Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  On the corruption, degeneration, denaturing, deterioration, etc., of generations of civilized men, and the animals tamed, that is, altered, denatured, and corrupted by men, in that such deterioration comes from physical causes, and in that the civilization of man, etc., has a physical effect on generation, see the Discourse or Letter “del tempo del partorire delle donne” by Sperone Speroni, which occupies the 3rd place among his Dialoghi, Venice 1596, pp. 53–54, beginning.2 (1 October 1823.)

  “Δῆλον δ' ὡς καρτεροῦσι πολλὴν κακοπάθειαν οἱ πολλοὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων γλιχόμενοι τοῦ ζῆν, ὡς ἐνούσης τινὸς εὐημερίας” (prosperitatis, Vettori) “ἐν αὐτῷ καὶ γλυκύτητος φυσικῆς” [“For it is very evident that men will endure many calamities for the sake of living, as being something desirable and naturally sweet”]. Aristotle, Politics, bk. 3, Florence, Giunti, 1576, p. 211.3 (1 October 1823.)

  To what I have said [→Z 2194] regarding our usare, usar, user as continuatives of utor–usus [to use], add [3569] our abusare, abuser, abuser, continuatives of abutor abusus [to use up], and see if the Glossary has anything. Also disusare, ausare or adusare [to stop using; become accustomed to], etc. (1 Oct. 1823.)

  Cuso as, continuative of cudo–cusus [to strike]. See Forcellini and the things I have said [→Z 2809–10] regarding accuso, excuso, recuso, incuso, and similar. (1 Oct. 1823.)

  Curtare [to shorten] (cortar [to cut] in Spanish, accortare, scortare with closed o, accorciare [to shorten], etc., in Italian, accourcir [to shorten], etc., in French) comes from curtus [shortened]. So too also decurtare [to cut off], etc. But what is curtus? Is it merely an adjective, perhaps? No, sir, it is originally without doubt the participle (as suggested by its material form and the mode of its signification, and its usage absolutely and generally considered) of a verb of which curtare is the continuative. And this lost verb must have been curo or cero or ciro or something like that, from κουρεύω [to shear, to clip] or κείρω [to shear], meaning tondeo [to shear], scindo [to cut, to divide], abscindo [to tear off]. Curtare for tondere, see last example by Forcellini. This reference would not have been attempted by the critics, or possibly mangled by the scribes, if they had known and considered the sure etymology and formation of curtare which I state here based on the rules of my theory of continuatives. This etymology still indicates the literal meaning of curtare, [3570] that is tondere, which hitherto was believed at most to be metaphorical, and the literal meaning of curtus, which is tonsus [cut]. This verb, which is the origin of curtare, and entirely comparable to a Greek verb of the same meaning, is to be placed alongside the others I have shown [→Z 2146–48] through gustare [to taste], potare [to drink], and any other ones I may have mentioned, comparable to the Greek verbs πόω and γεύω [to taste]a which had the same value as those unknown verbs and their known continuative forms, just like κείρω has the same meaning as curto. And the discussion and reasons given for the verbs mentioned above may be repeated here in respect of this one. If I am not mistaken, and if it is legitimate to speculate, the form of this verb must have been curo is, curti, curtum, or cureo es ui tum, or even curo as curui curtum, like neco as ui ctum [to kill], seco as ui ctum [to cut], eneco as ui ctum [to kill], reseco [to cut loose], etc., the supines of which appear to have been contracted from necitum, secitum (and not from necatum, secatum), made in the same way as domitum from domo as ui [to subdue], cubitum from cubo as ui [to lie down, to recline] (see pp. 2814–15 and pp. 3715–17), etc. Hence the original and full form of curtus would be curitum, curitus. (1 Oct. 1823.)

  Risito from rideo–risus [to laugh]. (1 Oct. 1823.)

