Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

1. Leopardi alludes here to the “purists”; see Z 1, note 6.

  Z 1215

  1. See Z 147 and note. For the idea expounded in the following sentence see Z 1513, 2591.

  2. New Holland was the name formerly used for the island continent of Australia. Yezo, or Hokkaido, is the northernmost of the four principal islands of Japan, and was once considered a barbaric land.

  Z 1219

  1. In order to write his scientific dissertations of 1811–1812, Leopardi had made use of the Dizionari di nomenclatura chimica by Vincenzo Dandolo, included in Giuseppe Saverio Poli’s Elementi di fisica sperimentale, Venice 1796 (= LL). The reform of chemical language is a crucial topic in eighteenth-century chemistry (cf. Marco Beretta, The Enlightenment of Matter: the Definition of Chemistry From Agricola to Lavoisier, Canton, Mass.: Science History Publications, 1993). Compare the discussion that follows with the long treatise on “precision” and “propriety” on Z 1477–1505 (see note 2 to Z 1477).

  Z 1222

  1. That is to say, the European universities when still in the grip of Scholastic philosophy.

  Z 1225

  1. The first edition of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary dates from 1755, and a contrast was drawn between it, the Vocabolario della Crusca and the Dictionary of the Spanish Academy, in Monti, Proposta, vol. 2, part 1, pp. 1–52 (Pacella).

  Z 1230

  1. Leopardi is thinking perhaps of Z 806 and 1070, where he speaks of the “vague and indefinite” character of the Hebrew language.

  2. See M. A. Morelli Timpanaro, Il dibattito sulla “Storia della guerra di Semifonte” nei secoli XVII–XX, Florence: Olschki, 1986.

  Z 1231

  1. Leopardi later radically changes his mind about the enmity between poetry and philosophy: cf. Z 1650 and note.

  2. I.e., weak verbs.

  3. The term “quiescent,” when applied to Hebrew verbs, has a restricted meaning, signifying verbal roots that contain at least one of the following letters: and, as a result, are conjugated irregularly (hence Leopardi’s characterization of them as “imperfect”).

  Z 1232

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

  Z 1233

  1. Tasso, Gerusalemme liberata 1, 2.

  Z 1235

  1. The reference here, and on Z 946, is to Locke’s Essay and to Destutt de Tracy, Éléments d’idéologie, translated by G. Compagnoni, Milan 1817–19. This work is not in the LL, but Leopardi may have read a lengthy review in the Biblioteca Italiana, tome 10, May 1818, pp. 249–56. Cf. Z 1347–48. On the distinction between words (parole) and terms (termini) see Z 110 and note 1.

  2. Leopardi is thinking for example of Isocrates: see Z 4117 and note 5. On “concomitant ideas” and the distinction between “words” and “terms” cf. Z 109–11.

  Z 1240

  1. See Plutarch, Table-Talk (Moralia 720a), and Diogenes Laertius 8, 12.

  Z 1244

  1. The Italian translation of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers had led Leopardi to imagine the original text to be more archaic in style than it really was.

  Z 1249

  1. The preceding sentence is a later marginal addition: Leopardi is still speaking of those critics who deny that the source of “every kind of beauty in a language” should be “popular speech,” and yet admire Caro, who will be mentioned immediately after.

  2. In the preface to his translation into Italian of a fragment of Hesiod’s Theogony Leopardi affirms his admiration for Caro, and says that he read him over and over again, while at the same time criticizing his version of Virgil. Cf. Poeti greci (B2), pp. 259ff.

  Z 1252

  1. See Z 304–305 and note, 2711, 4160–61.

  Z 1253

  1. In Opera omnia, Antwerp 1637 (= LL), tome 2, p. 533, but see also ch. 9, p. 537 and ch. 12, p. 539.

  2. Compare Algarotti, Saggio sopra la lingua francese, in Opere, tome 4, p. 52, reporting what the Abbé Du Bos had said of the French language, that “it is neither musical nor picturesque, which is the same as saying that it holds back from, if it is not actually rebellious to Poetry.”

  Z 1254

  1. See Z 208 and note 3. On habituation and dishabituation see Z 1370–71, 3902–903.

  Z 1255

  1. There follows, until the end of the paragraph, a ms. marginal addition, with a reference to a supplementary addition written two weeks later on Z 1312, in its turn complemented by a marginal addition. See another autobiographical thought on the theme of imitation on Z 2184–86 and note.

