In the notes to my Canzoni (Canzone 6, stanza 3, line 1) I have said and demonstrated that the metaphor doubles or multiplies the idea represented by the word.1 This is one of the principal reasons that metaphor is so beautiful, so poetic a figure, and is numbered by all the masters among the most important aspects and tools of poetic style, and also of ornate and sublime, etc., prose. I mean that it is so pleasing because it represents many ideas at one and the same time (in contrast to terms). And this is also why novelty of metaphor is still recommended to the poet (and it is a remarkable effect and sign of his gift and enthusiasm and poetic nature, and inventive and creative faculty). Because a large, indeed infinite part of our speech is metaphoric, but that does not mean that the metaphors of which it is ordinarily made up awaken more than one simple idea. [2469] For the original idea properly signified by those metaphoric words was consumed over time by the metaphoric meaning, which alone remains, as I’ve also said loc. cit. And this happens even when the same word has not entirely, indeed not at all, lost its proper meaning but preserves it and offers it in due course. E.g., accendere [to light, to kindle] still has its proper force. But if I say accender l’animo, l’ira [to kindle the soul, anger], etc., which are metaphors, the idea that they awaken is a single one, that is, the metaphoric, because long usage has brought it about that in such metaphors we no longer hear the original meaning of accendere but only the metaphoric. And so such words come to have several meanings that are almost completely separate from one another, almost entirely simple, and that can all by now equally be called their own. Which can’t happen with new metaphors, in which the multiplicity of ideas remains, and we feel all the delight of the metaphor: especially if it is bold, that is, if it is not so close that the ideas, although different, [2470] are almost confused, and the mind of the reader or listener is not forced to any unusual action or energy to find and see at once the relation, the link, the affinity, the correspondence of these ideas, or to run quickly, as if in a single point, from one to the other, in which the pleasure of their multiplicity consists. For, on the contrary, metaphors that are too far apart are wearying, or the reader cannot take in the space between the ideas represented by the metaphor, or doesn’t take it in instantly but only after some time, and so the simultaneous multiplicity of the ideas, in which the pleasure consists, no longer occurs. (10 June 1822.) See p. 2663.
The Latin word proma, feminine substantive of promus [steward, butler], should be added to the Lexicon and the Appendix of Forcellini. Forcellini says simply, Promus i, m. (that is, masculine) and has no examples of the feminine, except one where it is an adjective. It’s in a fragment of the first book of Cicero’s Oeconomicorum, cited by Columella, and in my edition of Xenophon (Leipzig 1804, edited by Carl August Thieme, according to Wells’s edition), tome 4, p. 407. There we read “haec primo tradidimus.” Mistake. Read promae [housekeeper]. It corresponds [2471] to τῇ ταμίᾳ in Xenophon’s Οἰκονομικοῦ [Oeconomicus], ch. 9, § 10: “ταῦτα δὲ τῇ ταμίᾳ παρɛδώκαμɛν” [“we handed these over to the housekeeper”]. And that Cicero also said it in the feminine, and not, e.g., promo, appears from what follows: “eamque admonuimus” [“we warned her”], etc., that is, promam. This mistake is also in my edition of Columella, bk. 12, ch. 3 (perhaps 4) where the said passage is cited.1 (10 June 1822.)
To the inclination, often noted and explained by me [→Z 85–86, 230, 339–40, 486–88, 1535–37], that men have to share with others their pleasures or displeasures, or any somewhat unusual sensation, one should ascribe, in part, the difficulty in keeping a secret that is rightly attributed to women and children, and which is equally typical of any other who is less capable either by nature or by habituation of opposing and conquering and repressing his inclinations. And it’s also too often typical of prudent men, practiced in mastering themselves, who still feel, if nothing else, some difficulty in keeping a secret, and some internal desire to reveal it (even to their detriment), when they are about to confide in others, or simply to converse, or discuss, [2472] or chat. The same is true as well when the secret is not someone else’s but our own, and when we see that revealing it damages only or principally ourselves, and, that being the case, we had resolved to be silent about it, and then we confess it because it just comes tumbling out.
But that this inclination is not natural or primitive (as it seems) but the effect of habituation, and the custom of society contracted by men living with other men, is something that I myself think and feel, who, much as I was first inclined to communicate to others my every unusual sensation (internal or external), today shun and detest not only conversation but often even the presence of others at the time of these sensations. For no other reason than the habit I have developed of almost always keeping my own company, and of being silent most of the time, and of living among men as if in isolation and solitude. We have to believe that the same thing happens to those who are in effect solitary types, to savages, to those who have either no society, or little and rarely, to the natural man, in short, who is without language, or has little use of it, to the mute, to those who by some chance have had to live far from the company of men for a long time, like the shipwrecked, pilgrims in places with unknown languages, prisoners, etc., silent monks, etc. (11 June 1822.)
