Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  (2) It is so wrong (see pp. 3451–52) or at least extraordinary for virtue to be the companion of fortune, that a virtuous person who is fortunate, a deserving person who obtains what he deserves (all the more so if such a person is extraordinarily deserving, if his virtue is truly exceptional, which these days is supremely damaging) almost exceeds the degree of exceptionality and singularity compatible with credibility, with illusion and that identification which the reader must establish with the events and characters narrated by the poet, with that similarity which the reader must find between those and present events, between those persons and himself, a similarity which he must, I repeat, find somewhere, in order to take some kind of interest in the poem. I have already spoken about this problem above, p. 3125. This equally will not pass away, indeed it is increasing and will continue to do so, it proves itself to be right and will continue to do so further with each passing day.

  [3134] (3) This is all the more true, because the idea which we have of virtue is so different from that which they had in Homer’s times. Virtue as it is generally conceived by the moderns has fortune as its enemy much more than that virtue conceived by the oldest ancients did, which consisted almost entirely, or at least for the most part, of strength and courage, qualities which very often, if not always, are followed (even today) by fortune, and are of considerable use in achieving it. So it was much more reasonable and appropriate in those times to choose as the hero of the epic poem, who had to be supremely virtuous, someone who was fortunate, because the virtue in respect of which he was required to prove himself excellent does indeed lead to fortune, and to show it as not having achieved its intention, would be to show it as imperfect, as though insufficient to produce what it normally did and insufficient for what it ought naturally to be used for and lead to. Especially since men are accustomed to judge on the basis of successes, [3135] and to make absolute estimations regarding the nature, qualities, degree, value, and intrinsic goodness of things from their effects. But virtue in its modern conception is, by its very nature, not merely not conducive to, but in fact prejudicial toward, good fortune. This argument is particularly relevant in more modern times, when moral ideas, as a result of Christianity and for other reasons, are more sophisticated, and the more useless they get the more sophisticated they become, and they become more perfect and subtle in theory, the more they separate themselves entirely from practice. But such considerations are also perfectly applicable, in due proportion, to Virgil’s times, and indeed, the virtue of Aeneas is immensely different from that of Achilles, and the type of perfect hero that Virgil imagined and tried to express was very different from, and in large part contrary to Homer’s.

  (4) Today, love of one’s own homeland and nation is virtually nonexistent. Even among the Romans at the time of [3136] Virgil it had cooled enough for hardly any of them any longer to consider their homeland as something that was individually their own. Unlike the older ancients, who saw it in precisely these terms, and as this gave rise to the enthusiasm that each of them displayed in acting on behalf of their own homeland, so it produced the great interest that each of them took in the glories of that homeland as sung by their poets. Such a spirit was no longer to be found among the Romans, and so they could take only a mild interest in the victories and praises of their most distant forefathers who in any case bore a name different from their own. (Trojans.) Homer sang to the free Greeks, and Virgil to the Romans, who following a very protracted and fiercely defended period of freedom, had become subjects once again, and moreover were tyrannized peacefully, for this was practically the most peaceful time in the history of the Roman empire, the period in which they were least concerned with freedom and least burdened by the yoke. I shall say nothing of modern nations. Let the facts speak for themselves, and let it be inferred from them how keen and [3137] long-lasting may be the interest that the national character of the undertaking and the Hero can bring about in an epic poem. When there is virtually no nationality in the nations. This applies above all to Italy.

  (5) Finally, the interest which a successful national Hero and undertaking is able to produce in an epic poem, cannot, it is clear, be universal nor can it be eternal, as I will show with examples below. The only form of interest that in epic poetry may be universal in terms of both place and time, that is, which is common to all nations and all ages, is that which is born of misfortune and in particular of unfortunate virtue, beauty, youth, even of unfortunate personal military valor. And this alone can also grip the reader, and remain with him for as long as he is reading, and stay in his mind for a long time afterward, like a barb left in a wound.

