Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  I say elsewhere [→Z 2009–10, 2145–48, 3733–34] that verbal nouns in us us derive from the supines, etc. Note the supine in u. This does not seem to be anything other than the ablative of the verbal noun in us us. So that I believe that likewise the supine in um is originally nothing other than the accusative singular of the respective verbal noun in us us, whether in use or not, because the supine in u is nothing other than the ablative of that in um, and the supine in u evidently seems to belong to a noun of the fourth conjugation, etc. (8 Dec., Feast of the Immaculate Conception, 1823.)

  Italianisms in Spanish, on which elsewhere [→Z 2783, 3394ff., 3728–31]. Quizà (that is perhaps) a word which as far back as the Dictionaries of the 17th century was accepted as ancient (although I find it still in use, even frequent, among modern speakers as well). Pure and clear Italianism, both in its form (in Spanish who would say quien sabe?), and in its meaning, because we too, especially in spoken, and especially everyday language, not infrequently use chi sa? chi sa che non, chi sa se, etc., in place of forse [perhaps] or in similar senses. (8 Dec., Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 1823.)

  It is said with reason, especially in human, and earthly, affairs, that everything is small. But with equal reason one could say, even about the tiniest things, that everything is big, that is speaking relatively, as they who call everything small also do, because nothing is small or big in absolute terms.1 So it is not true to say nor more reasonable or more philosophical to consider any human thing or anything else as small than it is to consider the very same thing as big, and even very big, if one chooses. And there are almost as many aspects and considerations, all equally [3957] worthy of the philosopher, as many, I repeat, for the second affirmation as for the first. And also the entire world and universe and the totality of things whether existing or possible or imaginable, in comparison with which we call small and tiny things which are human, earthly, perceptible, known to us, and the like, can in the same way be considered as a small and tiny thing, and on the other hand as big and very big. No less than when human things are called small—for example those of obscure private people in comparison with those of very vast and extremely powerful kingdoms—and nevertheless the latter too, as big as they are in comparison with the former, are described by philosophers as very small and nothing in another respect, so it is entirely reasonable that, in different respects, those of private and very obscure individuals are described, again by philosophers, as big and very big, of a size which is no less true or no less false than that of things of the biggest empires.1 (8 Dec. 1823.)

  In the whole of America, which was certainly inhabited and populated from the most remote times, since we have no information nor any memory of when it began, there has never been found any sort of alphabet or any trace of an alphabet, nor anything which comes close to the nature of one.a2 In spite of the great and wonderful culture, arts, manufactures, admirable constructions, exquisite politics and legislation, and other great and numerous parts of civilization which were to be found in the lands subject to the rule of the Incas, which began three centuries before the discovery and conquest of that country (that is in the 13th century); and even more in Mexico, whose civilization I believe is even more ancient. I am speaking [3958] of the last and best known civilization, because there are many indications of native traditions, and ruins of buildings and monuments of taste and of a different fashion from those of the last epoch of civilization, and of other things, which demonstrate that there were other epochs in which this or that part of America (in particular Peru), was, though we do not know to what extent, civilized or made less primitive. Especially as America was subject to very frequent and total revolutions in the countries where they took place, transmigrations and total extinctions of entire peoples and cities, and devastations and depopulations of entire provinces, because of the ferocity and frequency and the almost continuous waging of wars, as I have said elsewhere in several places (see p. 3932 among others, together with those cited there, and the thought to which these last belong). The writing of the Inca kingdom was made up of certain knots (Algarotti, Saggio sugl’Incas, Opere, Cremona, tome 4, pp. 170–71); that of the Mexicans consisted of pictures.1 These observations should be applied to what is said elsewhere [→Z 830ff., 1270–71, 2602–606, 2619–22, 3661ff., 3959–60] (1) about the uniqueness of the invention of the alphabet, (2) about the difficulty of this invention so necessary to civilization, and therefore so much the principal cause of the denaturing of man, etc., (3) about the essential differences between the states of even civilized people, who have never had mutual relations, (4) about the uniqueness of all or almost all the most difficult inventions, and those which contribute most to civilization. This uniqueness is demonstrated by the fact that, although very necessary, they have always been unknown to peoples, even those who were civilized to some extent, who have never had any dealings with Europeans, etc., after those inventions, or on the contrary Europeans, etc., albeit extremely civilized, being unaware of the inventions of other peoples, even of peoples far behind in culture, an ignorance lasting for many centuries, until the beginning of mutual relations between Europeans, etc., and such peoples. (8 Dec., Feast of the Immaculate Conception, 1823.)

