Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  [2682] Grace from contrast. Count Baldessar Castiglione, Il libro del cortegiano, bk. 1, Milan, from the Società tipografica de’ Classici italiani, 1803, vol. 1, pp. 43–44. “But having already many times thought to myself, whence originates this grace, apart from those who have it from the stars, I find a universal rule which seems to me to be valid on this subject in all human things, that are done, or said, more than any other. That is to avoid affectation as far as possible, as one would a steep and dangerous cliff, and, to say perhaps a new word, to use in every thing a certain nonchalance, which conceals art, and demonstrates that what is done and said is done without labor, and almost without thinking about it. From this, I believe, grace derives: because everyone knows the DIFFICULTY of rare and well executed things” (p. 44 of the edition) “and so EASE in them produces great amazement; and on the contrary effort and, as they say, dragging people by the hair produces extreme gracelessness and causes everything to be considered of little value, however great it is.”1 (Rome, 14 March 1823, second Friday of March).

  “Indeed it rarely happens that those who are not used [2683] to writing, however learned they are, can know perfectly the struggles and hard work of writers, or enjoy the sweetness and excellence of styles, and those intrinsic attentions that are often found in the ancients.” The same, ibid., p. 79.1 From how few, then, can the perfect writer or poet hope for worthy, true, and profound and full and perfect esteem and praise! And for how few does he who writes perfectly write and prepare pleasures! See p. 2796. (15 March 1823.)

  “Ancient speech means nothing other than the ancient way of speaking; and it would be foolish to love ancient speech for no other reason than to wish rather to speak as people used to speak than as they do speak.” The same, ibid., p. 64.2 (15 March 1823.)

  “Quelques sages, épouvantés des vicissitudes qui bouleversent les choses humaines, supposèrent une puissance qui se joue de nos projets, et nous attend au moment du bonheur, pour nous immoler à sa cruelle jalousie. (Herod. I. 32. III. 40. VII. 46. Soph. in Philoct. v. 789.)” [“Certain sages, frightened by the troubles that disrupt human affairs, assumed a power that makes sport of our plans, and waits for the moment of happiness to sacrifice us to its cruel jealousy. (Herodotus, 1, 32; 3, 40; 7, 46; Sophocles in Philoctetes, l. 789.)”] Voyage d’Anacharsis, ch. 71, p. 136, tome 6.3 (Rome, 26 March 1823.)

  “L’excès de la raison et de la vertu, est presque aussi funeste que celui des plaisirs (Aristot. de mor. II. 2. t. 2. p. 19); la nature nous a donné des goûts qu’il est aussi dangereux d’éteindre que d’épuiser” [“Excess of reason and virtue is almost as deadly as that of pleasures (Aristotle, De moralibus 2, 2, tome 2, p. 19); nature has given us tastes that it is as dangerous to extinguish as to exhaust”]. Same work, ch. 78, tome 6, p. 456.4 (29 March, Holy Saturday, 1823.)

  [2684] Man would be happy if his youthful (and childish) illusions were reality. They would be reality if all men had them, and continued to have them forever, because the young man of imagination and feeling, entering the world, would not find himself deceived by his expectation, or by the concept he had of men, but would find them and experience them as he had imagined. All men more or less (according to the difference in characters), and especially in youth, have these happy illusions. It is society alone, and mutual conversation, that, civilizing and instructing man, and habituating him to compare, to reason, to reflect on himself, inevitably disperses these illusions, and as in individuals, so in peoples, and as in peoples, so in the human race in the social state. In isolation, man would never have lost them, and they are characteristic of the youth in particular not so much because of the imaginative heat natural to that age as because of inexperience, and the fact that young people live in isolation. Therefore if man had continued to live in isolation, he would never have lost his youthful illusions, and all men [2685] would have them and preserve them for their entire life. Therefore these illusions would be reality. Therefore man would be happy. Therefore the original and continuing cause of human unhappiness is society. Man, in accord with nature, would have lived isolated and outside society. Therefore if man lived in accord with nature, he would be happy. (Rome, 1 April, Easter Tuesday, 1823.)

