Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  In the beginning, and upon the rebirth of studies, it was thought impossible for there to be a popular spelling, one that was not Latin, in the same way as it was thought impossible for there to be a popular, non-Latin literature; and the modern languages were regarded as incapable of their own spelling or their own literature. (21 Sept., Sunday, 1828.)

  For p. 4367. There would be another, entirely reasonable, way forward. To have two kinds of poetry and literature, one for the knowledgeable, the other for ordinary people. In this way, the former would not lose, whereas the latter would gain; the exquisite and divine pleasures of finest literature (for those able to savor them) would not disappear; there would still be those who could experience transports of delight in reading Virgil, as there are and will be connoisseurs who do the same in admiring a picture by Raphael, etc. etc. (21 Sept. 1828.)

  For p. 4355. In this respect, our Dante had a similar destiny to Homer’s. Until the 14th century he may have had as many diaskeuasts, that is, polishers of his poem, with greater or lesser courage, as he had copyists: hence those enormous and continuous discrepancies in the codices and printed editions of his work prior to the Crusca’s. See p. 4412.

  For p. 4317, margin. In Naples, Berni’s Orlando innamorato1 is also read in this way, and especially Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, and the people take sides, some for one of those heroes, some for the other, and with such ardor that after the [4389] reading, arguing among themselves about those stories, and quarreling, sometimes they come to blows, and even kill each other. Late one night, two Neapolitans who were arguing heatedly between themselves, went to wake up the famous Genovesi in order to learn from him who was right, Rinaldo or Gernando (Tasso’s Gerusalemme). I have all of this from Imbriani senior,1 who tells me that the Neapolitan people do not need the reciter to translate those poems, but are able to understand for themselves. In this way it can be truly said that those poems are published. (22 Sept. 1828.) See p. 4408.

  It is rightly said that almost all Greek literature was Athenian. I do not know whether anyone has observed that this cannot be said about poetry; indeed, so far as I recall, no famous Greek poet was Athenian (except for the dramatists, whom I do not consider to be proper poets but, at most, intermediate between poets and prose writers [→Z 4357]). So unpoetic is a highly refined civilization. (22 Sept. 1828.) So those who say that Greek literature flourished in Athens, must make a distinction, if they wish to be accurate, and add that the opposite is true for poetry, etc. (22 Sept. 1828.)

  If someone has introduced me or commended me or spoken about me to someone else, whether man or woman, and said “my greatest friend,” “great mind,” “learned,” etc. etc., they have done nothing. The most important word was missing. Anyone who has said: “a famous man” has brought me hospitality, distinction, and invitations. Fame is needed, not merit. In this case too what I said elsewhere [→Z 2401–402] is true, good fortune alone brings good fortune. Famous means [4390] rich, noble, powerful, respected, and other similar manifestations of good fortune. (22 Sept. 1828.)

  Heroism not only forces us to admire, it forces us to love. Our feeling toward heroes is like women’s toward men. We feel weaker than they are, therefore we love them. That greater virility than our own makes us fall in love. Napoleon’s soldiers loved him, they loved him with passion, even after his fall. And they did so despite what they had had to suffer for him, and the benefits which some enjoyed after he had met his fate. Thus the beloved’s abuse inflames the lover. And likewise the whole of France was in love with Napoleon. Thus we love Achilles for his superior virility, despite his defects and bestialities, indeed even because of them.1 (22 Sept. 1828.)

  For p. 4354, margin. It could also be that the first books were in prose, that the first application of writing in literature was to prose, while people perhaps continued to compose in verses without writing them down, and committing them only to memory, by reason of inveterate habit as well as because writing was considered to be unnecessary, indeed useless, for preserving poetry, and only useful and necessary for preserving prose. In that way much time could have passed from when prose was written and before there were written verses, during which time the only books would have been in prose. In that case, which seems natural to me, prose à son tour [in its turn] would have preceded poetry in written form, as a work of literature consigned to books. (22 Sept. 1828.) See next page.

  For p. 4318, margin. An epic cycle, in various poems, [4391] including Homer’s, which covered the entire history of the world, from the origins of things, i.e., from the theogony, etc., up to Ulysses; a cycle collected shortly after the time of Peisistratus, according to a German critic, perhaps still living (Bulletin de Férussac, etc.) who has written a dissertation specifically on this cycle.1 The poems included in this cycle, and their subject matter, were certainly not epics in the sense that we give to this word: nevertheless the cycle was called epic, in other words historic or narrative. Epic poetry was distinct from lyric poetry, even though τὰ ἔπη [epic poetry] was also sung on the lyre, etc. (23 Sept. 1828.)

  You laugh openly and loudly about something, even entirely innocently, with one or two people in a café, in a conversation, in a street: everybody who hears or sees you laughing like this will turn and look at you with respect; if they were talking, they will stop, they will seem humbled; they will never dare to laugh at you; if they had previously looked at you boldly or condescendingly, they will lose their boldness and condescension toward you. In the end, simply laughing out loud gives you a definite superiority over all those near and around you, without exception. The power of laughter is terrible and awful:2 anyone who has the courage to laugh is master over others, in the same way as anyone who has the courage to die.3 (23 Sept. 1828.)

