Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  They boast1 that the German language has such capacity and potency that not only can it imitate at will the style and manner of speaking or writing used by any nation, by any author, in any kind of discourse or text, not only can it imitate any language, but it can actually turn itself into any language. Let me explain. The Germans have translations from Greek, from Latin, from Italian, from English, from French, from Spanish, of Homer, of Ariosto, of Shakespeare, of Lope, of Calderón, etc., which not only preserve intact (or so it is said) the character of the author and of his style, not only imitate, express, represent the genius and the character of the language in question, but reflect line for line, word for word, syllable for syllable, the lines, the constructions, the precise order [2846] of the words, the number of the same, the meter, the number and rhythm of each line, or clause of the period, the imitative harmony, the cadences, all possible qualities both extrinsic and intrinsic, that are to be found in the original. These translations are consequently not imitations, but copies as faithful as is the copy of a canvas executed on a wooden panel, or one of a fresco painted in oils, or the copy of a painting done as a mosaic, or perhaps even as a copper engraving on the same scale as the original picture.

  If this is so, and it certainly cannot be denied, the sole explanation must be that the German language does not have a character of its own, or that its own character is not to have one, beyond which limits it cannot pass, which amounts to the same thing. That a language, no matter how rich, various, free, vast, powerful, flexible, tame and malleable it may be, can receive not only the impress of other languages but, so to speak, the entirety of all other languages into itself; that it makes short work of the liberty, the infinite multiplicity, the immensity of the Greek language, and after having wholly embraced it, and swallowed all its innumerable forms, it finds that it still has as much capacity as before, and can and does receive at will all the forms [2847] of the languages that are most irreconcilable with Greek itself (which adapts itself to so many) and with one another, that is, the forms of the Teutonic, Slavic, Oriental, American, Indian languages; such a thing, I maintain, cannot humanly happen, save in a language that does not have character. It has not happened with Greek, which has been and is the most free, vast, and powerful, and the most variously adaptable of all the formed languages that are known. It has not happened and it does not happen, in any other perfect language in this world so far as is and has been known.

  My argument runs as follows. Every nation has its own character, distinct from that of all the others, just as each individual has, and such that no other individual will ever prove to be perfectly identical. Every perfect language is the most vivid, the most faithful, the most total image and history of the character of the nation that speaks it, and the more perfect it is, the more exactly and completely it represents the national character. Each step a language takes toward its perfection is a step toward complete conformity with the character of the members of that nation. My question then is: do the Germans not [2848] have a national character? Certainly they do. Perhaps they have not yet developed it, so that being still unformed, it is capable of any configuration, and cannot readily be distinguished from that of the other peoples? On the contrary, it is highly developed, because their civilization is already at a high level. Perhaps it is so various, so fleeting, so pliable, so adaptable to every kind of quality that it embraces all the characters of the other nations, and can conform to all of them? Quite the reverse, because the character of the German nation is very marked, and so consistent that its defect is perhaps to incline to roideur [stiffness], to a certain rigidity and hardness, and to be too lacking in softness and malleability. But even if it were in fact the contrary (as it would be up to a certain point with Italians), I would be content for the German nation to have any character whatsoever, and one that offered enough distinctive features to prevent us confusing it with another, let alone with any other. If, then, the German nation has a character of its own, if in being civilized it cannot help but have one, if all the civilized nations have one and cannot fail to have one, [2849] the German language, if it is formed, and furthermore, if it is perfect, must be an entirely faithful and complete image of this character, and consequently itself have a character, both determinate and consistent, and such that it cannot be confused with that of another language, and such that it cannot admit the character of another language, even if similar to it, let alone exchange its own character with it. But the German language, without doing any violence to itself, admits the constructions, the forms, the expressions, the harmony, not only of related languages, not only of the northern ones, but also of the most alien languages, of the most ancient ones, of the southern ones, of the formed and the unformed, of those that belong to nations that as regards customs, opinions, governments, physical constitution, climates, and the eternal laws of nature are utterly disparate, and indeed wholly contrary to the actual character as consistently manifested and certain of the German nation, in short, of all possible languages past and present and, so to speak, future. The German language is therefore not formed, is not well defined, let alone perfect.

