Zibaldone
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“Et qui rit de nos moeurs ne fait que prévenir / Ce qu’en doivent penser les siècles à venir” [“Whoever laughs at our customs only anticipates what future centuries will probably think of them”]. Monsieur de Rulhière, “Discours en vers sur les disputes,” referred to by Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique under “Dispute.”
“Dieu puissant! permettez que ces tems déplorables / Un jour par nos neveux soient mis au rang des fables” [“Almighty God! May these deplorable times one day be put among the fables by our descendants”]. Ibidem.
Corata–coratella, curatella, coradella [offal], etc.
Grattare–grattugiare [to scratch, to grate]. Sciorinare [to hang out to dry, to spread out] diminutive verb. See Monti, Proposta.3 Macinare [to grind], macerare [to macerate], macina [millstone]–maciullare [to scutch, to mangle], maciulla [scutch]. Spilluzzicare [to nibble] (from spelare [to remove the hair, fur from]).
Sarmata, given the etymology of the word, means carrettiere [carter] from ἅρμα which in Greek means carro [chariot, cart], with the aspiration added sarma. From the fact that those people (from the far and extreme north of Europe and Asia) did not use fixed dwellings, and instead had movable houses like a kind of cart, [4173] they were called Sarmati by the Greeks. Ciampi, in the Antologia of Florence, February 1826, no. 62, p. 28, note 6. (30 March 1826, Bologna.)
Piaggia, spiaggia [land, shore, beach], lexicalized diminutives of plaga [region], from plagula, like nebbia [mist] from nebula [cloud], etc. etc.
Elevato, sollevato [raised, uplifted], per alto [high]. See Crusca under Elevatissimo and Sollevatissimo.
If a person wants to become a good comic writer or satirist, he has to be, or to have been, deserving of satire and comedy himself, and not just for a little while either, and for those very things that he wants to make fun of. (Bologna, Low Sunday, 2 April 1826.)
Homme emporté for qui s’emporte [flies into a rage], who is used to s’emporter. Empressé [eager].
Accuratus, accurato, etc., for qui curat, or qui accurat [who is careful, or takes pains over].
“We know from Pliny that certain seashells found in the Ponticae islands, sometimes written Pontiae, were called pernae because of their ham shape. Madre perla [mother-of-pearl] was extracted from them: and the Italian noun perla surely comes from perna or pernula.” (Positivized diminutive.) Amati, “Iscrizioni antiche scoperte da non molto tempo, e meritevoli di esser poste a notizia de’ dotti.” [“Ancient inscriptions recently discovered, and which deserve to come to the attention of the learned”] (Article in the Giornale arcadico, Roma, December 1825, No. 84, tome 28) no. 25, p. 358.1 (Bologna, 7 April 1826.)
Testis–testiculus, testicolo, testicule [testicle], etc. Citrus–citron [lemon]. Hirundo–hirondelle [swallow].
*“The ability to speak two languages seems to have been highly thought of in those days” (Athenaeus’) “because Galen, somewhere or other, refers to this condition as a miracle: ‘δίγλωττός τις,’ he said, ‘ἐλέγετο πάλαι, καὶ θαῦμα τοῦτ' ἦν, ἄνθρωπος εἷς, ἀκριβῶν διαλέκτους δύο’ [‘Once there was a man said to be bilingual: and it was a miracle that someone should have two languages’]. ‘Bilinguis olim quidam dicebatur: eratque res miraculo mortalibus, homo unus duas exacte linguas tenens.’ Galen in the second book of Differences of the pulses.”*2 Casaubon, Animadversiones in Athenaeum bk. 1, ch. 2. (Bologna, 14 April 1826.)
[4174] Οὐκ ἐθέλειν for not to be able, οὐ πεφυκέναι, see in Casaubon, loc. cit. above, ch. 5, in a line of Philoxenus.1 (Bologna, 17 April 1826.)
