Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  This is indeed what happens. Languages that are perfectly formed and have a character decidedly their own tend not to be free, and these two qualities would seem to be at odds. As a matter of fact the French language—the only modern language (excluding Italian and Spanish) that can be said to be perfectly formed—lost its freedom as it was being formed and became inflexible and unable to adapt to anything that is not absolutely its own.1 The English language has preserved its freedom [1956] but by sacrificing any marked originality. It first modeled itself on French, and almost became French.1 Today, it is sometimes French, and sometimes it does not know what it is, but it is never perfectly English, and English writers themselves acknowledge the harm done to the freedom of their language, and how it is that it only subsists through lack or insufficiency of legislation, and therefore of a marked character and taste and genius of its own, and national flavor, etc. The same is the case in German. The Italian language is the only European language, after Greek, that has retained freedom in its character after this character was perfectly formed and rendered perfectly its own, and it owes this advantage to the antiquity of its formation.

  We therefore should not wonder at the German language being so very free today. All languages are like that at the outset. The Latin language, which was later subjected to very harsh legislation and became the least free of the ancient languages, was by virtue of its antiquity [1957] very free when it began, and this can be seen in the writings or fragments of its earliest authors. In those days, it would have been as able to adapt to translations as German is today. Subsequently, that is, when it was perfect, it became wholly incapable of doing so, that is, in its state of perfection it was capable of transferring the words, but not the spirit and life of foreign writings.

  If, then, we want to discuss the matter correctly, we shall compare the various degrees of liberty that perfect languages enjoy or enjoyed. We shall not admire the boundless liberty of imperfect languages, which are free in the sense that the nation of the Tahitians or the Hottentots is free.1 (20 Oct. 1821.)

  The whole of nature is adaptable in an infinite number of utterly different ways. It has, however, so arranged things that those agents and forces, animal or otherwise, whose task is to adapt it, do so as it had intended, [1958] and so as to answer to its system, its design, its original plan, the order it had wished for. If then man, very obviously doing violence to nature, and overcoming countless natural obstacles, has succeeded in adapting both himself and the part of nature that naturally depended upon him, and the far larger part that has come to depend upon him solely by virtue of his alteration of it; if he has succeeded, I repeat, in adapting all that in a way utterly different from that plan, that order that with wise reasoning we find to have been destined, intended, aimed at, targeted, wished for, disposed by nature: this cannot serve either as a proof against nature or as a proof that nature had not effectively wished for that original order; nor that the perfection of things, so far as man is concerned, has not been lost; nor that the course of our species, and of whatever depends on it or belongs to it, is natural; nor that nature did not really have [1959] in view, had not conceived and procured with all the forces at its disposal an order of things as simple in its constitutive principles, its elements, its productive forces, its qualities analyzed and decompounded, as it is certain, determinate, consistent, and at the same time harmonious, fecund, and very various in its effects, susceptible to countless modifications, and subject also to many accidental disharmonies, though perhaps for no other reason than to ensure a greater harmony. (20 Oct. 1821.)

  We alone are responsible for ridding the system of nature of those accidental obstacles that derive from our own accidental corruption, that is, opposition to the other parts of this same system, and to the order nature intended for us. (20 Oct. 1821.)

  What else can this order in all the parts of the system of nature be but the original one? That is to say, the only one that is actually found to exist in nature, and before [1960] the influence of other wills and other thinking agents. (20 Oct. 1821.)

  We do not, in fact, believe that the beasts, too, are not capable of corruption. Not as much as man because they are less adaptable. Not so generally, because being less adaptable they are less social. They are not so able to extend their sway over objects extraneous to their species, because the same nature that makes them so much less adaptable than man, gives them far less influence over things, an influence whose supreme degree in man derives from his supreme adaptability, which, in the system of nature, itself entirely adaptable, constitutes man’s superiority over all other beings. Yet they, too, are eminently capable of individual corruption, and of a kind that may be extended to a certain degree to their own particular societies. They are eminently capable of misdeeds, and the beast that out of idleness or otherwise kills its own offspring, sins against nature and against conscience. We know little of the nature of animals, and we believe that all of them [1961] in everything they do, etc. etc., conform to the laws and to the order of their nature. But this is also how they would judge man, and one animal species another, etc. (20 Oct. 1821.)

