Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  The festivals of the Jewish people were all religious. But among all the peoples of antiquity, and especially, indeed, among the Jews, religion was closely bound up with the history [1442] of the nation. With their government always partaking of theocracy, their customs so greatly and continuously influenced by religion (as can still be seen today), etc., the opinions that the Jews entertained about their origins, etc., mingled the origins and development of the nation with those of worship, the glories of religion with those of the nation, etc. etc., more perhaps than was the case among any other people (on account perhaps of their greater antiquity). All the festivals of the Pentateuch recall and consecrate and perpetuate the memory of some great event of the ancestors, of some great favor accorded by God to the nation, etc., and they are all national and patriotic festivals, pertaining either to the exploits of their Heroes regarded no less as national figures than as saints, or to the works of God, considered by them to be virtually the head of the nation and almost as the leader of their Heroes, guide, condottiere, instructor of their ancestors, and the immediate origin of their very race.

  That is not the case with our religious festivals, [1443] which are indeed popular, but have nothing national about them, since the noble deeds of modern nations and the exploits of our ancient or modern national Heroes have nothing in common, or any close link with, the noble deeds of religion and the exploits of the Christian Heroes, who furthermore are not always our compatriots, unlike all those whose memory was celebrated by the Jews or other nations. Indeed, they very often do not belong in any way to our homeland. And I leave aside the spirituality of the worship that takes place in Christian festivals, a spirituality quite different from that of the Jews and other ancient peoples, and wholly incompatible with enthusiasm, great illusions, arousal of life, activity, etc. The festival of dedication of the Temple of Solomon had a theme that was more material than our own, but was nonetheless more distinct from the national than other Jewish festivals, an effect of the times and the monarchical system under which it was instituted. Yet it still contained the national in no small part, given the important share the nation had [1444] in its building, the solemnity and national character of the dedication made by Solomon, the annual visit paid by the nation to the temple, the general attachment to religion and its influence on the life and mores of the people, the testimonies of ancient history, etc., that the temple contained and the fact that the whole of the Jewish Religion was enclosed within and identified with the temple, the affection in which it was held by the people, as may then be seen in its rebuilding by Ezra and Nehemiah1 when the old and venerable wept in remembrance of the earlier temple, etc. This new temple was perhaps yet more national, because of its having been built by the nation’s own hands, and under the protection of national arms against the Samaritans, etc. So that the festival of the temple, both old and new was, we can say, the memory of a national endeavor.

  Regarding religious festivals among other ancient peoples, and the manner in which they were intertwined with national ones, e.g., that of Minerva in Athens, etc., one may easily consult historians and scholars, etc. For other nations also attributed mythological origins and exploits to themselves, etc. etc. etc.

  [1445] Regarding the national and patriotic festivals of the Greeks and Romans, and their paramount influence on the heroism of the nation, see Thomas, Essai sur les éloges, ch. 6, pp. 65–66; ch. 12, p. 149; ch. 10, p. 117; Meurs and the other authors of De festis Graecorum or Romanorum.1

  Roman triumphs were genuine national festivals, though they were not anniversaries. Nor was any harm done through the fact that perhaps the main share of the honor of the festival was accorded to a living man. (1) It was not he who decreed it for himself, nor a troop of slaves and flatterers who granted it to him, but the senate, etc., which was his equal, etc. (2) No matter how powerful he was, he was never more powerful than the people, which celebrated the festival. Indeed, he was liable some day or other to go back to the people, just as any private person was. (3) His example was not inimitable for the Romans, since a career in public service was open to one and all. (4) Although he was the central figure, the festival was nonetheless national, because it concerned the victories won by the nation itself over its enemies, and not those won by the General. (5) The General was a [1446] genuine representative of the nation, being chosen by it, and not a representative of a prince or a representative, as they say, of God, etc. (6) The triumph was, in short, a prize that the free and sovereign nation granted spontaneously to one of its subjects, and so the effect of these festivals was that of great prizes which excite emulation and foster the desire and hope of winning them. But the festivals of a living prince, even if decreed by the nation, would be decreed by a nation subject to its sovereign, which degrades the notion of the prize, especially since one knows full well that the prince cares little about being so rewarded by his servants. Nor can it excite emulation, and inspire hope, for it is known that people of far greater merit could not obtain that honor, etc., which is bestowed on the prince alone, or someone chosen by him who is his creature, and whose merit in being so honored depends on his will, etc. etc.

  Similar considerations might apply to the athletic games of the Greeks, and to the honors bestowed on the victors even though [1447] they were still living, etc.

  The civilized world no longer witnesses any such national or patriotic festivals, of any kind, apart from an occasional Te Deum and other ceremonies held for the victory of a prince. A type of festival that, because it is still the prince’s and has little impact on the people, etc., does not deserve to be called national, even when that victory really is of benefit to the nation. And so it never excites any emulation or any good effect, other than empty merriment, since the people only takes part in it (if, indeed, it takes part at all) as an invited guest, that is, the same part it had in the original endeavor, and which it might have in the fruits of the endeavor, should it so please the prince.

