Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  For p. 1108, beginning. From quietus [quiet], from quiescere, we have quietare and quietari, not used by the ancients, but according to the testimony of Priscian, who (bk. 8, p. 799 Putsch)1 lists it as one of those verbs that sound the same in the active as in the passive voice. As the word Quietator [Pacifier] on two medals of Diocletian testifies, a noun that can only come from quietatus, a passive participle, as also all the others of the same kind. Now Forcellini takes these verbs to mean quietum facere, to pacify, to soothe. And this really is the meaning of our quietare, quetare, chetare, acquetare, acquietare, acchetare. Nonetheless, the Spanish quedar—which is identical to quietare, just as quedo, [1993] an adjective, simply has to be quietus, and which from quietarsi, posarsi, fermarsi, came finally to mean, as it does today, restare [to stay]—demonstrates that the Latin quietare or quietari was, if not among the writers then certainly among the common people, a pure and obvious continuative of quiescere, not only in form but also in meaning. The Spanish also have quietar, with our meaning of quietare. A verb that is certainly not ancient or original in their language (this would be sossegar) but introduced later by writers, who took it from Italian or from Latin. In fact, in breach of the Spanish custom, it has the diphthong ie in the infinitive, etc., which demonstrates that it is foreign. I’ve found it with the diphthong not only in the Dictionary but also in classic writers. See the Glossary. (26 Oct. 1821.)

  On ancient Vulgar Latin, see Perticari, on the writers of the fourteenth century, etc., bk. 1, ch. 5, pp. 22ff., chs. 6, 7, 8.1 (26 Oct. 1821.)

  The French language acquired a certain form, and was accorded honor before Italian, and perhaps also before Spanish, thanks to the Provençal poets who wrote in it, etc. So that at the very end of the thirteenth century, and at the beginning of the fourteenth, which elevated the Italian language above all languages then living, “Frankish speech” was reckoned in Italy to be “the most delightful and widely known of all the other languages then spoken,” [1994] and we wrote in that language rather than our own, reckoning it to be “more beautiful and better,” etc. See Perticari on the 14th century, pp. 14–15.1 But to Italy’s great good fortune it so happened that in the 14th century, that is, well before any other nation, there emerged three great writers, judged to be great even afterward, independently of the age in which they lived. It was they who applied our language to literature, wresting it from the mouths of the plebs, and gave it stability, rules, style, character, all the modifications needed to make of it a language, which, though not fully formed (something that three writers on their own could not do), was nonetheless such that by using it one could be a great writer; they modeled it on already existing Latin literature, etc. This circumstance, quite independently of the nature of the Italian language, meant and had to mean that the era of this language was necessarily [1995] taken to start from then on, that is, from when it had three supreme writers, who resolutely used it for literature, for the loftiest poetry, for great and noble themes, for philosophy, for theology, which was then the non plus ultra. (And Dante therefore, with the courage of his great spirit, taking that coarse and unformed language from plebeian lips and wishing to raise it as high as it would go, was pleased, even despite common agreement and poetic good taste, to use it for what was then deemed to be the most sublime material, that is, theology.) This circumstance has meant that the Italian language, which today, unlike all others, can boast of five whole centuries of literature, is the richest of all. It has meant that its formation and character are decidedly ancient, that is, very beautiful and very free, together with the other myriad advantages of ancient languages. (For the writers of the sixteenth century, who later played a crucial role in forming it, apart from [1996] being ancient themselves and modeling themselves on the ancient classics, Latin and Greek, followed both in that regard and in every other the design and the parts of the particular form that our language received in the 14th century and that they simply perfected, completed and regulated, rendered uniform, and harmonized throughout.) It has meant, too, that our language has never repudiated the ancient words, phrases, and forms, and the authority of the ancients from the 14th century onward. It was not able to repudiate them without repudiating itself, because it was from then on that it assumed the character that makes it up and was splendidly applied to true literature. This circumstance is unique to the Italian language. Spanish caught up with it sooner than any other, but only two centuries later. From the 16th century it began a new age, and it is the most ancient in practice and character, after [1997] Italian. The French language did not have a writer who was absolutely great and recognized as such in any period before that of Louis XIV, or around then. (Montaigne1 in the 16th century either was no such thing, or was not sufficiently so, or was not the kind of writer capable of adequately forming and fixing the language.) Hence the age of French does not extend any further back, it boasts a century and a half at the most, the authority of the ancients is and must be nothing to it. Where the true and proper literature of a nation begins, there its writers begin to have authority over the language.

  And in this regard, it is not pedantic to reject the authority of modern writers over the Italian language, or to pay little heed to them, because Italy does not have its own modern literature, nor a modern philosophy. (Whereas in the sciences, where Italy is as modern as other nations, it is truly pedantic to reject modern authority, including as regards language.) If it had such a literature, as other nations do, modern authority would count for as much as ancient. But modern Italian writers have either paid no [1998] heed to language and have not served a national literature but a foreign one, and hence as writers they are not strictly speaking Italian; or they have paid heed to the language and have not served a modern but an ancient literature, they have simply imitated the ancients, and hence as writers they are not strictly speaking modern; or whether heeding the language or not heeding it, they have said nothing or very little that is thoughtful, their own, noteworthy, or new, and hence as writers they are neither modern nor ancient. There is no good modern Italian writer, or the few that there are have not and do not suffice to constitute a modern Italian literature that would define the language, or rather to continue without interruption the Italian literature that began in the 14th century and continually changed with the times, so long as it lasted. (26 Oct. 1821.)