  ᾿Ολίγου δέω τοῦτο ποιɛῖν ἢ παθɛῖν· ὀλίγου δɛῖν καὶ ἀπόλωλα· ὀλίγου δɛῖ τοῦτο γɛνέσθαι· πολλοῦ γɛ καὶ δɛῖ πολλοῦ ἢ μικροῦ ἐδέησɛν ἢ ἐδέησα· μικροῦ δɛῖν Peu s’en faut: beaucoup s’en faut: peu s’en fallut, etc., poco mancò che, etc., di poco fallò, per poco, per poco non, etc. [nearly, etc., almost, etc.]. See p. 3817.1 (1 April 1823.)

  It very often seems to us that we have felt pleasure when we say, either to ourselves or to others, that we have felt it. So true is it that pleasure can never be present, and although from that it follows that it can never be past, yet one can in a sense say that it is rather past than present. (Rome, 12 April 1823.)

  “Le ciel qui nous donna la réflexion pour prévoir nos besoins, nous a donné les besoins pour mettre [2686] des bornes à notre réflexion” [“The heaven that gave us thought to foresee our needs has given us needs to place limits on our thought”]. Études de la Nature, by Jacques-Bernardin-Henri de Saint-Pierre, Paul et Virginie, in the Dialogue between Paul and the Old Man, Paris, from the Imprimerie de Monsieur, 3rd ed., tome 4, p. 132.1 (Rome, 14 April 1823.)

  “En Europe le travail des mains déshonore. On l’appelle travail méchanique. Celui même de labourer la terre y est le plus méprisé de tous. Un artisan y est bien plus estimé qu’un paysan” [“In Europe working with one’s hands is dishonorable. It’s called mechanical work. Those who work the land are most despised of all. An artisan is much more respected than a peasant”], loc. cit., p. 136. It was the opposite among the ancients, for whom farmers and farming were honored, and the manual or mechanical arts (αἱ βαναυσικαὶ τέχναι) and their teachers were despised. See Cicero, De officiis, bk. 1 and Xenophon’s Oeconomicus, and the Oeconomicus formerly attributed to Aristotle.2 (14 April 1823.)

  Regarding the verb difendere [to defend] used by the ancient Latins, as by the French and the ancient Italians and the Spanish, for proibire [to prohibit], see Perticari, Apologia di Dante, p. 157. (Recanati, 12 May 1823.)3

  The good Greek writers elegantly use the infinitive of verbs in place of the second and third person of the imperative. Τοῦτο ποιɛῖν [to do this] instead of τοῦτο ποίɛι σὺ [do this] or τοῦτο ποιɛίτω [2687] ἐκɛῖνος [do this], or τοῦτο ποιɛίσθω (hoc fiat) [let it be] or τοῦτο ποιητέον [this is to be done] or τοῦτο ποιɛῖν δɛῖ [this needs to be done] which last word is understood in the elliptical formula τοῦτο ποιɛῖν [do this]. Similar to this usage is the Italian habit of using the infinitive instead of the second person singular of the imperative, when a negative or prohibitive particle precedes it. Non fare, non dire for non fa, non di’ [don’t do, don’t say]. This usage comes from common popular Roman, or rather the language into which Latin degenerated in Europe after the Empire, which was spoken in all Latin Europe, and from which the Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese languages and their dialects arose. See Perticari, Apologia di Dante, p. 170. But only the Italians preserved this elliptical usage, although it was also characteristic of the Provençals, as Perticari shows, loc. cit. The Greeks also said μὴ τοῦτο ποιɛῖν [do not do this] for μὴ τοῦτο ποίɛι [do not do this]. Likewise, too, instead of the second and third person plural imperatives, that is, instead of μὴ τοῦτο ποιɛῖτɛ [do not do this] or ποιɛίτωσαν [do not do this]. See Xenophon, Πόροι [Poroi], ch. 4, no. 40; Plato, Sophista, tome 2, ed. Ast, p. 346, l. 11e.1 (12 May 1823.)