  [3571] For p. 3542. As well as the verbs ending in uare and the nouns ending in uosus, the nouns ending in ualis also belong to this discussion, always being made from nouns of the fourth declension or from nouns ending in uus, etc. etc., otherwise such nouns merely form alis. Manuarius [of or belonging to the hand], Manuatus sum [furnished with hands] (from manuo or manuor [to steal]), Mortualia [grave clothes], Mortuarius [of or belonging to the dead], Mortuosus [deathlike], Flexuosus [tortuous], Flexuose [tortuously]. Portuosus [having many harbors], saltuosus [full of woods or forests], flatuoso [bombastic]. Like ritualis [ceremonial rites], manualis [book coverings], tonitrualis [thundering], etc. etc., from ritus us, etc. And the other adjectival or substantive nouns, or adverbs, or any terms otherwise derived from them, which have the u in front of the ending of their own particular type, also belong to this discussion, whatever the ending or type, etc. (1 Oct. 1823.)

  For p. 3541. The primitive and literal meaning of spes [hope] was not to hope but to wait, for good or ill indiscriminately. See Forcellini under Spes, Spero, etc., insperatus [unhoped for], etc. Suetonius in his Julius Caesar, ch. 60, § 1, and hence also Pitiscus, the Greeks under ᾿Ελπὶς [hope], ἐλπίζω [to hope], etc., the Spanish under esperar [to wait for, hope, expect], inesperado [unexpected, unforeseen], etc. etc., the Italians under speranza [hope], sperare [to hope for], etc., insperato [unhoped for], etc. (nowadays, speranza, sperare, etc., are never used in civilized discourse simply to mean to wait for, and rarely in writing, but in vernacular, plebeian discourse, perpetual preserver of antiquity, very often and in fact more frequently than in our ancient writings, they are used in this way,a and also for an expectation focused on ill, that is fear, but in this case [3572] I believe it is used only negatively, or does not literally mean fear, merely the expectation of ill, even though this itself is naturally fear-inducing: like the phrase by a Spanish author, estavan esperando la muerte [they were awaiting death] does not mean that they feared it, although they certainly did, but simply that they were expecting to die, and esperar merely expresses an opinion or judgment regarding the future, not the pleasure or displeasure that comes to us from such a judgment or opinion, or the ill or good which will come or is expected to come to us from the future, or to the desire, or nondesire for it and resistance to it, etc., to which refer the term fear, etc., and the term hope, etc., also included in our sense, which means aspettativa con piacere, con desiderio [expectation with pleasure, with desire], etc. etc. The same may be said of Greek, Latin, Spanish, and old French, in which languages to hope, etc., does not literally mean to fear, as they say, although it is said of ill, but only to wait for. See Forcellini under Spero). Richelet under espérer, etc. This meaning, which is certainly the original and literal meaning of spes (not the one given to it by Forcellini) makes it more likely that spes is one of the original words, for aspettare [to wait for], aspettativa [expectation] is an idea which must have been one of the first to be named, and before that of hoping, etc., which is a species of waiting, and too subtle and metaphysical an idea, etc. etc. (1 Oct. 1823.)