  From the fact that an essential quality of nature is the supreme adaptability and malleability of its constituent and original properties, and of its elementary principles, and of its compound whole, it is apparent how few truths, even within this system, and after it, can be absolute. (20 Oct. 1821.)

  Regarding the entirely different rhythm, etc., of poetry in different nations, see that of Skaldic poetry in Andrés, Storia, etc., Part 2, bk. 1, where he speaks of “Poetic taste in the Skalds,” tome 4, pp. 147ff.1 (20 Oct. 1821.)

  For p. 1856. The mind that is only open to pure truth is capable of few truths. It can discover little that is true, can know and feel few truths in their true aspect, [1962] and few true and great relationships between those truths, and cannot apply the results of its observations and reasonings very well. This is also borne out by usual experience in our imaginative southern regions, and the massive errors in opinion or conduct, etc., we read about all the time or hear or see in cold reasoners, impervious to every illusion. If you look for pure truth, you’ll not find it. The quest for truths, especially the most important ones, and above all those having to do with the science of man, needs the mixing and balanced tempering of utterly opposed qualities, imagination, feeling and reason, heat and cold, life and death, a lively character and a subdued one, a robust one and a languid one, etc. etc. (21 Oct. 1821.)

  “Un des grands avantages des dialectes germaniques en poésie, c’est la variété et la beauté de leurs épithètes. L’allemand sous ce rapport aussi, peut se comparer au grec; l’on sent dans un seul [1963] mot plusieurs images, comme, dans la note fondamentale d’un accord, on entend les autres sons dont il est composé, ou comme de certains couleurs réveillent en nous la sensation de celles qui en dependent. L’on ne dit en français que ce qu’on veut dire, et l’on ne voit point errer autour des paroles ces nuages à mille formes, qui entourent la poésie des langues du nord, et réveillent une foule de souvenirs. A la liberté de former une seule épithète de deux ou trois, se joint celle d’animer le langage en faisant avec les verbes des noms:” (likewise an attribute of Greek, Italian, and Spanish) “le vivre, le vouloir, le sentir, sont des expressions moins abstraites que la vie, la volonté, le sentiment; et tout ce qui tend à changer la pensée en action donne toujours plus de mouvement au style. La facilité de renverser à son gré la construction [1964] de la phrase” (I have said elsewhere [→Z 109–11, 950–52, 1226–28] that phrases and constructions, etc., like words, can be terms, and that the language with the greatest abundance of terms, to the detriment of words, is wont by analogy to be mathematical in its phrases, etc., and that French is all one great term) “est aussi très-favorable à la poésie, et permet d’exciter, par les moyens variés de la versification, des impressions analogues à celles de la peinture et de la musique” (vague impressions). “Enfin l’esprit général des dialectes teutoniques, c’est
l’indépendance: les écrivains cherchent avant tout à transmettre ce qu’ils sentent; ils diroient volontiers à la poésie comme Héloïse à son amant: ‘S’il y a un mot plus vrai, plus tendre, plus profond encore pour exprimer ce que j’éprouve, c’est celui-là que je veux choisir.’ Le souvenir des convenances de société poursuit en France le talent [1965] jusques dans ses émotions les plus intimes; et la crainte du ridicule est l’épée de Damoclès qu’aucune fête de l’imagination ne peut faire oublier” [“One of the great advantages of the Germanic dialects in poetry lies in the variety and beauty of their epithets. In this regard, too, German may be compared to Greek; in a single word one feels several images, as, in the fundamental note in a chord one hears the other sounds of which it is composed, or as certain colors evoke in us the sensation of those that depend on them. In French one only says what one means, and we do not see hovering around words these clouds of a thousand forms that surround the poetry composed in the languages of the north, and evoke a host of memories. To the freedom to form a single epithet out of two or three is joined that of animating the language by making nouns out of verbs: living, wishing, feeling are less abstract expressions than life, will, sentiment; and everything tending to change thought into action always imparts more movement to style. The ease with which one can at will invert the structure of a sentence is also very much to the advantage of poetry, and enables one to evoke, by the varied means of versification, impressions analogous to those of painting and music. Finally, the general spirit of the Teutonic dialects is one of independence: writers seek above all to transmit what they feel; they would willingly say to poetry what Héloïse said to her lover: ‘If there is a word that is yet truer, more tender and more profound to express what I feel, that is the one I want to choose.’ In France, the memory of the conventions of society pursues talent into the innermost recesses of the emotions; and the fear of ridicule is the sword of Damocles, that no festival of the imagination can make one forget”]. De l’Allemagne, tome 1, 2nd part, ch. 9, toward the end.1 (21 Oct. 1821.)

