Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  For p. 1129. One should note that, where a number of these and similar verbs and nouns are concerned, the grammarians and lexicographers have a different opinion to our own, that is, they derive the nouns from the verbs as we shall see [1205] in the case of lex [law] from legere [to collect] and rex [king] from regere [to direct], while we derive regere from rex in line with what sound philosophy and ideology1 and consideration of the natural progress of ideas dictates. For it is certain that men had a word to signify the one who issued commands long before they had another word to signify the actual act of commanding. The idea of the most material of actions, and consequently the idea expressed by verbs, is always metaphysical and hence subsequent to that signified by nouns. See in regard to this point pp. 1388–91. I mean subsequent to being signified, not always subsequent, however, in conception. But even if it was prior in conception (as in this example), man first fixed a sign to represent the one who was doing it and which was material and visible (like the king, that is, the one who issues commands) before he came to fix by means of a sign and decide upon the metaphysical idea of what the king was doing. Because this latter idea, even if second in the sequence, was the first idea that he clearly conceived, in such a way that he was able to define and circumscribe it with a sign. So that it is prior as clear idea even if subsequent as idea as such. And what must be sought with regard to languages is sequence and succession, not of ideas absolutely but of the clear ideas that man has conceived, since it is only these that he can and has been able to signify. See Sulzer, p. 53.2 But grammarians should be forgiven if up until now they have not been ideologues. Nevertheless, the philologist enlightened by philosophy should not allow himself to be swayed by their opinion regarding those matters that resist analysis and the science of human understanding. (22 June 1821.)

  For p. 1201. I have already spoken elsewhere [→Z 204] of an infertile woman who was beating a pregnant mare saying, [1206] “Why are you pregnant, and not me?” I believe that it is only with difficulty that a crippled father can look at his healthy children with equanimity and not feel some inclination to hate them or experience some difficulty in loving them that will readily be turned into hate, and will then inanely receive the name of antipathy, as if it were an innate passion and one without a moral cause. Countless actual proofs of this could be put forward, such as the hatred of ugly mothers toward their beautiful daughters and the harassment they often inflict on quite innocent young people for this reason, without they or their victims really understanding why. Likewise fathers of scant intelligence or in some other way ill-favored toward sons who are highly intelligent or in some way or other better favored than they. Likewise (and this is very common) the old toward the young (even if they are their children (indeed, especially in those cases), whether female or male, etc. etc.), whenever the old have not set aside youthful desires and whenever the young, even though utterly innocent and good, do not behave like old people. Likewise between brothers and sisters, etc. etc. So natural is it for the self-love inseparable from living beings to produce and almost turn into hatred of other objects, even those that nature has most strongly recommended to us (to our actual self-love) and made most dear. (22 June 1821.)

  [1207] How many things could be said about the infinite variety of men’s opinions and feeling regarding harmony in words. I leave to one side the very diverse and contrasting judgments of the ear about the external beauty of words, in accordance with the great diversity of languages, climates, nations, and habits,1 and about the sweetness, the grace, of both words and letters and pronunciation, etc. In one place a foreign pronunciation will seem graceful, somewhere else the same pronunciation will seem ungraceful but another foreign pronunciation graceful, all due to the different contrasts with the mores of each country or time, contrasts which sometimes produce a sense of gracefulness, and sometimes the opposite, etc. etc. See p. 1263. I leave to one side the very different harmonies that are evident in the periods of spoken or written prose, in accordance not only with the different languages, nations, and climates, but also with the different times and different writers and speakers of the same language and nation, living at the same time. I will simply make some observations regarding harmony in verse. A foreigner, or a prattling child, if they should chance to hear Italian verse, would not only feel no delight but their ear would not discern any harmony nor would it distinguish it from prose, unless it discerned and experienced some mild, indeed minimal delight in the regular conformity of their cadence, that is, in the rhyme. Rhyme would have seemed extremely unpleasant and barbarous to the ancient Greeks and Romans, etc., even though it could have been adapted no less to their language than to ours, and to the actual forms of verse that they used, which are very often similar or virtually the same as a number of our own forms, especially Italian ones. And furthermore, it would have been easier for them because of the greater number of consonances they had, and also [1208] the greater number of words, just taking into consideration the infinite abundance and variety of the inflections of each of their verbs or nouns, etc. (avoiding for now any comparison between the wealth of the various languages). So that they could have used rhyme better than we and more agreeably, that is, more naturally, doing less violence to the sense, the verse, the harmony of its structure, the rhythm, etc. And nonetheless they shunned it as much as we search it out and their verse, accustomed as we are to their harmony, would strike even us as barbarous and repulsive if rhyme was added.1

