Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  “Good translations of poetry are therefore rare in France, with the exception of the Georgics vulgarized by the abbé Delille. Our translators are skilled in imitation; they turn what they take from elsewhere into French, so that you would not be able to tell the difference, but I cannot find a work of poetry that allows us to recognize its origin and that preserves its foreign appearances. Indeed, I believe that such a work could never be accomplished. And if we rightly admire the Georgics of the abbé Delille, this is due to the greater resemblance our language has to the Roman whence it sprang, the majesty and pomp of which it maintains. But the modern languages differ so much from French that if French wished to conform to them, it would lose all dignity.” In Staël, Biblioteca Italiana, vol. 1, p. 12.2 Let us examine this argument.

  Whether Delille’s translation is better than any other French translation (as translation) the French, rather than foreigners, can and should judge for themselves.3 Whether, once the comparison has been made between the translation and the original, there is in evidence the same conformity and equivalence that the French reckon to see in it (although I will grant that there is as much there as is ever to be found in a French version) is a judgment which falls rather to foreigners than to the French, and we Italians, in particular, are better [963] placed than any other nation to decide on it.

  Just as each person thinks in his own language, or in the language that is most familiar to him, so too each appreciates and hears in the same language the qualities of written texts created in any language. Like thought, so too the sense we have of the qualities belonging to speech are always, and inevitably, conceived in the language we are used to. The expressions, forms, words, flourishes, turns of phrase, bold flights, metaphors, and inversions, and anything that it may fall to a language to produce in any foreign text or discourse (for good or for ill) is never heard or appreciated save in relation to the language that is familiar to us, by comparing more or less distinctly the foreign phrase with one of our own, and by transposing that bold flight or that refinement, etc., into our own language. The effect of a text in a foreign language on our mind is thus like the effect of prospects reproduced and viewed in a camera obscura, which can be distinct and truly correspond to real objects and prospects to the degree that the camera obscura is able to render them precisely, so that the whole effect depends on the camera obscura rather than on the real object. Since the same occurs with regard to languages (except for those people who have already managed to make another language familiar in place of their own, or to make it familiar and almost their own, by using it very frequently [964] to speak or write or read with, something that happens to very few, and where dead languages are concerned, perhaps to no one), our ability to perceive the qualities of language spoken by others depends upon the capacity of our own to express them. And the effect of others’ languages will always be in proportion to this capacity in our own. Now, since the capacity of the French language to adapt itself to foreign forms is extremely tenuous and minimal, the capacity to feel and appreciate foreign languages can be stretched only to a very limited extent in those who use French.

  Note that I refer here to appreciating and feeling, not to understanding and knowing. For the latter are the work of the intellect, which makes use of other means. And so the French can understand and know other languages very well indeed, without, however, appreciating or feeling them beyond a certain point.

  I have said that in this case Italians are better placed to pass judgment than anyone else. (1) The Italian language, as I have said elsewhere [→Z 321], is more an aggregate of languages than a language, whereas French is a single one. Hence in Italian there is perhaps a greater capacity than in any other language to adapt to foreign forms. It does not always receive them in an identical fashion, but finds a corresponding form that will then serve the student of the foreign language as color, so that he can depict, represent, and portray it in his own [965] understanding and imagination. And conversely in the French language this capacity is certainly less strong than in any other. (2) These considerations respecting the said capacity of our language apply still more strongly to Latin or Greek. Because our language fits almost perfectly with the forms of these languages, and more closely than any other language in the world, and this is not to be wondered at, given that it has the same genius and has always remained the true daughter of those languages, not only because of genealogy and the facts but because of a true and real resemblance and affinity in nature and in character. Whereas the French language, though born of Latin, has moved further from it than any other sister or relative. And the genius of the French language is as different from that of Latin as it could be, given that they are both languages of peoples belonging to one and the same climate and family, and with a common history, etc. The resemblance so far as words are concerned, that is, the fact that by far the greater number of French words are derived from Latin, is beside the point, it being an eminently material resemblance, a resemblance in sound but not in structure, indeed, not even in sound, given the great difference in pronunciation. But in any case, sound and structure are independent of one another in that there could be two languages, all of whose words had a common etymology, [966] which were nonetheless utterly different languages.

  Consequently, if to the French the flavor, style, and character of Virgil seem to be caught in Delille, to us Italians it seems just the opposite, and I think that in this we are more deserving of trust, since by means of our language (the only means there is to apprehend other languages) we are the best able to apprehend the qualities of French and (still more) of Latin; more than the French who, with their exclusive and recalcitrant language, have only a limited capacity truly to feel and appreciate Virgil in everything to do with language.

