Twilit Grotto -- Esoteric
GIORDANO BRUNO
The Nolan
The Heroic Frenzies
Dedicated to that most illustrious and excellent knight
Sir. Philip Sidney
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GIORDANO BRUNO
NOLANO.
DE GLI EROICI FURORI
AL MOLTO ILLUSTRE ED ECCELLENTE CAVALLIERO,
SIGNOR FILIPPO SIDNEO.
------
PARIGI,
APPRESSO ANTONIO BAIO,
l'anno 1585.
A Translation with Introduction and Notes by Paulo Eugene Memmo, Jr., 1964
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CONTENTS
* Argument of the Nolan
* The Apology of the Nolan
* First Part
o First Dialogue
o Second Dialogue
o Third Dialogue
o Fourth Dialogue
o Fifth Dialogue
* Second Part
o First Dialogue
o Second Dialogue
o Third Dialogue
o Fourth Dialogue
o Fifth Dialogue
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ARGUMENT OF THE NOLAN
UPON
THE HEROIC FRENZIES
Dedicated to the Most Illustrious Sir Philip Sidney
Most illustrious knight, it is indeed a base, ugly and contaminated wit that is constantly occupied and curiously obsessed with the beauty of a female body! What spectacle, oh good God, more vile and ignoble can be presented to a mind of clear sensibilities than a rational man afflicted, tormented, gloomy, melancholic, who becomes now hot, now cold and trembling, now pale, now flushed, now confused, or now resolute; one who spends most of his time and the choice fruits of his life letting fall drop by drop the elixir of his brain by putting into conceits and in writing, and sealing on public monuments those continual tortures, dire torments, those persuasive speeches, those laborious complaints and most bitter labours inevitable beneath the tyranny of an unworthy, witless, stupid and odoriferous foulness!
What a tragicomedy! What act, I say, more worthy of pity and laughter can
be presented to us upon this world's stage, in this scene of our
consciousness, than of this host of individuals who became melancholy,
meditative, unflinching, firm, faithful, lovers, devotees, admirers and
slaves of a thing without trustworthiness, a thing deprived of all
constancy, destitute of any talent, vacant of any merit, without
acknowledgment or any gratitude, as incapable of sensibility, intelligence
or goodness, as a statue or image painted on a wall; a thing containing
more haughtiness, arrogance, insolence, contumely, anger, scorn, hypocrisy,
licentiousness, avarice, ingratitude and other ruinous vices, more poisons
and instruments of death than could have issued from the box of Pandora?
For such are the poisons which have only too commodious an abode in the
brain of that monster! Here we have written down on paper, enclosed in
books, placed before the eyes and sounded in the ear a noise, an uproar, a
blast of symbols, of emblems, of mottoes, of epistles, of sonnets, of
epigrams, of prolific notes, of excessive sweat, of life consumed, shrieks
which deafen the stars, laments which reverberate in the caves of hell,
tortures which affect living souls with stupor, sighs which make the gods
swoon with compassion, and all this for those eyes, for those cheeks, for
that breast, for that whiteness, for that vermilion, for that speech, for
those teeth, for those lips, that hair, that dress, that robe, that glove,
that slipper, that shoe, that reserve, that little smile, that wryness,
that window-widow, that eclipsed sun, that scourge, that disgust, that
stink, that tomb, that latrine, that menstruum, that carrion, that quartan
ague, that excessive injury and distortion of nature, which with surface
appearance, a shadow, a phantasm, a dream, a Circean enchantment put to the
service of generation, deceives us as a species of beauty.
This is a beauty which comes and goes, is born and does, blooms and decays;
and is eternally beautiful for so very short a moment and within itself
truly and lastingly contains a cargo, a store-house, an emporium, a market
of all the filth, toxins and poisons which our step-mother nature is able
to produce; who having collected that seed of which she makes use, often
recompenses us by a stench, by repentance, by melancholy, by languor, by a
pain in the head, by a sense of undoing, by many other calamities which are
evident to everyone, so that one suffers bitterly, where formerly he
suffered only a little.
But what am I doing? What am I thinking? Do I perhaps despise the sun? Do I
regret perhaps my own and others having come into this world? Do I perhaps
wish to restrict men from gathering the sweetest fruit which the garden of
our earthly paradise can produce? Am I perhaps for impeding nature's holy
institution? Must I attempt to withdraw myself or any other from the
beloved sweet yoke which divine providence has placed about our necks? Have
I perhaps to persuade myself and others that our predecessors were born for
us, but that we were not born for our descendents? No, may God not desire
that this thought should ever come into my head! In fact, I add, that for
all the kingdoms and beatitudes which might ever be proposed or chosen for
me, never was I so wise and good that there could come to me the desire to
castrate myself or to become a eunuch. In fact I should be ashamed,
whatever may be my appearance, if I should desire ever to be second to any
one who worthily breaks bread in the service of nature and the blessed God.
And that such participation can be of assistance to one's good intentions I
leave for the consideration of him who can judge for himself. But I do not
believe I am caught. For I am certain that all the snares and nooses which
those people devise and have devised who specialize in knotting snares and
entanglements will never suffice for my enemies to ensnare and entangle me.
They would avail themselves (if I dare say it) of death itself, in order to
do me mischief. Nor do I believe myself to be frigid, for I do not think
that the snows of Mt. Caucusus or Ripheus would suffice to cool my passion.
See then if it is reason or some insufficiency which makes me speak.
What then do I mean? What conclusion do I wish to arrive at? What do I wish
to decide? What I would conclude and say, oh illustrious knight, is that
what belongs to Caesar be rendered unto Caesar and what belongs to God be
rendered unto God. I mean that although there are cases when not even
divine honors and adoration suffice for women, yet this does not mean that
we owe them divine honors and worship. I desire that women should be
honored and loved as women ought to be loved and honored. Loved and honored
for such cause, I say, and for so much, and in the measure due for the
little they are, at that time and occasion when they show the natural
virtue peculiar to them. That natural virtue is the beauty, the splendor,
and the humility without which one would esteem them to have been born in
this world more vainly than a poisonous fungous occupying the earth to the
detriment of better plants, more odious than any snake or viper which lifts
its head from the dust. I mean that everything in the universe, in order
that it have stability and constancy, has its own weight, number, order and
measure, so that it may be ordered and governed with all justice and
reason. Therefore Silenus, Bacchus, Pomona, Vertunnus, the god of Lampsacus
and similar gods of the drinking hall, gods of strong beer, and humble
wine, do not sit in heaven to drink nectar and taste ambrosia at the
banquet of Jove, Saturn, Pallus, Phoebus and similar gods; and their
vestments, temples, sacrifices and rites must differ from those of the
great gods.
Finally, I mean that these heroic frenzies have a heroic subject and
object, and therefore can no more be esteemed as vulgar and physical loves
than one can see dolphins in the trees of the forests or savage bears under
the rocks of the sea.
However, to deliver all from such suspicion, I thought at first of giving
this book a title similar to the book of Solomon which under the guise of
lovers and ordinary passions contains similarly divine and heroic frenzies,
as the mystics and cabbalistic doctors interpret; I wished, in fact, to
call it Canticle. But in the end I restrained myself for many reasons, of
which I shall report but two. One for the fear which I conceived of the
austere frown of certain Pharisees, who would judge me profane for usurping
sacred and supernatural titles in my natural and physical discourse, while
they, consummate scoundrels, and ministers of every ribaldry, usurp more
basely than one can say the names of holy ones, of saints, of divine
preachers, of the sons of God, of priests, of kings. But then we await that
divine judgment which will make manifest their malicious ignorance and
doctrines; our simple liberty and their malicious rules, censures and
institutions. The other for the great dissimilarity which is seen between
the appearance of this work and that one, even though the same mystery and
psychic substance is concealed under the shadow of the one and the other;
for no one doubts that the first idea of the Sage was to represent things
divine rather than to present other things; with him the figure is openly
and manifestly a figure, and the metaphorical sense is understood in such a
way that it cannot be denied to be metaphorical, when you hear of those
eyes of doves, that neck like a tower, that tongue of milk, that fragrance
of incense, those teeth that seem a flock of sheep returning from the bath,
those tresses that resemble goats descending the mountain of Galaad. But
this poem does not show us a face which so keenly invites one to seek a
latent and occult sense; so that through the ordinary mode of speech and by
similitudes more adapted to the sentiments which gentle lovers usually
employ, and experienced poets put in verse and rime, sentiments are
expressed similar to those used by the poets who spoke of Cythereida, or
Licoris, or Doris or Cynthia, Lesbia, Corynna, Laura and other such ladies.
Thus anyone could be easily persuaded that my primary and fundamental
intention may have been to express an ordinary love, which may have
dictated certain conceits to me, and afterwards, because it had been
rejected, may have borrowed wings for itself and become heroic; for it is
possible to convert any fable, romance, dream and prophetic enigma, and to
employ it by virtue of metaphor and allegorical disguise in such a way as
to signify all that pleases him who is skillful at tugging at the sense,
and is thus adept at making everything of everything, to follow the word of
the profound Anaxagoras. But think who will as it seems to him and pleases
him, in the end, willy nilly, if one is to be just, each must understand
and define it as I understand and define it, and not I as he would
understand it and depict it; for just as the passions of that Hebrew have
their own proper modes, succession and names, which no one has been able to
understand and could never explain better than he, if he were present, so
these canticles of mine have their own names, succession and modes which no
one can explain better and understand than myself, since I am not absent.
Of one thing I wish the world to be assured: what I have essayed in this
preliminary preface, wherein I address you in particular, excellent sir,
and in the dialogues formed upon the subsequent articles, sonnets and
stanzas, is to have everyone know that I should deem myself most shameful
and bestial, if with much thought, study and labor I should have ever
delighted or relished imitating (as they say) an Orpheus who adores a
living woman, and proposes after her death (if it be possible) to rescue
her from hell; when in fact I would hardly esteem her (without blushing) to
be worthy of being loved naturally even in that instant when her beauty is
in flower and when she has the power of bringing offspring to nature and to
God: so much the less would I desire to appear similar to certain poets and
versifiers who glory in a perpetual perseverance in such love, as in such a
pertinacious madness, which can certainly compete with all the other
species of folly that can reside in a human brain. So much, I say, am I
removed from that most vain, most vile and most infamous glory, that I
cannot believe any man who possesses a grain of sense and spirit can expend
any more love on such a thing than I have spent in the past and intend to
spend in the present. And, by my faith, if I wish to employ myself in
defending the nobility of that Tuscan poet, who showed himself so
distraught on the banks of the Sorgue for a lady of Valclusa, and not say
that he was a madman fit to be chained, I shall have to believe and force
myself to persuade others, that for lack of genius apt for higher things he
set himself the task of nourishing his melancholy, and belaboring his wit
in confusion, by analyzing the effects of an obstinate vulgar love, animal
and bestial, as so many others have done who formerly have sung the praises
of a fly, a beetle, an ass, of Silenus, of Priapus, of apes, and those who
have in our time sung the praises of urinals, of the shepherd's pipe, of
beans, of the bed, of lies, of dishonor, of the furnace, of the knife, of
famine, and of the plague, things which perhaps give the appearance of
being no less lofty and proud by reason of the celebrated voices of those
who sing of them than these and other ladies I have mentioned are, perhaps
by reason of the poets who have celebrated them.
Yet (that there be no mistake) I do not wish that here should be taxed the
dignity of those ladies who have been worthily praised and who are
praiseworthy: and those, especially, who may and do reside in this British
land, to whom we owe the love and fidelity of the guest; for even if one
were to find fault with the whole worold, one could not find fault with
this nation, which in this respect is not the terrestrial world, nor a part
of it, but is entirely separated from it, as you know: so that any
discourse regarding the whole feminine sex could not and would not include
any of your women, who must not be considered part of that sex; because
they are not women, they are not ladies, but, in the guise of ladies, they
are nymphs, goddesses and of celestial substance, among whom it is
permitted to contemplate that unique Dianba, whom I do not desire to name
in the rank or category of women. [Queen Elizabeth] Let it be understood,
then, that I mean only the ordinary genus. And I should unworthily and
unjustly persecute any individual of this class: because to no particular
person ought the weakness and condition of the sex be imputed, just as as
defect or vice of constitution, assuming there is some fault or error
there, must be attributed to the species or to nature, and not in
particular to the individuals of the class. Truly, with respect to that
sex, what I abominate is that zealous and disordered venereal love which
some are accustomed to expend for it, so that they come to the point of
making their wit the slave of woman, and of degrading the noblest powers
and actions of the intellectual soul. If my intentions are understood, far
from being saddened and becoming vexed with me because of my natural and
truthful discourse, every honest and chaste woman will rather agree with me
and love me the more because of it; and they will allow that the venereal
love women have for men is a dishonorable thing, as I actively reprove the
venereal love men have for women. Therefore, with a determined heart, mind,
opinion and purpose, I affirm that my first and principal, secondary and
subordinate, final and ultimate design in this work to which I have been
called, was and is to signify divine contemplation and present the eye and
ear with other frenzies, not those caused by vulgar love, but those caused
by heroic love. These frenzies will be explained in two parts, each of
which will be divided into five dialogues.
The argument of the five dialogues of the first part
In the first dialogue of the first part there are five articles, [9]
whence, in order: in the first is shown the causes and principal intrinsic
motives under the names and figures of the mountain, and the river, and of
the muses which declare themselves present, not because they have been
summoned, invoked, and searched for, but rather as if they had often
importunately offered themselves. By this is signified that the divine
light is ever present, that it forever offers itself, ever calls and knocks
at the doors of our senses and other powers of cognition and apprehension,
as it is indicated in the Song of Solomon where it is said, "En ipse stat
post parietem nostrum, respicinse per cancellos et prospiciens per
fenestras", [Cant. 2:9: "Behold He standeth behind our wall, looking
through the windows, looking through the lattices..."] which light very
often through various occasions and impediments remains excluded and
withheld. In the second article is shown what are those subjects, objects,
affections, instruments, and effects by which this divine light enters,
shows itself, and takes possession of the soul, in order to raise it and
convert it unto God. In the third, the intention, definition, and
determination which the well-informed soul makes with regard to the one,
perfect and ultimate end. In the fourth, the civil war which follows and
breakis out against the spirit after such determination, whence the
Canticle says, "Noli mirare, quia nigra sum: decoloravit enim me sol, quia
fratres mei pugnaverunt contra me, quam posuerunt custodem in vineis".
[Cant. 1:5: "Do not consider me that I am brown, for the sun has altered my
color: for my brothers have fought against me, whom they have made the
keeper in the vineyards..."] In that place are represented as four standard
bearers the affection, the fatal impulse, an appearance of the good, and
the conscience, which are followed by the numberless cohorts of the many,
contrary, varied and diverse powers, together with their ministers,
intermediaries, and organs which exist in this organization. In the fifth
is described a natural contemplation through which it is shown that every
contrary is reduced to friendship, whether through the victory of one of
the contraries, or through harmony and conciliation, or by some
vicissitude, every discord to concord, every diversity to unity; which
doctrine has been developed by us in the discourses of other dialogues.
In the second dialogue is more explicitly described the order and action of
the conflict which is in the substance of this complex of the frenzied one,
to wit: in the first article are shown three sorts of contraries. The first
is the conflict of two opposed affections or acts, as for example where
hopes are cold and desires hot. The second treats of the same desires and
acts in themselves, not only that different times, but at the same time,
when each one, for instance, dissatisfied with himself, looks to another,
and at the same time loves and hates. The third is between the power that
follows and aspires and the object which flees and eludes it. In the second
article is described the opposition which results from two impulses which
are opposed in general, to which are related all the particular and
subordinate contraries, for example, when one climbs or descends toward two
opposite places or goals at the same time. Thus it happens to the complex
being by reason of the diversity of the inclinations which are in his
several parts and the variety of dispositions which result from these, that
he rises men and falls at the same time, goes forward and backward,
withdraws himself from himself and also withdraws into himself. The third
article discusses the consequence of such oppositions.
In the third dialogue is disclosed how much power belongs to the will in
this combat, for to the will alone pertains the organizing, the initiating,
the execution and completion; for it is the will the Canticle addresses
when it says, "Arise, hasten, my dove, and come: for already winter is
passed, the rain is gone, the flowers have appeared in our land; the time
of pruning is come." (Cant. 2:10-12) It is the will that in any ways
bestows power to the other potencies; and bestows power especially to
itself, when it reflects upon itself and increases itself two-fold, when it
wishes to desire, and is pleased with what it desires; it withdraws itself,
on the contrary, when it dislikes the object of its desire, and is
displeased to desire it. Thus everywhere and in everything it approves what
is good and what the justice of natural law prescribes for it, and never
approves at all what deviates from that law. And this is how much the first
and second article explain. In the third article is seen the double fruit
of a similar power. Accordingly, as the result of the passion which draws
and ravishes them, lofty things become base, and base things become lofty.
Thus it is customary to say that by the force of vicissitude and
vertiginous attraction, the element of fear is condensed into air, vapor
and water, while water is refined into vapor, air, and fire.
In the seven sections of the fourth dialogue are contemplated the impetus
and vigor of the intellect which carries the affection away without it; the
development of the thoughts into which the frenzied lover is divided, and
the sufferings of the soul under the government of this so turbulent
republic. There it becomes clear who the hunter is, the birdcatcher, the
wild beast, the dogs, offspring, the cave, the noose, the rock, the prey,
the issue of so many labors, peace, rest, and the desired end of so
laborious a conflict.
Into the fifth dialogue is further described the state of the frenzied one
and is shown the order, condition and reason for his labors and fortunes.
