Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  For p. 4331. And I believe that bad men are much rarer than good men, provided that we do not describe as bad men (as we all always do) those who treat us badly because we treat them badly or inconsiderately, or because we are unwilling or unable (as is very common) to treat them well.

  Health is generally considered by society to be the most basic of human goods, even though it is given no consideration whatsoever. Among thousands of proofs (and here I am not talking about individuals but societies), observe that you will never find a place, a city that was first inhabited, and whose population grows daily, because of its healthy location or its beneficial climate. Business opportunities, proximity to the sea, centrality, presence of the royal court, there are a thousand reasons for originally choosing to settle a place, for founding a city, and for a city to steadily increase in numbers, but salubriousness is never one of them. There is no city whose origin, whose growth is due to this cause. You will often find a [4334] very healthy site, with excellent climate, which is yet deserted, and nearby one or more cities which are very badly located and heavily populated. Between Livorno and Florence (which is wretchedly positioned) you will see a site which seems almost miraculously favored by nature; you will also find a city there, which is Pisa, a city which was also once densely populated. Livorno for its sea, Florence for a hundred other advantages, each grow prodigiously in population every day. And at their gates, Pisa, from when it lost power, trade, all advantage but salubriousness, has become noticeably more deserted day by day. (Florence, 11 Aug. 1828.)

  For p. 4322, end. Personally, I take the view that this is the only true way of explaining the irregularities of measure which, despite all the rules and yet more rules and exceptions established arbitrarily by ancient and modern grammarians, despite all of the systems, such as that of the Aeolic digamma, etc., are always to be found in Homer’s verses. — *“Richard Bentley was the first to suppose, having noticed some irregularities in the measure of Homer’s lines, that these irregularities came only from the Digamma not having been taken into account, the pronunciation of which had undoubtedly fallen into disuse when the Iliad and the Odyssey were copied for the first time. Du Digamma dans les Poésies homériques (Extract from a Nouveau Commentaire sur Homère), by Monsieur Dugas-Montbel,”* Bulletin de Férussac, loc. cit., Jan. 1825, § 7, p. 9. — *“The fact is that, in spite of the adoption of the Digamma, not all the difficulties are resolved, and that Mr. Knight himself” (Payne Knight, who in 1820 published in England a full edition [4335] of the Iliad and the Odyssey with the digamma, “and with a particular spelling which he supposes originally to have been that of Homer”*; after Upton and Salter had made specimen editions of Homer with the digamma, and Heyne, in his 1802 Homer, *“at the bottom of his text, in which he follows the usual spelling,”* had already put words with the Digamma to which he had declared himself favorable)1 *“left passages intact which damage his system”* (i.e., as explained in a note, passages where a syllable, which should be short, becomes long because of the digamma: κργῠŏν ϝεῑπᾱς [you have said something positive], etc.),2 *“so difficult is it to reestablish the true spelling on the basis of simple conjectures and when we are entirely devoid of any written monument. It is certain that whatever system one adopts, there is not one that does not present objections, for in those earliest ages of poetry, when the laws of pronunciation were not yet subject to the restraint of writing which makes them more invariable, there must have been a host of anomalies that could only be explained on the grounds of usage, something stronger than reasoning and even than the rules of analogy; for in the end, under Peisistratus, when the verses of Homer were transcribed for the first time, the pronunciation had already undergone notable alterations which now it is impossible to determine.”* Ibidem, p. 13. —How then, with a pronunciation which was varied, uncertain, and not yet fixed, can an exact and constant measure of verses be supposed, be thought possible? —Payne Knight was already dead before 1824, or died that year.3 (12 Aug. 1828.)

  [4336] Regarding the Aeolic digamma, there are some curious and perhaps useful considerations in the brief memoir of Dugas-Montbel mentioned in the previous thought.1 He believes that *“the Digamma must have resembled the Latins’ V consonant and U vowel which we pronounce ou … If one observes that in the south of France it is not unusual to pronounce the monosyllable oui with a faint V sound (voui), one might have something analogous to the pronunciation of the Digamma.”* (Vice versa, in Tuscany the v is very often suppressed, or changed into an aspiration: pióe or piohe for piove, doe for dove, etc. etc., and this is also found written in the rustic writers,2 etc. See p. 4365). *“Mr. Dawes” (a great advocate of the digamma in Homer; English scholar) “believes that the Digamma should be written and pronounced like the English W (Dawes, Miscellanea, § 4, pp. 190ff., ed. of 1817).3 I do not believe that this form was ever known in antiquity, this letter is entirely of the north. As far as the pronunciation is concerned it tallies very closely with what I have indicated.”* pp. 13–14. (12 Aug.)

