Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  (2) These extraordinary geniuses fathom certain [1178] mysteries, certain parts of nature so hidden, discover and gaze upon so many things, that the sheer abundance and profundity of their conceptions prevents them from attaining clarity for themselves, and when communicating them to others prevents them from attaining to any sort of order, in short it overwhelms their faculties and is incapable, on account of the excess, of being defined, circumscribed, and brought to fruition. The power of their mind exceeds the capacity of the mind itself, because, in short, nature and the abundance of existing truths is far greater than the capacity and the faculties of man. And seeing too much, conceiving too much, renders such minds sterile and fruitless, and if they write, their writings either do not amount to very much and are even deliberately dry and impoverished (like those of Hermogenes), or are certainly much inferior to their intelligence. Like those animals unsuited to generation on account of the excess of generative force (mules). And stupidity in life is ordinarily the character of such people, either while they are still young, or when old, as it is told was said to Pico della Mirandola. What I say of intellect and philosophy also goes for the imagination and the arts that stem from it. Example of Tasso, his madness, his [1179] works, which, though very beautiful, are certainly inferior to his capacities and to those of the three other supreme Italian authors,1 although in reality he was a match for each of them. And the same also goes for any other capacity or particular discipline. (17 June 1821.)

  It is implausible that the Chinese language should have remained the same for so many centuries, unlike all other languages. Yet more or less the same rules are required to understand its earliest writers as are used in relation to modern authors. But the reason is that their script is virtually independent of the language, as I have said elsewhere [→Z 944–45], and, as I have also said [→Z 1019], the Chinese language could perish and their script be preserved and be understood no more and no less than before. Nevertheless, I do not doubt that their ancient language, notwithstanding the extraordinary immutability of that people, though it may not have perished, has certainly altered. This cannot be known for sure since we lack records from the ancient language although records of the ancient script remain. A script that has itself undergone and is still suffering some diversification. But because the characters (which are independent from the language in Chinese) are not in the hands of or available for the use of the people (especially in China, [1180] where the art of reading and writing is so difficult), they far more readily retain their essential forms and their meaning than do the words that are in daily and universal use by the educated and the uneducated, by people whatever their customs, opinions, character, trade, way of life, and circumstances. (In this regard, here is a passage from Voltaire cited by Monti, Proposta, etc., vol. 2, part 1, p. 159: “Almost all words that crop up frequently in conversation go through many changes of meaning which are difficult to follow, something that does not occur with technical words, because their meanings are more precise and less arbitrary.”)1 And we see as much in Latin, where the language is lost but the characters are preserved, so far as their essential forms and their value are concerned. Also in Greek, etc. Whereas in China, because the use, form, and meaning of the ancient characters has been preserved, so too has a complete understanding of the ancient scripts, even if today they were to be read with words and in a language altogether different from that in which the Ancient Chinese read them. (17 June 1821.)

  On the ancient sense of fabula [talk], whence favella [speech, language], and of μῦθος [word, speech], see the Variorum notes to the first book of Phaedrus, prologue, last line.2 (18 June 1821.)

