Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  As an absolute reason, the political and military insignificance of the Italians and Spanish has led to them being without modern language and literature from the 17th century onward, and is why they have none today. This insignificance is the reason why Italy and Spain have lost their existence as nations from that point onward. Therefore it is the reason why Italy and Spain have not had, from that point onward, either modern literature, or philosophy, etc. They do not have [3859] their proper modern language, because they are without their proper modern literature and philosophy, but why do they lack these? Because they are no longer nations. And they are not nations, because without politics and military force, they no longer have any influence on the fate of others nor on their own, they do not govern nor do they govern themselves, and their existence or their way of behavior is a matter of indifference to the rest of Europe. As far as not having influence over others nor having any part in the common affairs of Europe is concerned, it is clear. As far as not having any influence over themselves nor governing themselves is concerned, the Italians are either subject to a decidedly foreign prince and government, or the prince is Italianized but not the government, or if the government and prince are Italian, or Spanish in Spain, putting on one side the continued foreign influence which directs them, modifies, turns them to its own ends, and which in a word acts through an Italian hand, both in Italy and in Spain the form of government is such that the nation has no part in it, affairs are in the hands of very few who are completely separate from the rest of their countrymen, everything happens without ever coming to the notice of the nation, so that politics is completely unknown and alien to the nation itself, its business is the same as anybody else’s as far as it is concerned. And in addition to that the liberty of each, particularly the private citizen, that is of the majority and of the true body of the nation, is so circumscribed that each individual is in a very poor position to determine his fate, and to govern himself, but as far as possible is governed by others, and not by the nation, not by the commonwealth, not each by all, but all by one or [3860] by very few individuals, and the public governed, so to speak, by private people. As far as the army is concerned, everyone knows that Italy and Spain haven’t had one since the 17th century.

  This political condition of Italy and Spain has produced and produces the usual and inevitable effects. Death and privation of literature, industry, society, art, talent, culture, great minds, inventive faculty, originality, great passions, which are intense, useful or beautiful and splendid, of every social advantage, of great deeds and therefore of great writings, inaction, lethargy both in private life and with respect to the private, as well as with respect to the public, and like the public insignificant with respect to other nations. These effects came into being at once, and from the 17th century onward they have continued to increase both in Italy and in Spain, and today they are at their peak in both countries, although the reasons given for them are perhaps no greater now than in the beginning. Indeed, perhaps the opposite is the case (although the placidity of despotism, proper to the last century, and therefore its seductiveness, is the perfection of these effects, their summit and their highest degree rather than a lower one).1 This came about because nothing in nature happens by leaps,2 and because a living being when struck down by death, cools little by little, and is a good deal warmer a few moments after death than some time afterward. In the 17th century, and also in the 18th, Italy, though already killed, still twitched and gave off fumes.The same can be argued about Spain. Now one and the other are motionless and ice-cold, and in the complete power of death.

  It is a constant, and I have argued this in many places [→Z 754–56, 780–83, 794], [3861] that as things grow, the language always increases and grows. But for precisely the same reason, when they stop and life fails, the language stops and becomes impoverished and practically dies, as has happened in fact from the 17th century onward to the Spanish and to us. Our languages, once enormously rich and powerful as they were, have been and are by degrees continuously diminishing, shrinking, and being impoverished; and more and more they are being impoverished and losing their own essence, and the riches that are proper to them, their own in other words, because the ones they acquire from others, completely incapable in any case of compensating for the ones they have lost, are not of a type which is proper to their nature. The languages mentioned in truth are dying. Because in fact Spain and Italy, from the 17th century onward, and especially in recent times, did not have and do not have life any more, not only national life, for they are no longer nations, but not even private life. Without activity, without industry, without spirit of literature, arts, etc., without spirit or style of society, the life of the Spanish and the Italians is reduced to a routine of inaction, of indolence, of old and fixed ways, of spectacles and feasts regulated by the Calendar,1 of habits, etc. But never any innovation among them either in the public or the private sphere, of any sort which shows life in any way at all. All that they can do is receive in charity some slight innovation either of things, or of customs, or of thoughts, and a kind of breath of false and alien life, from foreigners. These are what move us [3862] that tiny amount we have been moved. If, when the rest of Europe has made so rapid a journey, we are not still in the position and degree in which human civilization was two or three centuries ago (and the Spanish still almost are, and we too are behind other nations), it is only foreigners who have carried us forward. We have made not one single step in our career, nor have we contributed anything to the advancement of others, as the others all have on their part. We have not walked forward, we have been transported and pushed. We are and were completely passive. Therefore it is only natural that we are passive in language as well, which always follows things and corresponds to them perfectly. We have very little conversation, and what little we have is foreign. Italian conversation does not exist, therefore it is only natural that Italy’s conversation does not take place in the Italian language, and that everything that belongs to it, and this is a great deal, and of many kinds, and in accordance with many parts of life, customs, literature, etc., is expressed in foreign words, and does not have words or phrases in Italian which express it. We cannot have our own modern language because today we do not live in ourselves, but whatever we live is in others, and through the means of others, and the life of others, and their soul and spirit and fire which are not ours. Since life comes to us from elsewhere, it is only natural that the language we use in this life comes from outside and not otherwise. And I say the same about literature. And what I say about Italy, I say [3863] equally about Spain, which however, from the 17th century onward (as too in its heyday), lives and has lived less than Italy, if for no other reason than because it has communicated less with foreigners, it has received less life from outside, as well as the fact that in itself it has had much less life than we have, and perhaps because of its own character it is less fitted for such communion, and for receiving life from others. And therefore its language and literature, while they have become as sterile, diminished, faded, lost, and reduced to nothing as ours have done, have maybe become less barbarous, nonetheless, than ours. I don’t know whether this should be counted a greater evil or a greater good, etc. (10–11 Nov. 1823.)

