Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  At every point in our lives, even in highly pleasurable acts, even in dreams, men or other creatures are in a state of desire, and hence there is not a single moment in life (except those of utter drowsiness and suspension of the exercise of the senses and of that of thought, for whatever reason) in which the individual is not in a state of pain, and all the greater the more sensitive his state and the greater his exercise of life may be—on account either of age or of character and essential nature, on account either of mediated or of immediate circumstances, either habitually or in the present moment—and vice versa. (30 June 1823.) See p. 3550.

  [2862] Friendship, let alone a full and intimate trust between brothers, is rarely preserved when they go out into the world, even when they have been raised together, and have maintained this trust to the utmost degree up until that moment, and moreover go on living together. And yet if a man is capable of a full and intimate trust, and if he ought to preserve it perpetually toward anyone, it ought to be toward those brothers who are his peers, and who were raised with him in childhood;1 and I say “ought to be,” not on account of the natural power of consanguinity, which power is null and imaginary, and plays no part in producing that trust or in preserving it, but on account of the natural power of habit and of habit contracted at the very beginning of the individual’s ideas and habits, and in his original ability to contract them, and preserved during the whole time that the greatest intensity and receptivity and amplitude, and the most intense exercise, of this capacity endures. This firmly established and deeply rooted trust is nonetheless undermined on account of the variety that dealings with other individuals in society introduces into the character of brothers. But if these [2863] dealings had never taken place, that trust would have been perpetual, just as it had not ceased up until that hour. What can this mean save that in the characters of men ninety-nine parts are the work of circumstances? And that no matter how very different they may seem, as often happens with brothers, only the most minimal, and imperceptible part of this diversity is the work of nature? It would be virtually impossible for all the minute circumstances and events encountered by one brother in his dealings with society to be encountered by the other, or be equivalent to those encountered by the other, even if he were placed alongside him. This diversity is responsible for the difference between two characters that appeared to be completely, and were well-nigh completely, companions, and since it is inevitable, the diversification of these characters in society is bound to happen. And I have spoken of minute circumstances, settling for these, because even the sum of the minutest things is enough to produce very large and highly visible effects upon the character of men, especially when they are first setting out in the world, and when in them the capacity of habits and of opinions, that is to say the propensity of the character to being formed, is still [2864] abundant and great and in good fettle. (30 June 1823.)

  Diminutives which in the daughter languages of Latin have taken the place of Latin positives, which I have discussed elsewhere [→Z 2281–83, 2286–88], whether these positives no longer exist in those languages, or whether these diminutives have become their synonyms. Fratello [brother], sorella [sister], figliuolo [son], Italian; orilla from ora, that is to say, extremity, Spanish. See the Glossary, Forcellini, and the Spanish Dictionaries on the three Italian words cited above. (30 June 1823.) Orecchia [ear], oreja, oreille from auricula; pecchia [bee], aveja, abeille from apicula or apecula, like vulpecula. Flagellum [little whip] was also used in ancient Latin in place of its positive flagrum [whip]; just as now there is flagello, fléau; and flagrum is lost. Scalpello [chisel] and scalpro. See pp. 2974, 3001, 3040, 3264.

  A feature common to the three daughters of the Latin language. Adding pleonastically for idiosyncratic reasons, and for the sake of linguistic propriety, the plural adjective altri or altre to the plural pronouns nos and vos. Noi altri, voi altri; nous autres, vous autres; nosotros, vosotros [we, you]. Italian and French are free to do this or not, Spanish is not free, etc. And with the former, especially the French, this usage seems to belong to familiar speech. With us it belongs to familiar written style, is very common in everyday speech, and almost ubiquitous in that of the common people, as in Spanish, when voi has a genuinely plural sense. See p. 2891. (30 June 1823.)

  Our feminine or neuter plurals in a, from masculine or neuter singular nouns, on which I have commented elsewhere [→Z 1181–82] regarding the plural word fusa [spindles] for fusi as used by Symmachus. Le peccata [sins], le fata [fates], le calcagna [heels], le cervella [brain], le fila [threads], le ciglia [brows]. These plurals correspond [2865] to their Latin equivalents. Le risa [laughing]: risum i is not found, either in Forcellini or in the Glossary. Le anella [rings]: anellum i is not found either. Le letta [beds]. Lectum i is found in Ulpian. See the Glossary under lectumstratum. (30 June 1823.)

  Altronde for altrove (on which I have commented, unless I am much mistaken, speaking about a passage from Florus [→Z 511], and on the Spanish donde, that is, unde, said, as we now say it, for ubi [where]) is found in Giusto de’ Conti, Sonnet 22 and Canzone 2, last stanza,1 in Angelo di Costanzo, sonnet 442 and in many others, both the above and likewise onde or donde for dove, etc., especially in fourteenth-century writers, in one of which I expressly recall having very recently found one or more such examples. And see the Crusca under altronde, § 2, etc. (30 June 1823.)