  The reflective man very often needs to have his mind made up by one who is unreflective either by nature or by habit, or by the press of circumstance, etc. He has more need of counsel than anyone else, not because he cannot see enough by himself, but because he sees too much, [1999] from which follows habitual and the most painful indecisiveness. (27 Oct. 1821.)

  The speed, e.g., of horses, whether seen or experienced, that is, when you’re being conveyed by them (see Alfieri on this in his Life, toward the beginning)1 is immensely pleasurable in itself, that is, because of the excitement, energy, power, life of that sensation. It really does awaken something like an idea of infinity, it lifts up the soul, strengthens it, sends it into an indeterminate action, a more or less temporary state of activity. And all the more so the greater the speed. The extraordinary must also play a part in these effects. (27 Oct. 1821.)

  The spirit, the culture, of the French nation is, was, and will be modern with respect to each successive era, and the French nation will always be (as we see that it is today) considered the type, the example, [2000] the mirror, the judge, the thermometer of everything that is modern.1 The reason is that the French nation is the most social of all nations, the headquarters of society, and lives almost exclusively on society. Now, leaving aside the fact that the human spirit progresses, in general or as a nation, only by means of society and that the progress of our spirit is greater wherever society is greater, in every aspect, and that such a nation is always at least a few steps ahead of the others and so in a more modern condition; leaving this aside, I observe that society, and civilization, always tends, in essence, to make things uniform. This tendency cannot be exe
rcised except with regard to what exists, and the uniformity that stems from civilization can be found or considered only in what exists in each successive era. Therefore, since the French nation, [2001] more than any other nation, is in all its aspects uniform, by virtue of its excessive sociability, and therefore the civilization that it enjoys, it can never be ancient, because then it would not be uniform with itself. That is, in every era the French are always like one another, and not like the ancients, or else they wouldn’t be the same as other contemporary French people. And so in France every new custom or idea, every advance of the human spirit becomes immediately widespread and universal, thanks to a society that instantly balances everything, and disseminates it, and makes it uniform, and generalizes and makes it all equal.

  That is the reason that France of necessity had to abandon its ancient language and speech, the reason that its language had to be completely reformed and renewed, the reason that it is precisely and in every respect a modern language. [2002] For a language has to be what the nation that speaks it is.

  It therefore follows from what has been said that the condition, the culture, the spirit of the French nation has to be rapidly and continuously and universally changing, and is subject to much greater and more frequent (in fact, constant) changes than that of other nations. And all the more so, the more it advances, and the more time passes, because the velocity of the human spirit, minimal at first, and hardly different from a state of rest, increases in proportion to space and to its own progress, etc., like the acceleration due to gravity.

  The same thing must therefore inevitably happen to the French language. It will have to be very unstable, changing frequently not only in its parts but in its character, because for the French nation what is modern today will soon become old-fashioned, for [2003] what was modern in the time of Louis XIV, when the present language was established, is so no longer. The language will need new reforms, similar to the reforms of that time. Thus of all languages, modern and ancient, it is the most susceptible to corruption, and, in fact, will inevitably suffer it, and very easily, because the spirit and the culture and the ideas of those who speak this language are most prone to mutation, and to the most frequent mutations and innovations. Nor will the French be able, so to speak, to place limits on the corruption of their language by having recourse to the study of the ancients, because they will never be able to write like the ancients, but only, and precisely, like the moderns. And they will never be able to imitate past writers in any regard because, being as they are always the same as one another, as their extreme sociability forces them to be, [2004] they never will nor ever do imitate anyone except their contemporaries. For the highest and necessary mark of respect for a Frenchman is to be perfectly similar to them in every regard.

  The same causes, moreover, that separated the French from the ancients at the time of the reforms1 will separate them (especially in language) from their classics, when these are old enough, as we can see they are already doing. (27 Oct. 1821.)

  For p. 1136, end. For all those reasons, the Greek language appears to have an infinite number of roots (as, for similar reasons, does the Italian language, which is closely related to Greek in that respect, as in all others), whereas, in fact, it has very few, as is necessarily the case in all languages. And some words that have the same origin [2005] or that are themselves a single root are considered radically different, that is to say, we believe that such and such a root is different from another, and it is the same (although one can no longer either prove or even detect it), we believe that such and such a derivative has no known root, and it does, that it is a root and it isn’t, that it comes from a different root than such and such other derivative, and it comes from the same one, etc. (27 Oct. 1821.)

