Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  Synizesis. Diphthongs. —Greek diphthongs and long vowels, before short vowels, often become short because the 2nd vowel of the diphthong is supposed to be elided with one of the two vowels which form the long. Thus in Virgil: “Te, Corydōn, Ŏ Ălexi,” “Pēlĭŏ Ŏssam,” “Īlĭǒ alto.”1 The o in the last two examples here, is not entirely elided by reason of its double function as a long vowel. Dugas-Montbel, loc. cit. at p. 4334, in note. See p. 4467.

  For p. 4344. With the spread in the use of writing, it is quite natural that people thought of composing and writing in the most natural way, in other words in prose. But perhaps not immediately, because it is also natural that the most simple and obvious things and ways are not discovered so quickly: especially where, as in our case, a different practice was well established.2 In any event, the fact remains that the world’s first and, for a long period, only compositions were verses, for no other reason that people composed long before writing. See p. 4390.

  For p. 4349. Today, more than ever before, men must content themselves with the respect of their contemporaries or, more accurately, the people they know; and books with surviving for a few years at most.3 (Today, in truth, everyone writes only for the people they know.)

  For p. 4327. This would be the case with Ialysus by Protogenes4 (or Apelles), where chance did better, indeed it did what art was unable [4355] to do. In any event, whether Peisistratus, or somebody else on his orders, or whether his son Hipparcus or the many men of letters of that time, friends and assistants of these two or of one of them (Wolf, pp. CLIII–V), were responsible for collecting together the Homeric verses, arranging them into that order which they have, and dividing them into the two corpora of the Iliad and the Odyssey, they would deserve all the praise for the resulting effect from these two works as a whole, and for the creation of the epic poem, if it were not obvious that they also created the epic poem without realizing it, and that they had no intention other than to put those songs into order, to classify them and divide them according to their subject matter. Homer’s διασκευασταὶ [diaskeuasts] were polishers and refiners, who probably corrected the meter and diction in many places, and added, removed, changed what seemed to them necessary to give unity, integrity, mutual liaison [connection], and continuity to those songs. They were different from the Critics, whose task was to seek out what the poet had actually written, not what was best; to correct the texts, not to refine them. (Wolf, CLI–II.)1 Hence διασκευὴ [revision] and recensio [recension] are quite different, in both these and in other ancient works (p. CCLVI, note).2 Wolf believes (p. CLII) that the διασκευασταὶ [diaskeuasts], whom he considers *“supervisors or polishers,” worked on the revision of the Homeric songs “together with Peisistratus or a little later.”*3 But he has no evidence of this; they are only mentioned by the scholiasts; I believe that they were much more recent (because this seems to me to be natural) though, as he too suggests, much earlier than the Alexandrian critics. Part of the overall effect of those two works is rather more properly due to them, since that intention was present in what they did. See p. 4388.

  [4356] In short, the epic poem in our literatures was born of none other than a false presumption. All that Homer and the Greek poets from that time, and from the centuries that followed, knew in that genre were hymns. *“Indeed, the word ὕμνος [hymn] has a broader sense, and often includes every type ἐπῶν [of epic verse]. Whence arises this line at the end of three of the” (Homeric) “hymns, an obvious trace of that custom: ‘Σεῦ δ' ἐγὼ ἀρξάμενος μεταβήσομαι ἄλλον ἐς ὕμνον’ [‘Now that I have begun with you, I will turn to another hymn’].”* (Wolf, § 25, p. CVII, note.)1 In other words, “I will move on to one of the Homeric songs, to which the sacred hymns served as proems,” and this is why the ancients often called them προοίμια [proems, hymns], προοίμιον Διός [hymn of Zeus], προοίμιον ᾿Απόλλωνος [hymn of Apollo], etc.2 The rhapsodes composed or sang one or other of these proems depending on the place and the occasion on which the Homeric passages were to be recited, that area’s tutelary deity, the ceremony, etc. See my observations on the 3 kinds of poetry—lyric, epic, and dramatic [→Z 4234–36]—which will be further illuminated by these comments. See p. 4460.