  The only surviving popular festivals are therefore religious festivals, which among us are wholly distinct from national festivals, and anyway hardly popular at all now, because, with very few exceptions, the majority are restricted to the churches, especially in the big cities, where amusements are everyday and enough on their own to keep people occupied.

  Yet the institution of religious festivals [1448] is a very beautiful one, as I have said, though it comes from ancient customs, and from practices long predating Christianity, as I have demonstrated, among which we should note, as being more strictly analogous to our festivals, the custom of the followers of various philosophers to celebrate every year with banquets, etc., the birthday feast of the ἀρχηγὸς [founder] of their sect. See Porphyry, Vita Plotini, ch. 15, and my notes there.1 It is well known that the early Christians used to assemble for banqueting, etc., at the feast days of their heroes, etc. After all, the birthday festivals both of still living private persons and, I believe, of the emperors, etc., whether dead or living, etc., were very common among the ancients, and still are even today, but they form no part of our argument here. (3 August 1821.) See p. 1605, paragraph 2.

  It is true that the poetry characteristic of our times is sentimental poetry.2 Yet a man of genius, having reached a certain age, when his heart is withered by experience and knowledge, can more easily write beautiful poems of imagination than he can poems of feeling, because one can in some way command the former, but not the latter, or far less so. And if when a poet is writing he is not [1449] warmed by the imagination, he can happily pretend to be, with the help of remembrance of a time when he was, and recalling and gathering together and depicting his past imaginings. It is not so easy where passion is concerned. And generally I believe that an old poet is better suited to poetry of the imagination than to that of his own feeling, that is, quite different from philosophy, thought, etc.1 And many actual instances, ancient and modern, could perhaps be adduced, despite what at first appears to be the case, because the imagination is proper to children,
and feeling to adults. (3 August 1821.) See p. 1548.

  Not only did the contemporaries, e.g., of Homer feel and appreciate his simplicity far less than we do, as I have said elsewhere [→Z 1420], but neither did Homer perceive himself to be simple. He did not believe, did not seek to be cherished for this; he did not feel, did not fully know the merit of and taste for simplicity (either in general, or with regard to his own), as we can see from the immoderate epithets, etc., and other ornaments of which he gives generously and inappropriately, like children do [1450] when they first begin to compose and focus on just the opposite of simplicity, that is, being mannered, ornate, etc., which they think is the strength of the work. Signs of a childish art, an infancy of art that produced simplicity unwittingly, and deliberately produced these little flaws that are caused by simplicity, flaws which a more mature art has readily managed to avoid when striving for simplicity, which, however, it has never been able to achieve.1 The same is true of Ariosto, etc., on whose flaws I have commented in my first thoughts and elsewhere [→Z 4–5, 700], and of our writers of the fourteenth century, who were very mannered and idiotically encumbered with ornaments in many things, although by natural temperament they were extremely simple, etc. (4 August 1821.)

  From what I have said elsewhere [→Z 1254], that intelligence is ease in contracting habit, and that this ease includes ease in changing habits, in contracting new ones to the detriment of past ones, etc., it follows that great intellects must ordinarily be extremely mutable (in opinions, tastes, styles, fashions, etc.), not as a result of [1451] the sort of volubility which arises out of frivolity, which in turn arises out of limited strength in intelligence and conceptions and sensations, etc., but as a result of the facility to contract habit, and hence to progress. Mutability, therefore, when it leads one ever further forward, even if it produces conditions in man that are wholly contrary to those of the past, is always a sign of great intelligence, or rather its precondition. And indeed one tends to find a very great difference, e.g., between the first and last works of a great writer (whether in genre, in style, in opinions, in the particular merits or qualities, etc., or in all these aspects at once), and none or very few in the works of mediocre, or markedly inferior writers. Compare Tasso’s Rinaldo,1 or Metastasio or Alfieri’s first tragedies with their last, etc. So it is also with inclinations in life or in study, in literary taste, etc. So too as regards his habits and material skills, etc. (4 Aug. 1821.)

  Even supreme intellects in their [1452] very earliest stages are more or less at the same level as markedly inferior intellects at the same stage. From this it is clear that a great mind is only forged through practice and habituation, the use of which then facilitates the habit of becoming habituated, which is tantamount to saying it produces talent in him, etc. etc. (4 Aug. 1821.)

