Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  [739] Thus, the Greek language, which had neither Academies nor Dictionaries, without ever losing the capacity to enrich itself and to exploit its most fruitful land, though persistently and tenaciously hostile to foreign wares (either because of its national character or because of its very wealth, which sufficed for everything), always remained as fertile, prolific, lively, luxuriant, and abundant as it was pure and genuine, until such time as Constantine, in all but transferring Italy to Greece, and the West to the East,1 with a vast and abrupt alteration in customs, inhabitants, court, etc., in introducing and establishing, and erecting, so to speak, the Latin language right in the middle of the Greek provinces and the Greek language, forced that tongue, which had for so long remained untamed and victorious over every alien onslaught, and unharmed amid all the barbarian perils it had faced, to admit foreign words and to mingle them with its own (not from need, but through ordinary use and [740] trade, and the presence of foreign peoples, who were numerous, and were masters), and in the end to barbarize, in spite of itself and by main force. See p. 981, paragraph 1. Even though the world was already decisively tilting toward barbarism, and had already set out on that path, still I believe that this intermingling and near fusion of Western and Eastern usages, customs, opinions, and languages contributed even more to a reciprocal barbarization of the nations, inducing and compelling them to damage, or to divest themselves of, their original institutions and customs much more thoroughly than they had done previously; such distance and decline from the original state is the usual and certain source of barbarism and corruption among men.1

  What I have said about Greek does not apply to the Latin language. Yet I sense that the original disposition, nature, essence, and organization of Latin was exceptionally well suited to producing the same outcome. But this [741] did not happen, for the reasons I am about to give. I will not now seek to discover whether Latin roots (I mean pure and original Latin roots) are as plentiful as Greek. The spread and the commerce of the Greeks, the far longer time that they, and therefore their studies and their language, endured, enabled them to increase their knowledge, and therefore their roots, to a far greater extent than the Romans, a people enclosed within very narrow confines until they conquered Greece, along with the rest of the world. But progress in Roman knowledge, dominion, and trade did not contribute to progress in Latin roots, and it is certain that the latter did not correspond to the former, for the reason I will give shortly. See in this regard Xenophon, ᾿Αθηναίων πολιτείας [Constitution of the Athenians], ch. 2, § 7.1

  Setting aside roots, I would note that the same immense capacity to form compound words that is admired in the Greek language, and that serves more than anything else to render it inexhaustible, was possessed in the beginning by the Latin language, and lasted for a long time, that is, at least up until Cicero, who was chiefly responsible [742] for fixing, ordering, establishing, composing, shaping, and defining Latin. Consider each of the ancient and original Latin roots, and you will see in how many ways, with how many small additions and variations, they may be made to signify the most diverse things by means of compounds, supercompounds, or decompounds, and derivatives, or by means of metaphors, in precisely the same way that the Greek language by the same means manages to say everything clearly, fittingly, purely, and with the greatest fluency. Note, for example, the verb duco [to lead, to conduct] (or the verb facio [to make]) and consider it in all its derivatives and compounds, and supercompounds, and in all its and their meanings and uses, both proper and metaphoric, though these are so frequently used that, although metaphoric, they are practically proper. With every examination I determined that the verb duco (and facio), because of the abundance of compounds and supercompounds (with prepositions and without), derivatives and their compounds, meanings and uses both proper and metaphoric—and with as many meanings among the compounds as among the root verbs—is very well suited to serve as an example. (Ludifico [to make sport of], carnifex [executioner], sacrificium [sacrifice], labefacto [to cause to totter] and countless others are compound forms of the verb facere, not with prepositions or particles, etc., but with other nouns, after the Greek fashion.)1 And, bearing this in mind, you will see how well-suited the Latin language originally was, like the Greek, to achieving omnipotence, to expressing everything with ease, all through its own resources and at its own expense, and to achieving flexibility, pliability, suppleness, etc. How the capacity of Latin to make such effective use of its roots, to extend itself, expand, gain ground, conquer with so [743] little effort, invest its own capital so well and so advantageously, cultivate its own territory so profitably—how this capacity, I repeat, which lasted in the Greek language until the very end, was lost so quickly in Latin, where, as we have seen, it was no less natural and characteristic, though it was considered then, and still is, to be exclusive to Greek, is something I will now explain, giving the reasons that I think are probable.