  Another enormous difficulty in the invention of the written alphabet: the infinite variety and uncertainty of the oral pronunciation of any language and word: always infinite, but more than ever before the invention of the written alphabet. Pronunciation does not receive any fixity except by the written alphabet; vice versa, the invention of the written alphabet does not appear possible without a fixed pronunciation. See the previous page. (12 Aug.)

  For p. 4319. *“Chants populaires des peuples grecs. On the occasion of the announcement of Monsieur Fauriel’s popular songs of modern Greece, the Literary Yearbooks of Vienna, tome 26,4 note that this collection [4337] may be thought of as a sequel to a similar collection of Serbian songs, recently published by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić1 but that the popular songs of three peoples remain to be collected, if we are to possess the entire poetry of the Greek nation. These three nations are the Albanians, the Wallachians, and the Bulgarians. The Albanians, who appear to be descended from the ancient Illyrians, must have many songs. The same must be assumed of the Walachians of Macedonia. Concerning the Bulgarians, Vuk is positively certain that they cede to the Serbians neither in lyric poems nor in epic songs. According to the same author, the Bulgarian language is a sort of romance language among the 5 Greek peoples: what Latin was for the peoples of Italy and France, Serbian still is for the Bulgarians. D-G.”* (Depping.) Bulletin de Férussac, loc. cit., January 1825, tome 3, art. 11, pp. 16–17. — *“Kleine serbische Grammatik. Little Serbian grammar by Vuk Stefanović, translated into German with a preface by J. Grimm, and observations on the heroic songs of the Serbs by J. S. Vater” (at that time professor at Halle, died in Halle 1826, German linguist, famous for having continued Adelung’s Mithridates as well as for other works) “Berlin 1824. The Serbian language, excessively rich in consonants, is spoken by about 4 million individuals, in Serbia, in Croatia, in Slavonia, and in Montenegro. It has a number of interesting poems which will be discussed in another article. This language merits the attention of the learned. Vuk, the author of the little grammar which has just appeared, also had printed in Vienna, in 1817–18, a Serbian dictionary, [4338] 36 folios 4°. The author, a native to the country, was first an inspector of Serbian customs, and, under the rule of Czerni Georges, he occupied the post of secretary to the Senate in his country. No Serbian perhaps has studied his national language more. A translation he has done of the New Testament into Serbian is due to be published in Petersburg.”* Ibid., June 1825, tome 3, art. 548, pp. 439–40. — *“Narodne srpske pjesme skupio, ili na svijet izdao, etc. Serbian national songs, collected and published by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, 3 vols., Leipzig 1824.1 The Serbians have a host of national songs which had never been collected, and a great number of which had never been written down, when the learned Serbian Vuk had the happy idea to make a collection of them, which he took to Germany and which was published there. It is an interesting novelty, which allows us to know the poetry of a people whose literature—not in truth very ric
h—existed unbeknownst to Europe. The first part of the collection contains about one hundred short pieces of verse, which the author calls feminine songs, because women compose and sing many within their own household. These pieces are made artlessly, most of them in blank verse, and possibly improvised; they are generally mediocre from the point of view of poetry. There are poems on all sorts of subjects, on love, the harvest, village feasts; they even include magic songs for making it rain, sung by young girls going through the villages. Here and there one finds thoughts that are agreeably natural or original or striking comparisons. The two other [4339] contain the heroic songs which abound among this warlike people. They are true monotones, in which the same epithets and the same formulas keep coming back. The adventures they sing of are sometimes interesting. The Serbs’ favorite hero, Marko, the son of a king, plays a large part in them. Battles are depicted in them out of a certain predilection, particularly the battle of 1389 which took away Serbia’s independence. D-G.”* Ibid., July 1825, tome 4, art. 22, p. 17.