  Each man is like a soft dough, susceptible to every possible shape, impression, etc. It hardens over time, and at first it is difficult, and finally it is impossible to give it a new shape, etc. Such is each man, and such he becomes as he grows older. This is the characteristic difference between man and other creatures. Their greater or lesser original conformability is the principal difference in nature between the different species of animal, and between the different individuals of one and the same species. The greater or lesser acquired conformability (through the general use of habituations, which produces an aptitude for particular habituations) and the different forms received [1453] by each individual of each species, is all the accidental difference there is between individuals. So consider how rational is the belief that things are absolute, even within the bounds, and the real order of nature as it is, and expand this thought.1

  From such observations it follows that nature has left more to do for their lives to those beings to which it has given greater conformability, that is, qualities and faculties which are more easily modified, diversified, and developed in various different ways, and capable of producing more diverse and more numerous effects although they do not produce them in their natural state. Such is man above all others. I have said in another thought [→Z 1370–72] what nature may have left him to do. (4 August 1821.) See p. 1538, paragraph 1.

  It is an error to distinguish the memory from the intellect, as if it occupied a separate region of our brain. Memory is simply the faculty the intellect has of habituating itself to conceptions, and it differs from the faculty of conceiving or of understanding, etc. And so necessary is it to the intellect that, without it, it is not capable of any action (the action of the intellect differs from mere conception, etc.), because every [1454] action of the intellect is composite (that is, composed of premises and consequence), nor can the consequence be derived without the memory of the premises. But this faculty, no matter how deeply inherent it is in the intellect, and which is often barely distinguishable from the faculty of conceiving and of reasoning, is, however, different. It may drastically fade, etc., but the faculty of conceiving, etc., not fade or be lost, etc., and it may also originally be weak in an intellect that is well provided with the other faculties. Note, however (against what is usually said about intellect being independent, etc., of memory), that there is almost no great intellect which does not have a great memory, at any rate to begin with. And this (1) because the aptitude for becoming habituated, etc., which constitutes great intellects naturally causes and also includes the faculty of memory, etc.; (2) because an intellect without memory, even if it be great, is not recognized to be such, for it is unable to produce notable results, etc.

  In any case, the faculty of habituation, which is what memory consists of, is in many respects independent of the will, like other habituations [1455] which are material and outside the mind, etc. This may be seen both from thousands of other things, and because very often a sensation experienced in the present recalls to the memory another experienced in the past, without the will contributing, or even having the time to contribute to the recalling of it. Thus a song reminds us of, e.g., what we were doing on another occasion when we heard the same song, etc. Thus Alfieri, at the beginning of his Life, notes one of his recollections that is relevant to this point, etc.1 (4 August 1821.)

  The force of habituation in man, and how it is that the development of all his faculties depends upon it, may be seen in his external organs, by comparing those of children (and still more those of babies) with those of adults, not with respect to particular abilities but regarding the everyday use each man makes of his organs, e.g., the hands. Which we find to be utterly inept in children for the same tasks that we perform quite easily. And this is not just because of the weakness, etc., of the organs which is inherent in that age, but also altogether independently of that, because of the lack both of the habits [1456] particular to one operation or another and of the general exercise that enables the organ to execute without the least difficulty a wholly new operation, etc., of the kind that happens, where, e.g., the hands are concerned, each and every day. So that observing the external organs of children, one would scarcely believe that they were the same as ours and that they had potentially the same capacities, etc. The organs of animals are less needful of habituation, according to what I have said pp. 1452–53. What is man? An animal more capable of habituation than others. (5 August 1821.)

  Frissonner [to quake, shiver], etc. φρύττω or φρύσσω [to roast], etc. (5 August 1821.)

  Let us again note the impact of opinion on the beautiful. I have said elsewhere that elegance consists in something irregular [→Z 1312, 1323, 1336]. So it is the case that while a hundred elegant details are appreciated and give pleasure in established writers, countless others which would deserve the same name, and are of the same nature, do not seem to be elegant and do not give pleasure, because their irregularity features in authors who are not sufficiently well established, even though they are of real merit, e.g., if they are modern, and so cannot have [1457] the authority of the ages in their favor. Indeed, the same phrases, metaphors, etc. etc., which, when found in an established author will s
mack of elegance, when found in an author who is not established will smack of uncouthness, ignorance, undue boldness, blundering, rashness, etc., unless we remind ourselves that they have the backing of a highly esteemed writer. And if we do remember at that moment, or even after our mind has passed judgment, we will immediately alter it, and find real taste in what had caused us real distaste. This effect is very frequent in studies of literature, and may be extended to considerations of many kinds, regarding the pleasure that derives from the imitation of the good and the classical, and very often from its counterfeiting. Pleasure that is neither natural nor absolute, but secondary and artificial, and yet genuine pleasure all the same. Indeed, so genuine that the reading of the classics, in my opinion, could never have given the ancients the pleasure it gives us, and equally, contemporary [1458] classics will never give us as much enjoyment as the ancient ones do (something that is as certain as can be), nor as much as they will give our descendants. (6 Aug. 1821.)