  While the Greek language was acquiring shape, consistency, order, and stability it did not have one single writer in whom, because of the abundance, variety, importance, merit, and outstanding fame of the writings, the whole of the language was reckoned to be contained. Before or after this period the fact would not have had the same effect. But the Latin language did have such a writer, and it had him in the very period to which I have referred, in Cicero. Cicero, by meeting the conditions above; by the scale of his talent, and the splendor [744] of his deeds, his rank, his life, and his great fame; by having not merely introduced but also shaped and perfected not only the Latin language but also its literature, eloquence, and philosophy, transferring it all from Greece; and by being, in short, beyond dispute the first, the outstanding Latin man of letters and writer in nearly every genre, soared so high above the others that written Latin was considered to be wholly contained in his works, which took the place of Academy and Dictionary, and for his successors his authority and example was not limited to teaching, and to serving as a norm and a model, but also, as happens, set limits. The language was deemed to have arrived at its destination; additions to it were reckoned to be at an end; the full extent of its growth was believed to have been attained; innovation was feared, the suspicion being that it would not enrich but damage and degrade the language; the sources of its wealth were reckoned to be closed, etc. So it was that Cicero, along with the countless benefits he had brought to his [745] language, also indirectly damaged it, through the excessive superiority and extent of his reputation and merit, which were too crushing and overwhelming, bringing it to a halt, as if it had already attained perfection and risked degeneration if it were to advance any further, and so he took away its boldness, its generative and productive power, its fertility, and dried it up. The same thing happened to Latin eloquence and Latin literature, for the same reason, and through the same person (see Velleius at the end of the first book).1 For, as it was thought that the time had almost come for literature to rest, so much had Cicero done to perfect it (see p. 801, end)—something that never happened in Greece, since this virtue did not belong to any one writer, and the perfection of an age intertwined with, and overlapping, the one following does not terrify as much as a single age containing, defining, and circumscribing perfection—so too with language, which in a similar way, [746] being already mature and perfect, ceased to grow and became sterile. This may be one reason, but this next seems to me the main one.

  Whatever the origin of Greek language, literature, philosophy, and wisdom may have been, it is certain that Greece, even if it was not the inventor of its letters, sciences, and arts, received them in an unshaped, unstable, imperfect, and undefined state, and having received them thus, shaped, stabilized, perfected, and defined them itself, and within itself and by its own hand and intelligence, so that its literature and its knowledge came to be its own, and, it may be said, its own work. Hence Greece did not need to have recourse to other languages to express its own knowledge (except, as in the case of all languages, at the beginning, and in the
very first derivations of its roots, since no language was born with man, but one derived from the other in more or less ancient times, until you reach an absolutely original mother tongue, which no one knows). As I was saying, Greece did not need these other languages, but, in shaping its knowledge, shaped its language also, and [747] so always profited by and cultivated its own resources, from which it drew the whole treasury of speech. But things were different with the Latins. Their literature, arts, and sciences came from Greece, and all at once, already formed, so that when the Latins received them, they were already ordered, composed, well defined, furnished with their language, and handled by the most famous writers. In short, the Latins simply had to transplant Greek sciences, arts, and letters wholesale on to home ground. Hence it was only natural that those disciplines, which they had not shaped, should also have brought with them a language that was not Latin, because, wherever disciplines are shaped, and receive order and a stable and fixed framework, there, too, a language is formed for them, which is naturally transmitted to the other nations along with the disciplines. Since the Latins had neither created nor shaped those disciplines, but had received them virtually per manus [handed down] and ready-made, they did not create or shape [748] the language, but received it in the same way. When Lucretius wanted to address philosophical topics, he complained about the newness of the things and the poverty of the language,1 as we might do today if we wanted to deal with modern philosophy. Cicero was a great man and a shrewd one, and while he jealously guarded the purity of the language, he was also aware that new things needed new words, and that the latter would not be (1) clear and clearly understood, (2) unaffected and natural, if they were not by and large the same ones that were in common and accepted use in those disciplines.2 He was bold and, when dealing with matters that were, so to speak, Greek, peopled Latin with