Z 88
1. The expression is a rephrasing of the preceding quotation: “il faut lui céder pour n’en pas mourir,” perhaps modeled on a sentence that Leopardi might have read in Thomas, Essai sur les éloges, in Oeuvres, tome 2, p. 133: “et n’invite l’ame à se recueillir, et à se réposer sur sa douleur.” On ancient and modern pain see note 4 to Z 76.
Z 89
1. A later marginal reference, when Leopardi was reading Friedrich Ast’s edition of Plato. In the Republic, 439e–440, there is a passage containing very similar sentiments regarding public executions.
Z 94
1. Staël, “Sulla maniera e la utilità delle traduzioni,” p. 12, article mentioned also on Z 2851, where she had in fact exempted Delille from her general criticism of translations into French, paraphrased by Leopardi here. This letter on translation, specially commissioned for the inaugural number of Biblioteca italiana (January 1816), was an event of momentous importance in the culture of Restoration Italy, precipitating a heated and long-running dispute between Classicists and Romantics.
Z 95
1. Here Leopardi makes clear that he writes his diary a penna corrente (“with the flow of the pen,” the same expression being used on Z 2541), that is “quickly,” or senza studio (“unreflectingly”), as he says on Z 691, and perfectly describes the polyglot nature of the Zibaldone. For the usefulness of the knowledge of many languages, advocated by Staël (cf. Z 1729), see Z 2213. The phrase, which renders the Latin currenti calamo, has been used in recent years by critics such as Luigi Blasucci (“Quattro modi di approccio…” [B12]) to describe the mode of composition of the Zibaldone itself.
2. Virgil, Aeneid 3, 389–93 and 8, 42–48.
Z 96
1. See Angelo Mai and John Zohrab, eds., Eusebii Pamphili Chronicorum canonum libri duo, Milan 1818, bk. 1, ch. 46, pp. 210–11. This edition was of a newly discovered fifth-century Armenian manuscript of the chronicles of Eusebius. Leopardi’s extensive commentary on this edition, one of the most mature fruits of his philological work (Timpanaro, La filologia, p. 83 [B11]), was published in 1823 in Rome (it is now printed in Scritti filologici, pp. 199–437).
Z 99
1. Homer, Iliad 24, 477ff., an example added later in the margin.
2. Therefore, the “most solid pleasure in this life is the vain pleasure of illusions” (Z 51).
Z 100
1. “Discorso di un italiano intorno alla poesia romantica,” in Prose, pp. 394 ff., 403.
2. From this page onward Leopardi started appending a date to his entries on a fairly regular basis: this means that the function and purposes of the diary were slowly changing. See Introduction, pp. xvii–xviii.
Z 101
1. Laurence Sterne, Viaggio sentimentale (trans. Ugo Foscolo), p. 92.
2. Leopardi here leaves blanks in the ms., but probably refers to Staël, Corinne, bk. 19, ch. 6, tome 3, p. 328: “Nothing could be more painful for Oswald than … to see again his memories so distorted and to feel his sense of melancholy renewed by so ridiculous an object.”
Z 104
1. Distraction is one of the means by which man avoids the recognition that “life in itself is an evil” (Z 4043). On drowsiness and drunkenness see Z 172 and notes. A possible trace of the influence of Pascal on this theme on Z 649. See also Z 1678, 4074–75, and, especially, 4187.
2. There may be an implicit reference here to Rousseau’s Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité (Oeuvres, vol. 3, p. 157).
3. Leopardi is referring to Pietro Giordani.
Z 105
1. Benjamin Constant, “I padri della chiesa,” Spettatore straniero, tome 9, no. 10 (90), 1817, pp. 559–64, an article originally published in the Mercure de France, and in its Italian form with an editorial disclaimer.
2. The dramatist August von Kotzebue, a staunch supporter of the Holy Alliance, was assassinated by the student Karl Ludwig Sand on 23 March 1819, an event with grave repercussions in continental Europe.
Z 106
1. The Gazzetta of Milan had in fact reproduced a number of such letters by German students in March 1820. Other judgments of the same kind on German culture on Z 1850, 1857, and 2617–18. It is interesting to note that a few years later an essay by Theodor Schacht, Über Unsinn und Barbarei in der heutigen Deutschen Literatur [On Nonsense and Barbarism in the German Literature of the Present Day], Mainz 1828, was enthusiastically reviewed in The Oxford Literary Gazette (nos. 1–2, 2 and 25 March 1829), where we read that the Arabian Nights and the Koran “appear tame and rational compared with the dreams of our German philosophers,” who are accused of “drunkenness [which] mounted to insanity” (p. 26). Leopardi was generally unsympathetic toward ancient and modern mysticism (see, e.g., Z 4221); in other thoughts, however, mysticism is related to “the uncertain and the vague,” cornerstones of his poetics (Z 3308, 3913). See Z 4057 and note.
