Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  2. Xenophon, Cyropaedia 1, 2, a passage which does in fact have more to do with age classes than with castes.

  3. That is, the Levites.

  4. Journeys of exploration in West Africa in the course of 1818 and 1819 were widely covered by the European periodical press, including those by G. T. Mollien and T. E. Bowdich. An extract from Bowdich’s original account (Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee, London 1819) in the Monthly Magazine, was translated in Spettatore straniero, tome 11, no. 15 (100), 1818, pp. 194–98 (= LL) with the title “Capitale degli Ashanti.”

  Z 922

  1. Arrian, Historia Indica 9, 10.

  Z 926

  1. See Z 314, note 1.

  Z 928

  1. Plato, Timaeus 22b. The Egyptian priest is addressing Solon.

  Z 929

  1. Leopardi is referring to the translation of an anonymous review of Charles Wilkins, Grammar of the Sanskrita Language (London 1808), taken from the Edinburgh Review, vol. 13, October 1808–January 1809, pp. 366–81, in Annali di scienze e lettere, vol. 5, no. 13, pp. 24–53; here we give the quotations from the original English text. The suggestions contained in this review (written in fact by Alexander Hamilton, who taught Sanskrit to Friedrich Schlegel; see also Z 1136), are expounded by Leopardi in later notes, where he reaches important conclusions on the relationship between Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit independently from Bopp (Daniele Maggi, “Il sanscrito nella teoria linguistica di Giacomo Leopardi,” in Mignini, ed., Leopardi e l’Oriente, pp. 115–35 [B8]). Another source probably consulted by Leopardi on the Sanskrit language is the article “Samskret” by N. Beauzée in the Encyclopédie méthodique (cf. D. Maggi, “Sulla conoscenza dell’India nelle Marche al tempo di Leopardi, attraverso i fondi librari e i manoscritti antichi,” in Mignini, ed. L’Oriente nelle biblioteche, p. 97 [B8]). See Z 2351–54. Sir Charles Wilkins, the cofounder, with Sir William Jones (see the note below), of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, was the first Englishman to master Sanskrit. On the study of Sanskrit in the nineteenth century see Morpurgo Davies’s book cited in note 1 to Z 758.

  2. Sir William Jones, who is generally reckoned to be the founder of Indo-European comparative grammar and of comparative linguistics, did more than any other figure to pioneer the movement known as the “Oriental Renaissance” (on which see Raymond Schwab, Oriental Renaissance: Europe’s Rediscovery of India and the East, 1680–1880, New York: Columbia U.P., 1984). He also published a translation of Sacontalá (Calcutta 1789) by the Indian poet Kalidasa. See Z 805 and note.

  3. A quotation from Sir William Jones’s key address, “The Third Anniversary Discourse, delivered 2 February 1786, by the President,” in Asiatic Researches, 1, 1788, pp. 422–23, on Sanskrit. This same quotation had featured in the Edinburgh Review, see note 1 above.

  Z 930

  1. See also Leopardi, Pensieri, CI, in Prose, pp. 340–41, and Z 2436–41.

  Z 932

  1. The anonymous text mentioned by Leopardi, “Memoria intorno ai Druidi e ai Bardi Britanni,” was by Ugo Foscolo, and appears in the issue cited of the Annali di scienze e lettere, pp. 350–99 (Pacella).

  2. Here Leopardi extends to the North as a whole the formula Madame de Staël had used to describe Germany, namely, that it was “the homeland of thought.” See Z 350.

  Z 935

  1. In fact Gennaro Sisti, Indirizzo per sapere in meno di un mese la gramatica greca, Naples 1752, § 211, p. 92.

  2. There follows until the end of the paragraph a ms. marginal addition, with the section beginning “The Chaldean language” being added much later.

  3. Antonio Agostino Giorgi was a celebrated theologian and orientalist and the author of a Grammatica Copto-Araba (Rome 1778), and of an Alphabetum Tibetanum missionum apostolicarum commodo editum (Rome 1762).

  Z 936

  1. See Benedetto Varchi, L’Hercolano, question 10, pp. 253–82.

  2. Varchi, L’Hercolano, question 7, pp. 123–77.

  3. This sentence is a ms. marginal addition. The allusion is to Genesis 11:1–9.

  Z 937

  1. On the project of a universal language see Z 1028, 3253–62, 4108.

  Z 939

  1. On the origins of languages in the earliest epochs of humanity, and in particular on the first hieroglyphs see Vico, The New Science, §§ 225–26: “Mutes make themselves understood by gestures or objects that have natural relations with the ideas they wish to signify. This axiom is the principle of the hieroglyphs by which all nations spoke in the time of their first barbarism.” On Leopardi’s knowledge of Vico see Z 143, note 2.