  And in fact the epic poem is contrary to the nature of poetry. (1) It requires a plan which is conceived and arranged completely coldly. (2) How can a task requiring very many years of work have anything to do with poetry? Poetry consists essentially in an impetus.3 It is also against nature absolutely. Impossible that imagination, the poetic vein, poetic spirits should endure, be sufficient, not diminish in so long a work on the same argument. See p. 4372. Virgil’s tiredness and strain in the last 6 books of the Aeneid is well known as well as apparent; they were written for a purpose, and not from an inner impulse or desire.4 See p. 4460. —The Furioso5 is a succession of different topics, almost of different poems; it is not created on a plan which is conceived and arranged from the beginning; the poet felt free to stop when he wished; he continued each canto of his own free will, from choice, impulse, primitive ὁρμὴ [impetus]; and at the beginning he certainly did not intend it to be so long. —Works of poetry should by nature be short, as were all primitive poems (that is, the most poetic and true), of whatever kind, [4357] among all peoples.1

  But what about drama? I would say that drama has even less to do with poetry than the epic. It is something prosaic: they are verses in form only, not in essence, nor are they poetic in nature. The poet is moved by his own personal feeling, not by those of others. The pretense of having a passion, a character which is not his (something which is necessary in drama) is something entirely alien to the poet, as is the exact and patient observation of the character and passions of others. The feeling which animates him at that moment is the only muse which inspires the true poet, the only thing which he is moved to express. The more he is a man of genius, the more he is a poet, the more he will have his own personal feelings to express, the more he will be averse to clothing another character, to speaking in the voice of another person, to imitating.2 The more he portrays himself and feels the need to do so, the more lyrical he is, the less dramatic he will be. In fact the greatest poetic minds who have cultivated drama (cultivated because they believed it to be poetry, deceived by its verse, in the same way as Virgil wrote an epic poem because he believed that Homer had done the same) always make the mistake, in this respect, of giving more of themselves than of others. See p. 4367. The inspiration of the dramatist is put on, because he has to dissemble: one who feels moved to compose poetry is moved only by the need to express feelings which he truly feels. See p. 4398. We laugh at the Exercises of the sophists: “what would Medea have said,” etc., “what would so-and-so say,” etc. The same with Orations to mark a fictitious event, like so many of our 16th-century orations, starting with Della Casa. What else is drama? Is it less ridiculous because it is in verse? Indeed, imitation is something prosaic: when it is in prose, as in novels, it is more reasonable: likewise in our comedy, prose drama, etc.

  [4358] Imitation has much of the servile about it. It is entirely wrong to consider and describe poetry as an imitative art, to compare it with painting,1 etc. The poet imagines: imagination sees the world as it is not, it creates a world that does not exist, it makes up, invents, it does not imitate, or (I would say) it does not imitate intentionally. This is the essential character of the poet: a creator, an inventor, not an imitator. *“That philosopher” (Plato) “was the first—so it seems to us—to make μίμησιν [imitation] the essence of the poetic art, on the basis of several genres, especially drama, etc.2 His primary opinion of the poetic art was adopted by Aristotle in his own celebrated little book. True, Aristotle corrected it here and there, but even so, he did not explain it in such a way as to make it entirely appropriate for every kind of poem: thus he completely excluded the genre of didactic poetry. Nor does any philosopher after Aristotle seem to have understoo
d correctly the true meaning of this art or its historical interpretation”* (Wolf, § 36, pp. CLXIV–V). This definition by Plato—a definition of that dialectical, even playful form related to training, with which he put, e.g., rhetoric alongside μαγειρική [cooking], etc. (see the Gorgias, and the Sophist, especially at the end),3—is the sole origin of this deeply held view that poetry is an imitative art. See p. 4372, end.

  But, leaving this discussion for another occasion, it is sufficient at present to reply that in the beginning and among the Greeks (since all things are more reasonable in the beginning), dramas were much shorter compositions than nowadays, and almost without a plan, in other words with only a very simple plot. *“But, in general, it would be most useful to have a single collection, drawn from all the scattered sources, of the ancients’ rules of poetics and judgments on their poets. [4359] If I am not mistaken, these would show, when compared with the best poems now extant, how late the Greeks learned to construct WHOLES in poetry,1 and would show that not even Horace, who made a precept of this, established the same limits to his precept as our philosophers do. These matters will have to be particularly investigated by anyone who wishes to judge the dramas of the Greeks by the laws of ancient aesthetics. And if in these matters Aristotle was too often diverted from historical method, his perspicacity, by which he surpassed his age, is all the more to be admired.”* See p. 4458. (Wolf, § 29, p. CXXV, note.)

  In any event, it can be seen that the epic, from which the drama appears to have deriveda (or rather from the songs of the rhapsodes, which were still not epic, but lyrical: Wolf),2 originates from lyric poetry, which is the only original and true form of poetry: the only form, but as varied as is the nature of the feelings which the poet and the human being can experience and wish to express. (29 Aug. 1828.) See p. 4412, end.

