Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  In any event, the Latin that was written in its first true, fully formed classics was reduced to such artifice, delicacy, tortuousness, and intricacy, to such complex composition, elaboration, circumlocution, and interweaving of periods, obliquity of construction, etc., immediately acquired such strict specificity in the use of expressions, phrases, and words—a specificity that could not be breached without causing formal offense to the language—and such precise discrimination in the use of its synonyms, that is to say, of the countless words serving to signify nuances regarding one and the same object, that it displayed more arbitrary elegance than has ever been seen. And this language was more than any other the explicit work of the writer, and required such [861] deep, subtle, precise, exact, and particular understanding not only of its nature but also of each expression, phrase, and word, if the writer wanted to handle its very particular, individual, arbitrary not to say definite specificity without giving offense. So that diverging greatly from the vulgar tongue, and at once forming two separate languages, that is, the written and the spoken, made it even more impossible for it to achieve universality, both for these latter reasons, and for the former. Some Latin writers who, even at a time when their literary language was in its perfected state, drew a little closer than others to their earliest writers, or to the people, and preserved to a greater degree the ancient character of the language, also drew closer than others to the best Greeks; they were simpler, smoother, and plainer, less contorted and elaborate, etc., and drew closer also to the future genius of the Italian language. This was the case with Caesar, Cornelius Nepos, and, above all, Celsus, on whom see what I have noted elsewhere [→Z 32–34] [862] regarding the great similarity of his language both to Greek and, more particularly, to Italian, as much in the general style as in the common forms, phrases, and words. And everywhere in the Latin writers (except in the first, imperfect writers) we find a touch of that purity and of that native grace which never belonged to their literature. We also find a greater and notable resemblance to the character of the Greek language, and of our own, and hence also of Vulgar Latin, from which our own language is derived, and to which Celsus, I do not doubt, is notably close, and more so than any other known classic of the golden or the silver age. Nevertheless, in these same writers there is always an air of greater culture, a language that is more elaborate, sharper, less simple, less plain and natural than that of the best Greeks, indeed to such a degree that it is never possible to confuse them with the latter. And certainly that purity, that spare beauty of the Greeks, and also [863] (but in relation to language only) of our fourteenth-century authors, was never characteristic of Latin writing and literature, except perhaps in its original state. And probably it did not suit the character of the Roman nation, which was much more stern than graceful, and however natural and simple it was, too (like all the ancient nations, not yet, or not wholly, corrupt, and more particularly like all free, strong, and great nations), yet it was one that would master nature rather than love and yearn for it, as the Greek nation did. (21–24 March 1821.)

  Just as the propriety of words is quite different from the bareness and dryness of each one, so too simplicity, naturalness, and suppleness in the structure of a language and a discourse is quite different from aridity and geometric precision. Distinguish accordingly the character of the best of ancient Greek writing from that of modern, reformed French. Likewise the character of the best and proper Italian language and writing of the past from that of both [864] French and present-day Italian. Which, even if its words, expressions, etc., weren’t barbarous, the geometric, sterile, dry, and precise nature of its style and character is. It is barbarous absolutely, but also relatively, because it is wholly foreign and French, and different from the character of our language. This is quite another thing from foreignness of words or phrases, which although foreign are not essentially inadmissible, or an absolute cause of barbarousness. But a foreign character in any language is essentially barbarous and is the true cause of the barbarousness of a language, which cannot help but be barbarous when it diverges, not from phrases or words, but from its character and nature. And present-day written Italian is all the more barbarous when the Italian flavor of certain words and expressions, mainly rare and ancient ones, whose Italianness is self-evident, contrasts with the nonnational and also the absolutely different overall character of the writing. (24 March 1821.)