  Z 941

  1. See Z 932 and note 1.

  Z 942

  1. The article mentioned here (in Annali di scienze e lettere, vol. 8, no. 24, December 1811, pp. 289–304) was a rendering of Sir George Leonard Staunton, “Ta Tsing Leu Lee: being the fundamental Laws, and a selection from the supplementary Statutes, of the Penal Code of China,” Edinburgh Review, tome 16, issue 32, August 1810, pp. 476–99. The translation of the article continues in the following issues (vol. 9, no. 25, January 1812, pp. 35–44, and vol. 10, pp. 3–38; the latter, however, is not in the LL). The passage on p. 300 cited by Leopardi refers to the Chinese as “quell’ immutabile popolo” (in the Edinburgh Review p. 481: “this unchanging people”).

  2. Annali di scienze e lettere, vol. 8, no. 24, December 1811, contained, at pp. 305–25, a review by J. S. Martin, originally published in the Magasin encyclopédique, 1811, vol. 5, pp. 224–39, of Jean Pierre Abel Rémusat, Essai sur la langue et la littérature chinoises, Paris 1811.

  Z 943

  1. Joseph Hager, Panthéon Chinois, ou parallèle entre le culte religieux des Grecs et celui des Chinois, Paris 1806.

  2. Leopardi refers here to a review in the Annali di scienze e lettere, vol. 5, no. 14, pp. 143–52, originally published in the Critical Review, of Ancient alphabets and hieroglyphic characters explained…, London 1806.

  3. Pages 297–98 refer to the “Ta Tsing Leu Lee” and pages 313–20 to the review of Rémusat cited on Z 942 (see notes 1 and 2).

  4. Both references to the review of Rémusat cited above (Z 942, and note 2).

  Z 944

  1. We give the original text as it appeared in the Edinburgh Review (see note 1 to Z 992), p. 478, where the author lists three further advantages possessed by China but omitted by Leopardi here, namely, “their system of early and universal marriage”; “the sacred regard that is habitually paid to the ties of kindred”; “the sobriety, industry, and even intelligence of the lower classes.”

  2. A further reference to the article cited on Z 942 (see note 1).

  Z 945

  1. In this paragraph Leopardi quotes from two reviews featuring in the same issue of the Annali di scienze e lettere, vol. 8, no. 24, December 1811, already mentioned (see Z 942, notes 1 and 2).

  Z 946

  1. Leopardi writes “De Vico,” one of the ways in which Vico signed his name.

  Z 947

  1. For Leopardi, as for the idéologues and their precursors (e.g., Condillac), the procedures of knowledge were essentially of an analogical type, since they were designed to uncover conceptual and natural relationships. Cf. Z 1089–90, 1189–90, 1650 and note, 1836–39.

  Z 948

  1. Leopardi’s emphasis on “things” and the relations between them (see previous note) returns in an anti-idealist mode on Z 1616 (see note 1).

  Z 949

  1. On the Skeptic sect, founded by Pyrrho of Elis, see Z 427 and note 1.

  2. That is, De medicina (first century CE), discussed on Z 32, 34–36.

  Z 950

  1. This entire passage was transcribed from a review of Alexis Guillaume Henri de Collin de Bar, Histoire de l’Inde ancienne et moderne, Paris 1814, which appeared in Spettatore, Foreign section, 1815, tome 5, no. 43, pp. 112–16 (quotation on p. 113).

  Z 951

  1. Peter Heinrich Holthaus, Auch in unserer Sprache können und wollen wir Deutsch seyn, Schwelm 1814. The quotation is from p
. 244.

  Z 954

  1. See “Varieties Literary and Philosophical,” which contains a note on a Persian dictionary by James Ross, Monthly Magazine, 1 July 1816, vol. 41, pp. 541–42.

  2. Ferdowsi, the Persian poet who lived between the tenth and eleventh centuries, was the author of A King’s Book of Kings. The Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp (for the various possible transliterations of name and title, see Barbara Brend and Charles Melville, Epic of the Persian Kings. The Art of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2010, p. xv). John Richardson, an orientalist and colleague of Sir William Jones, compiled A Dictionary, Persian, Arabic and English, 1777 and 1780, revised by Charles Wilkins in 1806 and 1810, and also A grammar of the Arabick language, London 1776.

  3. For example, Du Cange.

  Z 956

  1. Leopardi quotes the first paragraph of an article in the Spettatore straniero, tome 9, 1817, no. 5 (80), pp. 273–81, in which the editor of the journal, Davide Bertolotti, reviewed Horace Hayman Wilson’s translation into English of Kalidasa’s Megha Duta, which appeared in 1813 (and not 1814) with the subtitle of The Cloud Messenger.

  2. David Winspear, “Sull’arte di tradurre gli antichi,” Spettatore italiano, tome 8, no. 7 (83), 1817, p. 442. In the Biblioteca Italiana, no. 22, October 1817, p. 163 there is a review of a translation from Anacreon (Venice 1817), with a preface by Winspear.