  But the only way there was of introducing this form of interest to the epic, the one used by Homer in the Iliad, as I have said, that of duplicating the Hero, the interest and poetic purpose of the entire epic poem, was not just [3138] willfully not embraced by the Epic poets subsequent to Homer. It was shunned above all else, as something that would have directly excluded that unity of interest, purpose, and Hero which these poets and Doctors, in their times and ours, held to be the primary and supremely indispensable quality of the epic poem.1 Not the unity, I stress, that is found in the Iliad, from which, however, the rules, norms, and type of epic poetry were derived, but unity as it was conceived, determined, and prescribed by later minds, through metaphysical sophistry and by considering the matter too technically and narrowly. Which is why, although much misfortune may have been recounted in each of the poems referred to earlier, and despite the fact that, given that there was a victorious and successful side in each of them, there must necessarily have been a defeated and unsuccessful side too, all these poets took great care to prevent tears from being shed in respect of such misfortunes, as Homer had done, and to avoid directing their poems in such a way that, [3139] right to the end, the victory of the fortunate side, although always desired and at that moment duly applauded by the reader, at the same time should be lamented and wept over by him in heartfelt fashion, hence awakening in his mind, both in the course of the poem and in particular at the end, that mixture of pain and joy (such keen contrast of passions and sentiments persisting in him even after the reading is finished) and other, similarly contrasting feelings, which supremely gives prominence to each of them and multiplies their force, and brings about in the mind of the reader a tempest, an outburst, almost a welling up of passions, that leaves lasting traces of itself and constitutes the chief delight that we receive from poetry, which above all should move and agitate us, and certainly not leave our minds in a state of calm and rest. The Iliad produced such wonderful effects most divinely, compelling its Greek listeners to weep over the death and funeral of Hector, slain by the weapons of [3140] their own forebears in a war which, as far as they were concerned, was just and waged with just cause (that is, to avenge Patroclus), and to join their laments with those of Andromache and the desolate enemy city already close to the final calamity which their own arms or their own armies had in fact brought upon it. A most sublime effect, conceived, designed, and produced by Homer in ferocious, semibarbarian times, which no other epic poet has been able to conceive in more civilized times. For in fearing to duplicate the sources of interest (which in fact was precisely what they would have had to do, and without which such a divine effect was not possible), they expressly and studiously avoided making the enemy side, or any character in it, unduly virtuous or in any way interesting, right up to the end. And they took even greater care to avoid directing the different threads of their epic poems in equal fashion at all times and ultimately tying them as much to the fate [3141] of the victorious Hero as to that of another Hero in many ways equal to, balanced against, and comparable to him, but who is defeated. Which is what Homer did, for in the Iliad Hector is, and is intentionally represented as, directly comparable to Achilles.

  Turnus occupies but a very slight part of the Aeneid, and is therefore so uninteresting that his misfortune and death have certainly never drawn so much as a sigh from anyone. There is deliber
ately more than one Barbarian Hero in the Gerusalemme, and all of them of exactly equal value,a so that interest is not aroused in respect of any of them, nor does anyone lament their deaths or calamities, nor do the threads of the poem lead to any one of such deaths and disasters. What is more, given the spirit of his time, and given that in this case Religion appeared to proscribe, as indeed it is wont to do, and confuse impartiality with impiety, Tasso could not help but portray the enemies of the Christians as having odious traits (some more so than others, but generally odious, and particularly Solimano and Argante).1 Hence in the taking of Jerusalem no one feels in any way the misfortunes and disaster of that infidel city, nor [3142] is its taking described or narrated with the aim of moving the reader to compassion, nor in such a way as to enable compassion ever to be occasioned, even by accident. The same can be said about the defeats of the pagan or Mohammedan armies. And similarly other modern epics.

  It was not that Virgil and the others wished and intended to strip completely all valor, every virtue and quality from the side in opposition to the victors. Indeed, as it was understood better in their day than at the time of Homer that he who is victorious not through fortune but through virtue, is much more worthy of praise, the greater the virtue of the vanquished side is, they continued to wish enemies also to be represented expressly as virtuous in many parts or as worthy of respect or praise, both all together and as distinct characters among their number. But in so doing, they very studiously avoided allowing interest for the enemy or any individual member thereof to come anywhere near matching that which they wished to inspire in their readers with regard to the victorious side and Hero. In which they succeeded most excellently, beyond even their own intention, for where they wanted [3143] to transmit but a little interest to this or that enemy character or the enemy side, in fact they transmitted none whatsoever.

  These are the forms of the epic poem, and these are the rules and the procedures followed and employed on the one hand by Homer, and on the other by the epic poets who, so to speak, were born from him. Having thus compared the forms, the idea and, if we wish to put it in these terms, the reasons and intentions of the poets, now let us consider them more generally and compare their respective effects.

