Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  For p. 1285. We should further observe how many words that came simply from ancient errors in transcription are discovered by criticism to have been introduced, both into Dictionaries, and into the actual usage of ancient writers, or of modern ones who generally model themselves on the most ancient writers and draw on their language, etc. (14 July 1821.)

  For p. 1259, beginning. In which, as regards judgments on beauty, it is not so much habit that is involved as opinion. For our judgment varies from moment to moment, and if we [1319] see a style in dress that is completely new, and very different from the one we are used to, we immediately or almost immediately judge it to be beautiful and immediately experience the sense of beauty if we know that this style is the latest fashion. And if it is the other way around the opposite occurs, because that new style clashes both with our habit and with opinion. Add that we judge that new style of fashion to be beautiful even when it clashes with all the accepted forms of beauty, except that, although it takes only a moment to form our judgment of beauty, it will still need, proportionately, a little time to conceive the instantaneous sense of that judgment, that is, to acquire habituation, which still retains its rights in respect of it, and to undo the past habit.

  After all, just how much pure opinion influences the judgment and sense of the beautiful, independently of habituation itself and of every other factor, can be shown with a thousand proofs which are entirely routine, even though for that very reason less noticed. Who does not know that a mediocre beauty seems great to us, if its fame is great? And that we feel more drawn toward, and experience a far more intense sense of beauty when gazing at a woman who is famous for her [1320] beauty than in gazing at the beauty of one who is more beautiful but unknown, or less famous? So too if a woman is not beautiful, but is reputed to be so, or is famous for her love affairs or has been fought over, etc. etc. etc. The same is true of men so far as women are concerned, etc. etc. So too with writers: our sense of the beautiful is far more intense, more intimate, more frequent, more acute when we read, e.g., an already famous poet, one whose merit is already acknowledged, than when we read one whose merit we have yet to judge, even though he is finer than many others in whom we take the utmost delight. The formation of taste is in large part nothing other than the contracting of an opinion. If a specific taste, a specific genre, etc., is despised, or if you in particular despise it, a given work conforming to that taste or genre, etc., will not be pleasing. In the opposite case, if you change your opinion, lo and behold the same work will give you the utmost pleasure, and you will find countless beauties in it whose very existence you had not even suspected. This situation is very common indeed in matters of all kinds. During the second half of the last century, and the first years of the present century, very few people used to get any pleasure from reading good Italian style. Today, there are very many, and the same people who used to take no delight in it, or were actually bored by it, etc., today gladly feast on it, because opinion in Italy has changed. The people so changed include myself.

  [1321] I could apply this argument to a hundred other instances. Fourteenth-century writing style is so very much to our liking because we know that it was characteristic of the age. If we see it very faithfully reconstituted in a modern writer, even though it differs not at all from the old style, we do not like it. On the contrary, it disgusts us; it strikes us as utterly affected, because we know that it is not natural to the writer although this is not at all apparent in the work in question. This is just opinion therefore. Reasonable opinion certainly, but it follows that the beautiful is not absolute, since the very same thing, in different circumstances, seems to us beautiful and ugly, and if we did not know, e.g., the fact that that particular writer is modern, we would like his particular work very much indeed. Say the same about the most faithful imitations in literary genres, in the arts, etc., compare them against the originals, even if they do not differ by so much as a whisker, a point I have addressed in another thought [→Z 101, 143]. Say the same about symmetry, etc., on which see p. 1259. Say the same about archaisms. In an old writer they do not offend us at all, nor do they strike us as in any way monstrous, because we know that they were in use then. In a modern they make us feel sick, even if his style is so similar to that of the old writer that the archaisms do not stand out or clash with the rest of the work any more than they do in old writers themselves. [1322] (14 July 1821.)

  I have said elsewhere [→Z 198–203] that grace very often (perhaps always) comes from the extraordinary in the beautiful, an extraordinary that does not destroy beauty. Now I will add the cause of this effect. And it is, not only that the extraordinary generally surprises and therefore pleases us, which is something that does not pertain to the discussion of grace, but also that it gives us greater surprise and pleasure to see the extraordinary not harming the beautiful, not destroying the proper and regular, even while it is indeed extraordinary and in itself irregular, even while its being irregular and extraordinary throws that beauty and propriety into relief—to see, in short, a beauty and propriety which is not ordinary in things that do not seem able to fit together, a beauty and propriety that is different from others, different from the everyday. Example. An utterly monstrous nose is so irregular that it destroys the rule, and with it the proper and the beautiful. A nose like the one in Marmontel’s Roxelane1 is irregular, yet it does not destroy the beautiful or the proper, although in itself it is improper. And that is grace, and the wonderful effects of grace, described uproariously by [1323] Marmontel, which overpower the effects of all perfect beauty. See p. 1327, end. If we look carefully at what elegance in writing, a word, an expression, etc., consists in, we shall see that it always consists in a small irregularity, or in some small thing that is new or out of the ordinary, something that does not destroy the regularity and propriety of the style or language, but rather puts it in relief, and itself stands out. And we are surprised because although it stands out, and is out of the ordinary, or outside the rule, it is not improper, and this surprise gives rise to pleasure and to the sense of elegance and grace in writing. (Here discuss idioms, etc. etc.) If unfamiliarity in words or expressions is excessively unfamiliar, or used too frequently, etc., it destroys order, rule, propriety, and is a source of ugliness. If not, it is a source of elegance, in such a way that if you look at Virgil’s style, or Horace’s, models of elegance for all time, you will see that their elegance mainly and generally consists in the unfamiliarity of expressions and words, or their application to a particular use, passage, meaning, in the unfamiliarity of the metaphors, etc. Beginning [1324] at the first line and going on to the end, you will always be able to make the same observation.