  To what I have said elsewhere [→Z 3687] about the Latin positivized diminutive sella [seat], add the French selle, with its diminutive sellette, etc., and see the Spanish, etc. (11 Nov. 1823.)

  What happens in languages is like what happens in life and customs, and in speaking and doing, and dealing with men (and this is not a similarity, but a consequence). In times and nations where singularity in the way things are done, in customs, etc., is not tolerated, is mocked, etc., so too is distinctiveness of speech. And in proportion to how far difference from the ordinary, greater or smaller, is tolerated or acceptable, or is not acceptable, is not tolerated, is more or less mocked, etc., to the same degree a greater or smaller or no difference is accepted, not accepted, tolerated or not tolerated in speech. L
et us leave for the moment any comparison on this subject between ancient and modern languages, and any consideration of how, corresponding [3864] to the different nature of the condition and practice of ancient and modern nations, of the mind and human society, ancient and modern, all ancient languages are and were more adventurous than the modern, and how adventurousness is proper to ancient languages, and how therefore they are, by their nature, much more suitable for poetry than modern languages. For among the ancients, at some times and places more, at some times and places less, ηὐδοκίμει [a higher price was placed] on distinctiveness of works, of manners, of customs, of characters, of the behavior of people, and therefore also that of speech and writing. The French nation, of all those both ancient and modern, is that which least approves, admits, and accepts, indeed which most reproves and hates and rejects and forbids, not only distinctiveness, but nonconformity in operating and conversing in civilized life, in the characters of people, etc. The French nation, I say, putting aside the other things which pertain to this, about its language and style, is completely lacking in poetic language, and by its nature cannot have any, since by nature it is driven to be hostile and to hate, and does in fact hate, both distinctiveness of actions, etc., and also distinctiveness of speech and writing. Now poetic speech is by its nature different from ordinary speech. Therefore by its nature it is incompatible with the nature of French society and the French nation.1 And in fact the French language is incapable, not only of dealing with the unfamiliarity which arises from the use of words, phrases, meanings taken from other languages, [3865] or from its own antiquity, which is not that far away, but also with the unfamiliarity and therefore elegance which arises from a use of its own modern and common words and expressions that is out of the ordinary, that is, a use of metaphors which are not hackneyed, of figures, whether of meaning, or especially of diction, of bold flights of all sorts, even of those which not just in the ancient languages, but in other modern ones, as, e.g., in Italian, would by comparison be among the slightest, the most common, and sometimes would not even be bold. This incapacity is attributed to the language. In truth it comes from the language, but even more from the nation, and the incapacity is in the language for no other reason than that it is in the nation. In contrast, the German nation, which on the one hand because of its division and political constitution, on the other because of the natural character of its individuals, because of their customs, behavior, etc., because of the present state of their civilization, which since it is very recent is not in general as advanced as in other places, and finally because of the harshness of the climate which makes home life naturally proper, and habitual, to it, is perhaps of all modern nations the one least suited and habituated to an effective society of persons. It therefore easily sustains, and also approves and celebrates, not just dissimilarity, but also singularity of the actions, customs, characters, manners, etc., of people. (This singularity has among them not a few factual examples, and not unimportant ones either, even in entire cities and bodies like that of the Moravian Brethren,1 and in many other German institutions, etc. etc., which in truth have [3866] nothing modern about them at all, and would seem to be impossible in our times, and unfit for them.) It also sustains, allows, and exalts, etc., a very great singularity of every sort in speaking and writing, and possesses the language, not in verse only, but also in prose, which is by its nature the boldest of all the modern cultured languages, equal in this also to the boldest of the ancient ones. And this German language consequently is highly poetic and capable of and rich in every variety, etc.1 (11 Nov. 1823.)

