Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  I am speaking here only of active conjugations, not passive ones, which our languages do not have. So that if the r is characteristic of the Latin future indicative passive, this is of no relevance to our case, aside from the fact that there it occupies a different position, that is, it closes the ending of the first person, whereas in our futures it precedes [1973] the final vowel in the same person. (22 Oct. 1821.)

  I believe that it is possible to translate works that are modern or philosophical or that have any argument whatsoever into good Greek (especially in the case of works in Italian or Spanish or the like), just as I am sure that they could never be translated into good Latin. If circumstances in our countries had caused the Greek language to prevail over Latin, and if the former rather than the latter had served scholars during the rebirth of classical scholarship,1 the use of a dead language would perhaps have been able to endure for a longer period of time, or at any rate would have been more successful (not only in such scholarship but also in all the other uses to which the Latin language was put until the modern European languages had assumed an adequate form). Our elegant Latin writers of the 16th century, etc., could have been almost modern had they written in Greek, whereas writing in Latin they made sure that the only praise they could receive was from the ancients, that they would serve men of the past [1974] rather than posterity, and to be remembered rather than to hope. If the language that children still study today, and the one that many, especially in Italy, still stubbornly seek to employ on one occasion or another were Greek rather than Latin, it would serve modern life far better, it would far more effectively facilitate thought, and the imagination, etc., and it would be rather more likely that it could be put to some practical use, etc. (23 Oct. 1821.) See p. 2007.

  If we lacked other proofs that the true is unhappy through and through, would it not suffice to see how men who are sensitive, profound in character and in imagination, incapable of taking a superficial view of things, and used to pondering every accident in their lives, are irresistibly and always drawn toward unhappiness? So that, in the case of a sensitive youth, no matter how auspicious his circumstances may seem, we can predict without a doubt that sooner or later he will be [1975] unhappy, or guess that he is so. (23 Oct. 1821.)

  A man with a powerful and lively imagination, used to thinking and pondering, during a phase of extraordinary and transitory bodily vigor, of enthusiasm, of despair, of intense sorrow, or of any passion, of tears, in short, of near drunkenness, frenzy, etc., discovers truths that pure, cold, geometric reason would not discover in the course of many centuries. And if he makes them known, they are not heeded but are considered to be dreams, because the human spirit still lacks the necessary conditions to feel and understand them as truths, and because as a whole it cannot cover the ground in one go that that thinker has covered, but necessarily goes at its own pace, follows its steady progress, and is not disconcerted. But a man in that state sees such relationships, moves so swiftly from one proposition to the next, grasps the connection so vividly and easily, heaps up in one moment [1976] so many syllogisms that are so interconnected and so well ordered, and so clearly grasped, that in one leap he traverses several centuries. And perhaps he himself after that point no longer believes in the truths that he had then grasped and discovered, that is, either he does not remember or he no longer sees with the same clarity the relationships, the propositions, the syllogisms, and their concatenations that had brought him to those conclusions. In the end, the world is always in a state of coldness, and truths discovered in heat, no matter how great they may be, do not put down roots in the human mind, until they are confirmed by the calm progress of cold reason, once it has arrived at that point after a long period of time. The ancients with their great imaginations certainly discovered great truths; they made great leaps along the path of reason, laughing at the slowness and at the infinite means pure reason and experience had needed to advance as far. Vast tracts later occupied by their descendants they had already occupied [1977] and conquered in a flash, but these advances necessarily remained individual, because much time was needed to make them general. These conquests were not preserved, indeed they were voyages rather than conquests, because the individual only penetrated these new countries and reconnoitred them and was not followed by the multitude that might have established its dominion there. The advances of great individuals were not mutually reinforcing because they lacked a general and common preparation in the world that would make them intelligible to one another, and they likewise lacked a language that could establish, embody, define, and make equally clear to all what each individual had discovered. So that the great spirits of antiquity penetrated into the lands of truth each alone, not helping one another, and even when they encountered one another on the road, or arrived at the [1978] same point and met there by chance, they did not recognize each other. And when they had returned from their journey and recounted it to others, they did not realize that they were saying the same things, nor did the public discern this, because they did not say them in the same way, lacking as they did a uniform, philosophical language. The same reasons, moreover, that prevented people in general from recognizing these propositions as completely true also prevented them from discerning the common ground there was between the propositions and sentiments of one great man and the next. And thus the great discoveries of the great men of antiquity withered and did not bear fruit, and were not applied, for lack of the means to cultivate them, and to assist and bind one truth to another through the exchange of thought and a thinking society. (23 Oct. 1821.)

