Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  Z 2669

  1. The free-trade principles to which Leopardi seems to be referring here are those advocated by Adam Smith in his The Wealth of Nations (1776), and endorsed to some degree by Italian journals such as the Conciliatore. Note that a follower of Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, is mentioned on Z 245 and 3447. See also Z 4041–42, 4192–93, and note.

  Z 2670

  1. The classical authorities listed here are all cited by Barthélemy, in the work and at the page cited. On p. 392 he observes that sacrifices had ended because absurd and pointless cruelties will always sooner or later yield to nature and reason.

  2. The succeeding parenthesis is a marginal addition, judged by Pacella to be from 1826. The word ὑδραν has no accent.

  Z 2671

  1. Virgil, Aeneid 2, 318ff. and 429–30; Homer, Iliad 6, 76ff. and 7, 44ff.

  2. Leopardi follows Barthélemy in referring to Cresphontes (a play by Euripides, only a fragment of which has been recovered from Egyptian papyri) as Ctesiph[ontes]. By “Anthology,” Barthélemy means the Greek or Palatine Anthology.

  Z 2672

  1. Timpanaro, Classicismo (B11), pp. 202ff., has stressed the great importance of these and other Greek maxims (read in Barthélemy) in the development of Leopardi’s philosophy (cf. Z 3976 and note 3). Note, however, that he owned an Italian translation of the Voyage, and that this tragic view of life coincides in many respects with the strict Christian beliefs attributed by Leopardi to his mother (cf., e.g., Z 353–54). See Z 2673, note 2. The references are to: Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, ll. 1224–27; Bacchylides, victory ode 5, ll. 160–62 (Snell-Maehler); Cicero, Tusculan disputations 1, 48, 114; Pindar, Pythian odes 8, 95–96 (Snell-Maehler). Note that Pindar’s text is σκιᾶς ὄναρ / ἄνθρωπος, that is “man is the dream of a shadow”; Barthélemy’s reading probably derives from Plutarch, Moralia 104b, who quoting these lines suggests that Pindar by “man” hyperbolically means “human life.” Stobaeus quotes in various places lines on this theme attributed to various poets; see, e.g., 4, 52, 22, and 30 (Hense). One might also recall Lucretius, De rerum natura 5, 174: “quidve mali fuerat nobis non esse creati?” [“or what the evil for us, if we had never been born?”], which is, however, as Timpanaro notes (“Epicuro, Lucrezio e Leopardi,” p. 169 [B12]), a different question.

  2. Plato, Gorgias 487d. Leopardi transcribes both the Greek and the Latin from Ast’s Leipzig edition while modifying each to some extent. He had been given the first three volumes of this edition by the publisher De Romanis, who proposed that he translate the whole of Plato. The plan came to nothing, but the reading of these volumes lay behind the numerous notes on Plato now in the Scritti filologici, pp. 469–542 (B2).

  3. Plato, Gorgias 484c. Leopardi again modifies Ast.

  4. Plato, Gorgias, 482a–486d. What Leopardi finds noteworthy in this dialogue is, interestingly, Callicles’s position, that could be now labeled in Nietzschean terms as “immoralist.” But Leopardi had been reflecting on the “true natural law” since 1820: see Z 209, note 2 (and subsequently 1459, 1709, 2660). Cf. also, among his later entries, Z 4518.

  Z 2673

  1. For the need of a “scapegoat” in human societies (a mechanism studied by René Girard in his Violence and the Sacred) see Z 4071 and note. Sappho was believed to have hurled herself from the “rock” in Lefkada into the Ionian sea (see also Z 82 and note 2). The words “On le précipite … montagne de Leucade” are not in the text: they are probably taken from somewhere else or added, and there are also other minor changes to the text. By Memorabilia Barthélemy means the Liber memorialis of Ampelius.

  2. Plutarch, How a Young Man Should Study Poetry (Moralia, 36f). The lines of verse here are from Euripides, Cresphontes, ll. 4–6 (Kannicht), which were also translated into Latin by Cicero in Tusculanae disputationes 1, 48, 115. Again (cf. Z 2672, note 1), these ancient ideas serve to validate in a different, pagan manner the Christian ideas about the role of the mother depicted by Leopardi on Z 353–56, e.g.: “Seeing any sign of imminent death in the patient, she felt deep joy … and the day of their death, if this occurred, was for her one of rejoicing and satisfaction.”

  3. Plutarch, How a Young Man Should Study Poetry (Moralia 37a), citing a fragment by an unknown author (no. 360, 1–2 Kannicht-Snell, in Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981, vol. 2, p. 111): “ἡ βροτῶν τ' ɛὐπραξία / τῶν τἀλάχιστα γίγνɛται λυπουμένων.”