  The unfamiliarity and elegance which arise from introducing into our languages words, phrases, and meanings taken from Latin, has virtually the same nature and effect as that which arises from the use of our own ancient words, phrases, and meanings, or ones which have passed out of everyday, vulgar, spoken use, etc. Since both the latter and the former (and sometimes these more than the second group, which since they were barbarous and uncultured, sometimes preserve something of the barbarousness of their origin or of the lack of culture of those times which used them, etc.) always have (when they are fittingly chosen, and suited to the languages into which it is the intention to introduce them) something of their own and their nation about them, even when they have not in the past ever been spoken or written in that language. And that is quite natural, since they are proper to a language from which ours were born and emerged, and from whose blood and bones these are formed. Hence such words as these, etc., in a certain way belong to the antiquity of our languages, and in these they are virtually like their own ancient words. So it is not without very good cause, if in blaming the use or introduction of words, etc., taken from other languages, whether they are ancient or modern (except for words, etc., which are already naturalized), we praise the introduction of Latin words, etc. For the former, differently from the latter, are foreign both by blood and by aspect and effect, and different [3867] in this from our other words, and from our languages in general, and from their character, etc. Innovation taken prudently from Latin, although in fact it is absolute innovation, is for our languages rather the restitution of antiquity than innovation, unfamiliar rather than new; and in truth (even when it is not very prudent or praiseworthy) it has more of the archaic about it than of the neologism. Which is the opposite of what happens with other innovations, and other foreignisms, etc. And for these reasons, in addition to the others, it is still reasonable and fitting that the French language should be, as it is, infinitely less disposed to enrich itself with innovation taken from Latin, than its sister languages are. Since that language is much more deformed and varied, degenerate, alienated from its origin than the latter languages. Therefore that Latinism which to us would be entirely suitable and easy because it is kin and maternal, etc., for French, so altered from its mother, it would be completely alien and foreign and not maternal, etc. In fact generally what in French is more successful and stands the test and is adaptable and becomes part of it and appears natural to it is innovation taken from English and German (which to the Italians and Spanish would be unbearable and barbarous) rather than from Latin. This can also be seen in a certain way in English, German, etc., surnames and proper names which are present in French. A great number of them often appear much less foreign than to us, and less different and alien from the national names.

  What I say about innovation taken from Latin, can also be said about that taken from the sister languages, and we defend it, while we condemn other foreignisms. But on this point we must make a distinction between what is proper to the sister languages [3868] insofar as they are sister, and what is proper to them insofar as they are languages different from ours; what is suitable for the general character of the family, and what to the character of the individual; what belongs in a certain way to the whole family, and which merely by chance is proper to and the possession of a single individual of the family and not of others, or of some, but not of another, and that which, etc.; what belongs to that specific language, insofar as it fits with ours, whatever it may be, and what belongs to it insofar as it is distinguished from ours; etc. etc. The former fits our language, whatever it may be by origin or any other thing, and in our language it can appear an archaism, and to have a strangeness which is no different from that of our effective archaisms, and can contribute to elegance, etc.; the latter does not, and can only ever seem a neologism, etc., and a barbarism, as if it were taken from languages completely foreign to it, etc. Innovation taken from sister languages must be of a kind that in its effect is almost an archaism, that is so that the unfamiliarity and elegance which derive from it are similar to that which arises from the suitable use of moderate archaism, etc. (11 Nov. 1823.)

  For p. 3717, margin. See Forcellini both under the compounds of sono [to sound], and under sono as, end. From what is said there, and under Tono as ui, end [to thunder], and Crepo as, end [to creak, to rattle], etc., there may be some doubt as to whether the reason for the anomaly which
we discuss in such first-conjugation verbs is the one we think it is, or whether it is another, though in general terms at least I do not think so.a And certainly this anomaly appears in several first-conjugation verbs, and in the greater part of these, there is no vestige at all of the third conjugation except in the perfect and supine. And the desinence in ui is in truth to be found in many 3rd-conjugation verbs [3869] (p. 3707) but it is anomalous in those as well, and itself needs its cause to be identified and its origin assigned. And who knows whether on the contrary such third-conjugation verbs did not actually receive those perfects from the first or 2nd, that is that they were once conjugated coleo es, for instance, instead of or just as often as colo is, and that the perfect colui is from that form: instead of saying that sonui is from sono is, crepui and crepitum from crepo is, etc. And this crepo is must have been posited by the grammarian in Forcellini because he did not remember so many other 1st-conjugation verbs which have the forms ui itum, such as crepo as. (12 Nov. 1823.) See p. 3871. Lacesso is, īvi and ii, ītum, ĕre [to provoke]. Without doubt the perfect and supine of lacessere are not its own, but in origin come from a fourth-conjugation lacessio. Indeed lacessiri exists. See Forcellini under lacesso, beginning. The same can be said of peto is, īvi and ii, ītum [to reach], and any other similar verbs there may be. See p. 3900.