  For the previous page. This is true insofar as it is possible or probable. But so far as tradition is concerned, it would seem to show that books in prose did not precede those in verse, or only by a short time. This is because tradition places the earliest Greek prose at the beginning of [4392] the 6th century BCE, the time when Peisistratus collected the Homeric verses, and a time when there were many other poets who, according to Wolf, must have been able to write. Certainly tradition does not suggest, as it does with Homer, that their verses were collected and written at a later time. Nevertheless, although tradition does not suggest this for Hesiod either (see p. 4397) (hence Vico, bk. 3, p. 400: “By this reasoning, Hesiod, who left his work in writing, would have to be placed after the Peisistratids, since we have no authority for supposing that he was preserved by the memory of the Rhapsodes, as Homer was”),1 yet Wolf also places Hesiod among those poets who could not write, and Hesiod’s poems (which he attributes to various authors) among those which were long preserved by memory alone.—*“A more certain account attributed a rather prominent part in filling out the letters and devising new ones to Simonides of Ceos and Epicharmus of Sicily, the originator of ancient comedy, as late as the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. It is reported that Ionian Samos then made public use of these letters, when set into a proper series with the rest by one Callistratus, before others did. And several attest, and from reliable witnesses, that this Ionic alphabet of twenty-four letters was adopted by the Athenian people only under the archonship of Euclides, in Olympiad 94, 2, 403 BCE, and that before this time the use of the long two vowels was not common there. The writing of the Greeks, then, reached completion and was reduced to order at a very late date: first, as I suspect for many reasons, in the city-states that held Sicily and Magna Graecia, then in Athens, that city later so fertile in letters. But we must again take care not to believe that the use of writing was so late or that it was established in all of Greece at the same time. In light of the fact that the Ionians gave their [4393] European kindred an example of more refined culture, both humane and civil, in so many things, and that they were proficient at an early date in various forms of art and commerce, it would be probable, even in the absence of historical testimony, that they were the first to per
ceive the utility of this outstanding device as well, and to have expended effort and ingenuity on it. Clearly, they did not have to await Callistratus of Samos in order to try to put something in writing; they used papyrus well before him. Indeed, before Simonides and Epicharmus there were lyric poets, both Ionian and Aeolic, who could scarcely do without that aid for making poems. Finally, in that city” (Athens) “which held on to the old alphabet for the longest time, in Olympiad 39 a smaller number of letters was enough for the establishment of Dracon’s laws. Indeed would not the same number have been enough for great scrolls, if only the latter had been in normal use then, whether they consisted of skins or of Egyptian papyrus?”* (Wolf, § 16, p. LXII–V.) *“Certainly there is no mention or indication of Attic writers before the time of the Persians, the credibility of which is not weakened by the general condition of the period and the polity and by the silence of the most reliable authors. But I shall not pursue what I cannot establish without long digressions; I would even willingly admit that their art gradually began to be employed in private use” (about public use, in bronze, marble, etc., there is no doubt) “at Athens somewhat before Solon; nor do I doubt that some clever men did that in other cities, specifically those of Ionia and Magna Graecia, in the eighth and seventh centuries, and that some poets either followed their example or initiated the practice on their own—if not Asius, Eumelus, Arctinus, and the others famous in the first Olympiads [4394] for epic poems, at least, surely, Archilochus, Alcman, Pisander, Arion, and their contemporaries. But if it is a question of all Greece and in the rather more common use of the art and the custom of writing books, these are not to be removed from the period of Thales, Solon, Peisistratus, and those who are called the Sages—that is, that in which the language came to be freed from meter. This is shown us by the history of all the Greek arts, so that we seem to have no need at all for the testimony of that people, which forgot its own infancy. I have nothing to say here about the cultivation of prose begun by Solon himself and many others at the beginning of the sixth century BCE, and about the causes for the new enterprise; and everything that can be drawn from passages in the ancients has been said,”* etc. (Wolf, § 17, pp. LXIX–LXXI).1 — “About the cultivation of prose,” in other words regarding prose which is in some way cultured and literary. But with regard to prose which is rough and uncultured, and similar to that of our thirteenth-century writers, nothing prevents the view that it was written in books and privately (since it is certainly to be found in public documents) before verses were written: indeed I think that probability suggests so, and I am of this opinion, unlike what Wolf seems to think. Consequently, if literature means written books, I think, contrary to what is generally believed, that prose literature in Greece preceded poetic literature, that is, the writing of poetry. (25 Sept. 1828.)