  Above and elsewhere, Staël very often mentions the German dialects and not the German language. The idiom of the Irish, which is different in many essential features to that of England, etc., is mentioned by Lady Morgan, France, tome 2, bk. 5 or 6, article “Langage.”2 (21 Oct. 1821.)

  For p. 1938. “En apprenant la prosodie d’une langue, on entre plus intimément dans l’esprit de la nation qui la parle que par quelque genre d’étude que ce puisse être. De là vient qu’il est amusant de prononcer des mots étrangers: on s’écoute comme si c’étoit un autre qui parlât: mais il [1966] n’y a rien de si délicat, de si difficile à saisir que l’accent: on apprend mille fois plus aisément les airs de musique les plus compliqués, que la prononciation d’une seule syllabe. Une longue suite d’années, ou les premières impressions de l’enfance, peuvent seules rendre capable d’imiter cette prononciation, qui appartient à ce qu’il y a de plus subtil et de plus indéfinissable dans l’imagination et dans le caractère national” [“In learning the prosody of a language, one enters more deeply into the spirit of the nation that speaks it than by means of any other kind of study whatsoever. Hence the amusement we derive from pronouncing foreign words; we listen to ourselves as if it were someone else speaking: but there is nothing so delicate, so difficult to grasp as accent; it is a thousand times easier to learn the most complicated airs in music than it is to pronounce a single syllable. A long succession of years, or the first impressions of childhood can alone render us capable of imitating this pronunciation, which pertains to what is most subtle and indefinable in the imagination and in the national character”]. (See here (1) the great variety of all that is the work and effect of nature, and has nothing to do with reason, (2) the immense and inevitable and natural variety that must at all costs arise, etc., in the speech of men, a variety which, being so difficult to saisir [grasp], constitutes a very great obstacle to mutual understanding. And how many very slight, but also indefinable and inimitable particularities has the pronunciation and accent of each country, or region, or individual!, etc.). De [1967] l’Allemagne, tome 1, 2nd part, ch. 9, beginning.

  This amusement has a number of different causes, all together and conjointly effective, though very diverse and even opposed. How many effects, how many pleasures, etc., derive individually and in one and the same circumstance and at one and the same point from contrary causes! And they would not be such were one of those causes, or their opposites, wanting! (21 Oct. 1821.)

  For p. 1946. French people who are ignorant or unaccustomed to writing, or who are children or beginners, printers, etc., frequently fall into error by writing or printing as they pronounce. In other words, instead of the letter or syllable prescribed by their orthography, they put the one that in the French alphabet corresponds to the pronunciation of that same letter or syllable, e.g., instead of en writing or printing on,1 instead of au, o, etc., and likewise they leave out those letters or syllables that although according to their spelling should be written, are not pronounced, or vice versa, etc. This is [1968] certainly not something that befalls Italians, except when they mispronounce, etc. What else does it demonstrate but the imperfection of French writing, etc., and the fact that that writing, in not corresponding to their alphabet, does not actually correspond to the pronunciation, and is not natural?, etc.