  Suicide is against nature. But do we live by nature? Have we not wholly abandoned it in order to follow reason? Are we not reasonable animals, that is to say, utterly different from natural ones? Does reason not clearly show us the [1979] usefulness of dying? Would we desire to kill ourselves if we knew no other motive, no other guide in life but nature, and if we were still, as once we were, in the natural state? Why then, if we must live against nature, can we not die against nature? Why if the former is reasonable, is the latter not? Why if reason is supposed to instruct us in life, to define, regulate, and hold sway over it, should it not be, should it not do as much in death? Do we measure the good or evil of our actions by nature? No, by reason. Why measure all our other actions by reason, this alone by nature?

  There’s nothing to be said. Man’s present condition, in obliging him to live and think and act according to reason, and in forbidding him to kill himself, is contradictory. Either suicide is not against morality, though it is against nature, or our life, being against nature, is against morality. Since the latter is not so, neither is the former.

  [1980] We apply the same reasoning to suicide as to medicine. It is not natural. Bloodletting, all these poisonous medicaments, all these painful operations, etc., are unknown to natural peoples, and are against nature. But because man’s physical state today is very far removed from the natural one and becoming ever more so, an art and means that are not natural are appropriate and necessary in order to remedy the shortcomings of such a state. (See Celsus on the origin of medicine.)1

  To put it another way: bloodletting is against nature. But since the problem that demands it is an accident for which the natural order is neither guilty nor responsible, the remedy is appropriate by accident even if it is not natural.

  Now in the same way, this great accident which, against the natural order, has altered man’s circumstances, this accident, of which nature is not guilty, which could neither be foreseen nor allowed for but which, against the natural order, makes us desire death, makes suicide appropriate even if it is contrary [1981] to nature.

  It is therefore only religion that can condemn suicide. Its being contrary to nature, in man’s present state, is no proof at all that it is not licit.

  So what a lovely, happy state must it be that itself makes it permissible, and demands the thing that is most contrary to the essence of all things, the most contradictory with existence and its principles, a t
hing that if put into action would destroy all that lives and subvert the order of all that depends upon it or is in any relation to it!

  From all of this, we see how the advance of reason tends essentially, not only to make us unhappy, but also to destroy the human species, living beings, or beings capable of thought, and the natural order. Religion (far more favored and approved by nature than by reason) is all we have to shore up the wretched and tottering edifice of present-day human life, to intervene, [1982] to reconcile as best it can these two incompatible and irreconcilable elements of the human system, reason and nature, existence and nothingness, life and death.1 (23 Oct. 1821.)

  Grace from the extraordinary. The color brown, or shading into dark brown, is graceful, and piquant, as it were contrasting with and bringing out the beauty of the features. But if the contrast is excessive, and if the brown is black, or if, in short, the coloring is too different from what it should be, it never gives rise to grace but rather to ugliness. Excess, however, like the lack of it, is judged differently by people with different tastes, habits, partial and individual circumstances, etc. (24 Oct. 1821.)

  What I have said elsewhere [→Z 1744–47, 1927–30] about the effects of light, sound, and other such sensations on the idea of the infinite should be understood not only in relation to such sensations in nature but also in their imitations as made by painting, music, poetry, [1983] etc. Beauty in those arts consists in large part, and to a greater degree than we suppose or observe, in the choice of those or similar indefinite sensations to be imitated.

  And this is a beauty that has nothing whatever to do with the theory of beauty or ugliness arising out of fittingness or unfittingness, whose absoluteness I deny. Yet this beauty is not absolute either, but in part depends on the nature of man as such, and for the reasons stated in the theory of pleasure, and in part it, too, is subject to habituation, circumstances, etc. (24 Oct. 1821.)

  To what I have said elsewhere [→Z 1678–79] about our guai derived from the Latin vae, add that in several places in Italy one tends to say ghel or ghelo for ve lo (ghel dissi, ghelo dico) or gh’ for v’ (gh’ho messo, for v’ho messo, that is to say ho messo quivi), etc. I believe the Venetians in particular use this form.

  [1984] For p. 1937. Would we not laugh at a poor student of grammar who in his wretched Latin let non volo slip from his pen instead of nolo [I do not want]? And yet nolo is a blatant corruption and mangled distortion of non volo, simply due to the riffraff who tend to truncate words and stick bits together at random, etc. Conversely, I always hear our plebs saying noglio or n’oglio for non voglio [I do not want], and yet who would dare write in Italian noglio instead of non voglio, and to introduce the verb nolere into our language? Thus good and bad, pure and impure in a language is simply what is used or not used, and what found or did not find fortune with good writers in the period of its formation. But as for degeneration, all the words, all the phrases, all the languages known to us are simply a heap of degenerations and corruptions. [1985] (24 Oct. 1821.)

