Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  People will say that a large part of this lexicon derives from French because of the paramount influence of that language and literature on the modern languages and literatures caused by what I have referred to elsewhere [→Z 1029–30]. But even if it were to come from Tartar, since use determines the purity and goodness of words and phrases, I believe that what is good and fitting for all the languages of Europe ought also to be so (especially at a time with the attributes I have described) for Italy, which is after all in the middle of Europe, and is not actually New Holland, nor is it Yezo.2 And if those European languages that have nothing to do with French have accepted French words and use them continuously, how much more, and indeed more readily and more naturally and with greater benefit, should our language, a blood sister of French, use them? The origins of those words are [1216] familiar to us and homely, because they derive in large part from Latin although they are used with other meanings that they did not have in Latin, and indeed could not have had, since the Latins lacked those ideas. Very often they come from Greek, which is not more but less alien to us than it is to other cultured modern languages. Often they are wholly Italian, that is to say, they are already materially in our language, though with different and less subtle or less precise meanings, because our forebears could not have had the ideas that we have today. But we are not for that reason less Italian than they, nor are those ideas less Italian because our forebears did not manage to conceive of them, or only confusedly, due to the nature of the times and the state of the human mind.

  Gallicisms may be condemned (as, and as much as, reason dictates) and called barbarous, but Europeanisms (if I may so call them) may not, since what was characteristic of the whole of the civilized world and precisely because of civilization—as is the use of these words, deriving as they do from the actual civilization and science of Europe—was never barbarous.

  Consider, e.g., the words genius, sentimental, despotism, analysis, analyze, demagogue, fanaticism, originality, etc., and so many similar words that the whole world understands, the whole world uses with one precise meaning, and only Italians cannot use (or not with that meaning), why? Because the purists reject them and because our ancestors, not being able to entertain such ideas, could not utter or write those words with those meanings. But this holds true for the same words in all the languages of the world, and yet they have no qualms about using them. They would have qualms, rather, and feel ashamed at not knowing how to express an idea that was clear to them and clear indeed to the whole [1217] of the civilized world, since languages were created, invented, and perfected for the expression of clear ideas. While we, because we do not wish to use these words, cannot express the clear ideas that they represent or else we are obliged to express clear and precise ideas (as they are in our own minds) in a confused and indistinct way, and then we assert that Italian is most abundant, and can cope with everything, and is progressing. So that we have to remain silent, or write as our forefathers did, and then complain that Italian literature and philosophy is still a century and a half behind all the others. And how could it be otherwise, without the language?

  I add that even if we were able to discover other words expressing the same ideas in our Lexicon or our language, or fashion them from our language, we would very often do wrong to use them because we would not be understood either by foreigners or by Italians themselves, the idea that we awakened would not be nor ever could be precise, and we would not obtain the due and precise effect of such words, which is as much as to say, we would use them in vain, or almost as if they were pure sounds.

  (1) There was a time when men and writers were content to be useful, to make themselves understood, and win fame within the boundaries of their own nation. But today, with Europe in the condition described above, a writer whose name and writings do not go beyond the boundaries of his own country will win neither great nor [1218] lasting fame. Nor in the present state of things can anyone do great and immortal service to his homeland who does not succeed in being more or less useful, at least indirectly, to the rest of the civilized world. Furthermore, a glory or name that was restricted to just one nation would always, even in times past, endure but a short time, even in that nation itself. From a thousand examples, let it suffice to mention the Bards, many of whom, as we vaguely and confusedly know, were very famous within their own nations and yet today in, e.g., Scotland no more than the name and dim memory of very few of those ancient Scottish Bards remains. What I say of writers also applies to other kinds of famous people, etc., but to a greater extent to writers, because the deeds of man do not endure for long, and cannot be extended very far, while thoughts and words consigned to writing survive for a very long time and can be of use to the whole of humanity. Nor should a writer, especially in the present state of the world, be satisfied with promoting the interests of his nation alone, since he is able to work to the advantage of all nations with the same effort that he expends for her.

