It may be too late to make America great again. Where is the glory that was Rome?
How Nations Slip from Greatness to Obscurity
Category: Italian
The Art of the Aphorism: Giacomo Leopardi
I fanciulli trovano il tutto nel nulla, gli uomini il nulla nel tutto.
The child finds everything in nothing; the man nothing in everything.
Beautiful but Untranslatable Italian Words and Phrases
Latin Versus Italian: Differences
An enjoyable thirteen-minute video.
In the Cave
Troppe cose non sono chiare.
Too many things are not clear.
But all is not dark. So perhaps we can say:
La grotta è chiaroscuro.
The cave is clear-dark.
E noi siamo abitanti delle grotte.
And we are cave dwellers.
E così siamo chiaroscuro.
And so we are clear-dark.
Questa è la situazione umana.
This is the human predicament.
Questions Without Answers
Ci sono domande senza alcuna risposta.
There are questions without any answer.
Schopenhauer in Italian on Schadenfreude, La Gioia per il Danno Altrui
If to feel envy is to feel bad when another does well, what should we call the emotion of feeling good when another suffers misfortune? There is no word in English for this as far as I know, but in German it is called Schadenfreude. This word is used in English from time to time, and it is one every educated person should know. It means joy (Freude) at another injuries (Schaden). The great Schopenhauer, somewhere in Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit, remarks that while envy (Neid) is human, Schadenfreude is diabolical.
Exactly right. There is something fiendish in feeling positive glee at another’s misery. This is not to imply that envy is not a hateful emotion to be avoided as far as possible. Invidia, after all, is one of the seven deadly sins. From the Latin invidia comes ‘invidious comparison’ which just means an envious comparison.
My translation of the Italian:
To feel envy is human, but to taste joy at the injury of others is diabolical.