Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  Z 1074

  1. The discussion in this paragraph on the idea of quantity may derive from Rousseau’s Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité, in Oeuvres, vol. 3, p. 151 (note 14, on pp. 218–19).

  Z 1075

  1. The definition given here, in Latin, of posterior comes from the entry in Forcellini. The quotation in Greek is from Plutarch, Moralia 742d, but taken from Scapula, Lexicon, p. 1697.

  2. See Z 2186, note 2. See also Z 1101–102, 1394–99, 4024.

  Z 1076

  1. Jacopo Passavanti was the fourteenth-century Florentine author of Lo specchio di vera penitenzia (LL = Venice 1741, p. 118 for “pascibietole”). The words listed here are wonderfully vivid creations. Thus ammazzasette, a braggart, bully, or giant killer, is, literally, a “kill seven,” while pascibietola, a fool, is, literally, a “beet eater.”

  Z 1077

  1. Tacitus, Opere, tome 1, p. 74.

  2. Dante, Paradiso 9, 40. This remark is a later addition.

  Z 1078

  1. See Z 114–15, 520–22, and, on the role of the French Revolution, Z 459, 1101, 2334–35.

  2. The letter is reproduced in Monti’s Proposta, vol. 1, part 2, see in particular § 4, p. 261.

  Z 1083

  1. See Z 452–53. The following two sentences are added in the ms. margin.

  Z 1084

  1. See the lengthy discussion of Homer on Z 3095–167 (August 1823). On the system of “national hatred” cf. Z 879–911.

  2. This passage from “in respect of which” is a marginal addition. The relevant judgment on Cervantes is in an anonymous article, “Notizie intorno a Michele Cervantes e al D. Chisciotte” in Annali di scienze e lettere, vol. 8, no. 23, November 1811, p. 140, where however it is attributed to the editor of the Madrid 1797 edition of Don Quixote, Juan Antonio Pellicer. The other references are to a translation of Pierre-Joseph d’Orléans’s Histoire des révolutions d’Espagne, that is Istoria delle rivoluzioni di Spagna (LL = Venice 1737), tome 3, bk. 9, p. 178, and to Mme. de Lambert, Oeuvres, p. 160.

  Z 1085

  1. Jacopo Facciolati’s 1731 Padua edition of a letter by Cicero, republished in 1804 by Antonio Cesari with additional annotations, was reviewed in Spettatore italiano, tome 8, no. 3 (75), 1817, pp. 177–78, and Cesari’s passage on the subjective nature of beauty may be found there. This same issue of the Spettatore contains Leopardi’s fake translation from the Greek of a hymn to Neptune.

  Z 1086

  1. Cf. Z 836 and note, 1737–40.

  Z 1087

  1. Sulzer, “Osservazioni,” p. 97.

  2. G.-Th.-F. Raynal, “Les Français,” in Leçons, tome 1, p. 479 (Pacella).

  Z 1092

  1. An echo, perhaps, of Jean-Charles Léonard Simonde de Sismondi, Histoire des républiques italiennes du Moyen-Age (1807–18), a work produced, like Corinne, in the context of Coppet, and very celebrated at the time; see, for example, Pietro Borsieri’s lengthy review of the Italian translation (1817–1819), in Il Conciliatore, 1818.

  Z 1093

  1. Leopardi means here “modern culture” as opposed to the traditional culture which made Tuscany the linguistic and literary center of Italy (as the “purists” like Antonio Cesari, mentioned above on Z 1085, maintained).

  Z 1094

  1. All three flourished in the fourth century CE.

  Z 1096

  1. Leopardi’s reading of such authors led to the drafting of his Fragmenta patrum graecorum saeculi secundi, and of the Auctorum historiae ecclesiasticae graecorum deperditorum fragmenta, composed in 1814–1815, and edited by Claudio Moreschini (Florence: Le Monnier, 1976 [B2]).

  2. That is, the first Greek version of the Old Testament, dating from the third or second century BCE.

  Z 1098

  1. This paragraph shows the influence of Rousseau’s critique of “perfectibility” in his Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité. See Z 22 and note 1.

  2. Monti, Proposta, entry for accanato, vol. 1, part 2, p. 8.

  Z 1101

  1. The last two sentences of this paragraph were later additions. See Z 1078.

  Z 1103

  1. Sulzer, “Osservazioni,” p. 66: “The story of a child found in the woods, where he had probably been exposed shortly after being born, makes us see that Man who cannot fix his ideas by means of signs is completely lacking in memory.” Further on Leopardi will use the metaphor of the body: see Z 1657–58, 2584. On Sulzer see Z 807 and note.

  2. This entry reminds the reader of a similar recollection in St. Augustine’s Confessions 1, 8, 13, commented on by Ludwig Wittgenstein at the beginning of his Philosophical Investigations.