  How erroneous, absurd, contradictory it is to have tried to judge Homer according to modern or the best-known customs, ideas, and practices, and to apply them to his poems! It has been supposed that there is a monstrous mixture of dialects in Homer, because the dialect or language which he used was then divided into several different dialects. See p. 4405. It has been believed that he was a very accurate portrayer of heroic Greek and Trojan customs when in fact he portrayed only the customs of his own times, and gave the Trojans Greek names and customs. See p. 4408, end. (*“I would have to embark on a long excursus about the whole method that Homer normally employs in describing the heroes’ life. Only rarely do I find in him the sort of learned artistry affected by the poets [4360] of more cultivated times, when they take great care, in bringing onstage the mythical deeds of their ancestors, not to corrupt pure antiquity with modern customs, so that they more easily deceive readers or audiences who are skeptical because of their expert knowledge of antiquity, and force them to join and to live, with their whole minds, as it were, with the things and people that they especially desire.”* Wolf, loc. cit. on p. 4343, § 21, p. XCII, an art which not even the Greek dramatists possessed. *“Indeed, to say nothing of the” (Greek) “tragedians’ custom of transferring modern customs into the heroic age,”* etc., § 19, p. LXXXIII, note): and then at the same time, as if Homer had held and was describing modern views, features, customs, he has been criticized for absurdities, barbarities, etc., which are to be found in judging his poems according to such views and customs. (See my observations [→Z 2760–70] on the law of nations of those times, compassion, patriotism, etc. etc.) For more of these errors see pp. 4383–84. Finally, he has been attributed with an intention and an art in relation to epic poetry which he never had, and which is much later than him, and then he has been attacked, ridiculed, etc., because his poems fail in a thousand ways to respond to the rules of this art, which we said we had taken from them,1 fail to respond to the plan which we have formed and attributed to them, to the unity which we have assumed the honor of giving to them, etc. (31 Aug. 1828.) But in far more serious ways than these, and toward errors and absurdities far more damaging, we have been and go on being drawn by our mania for seeking to adjust everything to fit our point of view, and to explain everything according to our own ideas. (30 August 1828.)

  Mr. Bilderdijk,2 the most reputed living Dutch poet, and also a famous scholar and scientist (alive in 1826), in an essay Van het Letterschrift [4361] (about writing characters), 8°, Rotterdam 1820, *“agrees with the view that the ancient alphabets contained only consonants.”* (Bulletin de Férussac, loc. cit. p. 4312, tome 6, 1826, art. 152, p. 183.) But he says this for reasons and explanations different from those adopted by me elsewhere [→Z 1285–91, 2404–405]. (31 Aug. 1828.)

  For p. 4340. *“A book has appeared this year” (1824) “in Leipzig which should attract the attention of lovers of Slavic literature. It is a collection of Serbian songs in 3 vols. Published by Vuk Stefanović,1 a very well-known Serbian man of letters and the author of a Serbian grammar and dictionary. Herewith the notice given of it by the learned journal of Göttingen2 (1823, nos. 177 and 178): ‘These Serbian songs have not been borrowed from old chronicles; they have been gathered from the very mouth of the people. As they were never written, neither have they ever aged nor shall they.’”* Ibid., tome 5, Jan. 1826, art. 24, p. 26. (31 Aug. 1828.) See p. 4372.

  *“Vuk Stefanović and some other modern Serbian men of letters, believing they were doing the right thing, have introduced some new letters as well as a foreign orthography that is wholly barbarous among the Slav peoples. Why not stay with the old Cyrillic alphabet?”* (See the previous thought and those to which it refers.) Ibid., taken from the Son of the Homeland (Russian Journal), no. 26, p. 241, 1824.3 (31 Aug. 1828.)