  If there existed an absolute harmony, that is to say, an absolute correspondence and relationship between articulated sounds, and if Italian verse was absolutely harmonious (and Italian language and poetry are indeed deemed the most harmonious in the world), the foreigner and the child ignorant of the language would feel it as much as the adult Italian, neither more nor less. And if this absolute harmony and this absolutely harmonious verse were an absolute and natural reason in themselves for delight, they would be so universally, and not more so for the Italian than for the foreigner or the child.

  All those who are ignorant of Latin or Greek, whatever nation they may be from, feel no harmony in Latin or Greek verse unless they have been long accustomed to hearing it for whatever reason, [1209] and then little by little, as they take note of the minute parts and the minute correspondences and relationships and regularities, their ear may be trained to feel and appreciate its harmonies. This process is necessary even for those with a better understanding of Latin and Greek.

  Our common people find a degree of harmony in hymns in church, etc., and wouldn’t find any in Virgil. Why? Because in their structure, rhythm, and meter, and indeed very often in rhyme, ecclesiastical hymns resemble the Italian verse that people are also used to hearing and singing in the streets. And again because they are used to hearing just such barbarous Latin verse and meters.1

  When I read a canzone by Petrarch to a very cultured Italian who was not used to reading Italian poetry, he told me, almost shamefacedly, that he found the meter to be lacking in harmony, and that his ear took no pleasure in it at all. This meter resembles the one used in Greek odes consisting of strophe, antistrophe, and epode, and has so noble and dignified a harmony, one that is suited to sublime lyric. He added that the only pleasure he felt in harmony was in ottava rima and the meter we call Anacreontic.2 Note that he was very far from having what [1210] is called a bad ear.

  Ask a Frenchman, however knowledgeable in Italian or English, if he feels any harmony in our most beautiful unrhymed verse or in English blank verse.1

  Each nation has had and still has its own particular meters, both as regards the structure of each line and as regards the manner in which they are combined, laid out, and arranged, that is, in strophes, etc. And these in relation to the greater or lesser difference in climate, opinion, habit, historical period (since one and the same nation had some meters in ancient times, different ones subsequently, and yet others today), etc. etc., are highly diverse, and often actually either entirely wanting in harmony or unharmonious
to foreigners, depending on just how foreign one is, as we are in relation to the French on the one hand, and to the Orientals on the other, etc. etc. It is impossible for a foreigner to feel harmony or delight without one of the following conditions: (1) long familiarity with that language, but this is not enough, indeed, such familiarity is nothing unless long familiarity with poetry in that language be added to it; (2) resemblance or affinity between those meters and the meters of their own nation, as is the case with the Italians and the Spanish. The difficulty involved in feeling the harmony of foreign verse will be more or less great depending on the extent to which it is more or less different to the harmony of our own, or to that or those to which we are accustomed; (3) a habit formed in relation to other foreign harmonies analogous to the one in question; (4) an ear schooled in so many and such diverse harmonies that, by means of an extraordinarily enhanced reflexive, observational, and comparative capacity, it is capable of taking note of and recognizing, either immediately or very quickly, the nature of those foreign combinations, the elements of that harmony, and the recurrence of their respective regulated relationships, is capable of quickly habituating the ear, and has a capacity to contract a habit, a capacity characteristic of flexible and adaptable minds and intellects, that is to say, in short, of great intellects, etc. etc., and can in a short space of time come to [1211] discover and discern in the aforesaid harmony what members of that nation discover in it.

  It is impossible for the member of a nation accustomed to the harmony of its meters, with his ear attuned to them—and no matter how much it is called barbarous, harsh, dissonant, etc., by foreigners—not to hear it better and not to find it more delightful than any other foreign harmony, even though this be judged very beautiful, etc. Unless he were to form a new habit that overcomes the previous one (something that is very difficult and perhaps never happens).

  Which of us feels the harmony of Eastern verses or strophes? I won’t speak of German or English verse, or German metric prose, in relation to the Italians. The Italians recognize harmony in French verses far more quickly and readily, because French is a language and harmony more akin to their own.

