Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  Z 2130

  1. A transcription, as above, of a passage from Sevelinges’s Preface to Botta’s history of the American War of Independence. Emphasis added by Leopardi.

  Z 2133

  1. A parallel between Homer and Newton had been drawn by Mme. de Staël, De l’Allemagne, part 1, ch. 18 (a chapter quoted by Leopardi on Z 2028).

  Z 2137

  1. Ammianus Marcellinus, Rerum Gestarum qui de 31 supersunt libri 18, ed. J. Gronovius, Leiden 1693 (= LL), bk. 23, 4, p. 276.

  Z 2138

  1. Varro, De lingua latina 6, 63. There follows a ms. marginal and interlinear addition.

  Z 2139

  1. Citations taken from Forcellini. See Servius on Aeneid 11, 202 (fol. 337v): “Stellis aptum: coniunctum.”

  Z 2140

  1. See Z 2142, note.

  Z 2141

  1. Homer, Iliad 5, 487.

  Z 2142

  1. This etymology is manifestly unsustainable, as is that for apto on Z 2140, along with still other etymologies “by ear” proposed by Leopardi, on which see Z 1121 and Timpanaro’s comment in the note.

  Z 2145

  1. This paragraph is an unattached marginal entry. On the etymologies “by ear” hazarded here, see Z 1121 and note.

  Z 2146

  1. Here and below “conjugation” is used to mean declension.

  Z 2156

  1. See Z 2258, 4390.

  Z 2165

  1. That is, the Apokolocyntosis divi Claudii, a Menippean satire on the Emperor Claudius.

  2. The short poem in which Ausonius recounts the different phases of his day.

  Z 2167

  1. Ménage, In Diogenem observationes, p. 84 (on Diogenes Laertius 2, 25). The Greek title means, rather, “to himself.”

  2. The letters exchanged by Marcus Aurelius and Fronto (ed. Mai), bk. 1, letter 1 (tome 1, pp. 33–41) and bk. 2, letter 9 (tome 1, pp. 79–82). In the Van den Hout ed.: bk. 2, letter 2 (pp. 17–21) and bk. 2, letter 8 (pp. 28–29).

  Z 2168

  1. Horace, Ars poetica 31.

  Z 2169

  1. Leopardi, translator of Fronto, had praised his purity of language in an essay of 1816. It is worth noting the connection between linguistic and religious “scruples,” both of which were well known to Leopardi, who had certainly read many “masters of devotions” (the LL contained for example works by Jacques-Joseph Duguet, author of a Traité des scrupules, Paris 1718). See Z 1794–95 and note.

  2. See “Lettera al conte Gian-Francesco Galeani Napione,” in Saggio sulla filosofia delle lingue, 5th ed., Padua 1802 (= LL), p. 210, where Cesarotti makes clear his aim to reconcile philosophy and language (Pacella).

  Z 2170

  1. See Fronto, Ad M. Antoninum de orationibus, bk. 1, fr. 1 (ed. Mai, tome 2, p. 217). Van den Hout includes this passage in the Epistulae de eloquentia, p. 141.

  Z 2171

  1. In Corinne, bk. 7, ch. 1, tome 1, p. 296, Staël’s protagonist says to the Count d’Erfeuil: “your prose writers are often more eloquent, and even more poetical than your poets.”

  Z 2180

  1. Horace, Ars poetica 46–59.

  Z 2181

  1. Hecataeus wrote in the Ionic dialect, as did Arrian in his Indica.

  2. In his “Dialogo del capro ecc.” (cited on Z 1436) Monti, Proposta, vol. 1, part 2, p. 106, cites a passage by Cicero, De oratore 3, 11, 43.

  Z 2185

  1. That is, Leopardi’s patriotic canzoni. The first two (“All’Italia” and “Sopra il monumento di Dante”) were published in 1818, the third (“Ad Angelo Mai”) in 1820.

  Z 2186

  1. In his “Lettera” to the Biblioteca Italiana in response to Staël’s “Sulla maniera…” (1816), Leopardi had rejected Staël’s claim that reading alone might foster originality. Five years later, armed with the theory of habituation (cf. Z 1255, 1540–41, 1742, 1832–33, 2228–30), Leopardi has become far more sympathetic to this argument (cf. also Z 1697–98), although he will not dispense with what he calls impeto, i.e., “poetic impulse” as opposed to “art and habit” (see Z 2979), even making of it the true and only origin of all poetry (Z 4356: “Poetry consists essentially in an impetus”).

