Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  1. This work is included in Davanzati’s Scisma d’Inghilterra.

  Z 1425

  1. Voltaire’s observation, made in De l’art dramatique, is cited by Andrea Rubbi in his preface to Guarini’s Pastor Fido, Venice 1788, p. II (Pacella).

  Z 1427

  1. See Z 253–54.

  Z 1430

  1. “L’infinito,” perhaps the most celebrated of Leopardi’s poems (1819), is a turning point in modern Italian poetry.

  Z 1432

  1. Charles Pinot Duclos, Mémoires secrets sur les règnes de Louis XIV et Louis XV.

  Z 1434

  1. That is, the habit of attention and reflection.

  2. See Z 1320.

  Z 1436

  1. See Monti, “Dialogo. Il Capro, il Frullone della Crusca e Giambattista Gelli,” in Proposta, vol. 1, part 2, pp. 105–106. For “il Frullone,” see note 1 to Z 1367.

  Z 1437

  1. See Z 4525–26 and note.

  Z 1438

  1. Leopardi later finds a confirmation of this view in the relativism of Aristippus. See Z 1623 and note 2.

  Z 1440

  1. Henry IV (1553–1610) was king of Navarre and then king of France, responsible for healing the country’s divisions after the lacerating religious wars. Maximilien de Béthune, Duke of Sully, was his most loyal and effective minister.

  Z 1444

  1. In the fifth century BCE Ezra and Nehemiah, with whose names two books from the Old Testament are associated, won from the Persian king Ataxerxes I the right to reorganize civil and religious life in Jerusalem for the benefit of those who had returned from the Babylonian Captivity.

  Z 1445

  1. Thomas, Essai sur les éloges, in Oeuvres, tome 1, on the pages cited; Meurs, “Graecia feriata, sive de festis Graecorum libri sex” and “De ludis Graecorum,” in Opera omnia, tome 3, pp. 777–980 and 981–1048 (= LL).

  Z 1448

  1. Leopardi refers here to his Latin translation, done at the age of sixteen, of Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus. See Moreschini’s edition (cited on Z 1016, note 1), p. 237.

  2. Leopardi’s distinction in this paragraph calls to mind that of Schiller between “naive” and “sentimental” poetry (an example of the former, in the next paragraph, is Homer). See Z 136 and note, 1860–62 and note.

  Z 1449

  1. Here Leopardi distinguishes not only imaginative from sentimental poetry, but, within the latter category, a more personal kind of poetry, which is not generically philosophical, but personal and unique to the poet. In August 1828, while composing “Le ricordanze,” he writes: “That feeling which animates him [the poet] at that moment [Leopardi’s emphasis] is the only muse which inspires the true poet, the only thing which he is moved to express … the more of a poet he is, the more he will have his own personal feelings [editors’ emphasis] to express, the more he will be averse to clothing another character, to speaking in the voice of another person, to imitating” (Z 4357).

  Z 1450

  1. See Z 4326.

  Z 1451

  1. Tasso’s first poem, an epic in twelve cantos, published in 1562.

  Z 1453

  1. This is the motif, frequently recurring in Leopardi, of the “human race” as akin to the other animals (Z 3647–48), except that man is an “animal more prone to habituation than the others” (Z 1456). See also Z 1630, 1661–63, 1761–64, 1923–25, 3374–82 (and the tormented thought on Z 2558–62).

  Z 1455

  1. Alfieri, Vita, Epoch 1, ch. 2, vol. 1, pp. 10–11. For the mechanism of involuntary memory see Z 183–85, 1733–37.

  Z 1459

  1. The “natural law” is, according to a later definition on Z 2672, “that each man or living creature is all for himself, and the stronger dominates the weaker.” See also Z 209 and note 2.

  2. Leopardi will find his idea confirmed by Cieça, see Z 3932.

  Z 1465

  1. Petrarch, Rime 50, ll. 2–3, lines already quoted on Z 249 (and see note).

  Z 1468

  1. Leopardi probably means Holbach and Voltaire (Damiani); “by all…,” etc., is added in the margins of the ms. He does not seem to consider authors such as Joseph de Maistre and Louis de Bonald, recommended to him by his legitimist uncle Carlo Antici.

  Z 1469

  1. The fragment from Xenophanes is in Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 5, 14, in Opera, vol. 2, p. 715, ll. 3–9 of the Latin margin. The same passage is quoted on Z 19.

  Z 1473

  1. Staël, Corinne, bk. 14, ch. 1, tome 2, p. 335: “One may speak in favor of life, and yet there is much good to be said of death, or of a condition which resembles it.”

