Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  Just how quickly and easily a child is able to draw conclusions from the comparison of particulars, to generalize, to abstract, and to acquire by itself an understanding of principles and abstractions which appear very difficult to acquire (and achieving it is certainly wonderful), can be seen, among other things, from this consideration. I have noted, and everyone can note, how two-year-olds say irregular verbs of the language with the inflections that they [4430] ought to have if they were regular: e.g., saying io teno, io veno, io poto, for tengo, vengo, posso [I hold, I come, I can]. They had certainly not heard anyone say io teno, etc.; they therefore did not say these things by imitation, but through reflection, through reasoning; they had concluded that if from sentire, e.g., you make io sento [I feel], if from vedere you make io vedo [I see] then the first person of tenere, potere, ought to be io teno, io poto; from venire, io veno. And they were mistaken due to their exactness of reasoning and of generalization. They had already found for themselves the general rules for verb inflections, and already formed in their mind the type, the paradigm of their various conjugations. Such a discovery requires endless comparison, great mental acumen, amounting, it seems, to the exertions of the metaphysical spirit of the earliest grammarians, to whom such a child is not at all inferior, etc. etc. This observation is worthy of great attention on the part of psychologists and ideologues. See p. 4519. (4 [January] 1829.)

  For p. 4369. Socrates is also relevant here. I say this not so much in relation to Plato’s, or Platonic, Dialogues, and Xenophon’s Memorabilia, but rather to the great multitude of maxims, similarities, or comparisons, apothegms and moral sayings under the name of Socrates, which were drawn from the reports of various authors and compilers, and are to be found in the collections or florilegia of Stobaeus, Antonius, Maximus. (4 [January] 1829.) See p. 4469, end.

  Our da capo [from the beginning] is also analogous to the Greek ἄνωθεν for di nuovo [once again] (almost da cima [from the top], which we use for saying da capo). Socrates, in Stobaeus, ch. 123, παρηγορικά [“Consolations”], ed. Gessner, Zurich 1559: “πεττείᾳ τινὶ ἔοικεν ὁ βίος· καὶ δεῖ ὥσπερ ψῆφόν τινα τίθεσθαι τὸ συμβαῖνον· οὐ γάρ ἐστιν ἄνωθεν βαλεῖν οὐδὲ ἀναθέσθαι τὴν ψῆφον” [“Life is like game of dice. Whatever happens happens in the same way as to a piece. It is not permitted to throw again nor alter where the piece lies”]. “Aleae ludo similis est vita: et quicquid evenit, veluti quandam tesseram disponere oportet. Non enim denuo jacere licet, neque tesseram aliter ponere” (translated by Gessner).1 To [4431] which passage Johannes Conradus Orelli, Opuscola Graecorum veterum sententiosa et moralia, tome 1, pp. 455–56, Leipzig 1819, makes the following annotation. *“῎Ανωθεν (βαλεῖν) [to throw again] ἄνωθεν, denuo, iterum, wieder von vorne an [once again]. And likewise the Apostle Paul, Galatians 4, 9: ‘οἷς πάλιν’ [‘whereunto again’]” (this word is perhaps a gloss) “‘ἄνωθεν δουλεύειν ἐθέλετε’ [‘ye desire to be in bondage’]; and Josephus, Antiquitates, bk 1, ch. 18, § 3: ‘φιλίαν ἄνωθεν ποιεῖται πρὸς αὐτόν’ [‘and he makes friendship once more with him’]. This passage is cited by Schleusner in the Lexicon of the New Testament, under this word.”* (5 [January] of 1829.)

  Pythagoras in Iamblichus, De vita Pythagorae, ch. 18, p. 183, ed. Kiessling (Orelli describes it as just published in 1819): “᾿Αγαθὸν οἱ πόνοι· αἱ δὲ ἡδοναὶ ἐκ παντὸς τρόπου κανόν” [“Toils are a benefit, pleasures are in every way an ill”]. Excellent: but what is to be said about that intelligence or blind necessity which has ordained that things should be so? And what is the point of toil if pleasure, which is the only possible purpose, is always ill? (6 [January] 1829.)

  For p. 4406. Julian, letter 22, p. 389b. Spanheim. “῾Ο λογοποιὸς ὁ Θούριος” [“the historian of Thurii”] (Herodotus). Strabo, bk. 14, p. 656 and Diodorus, bk. 2, p. 262 (Fabricius) describe Herodotus as a συγγραφέα [prose writer].1 —Also in the modern languages, the first written prose (by which I mean the first books in prose) are generally historical, that is, chronicles and the like (6 [January] 1829.) See p. 4464.

