Pensieri di varia filosofia e di bella letteratura
Witticism.
General tendencies in literature.
Tendencies in Italian literature compared in its
various centuries.
Not the Beautiful absolutely, but the true, i.e. any
kind of imitation of nature, is the proper object of the fine
arts.
Not the useful but pleasure is the end goal of poetry
and the fine arts.
General tendencies in literature, with specific
application to or examples from the Italian one.
On the literary vices of scholars from the good and
classical centuries, before they became common vices in the centuries of
corruption.
Difficulty of avoiding affectation and the vices of
writing nowadays, compared to that of the ancients and the
classics.
Witticism.
Theoretical system of the fine arts.
Difficulty of performing artificially and willfully the
natural and ordinary functions of life, applied to the excessive art
found presently in literature.
Difficulty of achieving true imitation in
general.
Whether the prototype of the beautiful is to be found
in nature.
Exaggerations in sentences or expressions familiar and
proper to the French language, style or writers, given as proof of the
affectation dominant in that nation.
Too much consideration of danger and the effort of
avoiding it brings it upon, or else nothing is done; how this
observation applies to modern literature in comparison with the
ancient.
Comic power and character of Plautus.
Ovid's art of imagery.
In French pronunciation the imitative sound of many
written words has been lost.
In translations, how to interpret certain words that
are either deliberately coined by the author or distorted from their
original meaning.
Poetic sublimity of the Bible compared to that of the
profane classical poets.
The effectiveness of expressions is often nothing more
than their novelty.
On the style, poetry, and merits of Monti's
writing.
Comparison between reason and nature.
Regarding Lodovico di Breme's articles on
romanticism.
The greatest difficulty of art is hiding art and
achieving naturalness; applied to the discourse on romanticism.
There is no imitatation of nature unless it is done
with naturalness; observation applied to romanticism.
Comparison of the descriptive mode used by Ovid and by
modern descriptive poets with the one used by Dante.
Poetic image.
Useful and pleasurable.
On the opinion of Longinis regarding the lack of
greatness in the spirit and writing of his time. Its cause is
established to be the progress of reason and of knowledge. This progress
and the exile of the illusions produce barbarity. On the feelings and
behavior of Cicero, and the events in Rome following Caesar's
death.
Reason's divisive effect on society.
The love of wonder goes back to the same source as the
hatred of boredom.
Poetic image.
It is with reason and not by whim that the most ancient
and obscure centuries are considered of utmost heroism.
Eloquence in lyric recognized in Petrarch, who is
favored in this respect over Horace and everyone else. The copiousness,
simplicity, familiarity, and general nature of Petrarch's style.
Critique of Testi's poetry.
Affectionate style in Petrarch.
Critique of Filicaia's poetry.
Critique of Chiabrera's poetry.
Images and accidental effects which sometimes are born
from the expressions of poets and other writers, without being sought by
them, like that of the sponge Protogenes threw on his Ialysos.
The prophetic in Filicaia's style.
Chiabrera's best songs are nothing more than beautiful
sketches.
Critique of Guidi's poetry.
Zappi is the only one comparable to Anacreon in Italy
and abroad.
Critique of Manfredi's poetry.
Comparative critique of Italian poets.
Every being is content with itself, except for
man.
Popular songs in Recanati between 1818-20.
On Paciaudi's opinion that prose is the mother of
verse.
The effect of love on a shy girl.
About a peasant who was crying watching his ox being
slaughtered.
The most eloquent Italian pieces are certain Petrarchan
canzoni and various writings by Tasso. The eloquence of speaking about
oneself.
The flexibility of the French language serves to
express things, not to sculpt them, as the effectiveness of the Italian
language does.
Whether the name of the letters should be "be" "ce",
etc. or "bi, ci", as pronounced in Tuscany.
A simile to appropriately express the effect of
Anacreon's poetry.
The present taste for philosophy is not a chance, nor a
passing thing, as it was in other times.
Beautiful prose needs to have something poetic.
Technicalities of modern prose.
Laziness of the tortoise in proportion to the length of
its life.
"Testa" for head, as it should be said.
The means of imitation proper to any art should not be
naturally discordant among themselves, nor poorly combined; otherwise
art is barbarous in itself. Opera in music. Tragedy in verse.
Italianisms of Celso.
Critique of the book de Arte dicendi attributed to
Celso.
Poetic image. Remembrances of my childhood.
Monti, a poet by style, imaginative, unhappy in
feeling, translator and copyist in almost all of his original poems. His
Musogonia.