  Z 1256

  1. Leopardi quotes from Seber’s Index, in vol. 2 of Eusthatius’s Commentarii on Homer (Pacella). By Hymnus in Venerem Leopardi means the Hymn to Aphrodite, one of the corpus of Homeric hymns.

  2. Like Winckelmann, Leopardi accepted the argument advanced by G. P. Bellori, in his prefatory discourse to the Vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti moderni (1672), namely, that the creative “idea” arose through the observation of nature and not through some innate attribute of the artist (see Erwin Panofsky, Idea: A Concept in Art Theory, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1968).

  Z 1257

  1. There is a reference here to a passage from a letter of Raphael to Castiglione, reproduced in Giuseppe Bossi, “Del tipo dell’arte della pittura,” Biblioteca Italiana, tome 4, no. 12, December 1816, p. 456 (Pacella).

  Z 1260

  1. Alfieri, Vita, Epoch 4, ch. 1, vol. 2, p. 17.

  Z 1262

  1. See Z 2274–75.

  Z 1263

  1. Though precisazione is an accepted term in present-day Italian.

  2. Here, and elsewhere, “archaeology” means the new comparative Indo-European philology, or historical linguistics.

  Z 1268

  1. It is possible to discern in the use of the term “asylum” a distant echo of Vico, for whom the providential course of human history depended in part on the propensity of founders of cities to open asylums, and thus to create the conditions under which such inventions as the alphabet, agriculture, and law became possible (cf. The New Science, § 1056, and note 1 to Z 4441). See also Z 1276 and note 1. “Subprimitive” (sottoprimitivo) is a Leopardian term, by which he means the stage after the earliest in the development of human languages, when languages begin to diversify. See also Z 1271.

  Z 1270

  1. Discussions about the origins of the alphabet—whether it was “invented only once” (Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy. The Technologizing of the Word, London: Methuen, 1982, p. 89), whether the striking similarities between languages very distant from each other derived from a common origin or from loans—were in the air at the time that Leopardi was writing. They were fueled by advances in the decipherment of ancient scripts, from cuneiform of varied provenance to the hieroglyphs of the Rosetta Stone, first translated in full by Jean-François Champollion in 1822. See Maurice Pope, The Story of Decipherment: From Egyptian Hieroglyphs to Maya Script, London: Thames & Hudson, rev. ed., 1999, chapters 2 and 3.

  2. A very early, purportedly autochthonous Italic people, whose existence was accepted by most scholars and antiquarians of the early nineteenth century.

  Z 1271

  1. This passage from Sir William Jones, a marginal addition, derives from the article by Wilkins (translated into Italian) cited on Z 929 and 1010.

  Z 1272

  1. Analogy is invoked to show the “unity of origins” of all languages (Leopardi’s attention here seems to be mostly restricted to morphology). Along the same lines, see, for example, Z 1121, 1390–91, 1970 (Versace, “Appunti su Leopardi e l’analogia,” p. 240 [B12]). Leopardi may be alluding here to Charles Pougens, Trésor des origines et Dictionnaire grammatical raisonné de la langue française (Paris 1819) or else to the same author’s Archéologie française, Paris 1821–25 (= LL). See Z 4144ff.

  Z 1274

  1. Johann Georg Sulzer, discussed on Z 807 and elsewhere, was in fact Swiss.

  Z 1276

  1. This lengthy thought on the etymology of
the root word “silva” (i.e., wood, forest, but also matter) is revealing of Leopardi’s interest in the origins of humanity in a Vichian perspective: “native etymologies are histories of institutions signified by words in the natural order of ideas. First the woods, then cultivated fields and huts, next little houses and villages, thence cities, finally academies and philosophers” (The New Science, § 22, editors’ emphasis). See also Z 1268 and note.

  2. See Z 1169 and note.

  Z 1278

  1. Cicero, Orator 48, 160.

  Z 1279

  1. It is difficult to say to what entry Leopardi is referring here. The abbreviated form is not Spanish. Leopardi probably means that he will look at possible Spanish equivalents of sylva, etc.

  Z 1282

  1. On the history of the term hiyyuli, received into Medieval Hebrew from Arabic, see Israel Efros, Studies in Medieval Jewish Philosophy, New York and London: Columbia U.P., 1974, pp. 184–85.