In the first article is shown what pertains to the pursuit of the object
which withdraws itself; in the the second is shown the continuous and
relentless competition of the passions; in the third the lofty and cold,
because vain purposes; in the fourth the voluntary desire; in the fifth the
prompt rescue and powerful bulwark. In the following articles are shown in
their variety, according to their reasons and appropriateness, the
vicissitudes of his fortune, condition, and labors, each article expressing
them by antitheses, comparisons, and similitudes.
Argument of the five dialogs of the second part
In the first dialogue of the second part is offered the origin of the modes
and reasons for the state of the frenzied lover. In the first sonnet is
described his state beneath the wheel of time; in the second is described
the defense he offers for his esteem of ignoble occupations and for the
unworthy squandering of time which is so brief and narrowly measured; in
the third he confesses the impotence of his studies, which, although
illumined within by the excellence of their object, begin to obscure and
cloud that object when they come in contact with it; in the fourth he
complains of the profitless strain of the faculties of the soul as his soul
seeks to rise with powers unequal to the state it desires and venerates; in
the fifth is recalled the contrariety and familiar conflict found in him, a
conflict which may hinder him from applying himself entirely to his end or
goal. In the sixth is expressed the aspiration of desire; in the seventh is
considered the poor correspondence found between him who aspires, and that
to which he aspires; in the eighth is seen the distraction the soul suffers
because of the conflict between external and internal things, internal
things among themselves, and a similar conflict of external things among
themselves; in the ninth is explained the age and the time in the course of
life most propitious for the act of lofty and profound contemplation, a
time when the soul is not disturbed by the ebb and flow of its vegetative
constitution, but finds itself in a state of immobility and in a sort of
tranquility; in the tenth is described the order and matter in which heroic
love sometimes attacks, wounds, and awakens us; in the eleventh is
explained the multitude of species and particular ideas which show the
excellence of the mark of their unique source and are the means by which
the desire toward the heavenly is aroused; in the twelfth is expressed the
state of every human effort toward the divine enterprises. Much is presumed
before one engages himself in them, and much during the engagement itself.
But, then, when one is engulfed and penetrates more and more into the
depths, this fervent spirit becomes extinguished by presumption, the nerves
begin to yield, the strength is slackened, thoughts discouraged, all
intentions vanish, and the soul remains confused, vanquished and reduced to
nothing. Pertinently, therefore, was it said by the Sage, "he that is a
searcher of majesty shall be overwhelmed by glory" (Prov. 25:27). In the
last article is more clearly expressed what the twelfth demonstrated by
similitude and figure.
In the second dialogue, in a sonnet and in the dialogue which is a
commentary upon it, is made specific the first cause which subdued the
strong one, softened the hard one, and reduced him to an amorous servitude
under the command of Cupid, but in that way raised and disposed him to
celebrate his zeal, ardor, election, and purpose.
In the third dialogue in four questions and four answers of the heart to
the eyes and the eyes to the heart is explained the being and mode of the
appetitive and cognitive faculties. In this dialogue is shown how the will
is reawakened from sleep, given direction, urged and led by the cognition;
and reciprocally how the cognition is aroused, formed, and revived by the
will, the one proceeding from the other, alternately. It is doubted if the
intellect or the cognitive power in general, or even the act of cognition
is greater than the will or appetitive power in general, or even greater
than the affection. If one cannot love more than one can understand, and if
everything which in a certain mode is desired, in a certain mode is also
understood, and the reverse also be true; then it is fitting to call the
appetite cognition. For we see that the doctrine of the Peripatetics, which
has raised and nourished us from our youth, goes so far as to call the
appetite in potency and natural act cognition, so that they distinguish all
effects, means and ends, principles, causes and elements into those
primarily, intermediately, and ultimately known according to nature, in
which, they conclude, the appetite and the cognition concur. Thus is
proposed the infinite potency of matter, and the assistance of the act
thanks to which that potency is not in vain. For just as the act of the
will is infinite with respect to the good, so is the act of cognition
infinite and endless with respect to the true: accordingly, being, truth,
and goodness take on the same significance when they are referred to in the
same way, that is: as infinite goals.
In the fourth dialogue are represented and in some manner explained the
nine reasons for the ineptitude, disproportion, and deficiency of the human
sight and apprehensive potency toward things divine. The first lover, who
is blind from birth, is blind because of the nature which debases and
humiliation him. The second lover, blinded by the poison of jealousy, is
blind because of the irascible and concupiscible which diverts and misleads
him. The third, blinded by the sudden appearance of intense light, is blind
because of the brilliance of the object which dazzles him. The fourth,
received and nourished for a long time in the light of the sun, is blind
because of much lofty contemplation of the unity which removes him from the
multitude. The fifth, whose eyes are forever filled with dense tears, is
blind owing to the disproportion of means between the potency and the
object which impedes him. The sixth, who through much weeping has
extinguished the organic visual humour, is blind because of a lack of the
true intellectual nourishment, a lack which weakens him. The seventh whose
eyes are reduced to ashes by the ardor of his heart, symbolizes the burning
passion which disperses, weakens, and sometimes devours the power of
discernment. The eighth, blinded by the wound of an arrow's point, is blind
through the very act of union with the form of the object that conquers,
alters, and seduces the apprehensive potency, which is oppressed by the
weight of the form and falls under the impetus of its presence; therefore,
not without reason is the appearance of this object sometimes represented
in the form of a penetrating thunderbolt. The ninth, because he is mute and
is unable to explain the cause of his blindness, is blind for the highest
reason, the secret design of God, who has given man this zeal and
solicitude to search, so that he may never be able to reach higher than to
the knowledge of his own blindness and ignorance, and no higher than to
deem silence more worthy than speech. But this does not suggest that common
ignorance is to be excused or favored, for he is doubly blind who does not
see his own blindness. And there is a difference between the profitably
zealous and the stupidly idle. The stupidly idle are buried in the lethargy
of the incapability of judging their own blindness, and the profitably
zealous are aware, awakened, and prudent judges of their own blindness, and
for that reason are in quest and of the threshold of the attainment of the
light from which the others are banished for a long time.
Argument and Allegory of the Fifth Dialogue
In the fifth dialogue two women are introduced, for whom (according to my
country's custom) it is unbecoming to comment, expound, decipher, or to be
so wise and learned as to usurp the office of teaching and giving men
institutions, rules, and doctrines, but for whom it is fitting, when their
bodies are found to have a soul, to divine well and to prophecy. Therefore
the author has been content to make them merely recite the allegory,
leaving to some male intelligence the care and labor of interpreting it.
And even to him (in order to lighten his task, or I should say, discharge
him of it), I shall explain how these nine blind men, by reason of their
role, of the external causes of their blindness and of many other
subjective differences, take on significance other than the nine of the
preceding dialogue. According to the common imagination of the nine
celestial spheres these blind men symbolize the number, order, and
diversity of all things which are subsistent within an absolute unity, and
in and over all of them are ordered those intelligences which, by a certain
analogy, depend upon the first and the unique intelligence. The Cabalists,
Chaldeans, Magi, the Platonists and Christian theologians hold that these
intelligences are distinct in nine orders through the perfection of the
number which governs the universality of things and in a certain way
informs everything. They also hold that it is by a simple number that the
divinity is symbolized, whose extension and square represents the number
and substance of all things which depend upon it. All the more illustrious
thinkers, whether philosophers or theologians, who speak either by reason
and their own light, or by faith and a superior light, recognized in these
intelligences the cycles of ascent and decent. Thus the Platonists say that
by a certain revolution it happens that those who are above the fatality of
time and change submit themselves once again to this fatality, while others
rise and take their place. A similar revolution is alluded to by the
Pythagorean poet, when he says:
All these, where the wheel of a thousand years comes round, a god
summons to the river Lethe in vast train, so that they may begin
again to desire the return to the body. (Virgil Aeneid vi.
748-751)
Some say that thus are to be understood the words of Revelation in which it
is said that the dragon shall be conquered by chains for a thousand years,
and after that period released. To this interpretation adhere those who
speculate upon the many passages of Revelation which express the millenium
literally, represent it by a year, by a season, by one night, or by one
span time or another. Beyond a doubt the millenium itself is not to be
taken according to the revolutions called solar years, but according to
more than one method of calculating the order and measure upon which the
fate of things depends. For the years of the stars are as different as are
their particular species. As for the fact of revolution, it is given out
among the Christian theologians that from each of the nine orders of
spirits, a multitude of legions were cast down to low and obscure regions;
and so that those seats do not remain vacant, divine Providence wishes the
spirits who now live in human bodies to be drawn up to that eminence. But
among the philosophers Plotinus alone, to my knowledge, has seen fit to
agree with all the great theologians that such a revolution does not
concern all beings, nor take place at all times, but takes place only once.
And among the theologians only Origen, following all the great
philosophers, has dared to say, after the Saducees and other reproved
sects, that the revolution is vicissitudinal and yet eternal, and that all
those who ascend must decend to the bottom; as one can see in all the
elements, and in all the things which exist on the surface, in the bosom
and womb of nature. For my part, I confess and confirm as very appropriate
the opinion of the theologians and those whose task it is to give laws and
institutions to the people; just as I do not fail to affirm and except the
opinion of those who, speaking according to natural reason, address
themselves to the small number of the good and wise. The latter opinion has
been justifiably reproved for having been exposed to the eyes of the
multitude, for since it is only with great difficulty that they can be
restrained from vices and spurred to virtuous action by belief in eternal
punishment, what would happen were they persuaded of some lighter condition
for the reward of heroic and human deeds, and the punishment of crimes and
villainies? But to conclude this progression of mine, I say that now begins
an explanation and discourse upon the blindness and the light of these nine
men, first clairvoyant, then blind, and finally illumined. At first they
are rivals in the shadows and vestiges of the divine beauty; then they are
completely blind, and finally they enjoy themselves peacefully in the more
open light. While they are in the first condition, they are led to the
dwelling of Circe, who represents the generative matter of all things. She
is called the daughter of the sun, because from the father of forms she has
inherited the possession of all those forms which, by a sprinkling of the
waters -- that is to say by the act of generation and by the power of
enchantment -- that is by reason of a secret harmony -- she transforms all
beings, making those who see become blind. For generation and corruption
are causes of oblivion and of blindness, as the ancients explain by the
figure of souls who bathe and inebriate themselves in the waters of Lethe.
Then by that which the blind men lament, when they say, Daughter and mother
of darkness and horror, is signified the dismay and sadness of the soul
which has lost its wings, but will be relieved when it regains hope of
recovering them. By Circe's words, Take another one of my fatal vases, is
signified that men carry with themselves the decree and destiny of a new
metamorphoses, which is, however, said to be offered to them by Circe
herself; for although one contrary has its origin in the other, it may not
be efficaciously uncovered by them. For that reason she said that although
her own hand was unable to open it, it could entrust the vase to them. The
other meaning is that there are two kinds of water. There are the inferior
waters under the firmament which enlighten. These are the waters which the
Pythagoreans and the Platonists symbolized by the descent from one tropic
and the ascent to another. Then by her words, Traverse the width and depth
of the world, seek out all the many kingdoms, is signify that there is no
immediate progress from one contrary form to another, nor immediate
regression to the first form, but that it is necessary to traverse, of not
all, at least a very great number of the forms contained in the wheel of
natural species. Then will they be enlightened by the sight of the object
in which concur the three perfections, beauty, wisdom, and truth, revealed
through the sprinkling of the waters, called in the sacred books the waters
of wisdom and the rivers of eternal life. These waters are not found on the
mainland of the globe, but separated entirely from the earth, in the bosom
of the Ocean, of the Amphitrite, of the divinity, where that river rises
which takes its source from the divine throne, whose flow is not at all
like the ordinary flow of natural rivers. In that river are the nymphs, who
are the blessed and divine intelligences which assist and administer to the
first intelligence, similar to Diana among the nymphs of the wilderness.
She alone among all the others has by her triple virtue the power to open
every seal, untie every knot, uncover every secret and bring to light
whatever is hidden. By her unique presence, by her double splendor of
goodness and truth, benevolence and beauty, she pleases all wills and
intellects, sprinkling them with the salutary waters of purgition. Then
there follows a long chant and song by the nine intelligences, the nine
muses, whose chorus is ordered according to the number of the nine spheres,
so that the harmony of each one is continued by the harmony of the
following one. And that there may be no vacuum interposed among them, the
end of one song coincides with the beginning of the other, and the end of
the last song concurs with the beginning of the first, as the circle is
closed. For the most brilliant and the most obscure, the beginning and the
end, the greatest light and the most profound darkness, infinite potency
and infinite act coincide, as our method of argument has explained
elsewhere.
Finally one observes the harmony and concert of all the spheres,
intelligences and muses in a concert of instruments, so that the heaven,
the movement of worlds, the works of nature, the discourse of intellects,
the contemplation of the mind, the decree of divine Providence celebrate in
complete accord that lofty and magnificent vicissitude which raises the
inferior to the superior waters, changes night into day, and day into
night, so that the divinity may be in all, according to the mode in which
the infinite goodness is infinitely communicated according to the entire
capacity of each thing.
These are the discourses, then, which it seems to me cannot be conveniently
addressed and recommended to anyone than to you, excellent Sir. For I would
not risk doing again what I think at times I have done inadvertently, and
what many others ordinarily do who present a lyre to a deaf man and a
mirror to a blind one. To you then these discourses are presented without
fear, because here the Italian reasons with one who understands him. My
verses are submitted to the censure and the protection of a poet. My
philosophy stands naked before so pure an intellect as yours. Heroic things
are addressed to the heroic and generous spirit with which you are endowed.
My services are offered to one who knows how to accept them graciously, and
my homage to a gentleman who has ever shown myself worthy of such. And in
that which particularly concerns me, I know that through your good services
you have guided me with a magnanimity far greater than any recognition you
may have given to others who may have since come to you. Farewell.
The Apology of the Nolan
To the most glorious and virtuous ladies
Oh glorious and enchanting nymphs of England,
my spirit neither shuns nor disdains you, nor dishonors
you when it deprives you of the traditional name of women,
by neither counting you among them nor excluding you.
I am sure the name of goddesses are more meet for you,
because you are endowed with more than common life,
and are upon the earth what the stars are in heaven.
Oh, Ladies mine, your sovereign beauty my sincerity
can never harm, nor does it wish to do so, because it
cannot reach your superhuman kind,
but by bitter torment, it aspires to that place
where Diana is queen above all, who is among you
what the sun is amid the stars.
Labor and art humbly offer you by invention, my
words and the strokes of my pen such as they may be.
Shelf mark: 017.634
Title: Giordano Bruno's The Heroic Frenzies
A translation with introduction and notes
by Paul Eugene Memmo, Jr.
University of North Carolina
Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures
No 50
CHAPEL HILL
The University of North Carolina Press
Printed in Spain, 1964
First Dialogue
INTERLOCUTORS
Tansillo Cicada
Tansillo: The frenzies, then, most worthy of being placed in the first rank
and considered first are those I present to you in the order that has
seemed to me most convenient.
Cicada: Begin to read them then.
Tansillo:
Muses, whom I have so often rejected, importunate cohorts of my
suffering, alone consoling me in my woes by such verses, rimes,
and frenzies
the like of which you never showed to others who boast of the
myrtle and the laurel; now let the wind, anchor, and port keep me
close to you, if I am forbidden to cruise elsewhere.
Oh mountains, oh goddesses, oh streams, where I live, converse,
and nourish myself; where I learn in quiet and find beauty;
through whom I rise, reawaken, adorn my heart, spirit, and brow;
maybe you transform death, cypresses and infernos into fire, into
laurels, into eternal stars.
One may infer that he rejected the muses often and for many reasons, among
which perhaps are these. First, because he was not able to be idle, as the
priest of the muses must be; for one cannot be idle who must defend himself
against the ministers and servants of envy, ignorance, and malice. Second,
because he had received no assistance from worthy protectors and defenders,
who might have given him security. As it is said by the poet:
Oh Flaccus, there will be no want for Maros, if there is no lack
of Maecenae.
Another reason was that he regarded himself obligated to devote himself to
the contemplation and philosophical studies, which if not more advanced in
maturity, ought none the less, as mothers to the Muses, to come before
them. Moreover, because the tragic Melpomene drew him on the one hand with
more matter than talent, and the comic Thalia drew him on the other hand
with more talent than matter, it happened that as one took from the other,
he stood between the two weak and idle, rather than doubly active. Besides,
he had become a victim of the authority of the censors, who, turning him
from the more worthy and noble things to which he was naturally inclined,
shackled his intellect, in order to enslave him beneath the rule of a most
vile and senseless hypocrisy, from the freedom he had under the rule of
virtue. But finally, because of the great heat of annoyance into which he
fell, it happened that having nothing else from which to draw consolation,
he accepted the call of those who are said to have inspired him with
certain frenzies, verses, and rimes, the like of which they never shared
with anyone else. It is for that reason that this work sparkles with
originality more than with imitation.
C. Tell me, what is meant by those who praise themselves by means of the
myrtle and the laurel?
T. Those who can and do win praise for themselves by the myrtle are those
who sing of love. If these bear themselves nobly, they win the crown of
that plant concecrated to Venus who inspires them with her frenzy. Those
who can praise themselves by the laurel are those who sing worthily of
heroic things, who instruct heroic souls through speculative and moral
philosophy, or who celebrate those heroic souls and present them as
exemplary mirrors of political and civil action.
C. Are there still other species, then, of poets and awards?
T. There are not only as many as there are Muses, but a great many more
besides. For, although one can distinguish certain sorts of poets and
awards, one would not know how to define certain modes and species of human
genius.
C. I know certain makers of poetic rules who accept with difficulty Homer
as a poet, and who reject Virgil, Ovid, Martial, Hesiod, Lucretius, and
many other versifiers, after having examined them according to the rules of
Aristotle's Poetics.
T. You can be sure, my friend, that these are veritable blockheads, for
they do not considered that those rules serve chiefly to make clear the
nature of the poetry of Homer, or the nature of some other particular poet.
