Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  *“Alphabet phonométrique; découverte de huit lettres nouvelles, by Virard, 8°, Grenoble 1827. Monsieur Virard has been concerned for more than 20 years with everything to do with grammar. By a happy combination, by freeing the language of all the letters whose place in a word is idle, arbitrary, and of no use at all for the purposes of pronunciation, he has achieved more than anyone else the means of writing in the way in which we speak. The letters and their combinations which he makes use of represent only the sound of the voice, and by the examples he gives he adds to the demonstration of a method which he does not yet believe to be perfect, appealing in this connection to the further reflections of the most learned grammarians. Once the pronunciation has been registered in a certain and invariable manner, this will be the means of preserving its purity, of destroying the bad accents of the provinces, to make the true sound of the word heard abroad, to transmit through all time, from one age to the next, a pure and unalterable accent, and to perpetuate the harmony of discourse when the language is dead. A. Métral.”* Ibid., Feb. 1828, tome 9, pp. 131–32, art. 109. The 8 new letters will be for French sounds which do not truly correspond with any signs from the Latin alphabet. I think that Monsieur Virard’s purpose is not to introduce the use of a new system of spelling, [4377] but only to perfect the method of representation used, for example, in those dictionaries which have prononciation figurée [phonetic pronunciation].1 So that French (and others like it) could be said to need two writing systems, etc. (13 Sept. [1828].)

  — *“Journal grammatical et didactique de la langue française, composed by Monsieur Marle, 8°, nos. 11–22, Paris 1827 and 1828 … The spirit of innovation has also reached the Société grammaticale [Grammatical Society]” (the compilers of this Journal). “Now there are those who want to reform the spelling of the French language so as to subject it more to the influence of how it is pronounced. We will repeat here what we have said elsewhere, that spelling and pronunciation are reciprocally representative one of the other, but their rights are unequal, that is to say, that spelling has inviolable ancient rights which in the first place its companion must respect, and then become beautiful and euphonious, if it can, while always paying homage to the rights of its elder. The ancient rights of spelling proceed from the very origin of words, or etymology. To corrupt the spelling of these words at the expense of etymology and for the benefit of a more convenient way of writing, in favor of ignorance above all, is to introduce barbarism into the language, to open the way to endless corruption” (the example of Italian shows the contrary),2 “and to turn all the words in the language into what a famous woman said of a people that disowned the notable things of its history, a family of foundlings. The Société grammaticale must abandon an [4378] undertaking which nothing can justify. (See no. 21 of the journal.) … Champollion-Figeac.”* Ibid., March 1828, tome 9, p. 231, art. 206. (14 Sept., Sunday, 1828, Florence.)

  For p. 4330. *“The 2nd part of Monsieur Petit-Radel’s work (Examen analytique et tableau comparatif des synchronismes de l’histoire des temps héroïques de la Grèce, by L. C. F. Petit-Radel, of the Institut royal de France, 1 vol. 4° of 296 pp., Paris 1827) is preceded by a note by Monsieur Saint-Martin, in which this learned academician provides an extract of the reasons which have led his fellow academician to choose as the date of the fall of Troy the year 1199 BCE, and to use this as the base for all the calculations of dates going back that are included in the table.”* Ibid., April 1828, tome 9, art. 301, p. 329. (16 Sept. 1828.)

  Saints Cyril and Methodius, Greek brothers, monks, called the Apostles to the Slavs, introduced the Slavonic liturgy (“la lithurgie slavonne”), in other words the divine offices in the Slavonic language (“le service divin en langue slavonne”), into Moravia and Pannonia in the ninth century, and in order to write it down invented the Slavonic alphabet (“l’alphabet slavon”), which is still in general use and which bears the name Cyrillic alphabet. Bulletin de Férussac, etc., passim, and especially February 1828, tome 9, pp. 163–67, art. 141.1 (17 Sept. 1828.)

  ῞Ελλα (i.e., καθέδρα. Hesychius)—sella [seat].2 ἕζω, ἕδω ec.—sedeo [to sit]. ἕδρα, ἕδος, etc.—sedes [seat]. (17 Sept. 1828.)

