Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  The poet has to show that he has a far more serious purpose than to awaken images and make descriptions. And even when this is his principal intent, he must strive to achieve it as though he did not really care about it, and must let people think that he is not striving to achieve it, but to be aiming for more serious things instead. But he should describe in the meantime, and introduce images in his poem as things which are of little importance to him, and as if they flow naturally from his pen, and, so to speak, describe and introduce images with gravity, with seriousness, with no show of taking pleasure in them or having studied them deliberately, or having given thought to and taken care over them, or intending the reader to dwell on them. This is what Homer, Virgil, and [3480] Dante do, who despite being absolutely full of the most vivid images and descriptions, give no sign that they are aware of this, but allow people to think that they have a much more serious purpose instead which is all they are concerned with, and to which continually festinent [they hurry]; which purpose is to narrate actions and their event or outcome. Whereas Ovid does the opposite. He does not disguise, let alone conceal, but displays and, so to say, proclaims what he is, that is, that he has no greater or more serious intention, indeed that he aims at nothing other than to describe and to inspire and disseminate images and sketches, and to figure and represent the whole time. (20 September 1823.)

  I noticed a disgustingly egoistic old man take pleasure in speaking of certain very small sacrifices and voluntary sufferings he had made or endured (whether these were true or false, and whether they were truly voluntary or not), and do so with almost a certain modesty, which demonstrated well, especially to anyone who knew the character of the person concerned, that he was persuaded he was doing and enduring things that were heroic, and that those sacrifices and sufferings showed he had a greatly superior mind, and that he was capable of denying himself and his own self-love. He was very keen that this was how he should appear to [3481] others, which is why he spoke of such things, but he made it known equally clearly that this was indeed his own opinion. The desire to appear so in the eyes of others and his own, to appear capable of great sacrifice, to appear above such things as self-love, the opposite of egoistic, in other words a hero, was able to do this much in a mind so utterly rooted in the most complete and unabashed egoism, intolerant of even the slightest inconvenience and capable of sacrificing anyone or anything to his own slightest convenience; was able to do this much, I repeat, in a mind such as this was in fact, which moreover was entirely inert, solitary, and completely separated from society. At the same time, it is also true that virtually no man can be found who is so impudently and perfectly egoistic in his deeds, that he does not greatly desire to appear to be a hero at least to himself, and does not effectively persuade himself that he is one, and does not delight supremely in his opinion that he is one. For to esteem oneself is pleasing to all, and we may be sure that all esteem themselves in one way or another, even considerably, in the same way that they also love themselves continually, which means at all times, without interruption, [3482] even though self-esteem (like love, as has been shown elsewhere [→Z 2488–92]) may be greater or lesser in the same individual according to different circumstance and causes. See also p. 124, pp. 3108–109, and pp. 3167–69. What I say here about old egoists may equally be applied to children, who are extreme egoists and as yet unaware of heroism, for no one has yet mentioned it to them, but they nonetheless desire many small glories, like being ill or making others believe that they are so as to get attention within the family, and in some way being like adults, which they generally and continually aspire to resemble in thousands of ways, purely out of vanity or perhaps I should say ambition, etc. See Alfieri on himself, when he performed military exercises as a child.1 (20 Sept., Vigil of the Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 1823.)

  In Greek tragedians (as in the other ancient poets or writers, too), we do not find the same minute details, the same particular and distinct description and development of passions and characters so typical of modern dramas (and also other long poems and compositions), not merely because the ancients were far inferior to the moderns in terms of their knowledge of the human heart, which everyone knows, but because the ancients were not strong on detail, and did not care for it greatly, indeed they scorned it and avoided it, and precision and minute detail were as untypical of the ancients as they are typical and characteristic of the moderns. This in the way and for the reasons I have explained elsewhere [→ Z 1482–83].

