Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  Another important source of richness and variety [1333] in the Italian language is its huge capacity to employ one and the same word in different forms, constructions, expressions, etc., and to vary its meaning at will by means of this variation in forms, or use, or positioning, etc., which at times wholly alters the sense of the word and at times gives it a slight inflection serving to denote a slight difference from the thing originally denoted. I do not address here the huge capacity for metaphors, which is a very characteristic, indeed essential, property of the Italian language (of which we could not divest it, without wholly distorting it), and natural to such lively and imaginative minds as our fellow citizens have. I refer only to being able to use, e.g., one and the same verb in an active, passive, neuter, and neuter passive sense; in one or another case, and this with or without an article, with one or with several nouns at once, and even with different cases in one and the same passage; with one, or with several infinitives of other verbs, governed by one or other preposition, by one or other case mark, or else free of any preposition or case mark; with gerunds; with one or other adverb, or particle (that, if, how much, etc.), and so on. This capacity not only enhances the variety and the elegance that arise from novelty, etc., and from the unexpected, and, in short, the beauty of the discourse, [1334] but also to a supreme degree its utility. It multiplies ad infinitum the capital and the resources of the language, and serves to distinguish the minor differences between things and to circumscribe signification and to modify it, for Italian is able to express a thousand new things very easily and clearly with old words newly modified, but modified in accordance with the precise style of the language, etc. All the cultured languages have, and had, this necessary capacity to a greater or lesser degree, but in this, too, our language indubitably yields neither to Greek nor to Latin, and surpasses all the modern languages. And so characteristic is its boldness and preeminence in this capacity that it represents one of the defining features of the Italian language, when it is mature and applied to literature. Why ever would we then wish to divest it of its most characteristic attribute, and of the benefit that results from it? Why ever would we wish to deny Italian writers leave to continue to make use of it? If it was imparted to the language by its founders and first makers, etc. And if there is no instance of the particular use of a particular word in the Dictionary, should it then be condemned, even though there may be a thousand perfectly similar instances of the same kind and in other words, and even though such a use may be perfectly in accord with this capacity of the language, and with its own character? Why should a living language lose the capacities that in it alone [1335] are living and fruitful properties, and only keep the material of already used and recorded words and phrases, which are sterile properties, and so far as these capacities are concerned, dead properties? What mad pedantry is it to judge a word or phrase not by ear or the character of the language but by the Dictionary? That is to say, not by one’s own ear but by that of others. Indeed, by the pure norm of chance, since it is mere chance whether the old writers used or did not use one or other word in one or another way, etc., and whether if they did perhaps use it it has or has not been recorded and noted by the Lexicographers. But it is not chance that they have given or not given language the capacity to use it, etc., and that that word, form, etc., agrees with, or does not agree with the attributes of the language formed by them, and with its custom, etc. And this cannot be judged by the Dictionary, but by an ear trained through long and assiduous reading and study, not of the Dictionary but of the Classics, an ear which is a complete, practical, and faithful interpreter and witness to the character of the language, absolutely the only norm by which to judge the purity of a word or idiom, and as to whether it can be used, etc. And this was the sole guide of all the Classic writers, [1336] indeed in every language, and likewise of our own before the Dictionary. For the latter’s impact on the purity of writing, and how much it has helped to preserve the purity of the language, which is what it would seem it was mainly meant to help, see Monti’s Preface to the second volume of the Proposta.

  I do not mean here just to defend new uses of words (in the sense noted above) for the sole purpose of utility, but also that which is done for the sake of pure elegance, without there being any need, but where the novelty of the word serves to give the expression, etc. etc., that air of unfamiliarity and that indefinable something of the mildly unusual, set apart from ordinary custom, from which elegance, etc., derives. (17 July 1821.)

  With regard to, and as proof of what I have said pp. 1322–28, that grace derives from the extraordinary itself, and that when it is too much, in one direction or another, it has the opposite effect, observe how the unusual in written texts, in language, in style, is the chief source of affectation, impropriety, barbarity, inelegance, and ugliness, and yet the unusual is the sole source of elegance. See Monti, Proposta, etc., vol. 1, paragraph 1, Appendix, pp. 215, beyond the middle of the page [1337] –216, and p. 1312, last paragraph. (17 July 1821.)

  For p. 1312, margin. As an example of the indefinite one could use Virgil, Aeneid 1, 462: “Sunt lacrimae rerum: et mentem mortalia tangunt” [“There are tears in things, and mortal sorrows touch the heart”]. As for the irregular, we have seen pp. 1322–28 and in the above thought, that elegance in the strict sense of the term always derives from what is unfamiliar and set apart from ordinary speech, which in one way or another is always something irregular, whether because that word is alien, and hence using it is, I would not say against the rules, but irregular, or outside of the rules, or because that phrase is newly invented, like it or not, etc. And observe that, always presupposing that the immoderate—which produces the contrary of elegance—has been excluded, within the bounds of that irregularity which can be elegant, a greater or lesser elegance is very often, and is felt to be, in proportion to a greater or lesser irregularity. This is not only as regards language, but as regards style, etc. There is never elegance, strictly speaking, in order. There will be harmony, symmetry, etc., but in pure, rigorous order there cannot be elegance. Nor can there be nature in it, but rather reason, since order is always a sign of reason in anything. (17 July 1821.)