2. In this poetic sketch (see Z 3 and note 1) Leopardi expresses in the third person his solitude, in a moment of particular affliction caused, perhaps, by the refusal by his father to finance the edition of the third canzone (Damiani).
3. A reference to the poet Carlo Innocenzio Maria Frugoni, closely associated with the Academy of Arcadia.
Z 107
1. There may be an echo here of Aeneid 2, 54, and perhaps also of Corinne, see Z 87, note 1.
2. That is, the Latin Du Cange Glossarium and the Lexicon totius Latinitatis, on the crucial role of which see Donatella Martinelli, “Il ‘Lexicon’ del Forcellini nell’officina linguistica leopardiana,” in Gli strumenti di Leopardi, pp. 103–24.
3. Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander 7, 25, 4.
4. Moretum, l. 46. Leopardi had translated this pseudo-Virgilian poem in 1816.
5. Literally: “a lie growing on the end of the nose.” Theocritus, Idylls 12, 23–24.
6. Leopardi refers to the “old” edition of Fabricius on various occasions (cf. Z 999, 1015, 1016, 1021, 2793, 2796, 2800, 2811, 3236 note a, 3421, 3931, and 4133), in order to designate the edition he had to hand in the LL, even though he was aware of later editions.
Z 108
1. For Rousseau pity was a natural impulse, preexisting human culture, and certain in extreme situations to trump self-love. Here and on Z 516–19 Leopardi might be indebted to a celebrated passage in the Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité (Oeuvres, vol. 3, pp. 154–55). The doubt hinted at in the parenthesis near the end of this paragraph leads Leopardi to contradict Rousseau, analyzing compassion, in various circumstances, as a product of self-love (cf. Z 3107–109, 3293–98, 3361–62, 4488–89), and admitting that it requires such a degree of refinement (Z 3154) that it is virtually impossible (Z 4287). See also Z 355 and note.
Z 109
1. “Della fama avuta da Orazio presso gli antichi,” Spettatore, Italian Section, tome 7, no. 66, 15 December 1816, pp. 133–42.
2. Fronto, Ad Antoninum de orationibus, in Opera inedita, tome 2, p. 243 and note 3 (“Feres profecto buona venia…”). Note that modern editors read bona (Van den Hout, p. 153).
3. Keller, Orthographia Latina; Manutius, Epitome orthographiae.
Z 110
1. Drawing on Cesare Beccaria’s Ricerche intorno alla natura dello stile, Milan 1770 (see in particular ch. 2), Leopardi, in this thought, for the first time makes a distinction between parole, words, which have a penumbra of images, and termini, the more clear-cut terms of scientific theory (cf. Gensini, Linguistica leopardiana, ch. 3). Leopardi did not own Beccaria’s book, but he certainly read (cf. D’Intino, in Leopardi, Scritti e frammenti autobiografici, pp. LIV, LXXI [B2]) a detailed review in Annali di scienze e lettere, vol. 1 (1810), pp. 72–85. See also Z 1234–36, 1701–706, 3952–54, 4117.
2. On Fénelon see Algarotti, Saggio sulla lingua francese, in Opere, tome 4, pp. 44–47 and 56–59. See Z 687.
Z 111
1. Arrian, Historia Indica 30, 5.
Z 112
1. There is certainly an autobiographical implication in this note. See Z 354 an
d the notes to the whole passage.
2. Cf. Z 280 and 3602. See also the Stoic project formulated on Z 4239–40.
Z 113
1. Montesquieu, Considérations, ch. 4, p. 31, where the point is made that the tyranny of a ruler is no more conducive to the downfall of a state than indifference toward the public good is in a republic.
Z 114
1. Montesquieu, Considérations, ch. 6, p. 68, where the need to promote two opposed factions in conquered cities is stressed. Two days later (Z 116) the argument about “partisan spirit” in defending “the Christian religion” (a clear reference to the Papal States in Leopardi’s own times) is explained, in general terms, by “the superiority of nature over reason.”
2. Though originally aligned with the first triumvirate, Publius Clodius Pulcher (tribune of the people in 58 BCE) was a demagogue, responsible for unleashing armed gangs on Rome. Such was the climate in the city when Pompey—as Montesquieu records, Considérations, ch. 11, p. 115—is said to have used money to corrupt the people, buying the votes of individual citizens and using the rabble to disrupt the magistrates.
