Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  2. Jacopo Passavanti, Specchio di vera penitenzia, ch. 5, p. 291, “Trattato della superbia,” where this preacher rebukes Florentine translators of holy scripture.

  Z 2517

  1. The reference to sixteenth-century authors is a marginal addition. In Caro’s Lettere familiari a challenge is mounted to Bembo’s pronouncements against Dante’s purportedly indecorous language. In Galateo, ch. 22, Della Casa, for his part, defends Dante’s lexicon (vol. 3, p. 281).

  Z 2518

  1. Caro alludes here to passages in which Aristotle allows in poetry “modifications of diction,” “rare words,” and “metaphors” (Poetics 1460b, ed. Fyfe) and a “foreign” or “out-of-the-way air” (Rhetoric, 1404b, ed. Freese, 3, 2, 3).

  Z 2519

  1. We have not been able to identify the passage to which Leopardi refers here.

  Z 2521

  1. For the theory of grace, see, for example, Z 198–203.

  Z 2523

  1. Tasso, Discorso sopra varj accidenti della sua vita, in Opere, Venice 1735–42, vol. 8, pp. 242–68; Petrarch, Rime 28, l. 41; Virgil, Aeneid 4, 701.

  2. See Z 1313–14.

  Z 2524

  1. The expression “sciagure della virtù,” which reminds us of Sade’s malheurs de la vertu, also features in the letter of 17 December 1819 to Giordani (Epistolario, p. 354). On the whole paragraph see Z 4525–26 and note.

  Z 2525

  1. This phrase does not seem to feature in the Avvertimenti (cited on Z 2516) but undoubtedly reflects the thinking of Salviati (Pacella).

  Z 2526

  1. That is, the letter of 20 June 1562 to Varchi, in Caro, Lettere familiari, vol. 2, p. 183.

  2. The letter dated Rome, 20 July 1566, in Lettere familiari, vol. 2, p. 291.

  3. For the translation of Virgil’s Aeneid see letters 247 and 261, of 14 September 1565 and 30 March 1566, Lettere familiari, vol. 2, pp. 272 and 284; for that of Aristotle, see letter 180 to Varchi of 20 June 1562, ibid., vol. 2, p. 184.

  Z 2527

  1. Xenophon, Oeconomicus 20, 23.

  2. Seneca, De brevitate vitae 4, 2–3, relating to a letter sent by Augustus to the Senate on the theme of anticipated happiness (Pacella).

  Z 2528

  1. This sentence was added to the margin of the ms.

  Z 2529

  1. The French idiom is written thus in the ms.

  Z 2535

  1. See Caro, letter of 20 June 1562 to Benedetto Varchi, Lettere familiari, vol. 2, no. 180, p. 183, and letter to Felice Gualtieri of 15 November 1562, no. 189, ibid., p. 208.

  2. I.e., his translation of the Aeneid.

  3. Leopardi is referring to Castelvetro’s judgment in “Replica … contro la Canzone del Caro in lode de la Casa di Francia,” which is included in the Apologia, p. 18.

  Z 2541

  1. For the expression “with the flow of the pen,” see Z 95 and note 1.

  Z 2543

  1. In the ms. this sentence is an unattached marginal addition. The charges leveled at Botta are taken from Sevelinges’s preface to the Storia della guerra dell’indipendenza degli Stati Uniti d’America. See Z 2127–28, and Z 2395, note 3.

  Z 2547

  1. Homer, Iliad 1, 551; 3, 144; 16, 439; 18, 40.

  Z 2554

  1. Cf. Z 1978–82 and note, with the reference to Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse, part 3, letter 21.

  Z 2555

  1. In the ms. this last sentence is an interlinear addition from 1827.

  Z 2559

  1. Buffon (see Z 49, note 2) had stressed how human beings, unlike other species, were able to adapt to almost any climate on earth. On the “greater conformability” of man see also Z 1452–53 and note.

  Z 2563

  1. Leopardi breaks off here, on the grounds that his thought is “not true,” only to try in the following two pages to discover where he had gone wrong. In the 1827 Index he does nevertheless list both these thoughts, under different headings (Damiani).

  Z 2564

  1. There may be a reference intended here to Staël, so much admired by Leopardi (see, e.g., Z 1742), and yet also an advocate of perfectibility, especially in a Condorcetian text such as De la littérature (cf. Z 22, note 1).

  Z 2573

  1. See Z 2475.

  Z 2574

  1. Cf. the poignant aphorism on Z 58, and 3165–74.

  Z 2577

  1. Leopardi refers here in particular to the Lives of the Fathers of the Church by Domenico Cavalca, read in the Verona 1799 edition. See Z 2645, note 1.