  [865] I applaud the fact that Italians are being turned away from blind love and imitation of foreign things, and even more that they are being reminded and invited to use and esteem their own things. I applaud the fact that an effort is being made to reawaken that national spirit in them without which there has never been greatness in this world, and not merely national greatness but individual greatness also.1 Yet I cannot endorse the idea that our present achievements and, as far as study is concerned, our present literature, the majority of our writers, etc. etc., are celebrated and exalted every day as though they were superior to all the great foreigners, when they are inferior to the least of them; that they are presented to us as models; and that in the end we are almost enjoined to follow the road we are already on. If we are to wake up one day, and recover the spirit of the nation, our first step must be not pride or regard for our present achievements but shame. And shame must spur us on to change direction altogether, and make everything new. Otherwise we will never [866] achieve anything. The commemoration of our past glories is an incitement to virtue, but lying and feigning present glories is proof of cowardice, and an argument for staying satisfied with this most craven condition. Aside from the fact that it also serves to nourish and maintain that poverty of judgment, or, rather, the incapacity to make any sort of correct judgment and the lack of every critical art, of which Alfieri complained (in his Life)1 in relation to Italy, and which is so evident today in our continual experience not only of all the nonsense that is praised but of the achievements (should any by some miracle occur) that remain unknown or neglected or repudiated or condemned. (24 March 1821.)

  What does it mean that the so-called barbarians, or peoples who have not yet attained to anything more than a modest or even inferior civilization, have always triumphed over civilized peoples, and over the world? The Persians over the civilized Assyrians, the Greeks over the already corrupt Persians, the Romans over the Greeks when they had reached the pinnacle of civilization, and the northerners over the Romans in the [867] same circumstances?1 Indeed, what does it mean that the Romans were great only when they were almost barbarians? It means that all man’s strength lies in nature and in illusions; that civilization, science, etc., and powerlessness are inseparable companions. It means that doing is characteristic and an attribute only of nature, and not of reason; and because someone who does is always master over someone who simply thinks, so too will those natural or barbarous peoples, whatever you want to call them, always be masters over the civilized peoples, whatever motive or purpose drives them. I have no hesitation in predicting it. Europe, though completely civilized, will fall prey to those half-barbarians who threaten it from the depths of the north; and when they are no longer conquerors and become civilized, the world will come back into balance again.2 However, as long as there are still barbarians in the world, or nations that foster powerful, all-encompassing, and persuasive and steadfast and unreasoned and great illusions, the civilized peoples will be their prey. After that time, when à son tour [in its turn] civilization, which today has become so swift, vast, and mighty a conqueror, has nothing more to conquer, it will then either revert to barbarism and, if it proves possible, to nature by a new path, one utterly opposed to the natural one, and that is the path of universal corruption, as in the late Empire; or I do not know how to predict any further ahead what we should expect. The world will then set out on another course, and virtually another essence and existence. (24 March 1821.)

  [868] The saying that men are always the same at all times and in all countries is not true, except in the following sense. The stages that
man traverses, and those of each nation compared with one another, as well as the temporal stages in relation to one another, are always more or less the same or very similar. The various epochs that make up these stages do, however, differ markedly from one another, and so, too, therefore, do the men of one epoch compared with those of another, with one nation being today in one epoch, and another nation in another. Just as when someone says that the orbit of the planets is always the same, he does not mean that the precise point at which they appear and are to be found is always one and the same.1 The stages through which society passes resemble each other at all times. This is a true axiom. And since an excess of civilization has always led nations to barbarism, indeed, immediately preceded and played some part in it, the same would happen now as well, or, if not, the aforesaid axiom would prove false for the first time. At any rate, the proposition that men are the same at all times, unless it is understood, or amended in the manner suggested, is either false or absurd. It is false if one seeks to apply it to the effects of the human faculties, which—sometimes developed and sometimes [869] not, sometimes more developed and sometimes less, sometimes very active and sometimes so deeply buried in the depths of the mind that not even the philosophers are able to discover them (such as, e.g., today’s sensitivity in the ancients or, even more, in primitive peoples, reason, etc. etc.)—have diversified the surface of the earth in countless different ways and in many different guises. I would ask whether the Italians of today are or appear to be the same as the ancients, whether the present age resembles that of the Persian Wars or, still less, that of the Trojan War. I would ask whether savages resemble the French, whether Adam would recognize us as men and as his descendants, etc. This same proposition would be absurd if it were intended to signify anything more than the fact that at all times man has always been composed of the same elements, both physical and moral (albeit elements variously developed and combined, the physical and the moral alike). This is something that everybody knows. The essential qualities have not altered, nor are they alterable, from the beginning of nature onward, in any creature. But accidental qualities are alterable, by virtue of the different disposition of the essential qualities, which produces a diversity that [870] is truly significant and, as much as anything can be, worthy of note in those things which can only vary naturally. Taken in this latter sense, then, the above proposition would be as important as saying that the sea, the sun, and the moon are the same at all times (setting aside for now a transcendental physics that might refute it, and assuming it to be true, as is universally held to be the case). (25 March 1821.)

