Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

Apart from which, even had it been possible under the late empire to give the ancient harmony to discourse, even had this harmony been well known [2829] (which by this time it was not), their altered and corrupted taste had and could not help having an effect on harmony as well. Ancient harmony therefore would not have been pleasing, without cadences, without clamor, without refrains, without echoes, without thundering, without effrontery in the handling of rhythm, sweetly and shrewdly varied as such harmony was, etc. All the opposite qualities gave pleasure and were celebrated in those times. You only have to read the discourses or declamations or progymnasmata,1 etc., and the actual epistles of the sophists, Libanius, Himerius, Choricius, etc. This also obliged them to give words a different tone to that of ancient times. Furthermore, even had they not lacked the will, they would have lacked the boundless art required for the correct management and use of metrics. Hence they are always insolently monotonous, etc. (27 June 1823.)

  I have said elsewhere [→Z 999] that modern Greek is incontestably more similar to ancient Greek than Italian is to Latin. Among the many features it is enough to note that one of the things that particularly distinguishes modern languages from ancient ones, and among them Italian, Spanish, etc., from Latin, is the fact that the modern ones lack cases for nouns, which [2830] would by itself be almost enough to differentiate the special character and the spirit of our languages from that of the ancient ones. Now modern Greek retains the same cases as ancient Greek. It still retains the use of composition effected by means of single vowels and prepositions and particles. But all the proof you might need can be gotten by casting an eye over a page of correctly written vernacular Greek, whereupon you will recognize the very visible and, I would say, almost total resemblance it has to ancient Greek, and how much greater it is, indeed, of a quite different kind from the resemblance that links Italian and Latin, since this latter mainly consists of words and roots, and the former, in addition to these, in large part consists of the character and the spirit of the language. I have said correctly written, because there is certainly as great a gulf between modern Greek written or spoken by someone ignorant and that written by an educated man, as there is between the latter and ancient Greek. See the contract in barbarous modern Greek published by Chateaubriand in the Itinerary.1 But this is only natural, and happens in all languages and nations, and certainly the ancient Greek that was spoken, even by those who were not plebeian, and that was written [2831] by the ignorant, was quite different from the Greek the learned wrote, just as rustic Latin differs from the illustrious kind. See p. 2811. Cultured modern Greek, since it is both the case that every language can be cultured and no uncultured language can be of any worth at all, could certainly become a beautiful, effective, rich, powerful language, and perhaps, on account of the large part it retains both of the wealth and of the qualities and nature of ancient Greek, it could also become a language superior either to all or to many of the modern fully formed and cultured languages. (27 June 1823.)

  Grace derived from the extraordinary and from contrast. Very often grace, whether of the figure or of manners, derives from a beauty and propriety in whose parts there really does not exist any contrast, but which nevertheless arises from particular parts that do not normally harmonize and fit together, although in this particular beauty and in this particular circumstance they may fit; or from parts that are not normally combined, although when they are found together, they do always harmonize; whence this beauty is different to the ordinary kinds, although it is true beauty, that is to say, utter complete propriety and harmony. In such a circumstance the contrast [2832] is extrinsic and accidental, not intrinsic. In such a circumstance grace derives precisely from beauty, but not from beauty as such, but from beauty that is not ordinary, and of a different kind from the others. Thus in this circumstance too grace derives from the contrast, not of the parts of which the beautiful consists, but of the whole, that is of this particular beauty, with ordinary beauty, and from the surprise that man experiences seeing or appreciating a beauty different from the one he is accustomed to regarding as such, which produces in him a contrast with his ideas.1 This circumstance, from which grace arises, is not rare. All those physiognomies or figures of people, which are perfectly harmonious, and which nonetheless are not ordinary, or in which we do not normally find harmony, or in short are of a kind different from that of most beautiful physiognomies and figures, are in some respect graceful. And the circumstance is more frequent and more readily encountered in manners, which admit more variety than do physical and natural forms, and are able to harmonize in many more ways than the aforesaid forms.