  Z 2580

  1. That is, Bartolomeo da San Concordio, cited on Z 2452.

  Z 2583

  1. See Z 649 and note 2.

  2. Quoted from Mai’s edition. See Leopardi’s translation of this passage into Italian, in Opere inedite, ed. Cugnoni, vol. 1, p. 397.

  Z 2584

  1. The two metaphors are used respectively on Z 2949 (the ring) and 1657 (the body) for the same purpose.

  Z 2589

  1. See Z 1519.

  Z 2590

  1. Velleius, History of Rome 1, 18, a passage to which Leopardi had already referred on Z 745, 1819–20, 2103–104.

  Z 2591

  1. With Herodes Atticus and Aelius Aristides the rhetoric of the Second Sophistic attained its fullest development, in the second century CE.

  2. Leopardi has here translated his own thought into French, while expounding again (see Z 1134) a concept that might have originated (as Gensini observes, p. 49 [B11]), in many sources, among which Condillac, Staël, and most notably Genovesi’s Logica per i giovanetti, an influential book in Leopardi’s education, and an original synthesis of Locke, Condillac, and Vico. See in particular bk. 2, ch. 5, § 16 (p. 69) and bk. 5, ch. 4, § 74 (p. 247).

  Z 2592

  1. Cellini’s Discourse on the Difference Arising Between Sculptors and Painters Concerning the Right-Hand Place Given to Painting in the Funeral Rites of the Great Michelangelo Buonarroti was published in Florence in 1564.

  2. The feast, supposedly established by Pope Honorius III in 1216, when ratifying the dream of St. Francis, runs from Vespers on 1 August until sundown on 2 August, when plenary indulgence was extended to those who visited the Porziuncola Chapel. As in 1823, Leopardi gives both dates for the feast.

  Z 2593

  1. The Atticists were grammarians and rhetors who took as their models Athenian writers of the fifth and fourth centuries.

  Z 2599

  1. There follows a ms. marginal addition from 1827, in which year Leopardi made the acquaintance, probably through Vieusseux, of Count Domenico Paoli (1788–1849), a physicist from Pesaro. Paoli was the author of Ricerche sul moto molecolare dei solidi (Pesaro 1825), also cited on Z 4242.

  Z 2600

  1. Here Leopardi cites Iliad 13, 636: “There is sufficiency of all things, sleep, love” but eliminates the reference to love, substituting for it the music mentioned by Homer in l. 637. This Homeric passage is translated in full in the “Discorso di un italiano intorno alla poesia romantica” (Prose, p. 374) and in the operetta morale “Il Parini, ovvero della gloria.”

  2. See, for example, Z 175 and 2433–34.

  Z 2601

  1. In 1829 this idea will be given poetic form in “La quiete dopo la tempesta,” ll. 26ff. For the whole paragraph see Z 82 and note 2.

  Z 2602

  1. See Corpus Paroemiographorum Graecorum, eds. E. L. von Leutsch and F. G. Schneidewin, Göttingen 1839–51, vol. 2, p. 419.

  Z 2603

  1. Antonio Neri, L’arte vetraria, in A. Baumé, Chimica sperimentale e ragionata, Venice: Pezzana, 1781, tome 3, pp. I–CLVIII (= LL). Neri reproduces the account given by Pliny (Natural history 36, 65) of the accidental discovery of glass made by merchants in Syria (p. VII).

  Z 2605

  1. The source of this entry is Dutens, Origine, part 3, ch. 3, in particular pp. 51–52 (Polizzi, “per le forze eterne…,” pp. 199–200 [B11]). Fulminating powder is an explosive compound of gold used by alchemists.
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br />   Z 2607

  1. Accheti il suo pianto (“quiet his crying”) and d’incoraggiarli alla vita (“encourage them to live”) are much later marginal additions, perhaps from 1829, when Leopardi began to compose “Canto notturno” (see ll. 39–56) (Pacella).

  Z 2609

  1. Though a perfect hexameter, the line quoted by Leopardi is an amalgam of Odyssey, 17, 322, and 323, as cited in Algarotti’s essay on climate (see Z 205, note 1), in Opere, tome 4, p. 230, n. 1. In this same essay Algarotti contrasts Montesquieu, presented as an advocate of climatic determinism, with Machiavelli, depicted as a champion of “moral causes” (ibid., pp. 223–24).

  2. Lucian, Dependent Scholars (De mercede conductis), 17.

  Z 2610

  1. In fact Juvenal (not Martial), Satires 3, 78.

  Z 2614

  1. That is, sententious style.

  Z 2615

  1. That is, the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which corresponds to the conjunction “and.”

  Z 2616

  1. In the ms. the name of Galileo is an interlinear addition.

  Z 2618

  1. See Z 106 (and note 1), 1850, 1857.

  2. In the ms. the title is approximate. There is however no reason to suppose that Leopardi had firsthand knowledge of any text by Kant; see Z 1857, note 1. As for Wieland, see Z 1630–31 and note. The following reference is an addition from 1827.

