The zibaldone

The mid-fourteenth-century word zibaldone, a bit of Florentine slang, came to signify a personal notebook of miscellaneous contents. From Roland Allen’s The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper (New York: Biblioasis, 2024):

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....

Zibaldoni, although always idiosyncratic and personal to their owner, were not necessarily private, or intimate: you would share the highlights of your own with your friends, and if you saw something that you liked in theirs, you’d copy it over.

Sounds a lot like blogging to me.

I am seventy-one pages into this book, and it’s a joy.

Also from the book
Moleskine: seventy-five words