Greek words, so certain was he of being understood without seeming affected, because the Greek language was widely used and familiar in his world, indeed just as French is today, and those words were well known and much used in precisely those disciplines, as French words are today in modern philosophical topics and the like. Furthermore, they were necessary. Thus the Latin language was able to discourse on [749] things, and assume a written form, but it did so by means that were alien to it and not its own. One should also note that it was not one or another discipline but, it could fairly be said, all disciplines, and all human knowledge, everything that can be dealt with in writing, indeed even in polite conversation, that is, the whole of culture, and all regular, ordered subjects had come from Greece to Rome, at once and together. It therefore happened, as it was bound to, that the Latin language, harried and oppressed by the sudden abundance of new things, despairing of ever being able to match them immediately (as it would have had to do) with new words drawn from its own depths, quit the field and embraced the foreign furnishings of language, which it found ready to hand, and understood and used by all. So it was that Latin’s generative faculty remained either extinct or weakened, and turned into an adoptive faculty. Cicero had used it, [750] as one would have expected, with discretion and exquisite judgment and taste, never neglecting to cultivate the depths of the language, to expand it, and to draw from it as much as possible in those straitened circumstances, in that great abundance of new things, accompanied by foreign words that were already widely known and frequently used. But after Cicero the boundaries were crossed, in part because it was much easier (as it is today, relatively speaking, in relation to French) to draw the required words and phrases from the Greek language, which was already well stocked, and well known to all, than to do the same from Latin, which would not yield them without study and profound knowledge of all its resources. People who were not skilled in the use of their own language (a skill very rare and difficult in dealing with such a language, as is the case with our own today, and very few, or perhaps none at all, had it to the degree that Cicero did) were not too concerned about ascertaining whether it did or did not have the means to express fully and fittingly what was needed, [751] and ransacked the Greek language instead, which had everything to hand. In part because not necessity alone, or the difficulty of using Latin in such cases, or, finally, ignorance of their own language, but faddishness drove the Romans (as today, etc.) to use Greek words and phrases instead of Latin words and phrases, and to mix them up together, as if the former might lend grace and verve to polite speech, and, in short, not only literature and philosophy were involved but fashion, too. Horace had already set a poor example, being in all respects a libertine, a dandy, and a courtier, in short, precisely the opposite of the Roman character, and in his works as much a follower of wisdom among courtiers as Frederick II was among kings.1 It is no wonder that the Roman language seemed to him inferior to his own elegance and courtliness. The lines in his Ars poetica2 in which he defends and debates this habit of his are well known, indeed famous. As a man of low but subtle intellect, if he did harm by his example, he did not do too much damage in practice; indeed, I cannot decide whether, for his part, he did more good or more harm to his language, because his bolder flights appear to all, and I agree, very successful, for the most part, anyway. Yet shortly [752] after his death, that is, in Seneca’s time, etc., for both of the reasons stated above, things had gone so much farther that the Latin language on the one hand grew more impoverished and, on the other, became in effect more barbarous, thanks to Grecisms, as Italian has become today, thanks to Gallicisms. And it’s as odd as it is sad to note that, just as the Latin language then repaid with interest this damage and this barbarism in the Greek style when, already in a semibarbarous state itself, it poured it all back again, so to speak, under Constantine and his successors, so today the French language repays our language with excessive interest for the corruption it received when the Medicis were in France, etc.1 The Latin language was (for a short while) restored, if not to its former state, then certainly to a splendor resembling that of former times (along with an equally corrupted literature), by a fair number of writers from the century between Nerva and Marcus Aurelius, among them Tacitus, etc., although this is not the place to speak of them. I will simply note in passing a most curious parallel that may be drawn between Fronto and the current restorers of the Italian language, because it is relevant to this discussion on language. [753] Fronto himself, as is now apparent from the recently discovered remains of his writings,1 deserves a place apart among the restorers and zealots of the purity of Latin literature and language alike. In this regard, he is certainly, I believe, the last in time who is known, or who at least enjoyed some real fame. But he—and this is a fault of our nature—in wishing to reform the excessive licentiousness of the language and castigate its vicious novelty, fell, just like