  (2) I have said that it would be hard to make ourselves understood and to evoke precisely the idea we sought to signify, one that is exactly expressed by the equivalent [1219] words already in current use in Europe. Philosophy (with all its many highly diverse branches) is science. All the sciences, once they have attained an adequate level of development and stability, have always had their own terms, that is, their own terminology, so much their own that if one wished to change it one would change the face of the science. As has happened with the new Chemistry leading to the renewal of its terminology and the whole of that part of the terminology of physics or other sciences that pertained to or was influenced by chemical concepts old or new.1 And the terminology of any and every science has always been so bound up with it that wherever it is involved the terminology is too, no matter how and where it was created and even if it was imprecise in its etymologies, etc., provided that it was precise in the understanding and sense ascribed to them. Chemistry has a new terminology because it is a science that is new and different from the old one. And the same thing happens to the other sciences when they are renewed either wholly or in part. They lose their old terminology and acquire another, which becomes universal, however, in the same way as the first. And when you encounter a difference in terminology in one and the same science practiced in different nations that are little known and scarcely connected to each other, it is certain that the science is notably different in the respective nations and languages. See p. 1229. Hence the terms used in all sciences, whether precise or otherwise, but just as long as they are to some degree established, have always been universal, and it would never be possible in science to employ terms other than those that are universally known, understood, and employed without doing the greatest harm to clarity and taking away precision. A precision that does not strictly and chiefly derive from anything but the convention which attaches that precise meaning, very often metaphoric but having become completely proper, to that word. When the word is altered, the force of the convention is lost, and consequently, even if the new word may be an equivalent so far as its origin and its intrinsic properties, etc., are concerned, its impact will not be equivalent. For the [1220] reader or listener will no longer conceive the precise and clear idea he conceived by means of the accustomed word, which was reinforced by convention, or rather, the habit of attributing that meaning to it and understanding it with that precise meaning. It would be necessary gradually to renew the habituation, applying it to these new words, which would necessarily give rise to a long interval of obscurity and confusion in the understanding of writers, until the new terminology came to occupy the place of the accustomed one completely in our minds and make the bed, so to speak, that the other had already made. Nor would this be the only harm or the only problem. It would be necessary for this new terminology to become universal, for otherwise with its being restricted to a single nation or language, the harm specified in subsection 1 would ensue, and the nations would not understand one another with respect to ideas that ought to be equally precise, and prec
isely understood, everywhere. And if just a single nation in some science or other had a terminology different from that of other nations, then at least in that science it would be as if the nation was out of touch with the times and the rest of the world, as regards both the impact of its writers on foreigners and (worse still) impact of foreign writers on it. [1221] Supposing, then, that it succeeded in rendering that terminology universal, anyone will appreciate that we would be back where we started, universality would remain but would simply have moved to no avail (and with some temporary harm) from one terminology to another. And so, in my view, a writer or country that did not want to come into line would be mad.

  Philosophy thus has its terms like all the other sciences. And because contemporary philosophy is so (1) refined, (2) wide-ranging in its various parts and in its influences that it can be argued that the whole of human life today is philosophical, or at any rate is wholly subject to the speculations of philosophy, it therefore follows that philosophical terms are very numerous, crop up very often in everyday speech, and flourish in the great majority of present-day ideas, disciplines, and writings. And because these terms, as I have said, are by and large uniform throughout Europe, the language of the whole of Europe is virtually uniform as far as the expression of subtle, or subtly handled, ideas is concerned, even in conversation.