  It is claimed that a number of books of scripture are metrical and there is a high probability that this is the case. But no one has found out what meters they were composed in, though many have tried. And they never will be able to find out, unless by chance, because there is no rule that teaches us what seemed to the Jews to be harmony with respect to words. And what other reason for this could there be but the fact that absolute harmony does not exist? If it existed, the rule would be found, especially since those words which are claimed to have constituted a harmony exist in a complete and ordered state. [1212] (23 June 1821.) See p. 1233, end.

  For p. 1155. Sometimes, indeed, very often they denote the gradualness, the forward movement, and progress of an action that is for the most part slow, indeed they very often serve to express precisely the slowness of the action and are not used for any other purpose. Or else they explicitly express the weakness of the action and have something akin to a diminutive force equal or similar to that of Latin verbs ending in itare. Spanish and French also have similar forms, and employ them with similar meanings. (24 June 1821.) See p. 1233, paragraph 2.

  Is it not a widely observed, very frequent, and commonplace occurrence, and certainly within the experience of almost everyone, that certain people, who in the beginning or upon our first setting eyes on them strike us as ugly, very gradually, as we become accustomed to seeing them and as our sense of their external defects fades with habituation, start to appear less ugly, more bearable, more pleasing, and finally very often even beautiful, indeed very beautiful? And then, when we lose the habit of seeing them, they will perhaps once again revert to seeming ugly. The same is true of every other kind of object, whether perceptible to the senses or not. Many of which, thanks to the habit of seeing and dealing with them acquired at an early age, seemed beautiful to start with, that is, before we had formed a definite and fixed idea of the beautiful. Then when we saw them after a long interval, they seem to us ugly, really ugly. What does that mean? If there existed an absolute of beauty, its idea would be continuous, indelible, unalterable, and uniform in all men, nor could one either lose or acquire, weaken or reinforce, diminish or enhance it, [1213] or in any manner whatsoever change it (and change it into contrary ideas, as we have seen) through habituation, upon which it would not depend. (24 June 1821.)

  For some time now all the cultured languages of Europe have had a number of words in common, especially in politics and in philosophy, by which I also mean the kind of philosophy that features continuously in conversation, even in less cultured, less studied, and less artificial sorts of conversation or speech. I am not talking about words pertaining to the sciences, on which almost the whole of Europe agrees, but about that very high proportion of words which express things that are more subtle and, if I may put it like this, more spiritual than those that the ancient languages and our own in past centuries could succeed in expressing, or they express the same things expressed in those languages, but more subtly and delicately because of the progress and refinement of knowledge, metaphysics, and the science of man in recent times: in short, all or almost all those words which express exactly an idea that is at once subtle and clear, or at any rate perfect and complete. A very high proportion of these words, I repeat, are the same in all the cultured languages of Europe, except for minor and quite particular modifications, for the most part in the desinence. So that they come to form a kind of miniature language or a lexicon, and one that is strictly universal. And I do mean strictly universal, that is, not in the manner that French is universal, which is a secondary language [1214] for the whole of the civilized world. But the lexicon I have in mind here is a part of the primary and characteristic language of all nations, and serves the everyday use of all languages and of the writers and speakers of the whole of cultured Europe. Now, most of this universal Lexicon is actually lacking in the Italian language, which is accepted and recognized as classical and pure, and whatever is pure in the whole of Europe is impure in Italy. This is truly and deliberately to want to put Italy out of touch with the times and the rest of the world.1 Since the entire civilized world today forms almost a single nation, it is natural enough that the most important words, the ones that express those things that belong to our universal inner nature, should be common and uniform everywhere, just as a language that the whole of Europe today employs more universally and frequently than ever it did at any other time, that is, the French language, is common and uniform for the same reason. And since the sciences have always been equal everywhere (by contrast with literature), so too the scientific republic that is spread across the whole of Europe has always had a universal and uniform terminology in the most varied languages and is equally understood everywhere. Likewise metaphysical, philosophical, political, etc., concepts—once their great bulk and system had been simplified and made uniform and is today common [1215] to more or less the whole of the civilized world, a natural consequence of the general tendencies of the age—are today (because of necessity and the nature of the times) all the same. Hence it is entirely congruent and in accordance with the nature of things that the greater part at any rate of the lexicon that is used to handle and represent them is generally uniform, since the whole of the world is tending today to become uniform.1 And languages are always a thermometer of the customs, opinions, etc., of the nations and the times, and by their nature follow their progression.