Enmity of nature and reason brought to agreement by
Religion.
A case in which it is barbarous to follow reason and
unreasonable to follow nature; Religion in that case is on the side of
nature.
Recompensing a great gift or benefit with a small one
because of ignorance or a blunder; how detestable this is to the
benefactor and how much better it would have been to not recompense in
any way.
Singular ancient and modern men. How little it takes
today to consider someone extraordinary.
A saying by Bacon that all faculties reduced to art
become sterile; its application to poetry. Originality of the ancients;
inevitable servility of modern poets.
Immortality of man inferred from his inevitable
unhappiness in present life, and from suicide.
A quip or play on words.
Difference between attic and ancient wit and the French
and the modern; what it consists of.
On vernacular Latin. Very ancient Latin words unused by
the golden writers and used by those of the low period and by the vulgar
moderns.
A quip.
The more we account for time the less it seems we have;
the more we neglect it, the more it seems that we have left.
The beginning of a letter of thanks to a person who had
praised me in print.
Attic grace. The grace of a language is something
different from its other qualities. It can only be derived from a
language actually used in speaking.
Greek term used in common Italian.
Why those who are afraid tend to sing. The false
courage of many consists in dissimulating or diminishing suffering in
their imagination. The eὐφημία of the Greeks, the Latins and the
Italians.
The Greeks did not study Latin.
Italian words that are modified by Latin pronunciation
have lost their imitative sound.
Our immortality deduced from our present
unhappiness.
Comparison between the Greeks at the Thermopylae and
our sufferings, especially recently. Spartan mothers similar to the
Christian. The heroism of patriotism similar to the religious one.
Religion resurrects extinguished heroism.
The bad treatment of their novices on the part of
certain priests. The envy I felt towards those who seemed to have easily
attained what I did after many efforts.
Habit seems nature: and so the bad taste in literary
matters and the poor manner of writing seem natural because of
habituation. Way of convincing oneself of the contrary. Difficulty
nowadays of following nature, which is no longer our habit; the ease of
following habit in every thing.
Grace is not proper to the French language, but the
French boast about it in every line.
A romantic image.
Opposition is often reason for wanting and doing more
than you would have done if there had been no opposition. A material
example.
It is reasonable to allow Italians to derive words and
moods from Latin, while denying them to do that from other sister
languages. Barbarity of Greek words in modern languages. French language
considered in this context. Republican terms.
The fable of the peacock ashamed of its feet is
contrary to nature. The variety of the beautiful. There is no absolute
ugliness, nor a species of animals that seems ugly to itself, or
disgusting and the like.
An excuse for the above-mentioned fable.
On deriving new words from the already known native
ones. On deriving them from Greek.
Inaffectation and similar qualities can also become
affected.
A poetic image. Remembrances from my childhood.
The illusions are the most real pleasure.
The illusions, being natural, are in some way real
things.
Variety is such enemy of boredom, while uniformity is
its friend.
Definition of a good man.
Future life deduced from the unhappiness of the
present.
The alphabet generally considered is much richer in
elementary sounds than it is believed.
Personification of echo; example of the amiability of
Greek mythology.
Which objectives and intentions should the poet or
writer hide in order to escape affectation; definition of the
latter.
The artifice of many modern writers in hiding the true
reasons for many moral effects noted by them. Reducing things to their
principles. Simplicity and a small number of elementary things both in
the moral and in the physical worlds. Proposal for a system where all
moral effects are referred to their original causes.
The imitation of the Greeks hurt the originality of
Latin literature and poetry no less than the Italian was hurt by the
imitation of the Latins and the Greeks. The great field of originality
that the Romans had. Qualities added or substituted in the Greek style
by the Latins.
Elementary sounds of speech are missing from our
alphabet or other ones. On the Galic "u". A hypothesis on how it became
adopted by the French.
Few care to gain love at the price of hatred for
another. To what extent and why is hatred more effective than
love.
Poetic or extravagant images.
Witticism.
Perhaps man would be happy living naturally. Proofs.
But today man is incapable of this happiness. Man is not deprived of
instinct by nature but loses it because of art. The difference between
man's life and that of the other animals is the result of circumstances,
not of nature.
The ancient poets leave a lot to the reader, how and
why. They describe or narrate naturally.
Our true idylls are the so-called rustic poems.
Children's imagination compared to the poetry of the
ancients.
Self-love directed towards oneself is the origin of
vices, when directed towards others, that of virtues.
