Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  Princes can be loved only with the sort of passion that inspires loyalty to one’s side. [300] Ambition, avarice, etc., falling under the category of interests, consist of cold, selfish calculation, and so are entirely rational and quite the opposite of the fervid, unthinking, and blind impulse of passion. Anyone who sacrifices himself for his leader out of ambition, avarice, or any other personal motive is making a sacrifice not for the prince but for himself, and only so much as he thinks useful to himself, otherwise he will abandon the cause. But out of loyalty to their side, people will sacrifice themselves wildly, with no reservations, or conditions, or restraint or calculation at all, for the object of this devotion. So passion first of all is much stronger than reason and self-interest and enables people to overcome much greater obstacles and dangers, and, second, it does not change with the circumstances, like self-interest, which leads people from one cause to another, according to which is more advantageous. Princes, therefore, being unable to inspire any other passion in their subjects than the one described, and self-interest being neither as strong nor, still less, as reliable, and reason, therefore, being ineffective in the extreme (for we see all the time that the group [301] of citizens that likes or favors the government from mere persuasion, like those who hate it in the same way, is the most inactive and passive group in society), must foment loyalty to a side. And since this is inert or indeed nonexistent without an opposing side, for this reason, however paradoxical it may seem, we must conclude that it benefits the prince to allow room for an opposing faction, when a supporting one exists and is stronger, as is more normally and naturally the case. This was the practice of the Romans, and no one can deny that it served them very well.1 And the French royalists, and royalist provinces and cities, would not be such ardent supporters of the king without this partisan spirit and the existence of a substantial opposing party that is not as powerful, although if it were, things would be different.2 There are hundreds of other examples and similar experiences that can be supplied by ancient, modern, and present-day history. So what I said on p. 113 about the conquistadors can be extended to all princes and governments. (27 Oct. 1820.) Especially monarchies, oligarchies, aristocracies, etc., because in republics [302] the case is somewhat different and factions are useful for other reasons, although this does not mean that what I’ve said cannot apply to them as well. See p. 1242.

  In extreme misfortune all other ages accept some consolation, either philosophical or of any other kind. Only the young cannot admit or see any consolation other than death. The book by Crantor περὶ πένθους [On Grief], which was much praised in ancient times, and Cicero’s book De consolatione, which echoed much of Crantor’s, will both have been useful to all other ages. For a young person who is or believes himself to be profoundly unfortunate, there is no book you could write that would console him.

  The corruption of customs is deadly for republics, but useful to tyrannies and absolute monarchies. This alone is sufficient to judge of the nature and difference of these two sorts of government. (3 Nov. 1820.)

  “La plus grande marque qu’on est né avec de grandes qualités, c’est d’être sans envie” [“The greatest sign of true inborn virtue is to be without envy”]. Mme. la Marquise de Lambert, Avis d’une mère à son fils, Paris and Lyon 1808, p. 67.1

  “Une résistance inutile” (aux malheurs) “retarde l’habitude qu’elle” (l’ame) “contracteroit avec son état. Il faut céder aux malheurs. Renvoyez-les à la patience: c’est à elle seule à les adoucir” [“Futile resistance” (to misfortunes) “hampers the habit that it” (the soul) “would contract of adapting to circumstances. We must yield to misfortunes. Surrender them to patience: it alone will temper them”]. [303] The same, ibid., p. 88. (5 Nov. 1820.)

  Bion the Borysthenite “ἐρωτηθείς ποτε τίς μᾶλλον ἀγωνιᾷ” (anxietate maiore detineatur), “ἔφη, ὁ τὰ μέγιστα βουλόμενος εὐημερεῖν” [“having been asked who it is that suffers the most answered: ‘he who seeks supreme happiness’”] (Laertius, in Bion, bk. 4, § 48). He who can pasture on little joys, and gather in his heart the little pleasures he has experienced during the day, and give importance within himself to his little strokes of good fortune passes easily through life, and if he is not happy he can believe he is, and be unaware that he is not. But he who thinks only of great joys, who does not count as a gain, and does not try to pasture and ruminate on pleasant little incidents, little successes, satisfactions, achievements, etc., and thinks that all is nothing, if he does not attain that great and difficult goal that he has set himself, will always live in anger, anxiety, without enjoyments, and instead of great happiness will find continuous unhappiness. Especially when, having perhaps attained that great goal, he finds it vastly inferior to what he hoped for, as always happens with things that have been desired and sought after for a long time. (6 Nov. 1820.) See below.

  Jurists have observed that the Justinian Code does not contain any law against dueling (although many of them have gone to ridiculous lengths to invoke Constantine the Great’s [304] law against the Gladiators).1 This is like trying to paint a portrait or a copy without first seeing the original, or a child making clothes for when he is older.