  For p. 4353. *“poetry, etc., in a singing voice precisely as the old songs among the ancient Germans and Getae, which Tacitus mentions in his book De moribus, etc., and Jornandes, ch. 4 and 5, De rebus Geticis.”* Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca 1, 1, pp. 3–4. (6 [January] 1829.)

  Digamma. The History of Rome by B. G. Niebuhr, translated by Julius Charles Hare, M.A., and Connop Thirlwall, M.A., fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge, the first volume, Cambridge, 1828, section entitled: “Ancient Italy,” p. 17, note 33. “Micali [4432] with great plausibility explains the Oscan Viteliu on the Samnite denary of the same age (the age of the Marsic war) to be the Sabellian form of Italia. Tome 1, p. 52. The analogy of Latium, Samnium, gives Italium, or with the digamma Vitalium, Vitellium; and Vitellio is like Samnio. Vitalia is mentioned by Servius among the various names of the country: on Aeneid 8, 328.—p. 18. In the Tyrrhenian or the ancient Greek (note 36. In the former, according to Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2, 5, 10; in the latter, according to Timaeus quoted by Gellius, 11, 1. Hellanicus of Lesbos cited by Dionysius 1, 35, does not determine the language. Tyrrhenian however here does not mean Etruscan, but Pelasgic, as in the Tyrrhenian glosses in Hesychius). italos or itulos meant an ox. The mythologers connected this with the story of Hercules driving the1 Geryon’s herd (note 37. Hellanicus and Apollodorus in the passages just referred to). through the country: Timaeus, in whose days such things were no longer thought satisfactory, saw an allusion to the abundance of cattle in Italy. (note 38. Gellius 11, 1; Piso, in Varro De re rustica 2, 1, borrowed the explanation from the Greeks) … In the Oscan name of the country” (of ancient Italy), “which, as we have seen, was Vitellium, there is an evident reference to Vitellius, the son of Faunus and of Vitellia, a goddess worshipt in many parts of Italy (note 39. Suetonius, Vitellius 1).”2 —Elsewhere the author notes that Vitulus, surname of a Roman family, is none other than Italus, taken, like many others, from the family’s place of origin. (7 [January] 1829.)

  [4433] Ibid., section entitled “The Oenotrians and Pelasgians,” pp. 38–39. The author notes and demonstrates “that, according to manifold analogy, Sikelus and Italus are the same name (note 122. as Σελλος and Ελλην, Aristotle, Meteorologica 1, 14, p. 33, Sylburg” (see Cellarius, tome 1, p. 886) “T and K are interchanged as in Latinus and Lakinius)”1 and that likewise Sicily and Italy are one and the same name. The Sicels, according to the author, were Pelasgians, of those known as Tyrrhenians, who were driven out of Italy, that is, from that part of the peninsula which was then called Italy, by the Aborigines, and emigrated to Sicily, which was so named from then onward, from the name of these emigrants, Sicels, that is, Itali. (9 [January] 1829.)

  Ibid., p. 40, note 127. “Salmasius saw that Maleventum or Maloentum, in the heart of what was afterward Samnium would in pure Greek have been Maloeis or Malus.”2 And the author demonstrates this with other examples of Latin neuter nouns with entum derived from Greek masculine nouns in ας or ους, genitive εντος. See in Cellarius and in Forcellini the foolish etymologies of Maleventum given by the ancient Romans, which demonstrates their ignorance or inadvertency with regard to the digamma. (9 [January] 1829.) Indeed it seems that such ignorance produced the name Beneventum, given to what was previously Maleventum.

  Ibid., pp. 50–51. “We may observe a magical power exercised by the Greek language and national character over foreign races that came in contact with them. The inhabitants of Asia Minor hellenized themselves from the time of the Macedonian conquest, almost without any settlements among them of genuine Greeks: Antioch, though the common people spoke a barbarous language, became altogether a Greek city; and the entire transformation of the Syrians was averted only by their Oriental inflexibility. Even the Albanians, who have
settled as colonies in modern [4434] Greece, have adopted the Romaic by the side of their own language, and in several places have forgotten the latter: it was in this way only that the immortal Souli was Greek; and the noble Hydra itself, the destructions of which we shall perhaps have to deplore before the publication of this volume, is an Albanian settlement … Calabria, like Sicily, continued a Grecian land, though Roman colonies were planted in the coasts: the Greek language only began to give way there in the 14th century; and it is not three hundred years since it prevailed” (dominava) “at Rossano, and no doubt much more extensively; for our knowledge of the fact as to that little town is merely accidental: indeed even at this day there is remaining in the district of Locri a population that speaks Greek (note 163. For the assurance of this fact, which is stated in several books of travels in a questionable manner, I am indebted to the Minister Count Zurlo; whose learning precludes the possibility of his having confounded the natives with the Albanian colonies).”1 (10 [January] 1829.)