  In addition to which, the moderns seek to arouse interest in their plays by making their readers or audience relate to the characters in them, by causing the readers [3483] to see and contemplate themselves, their own hearts, affections, thoughts, misfortunes, situations, circumstances, and sentiments, in the characters in the play, and in their hearts, affections, situations, etc., almost like seeing a very faithful reflection of themselves in a mirror. We may be sure that the intentions of the Greek tragedians, especially the very oldest ones, were very different and in a certain way the opposite. Such an effect was too weak, soft, intimate, covert, and subtle for either the most ancient poets to aim for or for their listeners to experience, or, having experienced it, to take pleasure in it. Consistent with the nature of less civilized peoples and times, in drama the spectators looked for, and the poets sought to achieve, an effect that was much stronger and bolder and more éclatant [brilliant, resounding], sensations that were much prouder, more vigorous, and more prononcées [marked, pronounced], impressions that were much greater; and at the same time less internal and spiritual, more material and external. The Greek tragedians sought the extraordinary and marvelous in misfortunes and passions, almost like Lord Byron does today (albeit with much greater awareness of both one [3484] and the other), quite the opposite of what was required to make them relate and correspond, intelligently, to those of their audience. Misfortunes and horrible and unusual cases, atrocious crimes, unique characters, unnatural passions, were the Greek tragedians’ preferred subjects. This was certainly their intention, even though the selection, invention, and imagination did not always fully match the intention, sometimes more, sometimes less, more in some writers, less in others. But generally speaking and above all, I repeat, the most ancient of the Greek tragedians sought or preferred the superhuman in vices and virtues, in wrongdoing and fine or valorous actions, in situations or fortunes: precisely the opposite of modern tragedians, who seek the most human they can find in all such cases. Hence the ancients turned above all to the fabulous, hence the corresponding apparatus for the stage and the actors; hence not merely the subject but the method of treating it, of directing the drama, of weaving the plot, of providing the resolution, all had to match the poet’s and his audience’s intention, which in the latter was to receive and in the former to produce one of the most vivid, [3485] the most poetic, etc., sensations. Hence also the episodes had to correspond to the nature of this purpose and drama, hence the furies being introduced to the theater (in Aeschylus’s Eumenides), who caused women to miscarry and children to freeze (see Fabricius, Barthélemy, etc.),1 hence the subjects which for the most part were remote from the spectators in terms either of time, place, or customs, etc., despite the fact that so many poetic subjects were offered to the Greek tragedians not just by national but by patriotic history, and not even patriotic but contemporary history, etc. etc.2 Hence the improbabilities of every kind, the gaps, the improvisations (in truth made with less art, variety, etc., than they would be by the moderns, and with less than they are in modern drama and novels of intrigue), the frequent interventions by Gods or semigods, etc. etc. Modern dramatists, like the other poets, novelists, etc., set out to act on the heart, but the ancient tragedians, no less than the other ancients, set out to act on the imagination. This observation, which cannot be denied, is sufficient to judge how much the characters of ancient and modern drama differ in their essence, by what different standards one and the other should be judged, how absurd it is to
take modern dramatic poems as an artistic, etc., parallel for ancient ones, as though they belonged to the same genre, which is quite false. The ancient tragedians sought no more than to place before their spectators’ eyes and imagination a kind of seething volcano or some other [3486] such terrible phenomenon or oddity of nature which has nothing to do with those who were watching it. So they represented these misfortunes, these wrongdoings, these passions, these exploits, as though they were fearsome meteors which the spectators could contemplate with no fear of being harmed, experiencing the pleasure of wonder and the frightful which is unable to harm, but without finding or having to find any correspondence or similarity between these misfortunes, etc., and their own or those of the people known to them, indeed even of those who were like them or individuals from the same species.

  It may therefore be inferred from these observations why the detail, the degree, this precision in depicting and developing and conducting the passions and characters found in modern tragedies is absent from the ancient ones, and why it is vain to seek them and moreover to claim to have found them, or indeed even anything remotely similar to or like them.

