Zibaldone

by Leopardi, Giacomo

  Z 3444

  1. Plato, Symposium 192d–e.

  Z 3446

  1. This parenthesis was added in the ms. margin.

  Z 3447

  1. This is a paraphrase of a passage from the Italian translation of Jean-Baptiste Say’s Petit volume (cited on Z 245, note, pp. 3–4), Gli uomini e la società, Milan 1818, p. 6, not held by the LL, but probably borrowed by Leopardi. The review of Say’s lectures in the Spettatore, tome 5, 1816, pp. 385–88, mentioned by Pacella, does not contain this passage.

  Z 3448

  1. This parenthesis, along with the one a few lines below containing the same words, is added in the ms. margin.

  Z 3452

  1. It is interesting to note that Leopardi says here uditore [“listener”] giving priority to the oral/aural dimension of the theatrical experience. See D’Intino, L’immagine della voce (B11), esp. ch. 3.

  Z 3460

  1. Cf. Aristotle’s Poetics, 1453a: “This is the sort of man who is not preeminently virtuous and just, and yet it is through no badness or villainy of his own that he falls into the fortune, but rather through some flaw in him” (trans. Fyfe). That is, although the hero (in Aristotle’s example Oedipus or Thyestes) makes a fatal mistake, this is not such as to make us regard him as morally responsible. In Leopardian terms, the “guilt” is thus “involuntary or pitiable.” According to Cesarotti, Hector, in the Iliad, was also such a hero (Iliade o Morte di Ettore, tome 1, pp. XVff.).

  Z 3465

  1. That is, the “purists.” Cf. Z 1, note 6, and 1899.

  Z 3466

  1. This passage shows how far Leopardi was from Italian neoclassicism. His more dramatic view is similar—on this point as on many others—to that of Friedrich Schlegel’s so-called Studium-Aufsatz, that is Über das Studium der Griechischen Poesie (1797), where, speaking of the use of mythology in modern tragedies, he argues that “Historic or invented material shackles the poet as well as the public to an incredible extent. Its heavy burden oppresses the free development of the whole” (On the Study of Greek Poetry, trans. and ed. Stuart Barnett, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001, p. 80; Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, ed. E. Behler, Munich: Schöning, 1958ff., vol. 1, p. 339).

  Z 3468

  1. Cf. Z 1619–23, 1625–26, 1642–46.

  Z 3469

  1. In the marginal addition the references are to Aristotle, Politics 1260b, 27–33; 1273b, 27–35; 1274b, 18–29; 1266a, 31–37; 1288b, 31–1289a, 25; 1298a, 7–13.

  2. Aristotle, Politics 1264b, 32–1266a, 37.

  3. Aristotle, Politics 1266a, 37–1267b, 22.

  4. Aristotle, Politics 1267b, 22–1268b, 42.

  5. See Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, bk. 3, ch. 6, vol. 2, p. 157.

  6. The passage from Cicero is cited by Vettori (on Aristotle, Politics 1273b, 27–33) and by Meurs with respect to the political thought of Heraclides Ponticus, a pupil of Plato and of his successor, Speusippus.

  Z 3470

  1. Diogenes Laertius 5, 47 (De vitis, vol. 1, p. 294, where Theophrastus’s treatise On the laws, which consists of just the one book, is mentioned), and 7, 175 (De vitis, vol. 1, p. 475, where Cleanthes’s On the Laws is recalled).

  2. See Diogenes Laertius 6, 80 (De vitis, vol. 1, p. 352), and 7, 4 (De vitis, vol. 1, p. 368), and Vettori, Commentarii, loc. cit., where he praises the constitution of Lycurgus and expresses astonishment at Aristotle’s silence regarding the ideal state delineated in the Cyropaedia.

  3. In confirmation of Leopardi, succeeding studies of Aristotle’s Politics have shown that, while the original nucleus of the work (bks. 7–8) had been closer in spirit to Platonic thought, it tended over time to become more concrete, hence his collection and classification of constitutions.

  4. In the historical writings of Tacitus the transition from the Roman republic to the Empire was thus marked by a shift from openness and clarity to obscurity and ambiguity. See Z 120, where Leopardi’s source is Montesquieu.

  Z 3471

  1. Aristotle, Politics 1268a, 23–25.

  Z 3473

  1. In these pages Leopardi is expanding on an idea already hinted at on Z 320 and reiterated on Z 2916–17. That the writer should care about the style, not the novelty, of concepts is one of the touchstones of Isocrates’s poetics (see, e.g., To Nicocles 41 and Panegyricus 7–10), as Leopardi remarks in the preface to his translations of the Athenian writer. See, however, Z 4503–504, where this idea applies to ancients and moderns alike.

