Pagina 22 - BCSV, XXXV, 2005

22 LEON POMPA
signs [cenni], naturally believed that lightning bolts and thunderclaps
were signs made to them by Jove [...] that Jove commanded by signs,
that such signs were reai words, and that nature was thè language of
Jove»25. The relationship between thè two is then restated in thè first
paragraph of «Poetic Logic»:
That which is metaphysics insofar as it contemplates things in all thè
forms of their being, is logie insofar as it considers things in all thè forms by
which theymay be signified. Accordingly, as poetry has been considered by
us above as a poetic metaphysics in which thè theological poets imagined
bodies to be for thè most part divine substances, so now that same poetry is
considered as poetic logie by which it signifies them26.
There next follows a passage which is of cruciai importance in un-
derstanding thè connections involved in these two conceptions.
‘Logic’ - Vico asserts - comes from Xòyoc,, [logos] whose first and prop-
er meaning wasfabula, which carried over into Italian asfavella, speech - in
Greek thè fable was also called m?qoV [mythos\, myth, whence comes thè
Latinmutus, mute - for speechwas born inmute times as mental [language].
[...] hence lóyoq means both ‘idea’ and ‘word’. [...] hence thisfirst language
in thèfirst mute times of thè nations [...] must have begun with signs, either
gestures or ohjects, which had naturai relations with [their] ideas21.
Poetry is therefore thè basis both of thè world as it exists in meta­
physics, i.e. as it is perceived, and of thè mute forms of signification ap­
propriate to it. The suggestion is not that poetic man first creates thè
world of metaphysics through thè imposition of an idea upon it and lat­
er thè forms of meaning or signification by which he can refer to it but
that thè creation of thè metaphysical world through thè imposition of
thè appropriate mental idea and thè appropriate forms of signification
mutually require one another. This, I take it, is what Vico means when
he asserts that, since Xòyoc, means both ‘idea’ and ‘word’ and, since both
are born of thè same poetry, thè first mute language must have had nat­
urai relations with thè idea of thè world. If we abstract, for thè moment,
from thè point that both are thè produets of poetry, thè underlying claim
is that an idea can exist only if there is an appropriate mode of signifi­
cation or language, and, conversely, that a mode of signification can ex­
ist only if there is there is an appropriate idea to be expressed or signi-
25 Ibid., $ 379.
26 Ibid., § 400. My italics.
27 Ibid., § 4 01 .1 have slightly modified Bergin and Fisch’s translation. My italics.