  These observations may also in part be applied to ancient comedies, especially the type [3487] which was originally common in Athens and was later called old (ἀρχαία). Not even this form of comedy aimed at making the spectators relate to the characters, save for some in particular who were expressly represented in them as caricatures. It also aimed at acting on the imagination, an intention that is quite alien from modern comedy, and also from that which in Greece was referred to as the new (νέα) or second (δευτέρα) comedy, of the kind written by Terence the translator of Menander, who was its leader. Hence in the old comedy there were strange, not natural, poetic, fantastic inventions; allegorical characters such as Wealth, etc.; frogs, clouds, birds;1 improbabilities, extravagances, Gods, miracles, etc. The old comedies were not strictly actions (δράματα), but imaginative satires, satirical, dramatized fantasies, that is, put into dialogue—like those of Lucian, in which everything corresponds to the pattern of the old comedies, apart from their range, personality, and other such, not qualities, but external, accidental, arbitrary, etc., circumstances, which do not affect the nature of the genre, etc.2 (20 Sept. [3488] 1823, Vigil of the Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary.)

  For p. 2928, margin, end. From falsus [false], an adjective made from the verb fallere [to trick], come the Spanish word falto (unless this is a contraction of fallito, which I doubt, for in this case the Spanish would say faldo, from a form falido), and the noun falta substantive for falsa, and hence also faute in French, i.e., falte. And from falto or falta as the case may be, comes the Spanish verb faltar for falsare as we say in Italian, and which was still said in Latin (see Forcellini), for which the French say fausser; and for fallare or fallire in Italian, faillir in French, fallere in Latin. Faltar la palabra in Spanish [to break one’s word], fausser sa parole in French, falsare la fede, Speroni, Orationi, Venice 1596, Oration 8 against the Courtesans, § 2, p. 195, or fallire la promessa [to go back on a promise], ibid., p. 198, end,1 falseggiar l’amore for mancar delle promesse fatte in amore, abbandonando una donna per amare un’altra, o amando un’altra insieme, malgrado delle parole date [to fail to keep promises made in love, abandoning one woman in order to love another, or loving another at the same time despite giving one’s word]. Speroni, Dialogue 1, Venice 1596, p. 9, beginning. See p. 3772. For examples of analogous phrases, see Alberti under faillir. See the Crusca and the Glossary. (21 Sept., Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 1823.)

  Many timid persons are also very brave. I mean that many of those who lose courage in society neither flee from nor fear dangers [3489] and harm and fatigue and suffering, etc., and even willingly confront it, and cannot cope with the friendly or indifferent looks of those whose threatening aspect and hostile arms they would happily face down in combat or duel. Timidity, so to speak, belongs to the ills of the mind, while courage belongs to those of the body. One fears harm and pain that is internal, the other braves external harm and suffering. One revolves around the spiritual, the other around the material. Indeed, timidity is so far from excluding courage that in fact it favors it, and from it one can deduce with all likelihood that the man who is afflicted by it is courageous. For timidity usually fears shame, which is often and easily confronted by those who fear and flee danger. Hence to fear shame, which is an internal ill, so to speak, an ill of the mind as it gives no harm to the body or external things, and works on thought alone and gives no annoyance to the senses, means that a man is not frightened of external harm, and does not flee from and if necessary faces up to danger and even the certainty of suffering it, putting external and material ills or dangers before internal and spiritual ones, [3490] and the soul, so to speak, before the body, and wishing to suffer in the body, in possessions, etc., rather than in the spirit, and to die rather than to suffer the pain of shame. For this, and nothing else, is what such courage consists of, which comes from the feeling of honor and its effects. Which courage has its origins and foundation in, or rather is itself, a kind of timidity, or certainly a type of quality which is the opposite of effrontery, impudence, and shamelessness. (21 Sept., Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 1823.) See following page.

  There is no truly sublime feature in an oration, whatever it might be, in which the work does not cede to the material, that is, in which the sublimity and worth of thought, imagery, and the like do not very greatly outstrip the nobility, elegance, and worth of expression and style. At a point where sublimity is required, one sole virtue can and must go hand in hand with loftiness of concept, and that is simplicity, or perhaps we should rather say naturalness and the appearance of nonchalance.1 (21 Sept. 1823.)