Everything is evil. That is to say everything that is, is evil; that each thing exists is an evil; each thing exists only for an evil end; existence is an evil and made for evil; the end of the universe is evil; the order and the state, the laws, the natural development of the universe are nothing but evil, and they are directed to nothing but evil. There is no other good except nonbeing; there is nothing good except what is not; things that are not things: all things are bad. All existence; the complex of so many worlds that exist; the universe; is only a spot, a speck in metaphysics. Existence, by its nature and essence and generally, is an imperfection, an irregularity, a monstrosity. But this imperfection is a tiny thing, literally a spot, because all the worlds that exist, however many and however extensive they are, since they are certainly not infinite in number or in size, are consequently infinitely small in comparison with the size the universe might be if it were infinite, and the whole of existence is infinitely small in comparison with the true infinity, so to speak, of nonexistence, of nothing.
This system, although it clashes with those ideas of ours that the end can be no other than good, is probably more sustainable than that of Leibniz, Pope, etc., that everything is good.2 I would not dare however to go on to say that the universe which exists is the worst of possible universes, thereby substituting pessimism for optimism. Who can know the limits of possibility?
[4175] This system might be expounded and developed in some fragment or other supposedly written by an ancient Indian philosopher, etc.1
What is certain and no laughing matter is that existence is an evil for all the parts which make up the universe (and so it is hard to think it is not an evil for the whole universe as well, and even harder to make, as philosophers do, “Des malheurs de chaque être un bonheur général” [“Of the misfortunes of each being a general happiness”]. Voltaire, Épître sur le désastre de Lisbonne.2 It is incomprehensible how out of the suffering of every individual without exception, can come a universal good; how from the whole of many misfortunes and nothing else, a good can come). That is made manifest when we see that everything in its own way necessarily suffers, and necessarily does not enjoy any pleasure, because pleasure does not exist strictly speaking. Now given that that is the case, how can you not say that existence is in itself an evil?
Not only individual men, but the whole human race was and always will be necessarily unhappy. Not only the human race but the whole animal world. Not only animals but all other beings in their way. Not only individuals, but species, genera, realms, spheres, systems, worlds.
Go into a garden of plants, grass, flowers. No matter how lovely it seems. Even in the mildest season of the year. You will not be able to look anywhere and not find suffering. That whole family of vegetation is in a state of souffrance, each in its own way to some degree. Here a rose is attacked by the sun, which has given it life; it withers, languishes, wilts. There a lily is sucked cruelly by a bee, in its most sensitive, most life-giving parts. [4176] Sweet honey is not produced by industrious, patient, good, virtuous bees without unspeakable torment for those most delicate fibers, without the pitiless massacre of flowerets. That tree is infested by an ant colony, that other one by caterpillars, flies, snails, mosquitoes; this one is injured in its bark and afflicted by the air or by the sun penetrating the wound; that other one has a damaged trunk, or roots; that other has many dry leaves; that other one has its flowers gnawed at, nibbled; that other one has its fruits pierced, eaten away. That plant is too warm, this one too cold; too much light, too much shade; too wet, too dry. One cannot grow or spread easily because there are obstacles and obstructions; another finds nowhere to lean, or has trouble and struggles to reach any support. In the whole garden you will not find a single plant in a state of perfect health. Here a branch is broken by the wind or by its own weight; there a gentle breeze is tearing a flower apart, and carries away a piece, a filament, a leaf, a living part of this or that plant, which has broken or been torn off. Meanwhile you torture the grass by stepping on it; you grind it down, crush it, squeeze out its blood, break it, kill it. A sensitive and gentle young maiden goes sweetly cutting and breaking off stems. A gardener expertly chops down trunks, breaking off sensitive limbs, with his nails, with his tools. (Bologna, 19 April 1826.) Certainly these plants live on; some because their infirmities are not fatal, others because even with fatal diseases, plants, and animals a
s well, can manage to live on a little while. The spectacle of such abundance of life when you first go into this garden lifts your spirits, and that is why you think it is a joyful place. But in truth this life is wretched and unhappy, every garden is like a vast hospital (a place much more deplorable than a cemetery), and if these beings [4177] feel, or rather, were to feel, surely not being would be better for them than being.1 (Bologna, 22 April 1826.)
Avisé for accorto, etc. [shrewd]. Être osé for oser [to dare, to be daring]. Voltaire.2
The pleasure of Anacreon’s odes is so fleeting, and so resistant to all analysis, that to relish it, you really need to read them quite quickly, attending little or very slightly. Anyone who reads them steadily through, stopping at each part, anyone who examines, who pays attention, does not see any beauty, or feel any pleasure. The beauty lies in the whole, in such a way that it is not in the parts at all. The pleasure only comes from it altogether, from the sudden and indefinable impression of the whole.3 (Bologna, 22 April 1826.)