  “Il faut s’arrêter et séjourner sur les goûts et sur les plaisirs, pour en jouir: il faut de repos pour le bonheur. Il n’y a point de présent pour une âme agitée: la soif des richesses ne laisse jamais assez de calme pour sentir ce que l’on possède” (you can say the same of any desire that is difficult to satisfy but very much alive nonetheless) … “Ils passent leur vie en désirs et en espérances: ainsi, ils ne vivent pas, mais ils espèrent de vivre” [“It is necessary to stop and savor tastes and pleasures in order to enjoy them; repose is necessary for happiness. The present does not exist for anxious souls; a thirst for riches never allows one enough calm to enjoy what one has … They spend their lives on desires and on hopes; and as a result they never live at all but merely hope to do so”]. Mme. de Lambert, Réflexions sur les richesses, Paris 1808, following Avis d’une mère à son fils, pp. 153, 154.

  The joking advice of a Frenchman, “Glissez, mortels, n’appuyez pas” [“Skate away, mortals, don’t hang on”],2 seems to me to contain the whole of human wisdom, the very pith and substance and fruit of the most sublime, profound, subtle, and mature philosophy. But this teaching had already been given to us by nature, not to our intellect or reason but to our inborn, innermost instinct, and we all put it into practice in [305] childhood. So what have we learned with all our studying, effort, experience, sweat, and tears? And what has philosophy taught us? That which was second nature to us as children but forgotten and lost by acquiring knowledge. That which our savage, uncivilized ancestors understood and practiced without ever dreaming of being philosophers, with no trouble or effort, no research, no observation, no pondering, etc. For nature had already made us as wise as any of the wisest thinkers of our own or any other time. Indeed more so, inasmuch as thinkers follow maxims, which are more or less external to themselves, whereas we behaved by instinct and by a disposition that was inside us, and at one with our nature, and therefore more certainly and unfailingly and continually efficacious. So the peak of human knowledge or philosophy is to recognize its own uselessness—if man were still the same as he was in the beginning—and to undo the damage that it has done, and return man to the condition in which he would always have been if it had never existed. And the height of philosophy is useful for that reason alone, because it frees us and disabuses us of philosophy.1 (7 Nov. 1820.)

  [306] Aristotle or, according to others, Diogenes “τὸ κάλλος παντὸς ἔλεγεν ἐπιστολίου συστατικώτερον·” [“said that beauty was a better introduction than any letter”] (Laertius, in Aristotle, bk. 5, § 18). Theophrastus defined beauty as “σιωπῶσαν ἀπάτην” [“a silent trick”] (ibid., 19). Correctly, unfortunately: because everything that beauty promises, and seems to display—virtue,
honest behavior, sensitivity, greatness of spirit—is completely false. And so beauty is a silent lie. Notice, however, that Theophrastus’s definition is more general, because ἀπάτη [trick, fraud, wiles] does not exactly mean lie but trick, fraud, seduction, and relates to the effect that beauty has on others, rather than to lying in an absolute sense.

  Every day we appeal to posterity. Where matters of justice, correct judgment, retribution, etc., are undermined by the vices and defects of our contemporaries as contemporaries, this is fine. But in everything else, in everything that relates to the vices of men simply as men, or as depraved animals,1 I cannot see how this appeal helps us. If we could appeal to past generations, we would be more fortunate, but the tendency of the world has always been to get worse and for the future to be worse than the present and the past. The best generations are not those to come but those gone by; and there is no hope that [307] the world will change its custom and go backward instead of forward; and, still advancing, it cannot do otherwise than get worse. Especially given these present times and customs, it seems that only worse times and customs can ensue. We can therefore see what to expect from posterity. See p. 593, paragraph 1.

  It is a curious development in human studies, that the most sublime, free, and unregulated geniuses, once they have acquired solid and universal fame, become classics, in other words their works are numbered among the basic books and put into the hands of children, just like the driest and most conventional treatises on the exact sciences.

  Homer, who wrote before there were any rules, certainly never dreamed of spawning rules, as Jove did Minerva and Bacchus, or that his irregularity would be measured, analyzed, defined, and itemized to provide rules for others, and prevent them from being as free, unregulated, great, and original as he was. And it might well be said that the originality of a great writer, once it has led to fame (because without that, he would have remained in obscurity and would not have served as a norm [308] or model), hinders originality in any successors. I sympathize with them all, but particularly with the poor grammarians, who, charged with forming Greek prosody on the model of Homer, had to populate the Greek Parnassus with exceptions, with common syllables,1 etc., or at least warn that many of Homer’s examples conflicted with their teaching, because Homer innocently, unaware of the great fetus of rules that his poems carried in their womb, adapted syllables to suit his own purposes and even in the same foot made the same syllable first long, then short:

