Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  What I have said here regarding the use of ancient fables in the ancient manner (that is, by showing you believe in them and presenting them in some way to readers and listeners as though they believed in them, for otherwise there is nothing sinful about the prevalence of mythology), made, I repeat, by Christian poets, whether ancient or modern (especially Italian), writing for Christians, [3466] must also be said of the excessive use, indeed the intolerable abuse, of mythology which was and is made by Christian painters and sculptors, etc., not only from Italy but from every nation, foreigners no less than Italians. If it is up to them to choose the subject, you can be quite sure, especially in the case of sculptors, that it will not move away from mythology. And indeed since a very large part of the subjects carried out on commission are mythological, it follows that most of the paintings and especially sculptures seen in Europe (outside of Churches) are mythological. It appears that the whole purpose which a sculptor (in the same way as a poet) sets for himself is that his work should seem to be an ancient statue (like an ancient poem), needing to strive only to ensure that it is as beautiful as an ancient one, or even more beautiful, but still, if you like, within the genre of ancient beauty.1 (19 Sept. 1823.)

  “Ces hommes qui existent ainsi” (les Chartreux de Rome) “sont pourtant les mêmes à qui la guerre et toute son activité suffiraient à peine s’ils s’y étaient accoutumés. C’est un sujet inépuisable de réflexion que [3467] les différentes combinaisons de la destinée humaine sur la terre. Il se passe dans l’intérieur de l’ame mille accidents, il se forme mille habitudes qui font de chaque individu un monde et son histoire. Connaître un autre parfaitement serait l’étude d’une vie entière; qu’est-ce donc qu’on entend par connaître les hommes? les gouverner, cela se peut, mais les comprendre, Dieu seul le fait” [“These men who live in this way” (the Carthusians of Rome) “are perhaps the same for whom war and all its activity would have been scarcely sufficient, had they been used to it. It is an inexhaustible subject of reflection, all the combinations of human destiny there are on earth. Within the soul, a thousand events take place, a thousand dispositions are being formed which make of each individual a world and its history. To know another perfectly would be the work of a lifetime; what then does one think knowing men means? Governing them, that is possible, but understanding them, only God can do that”] Corinne, book 10, ch. 1, tome 2, p. 114. This means that man is supremely and infinitely or indeterminately adaptable, and that it is never possible to know all the ways and all the differences in which the spirit of individuals, according to differences in circumstances (which are infinite or indeterminable), adapts or is able to adapt, for the same reason as it is not possible to know all the possible circumstances that may occur, that can influence the spirit of individuals, nor all those which have actually influenced this or that given individual, nor their reciprocal combinations, nor their minute differences which produce not insignificant differences of character, etc. [3468] The greatest knowledge that it is possible to have of man, then, is to know perfectly and rationally that men cannot ever be known properly, because man is indefinitely variable in individuals, and the individual in himself. And the surest sign of such knowledge is never to be surprised in the slightest, and to be thoroughly and rationally and genuinely disposed not to be surprised, by any strange or unheard of and new temperament, character, quality, faculty, or action of any human individual, known or unknown, that may come within reach of our ears or eyes, that we happen or may happen to hear or see, for good or ill. Whoever has truly attained this disposition, and possesses it perfectly, soundly, constantly, and effectively, may say that he knows man as well as it is given to man to be able to. Indeed, only God is capable of more than this, as Mme. de Staël says, for God alone knows and is able to know every possibility.1 Now, men cannot be known perfectly by anyone who knows a little less than all possibilities, I mean, all possibilities of this nature and this earth. (19 Sept. 1823.)