“Poi che s’accorse chiusa dalla spera / Dell’amico più bello” [“When she saw that she was bathed in the light of her more handsome friend”], Petrarch, Sonnet 79 of the first Part: “In mezzo di duo amanti onesta, altera” [“In between two lovers a virtuous, haughty {lady}”]. Clear Grecism.4 Note that Petrarch did not know Greek.
Transgredior, transgressus–transgresser [to transgress].
Réviser (rivedere) [to revise]: for what I said elsewhere [→Z 2844–45] about avvisare [to inform], etc.
Frango is [to break, to shatter]—nau–fragor aris [to be shipwrecked].
For p. 4142. Nothing in nature actually announces infinity, the existence of anything infinite. Infinity is a product of our imagination, and at the same time of our smallness and our pride. We have seen things inconceivably greater than we are, than our world, etc., forces inconceivably greater than ours, worlds greater than ours, etc. That does not mean that they are great, but that we are tiny in respect to them. Now such greatness (either in terms of intelligence, of strength, or size, etc.) that we [4178] cannot conceive of, we have thought of as infinite; what was incomparably greater than us and greater than our things which are tiny, we have thought infinite; as if above us all there is, is only infinity, only this cannot be embraced by our conceptual power, only this can be greater than us. But infinity is an idea, a dream, not a reality: at least we do not have any proof of its existence, not even by analogy, and all we can say is that we are an infinite way from the knowledge of or the demonstration of such existence: there might be a lengthy debate about whether the infinite is possible (which has been strongly denied by some modern philosophers), and whether this idea, born of our imagination, is not self-contradictory in itself, that is metaphysically false. Certainly according to the laws of existence of which we can have knowledge, that is those deduced from the existing things of which we do have knowledge, or that we know really exist, infinity, that is something without limits, cannot exist, it would not be anything, etc. (Bologna, 1 May, Feast of St. Philip and St. James, 1826.) It seems that only what does not exist, the negation of being, nothingness, can be limitless, and that infinity is substantially the same as nothingness. It seems above all that the individuality of existence naturally implies a certain circumscription, which means that infinity does not admit of individuality and that these two terms are contradictory; therefore we cannot suppose an individual being without limits.1 (2 May 1826.) See p. 4181 and p. 4274, last paragraph.
Tetta–teton [breast, teat] (like mammella from mamma, etc.).
[4179] “Fammi sentir di quell’aura gentile” [“Let me feel that gentle breath”]. Petrarch, Canzone “Amor, se vuo’ ch’i’ torni al giogo antico,” l. 31, that is stanza 3, l. 1. The genitive for the accusative. See as well Canzone, “Quando il soave,” stanza 4, l. 4, and Sonnet “S’io fossi,” last line.1 (3 May, Feast of the Holy Cross, Vigil of the Ascension, Bologna, 1826.)
Scorto for accorto [shrewd], from scorgere for vedere [to see], etc., or else from scorgere for guidare, avvisare [to inform], etc., like avisé, etc. See the Crusca.
“᾿Αλλὰ τὶ καὶ λέσχης” (confabulationis) “οἶνος” (i.e., potatio) “ἔχειν ἐθέλει” [“but drinking wants to be mixed also with a little conversation”]. In Athenaeus, see Casaubon, Animadversiones, bk. 1, last chapter, beginning.2 Volere [to want] for dovere [to have to]. (Bologna, 6 May 1826.) Non vogliono [they do not want] for non debbono [they must not]. See Rucellai, Api, l. 621.
For a long while now, monarchs have not mentioned their country, nor has it been mentioned in their presence in praising, or advising them, or in any conversation at all. For a long while cities and nations have stopped being the homeland of monarchs. They are their states, whether the monarchs are native to them or not. For it is very true that even in England, and in France, where there is both a homeland and monarchs, who whether they are happy about it or not, are there for their subjects, not the subjects for the monarch, they do not, and neither does anyone or anyone speaking or writing to them (and on rare occasions about them as well), call either England or France, their homeland. It would be thought of as a slight or offense, if the word were mentioned in their presence which shows in a certain sense that it is superior to them. Monarchs for a long while have, in their own minds, and in many other people’s minds, been identified with the homeland. To make any distinction between them, would be thought of as an insult. Not so with the ancients. The Neros and the Domitians with a false name, and moreover an arrogant one, which however still kept the idea of homeland alive, styled themselves P. P., pater patriae [father of the country] (on medals, inscriptions, etc.). (Bologna, 10 May 1826.)