  2. The article cited, tome 2, pp. 90–92, is based on Locke’s Essay, ch. 16, “Of Number,” pp. 205–209 (cf. also Z 1075), where Locke claims that it is necessary to attach a particular name to each number, adducing as proof the example of those native Americans who, not knowing how to go past twenty, “would shew the Hairs of their Head, to express a great multitude, which they could not number; which inability, I suppose, proceeded from their want of Names” (p. 207). See Thomas Crump, The Anthropology of Numbers, Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1990. The reference to Robinson Crusoe is not in the Encyclopédie article. Muñiz, however (Letture di Leopardi [B12]), suggests that in the years since 1820 Leopardi may have read Defoe’s novel in the Italian translation from the French La vita e le avventure di Robinson Crusoe, Venice: Occhi, 1799 (= LL). See the passage where Friday cannot count up to twenty stones, compared with the thought on Z 360–62, which opens with the example of the stones.

  Z 2192

  1. That is, Virginia Mosca, who had died a year before.

  Z 2195

  1. Pontedera, Antiquitatum, p. 18. See Z 1276–77.

  Z 2199

  1. Terence, Hecyra 866.

  Z 2202

  1. The following unattached marginal addition (written on Z 2201) may be dated to July 1823 on the basis of the contents of Z 2894–95. Leopardi had begun to read Solís in February 1822.

  Z 2204

  1. Xenophon, On Hunting, ch. 13. Leopardi recalls in particular 13, 4: “I am no professor, but I know that the best thing is to be taught what is good by one’s own nature, and the next best thing is to get it from those who really know something good instead of being taught by masters of the art of deception.” (trans. Marchant and Bowersock, ed. Loeb).

  Z 2208

  1. A line from Statius, Thebaid 3, 661, also cited by Vico in The New Science, bk. 1, section 2 (§ 191). There is no clear evidence that Leopardi read the Neapolitan philosopher prior to 1828 (cf. Z 143, note 2) but he may have seen “I tre principii di Giambattista Vico,” Spettatore, tome 8, 1817, p. 273, in which this same passage features (Pacella). In the ms. both this page and Z 3638 follow Vico in opting for “primos” where all his editions of Statius (Amsterdam 1624, Lyon 1665, Venice 1519 and 1712) read “primus” (meaning thus “fear first made gods in the world” instead of “fear made the first gods in the world”). Leopardi’s (and Vico’s) reading, however, matches an important theme regarding ancient religions, namely, that wicked gods were the product of terrified imaginations, whereas the benign ones belonged to a somewhat more advanced level of civilization. Cf. Z 2387–88, 3638–43, 4410, 4126.

  Z 2211

  1. Leopardi’s hypothesis is that if during the Renaissance Greek had become the common language of culture, it would have been preserved better than Latin. By “barbarian Latin” he means here the Latin used by scholars after the Renaissance. Cf. Z 1973–74.

  Z 2212

  1. The repetition of piccolezza, “small-mindedness,” is Leopardi’s own.

  Z 2213

  1. Advocated by Staël also (Z 1729), and see Z 94–95 on the Zibaldone as a polyglot work.

  Z 2216

  1. In fact, Leopardi’s etymological speculation is incorrect.

  Z 2218

  1. These lines from Virgil were also cited by Leopardi in the margins of his ms. of “Ultimo canto di Saffo,” in relation to l. 55. Dido’s desperation may be likened to that of Laocoön and of Niobe, and one and all may be taken to represent the ancient sorrow described by Leopardi on Z 76–79 and 88, and earlier by Winckelmann. “The pleasure of despair” is a theme also addressed on Z 107 and 1545–46.

  Z 2219

  1. The parenthesis is a ms. marginal addition; within it another parenthesis suggests a variant text.

  Z 2221

  1. Cf. Leopardi, “Canto
notturno di un pastore errante dell’Asia,” ll. 105–16 (Pacella).

  Z 2222

  1. Book 2, l. 54.

  2. Latin rendering of a phrase of Themistocles in Plutarch, Moralia 328f, Life of Themistocles 29, 10 (based on Thucydides 1, 138).

  Z 2225

  1. Virgil, Georgics 1, 24–28. The ms. has “curas” instead of “curam” (Pacella).

  Z 2227

  1. In the sense of the Enlightenment supporters of unchecked liberty in linguistic matters.

  Z 2230

  1. Cf. Z 2186 and note 1.

  2. Cf. Z 1062–63, for the somewhat singular example of Goethe, cited by Staël.

  Z 2231

  1. Lucian, How to Write History 16. See Z 3982.

  Z 2241

  1. The Holy House was believed to be the dwelling in which Jesus had been raised in Nazareth, miraculously transported by angels to Croatia in 1291, thence to Loreto, near Recanati. The feast was placed in the Roman Martyrology by Pope Clement IX in 1667 for 10 December.

  Z 2242

  1. Leopardi considers these two forms as one verb: in modern Italian schivare means “to avoid,” schifare means “to loathe,” but it is clear that the two meanings are connected.

