Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  “῎Εργα νέων, βουλαὶ δὲ μέσων, ɛὐχαὶ δὲ γɛρόντων” [“Young men act, the middle-aged consult, old men make vows”].1 A line from I don’t know which ancient poet, which can be applied proportionately to the different ages of the human race, as can anything that may be said about the different ages of the individual. And in fact nothing is proper to our times but desire (eternally inseparable from even the most inept and weakest and most inactive and uncaring man, because of self-love, driving us toward happiness, which is never obtained) and letting be. (7 August 1822.)

  I have demonstrated elsewhere [→Z 835–38, 1737–40] that almost all the main discoveries that are useful to civilized life were the work of chance, and drawn the consequences. I would now like to explain and confirm this with an example. Is it credible that the art of making glass, or rather the idea of doing it, and the pure awareness of being able to do it (which art is very old), could ever have come [2603] to man by way of reasoning? Can obtaining a material that is translucent, fusible, shapeable at will, etc. etc., from ashes, and other materials whose external appearance is toto coelo [diametrically] different from the form and quality of glass (see Antonio Neri’s Arte vetraria),1 have possibly been first taught by anything other than one or more very simple and absolutely chance events? Now, how great a role the use of glass has in the routine of life and civilized comforts, how it is among the essential goods, how it has served the sciences, how many immense and innumerable discoveries of every type have been made by means of glass made into lenses, etc. etc. etc., how much Astronomy, Anatomy, Nautical Science (so much helped and advanced by the discovery of the satellites of Jupiter made with the telescope, etc.) owe to glass—it’s enough merely to mention all these things. But I mention them in order to point out that even if the successive discoveries, refinements, etc., made, acquired, etc., on the subject of glass, or by means of glass, etc., were not accidental but the result of reason (although it is said that the invention of the eyeglass and the Telescope happened by chance): nevertheless they should all, [2604] precisely speaking, be recognized as accidental, since their origin is accidental, that is, the invention of glass, without which none of the above-mentioned would have taken place. And therefore all that part (which is not small) of knowledge, comforts, human civilization which depends on and begins, etc., with the invention of glass, and without it would not have been achieved, is truly accidental, and acquired by pure chance.

  And that these and innumerable other similar discoveries were true accidents can also be deduced by observing that many nations consisting of human beings who by nature, natural intelligence, etc., were and are in every way like us, because the chance events which happened to us did not happen to them, lacked or completely lack this or that invention and all the advances of the human mind derived from it. And that is the case even when such peoples lived in very active societies, and had made many other discoveries, like, e.g., the Mexicans in America, a people who were largely civilized, but nevertheless lacked, precisely, glass.

  [2605] I also observe that although Chemistry has today made many advances, and is so explicit and distinct in its principles that it seems it could and should make great discoveries, resulting no longer from chance but only from reason, it has not made a single one that has anywhere near the importance and influence of those which came from the ancients, and were made in times of ignorance, and without principles, or with a very few undigested and not well understood principles from analogous sciences (the discovery of gunpowder, glass, etc.). All it has done is to perfect the ancient discoveries, or make analogous ones (like that of fulminating powder) that would not have been made if the ancient ones hadn’t already been known.1 And what I say of Chemistry I say of the other sciences. I would deduce that those principal discoveries which either immediately, or with the refinement, growth, and application that they were later subject to, decided and decide, produced and produce in large part the advances of the human mind are originally the result not of knowledge [2606] or of reasoning but of pure chance, for they were made in times of ignorance, and men could not have made anything remotely approaching such discoveries even with the greatest possible knowledge. And that therefore all that part of knowledge and civilization, all that claimed perfection of man and society that depends in any way on those discoveries (and it’s a very large, indeed the largest, part) was neither predestined nor prewilled by nature, because he who did not preordain or prewill the causes and first indispensable origins (which, as I say, were absolutely accidental) cannot have ordained or willed the effects. (10 August, Feast of St. Lawrence, 1822.)

  What I’ve said about glass should be said of thousands and thousands of other very important inventions that, without even the slightest information or trace, etc. (which therefore chance alone could deliver), could never have been made, and therefore are all accidental, however applied, expanded, perfected they were later, and even if they can no longer be recognized as what they were [2607] in the beginning, and their origin and form and nature, etc. etc., cannot be investigated. (10 August 1822.)

  As soon as the child is born, the mother who has just brought him into the world must console him, quiet his crying, and lighten the burden of the existence she has given him. And one of the principal duties of good parents in the childhood and early youth of their children is to comfort them, to encourage them to live,1 because sorrows and ills and passions are at that age much heavier than they are to those who through long experience, or simply because they have lived longer, are used to suffering. And in truth it is only fitting that the good father and the good mother, in trying to console their children, correct as best they can, and ease, the damage they have done by procreating them. Good God! Why then is man born? And why does he procreate? To console those he has given birth to for having been born? (13 August 1822.)

  [2608] It is possible to write in Italian without writing in an Italian manner, whereas it is all but impossible to write in French without writing in the French manner. And it is possible to write and speak in Italian and not in the Italian style, to write an Italian that’s not Italian, etc. (16 August, Feast of St. Roch, 1822.)

