in space and in time, and separately, as I said on pp. 366–68. Indeed, this is true not only of extreme sorrow but of every extreme passion, and also of every sensation, even if not extreme, yet so extraordinary and, in every respect, great that our mind is not capable of containing [716] the whole of it at once. This would also be the case with extreme joy.

  But it has to be said that it is rare for joy, even great and extraordinary joy, to stun us and make us almost senseless, and to be so great that it cannot possibly be felt fully and distinctly. This certainly happened to us when we were children, and must undoubtedly have happened to primitive men; but these days, even if a man has just a little experience and knowledge, it is really hard for him to be susceptible to a joy so great that it cannot be entirely contained within his mind but overflows it, although he is very
susceptible (at any rate most men are) to sorrow on a similar scale. But a man’s greatest joy today is always or certainly most of the time such that his mind is wholly capable of containing it, and this despite the fact that he must be little used to it, whereas such is not the case with sorrow or with any unpleasant passion. But the fact [717] is that evil, the object of sorrow and of unpleasant passions, is real, whereas good, the object of joy, is merely imaginary, and for joy to be such as to exceed the capacity of our minds, there would have to be, as in children and primitive peoples, a power and freshness of persuasive imagination, and of illusion, no longer compatible with life as it is today. (4 March 1821.)