At a more general level, Leopardi’s youthful interest in physics, astronomy, and a theory of matter deriving from antiquity but updated to accommodate some recent discoveries is taken up and maintained in the Zibaldone. In line with a long tradition of philosophy of a Lucretian and corpuscular kind transmitted during the eighteenth century, the world of living species and its “natural history” are located against the backdrop of the contrast between “inanimate” nature and the animation of life, a central theme in Leopardi’s poetic imagination, which sets solitary man against a nature that is inexorable because it is bereft of animation and sensibility (Z 1550–51, 1608, 1960, 2433). As in so much philosophical tradition, of a moral no less than a philosophical bent, man is aware of his own smallness, of his being but a speck in comparison with all possible worlds (Z 2936–38, 3171–72). This notwithstanding, Leopardi makes it perfectly clear that believing the universe to be infinite is an optical illusion (Z 4292). The infinite is, however, present in the imagination; it is a reworking of the consternation experienced in the face of immensity (Z 4177–78) and coincides, in effect, with nothingness (Z 4174). In spite of this tendency of Leopardi’s toward a limitless cosmic dimension, his perception of the world is strongly characterized by materiality. His initial doubts about a rigorous materialism, possibly a leftover from his religious education (Z 106–107), quickly give way to a vision (perhaps mediated by chemistry) in which matter becomes all-pervasive and never perishes: its perishing consists in fact in its decomposition into simple elements (Z 629–33): “Our mind is incapable not only of knowing but even of conceiving of anything beyond the bounds of matter. Beyond those bounds we cannot, try as we may, imagine a way of being, anything other than nothingness” (Z 601–602; cf. also Z 1636). Later, in a dizzying passage written in 1826, Leopardi destroys the very notions of matter, space, and time, all of them entities that can only be imagined by a process of thought that is itself matter and, what is more, a materiality of language (Z 4181). Thus, late in the Zibaldone, the very possibility of identifying any natural law at all falls away. Two brief, bitter anti-providentialist thoughts on the intrinsic disorder of the universe and—more subtly—on man’s disposition to read into it only the regularities that he judges to be positive, forgetting pain and illness and the waste of even the most humble of animal lives, appear in the name of Strato of Lampsacus (Z 4248, 4510). Leopardi ends by recognizing that the natural world proceeds without taking account of human categories, or of the teleological intentions that we arbitrarily attribute to nature, which, in a given habitat, for inscrutable reasons, rescues animals and implacably destroys vegetable life (Z 4189).
[FD]
Editorial Criteria
In reading the following, it should be borne in mind that the Zibaldone is a private text, neither intended nor prepared for publication, and ill-suited to editing conventions. Furthermore, the diary covers a fifteen-year period (1817–32), during which writing and spelling, quotation criteria, punctuation, and so on, vary considerably, and during which also Leopardi frequently intervenes retrospectively in his own text. A note that takes into account all the criteria followed in order to produce a readable English edition would fill dozens of pages. Here, we shall merely provide some general indications.
1. The Text
During the initial stages, the translation was based on the Pacella edition, but was subsequently entirely rechecked against the original manuscript, held in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples. The facsimile of the manuscript was initially accessible more widely only in the Peruzzi photographic edition, and then, after 2009, in the Ceragioli/Ballerini computerized edition, whose accurate transcription of the manuscript corrects various oversights by previous editors. The Damiani and Felici editions were, naturally, also consulted (see, for the editions cited, the Bibliography, section 1).
The following editorial choices impinge on the material layout of the text, compared with the manuscript and Italian printed editions:
1.1. Our paragraph division differs in many cases from that of other editions (see § 8 below).
1.2. The link between the text and marginal or interlinear additions has also been conceived on new lines, with the result that, as far as the location of specific passages is concerned, some may be found in a slightly different position from the one they occupy in printed Italian editions (but always on the same manuscript page). This particularly concerns passages that have been treated as footnotes in successive Italian editions and that we have chosen to incorporate into the text, and vice versa (see § 9 below).
1.3. Leopardi’s manuscript page numbers have become the standard form of reference for modern editions (Z 8, Z 1234–35, etc.). We follow this practice, and for ease of reference, we have also tagged our editorial notes to Leopardi’s page numbers rather than to the page numbers of the printed edition, as has been the norm up to now. As in previous editions, Leopardi’s page numbers are given in the text in bold in square brackets. We have normally placed the Zibaldone page number before the English equivalent of the word or the phrase that begins a new page in the Italian or in its immediate vicinity. Because of the different word order in the two languages, we have adopted, in some cases, various different criteria (among which the length of the portions of text belonging to each page), which sometimes can lead to some displacement of text in relation to a specific manuscript page, as will be noticed by those who read the English edition alongside the Italian original.