  [1338] For p. 1113, middle. Habitare [to be wont to have; to dwell], which in its metaphoric meaning (long since become its proper meaning) of abitare [to dwell] (note that it is often used actively with the accusative, and passively) is manifestly continuative and not frequentative, comes from habitus [condition or state of something], from habere [to have]. See Forcellini. (17 July 1821.)

  Because medicine since Hippocrates has made less progress and undergone fewer essential changes than, we could say, any other science in an equivalent stretch of time, and hence remains closer than any other to the condition and degree, etc., in which it came to us from Greece, that part of its terminology which consists of Greek words is perhaps greater than in any other science or discipline, comparatively and relatively speaking. I am not saying anything about Rhetoric, etc. (17 July 1821.) See p. 1403.

  Hebrew introduces or supposes a simple sheva (that is to say an unvoiced e that does not constitute a syllable), explicit or inferred beneath, that is to say after, all consonants that do not have another vowel, either at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of words.1 Reasonably enough, because our organs naturally end with a very delicate e, so that not only when pronouncing an isolated consonant, or a word ending in a consonant, and not followed [1339] immediately by a word beginning with a vowel, etc., but also when pronouncing two or more consonants in a row in one and the same word, such as TRAvaglio, etc., that or those consonants which do not have any other vowel are sustained imperceptibly by a very faint e, and they can never purely and simply lean on the consonant that follows. Except when those two or more consonants make such a sound that, though represented by several characters, it is in effect a single character, and is the equivalent of a single letter (a letter not represented as such in the alphabet, and there are quite a few of them, on which see the oth
er thoughts on the richness of the natural alphabet as pronounced) as with the double consonants (tuTTo), as with the consonants g and l in the word travaglio cited above, etc. Not so in the case of x, although it is represented by a single character, etc. (17 July 1821.)

  For p. 1257. In short, this idea, although it immediately forms part of ideal beauty, is daughter of the usual mother of all ideas, that is, of the experience which derives from our sensations, rather than of a teaching and of a form breathed into us and impressed upon us by nature in the mind before experience, a point which, after Locke, needs no further demonstration. But what I have to prove is that these sensations, our only teachers, teach us that things are so because they are so, [1340] not because they absolutely must be so, that is, because there is absolute beauty and absolute good, etc. This we also deduce from our sensations (and we deduce it naturally, just as we naturally deduce innate ideas from them, of which opinion this is a consequence), but it is in fact what we cannot deduce from them. And we cannot, precisely because everything is taught to us by our sensations alone, which are relative to the pure mode of being, etc., and because no notion or idea is derived by us from a principle prior to experience. Hence it is clear that the destruction of innate ideas destroys the principle of absolute goodness, beauty, perfection, and of their contraries. That is to say, the principle of a perfection, etc., that has a foundation, a logic, a form prior to the existence of the objects which contain it, and hence is eternal, immutable, necessary, primordial, and existing before the said objects, and independent of them.1 But where does this logic, this form exist? And what does it consist of? And how can we recognize or know it, if we derive every idea from sensations relating only to existing objects? To assume absolute good and absolute beauty is to return to the ideas of Plato, and to revive innate ideas after having destroyed them, since once they are removed there is no other possible [1341] reason why things should absolutely and abstractly and necessarily be thus or thus, with these good and those bad, independently of every will, of every accident, of every concrete circumstance, which in reality is the sole reason for everything, and is therefore always and only relative. Hence everything is not good, beautiful, true, bad, ugly, false except relatively, and hence the propriety of things with respect to one another is relative, if I can put it this way, absolutely. (17 July 1821.)

  In short, the principle of things, and indeed of God, is nothingness. Since no thing is absolutely necessary, that is, there is no absolute reason why it cannot not be, or not be in a specific way, etc. And all things are possible, that is to say, there is no absolute reason why anything cannot be, or be in this or that way, etc. And there is no absolute discrepancy between all the possibilities, nor any absolute difference between all the possible goodnesses and perfections.

  Which means that a first and universal principle of things either does not exist, nor ever did, or if it exists or existed, we cannot know it in any way, owing to our not having nor being able to have the smallest [1342] datum in order to judge things before things, and to know them beyond the purely real fact. We, in accordance with the natural error of believing truth to be absolute, believe that we know this principle. We attribute to it, to the utmost degree, all that we judge to be perfection, and the necessity not only to be, but to be in the specific way that we judge to be absolutely and entirely perfect. But these perfections are such only in the system of things that we know, that is to say, in only one of the possible systems, indeed, only in some parts of it, and not in others, as I have proved in so many other passages. And so they are not perfections absolutely, but relatively, nor are they perfections in themselves, and considered separately, but in the beings to which they belong, and relatively to their nature, end, etc., nor are they perfections that are greater or lesser than any other, etc., and they do not, therefore, constitute the idea of an entity that is absolutely perfect and superior in perfection to all possible entities, but they can also be imperfections, and sometimes they are, albeit relatively, etc. Also the need to be, or to be in a specific way, and to be independently of every cause, is perfection relative to our own opinions, etc. What is certain is that once the Platonic forms preexisting things are destroyed, God, too, is destroyed.1 (18 July 1821.)