  And it is entirely reasonable that, with philosophy having become a science that is so profound, subtle, accurate, and more or less uniform and consistent everywhere (by contrast with ancient philosophies) and—what is especially noteworthy so far as our own argument is concerned—ever clearer and more certain and definite in its concepts, [1222] its terms should be stable and universally uniform, especially given just how much uniformity and close interchange there is in Europe. Even the old shapeless and obscure, uncertain, ill-defined, and foolish philosophies that were taught in the Schools1 had their own stable and universal terminology, without which they would not have been understood anywhere in Europe, even though Europe was then so much less uniform and united within itself. The Italian language has an abundance of terms from the old philosophy, scholastic terms universally employed in the Middle Ages and up until recent centuries. And because they had the good fortune to be used by our forefathers, and even though they derived from barbarous origins and pertained to sciences that were not sciences, these terms are described in Italy as absolutely pure, and the terms of contemporary philosophy, derived from Europe’s greatest civilization, pertaining to the first of the sciences, and this taken to so high a level, are described as thoroughly impure because they were unknown to olden times. As if it were our job to venerate and preserve, rather than excuse on the one hand, and on the other expel the ignorance of those times. And as if the ignorance of past generations should be the measure and norm of the knowledge of present ones.

  [1223] If, therefore, modern philosophy—the philosophy which embraces so to speak the whole of this century, all present-day topics and ideas—is and must be consistent and uniform in its terms wherever it is practiced, we must adopt them and use them and comply with those the whole world uses. And it is too late to change them, and to fashion ourselves an Italian philosophical terminology, that is, a terminology drawn wholly from the springs of our own language. The latter would have been possible, had the greater part of modern philosophy derived from Italy. And then the other nations would have used the terminology made in Italy in their philosophy without any trouble. But because we have allowed foreigners to do everything, and allowed this science to attain such a high level with virtually no effort on our part, either we should continue to take no notice, ignore it, and not work with it, or if we do wish to work with it we should accept the terminology we find already established and generally understood. Without it we will not be wholly understood either by foreigners or by our own, as is apparent from the reasons given above. To which I would add as a corollary, demonstrated by the facts, that all those words that [1224] have expressed precisely and subtly a precise and subtle idea of whatever kind and in whatever branch of knowledge have always or almost always been universal and used in any language by all those who have conceived and set out to signify strictly that same idea. And that specific idea passed from the first individual who conceived it clearly to other individuals, and to other nations, and invariably in the company of that specific word. Precisely because so refined a precision in the act of signifying does not derive nor can it derive from anything but a strict and very apt convention, one that is all too difficult to renew and to multiply in the various languages.

  For all these reasons, it would be a task worthy of this century, and exceedingly useful to language no less than to philosophy, to compile a universal European lexicon containing those words, common to all or to the majority of the cultured modern languages, that precisely signify a clear, subtle, and precise idea. And especially those words that belong to everything that today is understood by the name of philosophy, and to all the ideas it embraces. For the physical or exact sciences do not have so great a need of this service, because their terminologies are adequately recognized and fixed and the ideas that they signify are not so readily [1225] either avoided or obscured and confused and rendered uncertain and indefinite as are those used in philosophy. The person who undertakes this task would have to define and circumscribe with all possible diligence the precise meaning of such words or terms, and draw from the various languages in which they are in use judiciously chosen examples from truly accurate and philosophical writers, and especially those examples containing a philosophical definition of the idea signified by the word, examples that it would not be hard to find given the sheer abundance of very profound, subtle, and perceptive writers from this and the last century, and even the one before that. Samuel Johnson adopted a similar approach in the Dictionary of the English Language,1 a language which really knows how to be philosophical, and abounds in such writers. If the compiler of such a Dictionary were Italian he would also be doing us a great service by inserting examples from the best Italian writers who have dealt with such topics. And if exactly equivalent Italian words chanced to be found, either in our own Dictionary or in any of our good writers, or indeed in ordinary usage, he would be performing a highly useful service by putting them opposite, etc., and he would thereby succeed in creating an Italian philosophical Dictionary, something devoutly to be wished, so that we may both know and display and use our wealth, if we have any.

  Although this Dictionary would be most useful to the whole of Europe, it would be of particular benefit to Italy. We would then see what a wealth of words that are spoken and written and acknowledged as necessary by the whole of Europe are despised and proscribed by us without there being any to stand in for them. And the Italian language should adopt those words without fear of being corrupted, any more than [1226] all the other European languages were corrupted when they adopted them. And it should not suppose—nor, indeed, should it be ashamed—that such a European Dictionary was not Italian, as if Italians were not Europeans, nor of the present century, etc. And it should acknowledge them to be eminently noble words, for they are concerned with and connected to the most noble of the human sciences, philosophy. See p. 1231, end.