  Foscolo, Discorso sul testo e su le opinioni diverse prevalenti intorno alla storia e alla emendazione critica della Commedia di Dante.3 —“Prospetto” (i.e., summary) of the Discorso: “The erroneous use of the tiniest [4379] dates of years (i.e., of the tiniest indications about time in ancient books), obscures rather than illustrates literary history; and the entire rejection of them, or the foundation of systems on the uncertainties, has recently divided the three leading critics of our time into Epicureans, Pyrrhonists, and Stoics. Payne Knight, a stoic critic.” —Discorso, § 15:1 “For Wolf, one verse of the sixth book of the Iliad is sufficient not only to give body, force, and arms to Vico’s theory that Homer did not write long poems, but also to infer in which period of human civilization the Iliad was commenced, and during which centuries, and in what circumstances it was continued and finished, perhaps with the assistance of chance and the atoms of Epicurus.” (apparently Foscolo had not read Wolf) “Heyne, with the use of conflicting facts, dates, and arguments, perhaps to give philology the right to claim and deny everything, introduced Pyrrhonism into the critical art; and anyone who refers to him,

  mussat rex ipse Latinus

  Quos generos vocet aut quae sese ad foedera flectat

  [King Latinus himself deliberates in silent doubt

  whom to call his son-in-law or which alliances to choose]”2

  (This means that Heyne reaches no decisions about questions on Homer and follows the method used by the Academy, in utramque partem disputandi [of arguing both sides].) “Added, in most strange alliance, to Wolf’s chance and atoms and Heyne’s Pyrrhonism is the positive stoicism of Payne Knight, a recent commentator on Homer. He begins: *‘In the eightieth year after the capture of Troy, while the already elderly Tisamenus, son of Orestes, held the kingdom of Mycenae, a great and disastrous change of affairs throughout all Greece was brought about by the invasion of the Dorians.’* (Carmina Homerica a rhapsodorum interpolationibus [4380] repurgata et in pristinam formam, quatenus recuperanda esset, tam e veterum monumentorum fide et auctoritate, quam ex antiqui sermonis indole ac ratione, redacta.” Note. This is the title of Knight’s Homer in which the digamma was restored, London 1820.)—“and from the Dorian invasion, which forced much of the Greek population to seek refuge in Asia minor, the critical history of Homeric language and poetry, and the period and character and fortune of the poet, hitherto unknown, are deduced with art, scholarship, and perseverance, and affirmed with the dignity of a man who feels he has found the truth. This is why some people, who could never be persuaded about the probability of those facts, have sometimes felt convinced by the arguments, and listen with reverence to the historian (sic)1 in whom they can place no faith.” (this is the system expounded and followed by Capponi, “Lezione seconda sulla lingua,” Antologia, May 1828.)2 § 16: “This Payne Knight was a man of powerful intellect; his reading was not vast, but it seemed to have been absorbed into his thoughts and collected not so much to nurture his studies as to be nurtured by his mind. He had many new and brilliant ideas; and although he could demonstrate some of them and reduce them to definite principles, he tried to ensure that all were axioms which required no proof; and from the consequences which he drew he excluded inflexibly any exception, with the result that they were inapplicable and seemed absurd: but although he spoke energetically in expounding them, he did not seem or did not wish to be eloquent in defending them; and when he realized he was wrong, he admitted it.” (“*‘I offer my apologies for the many errors in the book written in English on this matter,’* ‘Prolegomena in Homerum,’ § CLI.” Note.)3 “He had [4381] gentlemanly ways, and a free spirit and was scornful of applause; nor among his many adversaries was there any lack of noble admirers; and Heyne only cites him to praise him. And certainly while many could anatomize Greek poetry and lang
uage better than he, few could understand its character as well as he; and no one had gone before him, and few will be able to follow him in investigating them in their remotest sources. Studying the relics of antiquity to illustrate Homeric times, he gathered many examples at very great expense; they can be seen in the British Museum, left to it in legacy because of his love of literature and of his country, and in just ambition of being remembered. He came to visit me a few months ago; and as he spoke about the younger or older heroes of the Iliad, I noted that, according to his calculations, Achilles would have been a beardless warrior. He replied to me that he did not accept defeat; but that he began to feel the vanity of life, and from then onward he no longer cared about victories. Neither poetry nor the reality of things was sufficient any more to free him from the tedium which numbed all feelings within his soul; and only a few days later, he died: and I speak about him because his fellow citizens do not.”1 § 17: “Now, when writers of such intelligence, through dates that are conjectural, give form and certainty to vague and extremely obscure notions, and make them shine through as being true, they compel man either into credulity and silence, or into drudgery and the risk of controversy, and for matters of little importance for most readers.” (Florence, 19 Sept. 1828.)

