Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  The first writers and shapers of any language, and founders of any literature, not only did not shun barbarism but sought it out. See Caro, Apologia, pp. 23–40, that is, Predella’s introduction.1 They took words and expressions and forms and metaphors and manners of style and structure, etc. (and in great quantity), from the mother languages, the sister languages, and even from the completely foreign, [2504] especially if, even though these were foreign, the literature on which they were modeling themselves, and from which they were deriving and learning to create their own, belonged to them. Dante is full of barbarisms, that is, manners of speech and words taken not only from Latin but from the other languages or dialects that had some familiarity or relationship with our nation, and in particular Provençalisms (which almost amount to Gallicisms, so abominable today), and which were also abundant in the other writers of the fourteenth and thirteenth century, etc. Homer is teeming with barbarisms, as has been often noted by scholars, Herodotus is, the early French writers are, etc.

  And don’t think that the barbarisms of the early and classical writers were, in those times, common in their nations, or that those writers let themselves be carried away by current usage, or that they used and introduced them out of need alone, or to enrich [2505] their language with words and idioms that were economically useful. They used them, as one can easily discover, for the express purpose of being elegant by means of a language that was unfamiliar, and remote from the common. And although, because they wanted to be understood, they were compelled to use mainly current words and idioms, and to form from them the body of their writing, still very willingly and eagerly they seized on foreign words and expressions when they could, in order to speak in an unusual way, and to give their style something rare, which is what in short elegance is. And, e.g., with Dante, it’s clear that he endeavored to speak to his compatriots using Provençal idioms and words, because the Provençal nation was then the most cultured, and had a kind of literature which was well known in Italy, and made the Provençal language so accustomed to cultured Italians that when its words or expressions were Italianized they were not puzzled [2506] by them. And at the same time they were so uncommon that such words and phrases were not normally spoken by them (like the Latin words and phrases that, e.g., the poets bring back into Italian, and yet everyone understands them) or by the people who also, moreover, were sufficiently able to understand (without losing the pleasure of the unfamiliar), because of Provençal love songs, etc., which were very popular, and were sung, etc. Now then, from these songs, and from Provençal language and literature, Dante took many words and expressions in order to be elegant, and he succeeded at the time. And so, despite all the things that today would be called barbarisms, he, like Homer and other early writers, are considered classical everywhere, and some of them elegant, or if they are considered inelegant that is because of archaism rather than barbarism.

  In short barbarism, when it is truly an unfamiliar mode of expression, and is not incompatible, etc., as above, and is understood, is [2507] always (from whatever language it is extracted, with respect to its own language) not only compatible with elegance but a true source of elegance.

  Once the language and the literature of a nation have grown, developed, been established, it most often happens that, as commerce is introduced between this and other languages and literatures, partly the use of, and habituation to hearing, foreign words and idioms, partly the necessity of accepting them along with the objects, books, tastes, habits, ideas that come from foreigners, partly love of exotic things and satiety with one’s own, which is natural to all men, who are always inclined to novelty (see Homer Odyssey 1, ll. 351–52), partly also perhaps other causes—for all these reasons, the national speech fills up with foreign words and expressions in such a way that gradually, as one’s own words and habits are forgotten or grow obsolete, it becomes easier to speak and write with those of the foreigners, which are closer to hand, and are used more commonly, and more familiarly. And here again barbarism is introduced into the national language [2508] and literature, but for a completely different reason and purpose, and with a completely different effect than elegance and enrichment. As for enrichment, this is the point where the national language begins to fade and diminish noticeably, and to become impoverished, and to weaken to the point that, as most or certainly a large number of its words and expressions, and also its faculties, are forgotten and become antiquated, it no longer has the power or the capacity to fulfill the needs of language, and to supply a speech of its own, without recourse to the foreign. (And our language is already close to this point, not only because of the distinctive riches that it should have been acquiring, and has not, but also because of those infinite riches which it had, and has lost, many irrecoverably.) And the same is true of literature.

  As for elegance, then, because those words and idioms are no longer unusual, they are no longer elegant. In fact there is nothing more common and ordinary than those foreign words and manners of speech. As happens precisely in Italy today, where you cannot speak or write a more common and current Italian than by making it look and sound like French. [2509] This is very natural and logical, according to the reasons I have set forth, which introduce this second barbarism into a language.1 For they introduce it and have a direct influence, not through the writings of the great writers and men of true and refined good taste (as I said of that first barbarism), but through everyday language, and from here barbarism makes its way into the books of lesser writers who do not study, do not know, are not acquainted with, and don’t even try, or want to make the effort to investigate another language than that which they are accustomed to speak and hear spoken every day, and wouldn’t know how to express themselves in another way, and do not possess other words and modes of speaking. Furthermore, they follow and (according to their inadequate and foolish judgment) approve general usage, fashion, etc., and cadge the people’s praise and applause, and are satisfied with that wretched novelty and wish to pass for fashionable authors. So that, besides ignorance, the wish, too, leads them to [2510] barbarism, along with their bad judgment, and example drags them on, etc. Furthermore, modeling themselves in writing on the only or almost the only foreign books disseminated in their nation, they do not know other words, phrases, and kinds of style than the ones found in those books, or don’t want to rack their brains exchanging them with national equivalents, which they don’t have at hand. And so they increasingly sully the language and literature of their nation with foreign things, even beyond the usage of their fellow citizens’ ordinary speech.