  Ibid., section entitled “The Opicans and Ausonians,” p. 57. “Olsi, as it stands in the Periplus of Scylax (note 190. ᾿Ολσοὶ. Periplus 3), is no errour of the transcriber; it is Volsi dropping the Digamma; hence Volsici was derived, and then contracted into Volsci … I have no doubt that the Elisyci or Helisyci, mentioned by Herodotus (7, 165) among the tribes from which the Carthaginians levied their army to attack Sicily in the time of Gelon, are no other people than the Volsci.”2 (10 [January] 1829.)

  Dispersar Spanish. (Quintana.)3

  [4435] “Discourse on Homer,”1 etc. Athenaeus, bk. 14, pp. 619e–f, 620. Athenaeus records certain mournful popular songs (ᾠδαὶ), usually sung by rural folk (οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς χώρας [those from the country]) among the Mariandynians, people from Asia, who lived between Bythnia and Paphlagonia, about one of their ancients; songs mentioned also by Hesychius see Βῶρμον [dirge].2 —Ibid., 620b–c referring to the rhapsodists, says “Χαμαιλέων δ’ ἐν τῷ περὶ Στησιχόρου καὶ μελῳδηθῆναι φησίν” (were sung by the rhapsodists) “οὐ μόνον τὰ ῾Ομήρου, ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰ ῾Ησιόδου καὶ ᾿Αρχιλόχου, ἔτι δὲ Μιμνέρμου καὶ Φωκυλίδου” [“Chamaeleon in his book on Stesichorus says that not only things by Homer were sung by the rhapsodists but also those by Hesiod and Archilochus, as well as Mimnermus and Phocylides”]. —Ibid., d. “᾿Ιάσων δ' ἐν τρίτῳ περὶ τῶν ᾿Αλεξάνδρου ἱερῶν” (sacrificiis. Dalechamps) “ἐν ᾿Αλεξανδρείᾳ φησίν, ἐν τῷ μεγάλῳ θεάτρῳ, ὑποκρίνασθαι ῾Ηγησίαν τὸν κωμῳδὸν τὰ ῾Ηροδότου, ῾Ερμόφαντον δὲ τὰ ῾Ομήρου” [“Jason in the third book of the sacrifices of Alexander says that in Alexandria, in the great theater, the actor Hegesias performed extracts from Herodotus, and Hermophontos extracts from Homer”]. I do not know then how Dalechamps can translate thus “historiam Herodoti egisse” [“had recited Herodotus’s History”]; Fabricius,3 under “Herodotus,” says “in theatro decantata fuisse” [“had been sung in the theater”] simply referring to this passage, where however ὑποκρίνασθαι [performed] is much more than sung. Casaubon has nothing on this. (11 [January] 1829, Sunday.)

  Orelli, loc. cit., p. 4431, beginning, p. 519. “Αὐτίκα. Exempli gratia, verbi causa, more and more common.” See Ernesti on Xenophon’s Memorabilia 4, ch. 7, 2. Ruhnken on Timaeus’s Lexicon of Platonic Words, p. 56, 2nd ed., and Fischer in the Index to Socratic Aeschines, under this word.4 (11 [January] 1829.)