[2473] To the reasons I have given elsewhere [→Z 1473–74, 2039–41] that the young man who is sensitive by nature, and generous and virtuous, becomes with experience of life, more quickly than others, and more consistently and irrevocably, and more coldly and severely, and in short more heroically dissolute, add this: that a young man of that nature, and of that disposition, must, upon entering the world, experience sooner and more intensely than others the wickedness of men, and the damage done to virtue, and soon realize, with greater certainty than anyone else, the need to be wicked, and the inevitable and supreme unhappiness that is destined in this life and this society for men of true virtue. Because since others are not virtuous, or not as much as he, they do not experience as intensely or as quickly the wickedness of men, or the hatred and persecution of all that is good, or the hardships of that virtue that they do not possess. And, even if they experience the bullying and persecution of others, they are not as naked and unarmed when they fight and resist them as the virtuous man is. [2474] In short, the young man who is not very virtuous cannot conceive a hatred toward men as intensely or as quickly as the young man of noble spirit is forced to. Because he finds men less aroused against him, and less capable of harming him, and less different from himself. On account of which, since he never reaches the point of strongly hating men, and hating them on the grounds of a principle originating in and confirmed by and immovably rooted in experience, he doesn’t so easily arrive at the point of that heroic cold wickedness, confident and self-aware, reasoned, inexorable, irremediable, and eternal, which the man who has both intelligence and natural virtue must necessarily (and quickly) reach. (13 June 1822.)
We say colloquially every day: venir voglia a uno d’una cosa, venirgli pensiero, talento, desiderio, etc. etc. [the wish for something comes to someone, a thought, a longing, a desire]. See the Crusca and the French and Spanish dictionaries. Now, who would dare say this in Latin? Who would not consider it a barbaric Italianism or colloquialism? Now, you see precisely such a phrase, word for word, in the most perfect poem by the most [2475] perfect and elegant Latin poet, and in a place that has to be among the most noble, that is in the beginning and invocation of the Georgics (bk. 1, l. 37): “Nec tibi regnandi veniat tam dira cupido,” “Nè ti venga sì brutta voglia di regnare” [“May such a dark desire to rule not come to you”], that is, to rule in hell. See if Forcellini and the Glossary have anything on the subject. (14 June 1822.)
Concerning the ancient fraternity of the Greek language with Latin, or rather the common origin of both, and how in the beginning they did not differ but were in Italy and in Greece a single language, see a fine passage in Festus cited by Forcellini. See Graecus, at the end. (14 Jun
e 1822.)
Who will deny that the art of composition is not infinitely better today and more clearly and distinctly valued, developed, displayed, well known, set forth in all its principles, even the most profound, and infinitely more widespread among men, and more in the hands of the scholars, and further enhanced by a much greater number of examples and models, than it was among the ancients? And especially among those ancients and in those periods when they wrote better and more perfectly and immortally? And yet [2476] where is there today in any nation or language, I don’t say a Cicero (that eternal, supreme model of every possible perfection in every kind of prose), I don’t mean a Livy, but a writer who in his language and in his genre has as much value as any of not the best but even the good Greek or Latin writers? And where is there a number of writers that is, I don’t say excellent, but good, equal to the number the Greeks and Romans had? Find them for me, if you can, putting together all the best writers of all literate nations, from the rebirth of letters to the present day. And I mean good precisely as concerns the art of composition, of knowing how to say something, and discuss a subject, with all the perfection of that art. I mean good in terms of their language, whatever it is, and perfect in it and masters, as Cicero was of Latin, or as the other Latin and Greek writers were, not as great as Cicero in this and the rest, but still very good and classic. [2477] I mean good in this sense, since I’m not getting into the art of thinking, etc. And what I say of prose writers I would also say of poets, with the same restrictions, and regarding their mode of discussing and representing things of the imagination, because invention and imagination in themselves and considered absolutely belong to a different discussion.
The fact is that today everyone knows how it should be done, and no one knows how to do it. No one knows how to do it perfectly, and very few passably. And the best modern writers, in whatever language or time, can hardly be compared to the worst of the good ancients. Or if they are equal in some aspect or quality, or even if they are better, they are far beneath them in other aspects, and in the effect of the whole, and in the sum of qualities concerning the art of composing well, and clearly expressing one’s feelings, and developing a subject. As on the other hand there is no mediocre scholar of rhetoric who, having read Blair’s rhetoric,1 doesn’t know more about the method and logic of composing well than Cicero.
[2478] It doesn’t matter. “As the British Democritus, Bacon of Verulam, observed, all the faculties adapted to art become barren, because art limits them” (Gravina, Della tragedia, ch. 40, p. 70, beginning).1 Art is always perfected (or rather invented and developed) and popularized and known by all in those times when people are least able to put it into practice.2 In the time of Aristotle there were no great Greek poets. Roman eloquence had expired by the time of Quintilian (who, in terms of how to do it, perhaps knew more than Cicero). That very knowledge of what should be done is the reason that no one knows how to do it. Here, too, is proof that too much is the father of nothing, and that wanting to do is the cause of being unable to, etc. etc. Scruples, doubts, fear of falling into well-known, etc. etc., mistakes tie the writer’s hands, and most despair of it, and since they don’t practice the precepts of art, and are too late to follow their own nature, which has already been in a thousand ways distorted, twisted, and altered by art, they write, as we see, very badly, although they know very well what needs to be done to write well. (15 June 1822.)