  Z 2243

  1. Virgil’s Opera, vol. 1, p. 14.

  Z 2246

  1. Cineas, who went to Rome as the representative of King Pyrrhus of Epirus, sued for peace but the Senate turned him down (Plutarch, Life of Pyrrhus 18–19). In Rousseau’s celebrated account of this episode, given in the Discours on the sciences and the arts, and in the Prosopopoeia of Fabricius in particular (Oeuvres, vol. 3, p. 15), Cineas is judged to have seen “the finest spectacle ever seen under heaven, the assembly of two hundred virtuous men…” The Senators encountered by Cineas were not noted for their philosophical understanding.

  Z 2247

  1. Aelius Donatus, in Virgil’s Opera, vol. 1, p. 24.

  Z 2248

  1. Keller, Orthographia Latina, p. 14; Encyclopédie méthodique. Grammaire et Littérature, tome 2, art. “I,” p. 286.

  Z 2250

  1. Petrarch, Rime 50, ll. 24.

  Z 2251

  1. Virgil’s Opera, vol. 1, pp. 38–40.

  Z 2253

  1. See Z 879 and note.

  2. A marginal addition from 1827. As regards piracy, see Everhard Feith, Antiquitatum homericarum libri IV, Naples 1774, bk. 2, ch. 9 (“De furtis ac rapinis”), pp. 137–40, a book Leopardi read in April 1826, when in Bologna. This same text is also contained in Jacob Gronov’s Thesaurus Graecarum antiquitatum, Venice 1732–37 (= LL), vol. 6, cols. 3717–842.

  3. See Solís, Historia, bk. 2, ch. 11, p. 17 (cited, however, for the first time on 6 February 1822, on Z 2387–88), where one reads that lying was “a capital vice among the Indians” (in the Italian trans. p. 156).

  Z 2255

  1. That is, writers of Roman antiquities, such as Varro.

  2. Heyne’s biography of Virgil, organized by year, can be found in Virgil’s Opera, vol. 1, p. 50.

  Z 2256

  1. Virgil, Georgics 2, 536–41. In the ms. Leopardi underlines the final line, to which he attributes another, deeper meaning, such that the “immense space” is the space men have covered by means of civilization, distancing themselves ever more from the happiness of origins (Pacella).

  Z 2258

  1. Cf. Z 2053–54.

  2. Cf. Z 2155–56, 4390, and Pensieri, 75 (Prose, p. 325). A similar comparison (“Fortune is a woman”) in Machiavelli, The Prince, at the end of ch. 25.

  Z 2264

  1. Cf. Z 1637 and note 1.

  2. Giovanni Della Casa, “Lettera di esortazione a M. Annibale Rucellai,” in Opere, vol. 2, pp. 108–11 (letter 43).

  Z 2265

  1. This sentence is a marginal addition. Cf. Livy 21, 24, 5 and 21, 32, 6.

  Z 2268

  1. The reference to A. Marsand’s annotated edition of the Rime (Florence 1822) is a marginal addition, perhaps from 1827, and at any rate after June 1826, when Leopardi had read that volume, perhaps in connection with the preparation of his own edition for Stella, which he finished, at last, at the end of June.

  Z 2269

  1. See Z 3824–25.

  Z 2270

  1. Leopardi distinguishes here between dispositions and faculties, trying to account for the lesser or greater degree of propensity to becoming habituated in different individuals and species (see Z 1451–53 and note). Elsewhere Leopardi makes clear that dispositions are possibilities realized by faculties (cf. Z 2391), but the distinction is not always rigorous.

  Z 2275

  1. See Z 1260–62.

  Z 2276

  1. Quintilian, Institutiones 9, 1, 23.

  Z 2279

  1. In the active form it is not to be found in Forcellini; further on Leopardi mentions the deponent obsidiari.

  Z 2281

  1. See Z 980–81.

  Z 2283

  1. See Fronto, Ad M. Antoninum de orationibus, bk. 2, fr. 5, in Fronto, Opera inedita (ed. Mai), vol. 2, p. 266 (ed. Van den Hout p. 158).

  Z 2291

  1. As in the poem La ginestra, l. 6: “odorata ginestra” (trans. Galassi: “scented broom”).

  Z 2295

  1. For Voltaire, Diderot, Mirabeau, and others, Frederick the Great had been the model of an enlightened despot. Leopardi could find a more nuanced, and on the whole positive, portrait in De l’Allemagne, part 1, ch. 16, where Staël observes, however, that the king of Prussia may have liberated his subjects from what he called prejudices, but by the same token he had extinguished their patriotism. Cf. Z 906 and 4096–98.