We don't read of any prince to have committed suicide
because of desperation with life, whereas it would befit princes to do
so more than others.
A quip.
Teachers, even of math, should have a poetic
mind.
Everything has been perfected since the times of Homer
except for poetry.
Attic or ancient wit and French or modern wit.
On Sannazzaro's saying that man is as miserable as he
considers himself to be.
The effects of love. This more than any other passion
abstracts the soul from any other object.
Disgust felt at the nonsense or baseness of others,
when one is truly in love.
Love increases the feeling of life and is the vivifying
principle of nature, as opposed to hatred.
Dante and Petrarch are much less superfluous and a lot
more spontaneous with rhymes than all of the authors from the 16th
century.
Two similes uncommon among poets.
Sweet illusions that are born from the knowledge and
solemnity of anniversaries.
Eloquence in talking about onself. On the Apology by
Lorenzino de' Medici.
Daring in poetry and in eloquence often consists in the
vagueness of expressions or images.
Practice among the Latins to take words and phrases
from Greek, and among the Italians from French.
On the simplicity of Xenophon's writing.
In the battle of Isso, Dario placed the mercenaries in
the front, Alexander in the back. Both were Greeks. Reflections about
this incident.
On the ridiculous consisting of things and on the one
consisting of words.
The true and perhaps only hopeful utility of comedy
should be to instruct the young, the inexperienced and the unreflective
on the nature of social life and of men.
The sweetness of imagining everything like the ancients
did.
A poetic simile.
On an effect that the reading of novels produced in
me.
The way a good man was called by the Greeks and by the
Romans, considered to be telling of the opinions, state, and character
of those nations.
Pain due to misfortunes or loss of property is
lightened by the thought of necessity. The example of a child.
Hatred of life conjoined at the same time with the fear
of losing it and with the care to conserve it. My own example. That
becoming aware of the unhappiness of being is something against
nature.
Observation from which could be gathered that fear is
more fecund with illusions than hope is.
Quips.
Pignotti's fables decline from the goal and nature of
Aesop's, and are rather little moral satires, as are many of Lucian's
dialogues and inventions.
Female birds are less pretty than the male. Also among
humans the male sex is actually more beautiful than the fair
sex.
Love of glory, of freedom, and other such sentiments
are usually confused with the love of fatherland.
An observation showing that speaking is never divorced
from some bodily movement made solely because of speaking.
Exquisite judgment of the Greeks shown by the old age
attributed to Charon.
Being born is a mortal and great danger for man but not
for the other animals. A sign of our corruption.
On the verse invenies alium si te
hic fastidit Alexis.
Infinite vainness of truth.
Hatred is sweeter than indifference. The latter is
extremely rare in the natural state, but most common and almost constant
in the civil.
On the names of the letters of the alphabet.
Poetic thought in verse.
Joy tends to expand, sadness to restrain and contract,
both morally and physically.
Difference between Petrarch's simplicity and that of
the Greeks. The familiarity of Petrarch's style.
Self-contempt is a great stimulus to suicide. The love
of life is nothing but the love of one's own good.
Quip.
I don't like to speak to the people I esteem in the
presence of others, and why.
Perhaps the number of individuals in the animal species
is, naturally and generally speaking, in inverse proportion to their
greatness.
Crime is sometimes heroism; sometimes it promises well
of the person committing it. Also, the sacrifice of virtue by someone
who values it is a kind of heroism and greatness of spirit.
The pain that is born of boredom is more tolerable than
boredom itself.
Revenge is so appreciated that often we want to be
insulted in order to take revenge. The same can be said of hatred, even
without revenge.
Everything is nothingness, even the desperation that is
born from knowing and feeling this truth, even pain.
A kind of envy I have experienced.
Why an unexpected boon is dearer than one hoped
for.
A thought by Madame de Staël who condemns the abuse by
the romantics of the terrible and of the extraordinary which are not in
harmony with the habits and nature of almost any reader.
An aspect of nature in autumn.
Variety and contrast of the qualities of each
individual of the Southern nations, and the reason for this
variety.
The pleasure of the vague is of such nature that it
cannot be satisfied, yet it is much greater than any defined pleasure:
so far are these from being able to satisfy and fulfill.
The happiness available to man consists in a tranquil
life, animated by a certain and quiet hope for future well-being, and
calmly occupied.
Civilization introduced labors that are harmful and
discontinued those useful to the health of the body and of the human
faculties.