  *“Faeroeiscke quaeder om Sigurd Fofnersbane og hans aet. Songs of the Fœrœer (oe, oe) Islands on Sigurd Fofnersbane, and on his race, collected and translated into Danish by H. C. Lyngbye, with an introduction by Prof. P. E. Müller, 592 pp. 8°, 1822. In the Fœrœer (oe, oe) Islands,1 a particular dialect of ancient Scandinavian has been preserved, and in this dialect the people still keep more than 150 songs which are mostly sung to dance tunes, and serve in effect as accompaniment to the peasant dances. Monsieur Lyngbye has collected eleven of these songs: they have an epic character and sing of Sigurd, a famous hero across the whole of the north, and in the German romances of the Middle Ages. The islanders of the Fœrœer (ae, oe) Islands sing these poems in their meetings, and transmit them orally from father to son; it is likely that they are very ancient. Although the subject is similar to that in various passages of the Edda, they do not appear to be imitated from the Icelandic; at least, the Edda does not have at all the form of song in which the story of Sigurd is presented in the Faroese songs. In Iceland, Norway, and Denmark, [4340] besides, there is not the practice of accompanying dance with old songs in short lines like those of the Fœrœer (oe, oe). The style of these poems is simple and naïve; their images are less bold than in Icelandic poems; sometimes comparisons are made to the local nature of this archipelago; blue eyes are compared with the plumage of wild pigeons, which have this color in the Fœrœer (ae, oe). Monsieur Lyngbye has made a translation of these epic poems in verse, and in the notes he has explained the terms which might be difficult for the Danes. In the supplement, the editor has inserted other songs which have no relation to Sigurd, and a well-known old tune of the islands. It would now remain to publish the other Fœrœer (ae, oe) songs, and perhaps the Fœrœer (oe, oe) dictionary which was part of a description of the archipelago, written by Monsieur Svabo around 1782, and conserved in seven 4° volumes among the manuscripts of the royal library in Copenhagen.”* Ibid., art 21, pp. 16–17. (12–13 Aug. 1828.) See pp. 4352, 4361.

  *“Wertheidigung des Wilhelm Tell. Defense of William Tell, by X. Zuraggen, new 8° ed., Fluelen, in the canton of Uri, 1824. The truth of the story of William Tell having often been put in doubt, notably in a booklet which appeared in 1760 with the title William Tell, a Danish story, the author sets out to avenge the hero’s memory, and to demonstrate his existence with authentic documents. (Journal général de la littérature étrangère, September 1824, p. 264).”*1 Bulletin de Férussac, May 1825, loc. cit., tome 3, art. 526, pp. 422–23. (13 Aug. [1828].) See p. 4362.

  [4341] *“The invention of the Mongol alphabet is attributed to Bogda Khutugtu Chos rje Pandita, who was called from Tibet to Mongolia by the Khubilai Sechen Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan; and its correction to the lama Choski Oser, who lived in the time of Khaisan-Kulug Khan, who died at the beginning of the 14th century, and under whose reign this alphabet was introduced among the Mongol peoples. According to Mongol writers the only letters used in the court of the sovereigns of this land, up until the time of Khaisan-Kulug Khan, were Tibetan ones, known then as Uyghur (foreign). The Chinese maintain in history that, until the introduction of a particular alphabet, the Mongols used Chinese or wewuzi characters.”*1

  (Likewise very many Japanese books are written in Chinese characters, and these are also that part of Japanese literature which is best known, indeed almost the only part known, to Europeans. Bulletin, etc., tome 4, § 197.2 With regard to which Bulletin de Férussac, ibid. p. 175, observes: *“The use of syllabic writing” (the proper Japanese writing, consisting of 47 primitive syllables) “derived from the figurative writing of the Chinese, and the use made of the latter in applying it to a language for which it had not been formed” (Japanese) “are two phenomena capable of interesting men who make of the study of languages a subject of philosophical meditation).”*