  [2833] Grace, in these circumstances too, is always relative, that is to say, in relation to the contrast those particular forms or manners make with the habits and ideas that the spectator has regarding the beautiful. This contrast may be greater in one person, and less in another, and nonexistent in yet another, and hence elicit a sense of a greater or a lesser grace, or else this sense may not be elicited in any way. And this variety may also be in one and the same person in different times and circumstances, habits, and ideas. Whence it may happen that the same person but in a different time, or a different person but in the same time, regards as graceful qualities that are just the opposite of the ones they had previously considered graceful, or that the other person does. And the grace I am discussing may be such for a larger or a smaller number of people, for the majority or for a few, for those of one city or nation or for those of another, for country or city people, according to whether the extraordinariness of that particular beauty and harmony is greater or lesser, more or less visible, with respect to what [2834] the majority recognize as beauty, or to what the few, etc. Although I have here considered this grace in relation to the figures and manners of persons, the same argument could and should be applied to all other objects capable of beauty and of grace, in many of which the circumstance of grace being the daughter of a beauty out of the ordinary will be far more frequent and likely than it is in the forms and manners of men. (27 June 1823.) See p. 3177.

  Wherever there is no beauty, there is no grace either. I mean with regard to men, because beauty and ugliness are in all kinds of things, but men only make judgments about them, and have a sense of them, in certain things. And only in those where they can have a sense of beauty can they likewise have a sense of grace and conceive of it. And so too vice versa, wherever there is beauty, there is grace too. Which is not to say that you cannot have one without the other. But the kind that is capable of one is capable of the other. And by beauty I mean the sort that is properly and philosophically [2835] such, that is to say, the sort that is propriety, not the others improperly called beauties. (27 June 1823.)

  Pascitare from pascitus ancient participle of pasco [to feed] then contracted to pastus, like noscitare from noscitus then compressed into noscitus (just as from suesco you get suetus, etc.), on which verb noscitare I have commented elsewhere [→Z 1113, 1167, 2826]. (28 June 1823.)

  Emptito or emtito a frequentative from emo-emptus emtus [to buy]. No one in Plautus, Casina 2, 5, 39 would read empsitem for emptitem if they kept firmly in mind the theory and the grammatical formation of frequentatives in ito, and their derivation from participles or supines, and not from anywhere else.1 (28 June 1823.)

  I have supplied elsewhere [→Z 1505–506], with regard to synonyms, some examples of words that in the daughter languages of Latin have ended up with their own meanings which are very far removed from those they had in Latin, and among them the verb quaerere (querer) [to seek] which in Spanish signifies velle [to want]. Add the example of the Latin verb creare (criar) [to bring forth, to produce] which in Spanish means to rear, educate, both it and its derivatives, crianza, criado, etc. (28 June 1823.)

  [2836] “Solae communes natos, consortia tecta / Urbis habent” (apes), “magnisque agitant sub legibus aevum” [“They” (the bees) “alone have children in common, hold the dwellings of their city jointly, and pass their lives under the majesty of the law
s”]. Georgics, bk. 4, ll. 153‒54. Here the verb agito is as continuative as can be; and truly I don’t know how anyone can make so bold as to say that in this and similar passages it is frequentative. (28 June 1823.)