  By which I absolutely do not mean that Italian should or even could employ, still less lavish such words in literature, especially in poetry. If things are not appropriate they are not good. In the sciences, precise words are appropriate and good, but in literature it is the right words. I have already drawn the distinction elsewhere [→Z 109–11, 808, 951–52] between words and terms, and shown what a difference there is between the rightness of words and their nakedness and precision. It is the role of poets and of literary writers to cover up the nakedness of things as far as possible, just as it is the role of scientists and philosophers to reveal it. Hence precise words are appropriate to the latter and not to the former, each is exactly the opposite of the other. For a scientist, the most appropriate words are those which are more precise and express
a barer idea. For the poet and man of letters, on the contrary, words that are vaguer and express more uncertain ideas, or a greater number of ideas, etc. These, at any rate, must be the dearest to him, and the others, which are the extreme opposite, the most hateful. See pp. 1234, paragraph 1 and 1312, paragraph 2. I have said already, and will repeat here that in literature, and poetry especially, terms will always have a very bad and ugly impact. Foreigners are much at fault in this regard, and we must not imitate them. I have said [→Z 110] that the French language (and I mean the language used in literature and in poetry) is being corrupted by a profusion of terms, that is, words with dry, bare meanings, so that it now consists entirely of terms and forsakes and forgets words. We must never [1227] forget or lose or cease to use words, because if we reduced all genres of writing to the mathematical we would lose literature and poetry. The words I recommend to the Italian language are very apt and necessary, not ignoble but not elegant either. Literature, which requires what is called elegance, must not employ them except as alien words in the way that we sometimes employ foreign words and acknowledge them as such, like the best Latin writers who would include a few words in Greek, incidentally so to speak. Different styles call for different words, and just as what is noble in prose is very often ignoble in poetry, so too what is noble and excellent in one genre of prose is quite ignoble in another. The Latins, for whom it was by no means ignoble to say in prose, e.g., tribunus militum or plebis [tribune of the soldiers or tribune of the plebs], or centurio [centurion], or triumvir [triumvir], etc., would never have said the same in poetry, because these words, too bare and precise in their meanings, are not appropriate to verse, even though the right words are appropriate and the idea represented, far from being ignoble, is very noble indeed. The terms of scholastic philosophy, which our language recognizes as very pure, would have been barbarous in both our old and our modern poetry, and even in elegant prose if it had employed them as its own words. [1228] And if Dante scattered them liberally around his poem, as other poets and a good number of writers of literary prose from that time did, too, one can excuse them on account of the semibarbarism or, we might say, the nascent civilization of that literature and those times, which were, however, very pure where language was concerned. But the purity of a word is one thing, its elegance quite another, as are its propriety, beauty, and nobility with regard to different topics or even simply to different styles. For if we wish to deal with philosophical topics in an elegant style and beautiful prose, we would do best to shun such terms, because the nature of the style then requires elegance and beauty rather than precision, and the latter takes second place. (Furthermore, in such a case philosophy is one of the chief virtues of literature and poetry, both ancient and modern, if one grants what I have said, p. 1313, which you should see.) I say that Italy should recognize these terms, etc., as pure, that is, proper to its language as to others, but not as elegant. Literature, and especially poetry, has nothing to do with subtle, rigorous, and precise philosophy, for it has the beautiful as its object, which is as much as to say the false, because the true (since man’s sad fate requires it) was never beautiful. Now the object of any philosophy whatever, as of all the sciences, is the true, and consequently where philosophy reigns, there true poetry cannot be found. And this is an argument [1229] that many famous foreigners either do not see, or act (or behave) as if they did not see it, or did not want to see it. And they may perhaps be so inclined by their nature, forged rather for the sciences than for the arts, etc. But the more philosophical poetry is, the less it is poetry. (26 June 1821.) See p. 1231.