  Z 2674

  1. Leopardi refers here to the Aldine editio princeps of Plato, tome 1, published in Venice in 1513, in Greek only (which he did not have in front of him, hence the uncertainty about the tome).

  2. Plutarch, A Letter of Condolence to Apollonius (Moralia, 111a). The fragment cited is from Euripides, Hypsipyle 9.

  3. Plutarch, A Letter of Condolence to Apollonius (Moralia 115b), for the saying of Crantor’s and for the fragment from Aristotle, which turn upon the unhappiness of being born and the happiness of dying. The line from Menander cited in Moralia 119e reads “He whom the gods love dies young.” Leopardi would use it as the epigraph to “Amore e morte” and also in the operetta morale “Dialogo di Tristano e di un amico” (both dating from the early 1830s). Already in 1816, however, he had translated a passage where Fronto wrote to Antoninus: “Now, if death must make us more happy than sad, the earlier the age at which someone attains it, that person must be reputed more fortunate and dearer to the Gods…” (Opere inedite, p. 422).

  Z 2675

  1. See also Z 659–60 and 984–85. The English title for De magistro equitum is On Horsemanship.

  2. That is, Barthélemy, Voyage, as cited on Z 2670.

  3. That is, Barthélemy, Voyage, as cited on Z 2670.

  4. Plutarch, A Letter of Condolence to Apollonius (Moralia 108e–f), that is, the story of Cleobis and Biton, to whom the goddess granted death as a reward for their devotion.

  Z 2676

  1. That is, Barthélemy, Voyage, tome 4, ch. 53. Note that Barthélemy had written “figure,” not “statue.”

  2. Leopardi here cites from his edition (Venice 1741) of Jacopo Passavanti’s Lo specchio di vera penitenzia, which probably means that he took it with him to Rome.

  3. Leopardi alludes here to Cavalca’s translation of the Lives of the Fathers, see Z 2645, note 1.

  Z 2678

  1. Here Leopardi employs a neologism, se-amanti.

  2. This reference dates from the beginning of 1824, when Leopardi read Machiavelli’s Istorie fiorentine [Florentine Histories], where we read, loc. cit.: “those [divisions] are baneful which are attended by discordant groups and factions … While therefore the founder of a Republic cannot prevent animosities, let him at least guard against the growth of faction.”

  Z 2679

  1. Plutarch, How to Profit by One’s Enemies (Moralia, 91f–92a), describes here what Konrad Lorenz has later called the mechanism of “redirection” of “intraspecific aggression” (On Aggression, London: Methuen & Co., 1964), that is, in Leopardian terms, the system of “national hatred” (cf. Z 879–911, 1083–84, 1422 and passim).

  2. Plutarch, Precepts of Statecraft (Moralia 813a). This sentence is a later addition.

  Z 2680

  1. Leopardi’s short history of humanity echoes Rousseau’s Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité. The process described here will be analyzed in detail by Konrad Lorenz in his On Aggressivity (see Z 2679, note 1). In the draft of “Inno ai Patriarchi” (July 1822), Leopardi writes in fact that the golden age “is not a dream, nor a fable, nor the invention of poets, nor a deception spread by history or traditions” (Poesie, p. 678). Cf. “La ginestra,” ll. 145–54: “When such ideas become / known to the populace as they once were, / and the fear / that first joined mortals in a common pact / against unholy nature / shall be revived to some extent / out of real wisdom, then an honest, / just society of citizens / and right and piety will take root / from something more than vain mythologies.” (trans. Gal
assi).

  Z 2681

  1. Plutarch, Precepts of Statecraft (Moralia, 799f–800a). The same reevaluation of illusion in the operetta morale “Elogio degli uccelli,” where the birds urge on all living beings to be happy, “bearing constant witness, even though false, to the happiness of things.” Cf. D’Intino, L’immagine, ch. 1 (B11). See also Z 3530, 3954–55, 3990, 4002.

  Z 2682

  1. Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, bk. 1, ch. 26.

  Z 2683

  1. Castiglione, Il libro del cortegiano, bk. 1, ch. 44.

  2. Castiglione, Il libro del cortegiano, bk. 1, ch. 37.

  3. I.e., the book by Barthélemy cited on Z 2670ff.

  4. See the note above. Where Barthélemy refers to De moralibus he is in fact loosely paraphrasing the Nicomachean Ethics 2, 2, 1104a, where Aristotle states that all moral qualities are harmed by both excess and defect, and preserved by the mean.

  Z 2685

  1. Leopardi is concerned here with the use of the verb δɛῖν in combination with an adverb of quantity, much or little, by means of which Greek arrives at expressions akin to those given afterward in French and then Italian.