  We say fuso [spindle], a masculine singular noun, and fusa, its feminine plural, on account of our language’s propensity to give to a number of nouns in the plural the desinence of the Latin neuter plural, on which see Ciampi, De usu linguae italicae saltem a saeculo quinto,3 where he shows how many of our feminine plurals in a derive from a popular Latin, [1181] etc. Such Italian endings would seem to indicate corresponding Latin neuters, and the Italian fusa would seem to indicate a Latin neuter fusum or at any rate its plural fusa, just as from brachia we create le braccia, from cornua, le corna, from genicula, the diminutive of genua (Forcellini), le ginocchia (the Glossary also has genuculum or genuclum, and ginochium), from poma, le poma, from ossa, le ossa, from fila, le fila, from membra, le membra, from fundamenta, le fondamenta, from castella, le castella, from labia, le labia, from labra, le labbra, from gesta, le gesta, from ligna, vestigia, le legna, le vestigia, from ova, le uova, from terga, le terga, from flagella, le flagella, le cervella, etc., le vestimenta, le ornamenta (see the Crusca, under vestimento), etc., le corna, le ciglia, etc., from vasa, le vasa (Crusca, and Tansillo, Podere, ch. 3, tercet 2).1 Note that when gesto signifies gestus us [gesture], we do not say le gesta [deeds, feats] but i gesti [gestures]. And then we only say le gesta when gesto is taken in a neuter sense, and means a deed done, as in Cornelius Nepos “Obscuriora sunt eius gesta pleraque” [“Most of his feats are more obscure”]. (See the Glossary under Gesta.) Likewise we say interiori [interior] adjectivally, but generally le interiora (also, however, gl’interiori) for innards, that is, in the neuter sense, as Vegetius, “Torsiones vocant, et interiorum incisiones” [“They call it a griping, and colic in the intestines”].2 See p. 2340, end. But neither fusum nor fusa are to be found in the Latin dictionaries, but only fusus [spindle], which in the plural becomes fusi. Yet here we find in the fragments of Symmachus discovered by Mai (Q. Aurelii Summachi V.C. octo orationum ineditarum partes, Oration 3, that is “Laudes in Gratianum Augustum,” ch. 9, Milan 1815, p. 35): “Et vere si fas est praesagio futura conicere, iamdudum aureum saeculum currunt fusa Parcarum.” [“And truly if it is lawful to prophesy by presage the things that are to come, then the threads of the Fates are producing the Golden Age.”] Thus reads the Ambrosian Codex, which is very ancient, that is to say, at least midway through the sixth century, i.e., a century at most after the author’s death. And we can also be sure that it is not an error in transcription from observing that writing fusi would ruin the rhythm that Symmachus so loved and set such store by and cultivated so assiduously, as anyone who has read him will be [1182] aware, and as also may be seen at first glance in other writers of the period, and the surrounding periods, and generally in all Latin and Greek authors tainted by a corrupt and affected elegance and rhetoric.1 Note has been taken of this word fusa by Mai in the Index rerum notabiliorum [of matters of note],2 and by Furlanetto in the Appendix to Forcellini. See also Forcellini and the Glossary under saccus [sack], sextarius [a sixth part], since we say le sacca [bags], le staia [bushels]. From which one could deduce that the old Latin populace also said murum [wall], pugnum [fist], fructum [fruit], lectum [couch, bed] as a substantive, digitum [finger], anellum [little ring], risum [laughter] in the neuter gender, or at any rate in the plural (in addition to the masculine that we, too, have in such plurals), mura, pugna, fructa, lecta, digita, anella, risa, just as we say le mura, le pugna, le frutta, le letta, le dita, le anella, and le risa and the like, even though no precise knowledge of these Latin words survives, just as up until a few years ago we had no knowledge of the word we have seen [→Z 1181], which also survived in Italian. Fructa and mura, neuter plurals, may also be found in barbarian Latin (Du Cange). Lectum as a neuter substantive is used by Ulpian in the Digest, and see Forcellini. (18 June 1821.) Risus us [laughter] is what the best Latin writers say. Yet they say jussus us [order], and also jussum i [order]; and likewise they sometimes turn other such fourth-conjugation verbal nouns (insofar as risus is a pure verbal adjective) into neuter second-conjugation verbal nouns, as also gustum i, for gustus us, etc., on which see pp. 2146 and 2010, if you will.

  For p. 1173. The same goes for gems, and so many other useful or luxury goods that are very difficult to obtain, and impossible to do so without countless toils and disasters, but which on the other hand are considered to be pretty much necessary to a civilized life and do eff
ectively serve or are even necessary to trade between nations (which, without many such objects and such needs, would not survive), the chief source of civilization and therefore of the supposed happiness of mankind.

  [1183] The previous thought regarding the actual necessity of so many luxury goods, etc., for maintaining and fostering trade, itself necessary to civilization, even when such goods are not actually and in themselves either needed or useful for life, deserves to be extended. Because, since these objects cost humanity infinite toil, one sees how a lack of civilization is necessary to civilization, imperfection to perfection (in the sense that we call perfection what is in fact its contrary), and to humanity and delicacy and refinement, etc., the barbarism of society. (18 June 1821.)

  What I have said elsewhere [→Z 481–84, 667–68] regarding the different impressions proper names (and, one could add, words of every kind) leave on children, and regarding the different ideas of beauty or ugliness they attach to them, depending on the accidental circumstances of their age, also serves to demonstrate how true it is that beauty is purely relative, and how the idea of a particular beauty does not stem from the characteristic and absolute beauty of such and such a thing, but from circumstances wholly extrinsic to the category and sphere of the beautiful.

  And further extending this observation: if we want to see how children gradually acquire [1184] the idea of distinct and particular proportions and proprieties and how without any innate idea of particular and applied proportions or proprieties they nevertheless manage to judge one thing beautiful and another ugly, one thing good and another bad, and to be more or less in step with the universal judgment of what is ugliness or beauty, goodness or its contrary, without however having any model for it in the intellect or imagination, let us consider by way of example the development of children’s ideas regarding the human form, and see how gradually they come to judge and to feel the extrinsic beauty and ugliness of individual human beings.

  A child when born has no idea whatsoever as to what the human form is and ought to be (except for what he feels materially and can conceptualize of his own limbs and parts through the experience of the senses). (But if he does not have any idea of human forms, and all the ideologues are agreed on this point,1 how could he have one of their beauty? How could he have the idea of quality, not having the idea of the subject? And discuss likewise all other objects that are capable of beauty, of none of which does the child have an innate idea. How, then, could he have an idea of beauty, before having the least idea of those things that are supposed to be beautiful? Let us posit a being that is not only possible, but real, and which we also know to exist, without however knowing it in any other regard. What idea do we have of its beauty or ugliness? But if the beauty and ugliness that belongs to unknown forms is absolutely unknown, etc., the beautiful cannot then be absolute.)2 He very quickly acquires it through seeing, touching, etc. And in seeing, e.g., in all the people who surround him a nose or mouth of such a measure that we call well-proportioned, he necessarily and naturally forms the idea that such a part of man is and should be of such a measure. Here, right away, we have the idea of a proportion that is not absolute but relative, an idea that is not innate but acquired, not derived [1185] from nature nor from the essence of things, nor from a model and a notion preexisting in one’s intellect, nor from a necessary order, but from the habituation of the sense of sight to such an object, and from the decision of nature that has really fashioned the majority of men thus.

