Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  3. Alfieri, Vita, epoch 4, ch. 2, vol. 2, p. 19.

  4. Cf. Z 2381–83 and note.

  5. Petrarch, Rime 53 and 128.

  Z 30

  1. Bossuet, “Oraison funèbre du prince de Condé” (1687), a text that had resonance also in Restoration France.

  2. Cicero, Pro Milone 37.

  3. Domenico Maria Manni, Lezioni di lingua toscana, Venice 1759, pp. 20–21. The corresponding sounds in English would be: bay, chay, day … bee, chee, dee.

  4. In Classical Hebrew a schwa, a mark placed under a letter without a vowel, could be vocal or silent. The vocal kind, as Leopardi notes, is sometimes accorded the value of a short “e.”

  Z 31

  1. Leopardi had imitated Anacreon in the “Odae adespotae,” composed in 1816 and published in 1817 in the Spettatore. His admiration for Anacreon, however, goes well beyond his juvenile taste for Arcadia. See Poeti greci e latini, p. 6 (B2). The fact that Leopardi will rework this early thought on Z 3441 (1823), with a further appendix on Z 4177 (1826), reveals its importance as a possible description of his own poetics of the vago or indefinito, on which see Z 26 and note 2. Note that the noun spiro, or respiro (translated here as “breath”/“lungs”) is illuminated by Leopardi’s discussion on Z 602 of the Greek verb ψύχω (Latin spiro [to blow] or refrigero [to make cool]), from which ψυχή [soul] was derived.

  2. This work by Lucian, Dependent Scholars (De mercede conductis potentium familiaribus), is a bitter reflection on the life of courtiers, and particularly on that of poets and philosophers.

  3. Voltaire, Henriade, ll. 1–2. According to Pacella, the quotation is taken from Andrés, Dell’origine, vol. 4, ch. 2.

  Z 32

  1. Pietro Metastasio, Estratto dell’arte poetica d’Aristotile, in Opere, Venice, 1781–1783 (= LL), tome 16, chs. 3 and 4; see in particular p. 53.

  2. Gravina, Della tragedia, ch. 26, “Del numero,” in Della ragion poetica, p. 35.

  3. Leopardi refers here to his “Discorso di un italiano intorno alla poesia romantica,” on which see Z 15, note 1.

  4. Giordani, in the course of his stay in Recanati in September 1818, had advised Leopardi to read Celsus, which he did between late December 1818 and early January 1819. The result is the following detailed analysis of Celsus’s De medicina. No edition of the book is now to be found in the LL. These first notes triggered further important observations on Z 42, 855–56, 1010, 1012–13, etc., on the problem of Vulgar Latin, one of Leopardi’s projects for books (see the separate slips not referred to in the 1827 Index).

  5. Celsus, De medicina 1, 3, 21.

  6. Celsus, De medicina 2, 8, 34.

  7. Celsus, De medicina 2, 11, 6.

  8. Celsus, De medicina 2, 17, 4.

  9. Celsus, De medicina 3, 5, 10.

  10. Celsus, De medicina 3, 22, 7; 3, 24, 4; 4, 13, 5.

  11. Celsus, De medicina 3, 6, 10.

  Z 33

  1. Celsus, De medicina 4, 13, 5.

  2. Celsus, De medicina 4, 5, 9.

  3. Celsus, De medicina 4, 29, 1.

  4. Celsus, De medicina 5, 28, 17.

  5. Celsus, De medicina 5, 28, 16.

  6. Celsus, De medicina 5, 28, 16–17.

  7. There follows a later addition, written at the bottom of pages 33–36 (up to “and in ch. 27, after the middle”), containing the results of further research.

  8. Celsus, De medicina 7, 2, 5.

  9. Celsus, De medicina 7, 23.

  10. Celsus, De medicina 7, 26, 5g–i.

  11. Celsus, De medicina 7, 27, 6.

  12. Celsus, De medicina 6, 2, 2.

  Z 34

  1. Celsus, De medicina 6, 18, 7.

  2. Celsus, De medicina 7, 2, 5.

  3. Celsus, De medicina 7, 7, 7b.

  4. Celsus, De medicina 7, 16, 4.

  5. Celsus, De medicina 7, 22, 1.

  6. Celsus, De medicina 7, 27, 4.

  7. Celsus, De medicina 8, 10, 7b.

  8. The De arte dicendi libellus, Cologne 1569, in fact by Julius Severianus, was republished by Sixto à Popma and is in Fabricius, Bibliotheca Latina (1728), bk. 4, vol. 2, pp. 627–34. Leopardi’s quotations on Z 35 are taken from this edition. See Iulii Severiani praecepta artis rhetoricae, ed. R. Giomini, Rome: Herder, 1992.