  [3959] How very difficult both the invention of the alphabet and its application to writing and then to the different ancient languages was, and how great were the irregularity and the mistakes made by the first alphabetic writings and the first orthographies—defects which are still very notable in the most ancient, i.e., oriental, writings, as I have said elsewhere [→Z 1288–91], e.g., in Hebrew, which has no vowels, like many other oriental languages, defects which were then perpetuated in these scripts right up to our own day as far as those that are still in use are concerned, etc.—can be conjectured from the things I have said elsewhere in several places [→Z 1659–60, 1967–69, 2458–63, 2884–85, 3683]. These concern the difficulty in the first place of applying writing to modern languages, and regulating their orthography, and making it correspond to the true sound, etc., of the words, and also the irregularity and mistakes made by modern orthographies in their beginnings, indeed even up to the last century in Italy, and elsewhere, especially in France, up to today. And this notwithstanding the fact that the modern languages had very clear, complete, and perfect models in Latin and Greek; that the use of writing had been so common for so many centuries up to and including that period; that men were less crude and more skilled in everything than they were at the time of the first invention and use of the alphabet and its successive application to the various languages—and although the latter were mere babes, yet they were certainly better formed, and less uncertain, arbitrary, unstable, shapeless than at the earlier period, in which man had not yet used or known or had any example not only of a perfect language, but of any language worthy of the name: the opposite of when the Greek and Latin languages, so perfect, as well as many cultured languages, had been known and [3960] spoken, written, etc. etc., so generally for many centuries—and notwithstanding, finally, the height of civilization and the point of perfection which the understanding, etc., of the human mind has achieved in these times, and the high level of precision which it has made its own in everything, and which is characteristic of this age, and the capacity for invention and application, etc., and the taste for and frequency of reforms, improvements, etc. etc. Let then the difficulty, irregularity, etc., of ancient writings, etc., as above, be judged by these comparisons. (8 Dec. 1823, Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.)

  Disperser from dispergo–dispersum [to scatter]. (8 Dec. 1823, Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.)

  The v is only an aspiration, etc. Tovaglia [tablecloth] Italian–toalla, which is also written as tohalla (Cervantes, Don Quixote), and toaja Spanish. (9 Dec., Vigil of the Translation of the Holy House, 1823.)1

  Passive participles in active or neuter sense, etc. Atentado that is prudente accorto cauto [cautious], etc
., from atentar that is tastare [to test]. It corresponds exactly to the Latin cautus, a word which is originally a participle, and belongs to this same category, as elsewhere [→Z 2340]. Similarly the Italian avvisato and the like, on which elsewhere [→Z 3851, 3899]. See also Spanish dictionaries under recatado, recatar, etc. (9 Dec. 1823.)

  Could it be that mentar, rammentare, ammentare [to remember], etc., or at least the first, does not come from mente, but from the supine mentum of the unattested meno of which in Latin only the perfect memini remains, and on which elsewhere [→Z 3691]? (9 Dec., Vigil of the Translation of the Holy House, 1823.) See the Glossary, etc. Ramentevoir old French. See p. 3985.

  [3961] Could recatar, etc., be almost recautare from recautum from a recaveo? See the Spanish dictionaries and the Glossary, etc. (9 Dec. 1823.) See p. 3964.

  I have noted elsewhere [→Z 230] some verb or other compounded with a Latin preposition unattested in modern languages, which is used in modern languages and which does not exist in Latin. There are great numbers of such verbs and indeed other words in our languages, and the argument I produced about the verb mentioned above is to be extended to all these others. (9 Dec. 1823.) See p. 3969.

  For p. 3955, margin. Or else that its extraordinariness is of the kind that produces an extraordinary beauty (and which is therefore graceful, indeed such that is called grace rather than beauty), that is, a clashing of parts, etc., which do not normally join together to produce and form the beautiful, but between which there is no impropriety at all, a kind of beauty, and grace—which can, however, be of many varieties—about which I have spoken elsewhere [→Z 2831–34, 3177–79], but I don’t know whether I mentioned all the varieties this kind is capable of. (9 Dec. 1823.) See p. 3971.

  Hippocrates in his book De aere, aquis et locis (p. 29, part 1 of Mercuriale’s edition, Venice 1588, folio, published by Giunta, in two tomes, each divided into two parts) speaks of a nation which he calls the Macrocephali, among whom since they considered that those who had the longest head were γενναιότατοι [of the highest rank], it was the law that while babies were still very young, as soon as possible the shape of the head should be pressed by the hands in such a way that it became long and they made it grow in this way by forcing it with bandages and other bindings.1 He adds that in his day this law and this custom were no longer observed, but that the babies were born naturally with their heads so formed, because they were produced by parents who had heads like that. But that already in more recent times not all babies, [3962] and not so many as before, were born with long heads, because the law had fallen into disuse.