  Z 3474

  1. Xenophon, Cynegeticus 13, 8, where it is said of the Sophists that they write and distribute their writings in order to deceive, for the purposes of gain, and that they are of no use to anyone.

  2. Calamistri: a calamistrum was a curling iron, or crisping pin, and by extension, for example in Cicero (Orator 23, 78; Brutus 75, 262), a rhetorical ornament.

  Z 3475

  1. Leopardi expounds this idea in the Preamble to his translations of Isocrates (Volgarizzamenti in prosa, p. 225). Cf. Speroni’s dialogue cited on Z 3336 and the note.

  Z 3476

  1. The last two sentences were added in the ms. margin.

  Z 3479

  1. “Il bardo della selva nera,” which dates from 1806, was an unfinished work by Monti, written in celebration of Napoleon’s victories in Prussia. See Z 36.

  Z 3482

  1. The passage from “What I say here” is a marginal ms. addition. See Alfieri, Vita, part 1, epoch 1, ch. 5, vol. 1, pp. 23–25. He there recounts how as a child, he “acquired a certain notion of glory” from the wound he had gotten “performing the Prussian exercise.”

  Z 3485

  1. See Bibliotheca Graeca, bk. 2, ch. 16, vol. 1, p. 608, and Barthélemy, Viaggio d’Anacarsi, tome 10, ch. 69, p. 46.

  2. In the ms. there follows a marginal addition, which continues until the end of the sentence.

  Z 3487

  1. Titles of celebrated comedies by Aristophanes.

  2. Leopardi owned virtually no Greek tragedies (cf. note 1 to Z 3120), and even lacked Aristophanes (except Pluto, or Wealth, cf. Z 684 and note 2). He certainly relied on indirect sources (in this case Fabricius, for example, or Barthélemy).

  Z 3488

  1. In the ms. there follows a marginal addition, until the end of the sentence.

  Z 3490

  1. “Nonchalance” here translates sprezzatura, to be understood in the sense given to it by Castiglione: see Z 2682.

  Z 3492

  1. Pacella notes that Rousseau, in his Confessions, often speaks of his own character as “naturally timid and bashful” and in a passage in bk. 1 describes it as follows: “I am indolence and timidity itself; everything alarms and terrifies me; the very buzzing of a fly will make me shudder; a word to speak, the least trifle to perform, appear an intolerable labor; I am so subdued by fear and shame, that I would gladly shield myself from mortal view” (Oeuvres, vol. 1, p. 36; in the LL ed., London 1786–90, tome 1, p. 66). See Z 3190 (and note 2), 4037–40.

  Z 3496

  1. Lucian, Dialogues of the Dead 16. Diogenes mocks Hercules for being at one and the same time “half dead” and “half a god.”

  2. Plato, Symposium 202d–e, where Eros is defined as a great daemon, something midway between mortal and immortal. The multiplicity of gods and daemons and the vicinity of men to gods (central to Leopardi’s thought and poetics: see Z 64) is deemed by Nietzsche to be propedeutic to the sovereignty of the individual: hence his favoring polytheism and paganism over monotheism (The Gay Science, § 143), as Leopardi will do the day after he wrote this note (Z 3506 and note). See D’Intino, Il rifugio dell’apparenza (B12).

  3. Plato, Symposium 189e.

  Z 3498

  1. The following long passage, until “especially the margin,” is a marginal addition appended at this point.

  Z 3501

  1. Seneca, De brevitate vitae 4, 2–3, as cited in the notes to ch. 28 of Divus Augustus, in Suetonius, Opera, vol. 1, p. 313.

  2. For
piccoli beni: see Dante, Purgatorio 16, 91: “Di picciol bene in pria sente sapore.” Note, however, that Leopardi’s poetics is based on illusion and on the aspiration to the “infinite.”

  Z 3502

  1. From this paragraph one might infer that for Leopardi poetry is a much more effective consolation than religion (see Z 4469 and note 2).

  Z 3506

  1. Leopardi might be influenced by eighteenth-century materialism, e.g., Holbach, Système de la nature, “Conclusion”: “Cease then, man, from letting yourself be troubled by the phantoms which your own imagination, or imposture, has created. Renounce your vague hopes … Only think, then, of making yourself happy in the existence which is known to you” (Oeuvres philosophiques, vol. 2, pp. 387–88); there was no copy of this work in the LL, but see Z 183, note and 4486, note. That the ancients could not separate moral values from the senses is, however, an early belief (cf. Z 64–65). A strong undercurrent of neopaganism pervades much of nineteenth-century literature (see Z 3496 and note 2). The sentence “and insofar … abstractly” is an interlinear ms. addition.