  Z 1475

  1. At about this time Leopardi was contemplating the drafting of a treatise “On the five southern languages,” namely, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, and French. This is probably a sketch of an introductory note. See also Z 1477–504 (with its double beginning on Z 1477), 1505–507.

  Z 1477

  1. See Suetonius, Life of Augustus 58.

  2. Leopardi recalls here one of the crucial problems discussed in eighteenth-century linguistics. The thesis that there are no perfect synonyms was defended by the Abbé Girard, author of an influential dictionary of French synonyms, in his La justesse de la langue françoise (Paris 1818). Gensini suggests (Linguistica leopardiana, p. 78 [B11]) that in his discussion of this topic Leopardi may have been influenced by Condillac’s L’art d’écrire, included in his edition of the Cours d’études pour l’instruction des jeunes gens (Paris 1799–1800, tomes 3–4). Throughout these pages (to Z 1505) he seems to identify “propriety” with “precision” in the ancient languages (antisynonymy), in terms that elsewhere he will use to describe the modern, rational languages and scientific terminology, in contrast to literature: see, e.g., Z 1219ff., and, for the distinction between “terms” and “words,” Z 109–11, 808, 951–52, etc. A follow-up on Z 1520.

  Z 1482

  1. Leopardi to Bartolomeo Borghesi, “Sull’Eusebio del Mai” (May 1819), in Scritti filologici, p. 373.

  2. The quotation is in fact at p. 135, not 213, as Leopardi writes, and refers to a passage on p. 113.

  Z 1483

  1. Sallust, Bellum Catilinae 56.

  Z 1487

  1. See Z 1205. On Sulzer see Z 807, note 1 and 1053, note 2.

  Z 1492

  1. This sentence is a later marginal addition, which explains the forward reference.

  Z 1500

  1. The translation reproduces the unusually awkward syntax in Leopardi’s Italian.

  Z 1504

  1. The Benedictines of St. Maur were responsible in the course of the eighteenth century for much pioneering scholarship on the Middle Ages.

  Z 1513

  1. See Z 1215 and 2591.

  Z 1515

  1. Political and linguistic independence imply each other. An impassioned analysis of the cultural situation of Italy is on Z 865–66. For the notion of carattere, or indole, or genio of the language see Z 686 and note.

  2. The phrase risorgimento della civiltà refers here to the Renaissance. Cf. Z 3, paragraph 5.

  Z 1522

  1. Cf. Z 1898 and note.

  Z 1523

  1. The final sentence is a ms. marginal addition.

  Z 1525

  1. This work is generally known by its Latin title, De vulgari eloquentia. The Convito is more normally referred to as Convivio.

  Z 1526

  1. That is, Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata.

  2. See letter 247, dated 14 September 1565, in Delle lettere familiari, vol. 2, p. 272 in which Caro notes that his real purpose was to demonstrate “the wealth and capacity” of the vulgar tongue, against common opinion.

  Z 1527

  1. Leopardi has added e i viventi between the lines, as if to extend the claim about belief in the absolute to other living creatures besides man. See Z 370 and note, 1762.

  Z 1528

  1. Maevius was Virgil’s contemporary and enemy, a poet and critic of l
ittle merit but also from Cisalpine Gaul, and mentioned by name in Eclogues 3, 90.

  Z 1531

  1. It is not certain if this is a reference to a previous passage (e.g., Z 870–71) or to someone else.

  2. The notion that nature is “harmony” without contradictions is defended again on Z 1597–98 (see note). Later on Leopardi sees the idea of the cycle of destruction and reproduction from a totally different point of view: see “Dialogo della Natura e di un Islandese” (1824), and cf. Z 4087, 4129–32, 4169, 4175–77, 4461–62, and 4485–86.

  Z 1532

  1. The point about the undeserving is a marginal addition. The flurry of et ceteras is due to the fact that the first two of them (in the addition) are added to the following three in the body of the text.

  Z 1534

  1. Leopardi read Sidonius Apollinaris in two editions, one published in Basel in 1542, and one in Paris in 1652. In the text he quotes from the Paris ed., in his note from the Basel ed., where instead of fulmine the editor reads flumine (Pacella).

  2. Virgil, Aeneid 6, 425, uses the epithet “irremeabilis” (irremeable in Dryden’s translation) to describe the waves of the Styx, that cannot be rowed across again.