  [3469] For p. 2709. Virtually all the ancients who wrote on politics (except Cicero, De re publica and De legibus) did so purely or chiefly in speculative terms. They tried to reduce it to a theoretical and rational system, to design a republic of their making, and this was the purpose, intention, and subject of their books. Therefore—although the moderns first have made politics their main subject of study, and second, as private citizens, which they were and for the most part still are, and hence inexperienced in government, have been obliged in this to follow speculation rather than practice, and have therefore imagined, dreamed, fantasticated, and exaggerated more in political science than any other—nonetheless, I take it for certain that the ancients, indeed even the Greeks alone, had more Utopiasa1 than all the moderns put together. Plato’s republic is a Utopia, both the one described in the Politics, and the one in the other books of the Laws, different from the former, as Aristotle comments in the 2nd book of the Politics, pp. 106–16.2 Those of Phileas Chalcedon (Aristotle, Politics, bk. 2, ed. Vettori, Florence, pp. 117–26),3 and Hippodamus of Miletus (ibid., pp. 127–35)4 were equally Utopias, as was that of Aristotle himself (see Fabricius).5 It appears that Heraclides Ponticus too wrote of the good republic without ever having handled public affairs. See Cicero, Ad Quintum fratrem 3, letter 5; Vettori, in Aristotle, Politics, p. 171; Meurs, tome 5, pp. 114b–c, tome 6, pp. 270f.6 And without [3470] doubt the political books and peri nomon or nomoi [On laws or Laws] of Theophrastus, Cleanthus, and other such philosophers mentioned by Laertius,1 and the lost books on politics and peri nomon by Aristotle himself and many others like them, were also Utopias. The same goes for the πολιτεῖαι [constitutions] of Diogenes Cynicus and Zeno. See Laertius and Vettori’s preface to Aristotle’s Politics, p. 3, toward the end. Here the Cyropaedia is again relevant. See ibid., p. 5.2 Aristotle dismantles the republics of others, but no more and no less than in philosophy he feels obliged to replace them, and so offers us his own republic and system. And yet Aristotle was one of the ancient philosophers who was most devoted to observation.3 So too the others. And it should also be noted that the ancients, and specifically the Greeks, handled or had handled public affairs themselves or could do so, or certainly, again despite being private citizens, were nonetheless part of their respective republics, and contributed to governing them along with the people. And generally speaking in the ancient republics, all of which were free, the private citizens, even when they were devoting themselves only to philosophizing and study, were more likely, for no other reason than because of the continuous daily speeches, because of finding themselves regularly in the midst of harangues, because public negotiations all passed in front of and took place before the eyes of all, and the causes of events were manifest, and there was nothing secret about them;4 [3471] they were more likely, I repeat, to truly understand politics and be able to reason about it from experience, much more so than modern private individuals are, who generally find and have found themselves in entirely the opposite circumstances, and are not even actually part of their republic and nation, or of any save in name only. Nonetheless, they follow their imagination and speculation in politics much less, and experience and the facts much more, than the ancients did, and they fantasticate and invent and err much less. (19 Sept. 1823.)

  “Μὴ μετέχοντας δὲ τῆς πολιτείας, πῶς οἷόν τε φιλικῶς ἔχειν πρὸς τὴν πολιτείαν;” [“Yet, if they have no share in the government, how can they be loyal citizens?”], Aristotle, Politics, bk. 2, ed. Vettori, Florence, Giunti, 1576, p. 131.1 (19 Sept. 1823.)

  For p. 2916. This uniformity of style in Europe once again comes from the fact that to begin with all modern literatures came from France (including whatever is modern in Italian and Spanish literature and style). Hence, as well as styles in the various European languages corresponding to each other in kind, for they all derive from the same source, each of these styles [3472] has little variety in itself, for all of them originally derived from a style which has none, and many of th
em nevertheless are modified based on this.

  Moreover, it is as sure that the art of style and speaking is proper only to the ancients, as it is that the art of thinking is proper only to the moderns. Not only did the ancients make this art the object of infinitely greater study than we do; not only did they possess and know thousands of parts, means, secrets which we do not even suspect, and can barely understand or only with great difficulty when they explain them and talk about them specifically (like Cicero, Quintilian, etc.); not only, in other words, was this art incomparably broader, more extensive, richer, more varied, distinct, thorough, specific, and detailed among the ancients than it is now among the moderns, it was almost the only, not even almost, it was the principal subject of study by those of the ancients who claimed and aspired particularly to be called writers, and especially men of letters. Look in detail at the works of Isocrates, Xenophon, and hundreds of others. Substantially all words [3473] and nothing more. In ancient times, if we look closely, men of letters ultimately set themselves no objective other than to say well, correctly, in learned fashion and with artifice, what everyone already knew and thought, or what they could easily have thought or known how to think on their own, but which very few could have expressed in such a manner. And in truth they became famous for no other reason once they had achieved this effect (although perhaps neither others nor they themselves realized this, or had had this intention expressed, specified, and made manifest to them).1 I am not talking here about the sophists, who unlike the others had this intention and openly expressed it and made no secret of it, and this was the only real difference between the most ancient sophists and the classical writers, and between one and the others’ forms of writing. The former affected to speak well, and made a show of doing so, while the latter spoke well out of art, but did not show they were trying to achieve this or pursuing it, as in fact they were. In terms of style the two differed considerably. In terms of [3474] concepts, opinions, invention, development, order, etc., there is no difference at all. Consider carefully the two authors referred to above (both enemies of the Sophists) and all those among the ancients who sought and attained the reputation of being able to write well,a and it will be clear that in their concepts, etc., all is sophistry. Nor will it require much attention to notice this. In Xenophon, who had a particular loathing of the sophists, so targeted by his master (see the end of On Hunting),1 who were an abomination to him as well; in Xenophon, so open, straightforward and natural that he appears to be quite the opposite of a sophist; in Xenophon, one is immediately struck by the sophist nature of his concepts, so much that I heard it remarked on with wonder by someone who knew nothing of Greek or ancient literature, and who had done no more than cast a cursory glance over some translation of this author. Even Socrates himself, that friend of the truth, that fine, sober speaker and enemy of curling tongs,2 cosmetics, and all other ancillary ornament and affectation, what else was he in his concepts but a sophist, [3475] no less than the ones he himself derided? However little in general the ancients thought, it is not possible to believe that the thoughts and observations of Socrates, Xenophon, Isocrates, Plutarch (much more recent) and others like them were anything but common, trivial, or vulgar in their own time (whether they were political, philosophical, moral, or anything else) or exceeded the common ability to think, find, conceive, and observe. But few were able to express them in such a way, as I have said.

