Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  Another proof that our Italian language derives from the vernacular of Rome in its good times3 is drawn from the ancient Latin words that then fell into disuse among writers and are now found in Italian, and which have clearly passed in unbroken succession from those very ancient times down to us, because certainly no one has gone and fished them out from the oldest Latin writers that were lost even before the birth of our language, such as Lucilius, Ennius, Naevius, etc. So one should not suppose some empty gap between the ancients who used such words and ourselves who use them now, because they would not have been reborn, unless we want to suggest it was by chance, which it would be difficult even for the Epicureans to be convinced of. Therefore, since there is no other link between those writers and ourselves than Vulgar Latin, for writers had given up using these words, it can only be Vulgar Latin that preserved and propagated them in Italian. The word pausa, for example, which was used by the oldest Latin writers, then no longer used, and then came back into use in late antiquity and then in Italian (see Du Cange), certainly did not leap from antiquity to later times by a miracle (for those miserable barbarian-Latin writers certainly didn’t take it from the oldest authors, who, as far as they were concerned, were perhaps already lost and certainly either unknown or anything but read and studied). Rather, it came down by a continuous route that can only be popular Latin. And this, I believe, can be said equally for a great many other words.

  [43] A jealous husband said to his wife: “Don’t you realize, Devil that you are, that you are as beautiful as an Angel?”

  The more you think about time, the more you despair of having enough; the more you waste, the more you seem to have left.

  I would not wish it to seem that I were seeking to detract from the praises that it has pleased your Lordship to bestow upon me publicly, if I say that more than the honor that they bring me, I rejoice at your Lordship’s benevolence, which is shown to me thereby, and this being all the greater the smaller is my merit, it is proper that there be an abundance of that which makes up for its deficiency.1

  Propriety, efficacy, wealth, variety, self-confidence, and elegance and softness and ease, and gentleness and tenderness and fluency, etc., are different things and can exist without χάρις ᾿Αττικὴ, lepos atticum [Attic charm], the grace that can never be obtained except from a popular dialect (one capable of providing it), which the ancient Greeks took from the Attic dialect, and the Romans—especially the ancient Romans, like Plautus, Terence, etc.—from pure common native Roman, and that we can and must derive from Tuscan, used with discernment.

  It is not found in any Italian Dictionary that I have been able to consult, but the word blitri or blittri or blitteri is common among us, meaning a nothing, a thing of no worth, etc. This house is a blitri; this city is a blitri compared with Rome, etc. etc. Now, this word is totally and entirely Greek: βλίτρι, which was also pronounced βλίτυρι and βλήτυρι and βλίτηρι (as we also do) and perhaps also βρίτυρι, and didn’t mean anything. See Laertius, bk. 7, § 57, and therein the notes of Casaubon and Ménage,2 and Du Fresne, Glossarium Graecum,3 under βλίτηρι, and in appendix 1, likewise under βλίτηρι. I have scrupulously consulted all the other books that could conceivably be of any assistance without finding any trace of this word, and in particular, every one of the Greek Dictionaries I possess, where in fact it is absent in all its forms.

  We sing when we are frightened, not to keep ourselves company as is commonly said, or purely to distract ourselves, but (as I also find incidentally and most subtly noted in Magalotti’s second letter against the Atheists) to demonstrate and make ourselves understand that we are not frightened.4 This observation could perhaps be applied to many things, and kindle many reflections. And it is indeed obvious that at the sight of some ill we try to deceive ourselves and believe that it is not what it seems, or is less than it is, and we will seek out anyone who is or appears to be convinced of this and, as a last step, in order to convince ourselves, we will pretend to be already convinced, and behave and talk to ourselves as if we were. And this is what happens in the case described above. And indeed it is the custom of many people to make as light as possible of ills that loom over them by way of words or imagination, and in this manner they find consolation and strength, building up their courage not by despising the ill that has befallen them but by imagining that it is false or trivial. And so there are many people who are but rarely dismayed because when some ill is announced or foreseen, at first they don’t believe it at all (that is, they conceal or make light of all the reasons there are to believe it), and thus if the ill does not actually occur they have not been afraid, while others have been, and with good reason. Then they make light of it with as much imagination as possible, and thus they are not afraid except in those rare cases when so evident and real an ill arrives and afflicts them in such a way that they cannot delude themselves, yet, even when it has arrived, they often still do not believe it is an ill, that is, they do not want to believe it. And these people, who [44] often perhaps are taken to be courageous, are the most cowardly of all, since they are unable to accept either the reality or even the idea of adversity, and when they have an inkling of some misfortune that is imminent or has occurred, their thoughts turn at once to craven retreat and retrenchment, to shutting themselves off and shackling themselves and telling themselves it won’t happen. And so when these misfortunes become evident, you see how cowardly they are, how they despair and panic and go frantic like silly women, screaming, crying, praying, all things I have seen in fact and taken note of in someone whom I know and for natural reasons should know very well, someone by the way who is perfectly and accurately portrayed in what I have said above. Besides, it is all too obvious that man is inclined to conceal ill from himself and to conceal it from himself as best he can, and thus we have the εὐφημία [use of words of good omen] of the ancient Greeks, who gave unpleasant things, τὰ δεινὰ [terrible things], names capable of concealing or hiding the unpleasantness (on which see Helladius in Meurs),1 which they certainly did not do just to ward off the evil omen. And in Italian, too, we say se Dio facesse altro di me [if God were to do other with me], meaning: if I died (see the Crusca under Altro), and in Latin in this same case, si quid humanum paterer or mihi accideret [if I should suffer something human, or if {something human} should happen to me]2 and likewise in hundreds of other cases.