2. Underlining and Italics
Leopardi’s use of single underlining in the manuscript is very irregular: it performs different functions and varies with time and from one passage to another. We have decided to use italics—the usual printed equivalent of underlining—for:
2.1. the titles of works, which Leopardi as a rule (but not always) leaves in roman letters;
2.2. words or sentences analyzed from a philological/linguistic point of view, or the meanings of such words;
2.3. translations in Latin in brackets inside passages of Greek;
2.4. words or phrases in a language other than Italian in the original, followed by the English translation in square brackets;
2.5. parts of the text that the author underlined, deeming them particularly important. Double underlining (very rare) is rendered in small capitals.
3. Quotation Marks and Brackets
In order to mark passages quoted from other books, Leopardi generally uses single underlining—in conformity with typographic usage at the time—or else, in very rare cases, various types of quotation marks. Very often, however, he uses nothing and his prose merges with that of other authors, seriously impeding understanding. Suffice it to mention that in the Grande Dizionario della Lingua Italiana under the entry “disgrazia,” § 7, the specific meaning of the word is attributed to Leopardi, and not, as it should be, to Castiglione, quoted by Leopardi, precisely because the text has no quotation marks.
We have adopted the following criteria for dealing with this situation:
3.1. Following modern usage, all quotations are marked by double quotation marks (“…”) and quotations within quotations by single quotation marks (‘…’), including quotations in Greek, which are marked by double quotation marks in order to distinguish them from other interpolations in Greek that are not quotations.
3.2. The editorial notes specify whether any italics within the quotation are by the author quoted, or by Leopardi himself.
3.3. When a parenthesis is interposed in a quotation, the quotation marks clearly show the reader whether the parenthesis is part of the text quoted, or whether it is inserted by Leopardi.
3.4. As a rule, quotation marks (or em dashes, a practice sometimes adopted by Leopardi himself) also introduce Leopardi’s “quotes” from the speech of friends, acquaintances, and unnamed persons, or else imaginary dialogues with himself or between himself and a hypothetical opponent, or between other real or imaginary characters.
3.5. Text within square brackets is wholly editorial. It is
used as a rule for translations, comments, or sundry indications (cf. § 10.3 below), or, in some cases, the integration of missing dates (cf. § 10.3), or, very occasionally, the integration of missing words, the nature of which can be plausibly inferred from the context (e.g., Z 3451).
3.6. Braces, i.e., { }, inside translations in square brackets contain words that may assist understanding of the passage quoted.
4. Titles
Since the Zibaldone is a private text, it is not surprising that Leopardi writes the titles of the works he quotes in varied and irregular ways. He abbreviates, alternates upper- and lowercase letters, the original language, its Latin translation, and Italian (and it is not always possible to distinguish between the latter two); he changes and adapts the title to suit his sentence, or else recomposes parts of titles and subtitles differently from the original, which in turn often has a variable title. It being impossible to find any general rule for this myriad of very different instances, we have dealt with them on a case-by-case basis, seeking to balance understanding with precision and providing notes on the most difficult cases.
As a rule, we have chosen:
4.1. to leave all titles in their original language, if thus cited by Leopardi (including those in Italian). The advantage of having titles in the original is that they can easily and unequivocally be referenced in library catalogues, whether paper or online;
4.2. to give the title in the form and (Greek or Latin) case chosen by Leopardi (cf., e.g., Z 466), making use in the translation, whether in the text or the notes, of the best-known title of the work, with the preposition corresponding to the case, where appropriate;
4.3. to give the titles of books and periodicals in italics, and those of chapters, articles, or other parts of books, single poems, essays, or dialogues, etc., in double quotation marks (except for those in Greek);
4.4. to resolve abbreviations in full;
4.5. to retain in the case of very long titles (especially of older books where the heading gives information about the author, publisher, etc.) the nucleus of the actual title in its original language (in italics or quotation marks) and to translate all other information into English (publisher, printer, where published, and any other details): this practice is followed in the Bibliography as well as in the text and notes;
4.6. to use English for internal divisions, even those given by Leopardi in another language (as a rule French or Latin), and to standardize numbering according to Leopardi’s dominant criterion (Arabic numerals, separated by commas for book, chapter, section, page, etc.), unless the pages in the volume have Roman numerals. All such details are those given by Leopardi. In cases giving rise to possible ambiguity, our editorial notes help identify the passages quoted.
5. Italian and Other Languages
The Zibaldone is a multilingual text, which includes hundreds of quotations in Italian and in other languages, and in which Leopardi also expresses himself in more than one language, not least for the reasons he sets out on Z 95. Two criteria have guided our translation of quotations in Italian:
5.1. Prose passages by Italian authors are translated directly into English, unless the original wording is important to make the meaning clear, in which case the procedure set out in § 5.4 below is followed.
5.2. For poetry, on the other hand, the Italian text is also provided, sometimes even when it is a translation from another language, because it could be relevant to Leopardi’s own thought and poetry.