  Z 1104

  1. Both these references are added in the margin: Franciosini, Vocabolario, tome 2, p. 604; the quotation from Dante, Purgatorio 2, 35 (of an angel): “Trattando l’aere coll’eterne penne” [“beating the air with his eternal wings”] is in the Crusca.

  2. Z 1104–24, together with a number of later pages, is largely devoted to an attempt to establish, in contradistinction to “frequentatives,” a type of verb defined here as “continuatives.” In the separate slips referred to in the 1827 Index, there is an entry for “Continuatives, Latin,” and there is evidence for a plan to write an essay on this topic (Timpanaro, La filologia, pp. 57–58 [B11]).

  Z 1107

  1. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 12, 7, 9; Papinian, Digest 34, 1, 9.

  Z 1111

  1. Monti refers here (Proposta, vol. 1, part 2, 1818, p. 43) to Cicero, De senectute 16 and De amicitia 26.

  2. Festus, De verborum significatione, p. IV (the entry for adlectare does not in fact refer to lectus).

  Z 1112

  1. See Nonius Marcellus, De conpendiosa doctrina, ed. W. M. Lindsay, Leipzig: Teubner, 1903, vol. 1, bk. 3, p. 309. Leopardi writes “Naevius” instead of Laevius, reproducing Forcellini’s error.

  Z 1114

  1. Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 9, 6.

  Z 1115

  1. Alberti refers to Dante’s use of this word in Purgatorio 27, 78: “avante che sien pranse” [“before they are fed”].

  Z 1117

  1. Monti, Proposta, vol. 2, part 1, pp. 135 and 147 (among the examples we find here canticchiare).

  2. “Oftenizing” translates Leopardi’s spesseggiativo, a word coined by him from spesso, “often,” illustrating incidentally his claim about Italian’s capacity “for multiplying the use of roots without confusing meanings.”

  Z 1118

  1. Leopardi probably means between the first century BCE and the second century CE.

  Z 1119

  1. Plautus, Bacchides 79–80; Cicero, a fragment preserved in Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 8, 3, 66; Seneca, Ad Lucilium 1, 12, 4.

  Z 1120

  1. Cicero, Pro Cluentio 30.

  2. Festus, De verborum significatione, p. CXLVI.

  Z 1121

  1. Timpanaro, in La filologia, p. 53 (B11), notes that Leopardi’s speculation “by ear” (i.e., the belief that because two words have a similar sound there is an etymological connection between them: in this case as to the origin of stare) reveals his lack of any understanding of the concept of a phonetic law, but at the same time stresses that such a concept emerged relatively late in Indo-European linguistics, through the efforts of Pott, Schleicher, and the Neo-Grammarians. Cf. also Z 2142, note.

  2. Cited by Forcellini, vol. 4, p. 149.

  3. Plautus, Varro, and Isidore of Seville are cited by Forcellini.

  Z 1122

  1. Fronto, De Bello Parthico in Opera inedita, tome 2, p. 333: “rescribserim,” “scribtas litteras.” But modern editors read “rescripserim” and “scriptas” (see Van den Hout p. 225).

  Z 1123

  1. See also Z 3081.

  Z 1126

  1. The translation of this passage is in I principj discussi, Macerata 1789, tome 1, p. 306. See Z 51 and note 5.

  2. The edition of Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae (or Institutio de arte grammatica, a key text fo
r the study of Latin up until the beginning of modern times) to which Forcellini refers is in Grammaticae latinae auctores antiqui, ed. H. van Putschen, Hanover 1605. The LL has a Venetian edition of Priscian, published in 1476; this quotation on p. 16.

  Z 1127

  1. Leopardi refers here to what is known as a breathing, an aspirate—in Latin a spiritus—and which may be marked either smooth or rough. In Latin the distinction is likewise between a spiritus lenis (or tenuis) and a spiritus densus (or asper).

  2. Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 13, 9. In fact Gellius states that in Latin ὕπνος was first rendered sypnus and then somnus. The preceding quotation is from Encyclopédie méthodique. Grammaire et Littérature, loc. cit. and p. 77.

  3. This inscription was drawn originally from Gruter, Amsterdam 1707, tome 1, part 1, p. 196, no. 4, but quoted by Forcellini, under “Digamma.”

  4. Virgil, Universum poema, fol. 147v (Servius on Aeneid 1, 451 is also cited in Forcellini, under “Digamma”). For the art. “F” see note 2 above.

  Z 1128

  1. Sulzer, “Osservazioni,” p. 64.

  Z 1130

  1. Varro, De lingua latina 6, 66; Cicero, De legibus 1, 19.

  Z 1131

  1. Festus, De verborum significatione, p. XIX.

  Z 1134

  1. Leopardi met Friedrich-Wilhelm Thiersch in Rome, and referred to him in his letter of 10 March 1823 to Giordani as “a celebrated Greek scholar” (Epistolario, p. 663).

