H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA: LA CONVERSAZIONE -- I VERBALI: RENZI

 G.: Let us begin with the title, because no Frenchman ever wrote one without strategic vanity, and no Italian ever forgave him for it. S.: De l’origine et du mérite de la langue italienne. G.: Exactly. A title in a langue that is not italienne, which is already half the argument and all the provocation. S.: You do not object to the French as such. G.: Only to their using French to adjudicate the merit of Italian, which is like asking a London cabman to chair a committee on gondolas. S.: That is rather hard on cabmen. G.: They survive. The deeper point is logical. If one writes De l’origine et du mérite de la langue italienne in French, one is already implying that the tribunal of publication lies north of the Alps. S.: Or west. G.: Paris does not profit from precision unless it may define it. S.: Then the title itself is an act of audience selection. G.: Precisely. It says: I wish to offend the right people in the right capital by means they will actually read. S.: Not the French, then, but the Parisians. G.: Exactly. One need not insult all Gaul when Paris will do. Indeed, “langue gallica” would have been more accurate than “French” in the older, drier register. S.: Yet the book is on the origin and merit of Italian. G.: Which is what makes the choice so delicious. He is not saying great merit, mind you. Only merit. Enough to disturb without inviting immediate prosecution for patriotism. S.: You really do enjoy the restraint of “merit.” G.: Immensely. “Merit” is perfectly chosen. It sounds modest, and therefore more dangerous. “Grandeur” would be laughed at. “Merit” forces the Parisian to ask how much. S.: And perhaps to buy the book in order to find out. G.: There you are. It should offend the Parisians enough to want to purchase the insult in print. S.: Then perhaps “origin” does the heavier work. G.: Very likely. Between Bologna and the Sorbonne, Bologna is older. Between Rome and Gaul, Rome is earlier. If one is discussing the origin of the Italian tongue, one is inevitably leaning upon ancient Roman legitimacy. S.: Unless one goes Faliscan or Umbrian. G.: Which would be a delightful way to ruin dinner. No, the title plainly wants the Roman line to remain visible without becoming pedantic. S.: So l’origine is not merely etymology. G.: Of course not. It is genealogy with political aftertaste. S.: And merit? G.: Merit is where the real mischief begins. Origin can be granted to the past. Merit concerns the present comparison, which is what Parisians dislike surrendering. S.: Then the title says, in effect, that Italian has both ancestry and current worth. G.: Exactly. The ancestry cannot be denied without sounding barbarous. The worth cannot be denied without reading further. S.: Which is a very good method for selling a book. G.: Better still for starting a quarrel. S.: Then let us ask the obvious question. Was it common to write about one vernacular in another? G.: Perfectly common when one wished to address foreigners, flatter printers, or enter a wider republic of letters. Latin would have been one route; French by then was another, increasingly insufferable one. S.: So the choice of French is pragmatic before it is philosophical. G.: Entirely. One writes in the language of those whose attention one wishes to attract or irritate. S.: Yet you still hear a contradiction. G.: Not a contradiction, only a small impropriety ripe for philosophical harvesting. One praises the merit of the Italian tongue by declining to use it. S.: Could that not be explained simply enough? He wished to tell the French. G.: Or the Parisians, yes. But explanation does not abolish irony. The title performs its own dilemma. Italian is meritorious enough to be discussed; French remains useful enough to do the discussing. S.: Which perhaps proves French merit too. G.: Merely market position. One must not confuse distribution with virtue. S.: That is a useful distinction. G.: Keep it. It may serve elsewhere. S.: Then let us return to “origin.” You insist on Rome. G.: How not? If one says the origin of Italian, one is already caught between a noble Roman ancestry and the inconvenient clutter of Italic dialects, vulgar evolution, and local continuities. S.: So the title simplifies. G.: All titles simplify. But this one simplifies strategically. “Origin” sounds cleaner than “the rather mixed historical emergence from Latin under regional pressures.” S.: Publishers would object to the longer version. G.: Publishers always object to truth if it lengthens the cover. S.: Then the Roman claim is partly a matter of posture. G.: Very much so. “Origin” allows one to place Italian in a prestigious line from Rome, not merely in a muddle of rustic survivals. S.: Though Faliscan and Umbrian would still mutter in the background. G.: They may mutter, but titles are not obliged to hear every dialect. S.: You are being Roman yourself now. G.: It is one of the few respectable poses left to classicists. S.: Then merit again. In what sense can a language have merit? G.: Ah, the dangerous noun. It may mean expressive range, clarity, musicality, fitness for poetry, dignity in prose, civic usefulness, historical richness, or merely the ability to irritate those who think their own tongue naturally supreme. S.: The last sounds most likely in Paris. G.: Very much so. But one should not exclude the others. Italian had a long case to plead on grounds of literary excellence alone. S.: Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio. G.: Exactly. One does not need to invent merit where those three have already been busy. S.: Then why not simply say “great merit”? G.: Because “great” would make the thing too rhetorical. “Merit” sounds judicial. It invites assessment. It implies that one can soberly compare without flourishing. S.: So merit is a word of measured provocation. G.: Beautifully put. S.: Thank you. G.: Do not become French about it. S.: Never beyond the title-page. Then perhaps the whole title is a diplomatic assault. G.: Exactly. It is one of those admirable constructions by which one appears to be offering calm instruction while actually striking national vanity with a silk glove. S.: That sounds almost Talleyrandian. G.: Worse. Italian. The French at least like to appear impudent. Italians often prefer the pleasure of looking reasonable while the dagger goes in. S.: Then the French language is being used against French linguistic pride. G.: Precisely. That is the best use of French I know. S.: Would Latin not have done as well? G.: Not at all. Latin would have elevated the matter beyond the wounded