  Hebrew, one could say, has absolutely no compounds, and has very few derivatives in proportion to its roots and to the immense number of derivatives that other languages have with the same collection of roots. That means, and is the proof and demonstration, that Hebrew has to be one of the most ancient languages. The use of compounds (which all the Oriental languages related to Hebrew like Arabic, etc., also lack, I believe) is not, in fact, very natural [2006] or easy to invent, and doesn’t seem to have been a feature of primitive languages, nor was it one of the first means by which those languages developed. In fact, the human mind finds the simplest means last, such as that of using a few elements to create a vast vocabulary, by combining them in very diverse ways. The same happened in writing, where at first it appeared that as many different signs were needed as there were things or ideas. So it is, therefore, in the case of roots, etc. But one of the first means—and a very natural and primitive one—by which human language developed is the use of metaphor, or endowing the same word with many meanings, that is, things in some way similar, or among which man found some analogy, whether close or distant. And in fact the Hebrew vocabulary abounds in metaphors, as do the other Oriental vocabularies. That is, almost every word has a forest of meanings, which are often [2007] very disparate and very distant, and among which it is hard to distinguish the proper, original sense of the word. This led to the vividness of the Eastern imagination, which brought together things that were far apart, finding the most abstruse relationships, and seeing similarities and analogies between the most disparate things. Besides, without this abundance of metaphoric meanings, and this accumulation of senses for each word, the Hebrew language and its relatives would not have enough for expression, and for communication, etc. (28 Oct. 1821.)

  For p. 1974. Of all languages, Latin is the least adaptable to modern things, because, having an ancient character, and being very precise and very distinctive, it has no freedom, contrary to the other ancient languages; hence it is not capable of anything but the ancient, and, unlike Greek, is not adaptable to the modern. So it turned out that it [2008] was corrupted very early, again unlike Greek, and also that, like French today, it ceased to be a universal language, commonly understood, and came to be used much more for civil and diplomatic purposes, etc., and to be employed by the cultured and the learned in place of the spoken languages. It had to cease, I mean, as soon as the times took on a definite character of their own, to which Latin could not adapt. That might not have happened in the case of Greek, and if in recent times it had been universal in Europe, as Latin was, and as it had been in ancient times, especially in the East, perhaps it would not yet have lost that quality, and we would still use an ancient language among nations, and would write in it, etc. In that case we would really be very happy, because of the infinite capacity, power, and adaptability of that language, [2009] combined with its beauty, etc., which make it equally appropriate and sufficient to both the imagination and the intellect of all eras. So it would have turned out if Greek arms had prevailed in Europe over Latin. And in fact German is very similar to Greek, etc. See below a thought of mine on this detail.1 (28 Oct. 1821.)

  For p. 1167, end. Fluitare [to float] indicates a participle fluitus, from fluere [to flow] (recognized as derived from this verb, and called its frequentative), in place of fluxus, from which fluxare would have been made. Fluxus is, in fact, an irregular participle. It seems that the regular participle would be flutus, as from induere we get indutus, and from the unattested nuere the unattested nutus, or the supine nutum, from which, and giving evidence of it, we get the continuative nutare, along with the verbal noun nutus (like jussus us, effectus us, sumptus us, ductus us, etc. etc., nisus us, visus us, etc., risus us, etc., situs us, positus us, etc., sortitus us, etc., victus us, etc. etc.), and thus adutare from adnuere, abnutare from abnuere, etc. And I [2010] believe in effect that the true, although unused, participle (or supine) of fluere was flutus, whence flutare, which is, in fact, found in Lucretius,1 but in the more modern form fluitare. Thus we can confirm the Lucretian reading that some question, changing it to fluctat and fluctuat. See also another example of flutare or flutari in Forcellini under fluta, which seems to be a feminine participle used as a noun, like the Greek ἁρπ
υῖα from the unattested ἅρπω.2 Perhaps also fluctuare was originally pronounced fluctare, and was only a continuative of fluere from another of its participles, fluctus, since I think fluctus us is a verbal form of fluere, as nutus us is of nuere, jussus us of jubere, etc., all of which in the nominative singular have the form of the participle in us of the verbs they come from. Or, rather, fluctare must come from the supine fluctum, etc. In ancient times, one said fluctus i, like jussus i, etc. The truth is that fluctuare comes from fluctus us, like effettuare from effectus us, and is not a continuative. See p. 2019.

  Likewise, funditare [to hurl] indicates the ancient [2011] funditus, from fundere [to pour], rather than fusus. (28 Oct. 1821.) See p. 2020.

  For p. 1201, margin. And it’s very strange that he1 very often falls into this error of calling verbs in itare frequentatives of the ones that I call continuatives, such as mersitare, from mersare [to immerse], and at the same time calls the latter frequentatives, which, indeed, is what he calls mersare. So the verbs in itare would be frequentatives of frequentatives. And what would that mean? It’s clear that he didn’t consider what I have noted, that is, that the frequentatives as well as the continuatives derive uniquely from the participles in us of their positives.

  Moreover, the verb in itare, as I have said [→Z 1113‒14], might sometimes have been formed from the continuative in are, when, in the course of long use (and this very often happened), the latter had taken on its own appearance and meaning, and that of a positive verb, a synonym of the one from which it derived, or not a synonym but, in fact, independent of it. (29 Oct. 1821.)