They do not consider that those rules are there only to show us the kind of
epic poet Homer was, and not to serve as modes of instruction to other
poets who could in other veins, skills, and frenzies be in their several
kinds equal, similar, or even greater than Homer.
C. If I understand you correctly, then, Homer in his genre was not a poet
who depended upon rules, but he is the cause of the rules which serve
others who are more adept at imitating than inventing. And these rules were
drawn up by an author who was not a poet of any sort, but who knew how to
assemble rules of that particular kind (that is, rules of Homeric poetry)
for the benefit of one who would wish to be not another poet with a muse of
his own, but an imitator of Homer and the ape of Homer's muse.
T. You conclude well that poetry is not born of the rules, except by the
merest chance, but that the rules derived from the poetry. For that reason
there are as many genres and species of true rules as there are of true
poets.
C. How will the true poets, then, be recognized?
T. By our singing their verses, and by this, that when they are sung,
either they will be delightful, or they will be useful, or they will be
useful and delightful at the same time.
C. Whom then to the rules of Aristotle serve?
T. Those who cannot, as Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, and others could, be a poet
without the aid of Aristotle. And they serve him who, not having a muse of
his own, prefers to court the muse of Homer.
C. Then certain dismal pedants of our own day are wrong, who exclude some
from the rank of poets because they do not conform their speech and
metaphors or the introductions of their books and songs to those of Homer
or Virgil, or because they do not observe the traditional use of the
invocation, or because they entwine one story with another, or end their
songs with summaries of what has been said already, and with announcements
of what is to come; and because of other reasons drawn from a thousand
methods of examination, of censures and rules in virtue of that text.
Therefore it appears that they themselves would be the true poets (should
they so decide), and would easily attain the end toward which the others
tend only with effort. But, if the truth were known, these pedants are
nothing but worms, who do not know how to do anything well, as are born
only to gnaw, soil, and hurl their dung upon the studies and labors of
others; and being incapable of becoming illustrious through their own
talent virtue and talent, they seek to advance themselves through the vices
and errors of others.
T. Now to return to the point from which passion has led us to digress to
some extent, I say that there are and can be so many kinds of sentiment and
human creations, which one can adorn with garlands not only of all sorts
and species of plants, but also of all types and species of material. As a
result, crowns for poets are made not only of myrtle and laurel but also of
the vine branch for scurrilous verses, of ivy for Bacchic verses, of olive
for sacrifices and laws, of the poplar, elm and corn for agriculture, of
cypress for funerals, and other garlands without number for as many other
occasions; and, if you will permit, even of that material which a gallant
gentleman designated, when he said:
Oh Brother Porro, poet of flukes, at Milan you girdle yourself
with a garland of pudding, tripe, and sausage.
C. Therefore, through various talents which he displays in various meanings
and purposes, this poet certainly will be able to adorn himself with
branches of various plants, and be able to speak worthily with the muses,
because near them he finds the air which comforts him, the anchor which
sustained him, and the poet that welcomes him in time of fatigue, turmoil,
and tempest. Thus he says, Oh mount Parnassus where I live, Muses with whom
I converse, stream of Helicon (or some other) where I nourish myself, mount
which gives me tranquil abode, Muses who inspire me with profound doctrine,
font which refreshes me and cleanses me of every stain, mount where I lift
up my heart as I ascend, Muses conversing with whom I revive my spirit,
font reposing under whose shadows I adorn my brow -- change my death into
life, my cypresses into laurels, and my infernos into heaven. That is to
say, destine me to immortality, make me a poet, render me illustrious, the
while I sing of death, cypresses, and infernose. T. Good. Because for those
who are favored by heaven, the greatest evils are converted into even
greater good; for necessity nourishs labors and studies, and these as a
rule nourish the glory of immortal splendor. And so the death of one
century brings life to all the others.
C. Continue.
T. Next he says:
My heart is in the place and form of Parnassus, which I must
ascend for my safety; my muses are the thoughts which at every
hour reveal to me their glorious tale;
my fount of Helicon is there, where my eyes often pour forth
profuse tears. Through such mountains, through such nymphs and
waters, as it pleased heaven, I was born a poet.
Now let no king or favorable hand of any emperor, or highest
priest, and sovereign shepherd
give me such favors, honors, and privileges. My heart, my
thoughts, and my tears themselves cause the laurel to bear leaves
for my adornment.
Here first he declares what his mount is, speaking of it as the lofty
passion of his heart; secondly, what his muses are, speaking of them as the
beauties and prerogatives of his object; third, what his founts are, and
these he speaks of as his tears. Upon that mount his passion is enkindled,
out of beauties proceeds his frenzy, and by these tears is made manifest
his passion.
In this way he deems himself no less able to be crowned illustriously
through his own heart, thoughts and tears, than others who are crowned by
the hands of kings, emperors, and popes.
C. Make clear to me what he means when he speaks of the heart in the form
of Parnassus.
T. By these words he means that the human heart contains two summits, which
rise progressively from one root; and in the spiritual sense, from a single
passion of the heart proceed the two contraries of hate and love. For Mount
Parnassus has two summits rising from the one foundation.
C. Continue.
T. He says:
The Captain summons all is warriors beneath a banner by the sound
of the trumpet; where, if it happens that for some of them it
sounds in vain, and they come not promptly,
those who are traitors he kills, the madmen he banishes from his
camp or he scorns them: so the soul with those of its intentions
which come not to assemble under one standard, either it wishes
them dead or removed.
I regard one object, which absorbs my mind, and it is a single
visage. I remain fixed upon one beauty,
which has so pierced my heart, and is a single dart; by one flame
only I burn, and know but a single paradise.
The captain is the human will which sits at the stern of the soul and with
the little rudder of reason governs the affections of the inferior
potencies against the surge of their natural violence. With the sound of
the trumpet, that is to say, by determined election, he summons all his
warriors; that is, he calls forth all the potencies of the soul (warriors
we call them because they are in continuous conflict and opposition), or
the effects of those potencies, which are the conflicting thoughts, some of
which incline toward one, and others toward the other contrary; and he
seeks to assemble them beneath a single banner for a determined end. If it
happens that some of these thoughts which are required to present
themselves promptly and obediently are called in vain, (especially those
which proceed from the natural powers that either do not obey the reason at
all or obey it very little), the captain is forced at least to prevent
those thoughts from taking action, and if this cannot be accomplished, he
condemns them; it is thus that he is shown as one who would put some of
them to death and banish the others, proceeding against the former with the
sword of anger, and against the latter with the whip of distain.
Here he regards one object to which he is turned by his intention. A single
visage pleases him and absorbs his mind. In a single beauty he is delighted
and pleased, and is said to remain fixed upon it, because the work of the
intelligence is not an operation of motion, but one of rest. And from that
beauty only does he conceive the dart which kills him; that is, which
summons him to the ultimate end of perfection. He burns by one flame only,
that is, he is sweetly consumed by a single love.
C. Why is love symbolized by fire?
T. Putting aside many other reasons for the moment, let this suffice for
you now. Love converts the thing loved into the lover, as the fire, among
all the most active elements, is able to convert all the other simple and
complex elements into itself.
C. Now continue.
T. He knows a paradise, that is, a principal end; because paradise commonly
means the end; and here one must distinguish between the end which is
absolute in truth and essence, and that end which is so by similitude,
shadow, and partipation. According to the first mode, there cannot be more
than one end, just as there is only one ultimate and prime good; according
to the second mode, there are an infinite number.
Love, fate, the object, and jealousy are for me pleasure,
torment, content, and distress.
The senseless boy, the blind and guilty one, the supreme beauty
and my one sole death
shows me paradise, and snatches it away, presents me with every
good, and withdraws it from me; so much so that the heart, mind,
spirit, and soul have joy, have discomfort, have refreshment, and
a heavy burden.
Who will rescue me from the conflict? Who will make me enjoy the
fruit of my good in peace?
Who will put that which wearies me far from that which delights
me, so as to cause my ardors and my tears to become happy ones?
In this verse he shows the cause and the origin whence his frenzy is
conceived and his enthusiasm is born -- by ploughing the field of the
Muses, by scattering the seeds of his thoughts there, by aspiring to love's
harvest, and discovering the fervor of the sun in the heat of his own
passions and the humour of the rain in his own tears. He places four things
first: love, his fate, the object, and jealousy. Here love is not a base,
ignoble and unworthy mover, but a heroic lord and his guide. Fate is
nothing else than the fatal disposition and order of mishaps to which he is
subjected by his destiny. The object is the lovable thing and the
correlative of the lover, and it is clear that jealousy is the zeal of the
lover concerning the thing loved; it is not necessary to explain this to
him who has tasted love, and in vain shall we strain ourselves to explain
it to others. Love pleases because to him who loves it is pleasant to love;
and he who truly loves would not wish not to love. Wherefore I do not wish
to omit referring to that which I have shown in this sonnet of mine:
Dear, gentle, and revered wound of that sweet dart, which love
ever chooses; lofty, gracious, and precious ardor, which makes
the soul toss in ever burning delight,
what virtue of herb, or force of magic art, will ever release you
from the center of my heart, since the fresh onslaught which
strikes there at every hour, delights me the more it torments me?
My sweet pain, new in the world and rare, when shall I ever
escape from your burden, since the remedy is weariness to me, and
the pain delight?
Eyes, flames, and bow of my lord, twofold fire in the soul, and
arrows in the heart, because the languishing is sweet to me, and
the fire is dear.
His fate torments because of the unhappy and unwished for events, or
because it causes the subject to be esteemed less worthy of enjoying its
object, and less proportioned to its dignity; or because it does not permit
reciprocal relation between the lover and his object; or for other reasons
and obstacles which confront him. The object makes the subject content, who
does not nourish himself with anything else, who seeks nothing else,
occupies himself with nothing else and because of that objects banishes
every other thought. Jealousy distresses inasmuch as it is the daughter of
that love from which it derives, the inseparable companion and sign of that
love, -- and where love manifests itself jealousy is understood as a
necessary consequence, a counter-proof of which one can find among
generations which, from the frigidity of the climate and backwardness of
spirit, comprehend less, love little and thus know nothing of jealousy --
inasmuch, I say, as it is the daughter of love, its companion and its sign,
it never ceases to disturb and poisons everything found beautiful and good
in loves. Therefore as I have said in another one of my sonnets:
Oh daughter so guilty of love and envy, that you turn the joys of
your father into pain, the adroit Argus to disaster, and the
blind idiot to well being, minister of torment, Jealousy,
infernal Tisiphone, fetid harpy, who seizes and poisons the
sweets of others; cruel Auster, through whom the loveliest flower
of my hope must languish;
wild beast odious to yourself, bird foreboding of nothing but
mourning, pain which enters the heart through a thousand gates,
if one could deny you entrance, the kingdom of love would be as
sweet as a world without hate and without death.
Add to what has been said that Jealousy is not only sometimes the death and
ruin of the lover, but on many occasions kills love itself, especially when
it nurtures contempt; for then jealousy becomes so dominated by its
offspring that it extinguishes love and puts the object to scorn; in fact,
makes it no longer the object.
C. Now explain the other particulars which follow; that is, the reason why
love is called the senseless boy.
T. I shall explain everything. Love is called the senseless boy, not
because it is foolish of itself, but because it makes most lovers foolish
and in such lovers is a foolish thing. But in those who are the more
intellectual and speculative, love raises the mind the more and purifies
the intellect the more, awakening it, filling it with zeal and prudence,
developing a heroic ardor of the soul, and an emulation of virtue and
magnanimity in the desire to please and become worthy of the thing loved.
By the majority love is understood as crazy and stupid, for love makes most
men pour forth their peciliar sentiments and urges them on in exaggeration,
because it finds their spirit, soul, and body badly constituted and
incapable of considering and distinguishing what has is fitting for them
from what renders them more deformed, and thus makes them subjects of
scorn, laughter, and vituperation.
C. They say commonly and proverbially that love makes old men mad, and
young men sages.
T. The former unseemliness does not fall to all old men, nor does the
latter advantage fall to all young men; but it is true of the latter who
are well constituted, and of the former who are badly constituted. And
therefore it is certain that whoever is accustomed in youth to love with
discernment, in old age will love without going astray. But derision and
laughter belong to those who at a mature age would, as it were, begin to
learn their alphabet.
C. Now tell me, why is his destiny or fate called blind and guilty?
T. Fate is called blind and even guilty not of itself, for it is the very
number and measured order of the universe; but with respect to its subjects
it is called blind and is blind because it renders them blind to its view
by being itself most uncertain. And similarly fate is called guilty because
there is no mortal whose lamentations and complaints do not accuse it in
some way. Thus the Apulian poet said:
How is it Maecenas, that no one in the world seems happy with the
lot he has chosen or that heaven reserved for him? (Horace,
Satires i. 1. 1-3)
He then calls the object supreme beauty because to him it is unique and
most eminent and efficacious for drawing him to itself, and for that reason
does he deem it most worthy and most noble; and yet he feels the object to
be dominant and superior over him, as he is rendered subject and enslaved
by it. My one sole death he says of jealousy because just as love has no
more inseparable companion than jealousy, so love has no sense of any
greater enemy; just as nothing is more an enemy to iron than rust, though
that rust is generated of the same iron.
C. Now since you have begun by this method, proceed to show point by point
what remains.
T. I shall do so. Next he says of love, It shows me paradise. By this he
means that love is not blind of itself, and renders certain lovers blind
not because of its nature, but because of the ignoble dispositions of the
subject as it happens that the nocturnal birds become blind in the presence
of the sun. With respect to itself, therefore, love illumines, makes clear,
opens the intellect, makes all things penetrate and spurs miraculous
impulses toward the good.
T. I'm quite certain the Nolan shows this in another one of his sonnets:
Love who shows me so high a truth that it opens black portals of
diamond, enters its deity through the eyes and by the sight is
born, lives, is nourished, and reigns eternally
and makes me perceive how much heaven, earth, and hell conceal.
Love brings to light the true forms of absent things, regains
force and with a sure dart stabs and ever wounds the heart,
uncovers what is within.
Oh, therefore, vile herd, heed the truth, lend your ear to my
words that are not fallacious, senseless and squint-eyed ones,
open, open your eyes, if you can.
You believe the boy, because you understand little; because you
change swiftly, to you he seems fleeting; in your blindness, you
call him blind.
Love therefore shows him paradise because it makes him know, understand,
and accomplish the highest things, or because it gives grandeur at least in
appearance to the things loved. Fate snatches paradise away he says, for
often fate does not concede to the deceived lover all love has shown him,
inasmuch as what he sees and longs for is distant and opposed to him. It
presents me with every good, he says of the object, because the thing which
love points out to him seems to him unique, principal, and ultimate. It
withdraws it from me, he says of Jealousy, not because it actually wrings
every good from his presence and from his view, but because it makes the
good no longer a good but an agonizing evil; the sweet no longer sweet but
an agonizing languor. Therefore the heart, that is to say, the will find
joy, and finds it in that very will through the power of love regardless of
the outcome. The mind, in that part that recognizes that it partakes of an
ungracious fate has grief. The spirit, otherwise called the natural
affection, finds refreshment in being captivated by that object which gives
joy to the heart and can satisfy the intellect. The soul as the passive and
sensitive substance has a heavy burden because it finds itself oppressed by
the heavy weight of the jealousy which torments it.
After a consideration of his state, he adds a woeful lament, and says, Who
will rescue me from the conflict and give me peace; who will separate that
which wearies me and condemns me from that which pleases me, and open
heaven's gates to me, so that the burning flames of my heart may be sweet
and my tears be happy? Then, continuing his proposal, he adds:
O, Destiny, my enemy, go torment others. And you, Jealousy, go
forth from the world. That noble visage and insatiable Love
alone, assisted by their royal attendants can accomplish
everything;
for love snatches me from life, she from death, she gives me
wings, he burns my heart; he kills my soul; she revives it; she
is my systainer and he is my bereaved burden.
But what have I to say of Love, if Love and her noble visage are
only one being or one form, if by the same command and law
they leave one imprint in the center of my heart? They are not
two then. They are one which make my lot joyous and melancholy.
Four principles and extremes of two contraries he would reduce to two
principles and one contrariety. This is why he says, Ah me, torment the
others, which is to say, it is enough, oh my destiny, that you have
oppressed me to this extent, and (since you cannot exist without activity)
turn your fury elsewhere. And you, Jealousy, go forth from the world,
because one of the other two which remain will be able to take your
vicissitudes and functions upon itself: for you, my destiny, are not other
than my Love, and you, Jealousy, are not foreign to Love's substance.
Therefore it is Love that remains to deprive me of life, to burn me, to
give me death and to put all its weight upon my bones. As for her noble
visage, it remains there to snatch me from death, to give me wings, to
revise and sustain me. Finally, these two principles and one contrariety he
reduces to a single principal and to a single efficacy, when he says: but
what have I to say of Love? If her visage belongs to his empire, which is
none other than that of Love; if then the law of Love is the same as her
law; if the impression of Love sealed in my heart is certainly none other
than her impression, what need is there, then, having called it a noble
visage, to speak of it again as an insatiable Love?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Second Dialogue
T. Here the frenzied one begins to reveal his passions and disclose the
wounds which are represented as wounds of the body, but are substantially
or essentially wounds of the soul; and he speaks thus:
I who carry the lofty banner of love, have frozen hopes and burning
desires: at one and the same time I tremble, freeze, burn, and sparkle, I
am dumb, and I fill the sky with ardent shrieks.
My heart throws off sparks, while my eyes distil water; and I live and die,
laugh and lament; the waters remain living, and the fire does not die,
because I have Thetis in my eyes and Vulcan in my heart.