  Z 35

  1. Tiraboschi, Storia della letteratura italiana, bk. 1, ch. 8, tome 2, p. 215, maintained that the work reproduced by Fabricius and attributed to Celsus was merely “a fairly brief and imperfect compendium” of the treatise cited by Quintilian.

  2. Antiqui rhetores latini, ed. François Pithou, Paris 1599, p. 69, probably cited from Fabricius.

  Z 36

  1. See Leopardi, “Le ricordanze,” ll. 50–55.

  2. Here Leopardi comments on three works by Vincenzo Monti: “Il bardo della selva nera” (1806), the canticle already mentioned on Z 13, “In morte di Ugo di Bassville” (1793), and, a few lines further on, the “Musogonia” (1797).

  Z 37

  1. A collection of commentaries by various authors on a specific argument, generally of a sacred character.

  2. What is sketched here is evidently a self-portrait, and the figure of the child, ill and physically weak (or deformed), and destined for a premature death (and occasionally described as a girl) appears quite often in Leopardi’s autobiographical poetry and prose writings (see in particular the “Vita abbozzata di Silvio Sarno,” §§ 71, 73). Here, however, attention is focused on the parent’s lack of compassion, and is linked to the other autobiographical note on Z 353–56, which refers, however, to the mother, and not, as here, to the father.

  Z 38

  1. This thought derives from Fronto, Letter 7, to Appian, which Leopardi had himself translated in 1816. See Fronto, Opera inedita, tome 2, pp. 433–51 (ed. Van den Hout, pp. 244–48).

  2. This is the first real reference to Rousseau, whose works hover in the background of many entries from the very first pages of the Zibaldone (see, e.g., Z 22, note 1; Z 45, note 1; Z 56, note 3; Z 69, note 1; Z 104, note 2; Z 108 and note; Z 134 and note; Z 147 and note; Z 162, note 3; Z 252, note 2, etc.). Nevertheless, it is not easy to say when Leopardi first read any of Rousseau’s works, and which ones. For more details see Z 56, note 3.

  Z 39

  1. Leopardi took this aphorism by Bacon from Gravina, Della tragedia, ch. 40, p. 70, as he notes on Z 2478.

  2. It is difficult to say to which of Tasso’s uses of the verb sovvenire Leopardi refers; it can also mean “to assist.” In this case the passage would read: “I am assisted … by 4 reasons.” Note that this verb is used by Leopardi in l. 11 of “L’infinito”: “e mi sovvien l’eterno” (“and the eternal comes to mind,” trans. Galassi).

  Z 40

  1. In Italian: “poesia senza nome.” This remarkable definition (probably from early 1819) foreshadows the dissolution of traditional genres to which Leopardi owes his role as the founder of modern Italian poetry (he wrote “L’infinito” some months later). See K. Maurer, Giacomo Leopardis “Canti” und die Auflösung der lyrischen Genera, Frankfurt 1957.

  2. Even when, after the “philosophical” crisis of 1819 (see Z 179–81), Leopardi rejects his Christian beliefs, he considers the illusion of an afterlife, and one’s survival in the memory of posterity, as a most powerful vital force. The reference is to Pietro Verri’s Notti romane; the protagonist of this part of the work (called “Digression on the eternity of the intellectual substance,” pp. 119–128), is Cicero, “advocate” of illusions (Z 22), in particular the illusion of glory, celebrated in Pro Archia poeta (cf. Z 213–17).

  Z 41

  1. Ranieri De’ Calsabigi’s letter is printed in Alfieri, Tragedie, vol. 1, pp. XXI–XXII; Alfieri, Vita, part 1, epoch 2, ch. 5, vol. 1, p. 49.

  2. Lucian, “Zeus Catechized,” § 4, where Cyniscus likens Zeus, in his relation to Clotho, to a fish caught on a line.

  3. Pietro Vettori, Variarum lectionum libri XXV, Lyons 1554 (= LL), bk. 18, ch. 17, p. 330.

  4. Horace, Ars poetica 270–71.
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  Z 42

  1. The decline of Comedy (from the “Attic salt” of the Old comedy through Latin writers down to the modern age) is for Leopardi part of that supremacy of intellect (the “spiritualization of human affairs,” Z 1006), which characterizes Western civilization. Old comedy, mentioned later, denotes the comedies produced in Athens in the fifth century BCE.

  2. Scipione Maffei, Le cerimonie (1728), act 2, scene 4; the play was known for having abandoned the masks of commedia dell’arte and taking its theme from ancient theater.

  3. Following up on his notes on Celsus on Z 32ff. (see note 4), Leopardi formulates here the thesis that Italian and the other Romance languages were derived from Vulgar Latin rather than from the literary language—an argument developed at length in later entries. See, e.g., Z 855ff. (see note to 856), 1010 and note 2, 1012–13, 1034–35, 1938, 2298–99, 3620, 4331–33.