  If suppeditare [to provide] is derived from sub and pedes (see Forcellini), where did it get that added desinence of itare from? I believe that it was formed from some participle, and is therefore a continuative of some other lost verb. (1 July 1823.) That is to say, from suppedio–suppeditus, similar to impedio–impeditus, expedio, praepedio, etc., which also come from pes, but do not have the t in their stems, because they are not made from participles. It is worth noting, however, that the i in suppedito is short, and in suppeditus it would be long. But I believe there to be many other examples of this, that the i of verbs in ito is always short, even if formed from participles in itus which is long. Certainly from participles in atus we form ito which is short. See p. 3619.

  The Spanish use the adverb luego, that is to say immediately, at the beginning of enumerations, and especially when they have to supply more than one argument, and when the first is supplied, they say luego, which means first. A blatant Grecism. The Greeks [2866] in similar circumstances, and especially in the one mentioned above, elegantly use αὐτίκα, that is, straightaway, at the beginning of the period, as the Spanish do with luego, and also luego al punto when they employ a more familiar, or burlesque style.1 St. John Chrysostom or whoever the actual author of the two sermons on Prayer περὶ προσευχῆς, in Sermon 2, which begins “ὅτι μὲν παντὸς ἀγαθοῦ” [“Because {the source} of all good”] at the beginning: “Εὐθὺς τοίνυν ἐκεῖνο μέγιστον περὶ εὐχῆς εἰπεῖν ἔχομεν, ὅτι” [“Straightaway, therefore, the greatest thing we can say about prayer, is that”], etc., and Plato, De re publica, 1, tome 4, p. 32, last line where αὐτίκα does not serve the purpose of enumeration but means here we straightway are, promptly and as it were without searching or without going any further. And the Greeks very often write like this. We would say the first thing adverbially, first of all, in the first place; the Romans, primum, or principio (see Georgics 2, 8; 4, 8), etc. (1 July 1823.)

  I have often said [→Z 244–45, 2630–32, 2716–17] that each Greek author has, as it were, his own little Dictionary. This applies not only to each of them always or almost always using particular words to express particular things, whereas other authors will use yet others, or to their familiar and habitual expressions and phrases, but also to the meaning of the same words or phrases that the others also use, or that all use. Because anyone who carefully scrutinizes and considers Greek writers will see that the selfsame words and phrases in one writer will have one meaning, and in another writer another, and this not only when we have to do with authors that lived in different epo
chs, which is hardly strange, but also with authors who are contemporaries, and likewise compatriots, as, e.g., with Xenophon and [2867] Plato, who moreover were fellow disciples, and dealt in part with the same materials, and the same Socratic philosophy. I am saying that the meaning of words or phrases in each author is different, now more, now less so, depending on the terms of the comparison, and depending on the quality of those words, and for the most part the difference is such that those with little discernment or experience do not see it, and yet it is there, even though very slight. One author will always employ a word in its proper meaning, and never in its metaphorical ones. Another author will employ it in a meaning akin to the proper one, or perhaps proper also, and never in its other senses. Yet another will employ it in a transferred sense, but so consistently that when he needs to express a particular thing he will never employ any other word, and when he does employ this word he will never take it in any other sense, whence one can say that for him this meaning is the proper meaning of that word (as happens when the metaphorical meanings of words often absolutely take the place of the proper ones, which are then forgotten), and this circumstance is very common. Another author will employ that word with just as much consistency, or very nearly so, with [2868] another transferred meaning, and one that is more or less different, and sometimes with one that is very close and similar, and yet is not the same. And a similar variety (with many other differences akin to these) will be found in the use of one and the same verb, one and the same noun, one and the same adverb in authors who are contemporaries and compatriots. As those versed in these matters well know, it is important to pay very close attention to all this variety, and always to note with each author, and especially in the classical ones, what precise meaning he tends to give either always or generally to each word or expression that he employs. Once such information is discovered and noted, one can readily understand an author, and penetrate the character and true meaning of the expressions employed, and explain many passages that, without knowledge of the meaning he customarily ascribes to certain words, would not be understood, as has happened to many interpreters and grammarians, etc., who when they explain such passages in terms of the ordinary usage of those words or phrases, and do not take into consideration the particular usage they tend to have in that writer, either have not known how to [2869] disentangle themselves or have been deceived. This may even befall those who are very learned, and who nonetheless have no experience of a particular author, and are just beginners with regard to him, or who have only read some fragmentary passage. Certainly you cannot fully and properly understand any Greek author until you have gained experience of his particular Dictionary, and of its meanings, and you need experience of each such author when you come to read them for the first time or after a long interval, although in some it will cost you more effort, in others less, and in certain authors so much that only those with the longest experience of, and familiarity with, the act of reading and studying him will be capable of thoroughly understanding and explaining the true character of the words and phrases, and of the mode of expression, whether generally or in each specific passage. In short, only these will know his Greekness, which, one might say, is more or less different in each and every Greek author. (1 July 1823.)