  Today interest in Achilles and the Greeks who feature in the Iliad is minimal or nonexistent, as I have said, for its readers are no longer Greeks. Nonetheless, interest in the Iliad is most keen and consistent, and continues even after the reading is completed. This interest is in Hector and the Trojans. Readers of all nations, even after so many centuries, even after so many changes have been undergone by the human spirit, are effectively and continuously interested when they read the Iliad. All of them are interested only in the Trojans and Hector, that is, in misfortune; and this form of interest [3144] is reduced, principally and as if to its main point, to compassion. This, then, is the dominant and final sentiment which, when we experience it in the Iliad, we describe as its main source of interest. This is what moved Cesarotti to call the poem The Death of Hector, as I have mentioned [→Z 3113–14], measuring the character and the primitive, proper, and true intent of the poem from the effect that it produces in us over such diversity and distance of time, nation, opinion, character, and custom. In the Aeneid, the interest generated by compassion is absent. When I say absent, I mean in terms of the final interest. What is conceived with respect to Dido, Nisus, and Euryalus are episodic interests, which accompany us for but a small part of the poem, which have no connection with either its substance or purpose, to the extent that these episodes may even be cut, without the texture, or the principal and final effect, of the poem being in any way thereby affected or altered. Interest in the successful Hero, that is, in Aeneas, and the successful side, that is, the Trojans, must have been slight from earliest times, [3145] as I have shown above, and nowadays is less than slight. And this despite the fact that the reader of Virgil almost cannot help but transfer his interest from the unfortunate, defeated Trojans in the Iliad to the fortunate Trojans of the Aeneid. Hence the Iliad, in addition to having given birth to the Aeneid, to having nourished it and caused it to grow with its own milk, so to speak (I mean, in the sense of having furnished it largely with its subject matter and materials, or provided it with its rationale, and also having brought to it the means and methods of treating it, and its ornaments, etc., i.e., the model and imagery, the forms of its inventions, its order, poetic style, etc.), supports it and helps it even today, communicating part of its own interest to it, warming it with its own fire, echoing down to the Aeneid and influencing it and branching out into it and virtually watering it with the emotions which the reading or fame of the lliad inspired. Hence if the Aeneid inspires any interest as to its main subject, it should also be noted that the greater and perhaps indeed greatest part of it does not, properly speaking, belong to it, but comes to it from outside, and is totally accidental and extrinsic to it, not internal or essential, nor is it [3146] born from it, but was born elsewhere and previously. This is not to be confused with the proper and native interest of the Aeneid. On these accidental interests, see pp. 2645–48.

  The Lusiads would certainly have been of interest to Portuguese readers, and may still be so today, nor can the unfortunate Camoens be praised sufficiently for having chosen a subject so strictly national, and, what is more, for having been able to adapt it, and turn a topic as modern as it was at the time into the subject of his poem, a quality which on the one hand produces extreme difficulties that to many appeared to be insurmountable in the epic poem, while on the other it is extremely capable of contributing to produce or singularly increase the interest of an epic poem, as it would equally of a play or any other kind of poem. But for readers of other nations, I do not know how great the interest in the Lusiads could be, or whether among the Portuguese themselves, now the recent memory of these exploits has waned, and as in the rest of Europe national pride and other such magnanimous sentiments have grown cold, the Lusiads can continue to produce an interest that is sufficiently [3147] keen, continuing and enduring.