  Our gli, and our gn, and sounds like them, are distinct from all the others, and if one wished to represent them exactly, it would be appropriate to do so with particular, distinct letters. For gli, though it partakes of the sound of g and of l, partakes of them as [1343] a related sound, in the manner of so many others, which, however, are distinguished from their relatives, and have their own characteristics. But in reality it is neither g nor l, and does not precisely contain either one of the two, and is a distinct consonant, and a single one, even where one wishes to call it a compound, like z, which would be ill expressed by ts or ds, etc. Likewise f is different from p, even though it may be composed of this sound, and of an aspirate or breathing, and the Greeks in ancient times would express it with the letter p, and with that of the aspirate, that is to say, H. The sound that really contains g and l is in our word Inglese [English] or in the French aigle [eagle], indeed, generally in the French gl, which is very different from our gli. Nevertheless, praise is due for having represented this sound (so as to simplify the alphabet) with two letters in whose sound it partakes, which demonstrates the subtlety with which the articulated word has been analyzed until several sounds were decomposed, which are not precisely equivalent to any other. The Italian language is especially deserving of such praise, since the French represent the aforesaid sound with two ls, as do the Spanish. An inadequate and inappropriate character and one that evinces less subtlety in analysis. See p. 1345, paragraph 2. In which regard, I would like to refer to what Mr. Beauzée says (Encyclopédie méthodique, art. “H”), speaking of another letter, that is, of the h: “Il semble qu’il auroit été plus raisonnable de supprimer de [1344] notre orthographe tout caractere muet: et celle des Italiens doit par-là même arriver plutôt que la nôtre à son point de perfection, parce qu’ils ont la liberté de supprimer les h muetes” [“It seems that it would have been more reasonable to suppress every mute letter from our orthography: and that of the Italians, rather than our own, must thereby attain its acme of perfection, because they are at liberty to suppress the mute Hs”].1 My observation may again do much to show the degree to which the Italian script and its system is more philosophical and at the same time more natural than perhaps any other. See p. 1339. (17 July 1821.) The gl and gn, etc., have a part of g and a part of l, etc., but they do not contain these two letters in their entirety, and are not either one of them. They are therefore genuine, actual letters, and not double letters, because something with two halves is not double. I would say the same of z, but not of x, which contains two whole letters, and is simply a cipher, that is, a double character (not letter).

  For p. 1246, margin. I have said elsewhere [→Z 321–24, 1021] that the French language is universal, also because the written differs little from the spoken form, by contrast with Italian. The latter point is not at odds with the present observations: (1) because it refers especially to, and is true of, the taste, structure, form, and the whole corpus of the language and of written French style, which differs very little from spoken, but it does not refer to particular vernacular words, expressions, and structures; (2) because cultured French differs somewhat less from popular French than is the case with Italian. And this, first, because of social and political, etc., circumstances, which are very different in the one nation compared with the other; second, [1345] because the Italian language, being divided into so many popular dialects, has a shared cultured dialect that is necessarily very distinct from all the popular tongues, by which I mean a shared dialect, not only written but spoken by all educated people in Italy, in every appropriate circumstance, etc. Now the singularity of the written Italian language consists precisely in its having drawn more than any other from popular speech, which is so distinct from cultured speech, and especially f
rom a particular vernacular dialect, Tuscan, and in its having managed to use it, and ennoble it, and adapt whatever it has drawn from it to literature. But written French differs little from the French used in conversation, etc.; where this does differ from the language of the common people, the latter has no influence and provides nothing to French literary language. (3) I have already said [→Z 1021] that from the beginning, that is, when written Italian chiefly followed the custom of drawing on popular speech—a custom which it has now nearly, and wrongly, abandoned—then it was in effect quite similar to spoken, etc. Even today it comes close to [1346] polite speech, more closely than written Latin, etc., ever did, but not to popular speech, which is so different for us from the cultured kind. (19 July 1821.)

  Many qualities that strike some as annoying and uncouth, strike others as graceful. Just as men speaking phlegmatically often pleases women, but seems lazy to us. The converse will apply to women’s speech. Likewise certain languid, flaccid, drawling, fussy, simpering pronunciations or dialects, as for example, the Macerata, etc., dialect in our region. (19 July 1821.)

  For p. 1343, margin. This, too, however, serves to demonstrate that the sound in question is not that of g and l, which is indeed represented by the French, etc., with gl, and by us, too, as I have said. On the other hand, the sound of our gli and the French ill, and of the Spanish ll, was missing from the Latin and Greek languages, which did however have the sound of gl, as in Aegle1 (Virgil, Eclogues 6, 20–21), γλυκὺς [sweet], etc. (19 July 1821.)