  With regard to the trumpeting of reason and the attempted geometricization of the world in the French Revolution, see also several noteworthy points and some facts and observations in the Essai sur l’indifférence en matière de Religion in the final part of chapter 10 (which takes up some twenty or so pages), where the author relates the doctrines he has expounded to the formal example of the Revolution, from the passage beginning “There existed, thirty years ago, a nation ruled by an ancient race of kings,” etc., up until the end of the chapter.1 (26 March 1821.)

  For p. 838, beginning. Note again [871] how many tasks involved in the preparation of very commonplace things today regarded as necessities are by their very nature harmful to the health and life of those who perform them. What are we to make of this? That nature has often enough arranged things so that the survival and comfort of one species depends upon the destruction or harm done to another, or to some portion of it, is true, and obvious enough in natural history. But who could induce us to believe that it should actually have arranged for and decreed the destruction of one part of the same species for the comfort, indeed the perfecting, of the other part (which is certainly in no way more noble by nature but altogether equal to the first part)?1 And shouldn’t such tasks, ordinary and commonplace as they are, and regarded as necessary to life, be regarded as barbarous, since they are manifestly against nature? And won’t the life that requires and expects them, though it is comfortable and regarded as highly civilized, then obviously also be against nature? Won’t it then be barbarous, too? (30 March 1821.)

  For p. 499, end. To what I have said about the derivation of favellare [to speak], etc., from fabulari, etc., add the Spanish hablar, habla, etc., that is, fablar, [872] fabla, etc., from fibula, etc., according to the Spanish practice of replacing the f with an h, as in herir for ferir, hembra for fembra, hazer or hacer for facer, and a thousand other words. (30 March 1821.)

  The self-love of man, and that of any individual of any species, is a preferential love. That is to say, because an individual naturally loves himself as much as he can, he therefore prefers himself to others, therefore strives to outdo them as much as he is able, and therefore, in effect, the individual hates other individuals, and hatred of others is a necessary and immediate consequence of love of oneself, and, because self-love is innate, it follows that hatred of others is innate in every living being. See p. 926, paragraph 1.

  From which a first corollary follows, to the effect that no living being is exactly predestined for society, whose purpose can only be the common good of the individuals who make it up: this is contrary to the exclusive, preferential love that each person inseparably [873] and essentially has for himself, and the hatred of others that follows from it and that essentially destroys society.1 So that nature cannot in its original plan have contemplated or ordained any society in the human species that was not more or less similar to the society it established in other species, in other words, an accidental society, one born of and formed by a temporary identity of interests, dissolving when that identity disappears; or else one that is lasting, but loose or shall we say broad and with few restrictions, that is to say, one that promotes the interests of each individual as far as what they have in common is concerned, but at the same time does not prejudice particular interests or inclinations when they are in opposition to general ones. This occurs in societies of animals, but can never occur in a society so unified, constrained, precise, and bounded on every side as is that of men.

  It is worthy of note that the more society has expanded on the one hand, the more restricted it has become on the other, I mean as far as men are concerned. And the more restricted it has become, the more it has failed [874] in its purpose, that is to say, the common good, and in its means, that is to say, each individual working with others in pursuit of that purpose. This is a natural, but entirely unnoticed, consequence of the previous corollary, and of the proposition from which the latter derives. Observe.

  Once man had moved from the solitary state to that of society, the first societies were very broad. Links between individuals were not very close in each society, societies were meager in extent and number, and the relations between them were very restricted, or nonexistent. But in this fashion, the common good of each society was effectively pursued by individuals, because, on the one hand, it did not prejudice and, on the other, it advanced, indeed often constituted, each person’s own good. And the common good was effectively produced by these societies, which were more or less similar to natural societies and conformed to the considerations advanced in the previous corollary. Societies gradually become more restricted as we make our way down from natural times, and more restricted in two categories: (1) between the individuals in a single society; (2) between the various societies. Today, this restrictiveness has reached a peak in both categories.