  That spirit of Italy and Christian Europe toward the infidels (and, let us say it again, toward Christianity) which I have described above, which prevailed at the time of Tasso and in earlier times, which worked so powerfully in him, which inspired and produced the Jerusalem, has now disappeared completely and is quite lost, and in this sense our conditions throughout Europe have changed totally. Interest in the Gerusalemme today is accordingly nonexistent. What I mean is that the Gerusalemme no longer truly has any final or main interest, that is, it no longer inspires that interest which it mainly and essentially sets out to inspire. For there is no longer any room for such an interest in the minds of its readers, utterly changed as they are, nor can such interest be found any longer in anyone, as circumstances have changed and indeed have virtually been reversed. This despite the fact that the Gerusalemme at the time inspired a good deal of interest, possibly more so than the Aeneid in its day, indeed an interest that was universal among cultured nations, [3148] whereas interest in the Aeneid could only be national. Nor certainly did the Gerusalemme fail to achieve its purpose. But it is not for this reason that it is no longer able to produce such an interest. There are many episodes and sources of interest, which are not part of the main purpose, in the Gerusalemme. There is the episode of Olindo and Sofronia, which is born of misfortune. There are those of Erminia and Clorinda, which are born of misfortune. Then there is that of the Dane,1 it too born of misfortune, and, it should be noted, from misfortune involving the very side that proves to be victorious and successful, namely the Christian party. In this connection the beautiful and extraordinary talent granted Tasso by the spirit of his time should be considered, that is to combine compassion with happiness, to enable the latter to be born from the former, to preserve the extreme unity required of epic poems by taking a successful Hero and yet making him the object of compassion. An alliance which was impossible in ancient times, and which is difficult and to little good e
ffect today. But the Christian opinions which flourished at the time, in locating [3149] the real happiness of man in the next life, in making it independent of life in this world, in considering temporal misfortunes as advantages and true good fortune, in teaching that the most blessed man is the one who suffers for the sake of righteousness and faith and God, and even more so he who dies for love of them and because of them, gave Tasso scope to depict a character as being successful and having attained his desire and purpose, who, having also been represented as unfortunate in temporal terms and magnanimous in his misfortunes, etc., could also be made supremely compassionate and tender. Nor did he behave differently with respect to the Dane, whom he did not take to be unfortunate, but in fact most fortunate, in that he died, and died generously, for the sake of God, but at the same time he wished to make him, and succeeded in making him, the object of compassion and tenderness, as a result of his temporal misfortune and death, which he went to and bore with such fortitude. But he chose to avail himself of this right, and the opinions and provisions of his time, with respect only to characters of secondary importance (such as the Dane and Dudone),1 [3150] and in episodes. He wished to make his main hero fortunate not just in eternal but also temporal terms, and wanted the chief undertaking to be successful not just according to heaven but also according to earth. In this, however, I do not dare to question his judgment, nor can I criticize him if he believed that metaphysical dogmas (which are also least in keeping with, and indeed contrary to, nature, and which force nature unduly) should not have much influence on poetry, nor that they could be much use in producing good, beautiful and splendid effects through poetry. For they truly had little impact even in his day on the actions and almost inconsequential opinions of men, nor were they able at any stage to change human nature, which the poet must keep in view at all times. In truth, two types of opinions and dogmas, one distinct from the other, and which scarcely communicate, possessed the intellects of men in the age of Tasso and the centuries prior to it. One was Christian, the other natural; the former almost entirely ineffective [3151] and inactive, the force of which did not extend beyond the intellect, and within whose limits its existence was confined; while the latter, being effective and active, spread out from the intellect to influence and move the will, and govern operations and life. For men are always moved by opinions, nothing other than opinions can alter their voluntary actions, nor is there a voluntary human action that does not derive from an opinion, that is, from a judgment of the intellect. But the human intellect is capable of holding opinions and dogmas simultaneously which are in direct contradiction with each other, and capable also of holding them in full knowledge of their mutual and irreconcilable contradiction, as was the case in those times. Very different from the earliest age of Christianity, when only one kind of opinion prevailed among minds, that is, opinions of religion, and was effective, and extended to the will and the conduct of internal and external actions, and of life. But this period lasted much less time than might otherwise be supposed [3152] by whomsoever is unfamiliar with ecclesiastical history, or has not reflected upon it, or whoever allows himself to be influenced by the names or the language used in narrating it. It lasted very little time at all, or, if nothing else, very soon became quite rare. Moreover, it is necessary to distinguish in every era, nation, and individual between effective opinions and the ineffective which are confined purely to the intellect. The former may sometimes be useful for poetry, other times not (such as the present, see pp. 2944–46), sometimes more so, sometimes less; the latter, hardly or not at all. I refer to opinions that in themselves are related to the practice and conduct of life, not to others, which are outside this present discussion. E.g., those opinions, illusions, etc., ancient or modern, which, deriving from the imagination or experience, etc., persuaded or occupied, or persuade, etc., the intellect, and although by virtue of their nature they have nothing to do with the practice of life, and have no influence on the will and are ineffective, may nevertheless be useful to poetry and greatly so.