[4180] On the Aeolic digamma see Casaubon, Animadversiones in Athenaeum, bk. 2, ch. 16.1
Picus–picchio [woodpecker], from piculus and not from picchiare [to hit, to beat] as the Crusca says and is generally thought. See the French, Spanish, etc.
Three states of youth: (1) hope, perhaps the most anguishing of all; (2) furious and recalcitrant despair; (3) resigned despair. (Bologna, 3 June 1826.)
What does a man gain in perfecting his state? He runs into new torments every day (all needs for the most part are only torments) that he did not have before, and then has to find remedies for them, which without the perfecting of man would not have been necessary or useful, because the torments would not have occurred in the first place. To procure new pleasures for himself, perhaps more intense than the natural ones, though not likewise (1) common, (2) lasting, (3) easily achievable, actually they are the most difficult to achieve, because, apart from anything else, they require an extremely careful preparation and lengthy training of the mind, and for that reason alone they cannot be common to everyone, in fact are restricted only to certain classes, and to certain individuals.2 At the same time, he destroys in himself his ability to experience, at least in a lasting way, any natural pleasure. The natural state of man does truly bring some pleasures, easy ones, common to everyone, lasting, that are no less real because we can no longer feel them, and so cannot conceive how they can be pleasures. Simply the state of quiet and inaction so frequent and lengthy for the savage (unbearable for civilized man) is certainly a pleasure, not an intense one, but still able and sufficient to fill a great and perhaps the greatest part of the savage’s life. The same can be seen as well in other animals. It can be seen in dogs (among domestic animals, those most easily observed), that if they are not disturbed or made to move, are delighted to spend [4181] whole hours, lying placidly and serenely, absolutely still with their head on their paws.1 (Bologna, 3 June 1826.) Many torments then, especially of a moral kind, that without civilization would not occur, although there might be remedies for them procured by civilization itself, e.g., practical philosophy, are well known to be more likely to occur, to be more frequent, more common, than any effective application and efficacious use of such remedies. (Bologna, 3 June 1826.)
For p. 4178, end. The hypothesis of the eterni
ty of matter would not be an objection to these propositions. Eternity, time, about which the ancients debated so much, are, as modern metaphysicians have observed, like space, only the expression of our idea of them, as to how things are, and not things or beings, as the ancients seemed to think, in fact as philosophers thought up until recent times. Matter would be eternal, and so there would be nothing infinite.2 That would only mean that matter, a finite thing, would never have begun to be, neither would it stop being; that the finite has always been and always will be. Then the only infinite thing would be time, which is not anything, is nothing, and so infinity of time would prove neither the existence nor the possibility of infinite beings, no more than the infinity of nothingness does, an infinity which does not exist neither can it exist except in the imagination or in language, but which is a quality proper to and inseparable from the idea and from the word nothingness, which itself does not exist except in thought or in language, and as it is thought of or expressed [4182] in language. (Bologna, 4 June 1826, Sunday.)
ὑρίσκος—συρίσκος. See Casaubon on Athenaeus, bk. 3, ch. 4, beginning.1
Litterato for letterario [literary]. Petrarch, Triumph of Fame, ch. 3, l. 102. See Crusca. Tasso, Opere, ed. Mauro, tome 4, p. 304; tome 10, p. 297; tome 9, p. 419.
Oreglia, origliare, origliere, for orecchia, orecchiare, orecchiere [ear, to overhear, pillow].
γραφεὺς (scriba) [scribe]—greffier [clerk] (unless it comes from grief [grievance]).
Fallir la promessa [to fail to keep a promise]. Petrarch, Triumph of Divinity, ll. 4–5.
Senz’altra pompa, for senza niuna [without any show], ibid., l. 120. See as well the Sonnet “Il successor di Carlo,” l. 7, and the Canzone “Una donna più bella,” stanza 3, l. 12.2
MantUa, GenUa, MantUanus, etc.—MantOVa, GenOVa, etc.