  [2688] Perticari, finding in an old Provençal song the verb arsare [to burn], says, in the Apologia di Dante, p. 207, note 19, that this is the root of the word arso [burned], which until then had seemed a word without a root, because the ver
b ardere [to burn] should have produced arduto and not arso. He is deceived: and in fact the verb arsare derives from arso, the participle of ardere, which is its root. The participles of our verbs are for the most part the Latin participles, when the verb is Latin. If there is some anomaly in these participles, its cause and origin should be sought not in Italian or in Provençal but in Latin, whether this anomaly exists in Latin, too, or whether the participle (and I say the same of other words) that is anomalous for us is not so for the Latins. For Italian usage, especially in the particular case of participles, ordinarily followed Latin usage without regard for whether this corresponded or not to the rules or the analogy of the new language that was being formed. And many of the irregularities of our language and its sisters come from blind conformation to the mother language. From sospendere, prendere, accendere, [2689] discendere, etc., we would have had sospenduto, prenduto, accenduto, discenduto, difenduto, etc., if we followed the analogy of our language. But the Latins said suspensus, prensus, defensus, etc. And so, too, the Italians: sospeso, preso, acceso, disceso, difeso, etc. And, e.g., the root of preso is not prensare (which in fact comes from prensus) but the Latin prehendere or prendere. On the other hand, the Latins from vendere made venditus; here our language follows its analogy and says venduto for venditus (you can see p. 3075) not veso, because Latin doesn’t say vensus. I too think that the ancient Latins said suspenditus, prenditus, accenditus, etc., but if later they spoke differently, the anomaly of preso, acceso, etc., is not Italian or Provençal in origin but Latin. Likewise from ardere we should make arduto. But whether the early Latins said arditus from ardeo, as they did ardui for arsi, or never did, there is no doubt that later they usually said arsi, arsurus, arsus, supine arsum. We therefore say not arduto but arso, and we say arso [2690] because the Latins said it, and the origin of this anomaly should be sought in Latin, where it was and whence it came, not in Italian or in Provençal or in the Roman or Romance language,1 when it’s clear that it is much older than all these languages. Similarly from audeo they should have made audĭtus. But the Romans known to us made ausus. An anomaly of the same nature and type as arsus from ardeo: second conjugation, like audeo. This ausus is our adjective oso [daring]: from this adjective oso comes osare [to dare], which the Provençals said or at least wrote also ausar (Perticari, loc. cit., p. 210, line 6), and in fact osare is only a barbaric continuative of audere, which is its primary root, while the immediate one is ausus. But Perticari, on the other hand, would say that oso and ausus come from osare and from ausare, since he says that arso comes from arsare. As if, even following the analogy of our language, one could make arso from arsare: and not, rather, arsato, which is [2691] its true participle, and very different from arso, which is the participle of another verb.

  This and other such errors of Perticari and of many other grammarians, ancient and modern, come from the lack of information they have had available about the formation and derivation of verbs in are from regular or anomalous participles of other verbs, a type of formation very much used by the Latins, for whom the verbs thus formed were continuatives. And it continued to be widely used in later times and at the beginnings of the modern languages of Latin Europe.

  Ausus sum: son oso [I am daring]. This Italian phrase corresponding to the Latin confirms, if there is any need to, the identity of the adjective oso with the participle ausus, the only part of the verb audere that was preserved in the usage of the daughter languages of Latin, and the mother of many modern words, like osare, oser, osadìa, osado (participle of ausare), osadamente, etc. (Recanati, 15 May 1823.)

  The supreme adaptability of man. Animals can be domesticated to a greater or lesser extent, according to whether they are more or [2692] less capable of being habituated and are more or less adaptable by nature. But neither domestic animals when they live with man nor these or other animals when they live with animals of a different species from their own, contract the character and habits of humans or other animals, nor do the characters of several animals of different species mingle simply by their living together. Only domestic animals develop certain habits, and certain unnatural behaviors produced by the circumstances, which, moreover, have nothing to do with the behavior of man. But the man who lives with animals really does acquire many aspects of their character, and his own is altered, because of an effective mixing of qualities that are natural to the animals he lives with. It has been observed in the Roman countryside, and noted there by persons who by occupation, habit, and nature are anything but observers, that the shepherds and guardians of buffalo are ordinarily stupid, slow, awkward, very rough, savage, and have little of man about them; that the herders of [2693] horses are quick, active, ready, lively, keen, agile in body and mind; those of sheep simple, meek, obedient, etc. (Recanati, 16 May 1823.) And among the inhabitants of the Roman countryside the two extremes of boorishness and spiritualité and cleverness, of sluggishness and vitality, of ineptitude, laziness, etc., and activity, are the herders of buffalo and those of horses—just like the characters of those two species of animals among those which live in that countryside. (16 May 1823.)

  Regarding the non-Roman writers who wrote in Latin, and are considered classical in that language and literature, see Perticari, Apologia di Dante, chapter 30, pp. 314–16. (Recanati, 16 May 1823.)

