Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  Z 437

  1. The problem of Adam’s language was widely discussed in the eighteenth century. Leopardi refutes Adam’s “infused knowledge,” and shares the “sensationalist” view of a naturalistic origin of language, that is, a language composed of root words, which designate things that are “precisely perceptible to the senses” (Z 1388).

  2. See Z 2380 and note 1.

  Z 440

  1. See Z 370 and note.

  Z 442

  1. Here Leopardi is referring to Plato’s Academy.

  Z 443

  1. Leopardi’s reference is probably to Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy (whom he had known since his early years only indirectly, through the works of their opponents), the latter being meaningfully associated with Locke on Z 1235. See also Z 946.

  Z 445

  1. A commonplace expression in Aristotelian philosophic language, shared by many medieval theologians and philosophers (see Les Auctoritates Aristotelis: un florilège médiéval, ed. J. Hamesse, Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 1974, p. 231).

  Z 446

  1. Leopardi is certainly referring here to Heraclitus’s aphorism “Nature loves to hide.” On its history and various interpretations see Pierre Hadot, The Veil of Isis (trans. M. Chase, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U.P., 2006). Cf. also Z 2710.

  Z 449

  1. That is, Socrates.

  Z 452

  1. Lamennais, Saggio, ch. 10, tome 1, part 3, pp. 133–35, an attack on Rousseau’s notion of an original contract.

  Z 453

  1. Cf. Velleius, ed. Burmann, pp. 52–53.

  Z 454

  1. The theme of divine envy, also addressed on Z 197–98, 453–55, 2365–66, 2388–89, 4309, 4410, 4478, features, e.g., in Hesiod, Works and Days 42ff.

  2. Velleius, ed. Burmann, pp. 73–77.

  3. The two chapters, translated by Leopardi, concerned Furius Camillus. Angelo Mai, in his edition of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Romanarum antiquitatum, Milan 1816, ch. 20, p. 19, note 2, observed: “The same thought came to Scipio Africanus the Younger once Carthage was seized, as Appianus narrates in his De rebus Punicis” (Pacella).

  Z 455

  1. Ovid, Amores 1, 15, 25–26.

  Z 456

  1. Virgil, Aeneid 9, 446–49.

  2. Horace, Odes 3, 30, 7–9.

  3. A theme earlier addressed by Leopardi himself in “Della fama avuta da Orazio presso gli antichi,” in Spettatore, tome 7, no. 66, 1816, p. 137, though he noted that Horace had not been quite as famous in Imperial Rome as later generations supposed (Pacella and Damiani).

  Z 457

  1. An uprising against Rome (90–88 BCE) by its Italian socii, or allies, most of whom were fighting to win Roman citizenship. Despite the Roman military victory, full citizenship was then granted to all Italians south of the Po.

  2. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, a tribune in 133 BCE, proposed a law designed to alleviate poverty by redistributing public land. Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, elected tribune in 123 and 122 BCE, pursued a similar course and, with the tribune Livius Drusus, promoted colonies overseas.

  3. The reference is here again to Velleius Paterculus, ed. Burmann.

  Z 459

  1. Leopardi doesn’t seem to be sure about the role of the French Revolution in this context (see Z 1078, 1101, and especially 2334–35). His remark is also disconcerting, given the place of Rome in, for example, Machiavelli’s Discorsi, which follow in the footsteps of Livy. Cf. note 1 to Z 463.

  Z 460

  1. Velleius Paterculus 2, 3, 1; 2, 6, 4; 2, 56, 3.

  2. Leopardi is referring here to Pompey the Great; see Velleius Paterculus 2, 29–37.

  Z 463

  1. The later books of Livy’s history of Rome were lost, but short abstracts of nearly all of them survive. It is widely accepted by modern scholarship that the historian sympathized with Pompey’s party, that is to say, the republican side, in the civil war.

  2. Opposition circles in the First Empire—the idéologues, the Coppet Circle, even (ultimately) Chateaubriand—identified strongly with Tacitus, and echoed his lapidary condemnations of tyranny.

  3. The Pharsalia, Lucan’s epic poem, treats the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, and in its representations of the death throes of republican liberty was a key source first for Alfieri and then for Leopardi, notably in “Bruto minore” (1821). See Timpanaro, Aspetti e figure della cultura ottocentesca, Pisa: Nistri Lischi, 1980, pp. 42–53.

  Z 465

  1. See Velleius, ed. Burmann, p. 427, note. For the following reference cf. ibid., p. 460.

  Z 466

  1. The Greek title is in the dative case. On the absence of an introduction see Z 4467.

  2. Diogenes Laertius 2, 57. Lucian, How to Write History 23, from which the following quotation is taken (where “virtual” means: by function not by form).