  I have shown elsewhere [→Z 1808, 2640] that early poets and writers in each and every language could never be elegant where language was concerned, because they lacked the principal material for this elegance, namely, words and expressions remote from ordinary usage, and these did not yet exist in the language because there had been no writers and poets on whom they might draw, and who might preserve the words and expressions that were already in use. So it is that when a language is first written, it is simply what there is in everyday use. All that was already in use, and then fell out of it, is forgotten, there having been no one to preserve it, which is what writers do, and there were none yet. Taking more than a certain number of words or forms from that language whose literature serves as a model for the new one (as the Italians could have done from Latin) is far more dangerous in those early days than in those that follow (despite what the pedants reckon). Indeed, one cannot, because when the literature of a nation [2837] first arises, that nation is naturally ignorant, and therefore the writer or the poet, if he did this, would not be understood, and literature would not gain a foothold, would never be propagated, would not grow, would never become national.1 Furthermore, the poet would seem to be affected. See in this regard p. 3015. This also holds good for words of the same language that are more than a little remote from ordinary usage, whether because they have fallen out of use (even if it were possible for the writer himself or the poet to have ways of knowing them, since writers up till then were lacking), or for any other reason. One must appreciate that the nation in that period is ignorant, and does not study, and would not read a particular piece of writing or a poem, even if written in the vernacular, if its words or expressions were not within its reach, or that it could not understand without studying. And only a slight difficulty, only a minor abstruseness in words or forms is enough to exceed the capacity of the entirely ignorant, such as almost all are at that stage, and of those who are used to anything but study. For this reason I have said elsewhere [→Z 1808–10, 2639–40] that all or almost all the earliest poets and writers, and always or for the most part, both in language and in style, tend toward the familiar. And this occurs both in order to adapt to the capacity of the nation, and—since they lack, as has been said, the principal material for [2838] elegance in language—as a result of them being forced to adopt a domestic and unassuming language. And not wanting the latter to jar and clash with style, they are likewise forced to keep it, so to speak, neither too high nor too low, and to make it familiar. So it comes about that these poets and writers also seem familiar to their successors, when their words and forms, having already become quite remote from everyday usage, have also acquired what they need to be elegant. And for this reason they are already employed as such by the nation’s writers and poets, in the loftiest styles. But since they were not yet elegant at the time of those poets and writers, they had to assume a tone and a style adapted to inelegant words, and an air and a manner that was by and large domestic and familiar. These things still remain, and these qualities can still be heard, as in Petrarch, although elegance has overtaken their words and their expressions which previously did not have it, as has happened, and supremely so, to those of Petrarch. These considerations may be applied, and these effects may be discerned, especially in poets, not only because the earliest writers in a language and the founders of a literature [2839] are in the main poets, but because, since they lack the aforesaid material of elegance every bit as much as the prose writers, this lack and the familiar style that results is far more evident in them than in prose, which has no need of words or phrases that are very remote from everyday usage in order to be elegant with an elegance that is proper to it, and must always retain a dash of the familiar. Thus it happens that the style of Boccaccio, though it too is familiar, now and then strikes us nonetheless as less familiar, and gives us a stronger sense of elegance and refinement than that of Petrarch, and displays less nonchalance,1 which however is very beautiful in Petrarch. So it is. As far as the materials available to them in the language are concerned, the condition of poet and prose writer in that period is the same (by contrast with our own times, in which we have very gradually acquired a wholly distinct poetic language). The prose writer finds that he has little less than what he needs, and also nearly as much as he needs for a measure of elegance. The poet, who finds that he does not have any more than that, has to settle for a style and a manner that resemble prose. And in actual fact the familiarity that we are aware of [2840] in the earliest poets can be defined very well if we say that their style, without however being too low, because everything in them is well proportioned and well matched, has the feeling of prose. As in Caro’s Aeneid, which, even though it is not a very early poem, was virtually the first stab at a heroic poem in a language that was not yet believed to be capable of it, as he says himself,1 and may in a certain way be called primitive in the heroic genre and style.

  The whole of this argument about primitive poets and writers in a language is meant to apply to those who really merit the name of poets or writers, and not to those very early and very crude ones, in which there is no flavor either of familiarity or of elegance, nor of anything else that is definite and that can be clearly picked up, aside from insipidity, since they do not have a formed, developed, consistent, and uniform language, style, manner, or character. And this argument particularly applies, and the effects noted above principally occur, when in the first beginnings of a literature such great intellects emerge that they either create it [2841] almost in one fell swoop, or they drive it so far forward from the place in which they found it that it seems to all intents and purposes to be their work. This circumstance occurred in Greek literature and in Italian.a Because when a literature is formed very gradually, and with such steady progress that none of its steps is out of proportion to those preceding it, the effects mentioned above are less obvious, and less easy to see. For elegance in words and expressions have already been made possible through the abundance of writers and the enrichment of the language that allows for choice, and the nation is already capable and cultured and studious, before the literature manages to produce a lofty and perfect thing, and a great intellect makes use of both resources, that is, the language and his fellow citizens. (28 June 1823.) See pp. 3009, 3413.

  Participles in us of active or neuter verbs, and not deponent ones, in an active or neuter sense, in the style of those of deponent ones. Dissimulatus a um, pransus a um, impransus a um, coenatus a um, incoenatus a um, potus a um (from the ancient po or poo, on which see elsewhere [→Z 1118–19]) appotus a um, iuratus a um, coniuratus a um, iniuratus and the like, solitus a um, insolitus a um, suetus a um with its compounds, hausus (Forcellini haurio, end). See page 2904 end, 3072. Esus a um, ventus a um [2842] in Plautus, gavisus a um (gavisus sum, for the ancient gavisi). See Forcellini both under these participles and under their verbs, especially under coeno, edo, venio, etc. (28 June 1823.) Obstinatus a um; obitus a um, and other compounds of eo, like interitus a um, paeteritus a um. Placitus a um, like gavisus. See Forcellini. See p. 3060.

