Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  In this connection, consider also how many inventions, etc., proper to the ancients for such a long period of time, and that were common to many nations, and widespread too, once they were lost in later times could never be repeated, nor will they probably be repeated ever again (such as encaustic painting);1 and this despite the fact that we have information about them in general, that is, the memory that they existed and what they were like, and often also a lot of specific information about them, that is, traces of what they were like, the methods and processes, etc., the [3672] means, ingredients, etc., the form in which they were used, etc., and particular, distinct information regarding their effects, purposes, etc. Nonetheless, even for minds as civilized, refined, acute, penetrating, trained, cultivated, speculative, inventive, accustomed, and devoted to inventing, speculating, meditating, reflecting, observing, comparing, reasoning, etc., as human minds have become (for primitive and savage minds, etc., certainly are and were something quite different), they did not have the capacity, from when civilization began to return, to discover them a second time. (11 Oct. 1823.)

  The previous thought confirms the ideas I have expounded elsewhere [→Z 1263ff.] regarding there being but one primitive language among men, and all present and past languages deriving from one and the same primitive language (supported in this by Holy Scripture), and regarding the uniqueness of the invention of the alphabet, and the first origin of all ancient and modern alphabets. (11 Oct. 1823.)

  The impotence and lack of flexibility of the French language and its inferiority with respect to the other languages can be easily understood by the fact that other languages are capable, when they feel the need to do so, [3673] of easily adopting the form and style of French (as in practice has happened or is happening with all the cultured languages of Europe, at a certain period in particular, as with English and German, or still today, as with Italian, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Dutch, etc.; and they had and still have the potential to do this without themselves being corrupted and without violating directly their individual characteristic nature). Whereas French is totally incapable of taking on either the form or the style of other languages, or any other form but its own. And this holds true not only in relation to the other languages to which it is, so to speak, unrelated by family and blood, such as English, German, Russian, etc., which in their turn are capable of adopting and have adopted or are adopting the form of French, but also in relation to cognate or sister languages, such as Italian and Spanish. It cannot do it even in relation to its own mother language, Latin. (12 Oct., Sunday, 1823.)

  To exactly the same degree by which someone perfectly and truly comes to know and understand the difficulties of writing well, so does he learn [3674] to overcome them. No sooner does one know and understand completely, intimately, distinctly, and in detail all the difficulty of the best writing, than one is already capable of writing in the best way. And this is for the very reason that the art of good writing, and the way to do it, and what the art of good writing is, cannot be completely known and understood except by someone who possesses this art completely, namely someone who can put it fully into practice. So that at one and the same moment one both understands the difficulty of perfect writing, and learns the way of overcoming it and acquires the expertise. And only the person who is capable of writing perfectly fully understands the difficulty involved, nor could he otherwise ever write well, even though he can do it competently, except with very great difficulty. Those who write badly think that writing well is an easy thing to do, and they write smoothly in their own fashion, thinking they are writing well. And the worse they usually write, the easier they think good writing is, and the more easily they write. The awareness that writing well is a difficult thing is a most certain sign of being already well advanced [3675] in knowing how to write, as long as such a person is truly and intimately convinced of the difficulty of which he speaks, and is not asserting it merely in words spurred on by what he thinks it means and by common opinion. (For even someone who is incapable of writing says that writing well is very difficult, but he does not say it out of awareness nor from experience nor with genuine conviction, and if he is one of those people who become involved in writing and who suppose they can do it, it is certain that in truth he does not believe that it is difficult, though people generally say that, and he too says it along with the others.) On the contrary to think that writing well is an easy or not very difficult thing, and being confident that one has the ability and the competence to do it effortlessly, or to have the ability to learn it without much trouble is a sure sign that the person is incapable of doing anything, and is at the first stages of acquiring the art, or still a long way behind. (This is generally true of all the arts, sciences, etc.) From these observations one must deduce how many people there are who understand perfectly the value of, and appreciate the work, the knowledge, the art and skill of a perfect piece of writing and of a perfect writer, for which see pp. 2796–99. (12 Oct. 1823, Sunday.)