  And so true is this, that if the unfamiliar thing, e.g., that word, phrase, or metaphor, becomes common and familiar, it is no longer elegant. How many factual examples of this point could be brought forward with the help of a careful consideration of languages. A very great source of elegance for us Italians is the use of Latin words or expressions, freshly taken from that language in such a way that they are unfamiliar but not excessive, whether excessively unfamiliar, that is because their form is too strange, etc. etc., or excessively frequent as Latinisms. Now there are countless Latin words and expressions used by the old writers to enrich our language by introducing the unfamiliar into their writings that have become familiar, and now belong to the language, whether written or spoken, and no longer produce the slightest sense of elegance, although they are of the same origin, form, nature as the words, etc., which do produce it today. How many of Dante’s Latinisms, once they became Italianisms (a long time ago, and in very large number), are good and pure, but no longer have anything to do with elegance and grace?

  [1325] If the thing that is extraordinary or irregular in the beautiful, and within the limits of the beautiful, becomes ordinary and regular, it no longer produces the sense of grace. Once the sense of the extraordinary is lost, so is that of the graceful. The same thing is graceful in one time or place, not grac
eful in another. And this can come about for two reasons. (1) When that particular thing is extraordinary for some people and not for others. Tuscan speech feels more graceful to us than it does to Tuscans. So those Florentine touches judiciously introduced into writings, etc. So we feel the elegance and grace of the fourteenth-century writers much more than did the times they wrote in, much more than the writers themselves, who maybe didn’t want or try to be graceful, and were just thinking about writing as it came and saying what they had to say, who didn’t notice their grace, and the same is true of the speakers of those times. The same for foreign dialects or pronunciations that sound graceful abroad, not in the least at home. (2) When that particular extraordinary or irregular thing, etc., comes across as compatible with propriety, beauty, etc., to some people, and to others as incompatible, excessive, and destructive of rule, propriety, beauty, etc. One and the same foreign pronunciation, etc., [1326] seems graceful in one place where the difference is slight, etc., and extremely ungraceful in another, where its contrast with indigenous pronunciation and habits is too vivid and sharp, etc. etc. The same is true of the excess of popular Tuscanisms in written texts, which to us comes across as affected, etc. etc.

  But this judgment, too, is subject to variation, and the same pronunciation or dialect, etc., which was insufferable to a particular person will end up by seeming even graceful to them. So I say of every other kind of thing, and the experience is frequent.

  From all this we deduce again that since the sense and idea of propriety, rule, and beauty is relative, so the sense and idea of grace that follows on from the idea of what is extraordinary, irregular, etc., in the proper and the beautiful, etc., is entirely relative. So that the graceful is relative neither more nor less than the beautiful, on the idea of which it depends, etc.

  But the extraordinary or irregular, etc., which does not belong and is wholly extraneous to any system of order, rule, harmony, propriety, that is, which is not in the beautiful, is not in any way graceful, nor does it pertain to the discussion of grace; as, e.g., an extraordinary animal, a phenomenon, etc. etc. (14 July 1821.)

  Many things, many particularities in human forms (the same applies to the rest) may be found that are on the boundary between grace and deformity, or the flawed, [1327] and to some they appear graceful, to others flaws, some they please, and others they expressly displease, or may even happen to please and displease the same person in different circumstances. A fact that confirms the derivation of the graceful from the extraordinary, that is, from what is up to a certain point outside of order. What is certain is that a man or a woman can behave in such a way that, even if she has remarkable or even serious flaws, they can themselves be used to make her more loved and pleasing and desired, and more than other women, precisely insofar as her imperfection is acknowledged. (I hold this to be true of both physical and moral, etc., flaws.) And this by means of nicely judged contrasts in the propriety, style, and dash of a person’s conduct, etc. etc. etc., in such a way that the flaw in question serves rather to throw beauty and propriety into relief than to destroy it, even if it be a very serious one. Examples of this are frequent, and often ridiculous, etc. (15 July 1821.)