  2. That is, Sulzer’s essay cited on Z 1053, note 2.

  Z 1135

  1. See Z 741 and note.

  Z 1136

  1. See Z 929, note 1.

  2. See Z 51, note 5.

  Z 1138

  1. In 1789 the philologist and archaeologist Luigi Lanzi published a Saggio di lingua etrusca, to which Perticari refers in Della difesa di Dante, ch. 12, p. 112, claiming that Etruscan “is more ancient the more it cleaves to Greek, and more modern the more it knows of Latin.”

  Z 1139

  1. Pliny, Natural History 7, 192, who credits Palamedes with adding ζ, ψ, φ, and χ to the Greek alphabet. Servius, on Virgil, Aeneid 2, 81, in Universum poema, fol. 163r.

  2. Johann Jacob Hofmann, Lexici universalis historico-geographico-chronologico-poetico-philologici, Basel 1683.

  3. In Hamilton’s review, cited here (see Z 929), only the aspirated b is mentioned. This detail might make us infer that Leopardi had in mind the article by Gaston Laurent Coeurdoux (cited at Z 2354, note 1), who speaks of “le p et le b” (Daniele Maggi, “Il sanscrito, un padre gesuita e Giacomo Leopardi,” in D. Poli ed. “Una pastorale della comunicazione.” Italia, Ungheria, America e Cina: l’azione dei Gesuiti dalla fondazione allo scioglimento dell’Ordine, Rome 2002, pp. 503–20).

  Z 1141

  1. Servius on Virgil, Aeneid 2, 458, in Universum poema, fol. 173r.

  Z 1142

  2. Horace, Ars poetica 268–69.

  Z 1143

  1. See Z 107, note 4.

  2. Bernardino Baldi, Versi e prose, eclogue 15, pp. 250–58. It is worth noting that the only known usage of transversare is in Moretum.

  Z 1144

  1. The Roman jurist Paul, or Paulus Julius (third century CE), is said by Monti (Proposta, vol. 1, part 2, p. 167, note) to have been the first to deviate from the “natural and true meaning” of Coarctare.

  Z 1145

  1. Forcellini, under Coerceo, cites Ad Octavianum Augustum de progenie sua libellus, ch. 23, traditionally attributed to Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus but now reckoned to be a medieval forgery.

  Z 1146

  1. Quoted by Forcellini.

  2. Lucretius, De rerum natura 6, 1122. This same word occurs at bk. 6, l. 1161 and is judged by Cyril Bailey to be Lucretius’s own invention, used by no other author.

  Z 1147 [in note a]

  1. All modern editions have vela, or “sails,” where Leopardi has vota.

  Z 1149

  1. Plautus, Pseudolus 2, 2, 31, quoted by Forcellini under accepto. Modern editors bracket “expenso.”

  2. Plautus, Comoediae, Padua 1764 (= LL), p. 811.

  3. Pliny, Natural History 25, 58.

  4. Plautus, Mostellaria 602.

  Z 1150

  1. Sidonius Apollinaris, Epistole 5, 13, 2.

  2. Plautus, Mercator 138.

  3. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 1, 4, 14.

  Z 1152

  1. In Burmann’s ed. this fable (“Fur Aram compilans”) is numbered 4, 10 (pp. 265–68), in other eds. 4, 11. For some comment on Leopardi’s understanding of Latin and Greek prosody, in relation to this example from Phaedrus and to the later line from Aristophanes, see Timpanaro, La filologia, pp. 154–55 (B11).

  Z 1153

  1. In this passage from Cicero, Orator, 55, 84, the Roman author comments on the tendency of dramatists to use senarii (lines of six feet) in the style of the orators.

  2. The note no. 4 by Tanneguy Le Fèvre (Faber Tanaquillus) to l. 2: “I embellished this with senarii” may be found in Burmann’s ed., pp. 3–4, and it tells us that Phaedrus’s senarii occupy a middle ground between the accuracy of the Greek poets and the casual attitude to prosody of the Latin dramatists. The other quotation is from Desbillons’s ed. of 1786.

  Z 1154

  1. See Forcellini under legitare.

  Z 1155

  1. Rucellai, “Le api” (1524), l. 1030 and l. 1056, pp. 177 and 178. This reference is a marginal addition, in Pacella’s opinion from fall 1823. On this poem see Z 3416.