  Z 957

  1. Staël, “Sulla maniera e la utilità delle traduzioni,” p. 15. See Z 2677 also, on the affinity of Greek and Italian.

  2. The name of the purist Antonio Cesari, who extolled the virtues of fourteenth-century Florentine (see Z 1, note 6), is an interlinear addition.

  Z 961

  1. Passage drawn verbatim from the second part of Pietro Giordani’s review of Domenico Scinà’s (i.e., Demetrios Schinas’s) Memorie sulla vita e filosofia d’Empedocle Gergentino (Palermo 1813), Biblioteca Italiana, tome 2, no. 4, April 1816, pp. 15–21 (here p. 20). The first part was published in tome 1, no. 3, March 1816, pp. 322–33.

  2. Fabricius, bk. 2, cites from the Köln 1688 edition of Eusebius (= LL).

  Z 962

  1. This is the first time Leopardi refers to the name of a religious feast in the dating of his entry, a practice which is sporadic at this stage, but is much more frequent though not systematic from the fall of 1821 on. Cf. Z 1438 on “the very beautiful institution” (in Christianity, but with much earlier origins) “of consecrating each day to the memory of one of its Heroes, or of one of its noble deeds.” The reference is to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, “Letter to Gnaeus Pompeius,” as cited in Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, ibid.

  2. Quotation verbatim from Staël, “Sulla maniera e la utilità delle traduzioni,” p. 12. On the nonpoetic quality of the French language see Z 2052 and 3864.

  3. Jacques Delille, Les Géorgiques de Virgile, en vers françois, Paris 1782.

  Z 966

  1. Leopardi quotes here from Pietro Giordani’s review of three editions by Angelo Mai, of Plautus (Milan 1815), Isaeus (Milan 1815), and Themistius (Milan 1816). The first part of the review appeared in the Biblioteca Italiana, tome 1, no. 3, March 1816, pp. 315–21; the second ibid., tome 2, no. 5, May 1816, pp. 145–60 (quotation on p. 153).

  Z 969

  1. Staël, “Sulla maniera e la utilità delle traduzioni,” pp. 11–12 (Leopardi summarizes).

  Z 970

  1. Thomas, Essai sur les éloges, in Oeuvres, ch. 9, tome 1, p. 96.

  Z 974

  1. Lady Morgan (Sydney Owenson), La France, bk. 3, vol. 1, p. 264 (note, however, that the actual date of Lady Morgan’s death was 1859).

  2. Pierre-Louis Ginguené, one of the editors of the Décade, the author of a 14-volume Histoire littéraire d’Italie, completed by Salfi (the 1820 edition was in the LL).

  Z 975

  1. Maria Graham, Journal of a Residence in India, Edinburgh 1812.

  2. I.e., that they all move “equally,” in the same way, around the sun. In the operetta morale “Il Copernico” the Polish astronomer warns the Sun that the scientific revolution will destroy its privileges: “in this new state of the universe you will have as many equals, as there are stars with their worlds” (trans. Creagh, p. 198).

  Z 977

  1. Review of C. G. Londonio, Cenni critici sulla poesia romantica (Milan 1817), in Biblioteca Italiana, tome 8, December 1817, no 24, pp. 353–67. The Italian version of “Lenore” by Gottfried-August Bürger (1774) may be found in Giovanni Berchet’s Lettera semiseria. Cf. Leopardi, “Discorso di un italiano intorno alla poesia romantica,” in Prose, p. 420.

  Z 978

  1. Leopardi quotes from the second part of a review of Emanuele Bava’s Prospetto storico-filosofico delle vicende e de’ progressi delle scienze, arti e costumi del secolo undecimo dell’era cristiana fino al secolo decimottavo (Turin 1816), from the Biblioteca Italiana, tome 5, January 1817, pp. 27–41. The first part is in tome 4, December 1816, pp. 407–18.

  Z 979

  1. Transcribed from a review of Sebastiano Ciampi’s De usu linguae italicae (Pisa 1817), in Biblioteca Italiana, tome 7, August 1817, pp. 214–19 (here p. 215), emphasis added by Leopardi. See also Z 1180, Z 2649 and note.

  Z 980

  1. This is likewise a quotation from the review of Ciampi cited on Z 979 (see note 1), pp. 217–18, emphasis added by Leopardi. See also Carlo Cattaneo, “Nesso fra la lingua valacca e l’italiana,” first published in Annali universali di statistica, vol. 52, May 1837, issue 155, pp. 129–57, but originally drafted in 1830.