  3. This is a later addition, in which Leopardi refers to his Discorso sopra lo stato presente dei costumi degl’Italiani (probably drafted in 1824).

  Z 2623

  1. Cicero, Pro Archia poeta 23, a passage cited in part on Z 2624 and 2735 and translated on Z 240.

  2. Leopardi quotes from p. 120. As regards Josephus and language, see Z 1000–1001.

  3. Lucian, The Double Indictment 25ff.

  Z 2624

  1. See Z 2623 and note 1.

  2. Celebrated on the third Sunday in September as a twin feast to the one on the Friday before Palm Sunday (see Z 2400 and note 1).

  3. Lanzi’s essay on the Etruscan language also features on Z 1138–39 and 2329. Leopardi did not possess a copy but knew of its contents through the many quotations from it in literary journals. Restoration culture in the post-Napoleonic years witnessed strong interest in all things Etruscan.

  Z 2626

  1. Xenophon, Agesilaus 1, 13.

  Z 2627

  1. Isocrates, Panegyric 23–25 and On the peace 50.

  Z 2628

  1. Isocrates, Panegyric 81.

  Z 2629

  1. Isocrates, Panegyric 112.

  2. There is no reference to these words before this date (Pacella). See, however, Z 4474.

  3. The sentences after the date are added in the margin. See, e.g., Z 1798, 1825–26, 1930, etc., for analogous passages on the nature of poetic language.

  Z 2636

  1. Isocrates, To Nicocles 6, a speech translated by Leopardi in December 1824. Leopardi is responsible for the interpolation in Greek in parentheses.

  Z 2637

  1. These last three words are an underlined interlinear addition, which Leopardi subsequently clarifies by means of a further marginal addition, that is, note a.

  Z 2639

  1. A transcription of a passage in Della Casa, which is in its turn a paraphrase of a passage from Cicero, De senectute 24, cited on Z 599 (Pacella).

  Z 2641

  1. See Z 2519.

  Z 2642

  1. On the Arcadians see, e.g., Z 146; on Cesarotti cf. Z 2169, 2518.

  Z 2644

  1. The reference is to Plutarch, Moralia 1010d.

  2. Perticari reiterates the point about the unity and diffusion of the Roman language.

  3. Cf. Pascal, Pensées (ed. Brunschvicg), § 451 (Damiani). See Z 4280.

  4. According to Damiani, this is the kernel of Leopardi’s political thought, confirmed years later (perhaps 1835) by ll. 75–85 of the “Palinodia,” a satirical recantation of all his beliefs, which reads: “Violence and fraud, / destined to stay afloat, will always reign / with mediocrity. However much you want / empire and power consolidated or diffused, / whoever has them will abuse them, / in whomever’s name. Nature and fate / inscribed this law in adamant at the outset, / and neither Volta nor Davy will repeal it / with their lightning, nor will all of England / with her machines, nor the new century / with a Ganges of political screeds.” (trans. Galassi).

  Z 2645

  1. A transcription from Domenico Cavalca, Volgarizzamento delle vite de’ Santi Padri, edited by Antonio Cesari, Verona 1799, reproducing the Florentine edition of 1731–32 ed. by Domenico Manni. Cf. Z 2452 and note.

  2. Leopardi set out for Rome on 17 November 1822. This was the first time he had left Recanati. During his journey he read Lucian in Greek and Don Quixote in Spanish.

  Z 2646

  1. Chateaubriand, Génie du Christianisme, part 3, bk. 3, ch. 2, pp. 84–87.

  Z 2649

  1. Z 2649–52 is in its entirety—though with a number of interpolations by Leopardi in parentheses—an excerpt from an article on Venetian dialect in the Effemeridi di Roma, January 1821, tome 2, pp. 58–70. Leopardi’s note a comes from this same article. There are in this article intimations of the theory of the linguistic substrate, embraced in the eighteenth century by Scipione Maffei, for example in his Verona illustrata (1732), and in the nineteenth by Leopardi himself, by Carlo Cattaneo, Bernardino Biondelli, and Graziadio Ascoli (see Timpanaro, “Carlo Cattaneo e Graziadio Ascoli,” in Classicismo, pp. 246ff. [B11]). The Italian dialects, according to this theory, constituted enduring residues of early local languages, hence the references in these pages to words of Paduan and Veronese origin. Thus, the language of Livy was known for its “Patavinity” or “Paduanism” (see Z 1020 and note, and 3373), that of Catullus, as Maffei had noted, for its use of words local to Verona. Other references in this thought include, on Z 2650–51, Cicero, Ad familiares 9, 15, 2, where mention is made of words specific to the Veneto; and on Z 2652, the epigram Ad Varum in Catalepton, 7. Leopardi’s interest in Vulgar Latin and his formulation of the theory of the linguistic substrate dates to March/April 1821: see Z 856 and note, 932–40, 979. The reference to Maffei is therefore, according to Bolelli, “Leopardi e le lingue antiche,” p. 37 (B12), a confirmation rather than a source.