  [4382] Ibid., § 150:1 “Without returning to the question (and I discuss it elsewhere” (perhaps in the article on Pindemonte’s Odyssey)2 “and I now regard it as settled), whether the two poems flowed from a single mind in the same period,” (“Payne Knight, Carmina Homerica, ‘Prolegomena,’ § LVIII — and the small volume A History of the Text of the Iliad.” Note.) “who can fail to see that they are entirely dissimilar to each other, and that they aimed toward different purposes? For in the Iliad, reality is always assimilated to ideal greatness, so that the one is rarely severed from the other, nor can you clearly discern which of the two predominates; and anyone wishing to separate them would annihilate them. On the other hand, in the Odyssey true nature was portrayed from people’s domestic and everyday life, and the description is pleasing for its precision, whereas the enchantments of Circe, and the oxen of the Sun, and the Cyclops,

  Cetera quae vacuas tenuissent carmine mentes,

  [Other things which would have occupied idle minds with poetry]3

  satisfy our love of the marvelous: but the incredible stands on its own account, and truth on its.” (19 Sept. 1828.)

  Ibid., § 201:4 “But whatever the tenor of Dante’s language and versifying might be, it is not to be found in any manuscript; and in this respect the Vulgate,5 along with the learning and practice of the Academy, always predominates over any edition and emendation. Seeing ‘That by common defect of that period’—and who would not see it when it is more or less a defect of the other periods?—‘the spelling was hard, imperfect, inadequate, confused, varied, inconstant, and ultimately without much sense’” (“Salviati, Avvertimenti, vol. 1, bk. 3, ch. 4” Note) —6 “indeed [4383] seeing that it was little better in the marvelous version of the Decameron copied by Mannelli”1 (“Discorso sul testo del Decameron, pp. XIff., p. CVI.” Note)—“it seemed to the Academicians that they should bring all the rules together in one, which is:—‘that writing should follow pronunciation, and not move away from it in the slightest.’” (“Preface to the Dictionary, section VIII.” Note.) “Looking now at the fragments of Aristarchus’s Vulgate version of Homer,2 it would seem that the Ptolemaic Academicians were rather wiser, less presumptuous than ours. Homer’s prosody, due to the love that all primitive languages had for melody, enjoys protracting the modulations of the vowels. The Athenian ear was more interested in harmony, as happens in the development of all poetry, and constructed it around the articulation of the consonants; and the excessive modulations, which the knowledgeable call hiatuses, produced such displeasure that particles which have sounds but no meaning were inlaid between the words. Thus the Alexandrians, caught between Homer and the Attics, and without attempting to escape, emended the Iliad in such a way that a language and versification were created for a poetry which is neither primitive nor refined. The Greeks, in any event, went their own way as much as the French and the English, and while they elided one or more alphabetical signs in the pronunciation, they did not remove them from the writing; thus the appearances remained almost the same. But that they did not pronounce in the same way as they wrote is clearly proved by the fact that every meter in the later poets, and worse still in the Athenians, is out of kilter. Nor would they be verses for anyone who, when they recited them, divided the vowels as the [4384] meter suggests in the Homeric books, and the hexameter of the Iliad would be shortened by one or more of its musical beats if it were to be read in the Byzantine manner, distorting vowels, or forcing them to become diphthongs. The Greeks of today, whose literary pronunciation comes from Constantinople and is preserved in their Church singing, therefore recite the consonants most harmoniously, but not verses, since they favor simple accents and circumflexes, and rough and smooth breathing—given that they never aspirate any—and apostrophes and many more expedients derived from those semidigammas devised in Alexandria, which are sometimes useful in indicating the etymology and other grammatical aspects. But they are not to be taken account of in poetry, where the true guide to prosody derives from the meter; and did the meter depend on matters other than pronunciation in the age of poets? In any event the Greek grammarians more or less left the vocabulary as they had found it, so that each reader pronounced the words better or worse as it suited them. But the Florentines, unmindful of either the past or posterity, escaped from this same bind with the universal rule—‘That writing should not move away from pronunciation in the slightest’; and since no light percolated nor any sign of reliable pronunciation from the written texts, they took the pronunciation that they heard. Therefore, by cropping vowels, and doubling consonants, and adding accents and apostrophes, they established a spelling which produced to the ear not Io, nor lo Imperio, or lo Inferno; but I’, lo ’Mpero, lo ’Nferno [I, the Empire, Hell]: and they dressed verses written three centuries earlier in the mess [4385] that was the Florentine dialect of those days.”