  2. Verbatim quotation from Joseph Hager, “Esame di un articolo della Biblioteca Italiana” (that is of a review of the Observations quoted below, Z 981), in Spettatore italiano, tome 10, no. 14 (97), 1818, pp. 240–46, which refers in a footnote to Felice Caronni, Caronni in Dacia. Mie osservazioni locali, nazionali, antiquarie sui Valacchi specialmente e zingari transilvani, Milan 1812, a work praised also in the Biblioteca Italiana, tome 21, 1821, pp. 183ff. Emphasis added by Leopardi. The review refers to Cisalpine Gaul (or northern Italy between the Alps and the Apennines) and Transalpine Gaul (or Gaul north of the Alps, in other words, the territory of modern France).

  3. This passage is on p. 244 of the article by Hager cited above.

  Z 981

  1. Hager reviewed his own Observations in the Biblioteca Italiana, tome 8, 1817, pp. 206–11, as if they were the work of another.

  2. This passage is on p. 246 of the article by Hager cited on Z 980, note 2.

  Z 983

  1. This long passage (with interpolations) was transcribed directly from p. 245 of the article by Hager cited on Z 980, note 2.

  2. Hager refers to Pierre-Nicolas Bonamy’s essay on the fate of Latin in Gaul on p. 242, note 3 of the article cited on Z 980, note 2. The essay was originally published in Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, tome 24, 1756, pp. 603–56.

  3. Mémoires pour l’histoire des sciences et des beaux arts, Trévoux 1711, p. 914.

  4. This passage was transcribed by Leopardi from Hager’s review of his own Observations, in the Biblioteca Italiana (cf. Z 981, note 1).

  Z 984

  1. This volume (= LL) contains a review of Asiatic Researches, Calcutta 1791, and in particular of two articles by Sir William Jones, also cited on Z 929, note 3.

  Z 986

  1. In this splendid aphorism Leopardi anticipates by twenty years the central core of ch. 6, part 4, of Tocqueville’s Démocratie en Amérique (1840) on modern “soft despotism.” See also Z 163, 315, 3860.

  2. The remark in parentheses is a much later interpolation.

  3. The remarks quoted derive originally from an article in the Edinburgh Review, November 1817, vol. 29, issue 57, p. 1, reproduced as “Lalla Roca, romanzo orientale di Tommaso Moore,” Spettatore straniero, tome 11, no. 15, 1818, pp. 233–46.

  Z 987

  1. That is, the Romantic school.

  Z 988

  1. Only the Latin translations of Homer are mentioned in vol. 1,
bk. 2, ch. 3, p. 297 of Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, cited here.

  2. Eutropius, a historian of the fourth century CE, published Breviarium ab urbe condita in 10 books, a survey of the history of Rome translated into Greek, as Leopardi notes, by Paeanius and by Capito Lycius.

  Z 989

  1. Cicero, Letters to Atticus 1, 13, 1.

  2. Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, bk. 4, ch. 21, tome 3, p. 696, note (a), where Philostratus’s remark about Aelian is quoted. The note on Aelian is added in the ms. margin, as well as the reference to the note of Z 2166 (26 November 1821) on Marcus Aurelius.

  Z 991

  1. The majority of Gauls and Africans in this list flourished in the fourth and fifth centuries CE. Sedulius Scotus (ninth century) is generally reckoned to have been of Irish descent.

  2. It is not clear whether Hyginus, a Latin author (64 BCE–17 CE) mentioned by Suetonius, De grammaticis, 20, was a native of Alexandria or Spain.

  3. The reference here is to Petronius Arbiter, the author of the Satyricon, whose links with Marseilles are alluded to by Sidonius Apollinaris, Carmen 23, 155–56. But the information is certainly false.

  4. Fabricius, Bibliotheca Latina, tome 2, p. 99, quotes from Claude Saumaise, dedicatory letter De hellenistica commentarius, Leiden 1643, p. 39, who notes scathingly that the style of Ammianus Marcellinus, a historian of Rome born c. 330 CE in Antioch, was “uncouth and turbid.”

  Z 992

  1. Flavius is in fact the nomen. In this paragraph Leopardi is not always right on the distinction between nomen, praenomen, cognomen: Cocceianus is an agnomen, Cassius is a nomen, Claudius is a nomen, Tiberius Claudius are praenomen and nomen.

  2. Annexed by Rome in 17 CE, Cappadocia was then a procuratorial province until the time of Vespasian.

  3. Cicero, Pro Archia poeta 23.

  Z 994

  1. In the ms. there is a deleted reference to Persian, and to p. 31 of the review cited on Z 929, note 1.

  2. Leopardi summarizes here what Foscolo writes in the article cited on Z 932, note 1 (“inexhaustible treasure of variety, sweetness and majesty”), and refers to a review of an account by Luigi Angiolini, in the Lettere mentioned further on, of his visit to the Highlands of Scotland; see Notizie letterarie, no. 18, 4 May 1792, p. 142.