  For p. 1323, beginning. This also occurs because that specific particularity of form described by Marmontel is indeed unusual, but nonetheless it is frequently seen, which gives rise to habituation. And this means that the specific form is not deemed to be unduly flawed, nor does it seem so irregular and improper as to destroy propriety, rule, harmony, and beauty in the [1328] other parts. If the same trivial flaw, without being in any way so great in itself, were unique or utterly extraordinary, it would never be a cause of grace. Grace may indeed arise from the extraordinary, but never from the unique or utterly extraordinary, which produces only deformity. Because the extraordinary in that case is excessive, not with respect to its own nature and form, but in its being extraordinary, that is, wholly outside of the habitual, etc. etc., so that, through its conflicting unduly with habit, it destroys the idea of propriety, an idea that depends on habituation, etc. If such a particularity should seem to be completely new and unique to a person, even if it is frequent, this person will conceive a sense of deformity (see p. 1186, margin), while others may conceive that of grace. And that person, too, will then conceive it, habituating himself to that object, or to the same particularity in other objects. And this could happen to him even when the flaw is really serious. (15 July 1821.)

  Intense and extraordinary activity is always, or very often, a cause for gaiety, so long as the body is not brought low by it. (15 July 1821.)

  [1329] Because military art was cultivated in Italy before anywhere else, or more than anywhere else at the beginning (as was the case with almost all the disciplines), this art consequently retains many words or terms that are Italian among foreigners and in their languages, that is, derived from Italian, and used in that art or science in Italy, and by our own writers. See Lancetti’s letter to Monti, in the Proposta, etc., vol. 2, part 1 in the Appendix.1 (15 July 1821.)

  It is often said that if a particular discomfort, etc. etc., were going to last, it would not be bearable. On the contrary, we would bear it far better through habituation and time. Conversely, we frequently say that a particular pleasure, etc., would have been very great if it had lasted. On the contrary, if it had lasted it would no longer have been pleasure. (15 July 1821.)

  A young child who is embarrassed and blushes when he speaks, and does not know how to behave or to talk in the presence of others, is never graceless. Unlike a youth who is not very practiced in good manners, and who wants to be, or appear to be. A shepherd girl who will not raise her eyes in the presence of new people, and does not know how to hold herself [1330] or behave, etc., is never graceless. Unlike a woman who is equally or even less timid, and better educated, and wants to shine, or hold her own in conversation, but does not know how or has not yet learned. Thus gracelessness is never a product of nature (on the contrary, the natural qualities described above are always graceful, etc. etc.). But it often is of art, and art is never a source of what is graceful or proper unless it has led man back to nature, or the imitation of nature, that is, to ease, unaffectedness, naturalness, etc. And the direction that art has to take is nearly always this one. To make us unlearn what we already knew without any effort, and take away the qualities that we naturally possessed. Then with a lot of hardship and exercise and time start teaching us the same things again and restore to us the same qualities, or others that are hardly any different. For the natural modesty, diffidence, shame, etc., that is indeed often found in many people is no longer natural—that has been lost—but artificial, something that bit by bit they have painfully recovered with the help of art. (15 July 1821.)

  I have said elsewhere [→Z 625–29] that vitality was much higher, and mortality lower, in the ancient system of nations than in the modern system. I do not mean by that [1331] to base my argument on the potentially greater duration of human life in those times compared to now. The histories prove that there is little if any discrepancy between the longest life of the ancients and the longest of the moderns (at any rate considering the times about which we have accurate information), and in this regard they belie the dreams of some. And there is a strong likelihood that nature has more or less set the possible bounds of human life, beyond which one can on no account pass, as it has set them for the other animals, in whose present longevity there is no difference apparent, I believe, from ancient times. At least this is what can be said with regard to the terrestrial system, and to the epoch of the terraqueous globe that is known to us, it being possible, however, that this system has witnessed other epochs and great revolutions. And there may also be (or have been) some longer- or shorter-living human races, just as we see notable differences of longevity in the races of, e.g., horses.1

  But I assume, and one must generally assume, that in antiquity as we know it one could not live longer than it is possible to live today. The greater vitality of an
cient times has to do not with potential but with outcome, that is to say, with the realization of potential. [1332] That is to say that, though the ancients were not able to live longer than the moderns, they lived, generally speaking, more than the moderns, that is, they approximated more closely than we do to the bounds set by nature, in accordance with the corresponding differences in constitution, circumstances, etc. Premature natural deaths were rarer, or less premature (and unnatural deaths, if more frequent than today, were in no way sufficiently numerous to even up the score). They retained vigor, health, etc. etc., at an age at which they are not retained nowadays. At each and every age they were, relatively speaking, hardier, healthier, in short, more full of vitality than the moderns, better adapted to the functions of the body and physically more powerful. The number of kinds of illnesses as well as of individual illnesses was lower, and they were less violent, etc., or more curable so far as the sick themselves were concerned, etc. etc. etc. So that the sum total of life was greater in ancient times, even though no one in particular could live longer than it is possible to live today, and than some individuals do. (16 July 1821.)