  Now see part 1 of the Chronica del Peru by Pedro Cieça (for which work see pp. 3795–96), chapter 26, fols. 66, pp. 2–67, p. 1 and ch. 50, fol. 136, p. 2 and elsewhere, about the same practice of shaping babies’ heads in their fashion, which is proper to many savage populations of South America. Now what relations did these ever have with the Macrocephali? And is this custom perhaps something which nature teaches, and with which men easily, albeit by mere chance, must concur? This observation is to be applied to my other observations [→Z 3665ff., 3811–13] on the uniqueness of the origin of the human race; the ancient and unknown division of peoples that were formerly ὁμόφυλοι [of the same race], and then, right from when the memory of stories begins, became very distant and separate and different from one another; the uniqueness of inventions and discoveries, of the origin of a great many uses or abuses, etc. etc., many of which are taken today to be natural only because they are common, and they are common only because they arose before the division of the human race, or the separation of its parts, and its expansion, etc.1 See p. 3988. It can also be applied to the discussion on the barbarities of human society, etc. (pp. 3797–802). And on this same point apply the Greek passage quoted by me on p. 2799 where there is an account of a custom which is similar to or the same as that of very many other savage peoples—ancient, modern, or present-day—who never had any contact (in times that we know of) either with the Scythians who are discussed there, or between themselves. See p. 3967. And how many other customs, beliefs, etc., there are which are exactly the same among savages where it is impossible to see how they could ever have had, if nothing else, at least some news one of the other: island dwellers, very remote peoples. And yet the said similarities are often of such a nature and so frequent, and also so widespread, and on the other hand so far from and contrary, etc., to nature, that [3963] on the one hand it would be foolish to attribute them to chance, on the other it is not possible to find any probable cause for them, if not, etc. etc. —Use of weeks, etc. etc. (9 Dec., Vigil of the Translation of the Holy House, 1823.)

  Situla–sitella [bucket, kind of urn], tabula–tabella [board]. See p. 3844. (9 Dec. 1823.)

  Forcellini says that sportella is a diminutive of sportula, although sporta [basket] also exists, of which sportula is a diminutive. Perhaps it will turn out that all diminutives in ellus ella ellum are formed from nouns (or verbs, etc.) in ulus, known or unknown, diminutive or not, positivized or absolute, etc. In such a case sportella would be a supradiminutive of sporta, in accordance with the usage so frequent in Italian of double and triple diminutives, and as I have said elsewhere [→Z 3844] about anellus from anulus [ring], except that anulus is used with a different meaning whether by its nature or by extension from its positive, etc. Catena [brace, chain]–catella [chain]. Catus [cat]–catulus–catellus [whelp, puppy]–catellulus (see Forcellini under all these entries). Vitulus [calf] vitellus (see Forcellini under Catellus). Vitellus is positivized at least in our languages, etc.a1 Catinus [bowl]–catillus, catinum–catillum, catillo as [to lick a plate], catillo onis [plate licker, glutton], etc. Patina [shallow dish] or patena–patella (positivized; see Forcellini). It seems that from patina it should rather be patilla than patella. Patellarius [belonging to a dish], etc., see p. 3955. If it were true that diminutives in ellus were only from words in ulus (and verbs in ellare diminutive, from those in ulare, and the same with the adverbs, etc.), then catillus and the others like it, would either be contractions of catinulus (and then they would not be derivatives of, but exactly the same as the noun in ulus) or in fact of catinellus formed from a catinulus (which indeed exists). (9 Dec. 1823.) Cistella would be a diminutive of cistula [little box] and not of cista [box], etc. (9 Dec., Vigil of the Translation of the Holy House, 1823.) See p. 3968.

  [3964] For p. 3961, beginning. Catus for cautus [cautious], see Forcellini. Recatar [to hide] for recautar would be a very great archaism (in relation to the suppression of the u) preserved in a modern language, etc. (9 Dec. 1823.) See p. 3980.