  *“Commentatio historico-critica de Rhapsodis, 4° of 22 pp., Vienna 1824.4 This opuscule contains, firstly, the etymology of the word ῥαψῳδὸς [reciter of poems, rhapsode]. ἀπὸ τοῦ ῥάπτειν τὴν ᾠδὴν [from to stitch together the song], or ἀπὸ τοῦ ἐπὶ ῥάβδῳ ᾄδειν [from to sing with a baton]. The Author [4362] then sets out the reasons which make him adopt this etymology. ῾Ράπτειν ᾠδὴν [to stitch together the song] is explained, following Wolf” (§ 23, p. XCVI, note of the Prolegomena, etc.):1 “‘to weave together songs in a manner and in order appropriate for public recitation.’a ῾Ομηρισταὶ and ῾Ομηρίδαι are designated as synonyms in the sense of ῥαψῳδοὶ [rhapsodes]. There then follow some historical observations on the art of the Greek rhapsodes, divided into 4 periods. The 1st goes up to Homer; the 2nd covers the golden age of the rhapsodes, up to Peisistratus; the 3rd, the silver age, up to Socrates; the 4th, the age of bronze, is concerned with the degradation of the rhapsodes’ art. The opuscule concludes with a listing of distinguished rhapsodes.”* Ibid., March, art. 231, p. 170. (Aug. 1828.)

  For p. 4312. *“Several small tribes in Africa, America, and Polynesia, among whom a wholly foreign writing was introduced with the preaching of Christianity, after their language had been elaborated, in the absence of any writing, over a long period of centuries, could, etc.”* Ibid., 1826, tome 5, pp. 338–39, art. 485.2

  For p. 4340. *“Dissertatio historica inauguralis de Guilielmo Tellio, libertatis Helveticae vindice, quam examini submittet J.-J. Hisely, 8°, VIII and 69 pp., Gröningen 1824. (Beck’s Allgemeine Repertorium, 1825, 1st vol., p. 213) … In chapter 2 the author examines the historical fact attacked by Freudenberger. From this examination it emerges that W. Tell is unjustly accused of murder.”* Ibid., 1826, tome 6, § 138, p. 162. See p. 4372.

  For p. 4322, end. *“Mr. Granville Penn reads” (at the sitting of 21 June 1826 of the Royal Society of Literature, London, “an interesting notice concerning the meter of the first line of the Iliad. Modern editors and commentators have tried to demonstrate that this line could be [4363] made metrical” (who can doubt it, altering it at will?); “yet a great classical authority (Plutarch, De profectus virtutis sentiendo, ch. 9) declares it to be ‘unmetrical’ (ἄμετρον).”*1 (And the ancients say the same about many other lines of Homer’s. See p. 4414.)
*“In order to make it metrical, in their sense, following the ordinary construction of the line, they have contracted δεϊω, from the word πηλήίαδεϊω [son of Peleus], (sic)2 into δω. Plutarch in another passage, explaining why he calls this line unmetrical, affirms ‘that the number of syllables in the first line of the Iliad is the same as that in the first line of the Odyssey,’ and that the same is true of the last line of the Iliad in relation to the last line of the Odyssey (Symposium, bk. 9, ch. 3).3 Now the 1st line of the Odyssey is composed of 17 syllables, that is, of 5 dactyls and one spondee, the exact number contained in the line ‘Μῆ-νιν ἄ-ει-δε, Θε-ὰ, Πη-λη-ί-α-δε-ω Α-χι-λῆ-ος’ [‘The wrath sing, goddess, of Peleus’s son, Achilles’s]. That is why Mr. Penn thinks that when the poet articulated the line, he made a pause at the pentameter, which ends in Θεὰ, and renewed the arsis on the following syllable: Μηνιν α|ειδε, Θε|ὰ, Πηλη|ιαδε|ϊω Αχι|ληος. The author argues that, in spite of the transgression of the laws of meter, there is in the fullness and volubility of the opening line a magnificence of imagery similar to the first breaking forth of the waters of a river, at the moment when the sluice gates containing them are opened, and before these waters, regaining their natural direction, flow in a regular and uniform course. This appears much more analogous to the beginning of this majestic poem than the regularly measured meter which has been imposed upon it.”* Bulletin, etc., 1826, tome 6, art. 207, p. 239. The beginning [4364] of the Iliad, according to Müller (see p. 4321, line 16) is not by Homer, but added by the διασκευασταὶ [diaskeuasts]. If this is true, what is to be said about verses from the Homeric period, if those from times after Peisistratus are also found to be unmetrical?

  For p. 4170, end. *“La casa delle pitture [The House of Paintings]1 is the name given to a house discovered in Pompei on account of the frescoes which it presents, the most beautiful and best preserved of all those found up to now. On the 12th February 1825, work began on clearing the entrance to this house. Below the door was found a mosaic fragment of indifferent workmanship. It represents a large dog, in position to guard the entrance to the house. At the bottom are written the following words: CAVE CANEM [beware of the dog].”* Bulletin de Férussac, loc. cit. at p. 4312. Jan. 1826, tome 5, art. 40, p. 45.2 (2 Sept. 1828.)