Z 115
1. In subsequent thoughts Leopardi speaks, from a similar point of view, of “half-philosophy.” Cf. Z 520–22, 1078, 1793. The word used here, ultrafilosofia, might be a calque from the Greek verb ὑπɛρφιλοσοφέω, which is found in Philostratus, Vita Apollonii 7, 37, 2 and in Pseudo-Hippocrates’s letter 17.
2. See Z 118.
Z 116
1. That “natural inclinations, passions, affections” (and not “truth”) are the source of human behavior, beliefs, and decisions is argued in a long “treatise” on Z 437–51. This crucial theme had implicitly emerged in the Saggio sopra gli errori popolari degli antichi (1815), where Leopardi had made a collection of the unreasonable (yet powerful) beliefs of the ancients.
2. Montesquieu, Considérations, ch. 11, on the theme that men are never so deeply offended as when their customary observances are flouted.
Z 117
1. Montesquieu, Considérations, ch. 13, where the sad fate of conspirators in antiquity and of the regicides in the English Civil War is noted. The contrast in Leopardi’s comment is with the greater leniency shown to those who had voted for the death of Louis XVI in 1793. In 1819–1821, the French press was full of violent polemics about the surviving regicides.
Z 118
1. See Z 115.
Z 119
1. Montesquieu, Considérations, ch. 5, p. 48, note, quoting Josephus to the effect that Herodotus and Thucydides had never mentioned the Romans.
Z 120
1. Montesquieu, Considérations, ch. 13, p. 151, where it is noted that it was harder to write history under the Emperors, since everything had become secret. See also Z 3470.
2. Montesquieu, Considérations, ch. 14, p. 155, describes (quoting bk. 1 of Tacitus and bk. 54 of Dio Cassius) how it was that Tiberius had deprived the people of the right to elect magistrates, and thereby greatly debased the moral climate of Rome.
Z 121
1. Montesquieu, Considérations, ch. 14, p. 157, describes how Tiberius indicted a man for having sold a statue of the emperor along with his house, how Domitian condemned a woman to death for having disrobed before his image, and also a citizen who had painted a picture of the whole earth on the walls of his room.
2. Montesquieu, Considérations, ch. 14, p. 159, states that “No people fear unhappiness so much as those who ought to be reassured by the wretchedness of their condition … In Naples today there are fifty thousand men who live on herbs alone, and have as their sole possession only half a cotton garment. These people, the most unhappy on earth, fall into frightful despondency at the slightest smoke from Vesuvius. They are foolish enough to fear becoming unhappy.”
Z 122
1. Montesquieu, Considérations, ch. 15, p. 160, remarked that what good rulers do out of virtue bad ones can do from a desire to do the opposite of what their predecessor did.
Z 123
1. Note the effectiveness of what Leopardi calls the “materiale,” that is, what is tangible and visible, contrasted with the “petition” (a written “memoriale”). On the contrast between orality and written/printed culture see D’Intino, L’immagine della voce, in particular ch. 1.
2. Montesquieu, Considérations, ch. 2, p. 20, refers to the infrequency of desertions from the Roman army.
Z 124
1. The sculptor Edmé Bouchardon, as quoted in Algarotti, Saggio sopra la pittura, in Opere, tome 3, p. 202.
Z 125
1. Already in his “Discorso di un italiano intorno alla poesia romantica” (Prose, pp. 415ff.), Leopardi had criticized the “philosophical or metaphysical or psychological” (Leopardi’s emphasis) “or … Romantic” poet for rejecting mythology, a natural form of human imagination that personifies, that is, gives the form of the human body to everything, “emotions and goods and plants” (Z 19).
Z 130
1. Homer, Odyssey 1, 150–52; 8, 43ff. and 471ff.
Z 131
1. Celsus, De medicina 6, 5, 1.
Z 132
1. Underlined by Leopardi in the ms., the word sombre is in French.
Z 133
1. Lucian, An Encomium of Fatherland 63, 8 (Opera, tome 2, p. 479).
Z 134
1. As Rousseau had argued in the Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité (in Oeuvres, vol. 3, pp. 169–70), with the emergence of society, “the idea of consideration” was born, so that “each person began to look at others and to wish to be looked at himself, and public esteem had a value” (pp. 169–70).
Z 135
1. Sulla, in Montesquieu’s account, is so aristocratic as to be devoid of all patriotic feeling.
2. This anonymous work, first published in London in 1817, was designed to highlight the liberal aspects of the Napoleonic regime. Speculation as to the actual author was rife, with Madame de Staël and Benjamin Constant being among the names discussed.