  It is well documented that ancient classical works not only lose a great deal in translation, but that they are worth nothing, they appear to have no substance whatever, no worth is to be found in them that could make them even moderately estimable, they end up being like tow and ashes.1 This not only does not happen to modern classical works, but many of them lose nothing in translation, and in any language they are always the same, and have as much worth as the original. Cicero’s thoughts are certainly not as commonplace as those of writers mentioned above, etc., nor were they among the most [3476] ordinary of his time, especially among the Romans. Nonetheless, I find it hard to believe that anyone could bear to read the most conceptual of Cicero’s works translated into any language right to the end (or do so without tedium). What does this mean, what does this difference in condition between ancient and modern works mean when they are translated, if not that in even the most consummate ancient writers everything or virtually everything is either words or style, which, if removed or altered, leave almost nothing, and that when stripped of their mode of signification, their pronouncements appear to be the most ordinary, trite, common things in the world? Indeed the ancients’ thoughts are rather like common people: if you remove their clothing their forms look, if not uncouth, then certainly ordinary, of the kind that are found everywhere, with nothing special about them, nothing that invites the eye to contemplate them, or even to look at them, in other words nothing in any way singular or praiseworthy. On the contrary, in modern works everything is thought and person, style is nothing, the clothes are as ordinary as can be. And it is precisely for this reason that ancient classical works inevitably lose all or almost all of their value, that is, their style, when translated, for the moderns do not come near to having the art of style that the ancients did, nor are they able to retain that quality, etc., for these works in their own translations. And in not doing so, they are unable to leave them with any other quality that would make them worth reading, that would significantly distinguish these works from the most common and mediocre ones, especially the moral, philosophical, etc.1 I know that many consider the triviality of thought among the ancients in relation to ourselves, when we know so much more than they did. But [3477] I say this does not reflect badly on antiquity, on universal human spirit and reason, if one believes that such triviality, at least so far as a very great part of its thoughts is concerned, is not absolute, or was not even triviality at the time of the writers who expounded them. (19 Sept. 1823.)

  Sonito from sono as [to make a noise], continuative or frequentative (if, however, it does not come from the noun sonitus [noise]), but this is uncertain. Forcellini. (20 Sept. 1823.)

  Contentus a um [stretched, strained] (whence contentare in Italian, contenter [satisfy] in French, etc.) is originally nothing more than a mere participle, pure and simple. Yet it gradually became a simple adjective, and it is now this and this alone in Italian, French, and Spanish. (20 Sept. 1823.) Similarly also falsus [deceived], etc., on which see p. 3488. See p. 3620.

  Frisson, frissonner [shiver, to shiver],–brivido [shiver]–φρίσσω [to bristle]. (20 Sept. 1823.)

  For p. 3156. One could also add our Monti, in whom all is imagination and feeling plays no part, whereas it plays a very large part in most of Lord Byron’s poems (if, however, Lord Byron’s is properly signified [3478] with the term feeling). It is certain that Monti, although without any comparison inferior in imagination to that of Lord Byron, and although the only poetic thing about him is his imagination (both in terms of things and style), to read him is not unpleasant or without poetic effect, and the imaginative effects in him appear to be much more spontaneous and less forced than in Lord Byron. In fact perhaps it is the opposite, for Lord Byron is truly a man of the warmest natural fantasy, and Monti, whatever he is in himself, in his compositions is no more than a good, valiant translator of Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and other ancient poets, and an imitator, indeed, often no more than a copyist, of Dante, Ariosto, and some of our other classics. For Lord Byron draws his images from deep within himself whereas Monti takes them from others. And if in the former, the effort manifested in his writing of poetry appears to have something unpoetic about it, in the latter the imitating and copying are genuinely unpoetic, but are not such as to be noticed intrinsically in the poetry itself. This is why Lord Byron’s poems are less poetic, considered in their own right, than Monti’s are. While the latter is infinitely less a poet than the former is. [3479] And we conclude that the poems of the former are unpoetic, while the latter is not a poet. And the poetic effect of Monti’s poem
s belongs more to the ancients than to himself, and it is more that of ancient than of modern poetry and imagination. In terms of feeling, too, Monti’s vein has completely dried up, and when he tries to draw from it, as he does very rarely, he never succeeds in the slightest, as in the “Bardo.”1 (20 Sept. 1823.)