  *“The Mongols write from left to right as we do, but perpendicularly from top to bottom, as can be seen from the comparative Mongol and Kalmuk alphabet. Despite strokes which often change [4342] the form of letters, it is impossible not to notice that they almost all come from Greek and Syriac characters, and they are therefore perhaps one of the most ancient records serving to prove the link between the peoples who adopted them and the peoples of the West. Aside from the Eleut or Kalmuk alphabets, the Mongol alphabet also gave rise to the Manchurian letters which differ from it only by some slight changes. The Mongols also had another alphabet invented in the time of Khaisan-Kulug Khan by a certain Phagpa lama, the letters of which have been called square on account of their form; but it has not been possible to find anything written in this manner. On the contrary many ancient Mongol books are written in Chos rje Pandita letters.”* Bulletin de Férussac, etc., loc. cit., tome 4, art. 238, pp. 242–43, September 1825.1 (13 Aug. 1828.)

  “Quibus actus uterque / Europae atque Asiae fatis concurrerit orbis” [“Driven by the fates, the worlds of both Europe and Asia clashed”] Virgil, Aeneid 7, 223. I do not think that the full meaning of these lines and of that uterque [both] has ever been properly understood, nor that it can be understood without remembering the ancient division of the world into only two parts, Europe and Asia; a propos of which see a learned note by Letronne on line 3 of the Greek metrical Inscription discovered on the island of Philae by Hamilton (in Bulletin de Férussac, loc. cit., tome 3, pp. 401–402, art. 499 entitled “Explication d’une inscription grecque en vers, découverte dans l’île de Philae par M. Hamilton.” (*“From the continuation of the Recherches pour servir à l’histoire de l’Égypte pendant la domination des Grecs et des Romains, by Monsieur Letronne, of the Institute.”*):2 in relation to which Letronne says that it clearly follows [4343] Homeric geography, and shows how it was particular to Greek and Latin poetic geography. It was also followed by various writers of both languages, in prose; and up to Procopius, who includes Africa in Asia, whereas the ancients placed it in Europe. See also Berkel in Stephanus Byzantinus, p. 3831 and Uckert, Geographie der Griechen und Roemer, tome 1, part 2, p. 280 which are both referred to in a note by Letronne. (Florence, 13 Aug. 1828.)

  From the excellent and most perceptive observations by Wolf2 (Prolegomena ad Homerum, § 17, Halle 1795, vol. 1, pp. LXX–LXXIII) it can be concluded in all probability that the beginning of the culture of prose, and the first works by Greek prose writers, were contemporaneous with the period in which writing became commonly used by the Greeks, so that it was possible to make it into books; or better *“to attempt writing and to fit it to common use seem clearly to have been one and the same thing as to attempt prose and to set oneself to refine it”* (p. LXXII), which occurred at the beginning of the 6th century BCE (p. LXX). From these same observations, say I, we can understand the true cause of this apparently strange phenomenon, that in all nations, upon their first entry into civilization, poetic literature preceded literature in prose; a phenomenon that has been observed by many, yet no one, either before or after Wolf, has properly explained it, even though the reason is most natural, obvious,
and simple. Who could ever have thought of composing in prose before the use of writing (easy, common, on paper or similar portable material, not bronze or marble or wood)? How would such compositions be preserved? You could talk in prose, also for long stretches, and people talked, told stories in [4344] prose, made speeches, and so on, in public too; but neither speakers nor anyone else desired or made any effort to ensure that such prose would endure, given that no one even suspected that such prose might be preserved, because memory could not retain it. On the other hand, man is naturally inclined toward poetry and song, as is apparent from observing that almost all savage nations have poetry, that they recited and composed in verse. At first they had no hope or intention that these verses should be preserved, any more than spoken prose. Then, seeing that the memory could retain them, they thought, they sought to preserve them. When it became common to preserve and learn them, when there were people who made a profession of it (the Greek rhapsodes), then naturally the composition of verses also became a form of art; it became more precise, more cultured; finally there was a poetic literature—and this occurred without writing—while prose, which had not yet been cultivated in any way because it was not preservable, was in fact far from being able to form a part of literature. It is therefore natural that when writing had become common and it was therefore possible to compose in prose, prose was still in its infancy, it lacked art, whereas poetry was already much advanced; and poetic language had already been formed for several centuries while prose was still unformed. See p. 4238, paragraph 2. There was a literature long before writing (i.e., before writing was commonly used) but that literature was not and could not be other than poetic. See p. 4354.