  Z 1535

  1. Phalaris was a cruel Tyrant of Acragas in Sicily, during the mid–sixth century BCE.

  Z 1536

  1. Leopardi may have in mind Plutarch’s On Talkativeness, and in particular an anecdote concerning an imprudent husband and a talkative wife, Moralia 507b–f. Cf. Z 2471–72.

  Z 1541

  1. See Z 1254–55, 1312, and 1365.

  Z 1543

  1. A ms. marginal addition follows here.

  Z 1547

  1. This marginal addition on the “invalid,” perhaps from 1827 (Pacella), derives from Buffon, Histoire naturelle, tome 2, “De la vieillesse et de la mort,” p. 580 (LL = Storia naturale dell’uomo, tome 2, p. 282), though it is reproduced in Leçons, tome 1, 333.

  Z 1548

  1. This last sentence was written in the margin. Holbach, in Système de la nature, part 1, ch. 14 (Oeuvres philosophiques, tome 2, pp. 344–46), had presented the same arguments as are expounded here (Damiani). See also Z 4145–46.

  Z 1551

  1. Leopardi stated on Z 416 (see note) that man is altered and that he cannot go back to his natural origin except “by some route other than the original one.”

  Z 1552

  1. Cf. Z 1387.

  2. Montesquieu, Essai sur le goût, “Du je ne sais quoi,” pp. 394–98. See Z 198–203 and 1539–40.

  Z 1561

  1. This thought echoes Rousseau’s preface to his Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité.

  Z 1562

  1. This last sentence is a marginal addition.

  Z 1564

  1. The reference to past government in Spain implies an allusion to earlier traditions of absolutism and to such ministers as the Conde-Duque de Olivares, the favorite of Philip IV, but also, by contrast, to the current liberal regime in Madrid, which had reinstated the Cadiz constitution of 1812. On Spain see Z 621–22, 3584.

  Z 1565

  1. There follows (until “vice”) a lengthy unattached marginal addition.

  Z 1569

  1. William Molyneux asked in a letter to John Locke: Could a person born blind recognize a sphere and a cube by looking at them, if suddenly their sight was restored? Responses to this problem (Berkeley, Voltaire, La Mettrie, Condillac, Diderot, and others) served to differentiate those who believed in the existence of innate, natural judgments and those who were committed to the view that human judgments derived from habit and experience (cf. also Z 2960ff.). As to those who cannot speak, cf. Z 2896ff. and note.

  Z 1573

  1. Cicero, Orator, 29, 104; Isocrates, Oratio de permutatione, eds. Angelo Mai and Andrea Moustoxydes, Milan 1813, p. VIII, which reads: “et semper aliquid immensum infinitumque desiderant.”

  Z 1576

  1. See Z 200 and note 1, 1322–23.

  Z 1578

  1. See Z 1256, 1316.

  Z 1579

  1. There is no trace in the LL of the works by Johann Kaspar Lavater on physiognomy; they were most probably known by Leopardi indirectly.

  Z 1585

  1. See Z 1473, where there is an allusion to this same passage from Staël.

  Z 1590

  1. A marginal addition of 1827, alluding to a visit to the theater in Bologna that year or the year before (Pacella).

  Z 1591

  1. See Z 1025 and note. The “schismatics” are Orthodox Greeks.

  Z 1593

  1. The English sold the island of Parga to the Turks in 1819, and transferred its inhabitants to Corfu, provoking outrage among liberals across Europe. Foscolo wrote of it in his essay “On Parga” (Edinburgh Review, vol. 32, no. 64, October 1819, especially p. 65, p. 83). The event was dramatized in many poems and novels of the period, such as Giovanni Berchet’s I profughi di Parga, and depicted in several celebrated canvases (by Francesco Hayez, among others). Leopardi had himself planned to address this subject in a canzone. See Z 995 and note 2.

  2. Leopardi’s source is probably Buffon, Histoire naturelle, tome 3, “Variétés dans l’espèce humaine,” p. 473 (LL = Storia naturale dell’uomo, tome 3, p. 134). Georges Cuvier’s autopsy of Saartjie “Sarah” Baartman (a Khoi woman known to Western Europe as “the Hottentot Venus”) was published in the Mémoires du Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in 1817.

  Z 1596

  1. When Leopardi refers to “the devout” he usually has his own mother in mind. See also Z 354 for a description of “a mother” who considered beauty to be a veritable misfortune.

  Z 1597

  1. Leopardi may here deny that there can be contradiction in nature, much as Holbach does in his Système de la nature, part 1, ch. 5 (cf. Z 2337–38), but later thoughts admit its possibility, indeed, stress its necessity, notably on Z 4087, 4099–100, 4129, 4174–77, 4188–89, 4204–206, 4257–59, 4510.