  I say elsewhere [→Z 3586–87, 3637] that one must distinguish exactly between Latin words and phrases preserved in modern languages, or recovered by means of literature, sciences, diplomacy, politics, canons, jurisprudence, ecclesiastical things, liturgies, etc. (or still preserved by these means, but not through the use of ordinary speech, etc.). The same distinction must be made about the forms of words, etc., in view of the fact that modern orthographies from the beginning and then for a long time afterward were modeled on Latin, that they were full of mistakes and for a long time because of Latinism which was not present in the respective spoken language, that they were extremely imprecise, etc., all of which things I have spoken about in several places [→Z 1659–60, 2458–63, 2884–85, 3683, 3959–60]. (9 Dec., Vigil of the Translation, 1823.)

  I speak elsewhere about the dialects of Homer [→Z 961, 3012–14, 3041–47]. Given that the Ionic dialect was not common or the most common and therefore the preferred one, the fact that Homer wrote in a dialect rather than in the common language only goes to show that in his time there was no common language. And the fact that it did not exist only goes to show that Greek literature was not yet formed, because the latter could not exist without the former, and the lack of common language is a certain sign and effect of nothing less than the lack of a national literature or of its infancy, limited diffusion, etc. The same goes fora1 Herodotusb and
the others who in the most ancient times wrote in their native dialects and not in a common language. In any case if Homer also used and mingled other dialects more than was later done by other Greek writers, including the poets, though Ionic was the main one he used, Dante did the same, [3965] as he used and mingled the dialects of Italy much more than others, including the poets who were close to him did, and as no one would do today, because there is a common language, and this is certain and formed and determined, and all this is principally due to literature. If later some, such as Empedocles and Hippocrates, although they were not Ionian, wrote in Ionic (see p. 3982), that was because Homer had used it and made it famous and suitable for writing, and had thought it the only or the main dialect capable of being written, in the same way as afterward the greater abundance of Athenian writers over any other writers made the Attic dialect, or a language drawing principally on Attic, common, and for all time, and turned it into Greek properly so termed both in written use and in spoken, especially among cultured people.1 In any case the use of Ionic in ancient times by non-Ionians proves with certainty that Ionic was either the common form of Greek, or the most common, or the only one or the one most applied and therefore suitable for literature and cultured discourse, etc., or the most famous, etc. See p. 3991. And in the same way this happened for a similar reason in Italy in relation to Tuscan, where before, just as in Greece there was Ionic instead of Attic, so in Italy what had become common, etc., was not Tuscan, but Sicilian, etc., because of the culture of the Sicilian court and poets, etc., and their surpassing abundance, etc. Because of this, by my way of thinking, a big mistake is made by both ancient (see the references cited on p. 3931) and modern writers (who, I think, are quite large in number) who recognize the use or the preponderance of Ionic dialect in Homer, in Hippocrates, etc., and in the writings of ancient Greece as coming from the idea, according to them, that the Ionic dialect, or at least that of the writers mentioned as it is, etc., was the ancient Attic dialect, used by the Athenians. Which, if they have no other arguments to prove it, is certainly not proved by its use by those writers, because what right or what means did the Athenian dialect have to be preferred to the others in written works? They fall into the usual error, [3966] so common for such a long time (and still today) in Italy, even among the most learned and impartial, about Tuscan dialect, that is of believing that Attic prevailed over the other dialects in its own right (whereas no dialect prevails in its own right, since as regards order, form, etc., it does not come before literature, as regards the beauty of material sound, etc.; this is a dream because for all peoples and groups within them the sound which is prescribed by nature, as far as they are concerned, is the most beautiful, and that means the sound of their native dialect, and the one they learned in childhood, etc.), and not by reason of its preeminent literature and Attic writers, since this cause did not exist at the time of Homer; on the contrary Athens did not have, as far as is known, any writers at all, let alone being particularly abundant in them, etc. And it wasn’t powerful, it had no commerce, nor as far as is known, was it very cultured, or more cultured than others, always assuming it had any notable culture. But the Ionians were, etc., and it was precisely this which produced and made possible a Homer, etc. If however they do have other proofs in support of their claim, they are certainly reasoning the wrong way around, taking the cause for the effect, and the effect for the cause. Because if Ionic was at that time the Attic dialect, that happened precisely because it had had writers and literature, and thus had become the common dialect, etc., or because of the commerce and power and culture of the Ionians, to which culture no small contribution will have been made by the very literature which had drawn its origin from it. In any case the Attic people were very ready to adopt foreign Greek words and phrases, and even barbarous ones, at least in later times; and Xenophon says so in a passage quoted by me and discussed elsewhere [→Z 741, 785–86, 793]. (9 Dec. 1823, Vigil of the Translation of the Holy House of Loreto.)