  Z 1285

  1. See Z 1288 and note.

  Z 1287

  1. The library at Recanati has Filippo Delpino, Sistema di stenografia italiana, Turin 1822 (1st ed. 1819).

  Z 1288

  1. There is a probable trace here of Leopardi’s struggling with the texts. He had taught himself Hebrew using the polyglot Bible compiled by Brian Walton: he could read only if vowels were indicated. In his library were also a grammar by Gennaro Sisti (Naples 1777) and the Lexicon Hebraicum by Antonio Zanolini (Padua 1732). In 1816 he had published in the Spettatore italiano a review of a book containing various translations of the Psalms. See Felice Israel, “Lo studio dell’ebraico in G. Leopardi,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, 150 (1973), 334–49 and Giuliano Tamani, “Leopardi e l’ebraico,” in Ronconi, ed., Leopardi e la cultura veneta, pp. 30–34 (B8).

  Z 1290

  1. See Louis Moréri’s Le grand dictionnaire historique, Paris 1743–49, vol. 7, p. 202, col. 3, under Points voyelles. For some of the theological implications of this debate on vowels and points, see Adam Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment, Cambridge 2003, pp. 30ff.

  Z 1292

  1. See Monti, “Dialogo. L’autore e il libro,” in Proposta, vol. 1, part 2, p. XI.

  Z 1298

  1. Staël, De l’Allemagne, “Observations générales,” vol. 1, p. 1.

  2. Leopardi’s interest in the Wallachian language lasts until his later years, see Z 4331, 4400.

  Z 1303

  1. The name of the French stenographer is not known; Gravina, Della ragion poetica, bk. 1, ch. 11, p. 18.

  Z 1315

  1. Leopardi implies here the idea of acceleration expounded in later thoughts (see Z 1732 and note).

  Z 1316

  1. The need to consult Ménage (p. 173) “at all costs” is due to the fact that the line quoted here by Leopardi was sometimes omitted, and—in translation—often bowdlerized. Polemo was said by Diogenes Laertius—quoting Aristophanes on Euripides—to shun an “unnatural lust” for strongly seasoned phrases, preferring “a good bit of flesh.” “I could say what ‘a good bit of flesh’ means,” Ménage comments, “but shame prevents me.”

  2. The Greek noun here is Leopardi’s own coinage, derived from the epithet “full-breasted” (see Z 1256, 1578).

  3. Leopardi probably refers to the notes by Ménage to 6, 96 where Diogenes speaks of Crates’s wife (p. 265).

  Z 1322

  1. See Z 200 and note 1.

  Z 1329

  1. See Z 1230.

  Z 1331

  1. See Z 626–67. As regards horses, Leopardi may be drawing on Buffon, Histoire naturelle, tome 4, pp. 174–376 (LL = Storia naturale. Degli animali quadrupedi, tome 1, pp. 7–250).

  Z 1338

  1. Pacella points out that Leopardi summarizes here a passage from the review of Francesco Ricardi, Abrégé de la vraie méthode de lire et comprendre l’hébreu, Genoa 1820, in Biblioteca Italiana, tome 18, May 1820, p. 273.

  Z 1340

  1. The first seed of such relativistic argument is a thought by Xenophanes recalled on Z 19 (see note 3). Further on in this same paragraph and in the following thought Leopardi will make Plato’s “ideas” or “forms” responsible for a “positive” view of God discussed at length on Z 1613–23, 1625–27, 1637–46, where he will propose a “negative” view of God as “infinite possibility.” On the consequences of these reflections on Leopardi’s poetics see D’Intino, L’immagine della voce, especially ch. 3 (B11), and “Il rifugio dell’apparenza” (B12).

  Z 1342

  1. Leopardi summarizes here the meditation of the day before on Plato’s “ideas.” See the preceding note.

  Z 1344

  1. Encyclopédie méthodique. Grammaire et Littérature, tome 2, p. 216.

  Z 1346

  1. One of the Naiads.

  Z 1347

  1. I.e., he had never studied at a university. A portrait of a man who was physically weak and “had not cultivated the sciences,” but nonetheless “reasoned very well,” is to be found in Jacopo Nardi’s Vita d’Antonio Giacomini (p. 102), in a passage quoted by Leopardi on Z 683.

  Z 1348

  1. Cf. Z 1234–35.

  Z 1350

  1. See Z 1205. For this work see Z 807 and note 1, 1053 and note 2.

  Z 1351

  1. See Z 350 and note 1. On the contrast between north and south in Staël cf. also Z 75 and note.

  Z 1353

  1. See Justus Lipsius, in Tacitus’s Opera omnia quae exstant, Lyon 1598 (= LL), p. 13, where the historian is said to have been born at the very end of Claudius’s reign or at the very beginning of Nero’s.