  I will go further and say that for the French it is more difficult than for any other European nation not only to appreciate and feel the languages of others but also to form a clear and precise idea of them and finally also to learn them. It is very well said by Giordani (Biblioteca Italiana, vol. 2, p. 153) that “No language, either living or dead, can be learned except by means of another language, which is itself already known well. This is most certain. The language that we do not know is learned by bartering word for word and phrase for phrase, with the one that we already possess.”1 Now, if the language that we already possess only lends itself with the utmost reluctance and bad grace to these acts of barter, it is obvious that the difficulty of learning other languages must be correspondingly great. And since the language that we already possess is [967] the sole instrument we have to form the concept of the nature, weight, and value of foreign words and phrases, if the instrument is inadequate or weak, the effect will be weak and inadequate also.

  This is obvious (1) from the facts. The great difficulty as regards certain languages that are actually different in character from our own lies in the fact that, when we search in our language for equivalent words or phrases we do not find them, and because we fail to find them we do not understand, or have difficulty in understanding, or certainly in grasping distinctly and precisely the weight and nature of these foreign words or phrases; (2) from a cause still more profoundly philosophical and psychological than those already alluded to. Ideas, thoughts in themselves do not make themselves seen or known, and they could not be seen or known in themselves. To do that there is no other means than conventional signs. But if the conventional signs differ, it is as if there were no convention, and as if they were not signs, and thus in an unknown language the ideas and thoughts that it expresses are not understood. In order to understand these signs how would you go about it? To what would you refer them? To your ideas and thoughts immediately? How? If you do not know what ideas and thoughts they signify. You have to understand by means of other signs, whose convention you are a participant in, that is to say, by means of another language known to you; and then refer these unknown signs to the known [968] signs, and since you know very well what ideas they refer to, you manage to re
fer the unknown signs to the ideas, and consequently to understand them. But if the number of signs known to you is limited, how will you succeed in understanding those unknown signs, which will have no equivalents among those you do know? It is not enough for these unknown signs to correspond to some ideas and for you to be eminently capable of thinking such ideas. It is necessary for you to know what they are and to know it precisely, and you cannot know it save by way of known signs. It is necessary that if, e.g. (and this is the main point in the argument), these unknown signs express an accident, a gradation, a minute difference, a nuance of some idea that you already know and entertain and know how to express with known signs, you understand perfectly and form a clear and limpid concept of that albeit minute gradation; and if the latter cannot be expressed by any sign known to you, how will you arrive at the said effect? Only by dint of conjectures, or by explaining the point by means of circumlocution. With which it is not possible, or else certainly very difficult, for you to manage to form a clear, distinct, etc., idea of that precise idea, or half idea, etc., expressed by that particular sign. And therefore I maintain that the French are not as a rule capable of grasping the attributes of other languages, save in a more or less obscure fashion, but one which [969] always retains something confused and imperfect about it. Each language (leaving to one side, for the time being, words, in which French, although inferior even in this regard to the other languages, is nevertheless not poor, and in certain ways is rich) has particular forms, particular expressions of its own for which on the one hand it is very hard to find perfect equivalence in another language, while on the other hand they constitute the main pleasure of that language; they are its most native attributes, the defining features of its genius, the most intimate, recondite, and substantial graces of that tongue. No language, then, is so perfect an instrument that it can serve adequately to grasp perfectly each and every property of every other language. But all things are relative, and the language that is poorest in inversions (Staël, loc. cit, p. 11, end), confined within a “narrower” compass (ibid.), more monotonous (ibid., p. 12, beginning),1 more timid, with fewer bold flights, more constrained, more in thrall to itself, less supple, less free, less various, more strictly in agreement with itself in every part, such a language, I maintain, is the least appropriate, least effective, most inadequate, crudest instrument to raise us to an understanding of other languages and their particularities.

  If that argument holds good for perfect understanding, [970] how much more must it do so for perfect appreciation, which arises from a precise, complete, and entire sense of the qualities in a particular language, qualities that are so much more numerous, and so much more subtle and fleeting, and so much more particular and intimate and arcane and secret and peculiar. A language which, as a Frenchman (Thomas, whose passage I have referred to elsewhere [→Z 208]) admits, “se refuse peut-être” (à la grâce), “parce qu’elle ne peut pas nous donner ni cette sensibilité tendre et pure qui la fait naître, ni cet instrument facile et souple qui la peut rendre” [“may perhaps deny itself” (to grace) “because it can offer neither the pure and tender sensitivity that enables grace to arise, nor the fluent and flexible instrument that can reproduce it”].1 How then could a language such as French be a perfect instrument for grasping and feeling in a fitting manner the graces, etc., of other languages? If it is the case, as I have demonstrated, that the only instrument men have for this purpose is their own language, how would the majority of Frenchmen, even if learned and refined, have a deep and perfect feeling for such graces, and form a clear idea of them, and, in short, dress themselves entirely, as is necessary, in other languages and their genius?

