“Children find everything in nothing, men find nothing in everything.”
✨ Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone di pensieri
Giacomo Leopardi is considered one of the greatest Italian poets of the 19th century, perhaps the finest after Dante. He was also a voracious reader and scholar. For many years he kept an enormous notebook known as the Zibaldone (Harold Bloom called it a ‘hodge-podge’) for collecting his responses to what he read and experienced. A zibaldone is a dish with any old thing thrown in. A stew, a soup, a salmagundi.
Leopardi’s 4500+ pages contain comments about anthropology, astronomy, history, language, literature, love, poetry, philosophy, and religion. It’s a foundational book of modern culture, though it went unpublished until the 20th century. It was only fully translated into English 11 years ago, by the Leopardi Centre in Birmingham, England.
Of course, it’s not the only zibaldone, though it was the only one termed that. Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks (a page from which is above) are very similar, as are uncountable sketchbooks with text, ‘commonplace books’, scrapbooks, illustrated journals, and so on. Here’s someone keeping one fairly recently.
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There’s a great piece here about other zibaldone-keepers, though it descibes the form as analogue versions of a blog or Tumblr, which I think is unfair to zibaldoni. How about you, do you keep something similar? I tire of having possessions no longer in use but that are still kicking around and taking up space, so have given them up. But am working on memoirs in a zibaldone style … because they’re collages, of course.
I keep a journal on my laptop, but when we travel I take a little blank sketchbook & colored pencils to write brief notes & draw pictures to help me remember the highlights. Tuck in ticket stubs, etc. & it's sort of a stew. (Love the things I learn here!)