  A clear demonstration of how little the Greeks studied Latin, both absolutely and in proportion to how much the Romans studied Greek, is what Plutarch says at the beginning of Demosthenes, and Longinus, where he speaks of Cicero, about when Latin writers, quite undeterred by having a different language, discussed and judged Greek writers.3

  In our language, too, the shifts of Latin pronunciation, etc., have damaged several words, for example, from raucus, which is most expressive of the sound it signifies, our roco, which loses almost all expression.

  Our unhappiness is a proof of our immortality, if it is looked at from the point of view that the beasts and, in a certain way, all the beings of nature can be happy and are, and only we are not, nor can we be. Now, it is clearly true that in our whole globe the noblest thing, lord of all, indeed that in whose service there are a thousand incontrovertible signs that maybe not the universe but the earth is made, is man. And therefore it is against the constant laws that we can see observed by nature that the principal being cannot enjoy the perfection of its being, which is happiness, without which indeed being itself, that is, existence, is burdensome, while inferior and incomparably lesser beings can and do achieve all this, as is clear by a thousand signs and for the reasons already given in another thought [→Z 40].

  The constancy of the 300 at Thermopylae and, in particular, the two whom Leonidas wanted to save and who would not agree but clearly wished to die, like the customary joy of Spartan mothers and fathers (but more notably of the mothers) on hearing of the death of their sons for their country, is very similar, indeed exactly t
he same as the constancy of the martyrs and especially those who could have escaped martyrdom but absolutely did not wish to do so and desired it, as the Spartans desired with all their heart to die for their country. And you can see a recent example of a martyr who could have fled death but did not wish to in Bartoli, Missione al gran Mogol.4 And I apply the same [45] to those Christian mothers and fathers who rejoiced on hearing of their martyr children, and who also exhorted them, saw them, brought them, accompanied them, offered them to martyrdom and urged them not to yield in their torment, like the Spartan women who exhorted, etc., and the one who told her son when she presented him with his shield, “either with this or on it,” and those who abominated their sons if they were tainted with any cowardice, as likewise the Christian women did. From this comparison an unusual similarity between these two kinds of heroism arises, which is worth considering, and what I have said elsewhere in these thoughts [→Z 37] becomes apparent: that religion is unique in having brought together heroism and greatness of actions and valor and courage and strength of mind, etc., with reason, etc., and, indeed, has revived heroism, which with the waning of illusions had almost vanished; and how similar to our affairs is something that we think of as unexampled outside the circumstances of the liberty, love of country, etc., of the Greeks and Romans, in short of the ancients and mainly the very ancient, while as I said we have recent examples in our latest martyrs, not only in the ancient and earliest.1

  I used to think that the excuse the Capuchins gave for mistreating their novices, which they do with great satisfaction and an inner feeling of pleasure, namely that they, too, were so treated, was mad. Now experience has taught me that this is a natural feeling. I had just reached the age when I began to free myself from the bonds of a harsh and very strict education, but was still living in my father’s house with a brother several years younger, but not so much younger that he was not in full command of all his faculties, vices, etc.2 If for no other reason (certainly not the predilection of our parents) than that the way of life we shared with him had changed, he enjoyed a good part of our freedom and had many more comforts and little treats than we had at the same age, and far fewer discomforts and vexations and ties and restrictions and punishments, and as a result was a good deal more petulant and bold than we were at his age. So I naturally felt real envy toward him, not on account of the benefits he enjoyed, since I too had them then, and as far as the past was concerned I could not have them anyway, but mere, pure displeasure that he had them, and the desire for him to be vexed and tormented as we were, which is pure, legitimate envy of the worst kind, and I felt this naturally, without wanting to feel it. But in short I understood then (and that is when I wrote these words)3 that such is human nature, and so those benefits I had, whatever they might be, were less dear to me because I shared them with him, and perhaps it seemed to me that they were no longer the worthy goal of so many struggles when for someone else, who found himself in the same circumstances as me, and was less deserving than I, etc., they cost nothing. So I apply this to the Capuchins, who, discovering that the fate of the younger brothers who are novices is dependent on them, follow the impulses of the inclination I have described, and cannot bear saying to themselves that the good they have attained does not amount to much, since others acquire it with much less travail, nor can they tolerate having to experience the disappointment that these novices do not suffer the discomforts that they suffered in the same circumstances.