  The facts bear out my objections. Each people favors and appreciates and has a feeling for their own literature in preference to any other. This is only natural. But this occurs to a supreme degree among the French, who generally do not in truth know any other literature apart from their own (I refer here to literature, and not sciences, philosophy, etc.) [971] They know the other literatures only through translations that are done in a manner with which we are all only too familiar, and as the limits, genius, and utter inflexibility of their language require, and transport foreign works not only into their language but into their literature also, and make them part of French literature. The result is that the latter remains the only literature that is universally known in France, even by the general run of scholars. And it is also generally true that as well as not knowing foreign literatures, they do not care for them, and despise or are certainly very much inclined to despise them. And if they do not despise Latin and Greek, it is because men are not always consistent; it is because they talk as everyone does who exalts those literatures; it is because they esteem those literatures as companions or mothers of their own, and while they esteem their own as the most perfect possible, indeed, as the only true and perfect literature, they do not see, or prefer not to see, that it is utterly different, and in many respects contrary to Latin and Greek, which they are quite prepared to take as their model and norm and to cite as judge and arbiter, etc. etc.; and it is because they believe they are able to appreciate them fully and to judge them perfectly, etc.

  Every foreigner is liable to fall into error when judging the merits or flaws of another’s language, whether dead or living, especially with regard to its most intimate, secret, and particular qualities. This is also the case when it comes to judging the merits or flaws [972] of a work of foreign literature that pertain to the language, and to the whole of that part of style (and it is the greatest and the most important part) that depends upon language, or that has some relation with it in some way or other. But the judgments of Frenchmen on these subjects, and even of the greatest, most discerning, and most highly regarded Frenchmen, are almost always wrong, in such a way that their wrongness is, for the most part, in direct proportion to the boldness and assurance with which they are ordinarily pronounced, in other words, it is extreme. And ordinarily the French, when they speak of specific details regarding foreign literatures and concerning language, make a complete hash of it.

  So much for appreciation. As for understanding, the facts bear out my observations just as fully. Because the French nation, along with the Italian, is beyond dispute the one least educated in the matter of language, be it ancient, classical languages, that is, Greek and Latin (in which France can in no way be compared with England, Germany, Holland, etc.), be it living languages, of which the great majority of Frenchmen are quite content to remain utterly ignorant, or to know enough of them to usurp the right to speak ill of them, and to judge them erroneously and back to front. In Italy (where ignorance is not so often accompanied by temerity), [973] the limited study made of languages living or dead stems from the wretched state of the country and from the general inertia that prevails there, not without reasons that are all too natural and necessary. And it does not, in general, fall far short of what holds for every other branch of study, discipline, and profession. In France, however, circumstances are just the reverse: instead of inertia prevailing, it is activity, and the causes of activity, that prevail; instead of ignorance, it is all the other forms of culture that prevail. All other forms of study, and all worthy disciplines and professions have long flourished in France; its geographical situation, and all its other circumstances, enable it to sustain a continuous, and living and oral relationship with foreigners, as much within France itself as outside. Why then does it differ so absolutely from the other nations in its minimal or very limited cultivation of the languages of other nations, living or dead? Of the various causes that might be adduced, I reckon one of the main ones to be what I have said, namely, the difficulty their own language puts in the way of their understanding and having a feel for other languages, and the inadequacy of the instrument at their disposal for attaining to both knowledge and appreciation of the languages of others.

  [974] A famous Irish lady who died a few years ago (Lady Morgan) makes much of the fact that of the many French é
migrés who stayed so long in England none or almost none, when they returned to France with the Bourbons, had really learned English, and the judgments they brought to bear on English language and literature were incomplete, inaccurate, indeed, often utterly extravagant and ridiculous, even though they were all very well-bred and enjoyed the benefits to a greater or lesser degree of serious study.1

  I do not mean by this to detract from, indeed, I would wish to add to the glory of those highly learned and eminent French men of letters who, despite all these difficulties, by building themselves a ladder from one language to the other by means of lengthy, assiduous, and profound study of the languages and literatures of others, by means of travel, conversation, etc., have become such masters of the foreign languages and literatures that they have cultivated, have achieved as profound an understanding of their taste, etc., as a foreigner, and perhaps sometimes even a national, can ever manage. (A rare thing, moreover, and, except for Ginguené, I do not believe that there is a French author, especially today, who can or could truthfully judge Italian language and literature, and the same goes for other languages and literatures.)2 And I am not unaware of how much the Eastern languages and literatures, in particular, owe to the [975] French scholars of this and the last century. But these scholars, whether present or past, have spoken or speak both more modestly of their own language and literature, and more cautiously and with more respect for those of others, as is the natural custom of anyone who has a deeper, more mature, and closer knowledge and understanding. (20–22 April, Easter Sunday, 1821.) See p. 978, paragraph 3.