Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  For p. 1108. Amplexare and amplexari [to embrace], from amplexus, from amplectere and amplecti [to twine around] (one also finds amplectari, perhaps from a participle amplectus); and complexare, from complexus, from complectere. (4 Nov. 1821.) See pp. 2071, beginning, 2076, 2199, end, 2284, beginning.

  [2053] Vastness alone rouses a sense of pleasure in the mind, no matter what physical or moral sensation it comes from, or through which of the five senses. A large, expansive room whose ends one can barely see is always pleasing, especially if its vastness is readily taken in, is not interrupted by columns, for example, or other objects, which diminish the sensation. Vastness is pleasing, purely as vastness, even in the case of utterly unpleasant sensations, although if the unpleasantness is vast it seems that it should be worse, and in a sense it is.

  The vast has to be distinguished from the vague or indefinite. They please the mind for the same reasons, or for reasons of the same type. But the vast is not necessarily vague, and the vague is not necessarily vast. Nonetheless, these qualities are always similar in terms of the effect they have on the mind. That is because vague sensations, [2054] even if they derive (and they often do) from objects that are materially small and are adequately understood by the mind as small, being indefinite, have no boundaries. And vast sensations, even though the objects that produce them have clear boundaries, are always indefinite, because the mind cannot embrace them in their entirety, at least in a single point, and so cannot contain them, or succeed in fully grasping their boundaries.1

  All of this can be applied to the sensations produced by poetry, or by writers, etc., to the far away, to the ancient, the future, etc. etc. (5 Nov. 1821.)

  For p. 2052. From the nature of such styles (that is, of all great and true poets, more or less, and especially those who are notable also for their style) it must follow that many such images (sometimes contained in a brief phrase or in a single word, etc.) are only hinted at, and so [2055] their connections and relationships to the subject, or to other similar, relevant, linked, etc., images, ideas, judgments, etc., are only hinted at. And this, too, is pleasing, because it compels the mind to constant activity, to supply what the poet does not say, to finish what he only begins, to color in what he outlines, to discover those distant relations which the poet merely indicates, etc.

  et aridus altis

  Montibus audiri fragor.

  [and a dry crash being heard in the high mountains]

  Virgil, Georgics 1, ll. 357ff.

  What does crash have to do with dry? The mind must recognize it as the crackling sound of dry leaves in a wood. Thus the intellect must supply the connection between the ideas (only hinted at, in fact almost neglected, by the poet) in a very short phrase. And it must then complete the image that is only hinted at by that aridus fragor. (I do not know if my interpretation [2056] of this passage is correct. See the commentaries. It’s enough for me that this example explains my idea to myself.) In this way, the very suppression of words, of phrases, of concepts results in beauty, because it pleasurably compels the mind to action, and does not allow it to be idle, etc. etc. Those qualities in a style can easily become excessive, as in the seventeenth century. Then the mind feels no fondness for them, or at least not in all times and nations, etc. etc., since excess, like insufficiency, in this and everything else, is relative.

  Such styles, which, as I’ve said [→Z 2050–52], are at times certainly enough to produce a poet, are so difficult to distinguish from the subjects that you cannot say if such and such a piece written in such and such a style is poetic only because of its style or also because of its subject. Besides, it’s obvious that these styles demand liveliness of imagination, etc. etc., in the poet (and also in the reader), and hence poetic dispositions. If we were to look closely we would find few, very few, parts in the most poetic poems that, if these and similar qualities of the style [2057] they are written in were removed, would still be poetic. The imagination is not hugely different from reason, except in style or manner, when it is saying the same things. But reason would never know how or be able to say these things in the same way, only the true poet expresses them in such a manner. (5 Nov. 1821.)

  The lack of freedom and the exceptional definition and precision of the character and form of the Latin language may appear strange (1) in an ancient language, (2) in a language spoken and written by such a multitude and diversity of people and nations, (3) in the language of a very free people, which was developed, and adapted to literature, at a time when its freedom was, in fact, so excessive as to degenerate into anarchy. Certainly among the principal reasons for this, beyond those mentioned elsewhere [→Z 2014‒15], is the following.