  Z 2653

  1. Lucian, “Charon or the Inspectors,” 15. Leopardi cites this passage from Selecti dialogi, Rome 1591.

  2. See Leopardi, “Al Conte Carlo Pepoli,” ll. 151–52: “because the truth, once known, / though it is sad, has pleasures of its own” (trans. Galassi). On the relation between beauty and truth, see Z 1898 and note.

  Z 2654

  1. The experience of living in Rome, as his letters prove, confirmed in Leopardi a Rousseauian revulsion against big cities.

  Z 2655

  1. On 23 November 1822 Leopardi had arrived in Rome, and shortly after that began to study the newly published edition of Cicero’s De re publica. His philological notes to this recently discovered text, edited by Angelo Mai, would appear three months later, in the Effemeridi letterarie. This paragraph and the following, from the same edition, were originally in Latin, as were Leopardi’s interpolations.

  2. Cicero, De re publica 1, 3, 4; 1, 15, 23; 3, 2, 3.

  Z 2656

  1. See also Z 1014–15.

  2. Cicero, De re publica 2, 9, 16.

  3. Leopardi has written this sentence in Latin, and what follows, up until the date, was originally in Mai’s Latin also. The reference is to Cicero, De re publica 2, 10, 17.

  4. In the ms. the reference to Niebuhr’s “Survey of Spelling in the Vatican manuscript” is a marginal addition, followed then by another from 1827, where the concepts regarding synizesis from Z 1124, 1151–53, 2247–50 are recalled.

  5. Plato, Republic 563e; Cicero, De re publica 1, 44, 68.

  Z 2657

  1. The same aphorism features on Z 714, and related remarks may be found at 461–62, 658–59, 1260–62, 1554, 1776.
Note that the small interpolation in parentheses contains a comment by Leopardi on a textual variant posited by Mai.

  2. Mai, in Cicero, De re publica 2, 19, 34.

  Z 2658

  1. Cicero, De re publica 2, 37, 62.

  Z 2659

  1. Cicero, De re publica 3, 2, 3. Mai’s edition contains a note explicating “mens aut ratio.”

  Z 2660

  1. Cicero, De re publica 3, 8–20, 12–31. On the “so-called” natural law see Z 209, note 2, 1709, 2672 and note 4.

  2. Here Leopardi cites from Mai’s note, in Latin.

  3. Cicero, De re publica 3, 15, 25.

  Z 2661

  1. This passage, excerpted from Ammianus Marcellinus, Res gestae 15, 5, 23, was used by Mai to fill a lacuna in the first book of Cicero, De re publica. In his interpolation, in parentheses, Leopardi argues in Latin for substituting a genitive for an accusative.

  Z 2663

  1. Cicero, Orator 30, 108. Leopardi cites this passage from Hyacinthe Colin’s edition, Traité de l’Orateur de Ciceron, Paris 1809, which he saw in Rome.

  2. Cicero, Orator 39, 134.

  3. Cicero, Orator 44, 149. Leopardi’s conjecture is mistaken (Timpanaro, La filologia, p. 155 [B11]).

  4. Cicero, Orator 45, 153.

  5. Cicero, Orator 48, 159.

  Z 2664

  1. Cicero, Orator 58, 197.

  2. Cicero, Orator 62, 211.

  Z 2665

  1. Cicero, Orator 71, 235; 3, 11; 4, 16; 5, 19; 9, 32; 23, 83; 26, 88; 30, 107; 40, 137; 44, 150; 55, 183; 58, 196, cited by Leopardi from Colin’s edition. Most of the above conjectures are important, and a good number of them had already been proposed in humanist codices, as Timpanaro observes, La filologia, p. 75, note 42 (B11).

  2. As on Z 2661, in the ms. the Greek term used in this paragraph for “sons of the earth” has an accent on the penultimate and not, as is usual, on the second syllable. See Plato, Menexenus 237a ff.

  Z 2667

  1. French historical dictionaries do in fact take the primary meaning of “parents” to have been that of “relatives,” but the secondary meaning of “father or mother” was far from unknown in Leopardi’s day. Condorcet, for example, uses it with this second meaning.