  3. An ancient Persian unit of measurement.

  Z 467

  1. The full title of Caesar’s commentaries on the Gallic Wars is Commentarii de bello gallico; those on the civil war were entitled Commentarii de bello civili.

  2. Aulus Hirtius added an eighth book to Caesar’s Commentarii de bello gallico, and is generally considered to have written the Bellum Alexandrinum.

  3. In Hellenica 3, 1, 2, Xenophon attributed his Anabasis to Themistogenes of Syracuse.

  Z 468

  1. The Greek title is in the accusative case.

  2. Diogenes Laertius 6, 84.

  Z 469

  1. At the very end of Hellenica (7, 5, 27) Xenophon alludes to the possibility of another taking up where he has left off. Dionysius of Halicarnassus’s testimony is in his “Letter to Gnaeus Pompeius Geminus,” § 4. Here, as well as below, the title is in the genitive.

  2. The editorial relationship between Xenophon and Thucydides may have been suggested to Leopardi by a passage in Diogenes Laertius 2, 57, mentioned on Z 466. Niebuhr’s arguments for a division of the Hellenica into two parts at the end of bk. 2 may in turn have been suggested to him by Leopardi, whom he met in Rome in 1823 (Luciano Canfora, “Leopardi, Niebuhr e Senofonte,” Belfagor, 29, 1974, p. 95).

  3. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, “Letter to Gnaeus Pompeius Geminus,” § 4; Cicero, De oratore 2, 56.

  Z 471

  1. Z 4 contains analogous observations regarding the works of Homer, Petrarch, Dante, Ariosto on one side, Parini, Alfieri, and Monti on the other. See also Z 2, in relation to the aesthetics of the ugly. On Homer’s “little flaws” see also Z 1450.

  Z 472

  1. Leopardi probably has in mind here Foscolo’s poem Dei sepolcri (which he had certainly read—cf. Z 13—and assimilated well), and he retains its Vichian flavor. See Z 3430–32 and notes, with further developments concerning literature on Z 3435–40.

  Z 473

  1. A justified correction, proposed earlier, unbeknownst to Leopardi, by the Dutch philologist Sigmund Gelen (Pacella).

  2. The Dutch philologist Jan Gruter quotes a passage from Quintilian regarding the great importance of physical health and vigor in leading a good life (Velleius, loc. cit., pp. 505–506).

  Z 475

  1. Velleius Paterculus 2, 33, 4, and 2, 82 ff.

  Z 476

  1. Velleius, ed. Burmann, pp. 568–69. The topic is again that of divine envy that produces deserved unhappiness in men (see Z 3342–43, 3606–607).

  Z 477

  1. Florus, Epitome 2, 27, 17 (Mannheim 1779 ed., bk. 4, ch. 12, pp. 187–88). In this note Cassius Dio quotes from Velleius, 2, 98, Burmann’s ed. pp. 491–93.

  Z 478

  1. Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta memorabilia 5, 6, ext. 1 (but 5, 7–8 in Briscoe’s 1998 ed.).

  2. Justus Lipsius, in the note to the passage cited, in Velleius, ed. Burmann, pp. 18–19. Leopardi is right, according to later research (Timpanaro, La filologia, p. 50 [B11]).

  Z 479

  1. It is likely that Leopardi alludes to a young woman (perhaps Teresa Fattorini, who died of tuberculosis in September 1818). This might hav
e inspired the treatment of Silvia’s death in “A Silvia” (April 1828), as a passage on Z 4311 (June 1828) confirms, where “the misfortunes” that will soon obscure the young woman’s joy, produce “the most beautiful and the sublimest feeling that can be imagined.” Cf. also note to Z 483, below.

  Z 480

  1. Velleius, ed. Burmann, p. 608.

  Z 481

  1. Asconius Pedianus, Explanatio in Ciceronis orationes, Venice 1563 (= LL), fol. 76v, a commentary, of which only fragments survive, on various speeches by Cicero.

  2. Velleius, ed. Burmann, pp. 248–49. The words in Greek are Leopardi’s.

  Z 483

  1. Teresa, however, is the name of a girl (“the coachman’s daughter”) who appears in the sketches for an autobiographical novel known as “Vita abbozzata di Silvio Sarno,” §§ 52, 61, 70–71 (in Scritti e frammenti autobiografici [B2]), traditionally identified with the “Silvia” of the 1828 canto. Cf. note to Z 479, above. Leopardi later returns to “our likes, dislikes” on Z 1192–93, in a lengthy thought on habituation and on the relativity of aesthetic judgments. Cf. also Z 1206 and 1749–50.

  Z 484

  1. Appiano Buonafede, Istoria critica e filosofica del suicidio ragionato di Agatopisto Cromaziano, Lucca 1761. On suicide as a result of reason cf. Z 223, 1978–82, 2549–55, 3784.

