Laudator Temporis Acti quotes a passage from Leopardi that I like both for its main thought, which is a good one I don’t remember seeing elsewhere, and for the final sentence, a splendid example of how inescapable is our sense of “things ain’t what they used to be”:
I will say that by their own nature the writings which are closest to perfection normally bring more pleasure on the second reading than on the first. The opposite happens with many books that are written with no more than mediocre art and diligence but not without some extrinsic and apparent merit. These, once they are reread, are found to be much less valuable than at first reading. But if books of both kinds are read only once, they sometimes deceive even the learned and experts in such a way that the very best are rated below the mediocre. However, you must consider that nowadays even the professionals of literature have great difficulty deciding whether to read recent books a second time, especially those whose main purpose is to give pleasure. This was not the case with the ancients, due to the smaller number of books.
Dico che gli scritti più vicini alla perfezione, hanno questa proprietà, che ordinariamente alla seconda lettura piacciono più che alla prima. Il contrario avviene in molti libri composti con arte e diligenza non più che mediocre, ma non privi però di un qual si sia pregio estrinseco ed apparente; i quali, riletti che sieno, cadono dall’opinione che l’uomo ne aveva conceputo alla prima lettura. Ma letti gli uni e gli altri una volta sola, ingannano talora in modo anche i dotti ed esperti, che gli ottimi sono posposti ai mediocri. Ora hai a considerare che oggi, eziandio le persone dedite agli studi per instituto di vita, con molta difficoltà s’inducono a rileggere libri recenti, massime il cui genere abbia per suo proprio fine il diletto. La qual cosa non avveniva agli antichi; atteso la minor copia dei libri.
Yes, our forebears knew automatically whether a book was good or not — they didn’t have to bother with rereading! Because they had so few books! You’d think the thought of the Library of Alexandria might have occurred to him…
they didn’t have to bother with rereading
I got that this is sarcastic, but maybe misread the direction of the sarcasm? The point I took from the original was not that ancients never reread, but that they always reread. The moderns must go through the extra step of deciding whether or not to reread. The ancients would reread everything as a matter of course, like someone imprisoned for long with only a handful of books, or the same way as, in the days when the choice of TV channels was small, one might have rewatched a mediocre movie or show.
Ah, you’re probably right. Still, the idea that they had few books is absurd; I call to witness Ecclesiastes 12:12.
Maybe the thinking is that the ancient world might have had many books across regions, but the books any one person had access to, due to the high cost of reproduction before the printing press, was limited?
Maybe? But I still suspect it was just rote “invoke the ancients” stuff. Of course, it’s Leopardi, so perhaps I should cut more slack.
I am ignorant about Leopardi, but suppose most did not have access to the Library of Alexandria.
Those who did reportedly avidly reread Homer.
Since the Library of Alexandria was mentioned–excuse me if Hatters are not interested–Russell Gmirkin continues to press his claim that Torah was first invented in Alexandria in the 270s, all Semitic reaction to Greek prompts.
No, in my opinion.
Of course Hatters are interested! But it sounds pretty unlikely to me.
Let him and Velikovsky and von Däniken duke it out.
And thus I learn that Erich von Däniken is still alive.
Immanuel Velikovsky, however, is still dead.
Torah was first invented in Alexandria in the 270s
So the Dead Sea Scrolls are a fake?
(I see wp describes Gmirkin as “independent scholar”. Alarm bells.)
Then there’s Anatoly Fomenko, according to whom so-called ancient Greece and Rome are medieval inventions. Hence, presumbly, there’s no way the Torah is based on “Greek” precedents.
We discussed this Torah-written-in-Alexandria bilge before.
https://languagehat.com/an-archaic-form-in-deuteronomy/#comment-4586400
Then there’s Anatoly Fomenko, according to whom so-called ancient Greece and Rome are medieval inventions.. Is he the same dude who theorized that North Dakota doesn’t really exist other than as a ‘legal person’ tax dodge for ultra rich capitalists?
Why not. Per WP, he also posits “that the lands west of the Thirteen Colonies that now constitute the American West and Middle West were a far eastern part of ‘Siberian-American Empire’ prior to its disintegration in 1775”.
Dang. Seven volumes.
It seems fair to note that Leopardi is not speaking for himself here, but attributing everything to an elderly Giuseppe Parini addressing a young disciple. Why exactly he made this choice is above my pay grade, but I’m pretty sure some critics have read into it a layer of criticism and even irony. Maybe he wanted the old enlightenment intellectual and neoclassical poet (seventy years his senior and barely overlapping with his own lifetime) to sound slightly funnily nostalgic for the classical past?
On the other hand, that classical past need not be limited to classical antiquity. Ancient and more modern classics are mentioned together and on the same footing: “Omero o Cicerone o il Petrarca”; “le virtú dell’Iliade … o la Gerusalemme o il Furioso“; ” Omero, Dante, lo Shakespeare”.
Indeed Cicero’s contemporaries had access to much Greek literature that has since been lost. Whether the Greeks we call Homer (in the Borgesian expression I inevitably recall) also did seems more doubtful, but I don’t know. On the other hand, I suppose we really haven’t lost much literature since Dante and Petrarch, have we? So it seems true that we’re at least more overwhelmed than their contemporaries.
It seems fair to note that Leopardi is not speaking for himself here, but attributing everything to an elderly Giuseppe Parini addressing a young disciple.
Ah, that does make a difference — thanks for the context.