  When barbarism enters the language in this way for the second time, and spreads and is established, its very pervasiveness makes it inelegant, unlike the first time. Because at that point the common language is not what is called so and is truly national, but instead it is that barbarous, and macaronic language that is ordinarily spoken and written, and therefore those who write in the foreign style write in a very common and hence inelegant fashion. [2511] Where it should be noted that then barbarism is not contrary to elegance because it is foreign, for in fact the foreign when it is understood by the inhabitants of the nation, and is not affected, is always elegant. But rather it is inelegant because it is common.

  And whereas the first time, when the foreign was not common, it seemed elegant, and more elegant than what was national, this second time the purely national seems much more elegant than the foreign, not because it is pure or national (for these qualities were never a source of elegance) but because it is not common, being remote from current domestic use, proper by now only to writers, and very few of those.

  So you see that purity of language has become almost synonymous with elegance: and this truly and reasonably, but only because that purity had become unfamiliar.

  Thus those words and expressions which, [2512] because they were familiar to a nation, were at one time not elegant and were indeed avoided by writers who had a noble and elevated style, or claimed to have one, do become really elega
nt and graceful, because on the one hand they are still easily recognized as national, and so are immediately understood by all, as if in some way freshly remembered, and do not seem affected, and on the other hand are no longer current in daily use. And so even words and styles that were once very trite and plebeian in a nation aspire to the honor of elegance, and achieve it, as could be demonstrated by a thousand examples of individual words and phrases.

  In short, today, e.g., among us, those who write with purity write elegantly, because those who write Italian in Italy write in an unfamiliar manner, and those who write in a foreign manner in Italy write in a common manner.

  Hence the error of those who claim that there are fixed, eternal principles of elegance should be refuted. See p. 2521, at the end. There is no fixed principle of elegance except this (or [2513] something similar): that there is no elegance without the unfamiliar. Just as there is no eternal principle of the beautiful except that beauty is propriety. But, just as the idea of propriety is changeable, so the unfamiliar is variable, and hence real, effective, concrete elegance is variable, although abstract elegance is invariable. Neither purity nor any other such quality of a word or phrase is a definite and eternal principle of elegance of that individual word or phrase. Once inelegant, it later becomes elegant, and then again inelegant, according to whether it is or is not unfamiliar, in accordance with the conditions of the unfamiliar established above.

  These truths are confirmed by the history of any literature and language. The purity of Atticism did not become prized in the minds of the Greeks, nor was it a synonym for elegance among them, until the Greeks became accustomed to hearing and using foreign words and phrases. Homer, Herodotus, Xenophon himself (the model of Atticism) had been [2514] very elegant, with foreign words and phrases little used by the Greeks of their times—in fact, precisely by means of these words and phrases, among other things. Purity is not prized, or even named, except after corruption, that is, when it is unfamiliar. And before corruption the foreign is prized because it is unfamiliar. Ennius, Plautus, Terence, Lucretius, etc., models of Latin elegance, are full of Grecisms, that is, barbarisms. In the time of Cicero, Horace, and, much more, that of Seneca, Fronto, etc., when Italy was already half speaking Greek, the zealots of purity rose up, and the Grecism praised in Plautus and Caecilius (Horace to the Pisos)1 was impugned by the moderns, and completely banned by pedants, and used with moderation by the sages, and Cicero often apologizes for it, and praises and loves and mourns the purity of the ancient language, and the speech of his grandmother, which at the time of his grandmother all the good writers subordinated to Grecism as much as they could [2515] without becoming obscure to a people who were then ignorant of the foreign, and of Greek, and of words and phrases that were not of their own nation.1 For that reason, and no other, and perhaps from the very limitations of their knowledge of Greek, the ancient Latin writers, although they abounded in Grecisms and barbarisms, were still reputed to be, and were, models of pure Roman language, with respect to more modern writers. And the same can be said of the early Italians.