  For p. 3077. It should be noted that the arguments I derive from such Spanish participles to show [3573] the ancient Latin regular participles, etc. (and this every time that I argue from Spanish to ancient Latin, Vulgar Latin, etc.), are all the more valid because, as French is the most remote and altered of the daughters of Latin compared to the mother tongue both extrinsically and intrinsically, as I have said elsewhere [→Z 965ff., 1499ff., 2989–90, 3395], so Spanish is the closest to it extrinsically (see p. 3818), whereas intrinsically the Italian language is closest, as I have also shown elsewhere [→Z 1499–504]. But our discussion here has little to do with the intrinsic. The Spanish language, which has inherited more from Latin than all of its sisters in terms of the external form of the words, and which when it is heard aloud or read on the page shows the external appearance and sound of Latin more than all other languages and can be mistaken for it, must be considered the special and main preserver of antiquity, of Latinity, of Vulgar Latin, etc., insofar as regards the material form of the words and the property of their inflections, etc., which is what we are concerned with here. This particular conformity with Latin may be noted everywhere in Spanish, but specifically, singularly, [3574] and perhaps more than anywher
e else, in the conjugations of the verbs, which is precisely what is of interest in our case. AMO, AMAS, AMAt, amamus (Spanish changes the u to an o, and this is the only change to have occurred in all of this time), AMAtIS, AMANt. If we read only the letters in capitals, we have the Spanish conjugation precisely. Which is still wholly Latin, except for the t being omitted in just three places,a and the u being changed to an o in just one, a change which itself is entirely Latin (vulgus–volgus, etc. etc. etc.), and, without doubt in this case too, either proper to the whole of the ancient populace which spoke Latin, or to many of its parts and dialects. Indeed, this change is not only proper to both Italian and French, in this same case again, but quite ordinary and virtually constant in almost all or the majority of other cases (in Italian especially), in endings, in the middle and at the start of words. V-u-lg-u-s–V-o-lg-o. So much so that amamos for amamus should not even be called a change by Spanish, not having been made by Spanish but within Latin itself, indeed even being no more than an accident in Latin, a quality, a way of pronouncing it. In other words, amamos is Latin, and Spanish in this word is pure (and ancient no less than it is modern) Latin preserved in Vulgar Latin, etc. The Italian conjugation has changed much more, and the French one much more than the Italian one. It is sufficient for our purposes that the rules and inflections of the Latin conjugation are especially preserved in the Spanish one, even though the elements of the verb which are not inflected [3575] and the rule of the conjugation have changed or been suppressed, etc. As leo has changed from lego. But as the conjugation of the former is similar to that of the latter, the omission of the g, of which the change in the former consists, does not weaken at all the argument that the corresponding Latin legitus can be shown from the participle leido. And you may say similar things about other cases and arguments, whether in relation to participles or to anything else which belongs to the general forms of the conjugation or other things, etc.

  It should be noted that the very special conformity with the Latin language referred to above, in which Spanish wins out over all other languages, was and is properly preserved by Spanish (see p. 3638), and that although conformity in what is intrinsic is of much greater importance than the extrinsic, nonetheless, while the Italian language wins out over Spanish in terms of conformity with the character of Latin, and over all the other modern languages too along with Spanish, this conformity cannot properly be said to have been preserved by it, but to have been regained, and not to have remained there naturally and spontaneously of its own accord, but to have been restored to it by art after having been lost. This recovery was in very large [3576] part the work of our men of letters, who modeled the Italian language on Latin. And this is what generally happens, that the character of each language is formed and determined by its literature. (It is of course true that the character of the literature corresponds to the national character, and it certainly could not go against the nature and inclination of the language, or, if it did so, it would not be successful, or would give rise to dreadful effects and ones which are short-lived.) But the extrinsic form can only be preserved naturally, and were it to be lost, would be almost impossible to recover (just as the intrinsic form of our language, whether one attributes it to the literature or to whatever one wants, must always be said to be not so much preserved as recovered). Hence one may truly say that insofar as its nature and the people are concerned, Latinity has been preserved better, to a greater extent, and more properly in Spain than in any other part of the world. (At least insofar as regards the words, the norms and the rules of their inflections and modifications, for with respect to expressions, even without going beyond the popular, it appears that Latinity remains and has always been preserved much more in Italy, as is [3577] reasonable, than in other places, where perhaps, speaking of popular expressions, what has been preserved among us was never even introduced, or was introduced a good deal less, or with differences originating from the native languages and diversity of climates and from other circumstances. Now, that which was never introduced, or in being introduced was different, could hardly be preserved.)

  Such marvelous preservation of such a special conformity between the Spanish language and Latin for so long a time, a conformity which exceeds even that preserved in the very cradle of ancient Latin, namely Italy, must be recognized as coming from the same circumstances that make or permit the Spanish, or have always made and permitted them, to be so tenacious in their institutions, customs, opinions, religion, etc., so stationary in their character, in their degree of civilization, so slow in their social progress, etc., that after the rapid course that was taken and sustained by other nations last century, Spain today, compared with the rest of Europe, appears to have more of the barbarian about it than the civilized (hence the famous saying, by Abbé de Pradt, I believe, that Spain, though it belonged to Africa, became [3578] part of Europe through a mistake of geography).1 Even the gravity and calmness of manners in Spanish individuals, the length of their ceremonies, of their preparations even for unimportant operations and similar things, are indications of the stability of their national character, customs, and opinions. For generally, as all things in nature observe the law of analogy, the individuals of nations which are slow with regard to social, literary, and other kinds of progress, and tenacious in their way of being, are slow to act and of restful character, and where the individuals are such, the nation is too, while the contrary is true in the opposite case. And the same may be said of every other national quality, which is generally found to be portrayed and almost epitomized in its individuals.