  § 202:1 “These refinements were favored by the theory that Italian literary language flourished entirely in their city. Let us leave to one side that were it to be true it would be so contrary to the theories of Dante that it would never be applicable to any of his works. But could it have been applied by anyone other than critics who had heard the verses of Dante recited in their time? The human eye, which is a patient and most reliable organ, is freer and more intelligent than other organs, because it adheres more to the memory; but even so it cannot arrange that a hundred years go by and every pen does not get weaned from the current forms of the alphabet. Thus every age uses distinct forms of its own, which is why they are sufficient for anyone who is practiced to be certain of the period of any writing. But these are permanent divergences on paper; they reach posterity; and they can be compared by eye. This is not so with the ear; it is capricious because it gathers all sounds unwillingly, instantaneously, and necessarily; and the organs of the voice are connected to it, passive collaborators and mechanical imitators; and therefore no man grows mute unless he is born completely deaf. How much more rapid and more varied and more imperceptible will be the alterations to pronunciation than those to the written word? But they change without leaving not just definite forms, as with written words, but even a distant reminiscence. Who in later times can identify them except by ear? And where will he find them? [4386] By questioning the air which carries them? Or time which goes on cluttering the ear with new sounds? Was ALLAGHERI, as he wrote it, and later ALIGIERI, ALLEGHIERI, ALLIGHIERI, long or short in the penultimate syllable? Now it is ALIGHIERI; but in Verona it has been made into a proparoxytone, ALIGERI.1 If the distant ancestors of any city were to come back to life, they would certainly have difficulty in understanding their descendants.”

  § 203, and last:2 “But since the Florentines continued, from father to son, to swallow vowe
ls or reinforce them by doubling consonants, the Academy had the idea that that habit was born at the same time as their words.” (“Avvertimenti della lingua, vol. 2, pp. 129–60, Milan Classics ed.” Note.) “Yet it is always something that happens later; indeed it is common and inevitable in every spoken language: and all people, as time passes, reduce their modulations so that they are softer and longer, in order to speed up and break down the pronunciation; and the phrases become more forceful and fluent. This is said about the Greeks; and yet it is the English who write the greatest number of vowels, and when they speak it seems almost as if they have only an alphabet of consonants: but anyone who read their ancient poets in the modern way would find neither verse nor rhyme. Nor do I believe that anyone else can point to poetry from any people where the founders of the written language did not find pleasure in melody, and where the vowels did not dominate, and where they did not then diminish and decline. And this observation is also true for Latin prosody, which was less primitive and taken completely from Greek form, and in its idiom was stronger in final consonants; and even in the remnants of Ennius, which are very few, there are still very many examples of the strong beat in the twenty four morae of the hexameter [4387] falling on vowels in hiatus position; they are frequent in Lucilius; quite a number in Lucretius, not rare in Catullus; no more than seven, so far as I recall, in Virgil; only one in Horace; perhaps not even one in Ovid.1 Now how many, if even one, are to be found in Lucan and all the other intemperate devisers of consonants, up to the sensational Claudian? You may well tell me that the Divine Comedy was studiously versified in vowels. But it happened sooner in Italy than elsewhere that the modulations did not prevail over the articulation of the verses; that is because Petrarch had tempered his ear to Provençal prosody, which was full of truncated endings, more than the Sicilian which, for Dante, flowed with melody. However, for those founders of the language, it was written, never spoken; and therefore, as the books did not comply with later pronunciations, the vocal organs have to remain obedient to the eye. The damage done by the dissonance between spoken and written word in languages that are both popular and literary” (i.e., French, English, etc.) “is less than the disaster that befell Italian which was destined rather for the art of writers than the mind of the nation” (namely, written and not spoken, nor written for the people). “For this, time will provide, if and when it ever makes it spoken by a people. For now, the possibility of writing in such a way that every alphabetical sign is an essential element of meaning and sound in every word, has nevertheless been almost an advantage over the other languages since the days of Dante. For this reason I will endeavor to reconnect it to the prosody of all primitive poetry, and to the spelling which, where the languages are written but not spoken, [4388] remains literary, permanent in appearance, and unfettered by accidental sounds which change from time to time in popular languages” (French, English, etc.), “and in local dialects. Perhaps in this way the reading of the Divine Comedy, losing its Florentine affectations, will return pure and Italian.” End of the Discorso. (Florence, Sunday, 21 Sept. 1828.) See p. 4487.