  2. In reality Scotland and not England. See Z 177 and note.

  Z 485

  1. In the Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité Rousseau had questioned whether any savage who was free had ever complained about life or chosen to die by his own hand (Oeuvres, vol. 2, p. 144) (Damiani). See Z 3883.

  Z 489

  1. Florus, Epitome 1, 2, 1 (Mannheim ed., pp. 27–28).

  2. Florus, Epitome 1, 6, 8 (Mannheim ed., p. 34).

  Z 490

  1. Florus, Epitome 1, 6, 10 (Mannheim ed., pp. 34–35).

  Z 491

  1. Ménage, in his Observationes to Diogenes Laertius, De vitis, had reproduced the passage from Plato quoted above, that is Theaetetus 174a, taken from Ficino’s edition of Plato cited earlier (= LL). The interpolations in Latin are by Ficino, slightly modified by Leopardi.

  Z 493

  1. By virtue of “instinct” and of the “innate beliefs” discussed on Z 439ff.

  Z 494

  1. See Z 304–305 and note.

  2. Florus, Epitome 1, 7, 1 (Mannheim ed., p. 35).

  3. Florus, Epitome 1, 7, 12 (Mannheim ed., p. 36).

  Z 495

  1. Florus, Epitome 1, 8, 21 (Mannheim ed., pp. 38–39). The following suggestions are scrutinized by Timpanaro in La filologia, p. 51, note (B11).

  Z 497

  1. Voltaire, Pucelle d’Orléans, canto 7, l. 19. In fact the line reads: “Ou bien buvez, c’est un parti si sage.”

  Z 498

  1. As Lucio Felici has pointed out (L’Olimpo abbandonato. Leopardi tra “favole antiche” e “disperati affetti,” Venice 2005, pp. 69–70), this passage reminds us of similar etymological considerations made by Vico, The New Science, § 401.

  Z 500

  1. Cf. Horace, Ars poetica 1–4.

  Z 501

  1. Leopardi will come back to the analysis of children’s imagination (Z 2390, 3950–51), using the concept of “attention” (as defined on Z 1421).

  2. The Greek, the Latin translation that follows—and the mentioned sources—are taken from Laertius, loc. cit.

  Z 502

  1. Florus, Epitome 1, 7, 6 and 1, 7, 7 (Mannheim ed., pp. 35–36).

  2. Florus, Epitome 1, 24, 8 (Mannheim ed., p. 78), with reference to King Antiochus.

  3. Suetonius, Opera, tome 1, p. 159. And see note 6 to ch. 60, § 1 on movere by J. G. Gräve (Graevius), with references to Florus and Cicero. This addition may date from 1823, when Leopardi read Suetonius (the same passage is cited on Z 3263).

  4. Dante, Purgatorio 24, 141. The Italian is rendered literally, to convey the sense of the structure under discussion.

  5. Florus, Epitome 1, 31, 2 (Mannheim ed., p. 78).

  6. Florus, Epitome 1, 31, 4 (Mannheim ed., p. 86). The above passage, containing Leopardi’s interpolations in brackets, is scrutinized below. Leopardi’s interpretation turns upon the replacement of Massinassae (in the genitive) by Massinassa (in the nominative).

  Z 504

  1. According to a Christian legend that appears in Theodoretus, Historia ecclesiastica 3, 25, Turin 1748 (= LL), p. 126, and is repeated elsewhere, the Emperor Julian, at the point of death, had exclaimed “Thou hast conquered, O Galilean.”

  Z 505

  1. Ovid, Metamorphoses 6, 280–85.

  Z 507

  1. Job 3:1–26.

  2. In Leopardi’s own index this thought is listed under “Social Machiavellianism.”

  Z 508

  1. Staël, Corinne, bk. 12, ch. 1, tome 2, pp. 219–21: “she flattered self-love with a great deal of interest, and showed that one pleased her … she dwelt on every word I said; she devoted time to me with constant attention.”

  Z 509

  1. Florus, Epitome 1, 31, 1 (Mannheim ed., p. 86); Quintus Curtius Rufus, Historia Alexandri Magni 3, 11, 20.

  2. Petrarch, Rime 128, ll. 42–48; ll. 44–45 have already been quoted on Z 23.

  3. Florus, Epitome 1, 38, 9–10 (Mannheim ed., p. 106).

  4. Pseudo-Longinus, On the Sublime 38, 3; Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 7, 84.

  Z 510

  1. Florus, Epitome 1, 38, 14 (Mannheim ed., pp. 106–107).

  2. Florus, Epitome 1, 30, 3 (Mannheim ed., p. 85); Velleius Paterculus 1, 11, 1 (in Burmann’s ed., p. 78, where the cited passage of Florus is quoted).

  3. Florus, Epitome, respectively 1, 30, 3 and 1, 41, 7 (Mannheim ed., 86 and 117). In 67 BCE the Gabinian Law vested Pompey with the authority to clear pirates from the Mediterranean.

