The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper

by Roland Allen

No-one knows exactly when the gloriously sonorous noun zibaldone appeared, or what it originally meant. The earliest record of the word, in the mid-fourteenth century, refers to it as Florentine slang, without further definition, and we can only infer from context that it means something like ‘mess’ or ‘jumble’.The fifteenth-century merchant and art patron Giovanni Rucellai referred to his own zibaldone as ‘una insalata di più herbe’, a salad of many herbs, which gives an impression of something variegated and wholesome. But by then it had also become firmly attached to the notebook in one of its most enduring applications. For this informal culinary term came to signify a personal anthology, or miscellany. The basic principle was simple: when you found a piece of writing that you liked, or found useful, you copied it out into your personal notebook. You could copy out as much or as little as you wanted, neatly or not, and refer to it a little, or as much, as you wanted. The collection could be poetry or prose, fictional or factual, thematic or random, religious or profane, in Latin or Tuscan, or any mixture of any of these components; you could even draw pictures in it. The notebook itself could be large or small, luxurious or utilitarian. Some better-off writers, such as the author Boccaccio (the son of a Bardi banker), had zibaldoni made of expensive parchment, and paid professional scribes to do the writing for them. Many users illustrated them, or commissioned elabora...