  Wolf refers, in addition to Josephus, also to Wood (an Englishman), Rousseau, and Mairan for having preceded him in the view that the Homeric poems were only written down later. For the view [4395] that they were not originally epic poems, but were separate songs, later collected together by others and given their present form, he knows and refers to Casaubon, Bentley, and abbé Hédelin d’Aubignac, in relation to whose book Conjectures académiques ou Dissertation sur l’Iliade, Paris 1715, 8° he is highly scathing. But he never names our own Vico, one of whose five books of Principj di scienza nuova, 3rd ed., Naples 1744 he had, namely the 3rd, entitled “On the discovery of the true Homer,” which was wholly dedicated to Wolf’s questions.1 In this book— which has less and more poorly developed evidence than Wolf, but nevertheless has good and powerful arguments, some of which are not touched upon by Wolf—Vico asserts and demonstrates “that Homer left none of his poems in writing” (p. 399),2 “for up to the time of Homer and indeed somewhat afterward, common script had not yet been invented” (p. 394);3 “that the reason why the Greek peoples so vied with each other for the honor of being his homeland, and why almost all claimed him as citizen, is that the Greek peoples were themselves Homer” (p. 404);4 “that the reasons why opinions as to his age vary so much is that our Homer truly lived on the lips and in the memories of the peoples of Greece throughout the whole period from the Trojan War down to the time of Numa, a span of 460 years” (p. 404)5 (in other words, that the authors of Homeric verses lived and composed continuously from the Trojan War to Numa); that “the blindness and the poverty of Homer were characteristics of the Rhapsodes, who, being blind, whence each of them was called homēros (ὅμηρος in the Ionic [4396] language), had exceptionally retentive memories, and, being poor, sustained life by singing the poems of Homer throughout the cities of Greece; and they were the authors of these poems inasmuch as they were a part of these peoples who had composed their histories in the poems” (p. 404);1 “that Homer was an idea or a heroic character of Grecian men insofar as they told their histories in song” (p. 403);2 “that the Homer who was the Author of the Iliad preceded by many centuries the Homer who was the Author of the Odyssey” (p. 405);3 “that it was from the northeastern part of Greece that the Homer came who sang of the Trojan War, which took place in his country, and that it was from the southwestern part of Greece that the Homer came who sang of Ulysses, whose Kingdom was in that region” (p. 405);4 and, with the author of περὶ ὕψους [On the Sublime] stating that Homer composed the Iliad when he was young and the Odyssey when he was old,5 that “Homer composed the Iliad in his youth, that is, when Greece was young and consequently seething with sublime passions, such as pride, wrath, and lust for vengeance, passions which do not tolerate dissimulation but which love magnanimity; and hence this Greece admired Achilles, the Hero of Force; but he wrote the Odyssey in his old age, that is, when the spirits of Greece had been somewhat cooled by reflection, which is the mother of prudence, so that it admired Ulysses, the hero of Wisdom. Thus in the time of Homer’s youth the peoples of Greece found pleasure in coarseness, villainy, ferocity, savagery, and cruelty, while in the time of his old age they found delight in the luxury of Alcinous, the joys of Calypso, the pleasures of Circe, the songs of the Sirens, the pastimes of the suitors, and the attempts, nay the siege and the assaults, on the chastity of Penelope: [4397] two sets of customs which, conceived above as existing at the same time, seemed to us incompatible” (pp. 404–405).1 Finally “that the Peisistratids, Tyrants of Athens, divided and arranged the Poems of Homer, or had them divided and arranged, into the Iliad and the Odyssey; hence we may understand what a confused mass of material they must have been before, when the difference we can observe between the styles of the two Poems is infinite” (p. 399).2 (26 Sept. 1828.)

  “This is the Hero” (Achilles) “that Homer sings of to the Greek peoples as an example of Heroic Virtue and to whom he gives the fixed epithet ‘blameless’! This epithet (if we are to give Homer credit for making the delight he gives a means of instruction, as Poets are supposed to do) can be understood only as meaning a man so arrogant that, as we would say nowadays, he will not let a fly pass the end of his nose. What he preaches is thus the Virtue of punctiliousness, on which the Duelists of the returned barbarian times based their entire Morality, and which gave rise to the proud laws, the lofty duties, and the vindictive satisfactions of the knights-errant of whom the Romancers sing.” Ibid., bk. 2, pp. 322–23, after having described how distant is the heroism of Homer’s Achilles from our ideas about the heroic character, and even those of ancient civilized societies.3 (26 Sept. 1828.)

  For p. 4392, margin. Wolf states further at pp. XCVII–III, § 23:4 *“For the art of the rhapsodes embraced not only the poems of Homer, but also those of Hesiod and others, and the whole epic genre, and soon the lyric and iambic ones as well.”* And in note, p. XCVIII: *“Cf. Plato, Leges, [4398] 2, 658d, Ion, 530b,” (ed. Stephanus) “Athenaeus, 14, 620c.”* As for Hesiod, here are his words: *“But when I refer to Hesiod, I mean the entire period into which falls the composition of the works now attributed to Hesiod. For it is clear that they cannot be ascribed to one man; and many more circulated under
his name among the ancients. In the ῎Εργοις [Works and Days] there are many passages distinguished by the πίνῳ [patina] of venerable antiquity. But the Theogony and the Shield of Hercules and the great majority of the works that survive in short fragments are certainly a full century later than Homer. Proof of this point lies in the fact that they contain a good many novel ideas and imitations of Homeric passages, and in particular a fuller and more orderly knowledge of lands and peoples.”* § 12, note, pp. XLII–III.