  The Latin language, recognized as good, legitimate, and distinctly literary, was never anything but Roman—that is, the language of a single city—as long as it maintained its primitive form, and when it was applied to [2058] literature. Now, when the arbiter of a language is a single city, however vast, populous, and inhabited or visited by the most diverse types of people and nationalities, the language always assumes a restricted, circumscribed character, fixed within limits that are more or less extensive but always well-defined and recognizable. The language is uniform, balanced, in every way and necessarily loses that feature of remarkable and decisive freedom which is characteristic of ancient languages, fully formed or not, and of all languages that are not yet or not well formed. The formation of a language and a literature in such circumstances always introduces a strict uniformity, such as happens in France, where Paris, which is the center of the entire, vast nation, and is frequented by foreigners from every part of Europe—and is, moreover, the arbiter not only of customs but also of the national language and literature—gives the language and literature that same uniformity, [2059] that confinement, that limitation, that restraint which it gives to the spirit and to all other parts of society, and that neither the former nor the latter surely would ever have had without the enormous influence of a vast capital on the entire nation. See p. 2120.

  In Rome, the frequent, daily, public, and therefore cultured use of the Latin or Roman language, in the Senate, in the assemblies, in forensic matters—along with the immense, lively, tight-knit society that existed in that city, especially public society but also, particularly in the latter days of the republic, private—must have exercised, and did exercise, a strong and very definite influence on the language and on the literature. Now, wherever society and the spoken language exercise a strong, irresistible influence on the written language and on literature (as happens in France), both inevitably acquire a character of strict uniformity, [2060] and hence of constraint, of rigidity, lacking freedom, a character intolerant of individual innovations or distinct originality.

  The Greek language in its heyday was also much used in the market, in the assemblies, in the councils of optimates, but, in addition to the circumstances, the spirit was very different from that of modern times and from that of the time when Latin was formed, and so the same causes did not produce the same effects. The Greek language must necessarily have been, with respect to those uses, as various as the numerous republics into which Greece was divided, and as numerous as the homelands of the orators. As Greece was made up of many regimes (since every city was a republic), so it had many languages, and the public use of these could not impede diversity or introduce uniformity and rigidity, for it was necessarily varied itself and incapable of becoming uniform. Greece did not have a capital. It did not even have [2061] very close-knit societies, except in Athens. And in Athens, in fact, whose polished social customs raised it above other cities in matters of taste, culture, arts, etc., the Greek language was more developed, more established, less free than elsewhere, in spite of the variety of foreigners who flocked to that city, and its maritime situation, its commerce, its θαλασσοκρατία [control of the sea]. And when grammarians began to deliberately regulate the Greek language, and when, with regard to the Greek language, you began to hear one cannot, and compunctions,
etc.—all this had to do with the Attic language. But the different Greek dialects, all recognized as legitimate, having been used either fully or in part by the great writers; the very custom of the Attic language observed by Xenophon;1 and, finally, the fundamental character [2062] of the Greek language, which had been formed long before the rise of Athens—all these preserved it from enslavement. And as the Attic language prevailed, as philologists began to note and to condemn what in contemporary writers was not Attic, so the Greek language unmistakably lost its freedom. But this was carried out in a very lax manner, and largely failed, because the most heated promoters of Atticism, or the Athenians themselves (who readily used foreign words, etc., when they needed to, and even when they did not), reached the point of superstition, or petty tyranny, like our promoters of Tuscanism. (It should be noted that purism was just then emerging in the world for the first time.)1

  Parliamentary debates in England, though they were sufficient to give the language “quelque chose d’expressif” (“les débats parlementaires et l’énergie naturelle à la nation ont donné à l’anglais quelque chose d’expressif qui supplée à la prosodie de la langue” [“parliamentary debates and the nation’s natural energy have given English a certain expressiveness that supplements the prosody of the language”], Staël, Allemagne, tome 1, 2nd part, ch. 9, p. 246), [2063] were not sufficient to take away freedom from the language and literature of a people who are free by nature and who have no social life at all, in fact do not seem made for it, or for talking, but for silence, and where social life has no real influence on literature and little on public spirit, customs, etc. See p. 2106.