  “῎Ᾱρες, ῎Ᾰρες, βροτολοιγὲ, μιαιφόνε, τειχεσιβλῆτα” [“Ares, Ares, thou bane of mortals, thou murderous stormer of cities”].2

  The Latin Parnassus, created after scholarship had a regular form, if not completely among Latin speakers (although the true creation of the Latin Parnassus can be placed in the same century as Augustus, because earlier poets were of little account), then certainly among the Greeks from whom the whole of Latin literature was immediately derived, was not subject to the same difficulty. (8 Nov. 1820.) But Greek poetry had the misfortune to be there, beautiful and fully formed, before the rules were born. As a result, not only where prosody is concerned but everything else as well, it is possible [309] to recognize which consequences are natural and the differences that must arise from them with respect to Latin poetry.

  “Il faut être bien grand pour avoir la force de ne l’être qu’à ses propres yeux” [“One needs to be great indeed to have the strength to be so only in one’s own eyes”]. Mme. de Lambert, Portrait de M. de S…, Paris 1808, following the Avis d’une mère à son fils, p. 226.

  “Il est dans l’âge où les sentimens deviennent plus délicats, parce qu’on échappe à l’empire des sens; dans cet âge où l’on vit encore pour ce qui plaît, et où l’on se retire pour ce qui incommode, il jouit des plaisirs purs” [“He is at an age when the emotions become more delicate, because one escapes the empire of the senses; at that age where one still lives for what one likes, and where one withdraws from what causes discomfort, he enjoys pure pleasures”]. Ibid., p. 227.

  A fool who is always citing logic, who is presumptuous enough to bring it up in every discussion. He is precisely a man defined in the Greek style as: a logical ANIMAL.1

  The overwhelming preference that this century has for politics is an immediate and natural consequence of the simple diffusion of enlightened thought and the extinction of prejudices. Because when on the one hand people’s ideas are no longer formed by other people’s minds, and opinions no longer depend on tradition, [310] and on the other hand knowledge is no longer the preserve of a few, who could have no influence on the taste of ordinary people, then debate necessarily focuses on the things that concern us most intimately, most powerfully, most universally. The prejudiced or unreflective man acts from habit, lets things go as they will, and because that is how they are and always have been he assumes they cannot be any better. But for an open-minded man given to reflection, how is it possible, when politics constantly affects his life, not to make it his main object of consideration and consequently his major interest? In previous periods, like that of Louis XIV, even the ablest men, being neither open-minded nor primarily thinkers, preserved the old idea of politics, that it was fine as it was, and that it was only for those who were in charge of affairs to be concerned with it. Later on, there were open-minded men, though they were few. They thought and talked about politics, but the interest was not universal. Add that men of letters and scholars on the whole tend to be quite detached from the world, so politics did not affect the scholar so closely, did not enter his purview as much, did not play such a part [311] in his life as it does now that everyone is knowledgeable and knowledge is shared by all classes. However, although ethics is more important in itself than politics and affects everyone more closely, nevertheless, on careful consideration, ethics is a purely speculative science inasmuch as it is distinct from politics. The life, action, practice of ethics depends on the nature of social institutions and the way the nation is governed. It is a dead science, if politics does not combine with it, and cause it to hold sway in the nation. You can talk of ethics as much as you like to a badly governed people; ethics is a word, politics a fact. Domestic life, private society, every human thing takes its form from the general nature of the public condition of a people. You can see it in the difference between practical ethics in ancient and modern times, with their markedly different forms of government.1 (9 Nov. 1820.) Moreover, the ordinary person today may be well informed and thoughtful, but he is not profound, and although politics may perhaps require greater profundity of ideas and reflection than ethics does, nevertheless its appearance and surface offer a more accessible field for common intellects, and in general politics lends itself [312] more to dreams, chimeras, childishness. Finally, the common people prefer what is brilliant and vast to what is solid and useful but in a way more limited and less noble, because ethics concerns the individual and politics the nation and the world. And men’s pride is flattered by talk and discussions about the public interest, by examining and criticizing those who administer it, etc. And the common man believes that he is worthy and capable of leadership when he is talking about how to lead.

  For p. 62, thought 1. Observe, however, that there is a difference here between Latin and Italian literature not only in that a knowledge of philosophy and philology required the use of Greek words but in that the whole of Latin literature was derived from Greek. This is not the relation between Italian and French, except in philosophy, etc., indeed the opposite. So the introduction of Greek words into Latin must have been a bit easier and more natural. Also, the same family resemblance that there was between Greek and Latin exists between the Italian and French languages, and if you want to regard Greek as coming first, if only in its form and organization, the Provençal language also preceded ours in almost the same way.