  Sallust, Catiline, ch. 23. “Maria montesque polliceri” [“to promise seas and mountains”]. This saying, very common in Italy today, is found, as far as I know, only in this writer, who was most attentive to ancient words and manners of speech, and who as a result very often inclines toward popular words and manners of speech, as always happens to writers who study the ancient form of the language, for the common people are the principal conserver of that antiquity. (17 August 1822.)

  The Spanish nation, the most poetic by nature and climate of all the European nations (equaled in this only by Italy and Greece) and furnished with the most poetic language among the perfected languages (inferior in that quality only to Italian, and far from equaled by any other), has never produced a poet or a poem that is or was of truly European [2609] fame. So far do political institutions prevail over natural qualities. “῞Ημισυ γὰρ τ’ ἀρɛτῆς ἀποαίνυται δούλιον ἦμαρ” [“The day of slavery takes away half his {a man’s} worth”]. (Homer.)1 And this observation can be very useful to those who maintain that government has a greater influence than climate. (18 August, Sunday, 1822.)

  The vast expanse of Frenchness that floods through the customs and literature and language of Italians and other Europeans is absorbed from French books and the influence of French fashions, and visiting them in their homeland, which, however frequent, can never happen all that much. Whereas Rome and Italy from the time of the second Scipio on, and especially under the first emperors, were full of Greeks (actual Greeks or Hellenized natives of other lands). The houses of the nobles were full of them, as the Greeks were summoned and welcomed and placed permanently there in every sort of position, from kitchen worker to philosophy master, etc. etc. (see Lucian πɛρὶ τῶν ἐπὶ μισθῷ συνόντων2 [2610] and Martial’s epigram about
the graeculus esuriens [hungry little Greek], etc. etc.),1 the palaces and public offices were full of them, besides the fact that all the wealthy sent their sons to study in Greece, and these then became leaders in Rome and Italy, in public offices, in the forum, etc. So we can assess what and how great the Greek influence on customs and literature and hence on the language must necessarily have been in Italy at that time. Added to the fact that women too had to know Greek, more or less everyone studied their books, and the pleasure people got from them, and the libraries they made of them, etc. etc. (18 August, Sunday, 1822.)

  Say what you like. It is not possible to be great except by thinking and working against reason, and to the extent that one thinks and works against reason, and has the strength to overcome one’s own reflectiveness, or let it be overcome by enthusiasm, which always and in every case encounters reason as an obstacle, and a mortal enemy, and a deadly, chilling virtue. (22 August 1822.)

  [2611] Nothing shames the man of spirit or is capable of making him ashamed, and experiencing the unpleasant sensation of that emotion, except for being ashamed and blushing. (22 August 1822.)

  It is not enough for the writer to be master of his own style. His style has to be master of its material, and in that consists the perfection of art, and the supreme quality of the artist. Some of the very few who in modern Italy deserve the name of writers (indeed all these very few) allow us to see that they are masters of style. That is, their style is steady, even, not shaky, not always on the edge of a precipice, not uncertain, not stiff and rétréci [narrow], like that of all our other moderns, in the French manner or not, but free and loose and easy, and knowing how to expand and stretch and unfold and flow, sure of not saying what the writer does not intend, sure of saying nothing in the way that the writer doesn’t want it to, sure of not giving into another style, of not falling into a quality that the writer wants to avoid. It proceeds with a firm foot without stumbling or doubting itself, it doesn’t jolt along, now in the sky, now on the ground, now here now there, etc. All these qualities are found in the style, and are demonstrated, that is, are felt by the reader. Such writers are masters of their style. But their style is not master of the material, that is [2612] to say that the writer is not master of saying in his style everything he wants, or needs to say, or of saying it fully and perfectly, and this too is felt by the reader. So that very often requiring many things that would suit their argument, the tempo, etc., that would be useful or necessary to it, and that they would wish to say, and that they conceive perfectly, and perhaps even originally, and that would give rise to remarkable and beautiful thoughts, these writers, knowing this, nevertheless shun them, or touch on them sideways, and obliquely, and generally get shot of them, or say only one part of them, knowing that they’re leaving out the other, and that it would be good to say it, or in short they do not trust or they despair of being able to say them or say them fully in their style. This never happened to the truly great writers, and is deadly to literature. And to be more specific: these writers are, and show themselves to be, sure of not giving into French (that is, that bad Italian which is typical of our time and hence natural even to them, indeed only natural), but they are not, and do not show themselves to be, sure of [2613] being able to say in good Italian everything they need to, as our early writers were. In fact they let us feel that many things that are virtually necessary, and which they would be pleased to be able and know how to say in good Italian, and whose lack is felt, and that often are well known to all in this century—these things they omit purposely, and conceal, at least in some essential part, and appear either ignorant, or not very educated, or as not having conceived them, even when they have done so more than others, and in short they do not dare to say them for fear of offending good Italian and their own style. That fear and that impotence would ensure that Italian literature and philosophy never took a step forward, and never said anything new, as unfortunately is proved correct in the event. (27 August 1822.)