I love another and despise myself; but if by spread my wings, the other is
changed to stone; the other is raised to heaven, if I am thrust below;
the other always flees, if I ceaselessly pursue; if I call, there is no
reply, and the more I seek, the more is hidden from me.
A propos of this poem I would like to return to what I was saying a little
while ago. It is not necessary to tire one's self out proving what is so
evident:
nothing is pure and unmixed (and, as some used to say, nothing that is a
composite is a true entity; for composite gold is not pure gold and mixed
wine is not true and pure wine); moreover, all things are made of
contraries, and because of this composition in all things never do the
affections which engage us bring us delight without also bringing something
bigger. In fact, I shall go further; if it were not for the bitter in
things there would not be delight, just as hard labor makes us find delight
in rest; separation is the cause of our finding pleasure in union; and if
we investigate the matter generally, it will always be found that one
contrary is the occasion for the other contrary's desirability and
pleasure.
C. Then there is no delight without its contrary?
T. Definitely not, just as without its opposite there is no pain, as the
Pythagorean poet expresses it when he says:
They fear and desire, sorrow and rejoice; nor do their eyes
pierce the air while barred in the blind darkness of their prison
house (Virgil, Aeneid vi. 733-734)
Such are the consequences of the composition of things. This is how it
happens that none is satisfied with his lot, except some insensate and
stupid person, satisfied so much the more as he finds himself in the last
degree of the obscure phase of his folly; for then he has little or no
apprehension of his evil, he enjoys the present without fear of the future,
he is fully content with himself and with the world which surrounds him,
and he has no remorse or care for what is or may be; and finally, he as no
sense of the contrariety represented by the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil.
C. From this we see that ignorance is the mother of felicity and sensuous
happiness; and this same happiness is the garden of paradise of the
animals, as it is made clear in the dialogues of the Cabala of the Pegasian
Horse and in that which the wise Solomon says: Who increases wisdom,
increases sorrow (Eccl. 1.18).
T. From this we learn that heroic love is a torment, because it does not
rejoice in the present as animal love does but in the future and the
absent; and its contrary awakens in it ambition, emulation, suspicion, and
fear. Thus one of our neighbors said one evening after dinner: Never was I
so happy as I am now; -- Giouanni Bruno, father of the Nolan, replied: --
Neither were you ever more mad than now. --
C. Do you mean then, that he who is sad, is wise, and he who is sadder is
even wiser?
T. No, in fact I mean that in these is another species of madness, and one
much worse.
C. If he who is content is mad, and he is who is sad is mad, then who has
wisdom?
T. He who is neither content nor sad.
C. Who then? He who sleeps? He who has no feeling? He who is dead?
T. No; but he who endures, observes, and understands; who, considering the
evil and the good, holding the one and the other as something variable and
subject to movement, mutation, and change (so that the end of one contrary
is the beginning of the other, and the extreme stage of one is the
commencement of the other), takes care neither to humiliation himself, nor
becomes puffed up with pride, moderates his inclinations and tempers his
desires; for him it is an established fact that pleasures not pleasure,
because he is ever aware of its limits, and in the same way pain to him is
not pain, because he is aware of its limits by the power of reflection. In
this manner the wise holds all mutable things as things which do not exist,
and he believes these are nothing else but vanity and nothingness, because
the same proportion exists between finite time and eternity that exists
between mere point and the line.
C. So that never can we appropriately hold the view that we are content or
discontent without also holding that we are mad and without expressly
confessing it; and no one who debates the question and thus participates in
it will be wise. Consequently in the end everyone will be mad.
T. I do not intend this conclusion; for I would call him most wise who
could truly express one of his contrary states occasionally by means of the
other: -- Never have I been less happy than now; -- or again: -- Never have
I been less sad than now --.
C. But where two contrary feelings are evident, how is it that you do not
see two contrary qualities? I mean, why do you understand the minimum
happiness and the minimum sadness and two virtues and not as one vice and
one virtue?
T. For the reason that both contraries in excess (that is, when they begin
to go beyond their limits) are vices, for they exceed their range; and
inasmuch as these move toward the lesser degree they become virtue because
they are contained and enclosed within their extremes.
C. How is the state of lesser content and the state of lesser sadness not
one virtue and one vice, but two virtues?
T. I say further that they are one and the same virtue; for where there is
contrariety there is vice; and contrariety is there above all where the
extreme is; the greater contrariety is nearest to the extreme, and least
contrary or no contrary at all is in the middle where the extremes meet and
become one and indifferent. For example, between the extremes of hot and
cold is the more cold, and in the middle is the point you can call either
hot or cold, or neither hot nor cold, a point at which no extremes are
found. In the same way he who is the least content and the least happy is
at the degree of indifference, and finds himself in the house of temperance
where virtue resides and the condition of a strong soul, which does not
give way to the south wind for the north.
This is the reason why, to come to our point, the heroic frenzy, which our
present discourse somewhat clarifies, differs from other more ignoble
frenzies not as virtue differs from vice, but as vice practiced in a divine
way by a more divine subject differs from vice practiced in a bestial way
by a more bestial subject. Therefore, the difference is not according to
the form of vice itself, but according to the subjects who practice it in
different ways.
C. From what you have said, I can very will infer the state of this
frenzied lover who says, I have frozen hopes, and burning desires, because
he is not in the temperance of indifference, but in the excess of
contraries, his soul in discord; if he trembles in frigid hopes, he burns
in hot desires; and if his insatiability wrings shrieks from him, fear
renders him dumb; he throws off sparks from his heart for the love of
another, and in compassion for himself tears flow from his eyes; he dies in
the laughter of another, lives in his own complaints; and as one who no
longer belongs to himself, he loves another and despises himself. Similarly
physicians say that matter hates its present form in proportion to its love
of the form that it does not have. And thus the eighth verse concludes with
the war which the soul has within itself; and then, when the poet says in
the sestet, but if I spread my wings, the other is changed to stone, and in
what follows, he shows the suffering imposed upon him by the war he wages
with the contraries external to him.
I recall having read this sentence in Iamblicus, where the Egyptian
mysteries are treated, Impiously he has a divided will; therefore he can
live neither with himself nor with others.
T. Now listen to another sonnet whose import follows upon what has been
said:
Ah, what a condition, what a nature, or what a destiny is mine! I
endure a living death, and a dead life! Ah me! love has killed me
by such a death, so that I am deprived of both life and death.
Drained of hope at the gates of hell, overflowing with desire, I
reach out to heaven; and as an eternal slave to two contraries, I
am banished from heaven and from hell.
There is no respite for my pain, because between two burning
wheels, one which draws me here, the other there,
like Ixion, I must pursue myself and escape myself, because the
spur and the bit provide a contrary lesson to my doubtful fifth
discourse.
He shows how he endures the division and discord within himself. The
discord occurs when the affection, leaving the middle region and final goal
of temperance, tends to one and the other extreme; and when the affection
is transported high or to the right, it is also transported below and to
the left.
C. How does that affection which is neither exactly at one or the other
extreme fail to come within the state or bounds of virtue?
C. Affection is in the state of virtue when it establishes itself in the
mean, departing from the one and the other extreme; when it tends to be
extremes, inclining to one or the other of them, it falls short of virtue
so much that it becomes a double vice; and vice consists in this, that a
thing deviates from its own nature whose perfection consists in unity; and
the composition of virtue is at the point where the contraries unite.
Here, then, is how he is dead though living, and alive while dying; as when
he says, I endure a living death and a dead life. He is not dead, because
he lives in the object, he is not alive, because he is dead to himself; he
is deprived of death, because he nurtures thoughts in the object; he is
deprived of life, because in himself he neither can vegetate nor sense
anything. Besides, he is most base when he considers the loftiness of the
intelligible object and realizes the weakness of his power. He is most
lofty through the aspiration of the heroic desire that carries him far
above the limit of his own nature, most lofty through the intellectual
appetite whose operation and design is not to join his desire to its
object; and he is most base because of the violence brought upon him by the
contrary sensuality weighing down toward the inferno. Therefore, finding
himself rising and falling, in his soul he feels the greatest discord
possible, and he remains confused by the rebellion of the sensuality which
spurs him to the point where reason, acting in a contrary way, restraints
him. This is precisely what is shown in the following dialogue. Here reason
interrogates in the name of Filenio, and the frenzied lover replies in the
name of Pastore, who labors to watch over the flock of his thoughts, which
he feeds in the homage and service of his nymph, that is, in the service of
the affection of that object to which he has become enslaved.
F. Shepherd boy!
P. What do you wish?
F. What are you doing?
P. I suffer.
F. Why?
P. Because both life and death reject me.
F. Who is responsible?
P. Love.
F. That mischievous one?
P. That mischievous one.
F. Where is he?
P. In the center of my heart, strongly fixed.
F. What does he do there?
P. He stabs.
F. Whom?
P. Me.
F. You?
P. Yes.
F. With what means?
P. With her eyes, portals of heaven and hell.
F. Do you have hope?
P. I do.
F. Pity?
P. Pity.
F. The pity of whom?
P. Of her who tortures me night and day.
F. Does she have it too?
P. I don't know.
F. You're mad.
P. But what if such madness is pleasant to the soul?
F. Does she promised anything?
P. No.
F. Does she refuse?
P. Not even that.
F. Is she silent?
P. Yes, because decorum has taken the boldness from me.
F. Your raving.
P. Why?
F. Because you suffer.
P. I fear her disdain more than I do my torments.
He tells of his intense pain, he laments of his love certainly not because
he loves (for new no lover really dislikes loving) but because he loves
unhappily and has submitted to the arrows which are the rays of those eyes,
which, accordingly as they express disdain and refusal, or on the contrary
as they express benevolence and favor, become the portals which lead to
heaven, or, on the other hand, to hell. Therefore he is maintained in the
hope of future and uncertain mercy, and in the condition of present and
certain martyrdom. And even though his own madness may be clearly evident
to him, never does he managed to correct himself of it is at any point; nor
can he even conceive of it as unpleasant; and the more he errs because of
that madness the more he delights in it, and he shows us where he says:
May it never be that I lament of love, for without love I never
would be happy.
Next he shows another species of frenzy, nourished by a certain light of
reason, a species which excites fear and destroys the madness already
mentioned, so that it does not lead to any act that would irritates or
disdain the thing loved. Therefore, he says his hope is founded upon the
future, although nothing is promised or denied him; for he is silent and
asks nothing for fear of offending chastity. He does not dare explain
himself or make any proposal which could avail to exclude him by a
rejection, or assure him by a promise; for in his mind the evil that could
come to him in the one case weighs more than the good that could come to
him in the other. He shows himself, then, more readily dispose to suffer
his particular torment forever than to risk opening the door to what might
be an occasion of trouble and sadness to his beloved object.
C. This proves his love is truly heroic, for he wishes for himself the
favor of her spirit and the good will of affection as objects more
important than her corporeal beauty, a beauty in which the love he has for
the divine is not satisfied.
T. You know very well that there are three species of Platonic raptures.
One tends to the contemplative or the speculative life; one toward the
active or moral life and the last toward the life of idleness and
voluptuousness; similarly there are three species of love: one which from
the aspect of the corporeal form rises to a consideration of the spiritual
and the divine; another which perserveres only in the delight of the sight
and in conversation; and finally another which descends from a sight to the
concupiscence of the touch. Of these three modes others are composed,
accordingly as the first is accompanied by the second or by the third, or
as all three concur together; and beyond this each one of these is
multiplied into others besides, according to the affections of the frenzied
lovers which tend either more to the spiritual or more toward the corporeal
object or toward both of them equally. As a result, among those who are
found in this band, imprisoned as they all are in love's snare, some
propose for the accomplishment of their desire to gather the fruit of the
tree of corporeal beauty, and, failing in this satisfaction (or at least in
some hope of it), they deem decisive and vain every other amorous labor.
This is the way of those who are of a barbarous mind, who neither can nor
desire to attain greater dignity for themselves by loving worthy things, by
aspiring toward illustrious things, and higher still, by applying their
ardors and their deeds to divine things; for to such ardors and deeds
nothing but heroic love can more generously and efficaciously supply the
wings. The goal others propose for themselves is the fruit of gratification
they take from the aspect of beauty and grace of spirit which shines and
radiates in bodily charm; and although some of these love the body and long
very much for union with a body, lament its inaccessibility and are
saddened by separation from it, they always fear their claim to it might
deprive them of the affability, conversation, friendship, and concord most
important to them; for the assurance of the success of their efforts could
not be greater than the fear of losing the favor they looked upon as a
thing so glorious and worthy.
C. Because of the many virtues and perfection found in the human mind,
Tansillo, it is worthy to seek, accept, nourish, and preserve such a love;
but one must still take great care not to debase himself by becoming
obligated to an unworthy and degraded object, lest he participate in its
ignobility and indignity. I believe this was the significance of the
counsel given by the poet of Ferarra:
Seek to rescue him who steps into love's snare without having
your wings entangled.
T. To tell the truth, an object of no greater splendor than beauty of the
body is not worthy of being loved for any other purpose than to propagate
the species (as they say); and it seems to me proper to the swine and the
horse to be tormented for that purpose; as for myself never have I been
more fascinated by such a beauty than I am now over some statue or
painting, for these, it seems to me, are things of the same order. It would
be then a great shame for a noble spirit to say, speaking of a filthy,
vile, sluggish, and ignoble soul (no matter how excellent its corporeal
dress), I fear her scorn more than my torment.
Third Dialogue
T. There are many species of frenzies and these may be all reduced to two
sorts. The first accordingly displays only blindness, stupidity, and an
irrational impulse which tends to bestial folly; the second consists in a
certain divine rapture which makes some become superior to ordinary men.
The frenzies of the last sort are divided into two species; for some of
those who experience them, because they have become habitations of the gods
or divine spirits, speak and do admirable things for which neither they
themselves nor anyone else understand the reason; and these commonly have
been raised to this state from having first been undisciplined and ignorant
and void of any spirits and sense of their own; in them, as in a room which
has been scoured, is introduced a divine sense and spirit which has less
chance of revealing itself in those who are endowed with their own sense
and reason, for sometimes it is necessary that the world devoutly believe
that it is given to some men to speak and act under the influence of a
superior intelligence, inasmuch as their speech does not arise from their
own study and experience; consequently, the multitudes may justly show her
greater admiration and faith in men so endowed. Others, because of a custom
or habit of contemplation, and because they are naturally endowed with a
lucid and intellectual spirit, when under the impact of an internal
stimulus and spontaneous fervor spurred on by the love of divinity,
justice, truth and glory, by the fire of desire and inspired purpose, they
make keen their senses and in the sulphurous cognitive faculty enkindle a
rational flame which raises their vision beyond the ordinary. And these do
not go about speaking an acting as mere receptacles and instruments, but as
chief inventors and authors.
C. Which of these two species do you esteem the superior?
T. Those who are of the first sort have within them a great dignity, power,
and efficacy inasmuch as they harbor the dignity. But those who belong to
the second class are of their very selves more worthy, powerful, and
efficatious; they are divine. Those who belong to the first are worthy in
the same way as the ass who carries the sacraments; those who belong to the
second have a worthiness that is truly sacred. In those of the first class
the divinity is considered and viewed according to its effect and is
admired, adored, and obeyed; in those of the second, the excellence of
their special humanity is considered and brought to light.
Now we come to our purpose. These frenzies of which we speak, and whose
manifestations are seen in these dialogues, do not arise from
forgetfulness, but from a remembrance. They are not undirected frenzies,
but love and desire for the beautiful and the good, a model of perfection
one proposes to attain for himself by being transformed into its likeness.
It is not the rapture of one caught in the snare of bestial passion under
the law of an unworthy fate; but a rational force following the
intellectual perception of the good and the beautiful comprehensible to man
to whom they give pleasure when he conforms himself to them, so that he is
enkindled by their dignity and light, and is invested with the quality and
condition which makes him illustrious and worthy. By intellectual contact
with that godlike object he becomes a god; and he has thoughts of nothing
but things divine and shows himself insensible and impassible to those
things which ordinary men feel the most and by which for they are most
tormented; he fears nothing, and in his love of divinity he scorns other
pleasures and does not give any thought to his life. It is not the
melancholy frenzy which -- beyond counsel, reason, and prudence -- will
make him stray at the mercy of chance and carry him in the flow of its
ruinous tempest, as those who, having transgressed certain laws of the
divine Adrastia, were condemned to the butchery of the Furies and to the
loss of all peace by a conflict that was physical, arising from seditions,
ruin, and maladies, as well as spiritual, arising from the loss of harmony
between the rational and appetitive powers; but it is a heat enkindled in
the soul by the sun of the intellect, and a divine force which sets wings
upon him; so that always bringing him closer to the intellectual sun,
rejecting the rust of earthly cares he becomes gold proven and pure,
acquires the feeling of divine and internal harmony, and conforms his
thoughts and acts to the common measure of the law innate in all things. He
is not as one inebriated by the vessel of Circe who goes from ditch to
ditch and from rock to rock, plunging and stumbling; nor is he like a
variable Proteus always changing himself from one appearance to another,
without ever finding any place, or mode, or manner of settling or fixing
himself, but without disturbing his balance he conquers and overcomes the
terrible monstrous; and if he happens to decline, he returns easily to the
sixth sphere, thanks to those profound instincts within him which are like
the nine Muses who dance and sing around the splendor of the universal
Apollo; and beneath sensible images and material objects he perceives the
laws of divine wisdom. It is true that sometimes, having for an escort
Love, who is twofold, and because he sees himself often defrauded of the
fruits of his efforts by some rising obstacle, then, like one insensible
and frenzied, he overthrows the love of what he cannot understand; and thus
confused by the abyss of divinity, sometimes he gives up the contest. Then
he returns, nevertheless, and forces himself to attain by his will what he
cannot obtain by his reason. It is also true that he usually wanders at
random and transports himself now toward one and now toward another form of
twofold Eros, for the chief lesson love teaches him is to contemplate the
shadow of the divine beauty (when he cannot contemplate its direct
reflection), as, for example, the suitors of Penelopy amused themselves
with her servants when they were not permitted to converse directly with
the mistress herself. Now to conclude, you can understand from what has
been said, of what species this frenzied one is, whose image is shown us in
these verses:
If the butterfly wings its way to the sweet light that attracts
it, it is because it knows not that the fire is capable of
consuming it; if the thirsty stag runs to be brook, it is because
he is not aware of the cruel bow.