range of Parisian vanity. The whole point is to say this in the idiom of those who imagine they own polite Europe. S.: So French is chosen not because it is the highest medium, but because it is the right target. G.: Exactly. One writes in French to make the Parisians understand they are being contradicted. S.: A very economical insult. G.: Economy is the soul of good polemic. S.: Then perhaps the title also implies that Italian does not need French for its own sake, only for its circulation. G.: Good. That is an important distinction. One does not write in French because Italian lacks merit; one writes in French because Paris lacks Italian. S.: That is excellent. G.: Keep it, but attribute it to circumstances. S.: Happily. Then what of Bologna and the Sorbonne? G.: There again the title quietly flatters Italy’s priority. If one speaks of origin and merit, one may hint that in matters of learned civilisation Italy was old before Paris learnt to button its coat. S.: The university claim again. G.: Naturally. Bologna is older, and older institutions lend ancestral gravity to vernacular claims. S.: Though the vernacular itself is not born in the university. G.: No, but the prestige of discussing it is. One can hardly write De l’origine et du mérite… without imagining some republic of letters standing behind the title. S.: And that republic is partly French-speaking by then. G.: Tragically, yes. S.: You are very hostile to French this morning. G.: Not to French. To the use of French as if it had become nature rather than fashion with armies behind it. S.: Then the title is anti-naturalistic too. G.: In a way, yes. It reminds us that linguistic authority is historical, not metaphysical. French is there because of courts, diplomacy, salons, printers, prestige, not because God preferred nasal vowels. S.: A pity. It would explain much. G.: It would explain too much, which is never a safe sign in philosophy. S.: Then perhaps the author is saying: I will use your present currency to argue for another language’s standing. G.: Exactly. It is the linguistic equivalent of borrowing your opponent’s carriage to arrive at a lecture against his taste. S.: And l’origine lets him claim antiquity without becoming tediously philological. G.: Quite. He need not list every passage from Quintilian to make the point. “Origin” suggests Rome, continuity, dignity, descent, without forcing all the apparatus onto the cover. S.: While merit allows him to speak of the living language. G.: Yes. Origin is ancestry. Merit is present title to esteem. S.: That pair is actually rather shrewd. G.: Very shrewd indeed. One half is retrospective, the other comparative. One secures nobility, the other asks for recognition. S.: All in French. G.: Which is why the thing still amuses. To say the Italian language has merit in a language that is not Italian is already to enact the politics of linguistic hierarchy one wishes to challenge. S.: So the title is performatively crooked. G.: Not crooked, only splendidly double. It needs French to advertise Italian merit to those who otherwise would not trouble to notice it. S.: Then perhaps the book itself is not a betrayal but an embassy. G.: Excellent. A linguistic embassy under foreign roofs. S.: Then the right question is not “why French?” but “whom did he wish to trouble?” G.: Precisely. The Parisians, not the peasants of Provence and not every soul between Calais and Bayonne. Paris supplies the relevant vanity. S.: Because Paris pretends to be Europe. G.: As Oxford occasionally pretends to be England, yes. S.: That comparison will cost you. G.: Only locally. S.: Then would you say that the title’s merit lies in its mildness? G.: Yes. “Merit” is quietly lethal. It implies that Italian need not be sovereign to deserve esteem. That is enough to nettle a Parisian more effectively than trumpet-blasts of superiority. S.: Because superiority invites counter-superiority, whereas merit compels a hearing. G.: Exactly. Merit is difficult to dismiss without examining it. It is the most annoying of modest claims. S.: So the title says, as it were, “I do not ask you to kneel, only to admit quality.” G.: Very well put. And that small request is often the hardest for vanity to grant. S.: Let us consider whether there is any contradiction in discussing the origin of Italian in French when Italian itself descends from Latin, which French also in some sense does. G.: That makes the thing still better. One Romance tongue adjudicating another’s Roman credentials. It is a family quarrel carried on in the most socially pretentious sibling’s drawing-room. S.: Splendid. G.: Thank you. S.: Then perhaps “langue italienne” in French already concedes too much. G.: How so? S.: Because it names Italian as an object under French classification. G.: Ah, very good. Yes. The phrase is Frenchly possessive even when descriptive. “La langue italienne” sounds like something Paris can catalogue. S.: While the book means to resist the catalogue. G.: Exactly. It uses the catalogue entry in order to reverse the scale of assessment. S.: That is very nearly Hegelian. G.: Heaven forbid. It is simply tactical. S.: Then if one were very logical, one might say that to write De l’origine et du mérite de la langue italienne in French is to concede the present medium while contesting the deeper order of precedence. G.: Precisely. Present medium to French, deeper precedence to Italy. S.: And by Italy you mean chiefly Rome. G.: In the title’s political imagination, yes. One may admit the vulgar complexities later over wine. S.: You are too kind to Faliscan and Umbrian. G.: I know. But no title can survive every philologist. S.: Then perhaps the right concluding judgment is that the title is not inadequate at all, only delightfully inadequate in exactly the way that makes it effective. G.: Excellent. It is inadequate if judged as a pure philosophical description, perfect if judged as a provocation addressed to the proper capital. S.: And that capital is Paris. G.: Naturally. One does not use French to persuade Florence. One uses French to make Paris buy the argument against itself. S.: Then the whole thing becomes a market-form of national philosophy. G.: Very much so. Polemic with a bookseller’s instinct. S.: Which you rather admire. G.: I admire any title that knows its enemy and still sounds polite. S.: Then your final line? G.: If one wished to prove the merit of Italian to Italians, one would write in Italian; if one wished to prove it to Europe, one might write in Latin; but if one wished to annoy the Parisians just enough to sell copies, one wrote De l’origine et du mérite de la langue italienne in French.