  Z 1354

  1. See Z 309ff.

  Z 1362

  1. At this point in 1821 many Italian patriots were fleeing into exile, and their plight would in the years to come represent a crucial trope in the rhetoric of the Risorgimento. The thought seems to imply a certain skepticism on Leopardi’s part toward both the exilers and the exiled, even if he makes no specific mention of the events of the day. Cf. note 1 to Z 894.

  Z 1364

  1. The Triopian Greek Inscriptions were written by Marcellus of Side for Herodes Atticus, a Greek rhetorician resident in Rome at the time of the Antonines, and the sponsor of a significant number of major building projects in Greece. Leopardi’s own versions, in terza rima, were submitted to the Biblioteca Italiana but turned down.

  Z 1366

  1. Montesquieu, Essai sur le Goût, “Du je ne sais quoi,” p. 394.

  2. Leopardi refers to the anonymous review (in fact by Foscolo) “Traduzione de’ due primi Canti dell’Odissea e di alcune parti delle Georgiche,” Annali di scienze e lettere, vol. 2, no. 4, April 1810, pp. 25–78.

  Z 1367

  1. The thrust of the anonymous letter writer’s polemic is against the Crusca’s ignorance of and many mistakes in dealing with the supposed Greek etymologies of Italian words. “Frullone,” a sifter or bolter that separates the more refined flour from the coarser bran (i.e., crusca), is the emblem of the Accademia della Crusca and of its Dictionary.

  Z 1376

  1. In the whole passage Leopardi is clearly referring to the composition of the Zibaldone.

  Z 1378

  1. The last two sentences were added in the margin in 1827 (Pacella). Leopardi read Giovanni Battista Gelli’s Circe (1549) in late 1826, and found in these dialogues between Ulysses and his companions transformed by Circe into animals a ferocious critique of anthropocentrism. Here he refers to the sixth dialogue, “Ulisse e lione” (LL = Venice 1825, pp. 135–46). Paolo Segneri’s Incredulo senza scusa, ch. 13, pp. 78ff., treats the remarkable qualities of animals, attributing their schemes and stratagems to their divine creator.

  Z 1380

  1. According to Pacella, the handwriting of the note dates it to 1827.

  Z 1387

  1. See Z 1552.

  2. See Z 1436–37, 1866–69, 2523–24, and 4525–26, i.e., the very last entry of the Zibaldone.

  Z 1388

  1. To grasp Leopardi�
��s point here, it is necessary to bear in mind that aspettare, to wait for, is also related to a number of words having to do with the act of looking (Latin: specto).

  Z 1390

  1. Zanolini, Lexicon Hebraicum, p. 103.

  Z 1394

  1. As early as 1819 Leopardi had conceived the plan of writing satirical dialogues modeled on those of Lucian, and some—prefiguring the Operette morali (mostly written in 1824, pub. 1827)—were in fact drafted in 1821. The fact that Leopardi’s description of his project, as is clear from the manuscript, runs directly into the quotation of the lines from Virgil that follow suggests that he also had possible political implications in mind.

  2. Leopardi’s own version of book 2 of the Aeneid was composed in August–September 1816 and published in Milan in 1817.

  Z 1400

  1. Leopardi had begun to draft a tragedy of this name in fall 1819, inspired by Girone il cortese, a poem by Luigi Alamanni. The work was never completed.

  Z 1403

  1. The Historiarum sui temporis by J.-A. de Thou, read by Leopardi in the Geneva edition of 1620, one of the books kept in the banned section at Recanati.

  Z 1410

  1. The tragedy Cato, by Joseph Addison, first performed in 1713, was in fact a great success in England, and still more so in the American colonies, where its themes of republican virtue and liberty were much appreciated. In the ms. Leopardi writes “Addisson.”

  Z 1412

  1. On the theme of the veiling and unveiling of nature, see note 1 to Z 446.

  Z 1414

  1. Leopardi, “Discorso di un italiano intorno alla poesia romantica,” Prose, pp. 398–400.

  Z 1421

  1. Leopardi reflects here on an important concept he is already acquainted with, that of “attention,” the basis of memory, and the “wet nurse of reason” (Z 2390). He is probably relying, directly or indirectly, on Locke and Condillac. See the article “Méthode” in the Encyclopédie méthodique. Logique et Métaphysique, tome 2 (a tome consulted in May 1821, cf. Z 1075), pp. 12ff.

  Z 1423

  1. Antonio Genovesi, appointed professor of political economy in 1754 (the very first chair in Europe on that subject), published his Delle lezioni di commercio in Naples, 1767.

  2. Algarotti, Saggio sopra il commercio, in Opere, tome 4, pp. 325–36.

  Z 1424