If the unicorn runs to its chaste nest, it is because he does not
see the noose which is prepared for him. In the light, at the
fount, in the bosom of my love's light, I see the flames, the
arrows and the chains.
If my languishing is so sweet to me, it is because the heavenly
face delights me so, and because the heavenly bow so sweetly
wounds;
And because in that knot is bound up my desire, I suffer
eternally through the fire of my heart, the arrow in mind brest,
and the yoke upon my soul.
Here he shows that his of is not like that of the butterfly, the stag or
the unicorn, who would run away if they had some idea of the fire, of the
arrow and the noose, and who perceive nothing but what pleases them. He, on
the contrary is guided by a most keenly felt and only too lucid frenzy,
which makes him love that fire more than any other consideration, that
wound more than any state of health, those chains more than any other
freedom. For this evil is not an evil absolute; it is an absolute evil only
with respect to what is held good according to a certain opinion. And this
opinion is as fallacious as the condiment old Saturn used (for his dinner),
when he devoured his own sons. For this evil in the eyes of the absolute
and of eternity is understood either as a good, or as a guide leading us to
the good; for this fire is the burning desire for divine things, this arrow
is the impact of the ray of the beauty of the divine light, these yokes are
the species of the true and the good which unite and join our minds to the
primal truth and the supreme good. I spoke in this sense when I said:
By so beautiful a fire and so noble a yoke, beauty enkindles me,
and chastity entangled me, so that I must be happy in fire and in
slavery; liberty I must flee and I must dread the ice.
The conflagration is such that I burn yet am not consumed, and
the yoke is such that the world celebrates it with me; neither am
I frozen by dread, nor undone by grief; but my ardor is tranquil,
my burden sweet.
I perceive so lofty a light that I am enkindled by it, and a
noose devised of such rich yarn, that as contemplation grows,
desire dies.
Because so beautiful a flame enkindles my heart, and the desire
for so sweet a bond compels me, darkness is my servant and my
ashes glow.
All loves (if they are heroic, and not purely animal, the physical means by
which those enslaved by nature are called to procreation) have divinity for
their object and tend to the divine beauty, a beauty which first
communicates itself to the souls and is resplendent in them, and then, from
the soul, or better still, through the souls, is communicated to the body.
Thus a well-ordered passion loves the body, or corporeal beauty, only
because it is a sign of the beauty of spirit. In fact we become enamoured
of the body because of a certain spirituality we see in it, a spirituality
called beauty, and a beauty which does not consist in larger or smaller
dimensions, in determined colors or forms, but in a certain harmony and
concordance of the bodily members and hues. To the most acute and
penetrating senses, this harmony of members shows a certain sensible
affinity to the spirit; consequently, those who are so endowed fall in love
more easily and more intensely and they also fall out of love more easily
and are more intensely provoked. This ease and intensity can be explained
by a change that takes place in the beloved object as it expresses an ugly
spirit made evident in some gesture or in some expressed intention; so that
as such ugliness passes from the soul to the body, the body no longer seems
beautiful as it once seemed. The beauty of the body, then, has the power to
enflame, but certainly does not have the power to bind the lover and keep
him from fleeing from it, if that body is not assisted by the grace of
spirit he desires or by chastity, courtesy, and sagaciyy.
C. Do not believe that this is always so, Tansillo; for sometimes, although
we discover a vicious spirit, we remain none the less enflamed and ensnared
by it; or although the reason recognizes the evil and baseness of such
love, it does not have the virtue of throwing off the disordered appetite.
I believe the Nolan found himself in a like disposition when he wrote:
Ah me, a frenzy constraints be to cling to my evil; which makes
love appear to me as a supreme good.
Ah me, my soul is not troubled that it is always bound by
contrary counsels; with that cruel tyranny which nourishes me in
torment and has had power to exile me from myself, I am content
more than with my freedom.
I hoist my sails to the wind, which pulls me toward the odious
good and leads me to sweet tempestuous damnation.
T. This occurs when both souls are vicious and as though spotted by the
same ink, so that, because of their likeness love is aroused, enkinded, and
confirmed. Thus the vicious meet each other in a practice of the same vice.
And here I shall not be silent about what I know from experience. I have
had occasion to discover in a certain soul vices particularly abhorrent to
me such as sordid avarice, a most gravelling appetite for gain, ungrateful
disregard of favors and courtesies granted, and an affinity for certain
thoroughly vile persons (the most displeasing of all vices, because it
leaves the lover with no hope of ever being or becoming more worthy of his
beloved, or of becoming more acceptable to her); none the less I did not
fail to burn for her corporeal beauty. But the reason? I loved her without
good will, and if this had not been the case, I would have been made sad
rather than happy by her shamefulness and wretchedness.
C. That distinction between loving and having good will toward the beloved
is very apt and to the point.
T. Yes. For toward many do we have good will, which is to say, that we wish
them to be wise and just, but we do not love them, because they are
iniquitous and ignorant. And many we love because they are beautiful, but
we do not wish them well because they do not merit it; and among those
things he deems his beloved does not merit, the first is the love he as for
her. For that reason he regrets loving her the more he is unable to refrain
from doing so. This is the regret he refers to when he says, Ah me, a
frenzy constrains me to cling to my evil. But he was in an opposite frame
of mind when he said, either referring to another corporate object in
similitude, or to a truly divine subject:
Though you inflict upon me such cruel tortures, even so I thank
you, and owe you much, Love, for you opened my breast with so
generous a wound and have so mastered my heart,
that it truly adores a divine and living object, most beautiful
image of God on earth. Let him who will, think my fate cruel
because it kills in hope and revives in desire.
I am nourished by my high enterprise; and although the soul does
not attain the end desired and is consumed by so much zeal,
it is enough that it burns in so noble a fire; it is enough that
I have been raised to the sky and delivered from the ignoble
number.
Here his love is completely heroic and divine. And I would understand it as
heroic and divine, even though because of it he speaks of himself as
afflicted by such cruelty tortures; for every lover who is separated from
the beloved (to which, joined by his desire, he would also be joined in
act) finds himself in anguish and pain, crucifies himself and torments
himself. He is so tormented, not only because he loves and is conscious
that his love is most worthily and nobly employed, but because his love is
deprived of that fruition which it would attain if it had arrived at the
end toward which it tends. He does not suffer because of that desire which
enlivens him, but because of the difficulty of the labor which martyrs him.
Thus others consider him as being in an unhappy condition because of the
fate which seems to have condemned him to these torments; as for himself,
despite these torments, he will not fail to recognize his debt to Love and
will not fail to render thanks to it, because it has brought an
unintelligible form before his mind. For in that intelligible form,
although he is enclosed within the prison of the flesh during this earthly
life, bound by his sinews and confined by his very bones, he has been
permitted to contemplate an image of the divinity more exalted than would
have been possible had some other species and simitude of it been offered
him.
C. The god-like and living object of which he speaks, then, is the highest
intelligible aspect of the divinity he is able to experience for himself;
and it is not some corporeal beauty which would obscure his thought as it
appears superficially to the sense.
T. True, because no sensible thing or species of it can be elevated to so
much dignity.
C. Then hope is it that he mentions the intelligible form as the object (of
his love) if, as it seems to me, the true object is the divinity itself?
T. The divinity is the final object, the ultimate and the most perfect
object, but it certainly cannot be found here below where we can see God
only as in a shadow or a mirror; and for that reason the divinity can be
the object only in similitude, and not a similitude abstracted and acquired
from corporeal beauty and excellence by virtue of the senses, but a
similitude the mind can discern by virtue of the intellect. When it has
reached this state, the mind begins to lose love and affection for every
other sensible as well as intelligible object, for joined to that light it
becomes that light, and consequently becomes a god. For the mind draws the
divinity unto itself, being in God by the effort to penetrate the divinity
(as much as it can); and God is in that mind, for after having penetrated
the divinity the mind will conceive the dignity and (as much as it can)
will receive the divinity and retain a concept of it. Now the human
intellect feeds itself upon species and similitudes in this inferior world,
inasmuch as it is not permitted to contemplate the beauty of the divinity
with purer eyes. Thus he who arrives at some most excellent and most
beautifully adorned edifice and considers it in each detail, is pleased,
contented, and filled with a noble wonder; but then should it happen that
he also see the lord of these images in his incomparably greater beauty, he
would abandon every concern and thought of such images, turn and become
completely intent upon the contemplation of that lord. Such is the
difference between the state in which he see the divine beauty in its
intelligible aspects which are drawn from the divine beauty's effects,
operations, designs, shadows, and similitudes, and that other state in
which we might be permitted to see it in its own unique being.
Then he says, I am nourished by my high enterprise because (as the
Pythagoreans knew) in this way the soul is turned and moves toward God, as
the body moves toward the soul.
C. The body, then, is not the abode of the soul?
T. No; for the soul is not in the body locally, but is in it intrinsically
as its form, and extrinsically as creator of its form, similar to that
which forms the members and shapes the composite from within and from
without. It is the body, then, that is in the soul; the soul is in the
mind, and the mind either is God or is in God, as Plotinus said. And just
as by its essence the mind is in God who is its life, similarly by its
intellectual operation and the consequent operation of the will, the mind
refers itself to its own light and its beatific object. It is therefore
with dignity that this passion of the heroic frenzy feeds itself upon so
high an enterprise. Although the beatific object is infinite, and in act
perfectly simple, and although our intellective potency is unable to
comprehend the infinite, except in speech or in a certain manner of
speaking, or, as otherwise said, by a certain potential reason and natural
disposition, he of whom we speak does not differ from one who would aspire
toward the immeasurable as an end where in fact there is no end
C. And this is most nobly as it should be; for, in fact, the last end ought
not to have an end, otherwise it would not be the last. Therefore it is
infinite in purpose, in perfection, in essence, and in every matter
possible.
T. You speak the truth. Now in this life the peculiarity of such
nourishment is that it enflames the desire more than it can satisfy it, as
that divine poet shows us well in the words, My soul languishes in the
desire for the living God; and elsewhere when he who says, "My eyes are
diminished as they gaze into the heavens" (Isaiah 38:14). This is why our
own poet says, And though the soul does not attain the end desired and is
consumed in so much zeal, it is enough that it burns in so noble a fire. He
means the soul is consoled in this ardor and receives all the glory
possible to it in its present state, and participates in that ultimate
frenzy of man, inasmuch as he is a man in the state in which he finds
himself presently as we see him.
C. I imagine the Peripatetics (as Averroes explained) have this in mind,
when they say the ultimate happiness of man consists in attaining
perfection in the speculative sciences.
T. It is true, and they put it very well. For in this condition of ours we
cannot desire or attain greater perfection than that which is ours when our
intellect through the medium of some noble intelligible species is united
either to the separate substances, as some say, or to the divine mind, if
we employ the idiom of the Platonists. And I shall omit discussion about
the soul, or man in another state and mode of existence in which he may
find or believe himself.
C. But what perfection and satisfaction can man find in a cognition which
is not perfect?
T. Cognition can never be perfect to the extent that it shall be able to
understand the highest object; but only to the extent that our intellect
has the power to understand this object. It suffices that in this state of
ours and in any other our intellect may perceive be divine beauty to the
degree that it extends the horizon of its vision.
C. But all man cannot reached that point, but only one or two.
T. It is enough that all attempt the journey. It is enough that each one do
whatever he can; for a heroic mind will prefer falling or missing the mark
nobly in a lofty enterprise, whereby he manifests the dignity of his mind,
to obtaining perfection in things less noble, if not base.
C. Certainly a worthy and heroic death is preferable to an unworthy and
vile triumph.
T. A similar thought inspires the following sonnet:
Since I have spread my wings toward sweet delight, the more do I
feel the air beneath my feet, the more I spread proud pinions to
the wind, and contemn the world, and further my way toward
heaven.
Nor does the cruel fate of Daedalus's son burden me, on the
contrary I follow his way the more: that I shall fall dead upon
the earth I am well aware; but what life compares with this
death?
I hear the voice of my heart upon the wind: Where do you take me,
adventurous one? Resign yourself, for too much temerity is rarely
without danger.
I reply: fear not boble destruction, burst boldly through the
clouds, and die content, if heaven destines us to so illustrious
a death.
C. I understand when he says, It is enough that I have been raised to the
sky; but not when he says, and delivered from the ignoble number; unless he
means that he has come out of the Platonic cavern, removed from the
condition of the stupid and most vile multitudes; for it is understood that
those who profit from this contemplation can be only a very small number.
T. You have understood it very well. Moreover, by the ignoble sod it is
possible that he means the body and the sensual cognition from which he who
would become united to a nature of a contrary kind must raise and disengage
himself.
C. The Platonists speak of two kinds of knots with which the soul is tied
to the body. One is a certain vivifying act which like a ray descends from
the soul to the body; the other is a certain vital quality in the body
which results from this act. Now in what manner do you understand that this
most noble moving number called the soul is disengaged from that ignoble
number which is the body?
T. It certainly was not meant that the soul can detach itself from the body
in some physical way, but in a way peculiar to its potencies, which, not
enclosed and enslaved within the bosom of matter, are sometimes as though
lulled and inebriated and find themselves nevertheless occupied in the
formation of matter and in the vivifaction of the body. Sometimes these
potencies, as though reawakened and remembering themselves, recovering
consciousness of their principle and origin, turn themselves to superior
things and force themselves toward the ineligible world as to their native
home; but sometimes the potencies tumble from the intelligible world by a
conversion to inferior things beneath the fate and necessities of
generation. These two drives are represented by the two kinds of
metamorphoses which the present sonnet describes:
That god who wields the resounding thunderbolt Asteria saw as a
furtive eagle, Mnemosyne saw as a shepherd, Danae saw as gold,
Alcmena saw as a fish, and Antiope as a satyr;
to the sisters of Cadmus he was a white bull, to Leda he was a
swan, and a dragon to the daughter of Demeter. I, because of the
loftiness of my object, from the most vile subject become a god.
Saturn was a horse, Neptune a dolphin, Ibis took the form of a
heifer, and Mercury became a shepherd,
Bacchus a grape, Apollo a raven; and I by the mercy of love, am
changed from a base thing into a deity.
There is in nature a revolution and a circle in virtue of which, for the
perfection and aid of others, superior things incline toward the inferior,
and for their own excellence and felicity inferior things are raisedto the
superior. But the Pythagoreans and the Platonists hold that souls, not only
by a spontaneous will which brings them to an understanding of natures, but
also by the necessity of an inward law written and recorded by a fatal
decree, at certain times set out to seek their own destinies justly
determined. And these say that if souls separate themselves from the
divinity, it is not so much from a rebellious will of their own, as from a
certain order in virtue of which they become inclined toward the material.
Therefore, not from a voluntary intention, but from a certain mysterious
consequence, they begin to fall. And this is why their tendency leads them
toward the lesser good called generation. (I will use the word lesser
insofar as it pertains to a particular nature; but not at all as it
pertains to universal nature, where nothing happens without the highest
purpose which disposes of all things according to justice.) Once they and
occupied themselves with generation, the souls (by a new conversion which
follows in turn) return once again to their superior states.
C. Would those have it, then, that the souls are impelled by the necessity
of fate, and that they have no counsel of their own to guide them at all?
T. Necessity, fate, nature, counsel, will, in things justly and impeccably
ordered, all concur. Besides, according to the inference of Plotinus, some
would have it that certain souls can escape their peculiar evil, those
souls which, before they are confirmed in their corporeal garb, recognizing
the danger, take refuge in the mind. Because the mind raises them to
sublime things, as imagination debases them to interior things; the mind
maintains them in rest and identity as the imagination in movement and
diversity; the mind forever understands the one, as the imagination forever
goes about inventing varied images. In the middle is the rational faculty
which is composed of everything, as that in which concurs the one and the
many, the same with the diverse, motion with position, the interior with
the superior.
Now this conversion and change is symbolized in the wheel metamorphoses, in
which a man is placed at the top, a beast lies at the bottom, one half-man
and half-beast descends from the left, and one half man and half beast
ascends from the right. This transformation is shown in which Jove,
according to the diversity of the affections and their manifestations
toward inferior things, invests himself in varying appearances, which
assume the forms of beasts; and the other deities likewise transform
themselves into ignoble and alien forms. And on the other hand, because of
the sense of their own dignity, they recover their own divine forms; just
as the heroic lover, raising himself by his conception of the species of
divine beauty and goodness upon the wings of his intellect and intellectual
will exalts himself toward the divinity, abandoning the form of more
ignoble thing. And for that reason he said: From a more vile creature I
become a God, I change into a deity from a base creature.
Fourth Dialogue
T. Now is described the path taken by heroic love, as it tends toward its
proper object, the supreme good, and the path taken by the heroic intellect
as it strives to attain its proper object, the primary or absolute truth.
All of the above is summarized in the first poem which expresses the
purpose to be developed in the following five. Thus he says:
The youthful Actaeon unleashes the mastiffs and the greyhounds to
the forests, when destiny directs him to the dubious and perilous
path, near the traces of the wild beasts.
Here among the waters he sees the most beautiful countenance and
breast, that ever one mortal or divine may see, clothed in purple
and alabaster and fine gold; and the great hunter becomes the
prey that is hunted.
The stag which to the densest places is wont to direct his
lighter steps, is swiftly devoured by his great and numerous
dogs.