  Z 3507

  1. St. Augustine, De civitate Dei 21, 10.

  2. The rest of this sentence is added in the ms. margin.

  3. The phrase “even poetically speaking” is added in the ms. margin.

  Z 3509

  1. There follows a marginal ms. unattached addition, as far as “simply happiness.”

  2. The long passage between dashes (starting from “See the previous thought”) is a kind of unexpected intermezzo. What follows is the entry whose heading was “Nothing absolute.”

  Z 3511

  1. The information given here derives from Aristotle, Historia animalium 552b, 15 (and also Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes 1, 94), a place mentioned also in Leçons, tome 1, p. 375: “Aristotle says that in the Hypanis river there are little creatures who only live a day.” Cf. also later thoughts on Z 4270 and 4271–72. In the LL copy of Genovesi’s book there is still a slip of paper marking p. 26.

  Z 3513

  1. Arrian, loc. cit., recounts how in some regions of India men live forty years at most, and that girls may marry at seven; Pliny, Naturalis historia 7, 2, 29 says much the same.

  Z 3514

  1. Leopardi here contrasts animals that are brachibiotati, or short-lived, with those that are macrobiotati, or long-lived. These unusual words are derived from Greek terms used by Aristotle and Theophrastus, and then adopted in Latin by, for example, Pliny, but Leopardi may also have had in mind the macrobiotic theories of Hufeland (see Z 352 and note).

  2. There follows a ms. interlinear and marginal addition, culminating in “nature, etc.”

  Z 3516

  1. For these words, see Cicero, Orator 45, 153.

  2. Coccia is also used colloquially to refer to the human head, equivalent to the English “nut.”

  Z 3518

  1. See Z 314 and note 1, 545 and note.

  Z 3519

  1. The motifs of storm and thunder often feature in Leopardi’s juvenile compositions. See also “La quiete dopo la tempesta,” 33–41. On the anthropological meaning of this fear see Z 2388 and note. On thunder, in relation to the aesthetics of the sublime or of the indefinite, see Z 1928–29, 2188, 4293.

  2. This last sentence, and the internal reference, are unattached marginal additions.

  Z 3520

  1. Cf. Z 295, note 1. Unlike in Aristotle’s typology of characters, observable in youth and in old age (Rhetoric 1389a–1390a), a temporal dimension comes into play here.

  Z 3525

  1. The first part of the thought, concerning the Saracen heroes of Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, is a marginal ms. addition.

  Z 3526

  1. There follows a ms. marginal addition.

  Z 3527

  1. In this revealing aphorism Leopardi links the action of singing, that is poetry, to fear. It might be remembered that an uneasy note of fear is sounded at the very beginning of the Zibaldone, with the barking of a dog in the night and a child whose mother tells him she will feed him to a wolf if he doesn’t stop crying.

  Z 3530

  1. See Z 2680–81 for the example of Stratocles, as recounted by Plutarch.

  Z 3531

  1. The following sentence is a ms. unattached marginal addition.

  Z 3534

  1. Diogenes Laertius 9, 68.

  Z 3540

  1. In the ms. this sentence was extensively revised, with three additions.

  Z 3541

  1. Aristotle, Politics 1272a, 15.

  2. See Scapula, Lexicon, p. 602.

  Z 3542

  1. A perfect subjunctive form.

  Z 3544

  1. Fabricius, loc. cit., notes in Catullus’s verses Ad nepotem the use of ordinal as opposed to cardinal numbers, which is also possible in Hebrew and in Greek. On this problem, besides Leopardi’s own reference to Z 3584, see also Z 3557 and 3560.

  Z 3546

  1. The parenthesis is added in the ms. margin.

  2. Leopardi was to expand this thought in his “Discorso … sui costumi,” where a note refers the reader to this passage (see Prose, p. 454). His own experience seemed to confirm what Staël had observed in Corinne, bk. 6, “Moeurs et caractères des Italiens.”

  Z 3549

  1. The Orlando innamorato was left unfinished on the death of Boiardo, in 1494. The Ricciardetto was a satirical poem by Niccolò Forteguerri (1674–1735).