a great many of our writers, into the opposite excess. For a reform of this kind must consist of cleansing the language of its coarsenesses, diverting it from the wrong path, and setting it on the right one again. Not returning it to its first principles, and much less wanting it never to stray from them. Because a language naturally and reasonably always advances as long as it lives, and just as it is utterly absurd and contrary to the nature of things to wish for it to stand still, so too wishing to take it back farther than necessary, and obliging it to retrace the path that [754] it has already duly and honorably taken, is harmful and damaging. Whereas one should simply return it to the place, time, and circumstances that suit it, neither more nor less, ensuring only that this place is its own and suited to its nature. But Fronto, instead of purifying the language, wanted to antiquate it, and so reintroduced words and phrases—which, as is the way in human affairs, were forgotten, neglected, and stale—and even, it seems, old forms of spelling, as though he wanted, despite nature and truth, to blend his own and ancient times. As if it depended on the will of man to arrange things so that those centuries which have passed, and those changes which have happened both to the language and to everything that modifies it, had not passed or happened, and that the interval of time and of other things lying betwee
n the present and antiquity had been obliterated. Nor did he grasp that, just as language always advances, because it follows things, which are highly unstable and fluctuating, so too every age, even the best and the purest, has its language modified in a manner all its own, which is bad only [755] when it is contrary to the nature of the language, when it diminishes or destroys (1) its vigor and power, (2) its natural and characteristic beauty and excellence, and when it alters, corrupts, and spoils its particularity, its nature, its character, its intrinsic structure and form, etc. Aside from this, just as the intention to keep the language from being enriched is as vain as it is harmful and damaging, so too it is impossible and harmful to keep it from being modified in accord with the times and with the affairs of men, upon which language depends and for which it is made, not for some imaginary entity, such as virtue or justice, which is immutable, or so we suppose. The fact that Cicero did not write like Cato the Elder, etc., does not mean that he is not, in regard to language as in every other respect, the greatest Latin writer, nor does the fact that Virgil’s language is quite different [756] from that of Ennius, Livy Andronicus, etc., and also of Lucretius, mean that he is not the finest Latin poet, and a most limpid mirror of Latinity (recognized as such by Fronto himself in the Exempla elocutionum).1 I must, however, do Fronto justice, because, if he succumbed to that fault I have noted, he did so with far more discretion, judgment, and discernment, as much in his maxims or his reasoning as in his practice, than is the case with many Italians today, since he took great care to shun affectation, whereby the use of many antiquated words, particularly because of their obscurity, is rendered absurd and barbarous, and he had a real mastery of his language, and consequently, though he sinned in imitating the ancients too much, he nonetheless did not strive, as our contemporaries do, to give an antique color to his writings, by means of a merely instrumental and partial use of old words and phrases, without noting whether the writing really had an antique savor, and whether those words and phrases sounded appropriate and natural, or forced and at odds with the body of the composition. The notion of banning the apt and sensible coining and forming of new words and phrases never even crossed Fronto’s mind, indeed, he himself gives examples from time to time. Our own writers do precisely this, [757] but through incompetence, ignorance, lack of resource, and incomplete mastery of the language, believing themselves to be good Italian writers once they have learned and used incorrectly and at random a number of ancient words and phrases, then taking no care, or being unable to gauge whether these match the rest and the whole of the color, development, and texture of the discourse, or whether they resemble a scrap of purple sewn over a cheap fabric, or certainly one of a different color and cloth. But it is only fitting that I say what is true, namely, that I have never managed to find in the ancient Latin and Greek writers, imperfect though they may be, so much ungainliness, and incompetence, and paucity of judgment, and weakness and scarcity of resources, and so marked an inadequacy for tasks, projects, etc., as in contemporary Italians. Besides, Fronto by no means lacked talent. His fault comes down to his having regarded as models of correct language Ennius, rather than Virgil or even Lucretius (who so enriched the language in the philosophical sphere), and Cato, rather than Cicero; to his believing that the perfection of the Latin language was to be found in the former rather than in the latter, and in having regarded them as richer or more reliable sources, etc.; or certainly in his granting them for no real reason (though it tallied with the habitual respect for the ancient) greater authority in matters of language, etc. etc.1 This is said simply in passing and as a digression.