  [3676] For p. 3349. We must not overlook one difference which exists between the character, way of life, etc., of the ancient peoples of the north and inhabitants of cold countries, and that of the moderns, a difference which is greater than that generally found between the ancients and the moderns. For the northern ancients are portrayed for us by historians as very ferocious, very restless, very active not only in their character, but in their deeds, as resistant to the yoke, always desirous of novelty, always scheming, always recalcitrant and rebellious, and almost completely uncontrollable and uncontrolled. Germans, Scythians, etc.1 Modern northerners on the other hand are so readily subdued that certainly no southern people can match them. And they are so far from ferocity, that there is no people more docile, more amenable, more obedient, more tolerant than they are. And if there is any part of Europe where people scheme less, and are less recalcitrant to command, and less desirous of novelty and hate subjection less, that is indeed among the northern peoples. In such diversity of effects a great part is certainly played on the one hand by the diversity between ancient and modern governments, on the other the limited culture of the people in northern regions. But a very great part is certainly played by the material difference in their lives. The ancient [3677] northerners, poorly protected from the inclemency of the weather by their caves, obtaining their subsistence by hunting (Georgics 3, 370ff., etc.), some of them also nomadic and without a roof like the Scythians, etc., were even more ὑπαίθριοι [used to the open air] than southerners are today. Once social practices and comforts had been introduced, the civilized peoples of the north became naturally the most home-loving on earth. Nothing is more capable of making both nations and individuals quieter and more peaceful, nor less desirous of, and in fact more hostile to, novelty, than home life and domestic habits, which accustom people to a methodical life, make them content with the present, etc., as I have said in the passages referred to on the page to which this one refers [→Z 2752–55, 2926–28]. So it has come about, not just because of passing and incidental circumstances, such as a greater or more widespread and common culture of the mind, etc., but naturally and constantly, in the system of social life, and after civilization had become common in both north and south, that the peoples of the south, less home-loving, have been, and are, and are likely to be more restless and more active than the peoples of the north, both in heart and in deed, [3678] contrary to what the pure nature of one group and the other considered comparatively would suggest. So it is that the modern and civilized northerners are in truth much more different and changed from their ancient predecessors, than the southerners are from their ancient predecessors, both in character, and in usages, in actions, etc.

  And we should also note in relation to the home-loving way of life, methodical and uniform, that it helps to bring the imagination into play, to awaken and feed illusions, to make man rich in images and wild fancies, and with these he can easily do without activity and is sufficient to himself and finds pleasure in himself, to increase his int
ernal life and action to the detriment of the external to a much greater extent than the beauty and vitality of nature do in the southern countries. Here men are distracted and intemperate, concentrating on what is outside, and they always have the world and other people, and life, and society and the reality of things in front of their eyes, all of which destroy or hinder imagination and illusion, and produce boredom and consequently discontent with the [3679] present and desire for novelty. But in the home-loving life, solitude, the fact of being always or most of the time wrapped up in one’s self, having no or very few distractions given the method and the uniformity of life and limited society, leaves the field free for the faculties of the mind to act, develop, turn back on themselves, meditate, think, reflect, imagine, and produces of necessity a habit of thought which gravely damages, or even excludes, both the disposition and the inclination and the act of doing. And conversely being for a great deal of time far from the world, from society, from men outside, the habit of seeing life and human things normally from a distance naturally produces illusions and fine dreams and castles in the air, and gives free rein to imagining and devising conceits, and to creating for oneself the world and men and life in one’s own fashion, and gives space to hope. Or if hope has been lost, it facilitates its return (for hope, as long as it is allowed to run free, and is not constantly rejected by reality, because of man’s nature returns without fail and quickly), or if it has been weakened, it gives it the means to restore itself and recover its power, [3680] or if it is dying, it at the least keeps it alive; or in sum it ensures that where circumstances are equal, hope will always be greater than it would be in a life in the midst of the world, and it keeps disillusion at bay, or holds it back, or lessens it, or mitigates its effects, or restricts its spread, etc.