  Z 43

  1. Draft of the opening of a letter of thanks sent on 11 January 1819 to Francesco Cancellieri (cf. Z 1177, note 2) after Leopardi had received the first printed copies of his two patriotic canzoni. It is therefore likely that this part of the Zibaldone dates from the same period (see also Z 43, note 4).

  2. Leopardi makes extensive use in the Zibaldone of Isaac Casaubon’s edition of Diogenes Laertius, De vitis, which features corrections by Marcus Meibom and notes by Gilles Ménage (Amsterdam 1692).

  3. Ordinarily Leopardi simply refers to Du Fresne Du Cange’s Greek and Latin glossaries as “Glossario,” “Gloss.,” etc., in Italian. Indeed this is the sole occasion in the Zibaldone where he cites them in Latin. When a reader finds a simple reference to the “Glossary,” the immediate context will make it plain whether Leopardi is using the Latin or the Greek work.

  4. Lorenzo Magalotti, Lettere familiari, part 1, letter 2, p. 21. The same idea had already been expressed in Castiglione’s Il libro del cortegiano [The Book of the Courtier] 2, 16. As Leopardi later records in Z 3528 (1823), this thought dates to the beginning of 1819 (see also Z 43, note 1), and reflects his state of physical weakness and acute moral crisis during this crucial year, in which he almost completely lost his sight and planned his failed escape from Recanati (see note 2 to Z 55).

  Z 44

  1. Meurs, vol. 6, col. 327.

  2. A common expression in the wills of classical antiquity.

  3. Plutarch, Life of Demosthenes 3; Pseudo-Longinus, On the Sublime 12, 4.

  4. Leopardi owned the Rome 1663 edition of Bartoli’s work, in whose title the form Mogòr was used; Leopardi’s use of the form Mogol was, however, common at the time.

  Z 45

  1. This entire paragraph might seem a meditation upon Rousseau’s refusal, for example in Du contrat social, bk. 4, ch. 8, to attribute heroic, republican values to modern, Christian societies. But it is difficult to say what Leopardi had read of Rousseau by this time (see Z 38, note 2). The Social Contract is still partly uncut in the LL.

  2. Pierfrancesco, born in 1813. The “we” that Leopardi refers to in the following sentence are his immediate siblings, Paolina and Carlo.

  3. Apparently Leopardi is here copying or reworking some notes or sketches. It has been suggested (Peruzzi) that the Zibaldone is a revised copy of an earlier ms., which might be true for some parts of it, but certainly not for the whole text.

  Z 47

  1. The first quotation, which reads in English, “grace, grace, and yet it was not grace,” is intended to echo the second, “peace, peace and yet it was not peace,” derived not from St. Paul but from Jeremiah 6:14.

  2. One of the many childhood impressions and recollections scattered throughout the Zibaldone; a variant of it features also in the autobiographical sketches known as “Vita abbozzata di Silvio Sarno,” § 33.

  Z 48

  1. Here Leopardi sketches his first attempts at historical linguistics, one of the main strands of thought in the Zibaldone.

  2. Horace, Ars poetica 52–53.

  3. On “geometrical” languages see Z 110–11, 243, 323–24, 3254. On the “geometricization” of the world see Z 160 (and note 2), 415.

  Z 49

  1. See Roberti, “Il Pavone, che si specchia in un ruscello,” in Opere, tome 10, pp. 195–97.

  2. Leopardi might be indebted here to Buffon’s chapter on the varieties of mankind, in his Histoire naturelle, tome 3, “Variétés dans l’espèce humaine,” pp. 371–530 (LL = Storia naturale dell’uomo, tome 3, pp. 1–204). Another crucial study on this subject is Maupertuis, Vénus physique, part 2, “Variétés dans l’espèce humaine,” Oeuvres, Lyon 1768, tome 2, pp. 97–133. Buffon is mentioned for the first time in October 1820, Z 281 (see note 2). Z 2558–59 probably draws on the same source.

  3. Virgil, Aeneid 8, 59.

  Z 50

  1. The stéréotype, an eighteenth-century invention, perfected by the printer Didot in Paris in 1798, used a plaster-of-Paris mold of a page of type and wood engravings to form a metal cast.

  2. See Z 3050–51.

  Z 51

  1. A theme that recurs in “La sera del dì di festa” (1820).

  2. Since “there is no other reality or other substance in the world but illusions” (Z 99). This view is confirmed, more radically, on Z 3990. Illusions depend on “man’s innate tendency toward pleasure,” that is, on “imagination,” which is “the principal source of human happiness” (Z 168).