Ancient pain. Its great difference from the modern.
Whether poets and artists should or can fittingly treat ancient subject
matters where there is emphasis on the passions. Sensitivity was not
proper to the ancients; it is a natural effect of our modern
circumstances, but it is not innate in us: it is a remedy prepared by
compassionate nature for our present, although not natural, unhappiness.
How unreasonable it is to accuse ancient poets and writers of lacking
feeling and to devalue the ancients because they lacked it. They did
not, however, lack other noble and sweet passions, nor other great
delights of the spirit which we lack. The consolation of the ancients
was not in misfortune itself, as it is in some way for us.
Music imitates feeling in person, compared to poetry
and to architecture. A passage by Staël on the subject.
Poetic thoughts in verse.
Christianity has made men worse insofar as, without
extinguishing the passions, it has openly opposed them to its
principles. The nature of wickedness in the middle ages differs from the
ancient and from that in recent times. This difference is partially
attributed to Christianity.
On an artifice that gives effectiveness to style;
exemplified by a passage in the Roman Nights.
Danger reconciles us with life. My own example. The
leap from Cape Lefkada.
The trivialities and weaknesses of genius. Book XIV of
Corinne.
Ignorant and cold men usually do not feel envy towards
genius ones, because they do not esteem them nor believe them superior
to themselves, bur rather inferior. They will envy them only when they
see them esteemed, which cannot happen in small and ignorant places. The
kind of passions that men of genius awaken in others in such places.
Refer to the cited book in Corinne.
Influence and relation between the physical systems and
doctrines and the metaphysical. The example of the Copernican
system.
Bored and discouraged with life I did not have the
force to cry and to suffer, except when I was more cheerful than
usual.
Iambic satyrical Latin verse on the name of Pius taken
from some princes.
Feelings I've experienced while considering the
universal nothingness.
Hope is no longer capable of making us happy after we
have experienced and lost happiness.
Poetic simile.
Superficial or weak sensations of enthusiasm are gladly
communicated, with the hope to increase them; communicating profound
ones is avoided, nor is it possible.
A passage in Corinne condemns the ignoble poetizing of
the romantics and the excessive truthfulness and minuteness of their
imitation.
Progress of the effects of misfortune in the
individual. The self-hatred to which they lead. Evil joy and smiling
about one's own evils and about death itself; final result of
desperation.
Pain and desperation in misfortune among the ancients,
children, the ignorant.
Painful or terrible or unpleasant thoughts and
sensations: why they are often sought and accepted voluntarily. A
passage from Corinne.
The idea and horror of the ancients about where destiny
comes from. This explains the same effect on magnanimous and imaginative
men in modern times.
The epigrammatic of French spirit and conversation is
necessarily communicated to all their writings, whose character it
forms. French style is not capable of any other naturalness than that of
their conversation, which is not among the most natural. The praised
naturalness and grace of La Fontaine. French language is exalted as very
simple, but it is incapable of translating Xenophon and some of the most
simple and plain classical authors. Translations by Amyot. Perhaps
easier understood by an Italian than by an uneducated Frenchman.
Knowledge of several languages helps the facility,
clarity and precision of thinking, of conceiving, of fixating and
determining one's ideas to oneself.
The expressive sound of certain words created sometimes
by chance.
On our word "troia" which is hypothesized to be an
ancient vernacular Latin word.
Joy, feelings, and enthusiasm are the proper effects of
fleeting vigor. The bodily strength of the ancients must have given rise
to many spiritual pleasures and sensations of enthusiasm, especially in
educated persons.
Displeasure of not being able to participate in
conversations that interest us or are about things that we know as much
or better than those speaking about them in our presence.
It is false to claim that the moment of rejoicing is
suited for obtaining nothing, except for favors that can be done or
granted instantly. It is rather most inopportune for everything else,
and why so. Neither the times of joy nor of pain predispose us to
compassion or to interest in someone else. Rather, the times of
indifference do so, and all the more those of enthusiasm without a
definite objective or of joy without a specific cause.
Making someone interested in our misfortune when they
are in a similar state is, not just not easy, as they say, but
impossible. Perhaps it is easier to get interested someone who has
experienced it in the past.
The only real thing are the illusions, and phantoms the
only substance.
Property of ancient poets to leave a lot to the reader,
which is, among other things, reason for the great beauty of their
poetry, descriptions, images and ideas, i.e. the beauty of the
indefinite and the vague. The opposite effect is created by the modern
and romantic exactitude in making descriptions.