  Z 2686

  1. It is difficult to say to which edition Leopardi refers here. In the third ed. in four volumes published in 1788 in Paris by Didot (“dans l’imprimerie de Monsieur”) the passage cited is on p. 158. In the LL there was a Paris 1793 edition.

  2. Cicero, De officiis 1, 150–51; Xenophon, Oeconomicus 4, 2ff. and pseudo-Aristotle, Oeconomicus 1, 2, 2 are quoted by Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, loc. cit.

  3. Leopardi had returned to Recanati from Rome on 3 May 1823.

  Z 2687

  1. Plato, Sophist 262e. In the manuscript the reference is a marginal addition from July 1823, when Leopardi read this work.

  Z 2690

  1. By “Roman” Leopardi does not here mean the language spoken at Rome but “Romance.”

  Z 2694

  1. In his De vulgari eloquentia Dante theorizes the volgare illustre, that is, literally, luminous, splendid, or that gives glory (because it derives from God: hence its characteristics of order and regularity).

  Z 2695

  1. Constantinople fell in 1453.

  Z 2696

  1. The LL at Recanati had a copy of De Bizantinae historiae scriptoribus, Venice 1729–1733, in 24 vols. In tome 19 of this collection we find the Institutio Regia ad Porphyrogenitum Costantinum by Theophylactus of Ohrid, an author consulted by Leopardi for his studies of the Greek Fathers.

  Z 2697

  1. Leopardi is here taking a stand against the widely held view that Greece had already fallen into barbarism with the end of the Justinian reform. This view minimized the catastrophic effect of the Turkish conquest, to which Leopardi gives prominence. Unlike the damning remarks of, for example, Voltaire and Montesquieu and, famously, Gibbon’s assessment of Byzantine history as “a tedious and uniform tale of weakness and misery” (History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, bk. 5, ch. 48), Leopardi pays attention to the continuity of Greek culture and, while he recognizes its decline, he identifies flashes of light between the ninth and the twelfth century, the period now known as the “revival.” He will read and quote extensively from Photius in Bologna (October 1826, Z 4191ff.). The Violarium, or Collection of Violets, is a lexicographic work long attributed (even in Leopardi’s day) to Eudocia Macrembolitissa (1021–1096), wife of Emperor Constantine X, but now known to be a sixteenth-century forgery. For the Suda see Z 316 and note.

  Z 2699

  1. Domenico Cavalca, with a number of collaborators, was responsible for translating the Vitae patrum into Italian. Cf. Z 2452 and note, 2645.

  Z 2704

  1. Cf. Z 1, note 2. For Lammie, cf. Z 2299–304.

  Z 2705

  1. Perticari lists the great variety of ways in which words were introduced into the peninsula in the medieval period by barbarian invasions, commerce, and political exile.

  2. See Z 2709 and note 3.

  Z 2709

  1. Similar judgments on Descartes may be found, for example, in Algarotti’s Dialoghi sopra l’ottica neutoniana (Damiani), see, e.g., Opere, tome 2, p. 78 and in his Saggio sopra il Cartesio, ibid., tome 4, pp. 273–74.

  2. For Algarotti, Descartes’s positive system is only “a fine play of fantasy” (Dialoghi sopra l’ottica neutoniana, in Opere, tome 2, p. 77), or “an entirely speculative and fantastic philosophy” (Saggio sopra il Cartesio, ibid., tome 4, p. 313). Note that Leopardi applies almost the same expressions to Newton, whom on the contrary Algarotti praises for having found “the finest truths” (Dialoghi, ibid., tome 2, p. 89).

  3. There may be an echo here of Pierre Bayle’s dictum, cited on Z 4192, that reason is more an instrument of destruction than of construction. See also Z 304–305, 1852, 2705–709, 4135–36, 4189–90, 4192–93 and note 2.

  Z 2710

  1. For the metaphor of Nature’s veil in classical Antiquity, see Z 446 and note.

  2. See Wieland, Storia del saggio Danischmend, mentioned on Z 1630–31, ch. 6, p. 45.

  Z 2711

  1. Cf. the Pascalian motif of “a wise ignorance which knows itself” characteristic of “great souls, who, having traversed everything which men can know, find that they know nothing” (Pensées, ed. Brunschvicg, § 327). See also Z 4160–61, 4192–93, 4477–78. On the other hand cf. Z 4135–36.

  Z 2712

  1. An anticipation of this idea in Leopardi’s philosophical “system” on Z 417. See also Z 3180, 3304, 3660. In the final strophe of the “Inno ai Patriarchi” (July 1822) Leopardi counterposes to the nature of the moderns that of the inhabitants of the “Californie selve” (“Californian forests”), who are deemed happy because ignorant of civilization and uncorrupted by culture.