[2479] How far matter prevails over spirit in man can be observed by a comparison of sufferings. For the sufferings of the spirit are never equivalent to the sufferings of the body, measured on the same scale of relative intensity. And although it often seems to those who are troubled by severe spiritual pain that equivalent bodily pain would be more tolerable, a comparison of the experience of one and the other can easily convince any thoughtful person that between the sufferings of the spirit and those of the body, assuming they are still, relatively, of a similar degree, there is no equivalence. And the former can be overcome by greatness or strength of spirit, wisdom,1 etc. (not to mention that time consoles everything), but the latter have the power to defeat and vanquish the greatest tenacity. (15 June 1822.)
It is reasonable to admire the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, carried out through a great expanse of an immense enemy country, pledged in vain to impede them, from the heart of the [2480] kingdom, to its farthest borders, etc.1 Now, what should we say not of a retreat but of the conquest of a kingdom, also immense, as Mexico was, carried out not by ten thousand but by one thousand, or not many more, Spaniards, who were at a much greater distance from their country, by sea, etc. etc.?2 The more time goes by, the more the difference between men and men increases, and the superiority of the civilized to the barbarians. Although the Persians were very different from the Greeks, and vastly inferior, they were not so different or inferior as the Mexicans (although they were not without laws, or civic and social systems, or regulated government, or indeed political and military science embodied in certain principles) with respect to the Spanish. And the Persians and the Greeks did not differ much in particular with regard to weapons, whereas the Spanish differed greatly from the Mexicans. And likewise respectively in Tactics. (16 June, Sunday, 1822.)
[2481] So-and-so used to say that services, etc., and self-interested favors seldom achieve their purpose, because men receive with ease but return with difficulty. (All receive willingly and return unwillingly and little.) But he excepted from this number those which young men sometimes offer rich or powerful older women. And he added that no flatteries, services, or favors are better placed than these, or more easily and more frequently obtain their goal.1 (17 June 1822.)
Grace from contrast. Insipidness of character or manners or speech or jokes, feelings, etc., in a beautiful person is often striking, and is a great charme in women in relation to men and vice versa. Crudeness, or a certain lack of delicacy of manners, etc., is very often pleasing and attractive to many in a person who is delicately formed, etc. (17 June 1822.)
I have spoken elsewhere of the ferocity inspired in the virtuous man, in the youth, etc., by the resolution to commit, with eyes open, [2482] a first crime [→Z 2040]. I have also talked about the harm involuntarily done by Christianity and by establishing and perfecting morality [→Z 80–81, 710–11], since men (always inevitably evil), who today act more openly and decisively against conscience, are worse than the ancients, and, riding roughshod over the fear they have of punishment in the other life, become more ferocious and terrible in doing evil, like people who are condemned and desperate, etc. I would add that the man who resolved to commit a crime for the first time had to struggle painfully in order to triumph over his own conscience and his own habits, and then he finds himself in the act of having carried off this triumph. Which is the reason for great ferocity, similar to what is said of the lion, or other wild beast, which goes into a frenzy and is more terrifying than ever once it has tasted or seen the blood of another animal. Because man at that point is as if splattered and stained with blood, that is, the murderer [2483] of his own conscience.1 And, in general, the harder the struggle and difficulty in coming to the resolution, and the more pain and conflict it cost, the more effective and energetic and fiery and reckless and quick is the execution of whatever purpose. Because man is afraid of repenting, and rushes into the act as if fleeing with tremendous momentum and speed and fear his own thoughts, which, giving him room for further discussion, could dissuade him, or hurl him again into indecision, which man naturally fears and hates, and which is one of the principal travails of the spirit. Especially when the effect of the resolution (whether it is pleasure, or usefulness, or revenge, or the satisfaction of some human passion) pulls him and calls to him vigorously, and he fears that his own thoughts might hinder him from seeking that effect and achieving it, and on the other hand he keenly desires not to lose it, and not to deprive himself of it through his own weakness. (17 June 1822.)
[2484] The French have no poetry that is not prosaic, and b
y now have no prose that is not poetic. This confusion of two languages very distinct in nature, and both belonging to man by his nature, is essentially harmful to the expression of our thoughts, and is in opposition to the nature of the human spirit: which never speaks poetically when it reasons with a calm, etc., mind as it seems the French are obliged to do, if they want to write in prose that to them is elegant and witty and ornate, etc. (19 June 1822.)
How far it is the case that talents are in large part the product of circumstances can be seen from the fact that in small towns the number of people of easy and comfortable and (in other places) cultivated and civilized rank who do not have common sense, and to whom one cannot entrust the execution or management of the smallest matter, etc., is infinitely larger than in big ones. The same is true proportionately of smaller cities with respect to bigger ones, of those less cultured or sociable with respect to the more cultured, of capitals, where all are obliged [2485] to converse, to handle business, etc., with respect to provincial towns, etc. (19 June 1822.)
Zibaldone Page 181