  Having thus acquired solely and exclusively through habituation the idea of proportion or propriety the child readily forms that of disproportion and impropriety which is always and necessarily subsequent to that of their contraries, and therefore the idea of the ugly and the bad is subsequent to that of the beautiful and the good (which would not be the case if it were absolute and original and inherent in man, and if it belonged to the essence and nature of his mind and his faculty of conception), and comes not from an ideal type, but from the idea mentioned in the way I am about to describe. Following the example that we have chosen, if the child sees a nose that is much longer or shorter than the one he is accustomed to seeing, he instantly conceives a sense of disproportion and something improper, that is, of a simple contradiction with his own habit of seeing, and he forms a judgment regarding the improper and ill-proportioned or, in other words, the ugly. And so it is then that he is very soon in agreement with the universal judgment of men regarding particular beauty and ugliness, [1186] without having produced or received any idea of them from nature or reason.

  Let us move on to even more decisive proofs of my argument, that is, that every idea of proportion, propriety, beauty, definite and specific good, and all their opposites, come from simple habituation.1

  (1) If that nose were a little longer, or that mouth a little wider, even though it may be sufficient to arouse in men the judgment and the sense of ugliness, the child will not conceive this judgment or this sense in any way. That this is how things go is borne out by the experience of anyone who has ever been a child, and is willing to remember what happened to him at that age. And what is the reason? The reason is that the child has only acquired a weak and deficient idea of proportions because he has not seen much and not compared much, and so he has an equally deficient and imprecise and unsubtle and undetailed idea of disproportions. And he only becomes aware of them and feels them when the given object collides violently and forcibly with his habit. Only by seeing much does he come unthinkingly to form a judgment, a capacity for discernment, a fine sense of distinguishing the beautiful from the ugly. Sometimes on the other hand, the child is deeply impressed by something disproportionate or improper that others do not even notice, and from this he deduces a sense of ugliness that others do not experience. The reason is his limited degree of habituation, his having seen little, which causes him to find something strange that is not strange and therefore something ugly or very ugly something that is not ugly, or not very. How could that be if ugliness were an absolute? A boy used to tell of a person who had two noses, because he had observed a small difference in color in his nose, one part redder, one part less so. And no one else noticed it unless they looked for it. What does this [1187] mean? If the idea of particular beauty and ugliness were absolute and natural and innate, would the child need to grow and exercise his senses, and would he need experience in order to gain some idea, I don’t mean a perfect idea but sufficient, of particular beauty or ugliness? Doesn’t seeing that he does need these things clearly prove that the evaluation and sense of ugliness or beauty come exclusively from habituation and from comparison, and that no object in the world would be either beautiful or ugly, good or bad, if there were nothing with which to compare it, especially of its own kind? And that amounts to saying that nothing is beautiful or good absolutely, and on its own account. And consequently an absolute beauty or goodness does not exist.

  The perfecting of taste in every sphere, whether in the arts with regard to human beauty or in literature, etc. etc., is considered to be a proof of absolute beauty, and yet it is just the opposite. How is the taste of painters, sculptors, musicians, architects, lovers, poets, and writers refined? By means of much seeing or hearing of those objects upon which their taste has to be exercised, by means of experience, comparison, habituation. How then can this taste depend upon an absolute, universal, immutable, necessary, natural, preexisting type? What I [1188] say of children also goes for country people, and all those who are called coarse or ill-mannered or tasteless in any and every sphere. I say it of someone who is not used to looking at paintings, who, everyone knows and says, cannot judge pictorial beauty; I say it of someone who is not accustomed to reading good poets, who is never able to judge poetic beauty, beauty of style, etc. etc. etc. Just as the child’s judgment and sense of the beautiful is at first necessarily extremely crude, a fact that obviously demonstrates how his judgment depends on habituation, so too most men’s judgment and sense of beauty is always very imperfect, if for no ot
her reason than because most men never gain such experience as might enable them to form that fine, accurate, and clear judgment that is called refined taste. That is to say, (i) they do not dwell on the minute parts of objects in order to be able to compare them and hence form an idea of fixed proportions, an idea that they do not have. (ii) they do not have the habit of making minute comparisons, which is the sole means of judging minutely as to proportion and disproportion, beauty or ugliness, good or bad. Develop the argument thus, and apply these observations to every human faculty and form of knowledge. And from seeing that the sense [1189] of the beautiful is susceptible to being refined and to growing both in children and in fully formed men, you may deduce that it is therefore neither innate nor absolute, for something that needs to be acquired and formed is not inherent, and something that is susceptible to growth and consequently to change is not and cannot be absolute.