  Speaking of adaptability or malleability, and of the variety and liberty [2850] of a language, we need to differentiate between imitating and reproducing, or remaking, things through words. A perfectly malleable, varied, rich, and free language can imitate the genius and the spirit of any other language, and of any author in it, it can emulate and represent all of its various intrinsic properties, it can adapt to any genre of writing, and always vary its manner to suit the variety of such genres, and of the languages and authors it imitates. Among perfect languages ancient and modern, Greek is the one supremely capable of doing this, and of the living languages it is, in my opinion, Italian that is supremely capable of the same. I therefore maintain that the latter and the former are both of them aggregates of several languages rather than being one language, which is not to say that they do not have a character of their own, but rather that they have a character that is composite and capable of as many manners as they please. This is what imitating is, as when someone depicts from nature in marble, while not changing the nature of the marble into that of the object imitated. It is not copying or remaking, as it is when from a wax figure someone produces another wholly [2851] identical, also of wax.1 The former is a worthwhile activity, in part because of the difficulty involved in reproducing an object in a material of a wholly different nature, the latter is crude and banal because of the sheer ease of it, which strips it of any wonder, and so far as language is concerned it is damaging, because it is contrary to the form and nature and actual essence that it either has or should have. When they imitate in the former manner, it is things that are imitated, that is, the spirit, etc., of the languages, of the authors, of the genres of writing. When they imitate in the German manner, it is the words that are imitated, that is, the material forms, the constructions, the word order of another language (which a perfect language, indeed a formed one, should never be able to do, nor can it by its very nature do). And probably it is these latter features that are imitated, and not the actual things, that is, they do not manage to express the character, the force, the quality, the genius of the language and of the original author (though they claim to do so), precisely because in another, utterly different language they imitate, indeed copy, the words. Mme. de Staël also shares this opinion, in a passage that I have reproduced elsewhere [→Z 94] from the original letter to the Biblioteca Italiana, 1816, no. 1.

  [2852] A translation into Greek done in the German manner, a translation where one does not imitate but copies, or I mean where the words are imitated when in translations it is only the things that should be imitated, is that of the sacred books in the Septuagint.1 Now the Greek language itself, a language inordinately flexible and free, despite being a structured and perfect language, nonetheless turns out to be in this translation (certainly done in a good early period) wholly barbarous and at odds with itself, and not Greek. Furthermo
re, even though the remoteness of the times, and the scarcity of grammatical information, etc., and the difference in customs and in character, mean that not even by reading the Hebrew originals can we fully judge and appreciate their characteristic style, and the true genius of the language, nonetheless we can be absolutely certain that this style and this genius is in no way represented by the version of the Septuagint, that it is not what we hear when we read it, that Greeks, whether contemporary or later, did not hear it, and that it was in short very far from having on the Greeks the same effect, or any remotely similar one, or even one analogous to [2853] the effect the originals had on Hebrew readers.a Yet that is precisely the purpose of translations, and precisely what the Germans claim fully and precisely to attain with their method. After all that, it should be said that the translation of the Septuagint, which is barbarous on account of its excessive extrinsic conformity to the original, is very far from conforming as scrupulously and totally as the vaunted German translations do to their originals.

  A perfect language that is completely free, etc., and has the other qualities mentioned above, contains in itself, so to speak, all the other languages in a virtual sense, but can in no way ever contain even one of them substantially. It has what is equivalent to what the others have, but not precisely what the others have. With its forms it can represent and imitate the rhythm of the others, while all the time remaining the same, and all the time identical, and retaining its character distinct from all, but not take on the forms of others in order to counterfeit their rhythm, dividing up and multiplying into a thousand languages, changing [2854] face and features from one moment to the next, and in such a way that either one can never know and determine which is its own, or one can never deduce the latter from those it assumes, nor represent it in them.

  It is a widely known and well-established fact that southern peoples differ in very essential and crucial aspects of character from northern peoples, as do ancients from moderns, not to mention the other secondary subdivisions and minor differences in national characters. It is an equally incontrovertible fact that the character of each perfect language is precisely identical to that of the nation that speaks it, and vice versa. This is also undoubtedly and universally true of literature. Well then, the notion that a northern language might be able, without in the slightest way damaging itself or differing from its essence, not only to imitate, or even copy, the character of any southern language, but also to take on indiscriminately its constructions, expressions, harmony, as of any northern language, or the idea that a modern language might be able to do the same, indiscriminately, to any ancient language [2855] as it might to any modern language; this, in rerum natura [in the nature of things], and assuming that the principles of universal logic have some value in particular cases, is impossible when the latter language is formed and determined, and much more if the assumption is that it is perfect. Furthermore, this same point, according to all rules and speculative theories of literature, according to all the teachings given hitherto by observation and experience in these matters, is contradictory in itself, it not being possible for such a language when it is exactly counterfeiting the characteristic and peculiar forms and expressions of another characteristically different language to represent its genius and character, and preserve its spirit; it always being seen in particular cases, as is borne out by general speculative causes, that such a cause produces an opposite, indeed a diametrically opposed effect, even when languages that are related, and similar in character, are involved. But setting aside this point, and returning to the first impossibility, I maintain that the particular character of a language is always by its very nature exclusive of the other characters, just as that [2856] of a nation is, when it is formed and complete; that what is impossible for a nation is impossible for language; that if the German nation by its nature cannot assume the precise and proper character of the French, if it cannot assume their customs and manners without harming the national character, without ruining itself, without becoming affected, and revealing itself to be composed of contradictory parts, and giving a sense of unseemliness, of strain, of violence done to its own nature,1 by the same token the German language, if it already has a proper and certain form, if it has character, if it is perfect, cannot by its very nature counterfeit and duplicate the character of the other languages, and cannot without the disadvantages alluded to above and other yet greater ones, when renouncing its own forms, assume the forms of foreign languages in translations.