  Z 2717

  1. Leopardi had read the Phaedrus and other dialogues between January and April 1823, after being invited to translate the whole of Plato. Cf. Z 2672 and note 2.

  Z 2721

  1. It is hard to tell which work by Aristotle features this expression.

  Z 2723

  1. Michele Colombo, though a follower of Cesari, was less intransigent a purist than his mentor, and therefore judged it necessary to adapt the language to the prevailing social and cultural conditions. In the above passage he has cited Horace, Ars poetica 60. The italics are his (Damiani).

  Z 2724

  1. See Il libro della volgar lingua, bk. 1, in Bembo, Opere, tome 2, p. 40, where he places Boccaccio and Petrarch head and shoulders above all other authors.

  Z 2727

  1. Cicero, Orator 4, 14.

  Z 2728

  1. In Leopardi’s judgment Plato was at one and the same time a very exact and a supremely poetic writer. Cf. Z 3236–37.

  Z 2729

  1. See Z 32, 949, and 1313.

  2. Giordani, “Discorso sulla vita e sulle opere del Card. Sforza Pallavicino” (1820) in Opere, tome 10, p. 405. Leopardi had earlier, on Z 1313, held a more positive view of Galileo’s style, and Giordani’s judgment may have helped to change his mind.

  Z 2730

  1. Jean-Sylvain Bailly, Histoire de l’astronomie ancienne (Paris 1775), Histoire de l’astronomie moderne (Paris 1779–1782), works translated and abridged by Francesco Milizia under the title La storia dell’astronomia (Venice 1791), consulted by Leopardi when composing his own history, although not held by the LL.

  Z 2731

  1. On the different paradigm that sustains the “exact” (or “demonstrative”) sciences and what Leopardi calls in his note “probable,” “persuasive,” or “conjectural” sciences see Carlo Ginzburg, “Morelli, Freud and Sherlock Holmes: Clues and Scientific Method,” History Workshop, 9 (Spring 1990), pp. 5–36.

  Z 2732

  1. The Historia Augusta was a compilation, perhaps from the latter part of the fourth century, of biographies of Emperors from Hadrian to Carinus (285 CE).

  2. On Z 991 Leopardi cites Salmasius’s damning judgment on Ammianus.


  Z 2734

  1. The following references were inserted between the lines and in the margin. Maffei’s dissertation in St. Athanasius’s Opera omnia quae extant, Padua 1777 (= LL), tome 3, pp. 82ff.

  2. Leopardi had undertaken philological studies of both Julius Africanus and Eusebius of Caesarea (see Z 96 and note).

  Z 2739

  1. Leopardi, who had read Chateaubriand’s Génie quite early (cf. Z 15, 53, 156, 287 and notes) listed René among his readings in the early part of 1823, during his stay in Rome.

  Z 2740

  1. Cicero, De re publica, 1, 9, 14.

  2. Pliny, Natural history 7, 192.

  Z 2744

  1. Pliny, Natural history 7, 192.

  Z 2752

  1. Cf. Z 4250, 4282–83.

  Z 2759

  1. Leopardi was familiar with the notion, expressed by Burke (A Philosophical Enquiry, part 2, ch. 2, pp. 96–98), that spectacular natural phenomena involving terror and danger were expressions of the sublime (Ricerca, pp. 64–66). See Z 3617.

  Z 2760

  1. Leopardi later finds a similar description of the archaic morality of Achilles in a passage by Vico transcribed on Z 4397. See also Z 4406, on Constant.

  2. In Italian, commercio di guerra, a direct translation of the Latin, belli commercia, see Virgil, Aeneid 10, 532.

  3. Homer, Iliad 6, 53ff. See however Z 3117–21 on compassion in Homer.

  Z 2765

  1. Les Martyrs, a prose poem by Chateaubriand published in 1809, was set at the time of Diocletian’s persecutions of the Christians, that is, in the fourth century CE, and not in that of Lucian (second century CE). Leopardi was led astray in this regard by a remark in “I Padri della Chiesa,” an article by Benjamin Constant (see Z 105 and note 1) (Pacella).

  Z 2767

  1. Homer, Iliad 24, 477ff.

  Z 2769

  1. There follows a marginal addition, which can very plausibly be dated to April 1824. See Z 4078–79.

  Z 2771

  1. The reference to Caro, loc. cit., p. 18, is an unattached marginal addition.

  Z 2774

  1. Leopardi defines this phenomenon translating the Latin formula “reduplicatio sive anadiplasiasmus,” probably taken from the notes to the Charon in Gräve’s edition of Lucian (= LL).