  Furthermore, when the French, the English, etc., pronounce Latin as they do their own languages and pronounce it in a different way to that in which they pronounce the same signs in the Latin alphabet, how do they hope to convince us that their Latin pronunciation could be as true or plausible as ours? Who would believe that written Latin had this grave defect of not corresponding to the pronunciation, a characteristic found only in these modern languages for reasons that I have indicated elsewhere [→Z 1659‒60], one that is naturally unknown in every well-ordered system of writing?

  As for the genuine and ancient pronunciation of isolated signs in the Latin alphabet, Latin writers do here and there expressly instruct us about this, and show us that it was certainly not English or German, etc. The Latin [1969] diphthongs, whose pronunciation does not today correspond to the value of these signs in the Latin alphabet, were in times past pronounced as they were written, that is to say, ae was pronounced, as the spelling primer teaches, a and e, not e, and not as au or ai are pronounced in French o or ay, whereas their alphabet would require a and u, a and i. (22 Oct. 1821.)

  The Hebrew language is not only poor in comparison to our own, on account of the scarcity of written texts that we have in that language, but it is poor in regard to itself, poor even in the writings we do have, and even in proportion to their scarcity, in which proportion it could be far richer, indeed, it could in that proportion be as rich as the richest languages in the world. It is therefore wrong to relate its poverty to that cause, thereby representing it as a poverty relative only to us. I set out the real causes elsewhere [→Z 806, 1289‒91]. Rather it is true that not having been much written in its heyday is the principal but not relative cause of its poverty. (23 Oct. 1821.)

  [1970] The punctilious use of punctuation by the French corresponds to, and is analogous to, consistent with, and appropriate to the character of their words, constructions, etc., and of the whole of their language, and writing. (22 Oct. 1821.)

  Mediocre spirits can always be easily persuaded to believe or do something, and in one way or another be brought under the control of a man of talent, or cunning, or anyone who for whatever reason has obtained, or knows how to obtain, a certain ascendancy over them. Stubbornness is characteristic of small and great spirits, or spirits that are above or below mediocrity to a greater or lesser extent, but more the former than the latter. The same is true of the susceptibility to consolation. Except that great spirits are less susceptible than small ones, because the truth, which they understand very well, is never consoling, and because the consoler can never deceive them, which is the only way of consoling. (22 Oct. 1821.)

 
In all the conjugations, indeed in all the verbs from all three of the daughter languages of Latin, the constant characteristic of the future indicative is the r. It is just the reverse in the Latin conjugations known to us, in whose future indicative the r is never characteristic, and never features [1971] in the ending. Now, this property of the three languages cannot be attributed to the particular corruption which the Latin language underwent in France, Spain, Italy, independently one from the other. Because it is shared, and is utterly consistent in all three, a common origin is clearly indicated. Yet, since this latter is not the written Latin language, it cannot help but be the ancient vulgar language which spread equally and was communicated to the three nations. It therefore seems obvious to me that in Vulgar Latin r was a characteristic of all future indicatives. This property of Vulgar Latin must, in my opinion, be regarded as proven. I believe it likely that, in place of the future indicative, Vulgar Latin used the future subjunctive, whose characteristic feature is still the r in the Latin that we are acquainted with. Thus, e.g., the future subjunctive legero corresponds very exactly to the Italian leggerò [I will read], and is its source. [1972] And in fact I note that although regularly the r is wholly excluded from the ending of the future indicative in written Latin, nonetheless it is a characteristic feature, as it is with us, in quite a few anomalous or defective, etc., Latin verbs whose future indicative does have the very same ending as the future subjunctive has in the other verbs. For example, ero, potero, etc. etc., odero, meminero, etc., odierò, potrò, etc. Now anomalous or defective, etc., verbs (or nouns) tend to be the most ancient in each language, and to be a sure sign of ancient custom and its properties, just as the vulgar form of each language is in any case the greatest preserver of its ancient properties.