  Z 511

  1. The word troia, meaning at once “sow” and “Troy,” thus served to link the founding of Alba (white)—later Rome—by Ascanius, the son of Aeneas, to a legendary white animal.

  2. Leopardi quotes two passages from Florus, Epitome (Mannheim ed., pp. 132–33), respectively 2, 2, 4 and 2, 3, 5.

  Z 512

  1. Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum 79, 4.

  2. Virgil, Aeneid 1, 314.

  3. Virgil, Aeneid 11, 503–504.

  Z 515

  1. This is the core of Leopardi’s poetics of memory. On the pleasure of memory see Z 1860–62 and the later thoughts cited on Z 4426, note 2.

  2. From the autobiographical sketches known as “Vita abbozzata di Silvio Sarno,” § 25 (1819), we know that Leopardi is probably referring here to engraved books he used to read in his childhood: Thomas à Kempis’s La imitazione di Cristo (Venice 1803), two volumes of “sacred history,” an unspecified “book of saints” (perhaps Jean Croiset’s Vies des saints, also in Italian), an edition of Goldoni. He also refers to a miniature representing a small lake under the surveillance of God’s eye, which later on he intended to put on the front page of the first edition of the Canti (see the letter to Paolina of 28 December 1830). A similar engraving appears in the 1803 edition of Kempis. See Scritti e frammenti (B2), p. 64.

  Z 518

  1. See Z 108–109 and note.

  Z 519

  1. That is, Xenophon’s Anabasis.

  Z 520

  1. Leopardi returns to the important concept of “half-philosophy” (similar to that of “ultra-philosophy,” Z 114–15) on Z 1078 and 1793 (but see, for a different use of this term, Z 1715 and note). See also the concept of “middling civilization” (Z 404 and note). For this kind of interpretation of the French Revolution see Z 2334–35.

  Z 522

  1. The argument elaborated on Z 252 and 274–75, where several of these names appear, is that the tendency of philosophical study in Rome was to favor tyranny, a theme prominent in Montesquieu and Rousseau. However, these philosophers now appear in a different light (Timpanaro, Classicismo, pp. 196–97), because “half-philosophy,” in contrast to “full” or “per
fect philosophy,” allows some illusions to exist, and consequently some freedom to flourish. This opposition perhaps owes something to ch. 5 of Cicero’s Laelius sive de amicitia. From now on, Leopardi will consider “half-philosophy” (see Z 115), that is “practical philosophy,” as an alternative to Christianity and to every kind of abstract or metaphysical philosophy (including Plato). In this context we can explain his later translations of Isocrates and Epictetus, and his interest in Theophrastus. Cf. the Introduction to Volgarizzamenti (B2). See also Z 81 and note, 520–22, and notes, 2492–93, 2574–76, 4190, and note 4.

  Z 523

  1. Florus, Epitome 2, 18, 7 (Mannheim ed., p. 179).

  2. Florus, Epitome 2, 17, 11 (Mannheim ed., p. 177). See also Leopardi, “Comparazione,” in Volgarizzamenti, p. 333, and his lyric treatment of the theme in “Bruto minore.”

  3. Florus, Epitome 2, 16, 1 (Mannheim ed., p. 174).

  4. Florus, Epitome 2, 14, 4 (Mannheim ed., p. 172).

  Z 526

  1. Quoted in the Mannheim ed. of Florus, Epitome, p. 7.

  2. Florus, Epitome 2, 21, 3 (Mannheim ed. 1779, p. 183).

  Z 527

  1. This note is a marginal addition inspired by reading, in 1825, works by Antigonus of Carystus, Apollonius, and Phlegon of Tralles (whom Leopardi calls, using a word unknown in antiquity, taumasiografi, that is paradoxographers, or tellers of wondrous tales—cf., e.g., Z 4151)—to be found in Meurs, Opera omnia, vol. 7. See his notes in Scritti filologici, pp. 571–601.

  Z 528

  1. Diogenes Laertius 4, 15. The Latin interpolations were taken by Leopardi, with slight alterations, from Meibomius. The remark by Ménage features in De vitis, vol. 2, p. 171.

  Z 530

  1. At the end of this dense paragraph, where Leopardi describes the disappointment that follows hope (a theme that appears in various guises in prose—e.g., the autobiographical sketches known as “Vita abbozzata di Silvio Sarno,” §§ 73–75—and in verse, e.g., “La sera del dì di festa” and “Il sabato del villaggio”), a Stoic “spiritual exercise” surfaces, similar to the one suggested by Adelaide Antici (Leopardi’s mother) to her younger son Pietrino on Z 65 (see note).

  Z 531

  1. The reference here is to Leopardi’s own essay of 1815. See Z 1, note 2.

  Z 536