  3. The reference to Montesquieu is an interlinear addition, dating perhaps to June 1820, when Leopardi began to read the Essai sur le goût.

  4. In his 1827 Index Leopardi refers for this thought also to Z 710–11. See Z 72, first paragraph, and note 1 to Z 276.

  5. Leopardi is referring to Lettres à ses élèves by the French Hebrew scholar Guillaume de Villefroy (Paris 1751, held by the LL and cited also on Z 1126), translated in the twenty-volume work I principj discussi dalla società ebrea clementina de’ cappuccini di Parigi per facilitare l’intelligenza de’ libri profetici, Macerata 1789, owned by the LL, as well as the French ed. in 16 vols. Principes discutés…, published in Paris, 1755–1764.

  Z 52

  1. Tasso, Gerusalemme liberata 1, 1.

  Z 53

  1. In the first decades of the nineteenth century there was an implicit and unresolved opposition between the “psychologists” and the ideologues, where the former were sometimes presumed to accept the existence of an immortal soul, while the latter did not. The LL contained Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Études de la nature, Paris 1793, and the first edition of Chateaubriand’s Génie du Christianisme, Paris 1802, which included René (part 2, bk. 4, tome 2, pp. 169–218) and Atala (part 3, bk. 6, tome 3, pp. 191–304).

  2. Leopardi, “Discorso di un italiano intorno alla poesia romantica” (see Z 15, note 1).

  Z 54

  1. Leopardi implies here—Timpanaro notes (“Epicuro, Lucrezio e Leopardi,” p. 190 B12)—that this is something unnatural. See Z 748 and note. On Z 755–56 Leopardi states his preference for Virgil over both Ennius and Lucretius.

  2. Algarotti, Saggio sopra la necessità di scrivere nella propria lingua, in Opere, tome 4, pp. 16–17. Algarotti judges grandiosity to be a characteristic feature of Latin prose style.

  Z 55

  1. Carlo, Giacomo’s younger brother, who had a better knowledge of English, wrote on a slip of paper attached to the margin of the ms.: “It is not true that the English lack crushed c and g sounds, since they have the first in ch and the second in j when it comes before a vowel, and the way in which they pronounce the names of the Writer [i.e., James] and of the Annotator [i.e., Charles] may serve as an example of this.” Crushed translates schiacciato, a term that Leopardi takes from Salviati, traditionally used for the palatal affricates, and palatal lateral, nasal, and sibilant.

  2. Similar observations feature in the letter of apology sent on 13 August 1819 to Count Broglio d’Ajano, who had been involved in the attempt to secure a passport enabling Leopardi to flee from home. That self-love causes hatred of others is reiterated many times by Leopardi,
e.g., on Z 872ff., 1100, 1201, 1205–206, 1291–92, 3682–83, 3773ff.

  3. Hesiod, Works and Days 202–12.

  Z 56

  1. Sannazaro, Arcadia, “prosa” (i.e., chapter) 9, in Opere volgari, vol. 1, p. 32.

  2. The idea that happiness increases the more self-love weakens (Z 1382, 2410–11, 2495–96, 2736–37, 2752–55, 3291ff.) and the more one descends the scale of organized beings (Z 2899–900) is expounded on Z 3846–48, 3921–27, 4180–81, 4186 and in the “Canto notturno.” It is clear from this thought that Leopardi is already questioning the traditional anthropocentrism implied in his Christian education; see Z 84 and note 1.

  3. Rousseau had in fact written that “l’homme qui médite est un animal dépravé.” Leopardi has probably taken the dictum from the Venice 1797 edition of the Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité and translated it back into French. Cf. Z 3935, where Leopardi gives another version (see also Z 306 for “depraved animals”). In the LL there were also Les confessions (London 1786–90), a translation of Du contrat social (Del contratto sociale, ossia Principj del diritto politico, Venice 1797, among the “banned” books and still partly uncut), and an anthology of Pensées (Amsterdam 1786). On the other hand, passages from Rousseau’s works might have been cited by Leopardi from other works, for example, Lamennais’s Essai sur l’indifférence en matière de Réligion, in the Italian translation of 1819–20 first mentioned in November 1820 (Z 330). See, for example, Z 357, note 1, and 912, note 1. On the “hidden” presence of Rousseau in Leopardi see S. Koopmann, Studien zur verborgenen Präsenz Rousseaus im Werk Giacomo Leopardis, Tübingen 1998 (Italian trans. Cosenza: Memoria, 2003).

  4. Leopardi had access to an Italian edition of Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werther, published in its Italianized form as Verter, Venice 1796 (on Z 4479, however, we find the correct spelling). He perhaps had in mind here the entry for 22 May 1771, p. 28, where it is said that the happiest would seem to be those who “like children live from day to day.”