I stretch my thoughts to the sublime prey, and these springing
back upon me, bring me death by their hard and cruel gnawing.
Actaeon represents the intellect intent upon the capture of divine wisdom
and the comprehension of the divine beauty. He unleashes the mastiffs and
the greyhounds; of these the greyhounds are swifter and the mastiffs more
powerful, for the operation of the intellect precedes the operation of the
will; but the latter in turn is the more vigorous and efficacious; since
divine goodness and beauty are more lovable than comprehensible to the
human intellect, and besides love moves and spurs the intellect to go
before it, like a lantern, to the forests, uncultivated and lonely, very
rarely visited and explored, with the result that few men have left the
traces of their steps there. The youth is of little experience and
practice, as one whose life is brief and whose frenzy is unstable. In the
dubious path refers to the uncertain and the ambiguous reason and passion
which the letter Y of Pythagoras symbolized. On the right this path shows
him the more thorny, uncultivated and deserted arduous path upon which he
unleashes the greyhounds and mastiffs near the traces of the wild beasts,
which are the intelligible modes of ideal concepts. These are hidden, are
pursued by few men, and visited most rarely, and do not offer themselves to
everyone who seeks them. Here among the waters, that is to say, in the
mirror of similitudes, in the works in which is resplendent the efficacy of
the divine goodness and splendor -- these works are represented by the
symbol of the superior and inferior waters over and beneath the firmament.
He sees the most beautiful countenance and breast, that is to say, he sees
the power and external operation which can be seen in the state and act of
diligent contemplation of a mortal or divine mind, by a man, or by some
deity.
C. If he compares divine and human comprehension and places them within the
same class, I believe that he does so not with respect to the two modes of
comprehension, which are very different, but with respect to the object of
contemplation which is one and the same.
T. That is it exactly. He says in purple, alabaster and gold, meaning the
purple of divine power, the gold of divine wisdom, the alabaste of divine
beauty, in the contemplation of which the Pythagoreans, Chaldeans,
Platonists, and others attempt to rise as best they can. The great hunter
sees: he as understood as much as he can, and he himself becomes the prey;
that is to say, this hunter set out for prey and became himself the prey
through the operation of his intellect whereby he converted the apprehended
objects into himself.
C. I see. For he gives shapes according to his mode to the intelligible
species and proportions them to his capacity inasmuch as they are received
according to a mode of him who receives them.
T. And he becomes the prey by the operation of the will whose act converts
him into the object.
C. I understand; for love converts and transforms into the thing loved.
T. You know very well that the intellect understands things intelligently,
that is, according to its own mode; and the will pursues things naturally,
that is, according to the manner in which things exist in themselves.
Therefore, Actaeon, who with these thoughts, his dogs, searched for
goodness, wisdom, beauty, and the wild beast outside himself, attained them
in this way. Once he was in their presence, ravished outside of himself by
so much beauty, he became the prey of his thoughts and saw himself
converted into the thing he was pursuing. Then he perceived that he himself
had become the coveted prey of his own dogs, his thoughts, because having
already tracked down the divinity within himself it was no longer necessary
to hunt for it elsewhere.
C. Then it is well said that the kingdom of God is within us, and that
divinity lives within us by virtue of the regenerated intellect and will.
T. Precisely. Actaeon becomes the prey of his own dogs, pursued by his own
thoughts, turns his feet and directs his new steps; is renewed for a divine
course -- that is, with greater facility and with a more efficatious
inspiration -- toward the densest places, toward the deserts, toward the
region of incomprehensible things: from the vulgar and common man he was,
he becomes rare and heroic, rare in all he does, rare in his concepts, and
he leads the extraordinary life. It is there that his great and numerous
dogs bring him death; thus he stops living according to the world of folly,
of sensuality, of blindness, and of illusion, and begins to live by the
intellect; he lives the life of the gods, he feeds upon ambrosia and is
drunk with nectar. Now, in the form of other similitude, he describes the
manner in which Actaeon arms himself for the attainment of the object, and
he says:
My solitary sparrow, no longer delay making your nest in that
place which clouds and fills all my thought. There, above, give
the full measure of your labor, your industry, and art.
Find new life there and raise your lovely offspring. Now that
cruel destiny has run its full course, it no longer impedes you
from your enterprise, as it used to do.
Go, a more noble refuge I desire for you -- and you shall have as
a guide a god who by those who see nothing is called blind.
Go, and may every god of this immense creation be merciful to
you; and return not to me, since you are no longer mine.
The lover's former progress symbolized by the hunter stirring his dogs here
is symbolized by a winged heart; and from the cage in which it reposed in
idleness and quiet it is dispatched to build its nest up on high, and to
raise its little ones there -- its thoughts -- the time having come in
which the obstacles posed by a thousand lures without and by the natural
feebleness within are no longer present. He gives the heart permission,
then, to attain a more noble state for itself, and turns it to a more lofty
design and purpose, now that those powers of the soul which the Platonists
have already represented by the two wings are more firmly developed. And as
a guide to the heart he designates that god whom the vulgar in their
blindness call blind and mad; and that god is love who by the mercy and
favor of heaven has the power to transform the heart into that other nature
to which it aspires, or, after its voyage of exile, to restore it to that
state from which it was banished. That is why he said, and return not to me
since you are no longer mine, so that not unworthily I may say with that
other poet:
You have left me, my heart, and light of my eyes, you are no
longer with me. (Ps. 37.11)
Next he describes the death of the soul, called by the Cabalists death of
the kiss, symbolized in the Canticle of Solomon, where the beloved lady
speaks these words:
Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth, because by his blows
too cruel a love makes me languish; (Cant. 1: 1, 5:6-8)
by others this death is called sleep, as in the Psalmist's words:
If I shall give sleep to my eyes, slumber to my eyelids, I shall
find in him peaceful repose. (Ps. 131: 4,5)
He then speaks for the soul as languid inasmuch as it is dead in itself,
and alive in its object:
O frenzied ones, take care of your hearts; for mine, too much
estranged from me, led away by a harsh and pitiless hand, finds
its happy sojourn where it is smitten and dies.
My thoughts call it back at every hour; and in revolt, foolish
falcon, it no longer knows that friendly hand, from which it has
flown forth not to return.
Wild beast, who satisfies while giving pains, you ensnare the
heart, the spirit, and the soul by your spurs, your flames, and
your chains,
by your glances, accents, and lures; and the one who lanquishes
and burns and does not return, who shall heal him, who shall cool
his fire and unloose his chains?
Here the sorrowing soul, not in real discontent, but in the passion of a
certain amorous martyrdom, speaks as though addressing its discourse to
those who are similarly impassioned. It has dismissed its heart, as it
were, against its will, for the heart directs its course toward an
impossible goal, extends itself where it cannot reach and would embrace
what it cannot grasp; and the more the heart is estranged from the soul,
the more does it enkindle itself toward the infinite.
C. Tansillo, how does it happen that the soul in this stage of its
development is happy in its own torment? Where does that spur come from
which always stimulates it beyond what it possesses?
T. From this which I shall tell you now. Although the intellect has arrived
at the apprehension of a certain definite intelligible form, and the will
to a desire in proportion to that apprehension, the intellect does not stop
there; for its own light impels it to think of that which contains every
genus of be intelligible and appetitive, until it is about to apprehend the
eminence of the source of ideas, the ocean of all truth and good. Thus it
happens that whatever species is represented to the intellect and
comprehended by the will, the intellect concludes there is another species
above it, a greater and still greater one, and consequently it is always
impelled toward new motion and abstraction in a certain fashion. For it
ever realizes that everything it possesses is a limited thing which for
that reason cannot be sufficient in itself, good in itself, or beautiful in
itself, because the limited thing is not the universe and is not the
absolute entity, but is contracted to this nature, this species or this
form represented to the intellect and presented to the soul. As a result,
from that beautiful which is comprehended, and therefore limited, and
consequently beautiful by participation, the intellect progresses toward
that which is truly beautiful without limit or circumscription whatsoever.
C. This procedure seems vain to me.
T. Not at all, in fact, because it is neither fitting nor natural that the
infinite be understood, or that it present itself as finite, for then it
would cease to be infinite; but it is perfectly in accord with nature that
the infinite, because of its being infinite, be pursued without end, in
that mode of pursuit which is not physical movement, but a certain
metaphysical movement. And this movement is not from the imperfect to the
perfect, but it goes circling through the degrees of perfection to reach
that infinite center which is neither form nor formed.
C. I would like to know how by circling you can arrive at the center.
T. This I cannot imagine.
C. Then why do you say it?
C. Because I can say it and leave it for you to consider.
C. If you don't mean that he who pursues the infinite is like one who,
moving along the circumference, seeks the center, I don't know what you
mean.
T. It is other than that.
C. Now if you don't wish to explain it, we'll not speak of it any more. But
tell me, if you will, what he means when he says that his heart is led away
by a harsh and pitiless hand?
T. He uses here a similitude or metaphor borrowed from common usage, which
calls cruel the object that gives no fruition, or, at best partial
fruition, and is more an object of desire than of possession, so that he
who has partial possession of it cannot rest in full happiness, because he
still desires it with an ardor which brings him to the point of a swooning,
and to the point of death.
C. What are those thoughts which call back the heart to retard it from so
noble an enterprise?
T. The sensitive and other natural affections which looks to the
preservation of the body.
C. What have these affections to do with the body which can in no way be of
any aid or assistance to them?
T. They have nothing to do with the body, but with the soul which, too
intent upon a single effort or goal, becomes remiss and shows little zeal
for anything else.
C. Why does he called his heart that foolish falcon?
T. Because it knows of things above.
C. Usually one calls foolish those who know less than others.
T. No. As a matter of fact those are called foolish whose knowledge does
not conform to the common rule, whether they tend to base things, having
less sense, or to higher things, having more intellect.
C. I believe you are right. Now tell me further. What are the spurs, the
flames, and the chains?
T. The spurs are those new pricks which stimulate and re-awaken the
affection in order to render it attentive; the flames are those rays of
beauty which enkindle the man who is ready to contemplate it; the chains
are the details and circumstances which fix the eyes of the attention and
firmly unite the intellectual powers to their object.
C. What are the glances, accents, and lures?
T. Glances are the persuasions whereby the object (as though it gazed at
us) presents itself to us; the accents are the persuasions the object uses
to inspire and inform us; if the lures are the circumstances which please
and attract us. So that the heart which sweetly languishes, gently burns,
and constantly perserveres in its enterprise, fears that its wound may
heal, that its fire will go out, and its knot be untied.
C. Now recite what follows.
T.
Lofty, profound, and living thoughts of mine, ready to flee the
maternal bonds of the afflicted soul, and disposed as archers to
aim where the lofty idea is born;
along these steep paths, heaven allows you to encountered the
cruel beast. Remember to return and recall the heart which lies
concealed in the hand of a savage goddess.
Arm yourselves with the love of the domestic fires, and curb your
sight so forcefully, that
these companions of my heart shall not make you stranger to it.
At least bring tidings of its delight and joy.
Here is described the natural solicitude of the soul made attentive to
generation by the friendship it has contracted with matter. The soul
dispatches its armed thoughts which, stimulated and spurred on by the
complaint of the inferior nature, are commanded to call back the heart. The
soul instructs its thoughts how they are to behave, for charmed and
attracted by the object as they are, they are not too easily seduced to
remain captives and companions of a heart. Therefore the soul tells them
they ought to arm themselves with the love which burns with domestic fires,
that is, the love friendly to generation to which they have an obligation,
and of which they are to be the messengers, ministers, and soldiers. The
soul, then, orders its thoughts to curb their sight, to close their eyes,
in order not to gaze upon any other beauty or goodness than the one present
to them, their friend and mother. And the soul finally concludes that,
should its thoughts not wish to be recalled for any other duty, they at
least can return to give the soul some news of the condition and state of
its heart.
C. Before you proceed further, I should like you to explain what the soul
means when it says to its thoughts, Curb your sight so forcefully?
T. I will tell you. All love proceeds from the sight, intellectual love
from the eye of the mind; sensible love from the view of the senses. Now
the word sight has two meanings. If it can mean the visual potency, that
is, the power of seeing of the intellect or of the eye; or it can also mean
the visual act, the application which the eye or the intellect makes upon
the material or intellectual object. Thus when the thoughts are advised to
curb the sight, it is not to be understood in the first way, but in the
second, because it is the visual potency become act which begets the
affection of the appetite, whether sensitive or intellectual.
C. This is what I desired to hear you say. Now if the visual act is the
cause of the evil or of the good which proceeds from the sight, how is it
that we love and desire the sight? And how does it happen that in the
matter of divine things our love is greater than our understanding?
T. We desire the sight because in some way we know the good of seeing, and
that the act of seeing offers us beautiful things. Therefore, we desire
that act because we desire beautiful things.
C. We desire the beautiful and the good, but the sight is neither beautiful
nor good; in fact, it is rather an instrument of comparison or light
whereby we see not only the beautiful and good, but also the wicked and the
ugly. It seems to me that the sight can be beautiful or good, as we can see
either white or black. Therefore, if the sight (which actively perceives)
is neither beautiful or good, how can it be desired?
T. It is not desired for itself, but surely because of some object,
inasmuch as the apprehension of an object cannot take place without it.
C. What will you say if the object is neither one of sense nor of
intellect? How, I ask, can the object be desired, or even seen, if there is
no knowledge of it at all, if it has not occasioned any act of intellect or
sense, in fact if one doubts whether it is an intelligible or sensible,
incorporeal or corporeal object, or whether it is one or two or more
objects, or of one or the other nature?
T. To that I would say that there exists in the sense and in the intellect
an appetite and impulse towards the sensible in general. This is because
the intellect desires to know all of the truth, in order to grasp all that
is beautiful and good in the intelligible world. The sensitive potency
wishes to be informed of all that comes within the class of the sensible,
and to grasp all that appears as beautiful and good to the senses. Thus we
desire no less to see things we have never seen than things we have already
understood and seen. But it does not follow from this that desire does not
proceed from cognition, and consequently that we desire things which we do
not know. On the contrary, I hold it to be well established that we do not
desire what is unknown. For if things are unknown with respect to their
particular natures, they are not unknown with respect to their general
natures; in the visual potency one finds everything which is visible in
aptitude, and in the intellective potency everything which is intelligible.
Therefore, because the inclination to act is in the aptitude, both the
visual and the intellectual potency are inclined to act toward the
universal, as toward something naturally understood as good. It follows,
then, that the soul was not addressing itself to the deaf or the blind,
when it counseled its thoughts to curb the sight; for although the sight
may not be the proximate cause of desire, it is nevertheless the primary
and underlying cause of it.
C. What do you mean by this last statement?
T. I mean that it is not the sensible or intelligible appearance of a form
or species which of itself moves the soul, for he who contemplates the form
as it is manifest to the eyes does not yet come to love it; but from the
instant when the soul conceives the form as an object no longer of sight
but of thought, no longer divisible but indivisible, no longer under the
species of a particular thing, but under the species of the good and the
beautiful, then at once love is born. Now this is the object from which the
soul would divert the eyes of its thoughts. This sight is wont to encourage
the inclination to love more than it sees; for as I said a little while
ago, the affection always considers -- by its universal knowledge of the
beautiful and the good -- that beyond the species of the good and the
beautiful, which it has been able to attain, there are infinitely more and
more species.
C. But how does it happen that having abstracted a species of beauty which
is a conception of the soul we still desire to feed upon its external
appearance?
T. Because the soul always desires to love more than it loves and to see
more than it sees. Moreover the soul desires that this species which the
sight has engendered in it should not become attenuated, enfeebled, or
lost. The soul therefore wishes to see even more and more, so that what
might become darkened to the soul's internal affection might be frequently
illumined by the external aspect of the species, which, having been the
beginning of its existence ought to be the beginning of its conservation. A
similar analogy exists between the act of seeing and the act of
understanding, for the sight is proportioned to visible objects exactly as
the intellect is proportioned to intelligible objects. I believe, then,
that you now understand the intention and sense of the words the soul
speaks when it says, curb your sight. C. I see very well. Now proceed to
relate what comes of these faults.
T. There follows the complaint of the mother against her sons who, having
opened their eyes and fixed them upon the splendor of the object, contrary
to her command, now wander in the company of the heart. Thus she says:
And you, cruel sons, you abandon me to embitter my pain the more;
and because you constantly oppose me, you carry off with you my
every hope.
For what reason do I remain conscious, oh covetous heavens? For
what reason are these powers mutilated and wasted, if not to make
of me the subject and example of so heavy a martyrdom and of so
long a punishment?
Oh, in the name of God, dear sons, let even my winged fire become
a prey, and let me see some one of you again
returned to me from those tenacious claws. Alas, no one returns,
a party consolation for my woe.
Here am I miserable, deprived of a heart, abandoned by my thoughts, bereft
of the hope I had entirely placed in them. Nothing else remains but the
sense of my poverty, unhappiness, and wretchedness. And what am I not
deprived of this sense too? Why does death not come to my aid, now that I
am deprived of life? For what purpose are my natural faculties deprived of
their power? How shall I be able to feed upon the intelligible species
alone, the food for the intellect, if my substance is a composite? How
shall I be able to remain in the company of these dear and friendly
members, which I have woven around myself; how shall I order them according
to the symmetry of their elements, if I am abandoned by my thoughts and
passions because they are intent on immaterial and divine food? Come, come,
oh my fleeting thoughts, my rebellious heart. Let the sense live on
sensible things and the intellect upon intelligible things. Let matter and
the corporeal subject be the support of the body, and the intellect be
satisfied by its own objects; so that this complex continue to subsist, so
that there be no dissolution of this machine, whose spirit unites the soul
to the body. Why, wretched that I am, rather by my own doing than through
external violence, do I witness this horrible divorce within my parts and
members? Why? Because the intellect meddles by ruling the sense and
depriving it of its nourishment; the sense, on the contrary, resists the
intellect, for it would live according to its own rules, and not according
to those of the other. Only its own rules and not those of the other can
assure its existence and its happiness, because it must care for its own
and not the other's convenience and life. There are no harmony and concord
where there is that uniformity whereby one nature wishes to absorb the
whole being; but harmony and concord are present where there is order and
due proportion among diverse things and where each thing serves its own
nature. Therefore let the sense feed itself according to the law of
sensible things, the flesh according to the law of the flesh, the spirit
according to the law of the spirit, the reason according to the law of the
reason; let them not be confused or troubled with one another. It suffices
that one does not at all alter or prejudice the law of the other. For if it
is unjust that the sense outrage the law of reason, it is equally blamable
that the reason tyrannize over the law of the senses, inasmuch as the
intellect is the greater wanderer and the sense more domestic and as though
in its own abode.