Our strategy for translating from languages other than Italian is guided by the following criteria:
5.3. Words in another language that Leopardi considers or analyzes linguistically are always reproduced in their original language, as a rule followed by a translation in square brackets, except in those cases where no accurate translation is possible or where Leopardi’s line of reasoning is morphological and phonetic, rather than semantic. Lists of lexical units deployed solely to document given linguistic phenomena (which are in any case identified in the text and/or the notes) have not been translated.
5.4. Quotations from other authors in a language other than Italian are reproduced in the original language followed by an immediate translation in square brackets, with the exception of the category of quotation described in § 5.6 below.
5.5. The translation of such quotations is nearly always our own, sometimes informed by other translations. In certain cases we have used existing translations, which are indicated in the List of Other Editions (Used by the Editors), on pp. 2373–74. All quotations from the Bible are taken from the Douay-Rheims translation of the Latin Vulgate.
5.6. The sole exception to § 5.4 is a single category of quotation (not very frequent and concentrated only in certain portions of text) in which Latin or French is used as an international technical-scientific language. The relevant sources quoted by Leopardi are for the most part writings by philologists and scholars, authors of collections and dictionaries of the seventeenth, eighteenth, or nineteenth centuries (original language: Latin), or else reviews and journal accounts, sometimes anonymous, from the early nineteenth century (principal original language: French). We should perhaps note that, in our own times, the language used for such works would be English, the international scientific lingua franca. In most cases, reproducing such passages in their original language followed by the English translation would greatly hamper the reading of the text, since their authors often quote other authors (in various languages) and insert many notes in their texts, while Leopardi in turn inserts comments in Italian or in other languages (see, by way of example, Z 4158–59; such interpolations of Leopardi’s are always shown outside the quotation marks enclosing the quotation: see § 6.). We have therefore decided to facilitate reading by translating such quotations directly into English. The passages concerned are identified in the text by the positioning of an asterisk at the beginning and the end of the quotation (*“…”*). This tells the reader that the original is a language other than Italian. For convenience of reference, a detailed list of these passages, first in page order, and then in order of language and author, can be found in Appendix A following these criteria.
5.7. In many places Leopardi himself uses another language (as a rule Greek, French, or Latin), occasionally mixed with Italian to such an extent that it is sometimes difficult to make any distinction. We have usually retained Leopardi’s multilingual passages, where deemed significant and without excessively complicating the reading. On the other hand, brief bibliographical references made by Leopardi in the language he happens to be reading or quoting from have been translated directly into English.
5.8. We should also point out cases in which Leopardi coins a Greek word (Z 4117, § 9; 4121, § 6); another in which he uses Greek letters applied to an Italian sentence so as not to be understood (Z 4512); one case in which he translates himself (Z 2591, into French); the cases where Leopardi is probably the author of verses in Latin (Z 85) or in Greek (Z 4165) transcribed in the Zibaldone.
5.9. Leopardi occasionally makes quotations in Greek and then adds a Latin translation: as a rule, such quotations are from Greco-Latin editions, in which case the English is translated from the Greek text and placed either before or after the Latin, according to need. Where necessary, two distinct translations are given.
5.10. Words and passages in English in the text are, unless obvious, indicated in the editorial notes by the phrase “in English in the original.”
6. Interpolations
Very often, Leopardi interrupts his quotation (with or without brackets) in order to comment on the text, holding a dialogue with it. When the quotation is in a language other than Italian and is then followed by its translation into English, the interpolation is translated in the body of the original quotation but is not normally repeated in the translation. On occasion, when Leopardi’s observations (or those of the editors of the texts he is quoting) are purely linguistic or philological, they have not been translated because they refer to portions of text (Italian, Greek, or Latin) t
hat would no longer be identifiable in translation, or else are not syntactically consistent with it, or only repeat in a different fashion what has already been stated in the text, or provide a correct interpretation of the text itself. In a few rare cases, the interpolation has been moved to the end to facilitate reading. In interpolations, italics are used for Latin translations from Greek, and Roman letters for terms added (or implied by the text) and comments (cf., e.g., Z 2526–27).
7. Quotations from Annotated Texts and Reviews
In copying passages from scholarly articles, reviews, and so on, Leopardi also scrupulously copies the footnotes, albeit in various different ways. Most frequently, he inserts the note in brackets at the point to which it belongs. Except in particular cases, we have maintained Leopardi’s form of the quotation, without closing and reopening quotation marks, leaving to the reader the task of mentally reconstructing the original paging. The same occurs when Leopardi moves or adjusts minor passages using the material from the original text: title, name, half-title, other portions of the same text taken from other sections, and so on, unless elements of his own have to be distinguished from the text quoted (cf., e.g., Z 4302–303). In difficult cases the most appropriate and comprehensible solution is adopted, any clarification being provided in the editorial notes.
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