  And was that very rich, fertile, powerful, ordered, and at the same time very varied, poetic, and natural language of the sixteenth century, which to us (in its good writers) seems so elegant, considered elegant then? No sir, but, rather, corrupt. And only the language of the fourteenth century was considered good, and the change was deplored, called corruption and the total decline of the language (as we say with respect to the 16th century), and the less writers wrote in their own language, to write in that of that other century, the more elegant they were considered. Whereas the more the sixteenth-century writers follow the usage [2516] of their century and the less they imitate the fourteenth century, the more they appeal to us, for whom both have become unusual. And that is perfectly reasonable, because only then can they be natural and fluent, like Caro, who was never an imitator. (It’s notable, in the case of many sixteenth-century writers, that their letters, which they took less care over, and which they themselves considered to be written in an impure language, though it was the language of their century, are more pleasing to read, and in a better style than their other works, where they wanted the language to be closer to that of the fourteenth century, whereas in the letters they used their own language, and seem to us very elegant and natural.) See p. 2525.1 But in the sixteenth century, too, only the unfamiliar was considered truly elegant, and they found and sought it in the language of the fourteenth century, the only one they called pure, whereas for us it is the language of the sixteenth century that is of the purest. See Salviati, Avvertimenti della lingua, cited in the works of Della Casa, Venezia 1752, vol. 3, pp. 323, end–324. In the fourteenth century purity wasn’t even discussed, nor was it placed among the values prized in language or writing. And the language of that century was not considered elegant (except for some Florentine affectations that Passavanti mentions,2 and I think that these were loved more in the rest of Tuscany or Italy, than in Florence, as actually happens today as well). The writers who were considered most elegant, and who believed themselves or claimed to be, were not those who today are most admired for naturalness and simplicity, and [2517] in short used the contemporary language of their nation or homeland in the purest fashion, but those who today are less appreciated, that is, who supplied it with foreign words and idioms, and endeavored to extend it to the forms of other languages, and other styles. As Boccaccio did with respect to Latin and as Dante, whose language, if it seems pure to us, who measure purity by authority, no one certainly would have called pure in those times, if they had then thought of purity, and even the sixteenth-century writers were not much inclined to consider it pure, or grant it an absolute authority and a decisive vote in the matter of purity of language, restricting themselves rather to Petrarch and Boccaccio. See Caro, Apologia, p. 28, end, etc. Letter 172, tome 2, and also, if you will, Della Casa’s Galateo, on the assessment of such a great poet made at the time.1

  On the basis of these considerations and comparisons, I would dare to say that, although the Italian language of this century is ugly and bad for reasons and qualities independent of purity and barbarism—that is, because it is poor, monotonous, powerless, cold, ineffectual, dull, inexpressive, unpoetic, unharmonious, etc. etc.—nevertheless if the barbarous writers of modern Italy come down to our descendants, when the Italian language will already in some way be changed from the present, and if [2518] prejudice (which very much influences the sense of elegance and beauty in everything) and the judgment of our century does not have too much power in the future, as the judgment of sixteenth-century writers does not have in ours, this barbarous language of ours will be considered elegant, and pleasing, because it has already become unfamiliar, and perhaps Cesarotti, etc., will pass for a model of elegance in language.

  Finally, is it not well known that in the case of poetry unfamiliarity of words, phrases, forms (no less than of ideas) not only helps but is necessary to make its style elegant and distinct from prose? Doesn’t Aristotle offer that as a precept? (Caro, Apologia, p. 25.)1 Isn’t the poetic in language almost the same as the unfamiliar? Or indeed is the unfamiliar not a poetic quality of language, and does it not serve by its nature to poeticize language and style? Now, tell me if in Italian poetry today anything more [2519] prosaic than foreign words, phrases, etc., can be found? more banal, more ordinary, in short more definitively unpoetic and more destructive of the elegance of language, and more contradictory to the nature of poetic style? So much so that these words and manners of speech, which are always extremely inelegant in prose, where however less elegance is required, are disgusting in poetry, and change it utterly from poetry into bad prose, which is why Perticari (De’ Trecentisti) observes, although not with complete truth, that the barbarism that dominated Italian prose writing nevertheless did not set foot in poetry, as poetry and barbarism could not coexist.1 And why is that? Given that the unfamiliar is so characteristic of poetry that it cannot do without it? Why, I repeat, if not because tho
se foreign words and phrases are precisely the most common, daily, current, usual words and idioms of our present language? And hence destructive of the unfamiliar? And because, if they are new in writing or poetry, they are not [2520] new, indeed are old, in the common usage of speech, and hence are destructive of the novelty that is one of the principal values of poetic language? Wherefore today poems written in the pure Italian language are elegant, and often, too, those in the language that at one time was little less than very ordinary. And the only reason is that the more Italian they are, the more unusual those poems seem to us.

  I conclude that barbarism is destructive of elegance, in both prose and, especially, poetry (of which the unusual is demanded to a greater extent), not because it is unfamiliar, or simply foreign, and incompatible with purity (which is an abstract noun, and always variable in its substance), but, on the contrary, because it is destructive of the unfamiliar, and of the new, being common, trite, that which forms the most modern and hence the most everyday and ordinary part of the language. And that purity is necessary and helpful to elegance [2521] not because it is purity, or because it is national, etc. (qualities very alien to elegance and grace), but because it is unfamiliar and rare, and distinct from common usage and remote from the ordinary, and different from current everyday speech. (Which is to say in short that it is no longer really purity, although it has been, but is no longer, national. And yet purity is valued only when it is no longer such—that is, when, if one wants to use the pure language, one does not use the actual current national language. Thus the pure language is a misuse of words, said instead of the early language of the nation and of the nation’s writers.) See p. 2529.