  Z 1598

  1. Celsus, De medicina 1, 2, 1. Leopardi himself, his family, and friends firmly believed that his deformity and precarious health had originally been caused by excessive devotion to his books, particularly the “seven years [1811–18] of mad and most desperate study” of which he wrote to Giordani in a letter of 2 March 1818. The possibility that Leopardi may in fact have been suffering from a form of Pott’s disease, with multiple complications, which was neither diagnosable nor curable at the time, in no way detracts from the force of this conviction.

  Z 1601

  1. Celsus, De medicina 1, 1–2.

  2. Montesquieu, Considérations, ch. 2 (pp. 16ff.), remarks upon the efficiency of the Roman military machine, citing testimony from Josephus and Cicero regarding the great weight foot soldiers had to carry (p. 15, note b). For the whole paragraph see Z 1631–32.

  3. Nosology refers to the classification of diseases, a field in which Linnaeus and Pinel were pioneers.

  Z 1602

  1. This thought matches others (e.g., Z 69) concerned with the “snaturamento” (denaturing) caused by civilization. In the Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité (Oeuvres, vol. 3, p. 138), Rousseau had written that “our ills are of our own making” and “when one thinks of the strong constitution of Savages … when one realizes that they have almost no knowledge of illnesses other than those of injuries and old age, one is tempted to believe that the history of human illnesses would be easily told by following that of civil Societies.” Cf. Z 1631–32, 1805–806, 3179–82, 4025, and in particular on degeneration, imperfections, and monstrosity Z 3058–60. See also the passage by Speroni cited on Z 3568.

  Z 1604

  1. The parenthesis is a marginal addition.

  Z 1607

  1. This comparison is a marginal addition.

  Z 1608

  1. Damiani notes the same emphasis on movement in Holbach, Système de la nature, part 1, ch. 4 (Oeuvres philosophiques, tome 2, pp. 190–98).

  2. In his Éléments d’idéologie Des
tutt de Tracy equates grammar, ideology, and logic. See Z 1184 and note 1, 1235 and note.

  Z 1610

  1. See Periander’s dictum cited on Z 1717. Cf. also Z 1632–33 and an autobiographical recollection on Z 1802.

  Z 1612

  1. Bishop Ussher had dated the Creation to 4004 BCE, and he, along with others, reckoned that the Earth would then last another two millennia.

  Z 1613

  1. This sentence is a marginal addition.

  2. Taking his cue from the preceding thought, Leopardi will resume in the following pages (Z 1613–23, 1625–27, 1637–46) his meditations on God, Platonic “forms,” and the idea of perfection (see Z 1339–42).

  Z 1615

  1. In Scholastic terminology, aseity is the attribute of beings, notably God, that have in themselves the cause and principle of their own existence.

  Z 1616

  1. This thought is clarified by the one following, in which Leopardi refers back to earlier passages where, influenced by Locke, he had challenged the Platonic theory of innate ideas. The term “thing,” as used at the beginning of the entry, is characteristic of those arguments in which Leopardi opposes all that which exists (in a multiplicity and variety of circumstances) to any purely ideal principle or essence. Cf. Z 948 and note.

  2. Dutens, Origine, tome 1, pp. 49–50, cites a passage where St. Augustine (De diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII, questio 46, “De ideis”), affirms that eternal and immutable ideas are contained in God (“in divina intelligentia continentur”). On this point, Dutens continues, Augustine differs from Plato, who distinguishes between ideas and “divine essence.” Cf. Z 1622.

  Z 1618

  1. Leopardi gives here a more solid theoretical foundation to his meditations on the perfectibility of man. See, e.g., Z 22 and note, 56 and note 5, 222–23, 371–73, 830ff., 1096–98 and note.

  Z 1619

  1. Exodus 3:14.

  2. See Z 1615 and note.

  Z 1623

  1. The parenthesis is a marginal addition, as well as the last two sentences.

  2. Dutens, Origine, part 1, ch. 3 (“Delle qualità sensibili”), tome 1, pp. 51–69. In § 40, pp. 61–63, he cites a thought of Aristippus, the chief exponent of the Cyrenaics (quoted by Sextus Empiricus, Adversus mathematicos 7, 195), concerning the habit men have of giving common names to wholly subjective impressions. Influenced by Protagoras’s phenomenalistic relativism, Aristippus accepts individual perceptions as the norm of truth, anticipating seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sensationalism. Leopardi has already cited Sextus Empiricus on Z 661 in support of his own contention “that there is no absolute truth.”