  It’s no wonder that French writing is so different from the pronunciation. As I have said elsewhere [→Z 2462–63], all the spellings of the daughter languages of Latin, and also, at any rate in part, of English and German, had [2870] as their model and guide Latin writing, which belonged to the only literature that was known when a start was made to forming modern spellings and subjecting them to rules. Indeed, it was by the same token almost the only known writing, because modern languages virtually up until then had been very little written, and when it was deemed appropriate to write, people had for the most part written in Latin, albeit of a barbarous kind. Now, of the languages born of Latin, French is the one whose pronunciation diverges most from the Latin. It is thus the case that of these languages, French is likewise the one that differs the most from the mother, as much in spirit, constructions, styles, expressions, and in a good number of the words, as in sounds. See p. 2989. What is wholly certain is that at the beginning French was pronounced in the same way as it was written, that is, the pronunciation of the syllables in the French words corresponded to the value that the letters with which these words were written had in the alphabet. The extant verses of the Provençal poets were indubitably pronounced in this fashion or very nearly so, as is testified by their meter, their rhymes, etc., which would alike be lost if one were to pronounce them otherwise, or in a modern style. But because penetration from the north and commerce with northern peoples [2871] had altered French pronunciation, and thinned out the vowels, and thickened it with consonants, and made the pronunciation harsher, thus differentiating it from Provençal, and had then, through the medium of French, altered Provençal in turn (see Perticari, Apologia di Dante, ch. 11, beginning, pp. 106, end–108, beginning and ch. 12, beginning, pp. 111–12, and therein end, p. 119 and Chapter 16, end, p. 158), French diverged very markedly from Latin, both as regards the new words and forms it acquired from peoples who had never spoken Latin, and also as regards the sounds in which it clothed and with which it pronounced those same words taken from the Latin that it already had, and that it still retains. Hence there are two reasons why French pronunciation should have turned out differently from the writing. First, because of what I have just pointed out, that is, because not having a known writing, or at any rate no writing pertaining to a lettered and formed language, aside from Latin, French spelling, like the others, was obliged to adopt Latin as its model, and since French pronunciation had already become markedly different from Latin, and certainly very much more different than Spanish and Italian had been or were, [2872] consequently French writing was bound to differ much more from its pronunciation than do Spanish and Italian, which adopted and used the same model. Second, because this diversification and northernization of pronunciation had taken place, or gathered momentum and spread somewhat belatedly in France, and furthermore because the many poets in Provence wrote in Provençal—which was already wholly identified with French and at that time always analogous to it, though more Latin than it (see Perticari, loc. cit., p. 107, beginning)—because they wrote it, I repeat, in a manner similar to and analogous with Latin, and because it was as true as it was natural that the first to write in French looked to the Provençals, and took them as their guides, because they were perhaps the most learned at that time in France, and because they had helped to spread there the taste for vernacular poetry and for writing in the vernacular: for all these reasons, French writing drew close to Latin, as both Provençal writing and pronunciation had drawn close to it; drew close, I repeat, notwithstanding the fact that French pronunciation drew further away from it all the time, as it did also from the writing. [2873] Which is why it can truly be said that French pronunciation—by itself and through its own momentum—drew apart from and separated from the writing, rather than the writing from the pronunciation. Although it is really the responsibility of good and philosophical orthographers to see to it that writing in some way keeps pace with general pronunciation, where it is governed by rules, or recognized as regular, but not to cause writing to stay in the same place, and let this particular pronunciation go its own sweet way, without giving it any further thought. But these arguments could neither be formulated nor followed in those early, confused, and ignorant times, nor once formulated could they be implemented, the opposite practice having become so firmly rooted that one could no longer either be rid of it or change it, because it required too many and too sweeping and crucial changes, and not the few, slight, and almost accidental ones that Italian practice required and received.

  The consequence of all these causes and developments is, oddly enough, that written French is sometimes identical to, and very often similar to, Latin, and almost always recognizable as its [2874] daughter. But French as pronou
nced, which is tantamount to saying the French language as such, is so different from it, indeed dissimilar to it, that this line of descent can barely be discerned. And, if we were to go by their pronunciation alone, we would never guess the origin of a large part, perhaps most, of the great number of Latin words preserved in French, nor would we ever take them to derive from particular Latin words, whereas this origin is apparent at first glance when we read such words in written form. Indeed, I really do believe that, if French writing were not so different from its pronunciation, by now knowledge of the greater part of the origins of this so very modern language would be lost, or prey to dissertations, conjectures, and fables. Whereas in fact such knowledge is preserved only thanks to the diversity, irregularity, indeed the absurdity of the writing, and yet it is preserved in it very clearly, certainly, and visibly, and all the more visibly the more different the writing is from the pronunciation, because it is thereby all the more similar to Latin. So greatly has the Latin language changed on French lips through dealings with northern peoples, and perhaps also in large part before that, on account, indeed, of the [2875] climate,1 apart from the northern origin of many of the actual speakers, that is, of those who were in origin Franks. Although neither the Gothic and Lombard origin of many Italians, nor the Vandal or Moorish origin of so many Spaniards have come anywhere near to producing effects in the languages of these two peoples that are similar and proportionate.