  The consequence and proof of these observations is that in fact the northerners from one point of view are deeper and more subtle speculators, more philosophical, especially in abstract fields of knowledge, or the more abstract parts of them, or the more abstract genres, etc., and in short are more thinkers than southerners are. Thus Staël calls Germany “la patrie de la pensée” [“the homeland of thought”].1 And from another point of view, something which appears contrary both to the quality mentioned above, and to the respective natures of northerners and southerners, the former are more imaginative and more truly poetic and more sensitive, enthusiastic, and stronger and more effective in their imagination (as far as poetry is concerned, however, not action; and action only by the spirit, not the body), and more inventive, original, and productive than southerners. But this, according to the previously stated observations, must be understood, as is in fact the case, to be true only of modern northerners and southerners, given the modern circumstances of both. Among the ancients, given the diversity of these circumstances, it had to be, [3681] and was, the opposite case, that is that southerners were more imaginative, productive, etc., than northerners, in conformity with the true nature, and natural distinctive quality of both. So that this superiority of modern northerners, etc., is in truth one of the many social contingencies, though of the sort which are absolutely constant and coexistent with the essence of civilization, and as long as civilization lasts in one and the other people, they can never be absent.

  In any case, when the imagination of northerners is compared with southern imagination, insofar as it is, generally and taken as a whole, stronger, has more life, is more vigorous, active, productive, and is greater, it is also that much more sombre [somber], lugubrious, sad, melancholy, cheerless, and, so to speak, ugly. For, leaving aside other considerations, northern imagination is nurtured by solitude, silence, the monotony of life, and southern by the beauties and the vitality and the activeness of nature; and the products of northern imagination are born within the walls of a room heated by stoves, while those of the southern are born, so to speak, beneath a blue and golden sky, in [3682] green and smiling fields, in air warmed and vitalized by the sun.1 (13 Oct. 1823.)

  For p. 3737. Actually, the love we have for food and similar things which either we need or which give us pleasure, could instead be called hatred. Because, looking only to our own good, it leads us, in view of that good, to destroy, or to consume in whatever way and wear down and undo with use, the loved object. Or to be ready to undo or impair it if and to the extent and in the way that our good, and the use which therefore we propose to make of it, should require this. Which is the same hatred that the wolf bears the lamb, and the hawk the partridge. In truth, they do not hate either the partridge or the lamb, rather, in the way in which we are accustomed to speak of other things, they could be said to love them. But since this love leads them to kill and destroy them for their own personal good, we therefore call it hatred and enmity. (See Speroni, Dialogue 5, Venice 1596, pp. 87–88.) Now exactly the same as this is the love of primitive men toward women, insofar as the pleasure which they desire and search after does not require the destruction of the women. But [3683] if it were to require it, the love for women would lead primitive men to destroy them, so far is it from holding them back from such action. Since in fact it leads them into taking no notice at all of the physical troubles and harm which they frequently cause in order to satisfy their own desire, in obtaining their own pleasure with them, etc., even when they can do this without harming them. And it also happens (even among civilized people) when desiring to obtain their own pleasure with women, that, whether being able to do otherwise or not, whether foreseeing it or not, they kill them, or are the cause of their dying soon or some time after, or of them suffering greatly in their bodily health, even for ever. And are not women killed in the way of honor every day by their lovers? etc. etc. Of this nature and of no other is the love of primitive men toward women, and likewise of women toward men, proportionately to the nature and strength of the former in comparison with the latter. And only of primitive men perhaps? Let these observations be applied to those in which we show that from self-love hatred toward others is necessarily born, etc.1 (13 Oct. 1823.)