  Setting all that aside, I maintain that in a language that truly has that capacity, the translations of the kind the Germans boast of merit little praise. They demonstrate that the German language, [2857] like a piece of wax or a soft and shapeless paste, is ready to receive any shape and impression you care to give it. Apply to it the forms of any foreign language, and of any author. The German language receives them, and the translation is done. This work earns the translator no great praise, because there is nothing so very wonderful about it, for neither the preparation of the paste, nor the fabrication of the stamp that he applies to it, is due to him. He is as a consequence simply a servile and mechanical worker, because where there is too much facility there is no place for art, and the value of imitation does not lie in identity but in similarity. Nor is the value greater the closer the imitator gets to the thing imitated, but rather the closer he gets to it in terms of the qualities of the material in which it is imitated, and the worthier this material is. And it is greater, furthermore, the more creation there is in the imitation, that is to say, the more creation the maker has imparted to the resemblance the new object has to the one imitated, that is, the more this resemblance derives from the maker rather than from the material, and the more it is in the [2858] art than in the material, and the more it owes to genius than to external circumstances. Nor can such a work greatly enhance a language, nor serve to enrich it, or to vary it, or to shape and define it, both because it is bound to lose these impressions and these forms as readily as it receives them, and for the same reason as it so readily receives them, and because these latter in their multiplicity harm each other, cancel each other out, destroy each other, and prevent each other from effecting a lasting fusion and establishing a common nature with the language; in the first place, because this excessive multiplicity is incompatible with the sort of unity of character that a language, even an immense one, ought to have, especially when they differ markedly from one another or are mutually repugnant; and also because a large part of these forms or impressions, being utterly alien or wholly contrary to the national character of the Germans, and to that of their literature, cannot help but harm their language, and ruin it, or inhibit it or delay its taking on and resolutely [2859] embracing and retaining the sole form and character that can suit it, that is, the one that conforms to the character of the nation and of the national literature, without which form—perfectly defined and perfectly received by it in order to constantly preserve it—that language will never be complete and perfect.

  I will conclude by saying that if the German translators (very great and highly learned men of letters, and often men of genius) really do achieve the effects that I described at the beginning of this thought, which I firmly believe is the case so far as extrinsic features are concerned; if they nevertheless do no violence to the language, an idea which I believe to be a lot less true than people say; if in short the German language, as regards the qualities discussed above, is as others have argued, which is something I’m not convinced about; then the German language as applied very late to literature, and indeed vast and immensely various, both because of its ancient origin and because of the sheer number of individuals and range of peoples who speak it, is not yet either perfect or formed and sufficiently [2860] defined. I therefore also conclude that it is still too soft through being too fresh; that with time and perhaps soon (because of the great ardor, activity, and tireless literary endeavor of that nation) it will acquire the firmness and certainty that befits each langua
ge, and the specific form and defined and stable character and personality, and the kind of perfection that befits it, and with the degree of characteristic unity that is an inseparable aspect of the perfection of any language, as of any nation, and perhaps of whatever is, if nothing else, human; and also that then it will be able to be and will be utterly free, vast, rich, powerful, flexible, capable, immense, and immensely various, equal in these qualities if abstractly considered, and even superior, if you wish and if it is possible, not only to the Italian but actually to the Greek language itself, but it will not therefore have or will not in any way retain those extravagant and unprecedented capacities delineated above. And those translations that now are praised and celebrated, rather on account of their readers’ mathematical than of their literary taste, or so I believe, and rather as curiosities than as works of genius, [2861] rather as a panorama1 or an anatomical model or an automaton, than as a statue by Canova, rather measuring them with a compass than savoring them and tasting them and comparing them to the originals with the palate, those translations will, I maintain, seem to Germans not to be German, and at the same time to be incapable of giving the nation the idea of the originals, being alien to the language and characteristic of an epoch of imperfection, and immaturity. (29–30 June 1823.)