  [3491] “Θαυμαστὸν οὐδέν ἐστι μὲ ταῦθ' οὕτω λέγειν” (Isaac Casaubon writes οὐδὲν ἐστί με), “Καὶ ἁνδάνειν αὐτοῖσιν αὐτοὺς καὶ δοκεῖν Καλῶς πεφυκέναι· καὶ γὰρ ἁ κύων κυνὶ Κάλλιστον εἶμεν φαίνεται, καὶ βοῦς βοΐ, ῎Ονος δὲ ὄνῳ κάλλιστον, ὗς δὲ ὑΐ” (the same reads “῎Ονος δ' ὄνῳ κάλλιστόν ἐστιν, ὗς δ' ὑΐ”) [“There is no wonder in my teaching this, that citizens please citizens, and seem to one another to be beautiful: For so one dog seems to another dog the fairest object in the world; and so one ox seems to another, ass to ass, and swine to swine”]. Epicharmus, the comedian of ancient comedy, native of Kos but lived in Sicily, a contemporary of Hiero the tyrant. Fragment reported by Alcinus in Diogenes Laertius, in Plato, bk. 3, § 16, p. 175, Amsterdam 1692, Wetstein. (21 Sept., Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 1823.)

  Rasito as from rado is–rasus [to scrape, to shave] frequentative. The continuative form is found in French, that is, raser, which has survived instead of the positive form which is missing in that language. (22 September 1823.) See also arrasar in Spanish.

  For the previous page. Those who are timid (that is, fearful of shame, prone to δυσωπία, mauvaise honte [bashfulness]) are not merely capable of not fearing or fleeing danger, harm, sacrifice, but are capable even of seeking it out, desiring it, loving it, craving death and procuring it with their own hands. The same moral or physical qualities which often lead to timidity (these include, among other things, reflection, delicacy, [3492] and profundity of spirit, etc.—see pp. 3186–91—which is why Rousseau was so overpoweringly and irreducibly timid),1 also lead to boredom with life, disillusionment, unhappiness, and thus also desperation. It is truly astonishing and wretched, no less than it is true, that a man who does not only not fear or flee death but desires it supremely, a man who despairs of himself, who already counts life and all human things as nothing, a man who is even resolutely determined to die, yet fears the sight of men, should lose heart in society, take fright at the risk of being ridiculous (a risk wh
ich is always before him, and the thought and fear of which is what makes him timid), and not have the courage to undertake anything that could improve his condition or make it less miserable, and this for fear of worsening that life by which he no longer sets any store and of which he despairs, which to him seems like it cannot become any worse, hating it so much already as to desire supremely to be released from it, or to want determinedly to throw it away. It is astonishing that a man who desires or [3493] has resolved to die, a man who places his best hope in not being, who can find nothing better for himself than to renounce all things, should consider that he still has anything left to lose, and what is more, something so important that he should be so supremely afraid of losing it, and that this opinion and fear should make it impossible for him to be bold and to throw himself desperately into that life which he in no way esteems; that he should prefer to renounce everything decisively and to lose all things, than to put himself in danger, as he believes he is, of losing that one thing which is reputation and others’ esteem which the timid man at all times fears losing by dealing with others in society, but which he is well aware that he does not have or that he will lose by being timid. Yet in spite of this, he is rendered incapable of boldness by the continuous fear of losing, and the continuous and anxious concern to preserve, that which he realizes he does not possess, which he is well aware he will either necessarily lose or will never be able to acquire save by laying down that continuous, excessive fear or that continuous, excessive concern. All these wretched and strange contradictions [3494] and all these accidents occur (in proportion, to a greater or lesser degree, etc.) in timid people, the more so the more delicate, etc., their spirit is, a delicacy that is often the only or the main cause of timidity. But as for still fearing shame in desiring death or being willing to procure it, this is explained when we see that this form of courage, which is not born from physical causes, or from natural action or habit or acquired by lack of reflection, but is born of reflection accompanied by the sentiment of honor, and of delicacy of spirit (not from coarseness, like the other type is) does indeed prefer death to shame, and is much more fearful of the latter than it is of the former, that it in fact chooses the former unblinkingly and deliberately, and places not living before the pain of living in shame. (22 Sept. 1823.)