  Italian orthography in the 16th century is poor because of the excessive desire for it to look like the usage of Latin writing. Machiavelli writes on a number of occasions (or so it is written in the old editions of his works) sanctissimo for santissimo [most holy]. (13 Oct. 1823.)

  [3684] There is no one more intolerable and less tolerated in society than a person who is intolerant. (14 Oct. 1823.)

  Mêler [to mix] Old French mesler, as I have said elsewhere [→Z 2280, 3182], comes from misculare or mesculare, like mâle [male], Old French masle, from masculus. (14 Oct. 1823.)

  Excusso as, excussabilis, excussatus, from excutio is [to shake off] (on this verb and related verbs, such as concutio [to shake], etc., and their continuative forms I think I have already spoken elsewhere [→Z 2199]), see Forcellini. (14 Oct. 1823.)

  In relation to the entry anceps [two-headed, doubtful] referred to in my theory of continuatives, see the entry am in Forcellini. (14 Oct. 1823.)

  Low and vernacular words and those from popular rather than illustrious Latin, and criticized by writers right up to the time of St. Jerome; two of them are now part of the modern languages.1 See Forcellini under Annihilare, and the Glossary, etc. (14 Oct. 1823.)

  Nouns in uosus, verbs in uare, etc. etc., as I’ve mentioned in a number of other places [→Z 2019, 2324, 2339, 2889, 3617]. Add amanuensis [clerk]. Casuale [casual], Exercitualis [belonging to an army], Casuiste, French Luctuosus [mournful], Fructuosus [fruitful], Fatuité [complacency, self-deceit], fortuitus [casual], mortualia [funeral chants], mortuarius [mortuary], mortuosus [deathlike], manualis, manuarius [belonging to the hand]. These nouns or verbs or adverbs, etc., which when they come from nouns of the fourth declension (for instance from manus [hand]) always retain the u, while those which come from nouns of the [3685] second declension always (or regularly) lose it, show clearly that the genitive, etc. of nouns of the fourth, which now have a long us, etc., or long u in the case of neuters, was once in uus or in uu, etc. See p. 3
752. For it can be seen that words deriving from nouns of the fourth declension are formed in the same way as those deriving from words in which the double u is still retained and it is manifest and beyond controversy, as much as to say derivatives of nouns in uus, etc. These two u’s count as a single syllable, like the double a of ablative singulars of the first declension. It might be that this, and the double u were pronounced double, or else single, dragging out the voice in a certain way, etc. In all cases this observation should be referred back to my remarks [→Z 1151–53, 1158–60, 2266–68] on Latin diphthongs not considered by grammarians, or it could be that in pronunciation they were monophthongs, or truly diphthongs, or triphthongs, etc., which all adds up to what I am trying to demonstrate in the above-mentioned remarks. Since if they also in time became monophthongs, and that right into the best age of the Latin language (as do the common ae oe, etc.), that nevertheless, indeed more than ever, demonstrates that ancient Latin speakers (who are discussed in the above-mentioned remarks) pronounced the successive and concurrent vowels so rapidly that they ran them all together (whether they were two or more) into a single syllable, and that is how they did them in pronunciation, and frequently in writing [3686] and in verses which are more or less regular, more or less rough and formless, and especially in rhythmic verses, which were certainly proper to the most ancient, as well as to the most modern, instead of metric verses, or more than these, etc., but even in metric verses, etc. etc. (14 Oct. 1823.)

  For p. 2903. —and conspico or conspicor [to catch sight of], despico (see Forcellini under despicatus) and despicor [to despise] (and any other similar coming from specio [to look at] or its various compounds), on the subject of which, although conspicor is usually found in the same sense as conspicio, that is in no way continuative, nevertheless the passage in Varro, referred to by Forcellini “Contemplare et conspicare, idem esse apparet” [“It is clear that contemplare and conspicare are the same”],1 should be noted. Therefore conspico is actually continuative in meaning. See also the other passage in Varro where conspicor is passive in Forcellini, ibid., that is under Conspico. (14 Oct. 1823.)