  The situation of Italy and Germany is precisely that of Greece in this matter (except that our vernaculars were not drawn on by good writers, as those of the Greek provinces and cities were). Germany takes advantage of this for the freedom of its language.1 We will not be able to if those who want us to restrict the language to Tuscan—in fact to Florentine—prevail. An absurdity, in a country that has no unity, and where no city, no province dominates, to want to introduce this tyranny [2064] into the language, which cannot essentially survive without a similar uniformity of customs, etc., in the nation, and without the tyranny of society, which Italy utterly lacks. An absurdity that Florence, which has never been the center of Italy (and which is now inferior to many other cities in terms of scholarship, writers, etc., and even in its knowledge of cultured language), should be the center of language and literature. And that in a country which not only is without a vast capital city, or any capital city (and so is lacking a single, coherent, society, or any norm or model of society), but is also devoid of any society at all, one would want to impose a control (in the case of language, which is the image of every human thing) more severe than that which a vast capital, an established center and image and model and type of the whole nation, together with a very tight-knit, uniform society, imposes on French language and literature. (6 Nov. 1821.) Certainly if there is a nation in Europe [2065] to whose political and moral and social constitution such control in the case of language is less suitable (and language depends entirely on social conditions, etc.), it is Italy, which, unfortunately, unlike Germany, is not even a nation or a country. (7 Nov. 1821.)

  The above-mentioned circumstances of the Latin language, reducing its freedom, as necessarily happens with all written languages and literatures strongly influenced by society, which makes them strict slaves to usage, as in France, must have made it so that the written Latin language and the literature, like French, could very easily be corrupted, or degenerate, or lose its original character or that of its formation. For usage changes continually, especially with the changing circumstances of peoples, as happened in Rome. The written language, and Latin literature, depending [2066] entirely on usage, must have rapidly changed in appearance, as I have predicted for French, and the situation of the Latin language and Latin literature confirms my prediction. And since, owing to circumstances, the writers who followed the age of Cicero and Augustus were not great, we (like those who at that time had good taste) call this change (which was also inevitable) in the Latin language and literature corruption, as we do, even more emphatically, the equally inevitable change that occurred and continued to occur in later times. In other words, the written Latin language had to change its form continuously from century to century, and so it did, but since the subsequent centuries were corrupted, and had few or no good writers and literary men (I mean good in themselves, like a Cicero or a Virgil), the changes that it inevitably had to endure, and did, are called, [2067] and were, corruptions. (7 Nov. 1821.)

  As the French language is enslaved, so too is French literature. It is the most enslaved of all literatures that exist or ever did exist (a natural quality in a literature with a modern character). It is unfavorable, or not very adaptable, to originality, and thus to true poetry, and so, too, it can hardly be called literature, since it is a servant to tradition and society, not to the imagination alone, etc., as it should be. Nor is it possible for the language to be enslaved and the literature not, since the opposite could not and cannot happen in any place or time. I am talking only about literature, which, along with customs (equally enslaved to society and uniformity in France, and hostile to originality), follows or accompanies the course of the language, and has all its qualities; not philosophy, which is not in this situation in France, or, owing to its nature, anywhere, since it has a [2068] model and a motive independent of any circumstances—that is, the truth, which cannot be influenced and is always free, etc. The same goes for the sciences, etc. (7 Nov. 1821.)

  Furthermore, the above considerations prove that while the French language (like Latin) and literature and French customs are by nature inimical to innovation, since they rule out originality and insist on uniformity, nonetheless, and for that very reason, the language (like Latin), literature, and customs are more subject to innovation than any other, and are changeable to the ultimate degree, as we have seen in the case of Latin, and as we see, similarly, in all that has to do with the French nation, the most changeable of all existing nations (in its general character as in the individual, and in everything else as well), and the constant teacher and source of innovation for other civilized nations. So there is an essential contradiction in the nature of this nation, language, literature, etc., or, rather, an elementary principle that necessarily produces two [2069] opposite effects. An inevitable source of weakness, corruption, instability, etc. (7 Nov. 1821.)