  The wholly disconnected manner of French writing, in which the sentence is never linked to the one before it (indeed the connection and linking of sentences is a vice, while [2614] in other languages it is a virtue), whose style never unfurls, and is unable and is not allowed to adopt the steady, unselfconsciously modest, unified, and fluid manner that is natural to human discourse, and speech, and is typical of all other nations, this kind of writing, I repeat, outside of which the French have no other, is a kind of Gnomology.1 And those qualities necessarily suit it, given the precipitation of its style, which the French can’t do without, and without which they find no book worth reading. Because of that precipitation the writer and the reader are forever having to catch their breath. And that’s exactly how it seems: that the writer speaks with whatever he’s got in his lungs, and so he has to break up his speech, and make short sentences, so that he can stop and breathe. (28 August 1822.) In effect the tone of any French writing, starting with the first syllable, is that of someone speaking aloud. So it seems, at least, to those who are not [2615] French, and those who have not been used to French reading, etc., all their life. That moderate tone of natural speech, a tone with which the ancients began even their Orations, including the most violent and passionate, is a quality alien even to French people’s private correspondence. (28 August 1822.)

  In this, as in many other qualities, French writing resembles the Oriental style, which, for the same reasons, and as a necessary consequence of them, is also very disjointed, as one sees in the books of poetry and wisdom in Scripture. The Hebrew language is almost entirely lacking in conjunctions of any sort, and can’t help going from one sentence to the next without a connection, if it wants to have variety, because otherwise all its sentences would begin, as many do, with waw.1 But that can be a virtue for the Orientals, though it is a defect among the French: because for the former it is natural, for the latter not. Not even we Italians, not even the Spanish, have that great superabundance of vital feeling, and that great natural and habitual and physical intensity and rapidity of imagination that the Orientals have. That manner of writing, therefore, which for us is moderate, and those images, etc., which for us have [2616] the right measure, to them seem languid and slow, and what seems excessive to us to them seems very moderate. But if not even the Italians and not even the Spanish have the habitual physical force of inner life that the Orientals have, much less will the French achieve it. And in truth their writing style is a habit, and not natural, as one can also see in their early writers. (28 August 1822.)

  The lack of society of German men of letters, and their retired and indefatigably studious and closeted life, makes their opinions and their thoughts independent not only of men (or the opinions of others) but also of things. Whence their theories, their systems, their philosophies are for the most part (whatever subject they have to do with: political, literary, metaphysical, moral, etc., and even physical) poems of reason. In fact the English (such as Bacon, Newton, Locke), the French (such as Rousseau, Cabanis) and even some Italians (such as Galileo, Filangieri, etc.)1 have made great and true and solid discoveries about the nature and theory of man, about governments, etc. etc., general physics, etc., but the Germans none, even though everything that their [2617] philosophers write is, in some respect, new, and even though the Germans have an abundance of originality in every subject, more than every other literate nation (but they don’t know how to be original except by dreaming). And even though the German nation has so many metaphysicians, counting even just the modern ones, as many as all the other nations have together, counting the moderns and the ancients; and even though it is intellectually extremely deep by nature, and by habit. Further, German men of letters have, in the highest degree, precisely what the philosopher requires in order not to be a dreamer, and not to wander off from the truth as he goes in search of it, which the philosophers of other nations do not usually have. That is to say that the Germans have an immense knowledge, a virtually (if it’s possible) complete and perfect knowledge of
all the things that are and were. And since they are, by dint of study, masters of reality, while other men of letters are far from masters of the facts, it’s truly amazing, and most certain, that [2618] whereas by now other nations all philosophize even when they’re making poems, the Germans make poems when they’re philosophizing. And one can truthfully say that the slightest and most superficial of the French philosophers (so light and volages [flighty] by nature and by habit) knows actual man and the reality of things better than the greatest and most profound of German philosophers (so thoughtful a nation). Indeed, their very profundity is damaging to them: and the deeper or higher he goes, the farther the German philosopher strays from the truth, which is the opposite of what happens to all others.1 (29 August 1822.) The Germans encounter the truth much more easily and much more often when they joke, or when they speak with a certain carelessness and look at things on the surface, than when they reason, and any novel of Wieland contains a greater number of solid truths, or ones that are new, or newly deduced, or newly considered, developed, and expressed, even of an abstract nature, than Kant’s Critique of reason.2 (30 August 1822.) See the outline of my discourse on the present-day customs of the Italians.3

  [2619] It is curious to observe how universality has passed from the Greek language, which is the richest, most vast, varied, free, bold, expressive, powerful, natural of all cultivated languages, to French, which is the poorest, most limited, uniform, slavish, timid, languid, ineffectual, artificial of them all. And more curious that both languages were useful to universality precisely because they possessed these qualities, which are directly contrary to one another, to the highest degree. And yet so it is, and today, too, outside of the French language there is none, and without the French language there would not be a language better suited to universality than Greek, even though it is dead (2 Sept. 1822), and even though it is precisely the extreme opposite of the French language. (2 Sept. 1822.)