  2. Festus, De verborum significatione, p. LXXXVI, cited by Forcellini.

  Z 1156

  1. Andrés, Dell’origine, part 1, ch. 11, tome 2, p. 281.

  Z 1157

  1. For the concurrence of vowels, or concursus vocalium, see Quintilian, Institutio oratoria 9, 4, 33–37.

  Z 1159

  1. Visconti, Iscrizioni greche Triopee, p. 54. Leopardi knew this text and in 1816 had commented on and translated the two inscriptions (Poesie, pp. 536–46). Echo would repeat the word or words last said, and thus shows here how swiftly amorous infatuation may be followed by loss. See Z 1363–64.

  Z 1160

  1. On Leopardi’s opting for the Reuchlinian, as against the Erasmian, pronunciation of Greek diphthongs, see Timpanaro, La filologia, pp. 194–99 (B11).

  Z 1163

  1. Orlando furioso 19, 56, 1–2.

  Z 1164

  1. Cf. Z 30 and Dante, Purgatorio 23, 33.

  Z 1166

  1. Leopardi took these very early commentaries by Helenius Acron and Pomponius Porphyrion from Horace, Poemata omnia, p. 37v.

  2. As Timpanaro, La filologia, p. 58 (B11), says, the Latin verb reparare in Horace is transitive and cannot therefore be explained with reference to the Italian riparare, which is intransitive.

  Z 1168

  1. Plautus, Miles gloriosus 1066, quoted by Forcellini, under sublecto.

  Z 1169

  1. Pontedera, Antiquitatum, letter 2, p. 14. The first two letters, dating from 1731 and addressed to Andrea Marano (as are the others), allude to the affinity between archaic Latin and the pre-Romance vernacular. Cf. Z 1012–13, and see Timpanaro, La filologia, pp. 56–57 (B11).

  Z 1174

  1. Similar reflections feature in the first two discourses of Rousseau.

  Z 1177

  1. Leopardi had drafted commentaries, in 1814 and 1817 respectively, on Hermogenes and Esychius; see Opere inedite, vol. 1, pp. 107ff., 171ff. (B2).

  2. Francesco Cancellieri, Dissertazione intorno agli uomini dotati di gran memoria, Rome 1815, pp. 129–49. In this work, pp. 87–89, Cancellieri had commented on Leopardi’s prodigious talents, on the basis of information supplied by his uncle Carlo Antici. Cf. Z 43 and note 1.

  3. Anonymous, “I letterati, ossia la lucerna di Anassagora,” in Spettatore, tome 7, issue 68, 1817, pp. 276–80, quotation on p. 276.

  Z 1179

  1. That is, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio.

  Z 1180

  1. Voltaire, Dict
ionnaire philosophique, art. “Galant,” tome 4, p. 208.

  2. Phaedrus, ed. Burmann, pp. 6–7, note 10.

  3. Leopardi knew Ciampi’s work from a review in the Biblioteca Italiana, tome 7, August 1817, pp. 214–19 (see Z 979).

  Z 1181

  1. Leopardi owned a 1770 Venetian edition of Luigi Tansillo’s poem Il podere (1560); the word vasa features in ch. 3, l. 6.

  2. Both Cornelius Nepos and Vegetius are quoted by Forcellini.

  Z 1182

  1. See Timpanaro, La filologia, pp. 76–78 (B11), to the effect that Leopardi was among the first, if not the first, to use cadence as a criterion in the criticism of classical texts.

  2. In the ed. of Symmachus quoted above.

  Z 1184

  1. On the Lockean and ideologic tradition, and Leopardi’s direct or indirect knowledge of it, see, for example, Z 208, note 3 and Z 1235, note 1.

  2. The first parenthesis is an interlinear interpolation, the second a marginal addition.

  Z 1186

  1. This theory derives from Locke’s Essay, from Condillac, and from the idéologues, on which see note 3 to Z 208 and Z 1184, note 1.

  Z 1190

  1. See Z 947 and note.

  Z 1193

  1. On the “so-called sympathies and antipathies” cf. Z 481–82, 1206, 1749–50.

  Z 1196

  1. This last sentence is a marginal addition.

  Z 1201

  1. Matthew 20:1–16.

  Z 1205

  1. See Z 1184 and note 1.

  2. Sulzer, “Osservazioni,” p. 53.

  Z 1207

  1. Here begins, until the page reference, a marginal ms. addition.

  Z 1208

  1. See Algarotti, Saggio sopra la rima, in Opere, tome 4, p. 65 (Pacella).

  Z 1209

  1. The hymns referred to here would have been in Latin.

  2. Ottava rima is a narrative verse form consisting of eight lines of eleven syllables, in the pattern a-b-a-b-a-b-c-c. Anacreontics are short poems employing a seven-syllable meter. Neither of the above forms was used by Petrarch, but they were very popular in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

  Z 1210

  1. See Algarotti, Saggio sopra la rima, in Opere, tome 4, pp. 66–67, note 3 (Pacella).

  Z 1214