  Z 2296

  1. Here Leopardi merges and rephrases in Italian the two passages from Montaigne and Pascal which he will later quote in French through Charles Nodier (Z 4416) (Pacella). There is no edition of Montaigne in the LL, and we therefore cannot be certain as to whether Leopardi had firsthand knowledge of his essays. Yet a good number of thoughts appear to have been directly influenced by Montaigne, and when in Pisa or Florence (1828) he contemplated composing some “Essays, after the manner of Montaigne.”

  Z 2298

  1. In modern editions, Plautus, Truculentus 1, 78.

  Z 2301

  1. See in particular ch. 8 (Prose, pp. 717–20).

  Z 2304

  1. Leopardi had studied the “prejudices” of the common people in his Saggio sopra gli errori popolari degli antichi (1815). The idea that fairies and other figures of popular superstition were related to classical deities was suggested two decades later by L. F. Alfred Maury, Les fées du Moyen-Age, recherches sur leur origine, leur histoire et leurs attributs, Paris 1843, in particular pp. 5–14. The following reference is to Monti, Proposta, vol. 3, part 1, p. 14.

  2. According to Pacella, Leopardi has in mind here an unpublished note in a different redaction of his essay on Fronto, which comments on the Latin name Fati given in an inscription to the three Parcae.

  3. Apuleius, De mundo, 38.

  4. See Z 200, 250–51.

  Z 2306

  1. Lucretius, De rerum natura 5, 1409.

  2. An example not found in Plautus (Pacella).

  Z 2307

  1. See Scapula, Lexicon, p. 1099 and Meurs, vol. 6, pp. 289–334, in particular p. 298 under κνέφας [darkness, dusk].

  Z 2309

  1. Varro, De lingua latina 10, 81; Festus, De verborum significatione, p. CXX.

  Z 2310

  1. Lucretius, De rerum natura 1, 237.

  Z 2317

  1. Bembo, in Prose della volgar lingua, bk. 3, in Opere, tome 2, p. 97.

  Z 2319

  1. Virgil, Aeneid 4, 667.

  2. Horace, Odes 4, 2, 22–24.

  Z 2322

  1. Leopardi’s reference here is to Virgil’s Opera, vol. 1, p. 90, and to the institution of the Actian Games in 276 ab urbe condita (not 723, as Leopardi mistakenly writes), that is, 28 BCE.

  2. In the account given by Pausanias, Description of Greece 1, 28, a bronze statue of
Pallas Athene by Phidias was erected using booty taken from the Persians, who had landed at Marathon.

  Z 2324

  1. There is no exact English equivalent: the adjective dorsuosus refers to the backs of waves or hills.

  2. Leopardi ends this list of Latin words with untuoso in Italian.

  Z 2325

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

  Z 2329

  1. Neither work is in the LL at Recanati. See Luigi Lanzi, Saggio di lingua etrusca e di altre antiche d’Italia, Rome 1789, tome 1, pp. 83ff. See also Z 1138–39.

  Z 2331

  1. Plato, Timaeus, 22b. See Z 928, note 1. In this passage Leopardi evokes the medieval concept of translatio imperii (transfer of rule): see Z 867 and note 1.

  Z 2332

  1. See Z 404 and note.

  Z 2333

  1. According to the Manuscrit venu de Sainte-Hélène d’une manière inconnue, Napoleon had prophesied that Russia would achieve greatness in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars (a manuscript copy of the London 1817 edition is at Recanati in the LL). Leopardi, however, may have got wind of a similar prediction made by the Abbé de Pradt, who is cited on Z 3577–78. On the role of Russia in the cycle of civilizations cf. Z 867.

  2. See Z 1732 and note.

  Z 2335

  1. An explanation of the Terror of a quite “Stendhalian” tone (see Z 4289–90), unexpectedly similar to a passage where Chateaubriand judges the sheer barbaric brutality of the Terror a cause of heroism and “grands dévouements” [“great acts of selflessness”] (Mémoires d’outre-tombe 25, 10; vol. 3, p. 47). See also Z 520 (but, in contrast, Z 408 and note 2).

  2. This is Leopardi’s first mention of Anton Maria Salvini, a Florentine man of letters and collaborator with the Crusca, who “because of his great modesty, never allowed us, as long as he lived, to cite him” (Vocabolario, vol. 8, p. 58, note 269) (Pacella).

  Z 2338

  1. This thought, and the account given of the ramifications of agriculture, anticipates the bravura passage on the souffrance in a garden on Z 4175–77. The reluctance of Leopardi here, following Holbach, Système de la nature, part 1, ch. 5, to admit that there is contradiction in nature (cf. Z 1597–98) is undermined in later thoughts, on Z 4174–77 but also on Z 4087, 4099–101 and 4127–29. Note that the comparison of “the sand of the sea” comes from the Bible, namely Hosea 1:10.