Z 136
1. Later, Leopardi adds that only this kind of poetry is “unique to, and peculiar to the present time” (Z 734–35; see also 1448–49, 1860–62, and 3976). Leopardi’s definition echoes that of Schiller, although there is no evidence of Leopardi’s ever having read the German poet, whose works are not in his library. The chapter on Schiller in Staël’s De l’Allemagne is very superficial.
2. An echo of a passage invoking Tasso in Staël’s Corinne, bk. 15, ch. 6, tome 3, p. 61 (Damiani). See Z 214, 635.
3. See Z 260–61, 3161, 4493, 4515.
Z 137
1. Pietro Giordani’s letter of 18 June 1820, to Leopardi.
Z 142
1. I.e., the line from Seneca quoted from the Spectator (cf. the following note).
2. In fact from Seneca, Phaedra 607.
Z 143
1. Staël, in her 1816 article on translation, had commented on the limited fame currently enjoyed by writers, such as Sannazaro, who had based their art upon imitation.
2. Leopardi seems to echo Vico’s stages, the first of which “by a powerful deceit of imagination, which is most robust in those who are the weakest at reasoning, was a poetic or creative nature” (The New Science, § 916). Leopardi mentions Vico for the first time on Z 946, but the only direct references to The New Science are on Z 4392 and 4395–97 (September 1828). It is difficult to say when and how Leopardi read Vico. He may have learned through secondary sources (see, e.g., Z 2208 and note) of Vico’s theories and themes: the distinction between imagination and reason, the historical cycles, corsi and ricorsi (cf., e.g., Z 403, 608–609, 740, 3517–18), the origin of language (cf. Z 498 and note), and the distinction between an original and a “returned” barbarism (cf. Z 314, note 1), cruel gods as a product of terrified imaginations (cf. Z 2208 and note, 3638–43). Some of Vico’s themes were probably known to him through Genovesi’s Logica per i giovanetti, in particular bk. 5, ch. 4, §§ 71–74 (pp. 245–47). See also Z 342 and note 3, Z 545 and note, Z 939 and note, Z 1268 and note,
Z 1276 and note 1, Z 4441 and note 1. On the “spiral” form see Z 416 and note.
Z 144
1. “Appressamento della morte,” a poem by Leopardi dating from November and December 1816.
2. Through his reading of Corinne, in the fall of 1819 (Z 73). See Z 1742.
Z 147
1. On the increasing uniformity of the world see Rousseau, in the first part of his first Discourse (Oeuvres, vol. 3, p. 8) and elsewhere (e.g., Émile, in Oeuvres, vol. 4, pp. 528 and 829). Leopardi’s remarks in these pages, on Z 123, 1926–27, 2405–408, and elsewhere, are very much in line with Herder’s views, and tally with what historians in recent years have judged to be the beginning of globalization, that is the rise of global uniformity visible in ideologies, institutions, and bodily practices. See C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914, Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.
Z 148
1. Hesiod, Works and Days 11–30, where a distinction is drawn between a contest that fosters discord, and a “good” contest that promotes fruitful rivalry.
Z 149
1. Ugo Foscolo had represented the philosopher’s progressive and destructive descent into egoism and isolation in his novel Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis, read in the spring of 1819 (see Z 58, note 2).
2. That is, philosophy.
Z 152
1. I Corinthians 9:27.
Z 153
1. Alfieri, “Parere dell’autore sulle presenti tragedie,” in Tragedie, vol. 5, p. 400.
Z 154
1. In this section of his Essai sur le goût (translated as “pleasures of the mind” in the English ed. of 1759) Montesquieu reflects on the manner in which architecture and music take into account the nature of the senses of sight and hearing, and argues that aesthetic rules are therefore relative, not universal.
2. Here Montesquieu refers to Plato’s philosophy as “false” (“une philosophie fausse”), a word underlined in the edition at Recanati, p. 366, probably by Leopardi himself, who almost never underlined his books. Cf. Z 1712–14 (where he uses the same word, “false,” apropos of Platonic ideas).
Z 155
1. In “Del tipo dell’arte della pittura,” Biblioteca Italiana, tome 4, no. 12, December 1816, p. 451, the painter and sculptor Giuseppe Bossi had argued that the representation of objects invariably arose through an “ideal type” impressed upon the mind of the artist, and that the sum of such types constituted a “second nature” or “ideal nature.” Leopardi will come back to the critique of Plato’s “ideas” or “types” in subsequent thoughts, see, e.g., Z 1340–41, 1462–63, 1714, 1909–11.
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