  Returning now to the matter at hand, the circumstances referred to above may be divided into geographical, natural, and historical. If we look at the first, the location of Spain, which is situated at one extreme of Europe making it relatively unfrequented by foreigners, renders the nation little prone to change. The second set of circumstances consists of the climate, and the national character with respect to the physical part. This in the Spanish is lazy and soft [3579] and desirous of rest and stasis rather than action and movement, or is certainly capable of contenting itself easily with rest, almost as if operating is impeded or made difficult for them. This is customary in hot and happy climates. “La terra molle e lieta e dilettosa / Simili a se gli abitator produce” [“The soft and happy and pleasant land produces inhabitants like itself”]. (Tasso, Gerusalemme 1, 62.)1 The historical circumstances match the ones mentioned above, and ordinarily are influenced and modified by them, hence they should be considered effects rather than causes. Nonetheless, this does not stop them from at times being causes. With reference to Spain, we find them to be at times the former and at others the latter, and so sometimes we find them as sisters of the effect whose origin we are seeking (I mean, the singular preservation of Latinity), sometimes as mothers.

  In the general flood of barbarians which plagued the cultured regions of Europe, Spain had only the Vandals (or the Ostrogoths), etc., I believe, who, moreover, stayed there for only a brief time, certainly much less than the Goths, Lombards, and all the various peoples in Italy who afflicted the country and established and maintained kingdoms there, etc. [3580] Spain had the Moors for a very long time, who were powerful and dominant. But the religions, languages, customs, and races of these foreign conquerors and the natives who were in large part subjects, never mixed with each other. Two races, two religions, two languages, two ways of life, in other words two quite different nations, contrary and hostile to each other, persisted the whole time in Spain, always separate and clearly distinct one from the other, despite always being adjacent to each other, materially confused with each other, and under the eyes of each other. The Mohammedan never recognized Christ, nor did the Christian ever recognize Mohammed, nor did the Arab give up his language for Spanish, or the Spaniard ever suckle any but his native tongue. An amazing thing this, of which I believe there is no other example, except for the Greeks and Turks, which still goes on and which I have considered elsewhere [→Z 1590–93] in speaking o
f the singular tenacity of the Greeks with respect to their customs, practices, etc., as to their language. A tenacity in which the Greeks possibly have no peer other than the Spanish nation, nor the Spanish possibly any other than the Greeks. The parity or similarity [3581] of the climates, the qualities of the skies and soils in both countries are also well matched. The qualities of the foreigners correspond too, both Arab, not originally, but in terms of the language (if I am not mistaken), and both Mohammedan in terms of religion, the Moors in Spain, and the Turks. Albeit with this difference in favor of Spain, that whereas the Turks, barbarian and quite ignorant, came to a civilized and learned country, and as barbarians reigned over a people that became barbarian and ceased to be cultured because of them, the Moors, who were not barbarian, came to a country that was quite unsophisticated, and themselves being almost civilized, reigned in a country far less civilized than they were. The Moors in Spain had a very extensive literature, and Spanish and foreign libraries are full of their works (some of them, like those of Averroes, were known by means of translations and famous throughout Europe). However, this did not mean they were able to introduce their literature (the only literature in Europe at the time) among the Spanish, or to leave it with them who had none of their own, or their civilization (also unique), or even with the help of this and their literature, their language. Nor, in Spain, half covered and dominated by foreigners of quite different language and custom [3582] who were civilized and literate, and that for a long period of time, were they able to stop the native language being preserved much better, insofar as the people is concerned, than in other nations which partook of the same language and which never had civilized or literate foreigners, and such barbarians as they did have, they either had for much less a space of time, or they were soon naturalized in terms of custom, religion, etc.