  The French language is, strictly speaking, in all regards and respects, the language of mediocrity. It is not nor will it ever be the language of greatness, or of originality, in any genre. (As a language is, so always are feelings, and writers.) And this is also the reason why today it is universal, why it is well adapted to being understood and made practical use of by foreigners of every kind, why it is so well adapted to the use of less cultured fellow countrymen and is spoken and written well by almost everyone in France, and why ordinary people in Europe, whatever language they speak, prefer the style, the tour [cast] of this language, to that of their own. It is for the same reason that a moderately cultured lady or gentleman becomes agitated and makes a dozen mistakes (as regards grammar rather than the purity of the language) when they try to write or speak a sentence in the Italian style, but succeed with ease and escape every danger when they use a French sentence, etc. etc. The true [1986] sentence, style, genius, character, and spirit of mediocrity. And to what other category but mediocrity could the language of reason and society belong? The French language would not have become universal and been so celebrated and exalted above all others, except in the age of mediocrity, that is, reason, such as ours is, nor could such an age prefer any language to French, or any linguistic genius and character to that of French, even in their own languages.

  This is not the place to pass from language to nation (as philosophers are prone to doing) and say that the nation that speaks the language of mediocrity cannot be the nation of originality or of greatness. But really, what originality, what greatness can arise from the culmination, the excess, the absolute predominance of society? [1987] (24 Oct. 1821.)

  The abundance and vividness, etc., of memories makes all images having to do with childhood very pleasurable and poetic, as well as everything that awakens them (words, phrases, poems, paintings, imitation or reality, etc.). The ancient poets, and foremost among them Homer, excel here. Like sense impressions, the memories of childhood, at any age, are more vivid than those of any other age. And memories of images and things that were painful, or terrifying, etc., in childhood are also pleasurable, because of their vividness. And for the same reason, we also derive pleasure in life from a painful memory, even when the cause of the pain has not yet passed, and even when the memory causes pain or increases it, as with the deaths of those [1988] dear to us, the remembering of the past, etc.1 (25 Oct. 1821.)

  Any modern style that has propriety, power, simplicity, nobility, always has an ancient flavor to it and does not seem modern, and that may be, perhaps, why it is criticized and not generally well received. Conversely, any ancient style that has etc. smacks of the modern. What does this mean? What, then, is the nature of the moderns? What is that of the ancients? (25 Oct. 1821.)

  For p. 1950. Full and perfect imitation is what constitutes the essence of perfect translation, as I have said elsewhere [→Z 319–20, 1947–50]. Now, this is what our language can do, and German cannot, since it is one thing to counterfeit, but quite another to imitate. (25 Oct. 1821.)

  The man who is habituated to everything never becomes habituated to inaction. Time, which assuages, weakens, destroys everything, never destroys or weakens the disgust and the fatigue a man feels at doing nothing. Habituation, [1989] it is true, can influence inaction by transferring the action from the outside to the inside, and a man who is compelled not to move, or act in any way on the outside, gradually acquires the habit of acting on the inside, of making do with his own company, of thinking, imagining, in short, of conversing intensely only with his own thought (as children do, as prisoners get used to doing). But pure boredom, pure nothingness, is something that neither time nor any possible force (save the sort that benumbs or extinguishes or suspends human faculties, such as sleep, opium, lethargy, total exhaustion of one’s forces, etc.), serves to make less intolerable. Every moment of pure inaction weighs as heavily on a man after ten years of habituation as it did the first time. Nothingness, not doing anything, not living, death are the only things that man is incapable of, and [1990] that he cannot become accustomed to. So true it is that man, living beings, and all that exists are born to act, and to act in as lively a fashion as possible, that is to say, that man is born for external action, which is far more lively than internal action. And all the more so in that internal action harms physical being, the stronger and more persistent it is, whereas the opposite is the case with external action. As for the internal action of the imagination, it spurs on impatiently and demands external action, and reduces man to a violent state if he is prevented from acting. And youths, primitive men, the ancients crave such action, and cannot be prevented without putting their nature in conflict with itself. The reason is simply that man and all living creatures always incline naturally toward life, and to that surplus of life that is proper to them. (26 Oct. 1821.)

  I have said [→Z 1387] that grace, etc., derives from contrasts, and therefore man, and love, often incline toward their opposites. We obse
rve, in fact, that women who are weak by nature like strength in a man, and men vice versa. Although this arises directly from the natural inclinations of both sexes, it also comes in part from the [1991] power of contrast, for we see that sometimes a relatively weak man is more attractive to an extraordinarily strong woman than to any other woman, and she is attracted to him more than to any other man. The same goes for delicacy as against vigor, and the other opposite qualities of the two sexes respectively. In all this, however, the habit of different individuals exercises an influence. (26 Oct. 1821.)

  When you imitate the way someone talks, gestures, etc. etc., who is unknown to your audience, even if the imitation is very true to life, clever, etc., it will yield almost no effect or pleasure, while a far less lifelike imitation of the same thing, when done for someone who knows the subject well, will be very pleasurable. This should serve as a rule to those poets, painters, actors, etc. etc., who exhaust [1992] their imitative inspiration (however apt it may be) in imitating things that are unknown or little known or very unfamiliar to readers or spectators or the majority among them. (26 Oct. 1821.)