  Z 3552

  1. In the ms. the period comes at this point; the rest of this sentence was later added in the margin.

  Z 3554

  1. The last two sentences are a ms. unattached addition.

  Z 3556

  1. The following reflection on agility (until “derives”) is a ms. marginal addition.

  Z 3560

  1. The rest of this parenthesis was added in the ms. margin. For the concept of linguistic “character” in relation to French see Z 2989–90 and note.

  Z 3561

  1. Aristotle, Politics 1278a, 27.

  2. There follows a ms. addition which continues until the reference to Speroni’s Dialogues.

  3. Dante, Inferno 5, 39.

  Z 3568

  1. Annibale Sermattei della Genga (1760–1829) assumed the name of Leo XII. The election of the new Pope (28 September 1823) signaled the end of any possibility that Leopardi might obtain the post of cancelliere del Censo. See his letter of 10 November 1823 to Niebuhr (Epistolario, p. 755). See also Z 3245, note 4.

  2. Speroni, Dialoghi, pp. 53–54 (the same dialogue cited on Z 3560), where he mentions differences in birth patterns between wild and domestic animals. Cf. Z 1602 and note.

  3. Aristotle, Politics 1278 b, 28–30.

  Z 3578

  1. In a review which appeared in the Spettatore, reference was made (tome 6, 1816, p. 35) to this passage in which Dominique Dufour, abbé de Pradt, judged Spain to be a part of Africa by “blood, customs, language, way of life and of fighting” (Mémoires historiques sur la révolution d’Espagne, 2nd ed., Paris 1816, p. 168) (Pacella). In his letter of 6 December 1816 to Stella, Leopardi expressed regret at not having received some works by de Pradt, most probably the Mémoires, which had been confiscated by the police in Ancona (see Epistolario, p. 40 and the note ibid. on p. 2130). Cf. note 1 to Z 2333.

  Z 3579

  1. Rousseau cited this same couplet from Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata in his Confessions (in Oeuvres, vol. 1, p. 572), though using it to describe Touraine rather than Spain (Damiani).

  Z 3583

  1. On the Greek struggle for independence, see Z 995 and note.

  Z 3584

  1. Leopardi agrees here with Chateaubriand’s judgment that Spain is characterized by “a kind of stagnation of customs in which she reposes” which helps to preserve her from the corruption of the other European peoples (Génie du Christianisme, part 3, bk. 3, ch. 5, tome 3, p. 99) (Damiani). Note that a French army had crossed the Pyrenees in April 1823 in order to intervene on the royalist
side, when Chateaubriand was foreign minister. After a short campaign, the liberal regime surrendered Cadiz at the very end of September and a French force disembarked in the city on 3 October 1823, a day or so after this entry by Leopardi. Ferdinand, once restored, inflicted ferocious reprisals on his liberal adversaries, who went into exile in large numbers.

  Z 3587

  1. On this important distinction see Z 3637–38, 3964, and 4294.

  Z 3588

  1. Creuzer records various cases, taken from Plato, in which ἄλλος is redundant. Plato, Symposium 191b and 216e. See also Leopardi’s notes on Plato, in Scritti filologici, p. 538.

  2. Petrarch, Rime 71, l. 79. The following reference to Speroni is added in the ms. margin.

  3. This work was published in installments in the course of 1823 in the Effemeridi letterarie, and is now in Scritti filologici, see in particular pp. 270–72.

  Z 3591

  1. See Z 3095ff.

  Z 3593

  1. For all this passage see Z 3095 and note.

  Z 3594

  1. Ugone, the brother of King Philip I, appears in a dream to Goffredo and says to him in the stanza cited in highly abbreviated form by Leopardi: “For if high Providence chose / you [Goffredo] as chief captain of this enterprise, / it also determined that he [Rinaldo] was to be / the principal executor of your plans. / To you the first place, to him is granted / the second: you the head, he the hand / of this battle; to take his place / no other can, nor is it lawful for you to try.”

  Z 3595

  1. Leopardi here cites Dante, Paradiso 4, 1–3, but in an altered form. The original reads as follows: “Intra due cibi, distanti e moventi / d’un modo, prima si morria di fame, / che liber’omo l’un recasse ai denti” (we have slightly modified Hollander’s translation in the text). See Z 381 and note.

  Z 3597

  1. These stanzas of the Gerusalemme liberata describe Goffredo’s insensitivity to the charms of Armida.

  2. On the fascination of strength see Z 2155–56, 2258. On Achilles in particular, cf. Z 4390.

  3. On this tormented ms. page there are three lengthy additions in the margin, among them this last passage.

  Z 3598

  1. The “exploit in the wood” was the liberation of the forest near the Christian camp from the enchantment cast upon it by the magician Ismeno.