  [46] When we have formed a bad habit through reading, writing, discourse, literary or other kinds of entertainment (but above all through books, as far as the taste for writing is concerned, and conversation with people, as regards behavior), we believe that that is nature, because nothing is so easily confused with nature, even by the most perceptive people and philosophers, as habit. And we claim we have to follow that habit, e.g., in writing (since this is what I want particularly to talk about here, for example, those who think that writing in a French Italian is natural, and the same for the corruption of taste in every kind and aspect of writing and style), and say that it’s natural, and that that’s how it comes spontaneously and poetry should flow from nature and similar things. But it is not nature, it is habit, and a very bad habit, and do you want to see why? If you are truly well disposed to the Fine Arts, read the true poets and writers, particularly the Greeks, and you will immediately see that that is nature, and you will be astonished—as indeed happens, for there appear almost to be two kinds of naturalness and we don’t understand how, and on the other hand this duality amazes us—how different it is from what you believe to be nature, yet you cannot deny that this is nature because it is too obvious. And here if you want to be a poet and make use of what nature bestows upon you, naturally, and honestly, begin, if you are a person of sound judgment, to understand the absolute need for study (oh what blasphemy! that study is necessary to write and produce good poetry), and learn from the classics and the arts of poetry and treatises, etc. etc., and little by little you will see the enormous difficulty in imitating and following that nature which at first, by confusing it with habit, you thought was so easy to express, because, in fact, there is nothing so easy as habit to follow, or more difficult to fight against. It is precisely here that the enormous difficulty in following true nature lies, and this is not achieved without a counterhabit that is much more difficult than the first. Because you must build it up from the foundations (something we had not noticed with the first, for it had risen little by little, when we were young, of its own accord, without any effort on our part), build it up by first uprooting the other—and this is the great task that simply didn’t exist with the other—and finally build it up, continue it, and preserve it, once finished, in the midst of an infinity of things that conflict with it (such as necessary reading, discussions, usual business, etc., entertainments, the usual corrupt conversations, correspondence, listening to other people talk, etc. etc.) and are all the more dangerous the more they recall that former habit, so that the place still remains slippery, and it is easy to slide into bad ways. And thus it is absolutely necessary to study in order to make best use of that nature without which, on the contrary, nothing can be done, but with which alone you could perhaps have done almost everything, but now you can do nothing—indeed less than nothing, since you cannot but do ill—thanks to this unavoidable habit formed against nature.

  Grace cannot come except from nature, and nature never works according to the compass of grammar, geometry, analysis, mathematics, etc. Hence the scarcity of grace in the French language, all analytical and technical and regular, and shall we say angular, especially scarce in external style, and there again internally, etc., even if they do compensate for it by referring to grace 20 times a page, and [47] there is not a single French book where you do not find, wherever you look, “grace, grace,” especially when speaking of their nation’s books, praising them, etc. “Grace, grace” makes me then want to say, “et non erat grace” (“pax pax et non erat pax,” but I don’t really know whether St. Paul says this, or some other sacred Writer).1 See these thoughts pp. 92–94.

  Night screech of the weather vanes with the wind blowing.2

  It is usually said that resistance stimulates and imparts energy to carry out and conclude what has been attempted. Now I add that very often where without resistance I would have done ten, with the addition of resistance I will do fifteen or twenty. And this often by absolute and determined will, not because the mechanical superabundance of the effects of the force employed are greater than necessary against the resistance encountered, and not diligently counterbalanced in relation to the resistance, as, if I want to push something from one place to another, I find that it will not move at the first push, I increase the force, and this makes me drive it farther than I had intended. But I am referring to deliberate will. E.g., I give a push and it’s no use, another and it’s no good, the third the same, and finally I get angry, grab the thing with both hands, and drag it much farther than I had first wante
d it to go, and, wanting it to be where it should be, I have to move it back to the proper place, and that’s what I do. And the distance that I have moved it is often more than twice and even three times farther than I wanted it to go. This happens because I am then thinking not about making it go to that very place, and having that as the aim of my action, but in fact about overcoming and taking revenge on its resistance, and demonstrating the superiority of my will and of my force over its will and its force, which is shown all the more, and the victory and revenge are all the greater, the farther I make it go, and, in short, because that is now the aim, we focus on the perfection of the outcome thus achieved, and so it doesn’t matter that we finish up compromising the first aim, which at this point we have effectively forgotten. I now apply this physical case to morals.