This is why it is then, oh my thoughts, that some of you are obligated to
care for your home, while others can set out to seek other cares elsewhere.
Such is the law of nature and such consequently is His law who is the
author and the principle of nature. Therefore you transgress when, seduced
by the beauties of the intellect, you leave the other part of me in danger
of death. Whence have you engendered this perverse and melancholy humour of
breaking certain natural laws of the true life, a life you hold in your
power, for an uncertain life that is nothing if not a shadow beyond the
limits of the imaginable? Does it seem natural to you that creatures should
refuse the animal or the human life in order to live the divine life when
they are not gods but only men and animals?
It is a law of fate and of nature that each thing work according to the
condition of its nature. Why, therefore, in pursuit of coverting the nectar
of the gods do you lose that nectar which is proper to you, afflicting
yourself perhaps with the vain hope of some other nectar? Do you not
believe that nature should disdain to accord you this other good, when you
so stupidly disdain the good she offers you?
Heaven scorns giving a second good
To one who has not held first one dear.
By these and similar arguments the soul, pleading the cause of its more
infirm part, seeks to recall the thoughts to the care of the body. But
those, although late, return and show themselves to it not in the form in
which they formerly departed; they return only to declare their rebellion
and to force the whole soul to follow them. That is why the soul utters the
dolorous complaint:
Oh, dogs of Actaeon, oh ungrateful beasts, whom I had directed to
the refuge of my goddess, you return to me devoid of hope; and
coming to the maternal shore,
too grievous a pain do you bring back. You tear me to pieces and
wish me deprived of life. Then leave me, life, become a double
stream deprived of its source, that I may reascend to my sun.
When will nature agree to release me of my grievous burden? When
will it come to pass that from here I too may raise myself
and swiftly be delivered to the lofty object and together with my
heart and common offspring dwell there?
The Platonists hold that with respect to its superior part the soul
consists only in the intellect, so that it is more reasonably called
intelligence than soul; for it is called soul only in so far as it vivifies
the body and sustains it. Therefore here the same essence which nourishes
the thoughts and maintains them on high in the vicinity of the exalted
heart experiences a sadness in its inferior part and recalls those thoughts
as rebels.
C. So that there are not two contrary essences, but only one essence
subject to two extremes of contrariety?
T. Exactly. As the ray of the sun reaches the earth and touches the
inferior and obscure elements it illuminates, vivifies and enkindles, but
is for all this no less in contact with the element of fire, that is, with
the star whence it proceeds, is diffused and has its principle and own
original subsistence, similarly the soul which is in the horizon of its
corporeal and incorporeal nature, raises itself to superior things and
inclines to inferior things. And you can see that this happens not by
reason and order of local motion, but only through the impulse of the one
and the other potency or faculty. For example when the sense mounts to the
imagination, the imagination to the reason, the reason to the intellect,
the intellect to the mind, then the whole soul converts itself to God and
inhabits the intelligible world. From there by a contrary conversion the
soul descends to the sensible world by the degrees of the intellect, the
reason, imagination, sense, and the vegetative faculty.
C. Indeed, I have been told that the soul that finds itself in the ultimate
degree of divine things, justly descends to the mortal body and from there
climbs again the divine degrees; and also that there are three degrees of
intelligences -- those in which the intellectual dominates over the animal,
called celestial intelligences; those in which the animal prevails over the
intellectual, called human intelligences; and others in which the two
balance each other as in the intelligences of demons or heroes.
T. In exercising its faculty, then, the mind can desire an object only to
the extent that it is near, proximate, known and familiar to it. Thus a pig
cannot wish to be a man nor desire anything appropriate to the appetite of
a man. He prefers to wallow in the mud rather than in a bed of fine linen;
he would sooner mate with a sow than with the most beautiful woman nature
produces, because the desire conforms to the nature of the species. And
among men one can see it is the same, according as some men are more or
less similar to one or another species of brute animals. Some men have
something of the quadruped, others something of the volatile animals and
perhaps these men have an affinity -- one I would not wish to describe --
which draws them to the love of certain kinds of beasts. Now, if the mind,
finding itself oppressed by the soul's tie to the body is permitted to
raise itself to the contemplation of another state which the soul can
attain, it certainly will be able to see the difference between one state
and the other, and to disdain the present for the sake of the future one.
Similarly, if a beast were sensible of the difference between his own
condition and that of man, between the state of his own ignobility and the
nobility of the human state which he would not deem impossible to achieve,
then, as a way out, he would prefer death to a life that would detain him
in his present existence. Therefore at this point when the soul laments,
saying, O dogs of Actaeon, it is introduced as something constituted only
of the inferior potencies, and the mind has revolted against it, and
carried the heart away, that is, it has carried away all the affections and
the entire army of thoughts. For that reason, perceiving its present state,
and in ignorance of any other, believing none other any longer exists, and
having no knowledge of it, the soul laments that its thoughts, in their
tardy return, come back rather to draw it up with them than to find any
refuge in it. And because of the distraction it if suffers from the double
love of material and intelligible things, the soul feels itself lacerated
and torn to pieces, so that it must finally yield to the more vigorous and
powerful attraction. Now if the soul ascends by virtue of contemplation, or
is transported above the horizon of the natural affections, perceiving with
a most pure eye the difference between the life of contemplation and the
life of passion, then, conquered by its most lofty thoughts, as though dead
to the body, it aspires to the superior regions; and although it continues
to live in the body, the soul vegetates there as if dead and is present in
the body as an animate potency incapable of any action; not that it is
inoperative so long as the body exists, but that the operations of the soul
as a composite are delayed, enfeebled, and debilitated.
C. This, then, is the sense in which a certain theologian, who is said to
have been transported to the third heaven, was dazzled by the heavenly
vision, and desired the dissolution of his body.
T. In this manner, although the soul at first launches complaints against
its heart and thoughts, it now desires to be raised with them and
manifestly deplores the union and familiarity contracted with corporeal
matter. Leave me then, it cries, corporeal life, and do not trouble me, so
that I may reascend to my native home, to my sun. From now on leave me to
dry the tears from my eyes, eyes I can no longer aid, separated as I am
from my good. Leave me, for it is neither proper nor possible for a doubles
stream to flow deprived of its source, that is deprived of its heart; for
how can I form two rivers of tears here below, if my heart, the source of
those rivers, has flown above with its nymphs which are my thoughts?
Therefore, little by little from its disaffection and regret the soul
progresses toward a hatred of inferior things which it expresses by the
words, When will nature agree to release me of my grievous burden?
C . I understand this very well, and even what you would infer with respect
to the principle point of this discourse, that there are degrees of loves,
affections, and frenzies, according to the degrees of greater or lesser
light of cognition and intelligence.
T. You understand me well. This should lead you to that doctrine commonly
borrowed from the Pythagoreans and the Platonists according to which the
soul makes the double progress of ascent and decent, corresponding to the
double concern it has for itself and for matter, inasmuch as it is moved by
the appetite for its proper good on the one hand, and as its material part
on the other hand is directed by the providence of fate.
C. But please tell me briefly what you think about the world soul. Can it
too ascend and descend?
T. If you speak of the world as the vulgar refer to it, when they call it
the universe, I reply that this world being infinite and without dimension
or measure appears to be immobile, inanimate, and unformed, even though it
is the place of an infinite number of movable worlds and has infinite space
in which are all those large animals we call stars. If you speak of the
world according to the meaning held among the true philosophers for whom
the world is every globe, every star, this our earth, the sun's body, the
moon and even others, I reply that the soul of each of these worlds not
only ascends and descends but moves in a circle. Because each of these
souls is composed of superior and inferior powers, the superior powers lead
it toward the divinity, the inferior ones toward the material mass which
becomes vivified by that divinity and maintained among the tropics of
generation and corruption of the living things of these worlds; and each
soul eternally serves its own life; and the action of divine providence
always in the same measure and order, by warmth and divine light always
maintains it in the same, customary state.
C. This suffices me on this subject.
T. Just as these particular souls according to the diverse degrees of their
ascent and descent are diversely affected in their behavior and
inclinations, so they manifest a diversity of matter and degree of frenzy,
love and sensitivity; and there is this diversity not only in the ladder of
nature according to the order of the diverse lives the soul assumes in
diverse bodies as expressly held by the Pythagoreans, the Saducees and
others and implicitly by Plato and those who have more profoundly
penetrated his meaning, but also in the ladder of human affections which
has as many degrees as the ladder of nature, inasmuch as man in all his
potencies represents every species of being.
C. For that reason souls can be known to ascend or decend by their
affections, to come from above or from below, to be on the way of becoming
beasts or gods, according to their specific natures, as the Pythagoreans
understood it. Or one may understand it simply by the similitude of the
affections held by common opinion; for the human soul need not have the
power to become the soul of a brute, as Plotinus and other Platonists
justly maintain, following the lesson of their master.
T. Good. Now, a to come to the point, this soul of which we speak having
advanced from an animal to an heroic frenzy, expresses itself in these
words: When will it come to pass that I raise myself to the lofty object,
and dwell there in the company of my heart and common offspring? It
continues with the same proposal when it says:
Destiny, when shall I be allowed to ascend the mount, which for
my perfect blessing shall bring me to the lofty gates where I
shall know those rare beauties? When will my tenacious pain be
strongly comforted
by him who reassembles my dislocated members and preserves my
failing powers from death? My spirit will prevail over its enemy,
if it ascends where error assails it no longer,
and attains the end it waits for, and ascends where the lofty
object is, and seizes the good which one alone possesses,
whereby so many faults are remedied and happiness is found -- as
he declares who alone predicts all things.
O destiny, oh fate, oh divine and immutable providence,
when shall I be allowed to ascend that mount, when will I reach so much
loftiness of mind that I may transport myself and reach those high portals
and enter to see those rare beauties, beauties that in some way shall be
explained and understood? When will he accord efficacious comfort to my
pain (releasing me from the rigorous knots of care), he who read
reassembles and unites my members, till then disunited and dislocated? The
question is asked of Love, who brings about the union of these corporeal
members, till then divided from each other as much as one contrary is
divided from another; all Love, who, besides, preserves from death these
intellectual potencies which have been failing to act, and provides them
with the spirit whereby they may aspire to ascend. When, I say, shall I be
fully comforted by giving these potencies free flight, so that my whole
substance can fix its home in that place where by my own effort I may amend
all my faults? Arriving at that summoned my spirit will prevail over its
enemy, for nothing is present there that may outrage it, no contrary that
may conquer it, no error that may assail it. Oh, if my spirit attains and
reaches the place which with all its power it desires, if it climbs and
arrives at the summit where its object is and settles itself to remain
there; if it manages to possess the good which cannot be possessed except
by one alone (that is, by that good itself, inasmuch as everything else has
goodness only in the measure of its own capacity, and that good alone has
it in all its plenitude), then I shall be permitted to be happy according
to the mode in which he declares who predicts all things, that is, he who
declares this loftiness and in whom declaring and accomplishing are the
same thing. I will be happy according to the way in which he declares or
acts, who predicts everything; that is to say, he who is the principle and
efficient cause of all things, for whom to declare and to order is the true
making and undertaking. This is how Love's affection makes its way from
above and from below upon the ladder of superior and inferior things, and
how the intellect and the sense make their way from above and from below in
the order of intelligence and sensible things.
C. Therefore the greater number of philosophers hold that nature delights
in the vicissitude which is seen in the revolution of its wheel.
Fifth Dialogue
I.
C. Let me have a look here, so than by my own effort I may be able to
consider the states of these frenzies, according to the arrangement of the
militia presented here.
T. Notice how the warriors carry the emblems of their affections and their
fortunes. Let us consider their names and their dress. Let it suffice us to
give our attention to the meaning of the emblems and to the meaning of what
is written, as well as to the motto which accompanies the emblematic figure
and the poem which completes the figure by clarifying its sense.
C. This is most agreeable. Here then is the first one. He carries a shield
divided in four colors; on the crest of the shield is painted a flame
underneath a head of bronze, from whose apertures a smoky wind issues with
great force and written above are the words, At regna senserunt tria ('But
three realms afflict him').
T. I shall give you some clarification of the above. As one can see, the
presence of the flame warms the globe, in which water is contained, and
causes this humid element, rendered lighter and less dense by virtue of the
heat, to resolve itself into vapor and consequently to demand a much
greater space to contain it. If the water does not find an easy exit, it
bursts forth with the greatest force and destruction to crack the vessel;
but if an easy exit is procured for it, it issues out little by little with
less violence and according to the extent of its evaporation exhales and
expands into air. This figure represents the frenzied one's heart whose
organization has been well disposed to the contact of love's flame, and
consequently from its vital substance one part (of the heart) sparkles in
flames, another part is transformed into abundant weeping rising from the
breast, and still another sends up a wind of sighs to incense the air.
And that is the reason for the words, At regna senserunt tria. Here the
word at has the virtue of implying difference, diversity, and opposition,
as if to say that there is some one else who is capable of experiencing the
same feelings, and yet does not experience them. This is very well
explained in the verse placed underneath the emblematic figure:
From my twin lights I, a little earth, am wont to pour forth no
sparing humor to the sea; the sighs hidden within my breast the
avid winds receive in no small measure;
and the flame loosed from my heart mounts to the sky without
diminishing. With tears, sighs, and my ardor I render a tribute
to the sea,
to the air and to the fire. Water, air, and fire receive some
part of me; but my goddess shows herself so iniquitous and cruel,
that my tears find no solace in her, nor does she hear my cries,
nor does she ever turn in pity toward my ardor.
Here the material subject represented by the earth is the substance of the
frenzied lover. From twin lights, that is to say, from his eyes, he pours
forth copious tears which flow into the sea; from his breast he sends an
abundance and multitude of sighs to the immense receptacle of the air; and
the fire of his heart does not abate upon the stream of air like a small or
weak flame, does not resolve into smoke and transmigrate into another
essence, but, powerful and vigorous (rather nourishing itself upon some
other substance than abandoning anything of its own), it joins a kindred
sphere.
C. I have understood it well. Now to the other.
II.
T. He who comes next has on his shield, also divided into four colors, a
crest in which the sun extends its rays upon the back of the earth; and
there is the motto, Idem semper ubique totum ('always and everywhere the
same.)
C. I see that this cannot be easy to interpret.
T. The meaning is the more excellence, as it is the less vulgar, and you
will see that it is single, unified, and not strained. You must consider
that although the sun appears different with respect to different regions
of the earth according to time and place, nevertheless with respect to the
entire globe it acts always and everywhere in the same way, for in whatever
point of the ecliptic it may find itself, it causes winter, summer, autumn,
and spring, and the entire earthly globe receives these four seasons
because of it. For it is never hot in one part but it is cold in an other.
When it is hottest for us in the topic of Cancer, it is coldest in the
tropic of Capricorn, so that the sun is the cause of the summer here, the
winter there, and the cause of the spring and autumn according to the
disposition of the middle and temperate regions. Therefore the earth is
always subject to rain, wind, heat, cold; in fact the earth would not be
wet in one part, if it were not dry in the other, and the sun would not
heat it from one side, if it had not withdrawn its heat from the other.
C. Before you complete your argument, I understand what you and the
frenzied lover mean. As the sun always directs its impressions upon the
earth and as the earth always receives all of them entirely, so does the
lover's object by its active splendor render him passively to tears,
symbolized by the waters, to passions, symbolized by the flames, and to
sighs, symbolized by these intermediate vapors which depart from the fire
and proceed to the waters, or depart from the waters and proceed to the
fire.
T. It is very well explained in the following sonnet:
When the sun sets in Capricorn, there is no torrent the rains do
not enrich; when it returns through the Equinox, then are
unleashed the messengers of Aeolus,
and it enkindles us by a more prolific day whenever it reascends
to burning Cancer. But my tears, sighs, and ardors do not accord
with these frosts, tempests, and hot seasons;
for I am always in tears, no matter how intense my sighs and
fires. And though I know too much of water and fire,
never does it happen that I sigh the less, and there is no limit
to my burning amid sighs and previous weeping.
C. The meaning of the emblem is explained less by this poem than by the
preceding commentary; for the poem follows rather as a consequence and
companion of the commentary.
T. Say rather that the emblem is implied in the commentary, and the motto
is fully explained in the poem. For both the emblem and the motto are most
appropriately represented by the symbol of the sun and the earth.
C. Let us proceed to the third.
III.
T. The third lover carries upon a shield a nude boy lying upon the green
meadow. The boy rests his head upon his arm, and turns his eyes to the sky
toward certain edifices, houses, towers, landscapes, and gardens set above
the clouds; and a castle is also to be found whose walls are made of fire,
with the motto, Mutuo fulcimur ('Mutually we are sustained').