  For p. 1126, margin. One can see from the Italian language how true it is that the v was always, by the nature of human pronunciation, at least in our regions, either considered, or confused with, an aspiration, a light one, because Italian often eliminated the v completely, whether the word derived from Latin or from another language. And in words where it has been preserved common pronunciation often suppresses it, and so, often, does writing, as in the word nativo, from the Latin nativus, which we write indiscriminately natío, and in many other, similar words, Latin or not, which are written either both ways indiscriminately or always without the v they originally had—words like restío, which certainly was formerly pronounced restivo or restivus. Giulío for giulivo, Poliziano, bk. 1, stanza 6, l. 4.1 Bevo, beo, bee, etc. Devo deve, deo dee, etc. See the grammars, and among others Corticelli.2 Paone, pavone, etc. Conversely, often, in these and other [2070] words, people insert or, anyway, add, almost out of habit, the v (which should not be there), especially between two vowels, to avoid the hiatus, just as with the Aeolic digamma, which I say is the same as the old Latin v. Furthermore, as the Romans said audivi and audii, etc. etc., so our language has the recognized characteristic of removing the v from the imperfects of the second, third, and fourth conjugations, and we can say udia, leggea, vedea as well as udiva, leggeva, vedeva (that is, videbat, etc., since the Latin b is a v for us in such cases, as it often was among Latin speakers, and vice versa; among Spanish speakers, too, these two letters were at that time, and are still, confused). Characte
ristics analogous to the ones I’ve noted in the Italian language can be seen in French as well and, even more, in Spanish. Similarly, the analogy between the f and the v can be seen in French by observing that the masculine vif becomes the feminine vive, etc. etc. (7 Nov. 1821.)

  [2071] For p. 2052, end. Dissertare, exsertare, insertare, are from dissertus, exsertus, insertus, participles of disserere, exserere, inserere. Our concertare, concerto, etc., and the French and Spanish words seem to be a continuative of conserere [to connect] (see Forcellini under this word), originally said consertare. See the Crusca under consertare, conserto, etc. etc., and the French and Spanish dictionaries. Since they do not seem to have anything to do with pure Latin concertare [to contend warmly], from certare [to contend, to vie with]. The Glossary says nothing about consertare, consertus, etc., or about concertare, concertus, etc., and there is no reason to consult it. Our disertare [to destroy], etc., comes, as I’ve said elsewhere [→Z 1109], from desertus [deserted], etc. There also seems to have been a continuative of the simple serere [to bind together], that is, sertare. Martianus Capella has Sertatus regali majestate [wreathed in royal majesty] and is quoted by Forcellini, who explains sertatus as coronatus [crowned], serto circumdatus [surrounded by a garland]; sertare in the Glossary is explained as sertum imponere [to place a garland on], coronare [to crown], as if meaning that this verb is formed from the substantive [2072] sertum [wreath], or serta orum [wreaths], or from serta ae [wreath] (on which see Forcellini, Appendix and Glossary). But since this verb is found not only in the example offered by Forcellini but also in the other example in the Glossary, accompanied by an instrumental ablative, it must have been formed not from a substantive but from sertus, the participle of serere (sero, is, ui, ertum), and therefore sertatus is of a different nature from radiatus [furnished with rays], paludatus [wearing a military cloak], togatus [wearing the toga], which are typically not accompanied by ablatives but stand by themselves. Furthermore, although only the participle sertatus is found, and Forcellini has only that (the Glossary, however, offers sertare), I nevertheless believe that this sertatus, for the foregoing reasons, points to a verb, and is therefore a participle. Sertare in the sense of to close is from late Latin, and the Glossary has it, but it has nothing to do with our sertatus, nor does it come from serere; rather, it’s a mangled continuative of serare [to shut], and serare is recognized by Priscian. (Forcellini under sero, is, end.) (8 Nov. 1821.)