  Of the disdain in which the learned held the Italian language (called vernacular) in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, compared with Latin, see Perticari, loc. cit., chapter 34. (16 May 1823.) See also the end of the Lecture “Dell’ordine dell’Universo” by Pier Francesco Giambullari, in Prose Fiorentine, part 2, vol. 2 (Venice 1735, tome 3, § 2, pp. 24 end–25). (17 May 1823.) See likewise Perticari, Degli scrittori del Trecento, bk. 1, ch. 13, p. 77; ch. 16, pp. 88ff., final chapter, end, p. 98; bk. 2, ch. 9, p. 163.

  [2694] Once an illustrious language1 is formed, that is, an ordered, regular, established, and grammatical language, it is not lost until the nation it belongs to declines into barbarism. The duration of a nation’s civilization is the measure of the duration of its illustrious language and vice versa. And since the same nation can have several civilizations, that is, after becoming civilized it may fall again into barbarism and then rise again to new civilization, each of its civilizations has its own illustrious language that has been born, has grown, has been perfected, been corrupted, has declined, and died together with it. Such a revival of both civilization and illustrious language has, in the history of the known nations, or, we might rather say, in known history, a single example, that is, that of the Italian nation. Because none of the other nations that were civilized in ancient times rose again to become a current, modern civilization, and none of the nations at present civilized were civilized (as far as we know) in ancient times, except the Italian. Likewise no other nation can show two illustrious languages that it has [2695] used and generally cultivated (as the Italian nation can), except for the spread of our ancient language, that is, Latin, together with our customs throughout the Europe that was subject to us, and that for some time made the Gauls, Spain, Numidia (which did not return to civilization), etc., Italian in customs and language and literature.

  But, to get back to our subject, since Greece, in all known history, is the nation that preserved a civilization the longest, so the illustrious Greek language is of all the illustrious languages known to history, ancient or modern, the one that lasted the longest time. Although in the early Middle Ages Greek civilization was greatly in decline, and, similarly and proportionately, the illustrious Greek language, nonetheless Greece did not become absolutely barbarous except after the fall of Constantinople,1 for at least some part of Greek civilization, if [2696] nothing else, was preserved in the Court of Byzantium as long as that lasted. And until that same end the illustrious Greek language endured, in such a manner that the Greek writers of the final period, like Theophylactus and the writers of Byzantine History,1 are for the most part intelligible and straightforward, without further special study, to all those who under
stand Homer and Herodotus. Thus the illustrious Greek language lasted, always one and always the same, for 23 centuries, that is, from Homer to the last Greek emperor. A marvelous duration, but so was that of Greek civilization. Because under no circumstances of the time did Greece ever become entirely barbarous until it was completely subject to the Turks. During the entire interval of the preceding centuries it was never without literature, not even in the worst centuries, as we can see, considering even just Photius’s Bibliotheca, written in the ninth century, and the various works of Tzetzes [2697] written in the twelfth, in addition to Eudocia Augusta’s Collection of Violets, the Suda Lexicon, etc., works that in no other part of the world outside the Greek part, even if they had been translated into the respective languages, would even have been understood in those times, let alone similar ones composed.1

  The illustrious Latin language, born much later, died much earlier, because Italian civilization and that of all Latin Europe, owing to different circumstances, ended a very few centuries after it was born. By the time Constantine transferred the court to Byzantium, Greece was already much superior to the Latin world, and especially Italy, in both civilization and literature. And perhaps this was one of the reasons that led Constantine to make that move, which also helped to maintain civilization in Greece and, with it, the illustrious language (cultivated then by Themistius, Libanius, the Emperor Julian, Iamblichus, Gregory, Basil, who were much superior in [2698] Greekness to Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, Popes Gregory and Leo, Ammian, Boethius in Latinness), and contributed to the corruption and extinction of Latin civilization and the illustrious Latin language, especially in Italy, where a Latin court did not exist at all. For a short period one existed in Gaul, and there produced Sidonius and Pacatus and the other noble men of letters of the time, and made that province incomparably superior, for the moment, in terms of Latinness, literature, and civilization, to Italy itself, which had bestowed them on the Gauls. Until the conquests of the Barbarians completely destroyed both civilization and the illustrious language in all Latin Europe.