  “Considerations on Homer,” etc.5 Not only Homeric poetry, but also many other writings, and perhaps all those from earliest antiquity, not only poetry but also prose, existing today or lost, probably had their diaskeuasts, who reduced their spelling and phrasing to a more modern and less crude and irregular form: and these writings were passed down to posterity in that form alone, i.e., more or less diascheuasmenoi [revised]. And I cannot but believe that even Herodotus, and also those genuine writings that we have by Hippocrates, have reached us altered and reformed by diaskeuasts (whom we might translate as reformers). [4436] In their syntax, and in their manner, they still have much of that irregularity and that lack of art which might be expected of their time, but not very much: Xenophon and others from the classical age perhaps have it no less: and generally I find their construction and wording to be much more formed and artificial than what seems probable to me for that time. What is not very visible is the infancy of the prose, which is so clear in our writers—not so much Ricordano or his contemporaries, but the Villanis,1 etc. (Likewise with the Spanish in the 13th century, the French, etc.) The infancy of prose can clearly be seen on the other hand in some surviving fragments of Democritus, an approximate contemporary of Herodotus (he died, aged over 100, in the 94th Olympiad, Herodotus flourished in the 84th Olympiad, approximately 440 BCE, Hippocrates died around the 100th Olympiad: Democritus is referred to in his writings). See in particular in the collection (incomplete, however, and imperfect) the fragments on ethics 43, 50, 70, 73, 121 and on physics, fragment 1 given by Orelli on the basis of Henri Estienne (loc. cit., p. 4431, beginning) pp. 91–131. One and the same thing is repeated in the same sentence; there is hardly any syntax; essential words and entire phrases and sentences are omitted and implied; one part of the sentence does not agree with another; the discourse proceeds by way of those forms which the Greeks call anacoluti (or anacolutie) [anacolutha], i.e., non-sequiturs2 which is the same as saying without form. Such fragments, that is, passages which have échappés [got away] (as naturally happens to many) from the diaskeuasis, may serve as evidence of the true prose of that period; they are very similar to the work, for example, of our Giovanni Villani, and compared with the writing of Herodotus, may serve as proof of my opinion. I say échappés, etc., because certainly, if Herodotus was, then Democritus too was subjected to diaskeuasis, and was known διεσκευασμένος [in revised form] among the ancients, though nothing similar is to be found in most of his other fragments, and Democritus was regarded by the ancients as being excellent also in style. (Cicero, in Orator, ch. 20, 67: “Itaque video visum esse nonnullis, Platonis et Democriti locutionem, etsi absit a versu, tamen, quod incitatius feratur, [4437] et clarissimis verborum luminibus utatur, potius poema putandum quam comicorum poetar.; apud quos, nisi quod versiculi sunt, nihil est aliud quotidiani dissimile sermonis” [“And so I note that it has seemed to some that the style of Plato and Democritus, though far removed from verse, on account of the fact, however, that it moves along rapidly, and uses words which are like shining lights, ought to be considered as more like the style of a poem than that of the comedians; for these, apart from the fact that they use poetry lines, differ in no other way from everyday speech”]. De oratore 1, 11, 49: “Si ornate locutus est, sicut fertur, et mihi videtur, physicus ille Democritus; materies illa fuit physici, de qua dixit; ornatus vero ipse verborum, oratoris putandus est” [“If Democritus the natural philosopher spoke elegantly, as is reported, and as is my opinion; the subject on which he spoke was that of natural philosophy; but by his elegant use of words, he must be considered an orator”].) Cicero praises him also for clarity. (De divinatione 2, 64, 133: “valde Heraclitus obscurus; minime Democritus” [“Heraclitus extremely obscure, Democritus in no way”].) The fragments noted above are understood only through discernment. It is quite true that everyone has this discernment, and despite their confused and intricate form, everyone understands them immediately. And in fact they are clear. The same with our old writers, the same with almost every book of similar ages and similar style: primitive, naive, artless, almost as nature dictates. Nature speaks to the reader as she has dictated to the writer; she acts as interpreter. In any event, those constructs and that manner of expression, after the use of writing in prose had become common, disappeared almost completely; they are not to be found even in Greek writing on papyri found in Egypt, all of which, even t
hough they are obscure, intricate, unrefined, artless, are yet more logical, more grammatical, more regular and formed, albeit done by people who were ignorant and lacking in art: as an ignorant notary today, though he writes pretty badly, still avoids the grammatical errors of our historians and philosophers of the 13th and 14th centuries. See p. 4466. In (Greek) literature I am unable to quote other examples: except that they are to be found in many of the early Christian books, both the canonical as well as the so-called apocryphal books—see p. 4483—and in the fragments of Philodemus from Herculaneum,1 documents of singular ignorance in this respect, and of carelessness. See p. 4470. —But in fact can it not be said of all ancient books that they have come down to us διεσκευασμένοι [revised] in some way? Has it not been proved that Cicero, for example, did not write [4438] using the spelling in which his books are published nor with the spelling used in the manuscripts in our possession, which is also different from that used and introduced into the ancient books by Latin grammarians of the 4th century? (Niebuhr, Conspectus orthographiae codicis vaticani Ciceronis de re publica, at the end.) See p. 4480. (12 Jan. 1829, Recanati.)