  Continuatives of the daughter languages of Latin. Diventare [to become], Italian, from devenio‒deventus. Sepultar [to bury], Spanish, from sepelio‒sepultus. This verb sepultare is used by Venantius Fortunatus, an Italian poet and writer of the sixth century, Carmina, bk. 8, in the Hymn “De vitae aeternae gaudiis.”1 (Glossary Du Cange.) Pressare [to press], presser, prensar, oppressare, oppressé, soppressare, expressar, etc., from premo‒pressus. See the Glossary. Tritare [to grind] from tero‒tritus. The Glossary. Tritare, Frequenter terere, Johannes de Janua, i.e., Genoese, 13th century, author of a published Dictionary.2 Cautare, incautare from caveo‒cautus [to be on one’s guard]. See the Glossary, Gozar [to enjoy] Spanish from gaudeo‒gavisus. It was formed in the late empire from ga
visus gausus, whence gosus, whence gosare, and gozar. Or from gavisus gavisare, gausare, gosare, gozar. In ancient Latin-Greek glosses we find gaviso‒χαίρω [to rejoice at, to take pleasure in]. See the Du Cange Glossary under Gavisci, and also under Gavisio, Gausida (goduta the substantive) and Gausita. See therein also Gauzita, where you already find the z of gozar. From this, or from gavisio, gausio, gosio, indeed from gavisus us, gausus, gosus I believe that the Spanish gozo, godimento was formed, rather than from gaudium. Gozar, like our godere and the French jouir, is very often a true continuative of gaudere, as much for the meaning as for the form, being equivalent to frui. The verb jouir, jouissons, jouissez, jouissent, etc., must have come likewise from gavisare, before this latter had changed into [2843] gausare, and the i disappeared, which is missing in gozar, but nevertheless it is more disfigured. You can say the same of joie, jouissance, joyeux, etc., and of gioia, gioire, etc., which come from there. Pransare or pranzare [to dine] Italian from pransus from prandeo whence the Latin frequentative pransitare. Incettare [to buy up] not from a barbarian incaptare, as Giordani thinks at the beginning of the letter to Monti, Proposta, vol. 1, part 2,1 but precisely from an inceptare, with the a in captare changed into an e by virtue of composition, as in attrectare, contrectare, detrectare, obtrectare, etc., from tractare or from detractus, etc., from detraho, in affectare, etc., from affectus from afficio which comes from facio, in coniectare, subiectare, obiectare, etc., from coniectus from coniicio which comes from iacio, in descendo, ascendo, etc., from scando, in occento from occentus from occino from cano, in aggredior, etc., from gradior, in accendo, incendo, succendo from candeo or from the unattested cando, see p. 3298 and in many similar ones, though more generally and more regularly, the a of the first syllable in disyllabic verbs (see p. 3351) changes by virtue of composition into i (and you may wish to look at p. 2890). Incepto from inceptus from incipio is an altogether different verb. From capto, or certainly from capio come excepto, receptor, accepto, intercettare, discepto, etc., which also change the a into e, and do not form excapto, recapto, etc. See pp. 3350 end, 3900, end. Avvisare [to direct the mind] in its proper sense (see the Crusca under avvisare, §§ 1, 2, 3) is a genuine continuative of avvedere [to realize, to feel] in its original sense. But it cannot be formed from this Italian verb, which has as its participle avvisto and avveduto, not avviso. It must have been formed from advisus from advidere, which verb is today not to be found in Classical Latin. See p. 3034. In late Latin, however, we find the verb advidere meaning avvertire, which I believe is metaphorical, [2844] and with this and similar meanings the verb advisare and avisare. See the Du Cange Glossary. The French and the Spanish also, who do not have the verb avvedere, have aviser and avisar, but use them in these metaphorical senses in which we likewise use them. I believe that it is only in our language, and chiefly in our ancient authors, that this verb occurs in its proper sense where it is more directly continuative of its original verb advidere. We also say avvistare, and it is roughly equivalent to avvisare in its proper sense, or closely approximating to it. See p. 3005. Advidere should strictly speaking mean adspicere, oculos advertere, [to look at] and hence also animum advertere [to pay attention]. (In the example that the Glossary gives, I cannot decide if it means animadvertere, or commonere, as the Glossary explains.) In which sense, avvisare taken in its proper sense is its real continuative, expressing the same action, but lasting longer. Much the same may be said of adspectare. We only use advidere as a reciprocal, that is to say, a neuter passive verb, always however with a meaning like those given above, or such that it is relative to the eyes that actually see, or to the mind that considers and knows something. If you want to have a good laugh and see again just how many gross errors have been caused by the scant knowledge we have had hitherto regarding the formation of Latin [2845] and barbarian Latin verbs from the participles or supines of other verbs, take a look at the fine etymology of advisare that Hickesius gives in Du Cange, in the Glossary. Look also at the Crusca under avvisamento, § 3, and under avvisatura. (29 June, my birthday, 1823.) See p. 3019.