C. What does this mean?
T. You are to understand that the nude boy represents the frenzied lover,
simple, pure, and exposed to all the accidents of nature and fortune, who
with his powerful imagination builds castles in the air and, among other
things, a tower, whose architect is love, whose walls are the amorous fires
and whose builder is himself who says, Mutuo fulcimur. This is to say, I
build and sustain you up there with my thoughts, and you sustain me here
below with hope. You would not exist were it not for my imagination and my
thought which forms and sustains you; and I would not be alive were it not
for the consolation and the comfort I received because of you.
C. It is true that even the most vain and chimerical fancy can be a more
real and genuine medicine to a frenzied heart than the herbs, stones, oils,
or other products produced by nature.
T. Magicians can do more by means of faith than doctors by means of the
truth, and in the gravest illnesses the sick profit more by believing all
that the first say, than by understanding all that the second do. Now let
us read the verse.
Beyond the clouds, in the highest region, sometimes when I burn
in delirium, for the refreshment and deliverance of my spirit I
form a castle of fire in the air.
If my fatal destiny incline a little, so that the sovereign grace
bend without scorn and anger toward the flame which kills me, O
happy my pain and my death!
Oh, youth, of your flames and of your snares -- because of which
men and gods sigh and become slaves --
I do not feel the ardor, nor the burden, but, you, O love, can
cause them to possess me, if your merciful hand will lead you to
uncover my torment.
C. The lover in this poem shows that what nourishes his fancy and revives
his spirit is the belief (for he lacks the boldness to explain and make
known his pain to himself, profoundly subject as he is to martyrdom) that,
if severe and rebellious fate bend somewhat (and finally decide to smile
upon him) by making the lofty object reveal itself to him without scorn and
anger, such good fortune would make him deem no joy so happy, no life so
blessed as the happiness he would find in his pain and the blessedness he
would find in death.
T. And thus he begins to explain to Love that, if it can ever have access
to his heart, it will never be by using the armed might whereby he usually
triumphs over men and gods; but only by uncovering his burning heart and
tormented spirit; for only by such a sight will compassion be able to open
the way to him and introduce him to that difficult abode.
IV.
C. What is the meaning of that fly which flies around the flame and is
almost at the point of being burned, and the meaning of the motto, Hostis
non hostis ('an enemy yet not an enemy')?
T. It is not difficult to understand that the fly, which is seduced by the
beauty of the dazzling light, throws itself innocent and full of love into
the deadly flame. For that reason hostis refers to the scalding effect of
the flame; non hostis refers to the desire of the fly. Thus hostis, the fly
as passive; non hostis (the fly) as active. Hostis, the flame because of
its fire; non hostis, because of its splendor.
C. Now what is that written on the tablet?
T.
May it never be that I lament of love, without which I do not
wish felicity. Even if it be true that I toil for it in pain, I
can only desire what it grants me.
Whether the sky is clear or obscured, cold or burning, I shall
ever be a true phoenix, for another destiny or fate can hardly
untie that knot which death cannot untied.
For the heart, for the spirit, and for the soul there is no
pleasure, liberty, or life which smiles so much, rejoices, and is
so welcomed,
is so sweet, so gracious, and so excellent as the hardship, yoke,
and death provided for me by nature, will, and destiny.
This emblem shows the similarity between the frenzied lover and the fly
drawn toward the light. But then the poem makes apparent their difference
more than their similarity. For one ordinarily believes that if the fly
could foresee its own ruin, it would rather flee the flame than pursue it
as it does now, for it would hold it evil to lose itself by dissolving in
the inimical fire. But the frenzied one would like to perish in a flames of
love no less than he would like rapturously to contemplate the beauty of
that rare splendor beneath whose sway by the inclination of nature, his own
free choice and the disposition of fate he toils, serves, and dies, more
joyful, more resolved, and more valiant than the influence of any other
pleasure offered to his heart, liberty offered to his spirit, and life
reawakened in his soul.
C. Tell me, why does he say, I shall ever be one?
T. Because he thinks it worthy to explain that the reason for his constancy
is that the wise man does not change like the moon. It is the stupid man
who changes as the moon does, but this lover is one and immovable, like the
Phoenix.
V.
C. Good. But what does that branch of palm mean, accompanied by the motto,
Caesar adest ('Caesar is here')?
T. Without too much discussion all may be understood by reference to the
writing on the tablet:
Unconquered hero of Pharsalia, although your warriors were almost
extinct when they saw you, they rose again most potent in battle
and subdued your haughty enemies.
Thus does my good, which is equal to heaven's blessedness, in
revealing itself to the sight of my thoughts whose light was
obscured by my scornful soul, revive them so that they are more
powerful than love.
Its sole presence, or the memory of it, so revives them, that
with sway and divine power
they reduce every contrary violence. My good governs me in peace,
but does not abandon its snare nor its torch.
The inferior powers of the soul, like a valiant and inimical army which one
finds disciplined, skilled, and well provided in its own country, sometimes
turn against the foreign enemy, who descends from the high summit of the
intelligence to dominate the people of the valley and the swampy plains. It
happens that, because of the harassing presence of the enemy and the
difficulty of the precipitous swamps, these people find themselves almost
lost, and in fact would be lost, were it not for a certain conversion by
the act of contemplation to the splendor of the intelligible species; for
the act of contemplation there is a conversion from the inferior to the
superior degrees.
C. What are these degrees?
T. The degrees of contemplation are like the degrees of light. Light, which
is never in darkness but sometimes appears shadowy, is seen better in
colors in the order of their progression from one extreme, black, to the
opposite extreme, white; is more efficaciously in the refulgence diffused
upon refined and transparent bodies as in the reflection of a mirror or the
moon; is more vividly in the rays scattered from the sun, and in the
highest and most principal degree, is seen in the sun itself. Now the
potencies of comprehension and affection are ordered in such a way that a
potency always has an affinity for the one immediately above it, and each
potency by a conversion toward the one which raises it reinforces itself
against the inferior one that draws it down (as the reason, converted to
the intellect, is not seduced or conquered by the sensitive powers);
consequently, when the rational appetite clashes with the sensual
concupiscence and by the act of contemplation confronts the intellectual
light, then it retrieves its lost virtue, reinforces its nerves, frightens
the enemy and puts him to rout.
C. In what way do you mean that this conversion takes place?
T. By three preparations which the contemplative Plotinus notes in his book
Of the Divine Intelligence [Enneads 5.8]. The first is by resolving to
conform the vision to the divine likeness by turning the sight from things
equal or inferior to its own perfection; the second is by applying the
vision with every purpose and attention to the superior species; the third
is by submitting the entire world and affection to God. For he who behaves
in this way is beyond a doubt infused with the divinity, present everywhere
and ready to penetrate him who turns himself to it by an intellectual act
and offers himself to it by the will's affection without reserve.
C. Then it is not corporeal beauty which this lover longs for?
T. Certainly not; because not being true or constant, corporeal beauty
cannot be the cause of true or constant love. The beauty one sees in a body
is an accident and a shadow, and is like other things that are altered,
tainted, and wasted by the mutation of the subject, which from beautiful
often becomes ugly without any alteration taking place in the soul. The
reason then apprehends the truest beauty by converting itself to the thing
which gives the body its beauty and its form; and this thing is the soul,
the modeller and sculptor of the body. After this, the intellect rises
further and well understands that the beauty of the soul is incomparably
superior to the beauty found in bodies; but it is not persuaded that the
soul is beautiful essentially and in itself; for if it were, there would
not be the differences one sees within the genus of souls, some of which
are wise, amiable, and lovely, others stupid, odious, and ugly. It is
necessary, then, to be raised to that superior intellect which is beautiful
in itself and good in itself. This is that one and supreme captain, who
alone, placed in the sight of militant thoughts, illuminates them,
encourages them, reinforces them, and assures them of victory through scorn
for every other beauty and the repudiation of every other good. This, then,
is the presence which overcomes every difficulty and conquers every
violence.
C. I understand completely. But what is the significance of, there it
governs me in peace, but does not abandon its snare, nor its torch?
T. It means and proves that love of whatever sort, the stronger its empire
and the more certain its power, makes its bonds more tight, its yoke more
firm, and flames more ardent, unlike the ordinary prince or tyrant who uses
the greatest force and constraint when his power is weakest.
C. Let us go to the next one.
VI.
T. Here I see an image of a flying phoenix toward which a little boy is
turned who burns in the midst of flames, and I see the motto, Fata obstant
('Their fates run contrary'). But in order to understand this better, let
us read the tablet:
Unique bird of the sun, lovely Phoenix, who are as old as the
world in happy Arabia, you are still what you always were, while
I am no longer the same.
Because of the fire of love I die unhappy, while you the sun
revives with its rays. You burn in one, but I in every place. I
from Cupid, but you from Phoebus have your flame.
You have predestined for you the term of a long life, and I have
a brief one, whose end is offered me in ruins without number.
I know neither the life I shall live, nor the life I have lived.
A blind destiny leads me, while you, assured of yours, turn once
again toward your heart.
The sense of the verse shows us that the emblem represents the antithesis
between the fate of the phoenix and the fate of the frenzied one, and that
the motto, Fata obstant, does not mean the fates are contrary either to the
boy or to the phoenix, or to the two of them, but that for each one of them
the decrees of fate, far from being the same are different and opposite.
For the phoenix is what it was, inasmuch as by the fire the body of the
phoenix is renewed in the same material, and its form is renewed by the
same spirit and soul. The frenzied one is what he was not, because as a
human subject he belonged previously to some other species, separated from
the human species by differences without number. Therefore one knows what
the phoenix was and knows what it shall be, but only in terms of many and
uncertain metamorphoses shall this lover be able to clothe himself again in
a natural form identical or similar to the one which is his today. Besides,
the phoenix in the presence of the sun changes death for life, and this
subject in the presence of love changes life for death. And further, the
phoenix consumes itself on the aromatic altar, and the lover finds his fire
everywhere and takes it with him wherever he goes. Moreover the phoenix is
assured of the terms of a long life, but the lover because of infinite
vicissitudes of time and innumerable reasons of circumstance has only the
uncertain term of a short life. The phoenix enkindles itself with
certainty, the lover burns in the doubt of ever seeing the sun again.
C. What do you suppose this emblem represents?
T. It represents the difference between the inferior intellect (commonly
called the intellect in potency, or the possible or passive intellect),
which is uncertain, diverse, and multiform, and the superior intellect, the
one perhaps called by the Peripatetics the lowest in the hierarchy of the
intelligences, which, they say, immediately influences every individual of
the human species and is the active and actual intellect. This intellect,
unique for the human species, influences every individual and is comparable
to the moon which is always of the same species and whose aspect ever
renews itself as it turns toward the sun, the first and universal
intelligence. However, the human intellect, individual and multiple, is
turned like the eyes toward countless and most diverse objects, so that it
is informed according to an infinity of degrees and an infinity of natural
forms. That is why it happens that this particular intellect is frenzied,
wandering, and uncertain, while the universal intellect is tranquil,
stable, and certain with respect to the appetite as well as to the
apprehension. Therefore (as you can easily decipher for yourself), this
figure symbolizes the nature of the sensitive appetite and apprehension,
changing, shifting, inconsistent, and uncertain, and the nature of the
intellectual appetite and its concept, firm, stable, and definite. The
figure also symbolizes the difference between sensual love, uncertain and
undiscerning of its objects, and intellectual love which sees only a single
object toward which it turns, whereby its thought is illumined, its passion
enkindled, inflamed, illuminated, and maintained in unity, identity, and
position.
VII.
C. But what is the meaning of that figure of the sun with a circle inside
it and another circle outside of it, and of the motto, Circuit ('It
revolves in a circle')?
T. I'm sure I would never have understood the meaning of the figure if the
author himself had not explained it to me. Now it must be understood that
Circuit refers to the motion the sun makes around the double circle drawn
inside it and around it to signify that the sun both moves itself and is
moved at the same time. Therefore, the sun is always found to be in every
point of the traversed circle, for in the single instant of time, it both
moves and is moved simultaneously and is equally present in the entire
circumference of the circle in which motion and rest converge and become
one.
C. This I have understood in the dialogues Of the Infinite Universe and
Innumerable Worlds, where it is explained that the divine wisdom (as
Solomon said) is movable to the highest degree and at the same time most
stable, as it is declared and understood by all those who know. Now proceed
to your explanation of it.
T. The author of the emblem means that his sun is not like that sun which
(as is commonly believed) circles the earth in the daily motion of
twenty-four hours and completes its planetary motion in twelve months,
affecting the earth by the four distinct seasons of the year according to
the regions in which it finds itself in the four cardinal points of the
Zodiac. But his sun is such that, representing eternity itself and
therefore in perfect possession of all, it comprises the winter, spring,
summer, the autumn, the day, and the night together, for it is wholly
everywhere and in all points and places.
C. Now apply your statement to the emblem.
T. Because it is impossible to design the whole sun at each point in the
circle, two circles have been drawn here. One circle is drawn around the
sun to show that the sun moves itself through it. The other circle is drawn
inside the sun, to show that the sun is moved by it.
C. But this figuration seems to me obscure and not precise.
T. It is sufficient that it is as clear and precise as he was able to make
it. If you can find a better one, you are given every authority to remove
this one and replace it with one of your own. For this was presented only
in order that the idea might not be without some concrete form.
C. What do you say about the word circuit?
T. That motto, according to its fullest meaning, represents as much as can
be represented; for by the sun's revolving itself and being revolved in a
circle is signified its present and perfect motion.
C. Most excellent. Granted that those circles express poorly the
coexistence of movement and rest, we can nevertheless say that they have
been put there to signify a single revolution. And so I am content with the
subject and form of the heroic emblem. Now let us read the rime.
T.
Sun, you send down temperate rays from Taurus, from Leo you ripen
and burn all, and when you shed light from stinging Scorpio much
of your fiery vigor you abandon,
until from proud Aquarius you consume everything with cold, and
harden the humid bodies. -- But I in spring, summer, autumn, and
in winter am eternally warmed, burned, inflamed, and enkindled.
So hot is my desire, that I am easily moved to contemplate that
lofty object for which I burn so much,
that my ardor throws off sparks to the stars. The years have no
moment which see any change in my anguish.
Notice here that the four seasons of the year are indicated not by the four
movable signs of Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn, but by the four which
are called fixed, that is to say, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius, in
order to represent the perfection, stability, and fervor of those four
seasons. Note also that by virtue of those apostrophes found in the eighth
verse, you may read mi scaldo, accendo, ardo, avvampo; or, scaldi, accendi,
ardi, avvampi; or also, scalda, accende, arde, avvampa. Besides, you must
consider, these are not four synonyms but four diverse terms which express
so many degrees of the effects produced by the fire; for first, the fire
warms, second, it inflames, third, it burns, fourth, it enkindles or sets
him on fire who has been warmed, inflamed, and burned. And therefore are
denoted in the frenzied one desire, intention, zeal, and the affection of
love which he feels at every moment.
C. Why do you give it the name of anguish?
T. Because the divine light is in this life more an object of laborious
emptiness than of tranquil fruition, since our minds move toward that light
like birds of the night toward the sun.
C. Let us proceed. I have now heard enough to grasp everything.
VIII.
T. The following crest presents a full moon with the motto, Talis mihi
semper et astro ('Such is it always to me and to the sun'). It means that
to the star, that is, to the sun and to him the moon is always such as it
is here, full and free clear in the entire circumference of its circle. So
that you may understand this better, I would have you read the poem written
upon the tablet:
Inconstant moon, fickle moon, you who emerge from the horizon
with your horns now empty, now full, your orb reascends now
white, now dark; now you illuminate Boreas and the valleys of the
Caucasus,
now you turn along your usual path to give light to the south and
the last confines of Lybia. So the moon of my sky for my
continual torment is ever steady, and is ever full.
And my sun is the same, which forever ravishes and restores me,
which ever burns and is so resplendent,
always so cruel and so beautiful. This my noble torch ever
martyrs me, and still it delights me.
It seems to me that this lover's particular intelligence is always thus
with regard to the universal intelligence. In other words, the universal
intelligence illumines the entire hemisphere, even though that intelligence
appears sometimes obscure, sometimes more or less luminous, according to
the impressions it makes upon the inferior potencies. Or perhaps it would
mean that his speculative intellect (invariably in act) is always turned
and drawn toward that human intelligence represented by the moon. For as
the moon is called the lowest among all the planets and is found nearest to
us, so the intelligence which illuminates all of us (in our present state)
is the lowest in the hierarchy of intelligences, as Averroes and other more
subtle Peripatetics note. With respect to the intellect in potency, the
human intelligence represented by the moon sometimes seems to decline,
insofar as it does not display itself in act, and sometimes it seems to
rise from the valley, that is, from the bottom of the concealed hemisphere;
sometimes it displays itself vacant and sometimes full, accordingly as it
gives more or less light; sometimes its orb is obscure, sometimes
brilliant, because sometimes it dispenses only a shadow, similitude, and
vestige, or sometimes it pours out the light more openly; sometimes it
declines toward the south, sometimes to the north; that is, sometimes it
retires and alienates itself more and more from us, sometimes it returns
and approaches. But the active intellect by incessant labor (for it is
foreign to human nature and the human condition which is wearied, beaten,
incited, solicited, distracted, and as though torn by the inferior
potencies) always sees its object immobile, fixed and constant, and always
in plenitude, and in the same splendor of beauty. Therefore the object
always ravishes him insofar as he fails to offer himself to it, and always
restores him insofar as he succeeds in offering himself to it. It always
enflames his passion as much as it is resplendent in his thought; it is
always as cruel to him by withdrawing itself as he similarly withdraws
himself, and always so beautiful in communicating itself to the degree that
he offers himself to it. It always martyrs him separated from him by space;
and it always delights him because he is conjoined to it in his affection.
C. Now apply the meaning to the motto. T. He says then, Talis mihi semper;
that is to say, by means of the constant application of my intellect,
memory and will (for they alone do I remember, understand and desire), it
is always such to