and never was the sacred fire on the
altar of Vesta suffered to become entirely extinct. Such was the intellectual
and moral atmosphere in which Bruno passed his childhood. His paternal home was
situated at the foot of Mount
Cicada, celebrated for
its fruitful soil. From early youth his pleasure was to pass the night out on
the mountain, now watching the stars, now contemplating the arid, desolate
sides of Vesuvius. He tells how, in recalling those days -- the only peaceful
ones of his life-he used to think, as he looked up at the infinite expanse of
heaven and the confines of the horizon, with the towering volcano, that this
must be the ultimate end of the earth, and it appeared as if neither tree nor
grass refreshed the dreary space which stretched out to the foot of the bare
smoky mountain. When, grown older, he came nearer to it, and saw the mountain
so different from what it had appeared, and the intervening space that, seen
from afar, had looked so bare and sterile, all covered with fruit-trees and
enriched with vineyards, he began to see how illusory the judgment of the
senses may be; and the first doubt was planted in his young soul as he
perceived that, while the mind may grasp Nature in her grandeur and majesty,
the work of the sage must be to examine her in detail,
and penetrate to the cause of
things. When he appeared before the tribunal of the Holy Office at Venice, being asked to declare who and what he was, he
said: "My name is Giordano, of the family of Bruno, of the city of Nola, twelve miles from Naples. There was I born and brought up. My
profession has been and is that of letters, and of all the sciences. My
father's name was Giovanni, and my mother was Francesca Savolini; and my father
was a soldier. He is dead, and also mother. I am forty-four years old, having
been born in 1548." He always regarded Nola with patriotic pride, and he
received his first instruction in his father's house and in the public schools.
Of a sad disposition, and gifted with a most lively imagination, he was from
his earliest years given to meditation and to poetry. The, early years of
Bruno's life were times of agitation and misfortune, and not propitious to
study. The, Neapolitan provinces were disturbed by constant earthquakes, and
devastated by pestilence and famine. The Turks fought, and ravaged the country,
and made slaves of the inhabitants; the neighbouring provinces were still more
harassed by hordes of bandits and outlaws, who invested Calabria, led by a terrible chief called
Marcone. The Inquisition stood prepared to light
its fires and slaughter the heretic.
The Waldensians, who had lately been driven out of Piedmont,
and had sought a shelter in the Calabrian territory were hunted down and given
over to the executioner.
The convent was the only refuge from
violence, and Bruno, either from religions enthusiasm, or in order to be able
to devote himself to study, became a friar at the age of fifteen. There, in the
quiet cloister of the convent of St. Dominic at Naples, his mind was nourished and his
intellect developed; the cloistral and monkish education failed to enslave his:
thought, and he emerged from this tutelage the boldest and least fettered of
philosophers. Everything about this church and this convent, famous as having
been the abode of Thomas Aquinas, was calculated to fire the enthusiasm of
Bruno's soul; the leisure and quiet, far from inducing habits of indolence, or
the sterile practices of asceticism, were stimulants to austere study, and to
the fervour of mystical speculations. Here he passed nearly thirteen years of
early manhood, until his intellect strengthened by study he began to long for
independence of thought, and becoming, as he said himself, solicitous about the
food of the soul and the culture of the mind, he found it irksome to go through
automatically the daily vulgar routine of
the convent; the pure flame of an
elevated religious feeling being kindled in his soul, he tried to evade the
vain exercises of the monks, the puerile gymnastics, and the adoration of
so-called relics. His character was frank and open, and he was unable to hide
his convictions; he put some of his doubts before his companions, and these
hastened to refer them to the superiors; and thus was material found to
institute a cause against him. It became known that he had praised the methods
used by the Arians or Unitarians in expounding their doctrines, adding that
they refer all things to the ultimate cause, which is the Father: this, with
other heretical propositions, being brought to the notice of the Holy Office,
Bruno found himself in the position of being first observed and then
threatened. He was warned of the danger that hung over him by some friends, and
decided to quit Naples.
He fled from the convent, and took the road to Rome, and was there received in the monastery
of the Minerva. A few days after his arrival in Rome
he learned that instructions for his arrest had been forwarded from Naples; he tarried not,
but got away secretly, throwing aside the monk's habiliments by the way. He
wandered for some days about the Roman Campagna, his destitute condition
proving a safeguard against,
the bands of brigands that infested
those lands, until,, arriving near Civita Vecchia, he was taken on board a
Genoese vessel, and carried to the Ligurian port, where he hoped to find a, refuge
from his enemies; but the city of Genova was devastated by pestilence and civil
war, and after a sojourn of a few days he pursued once more the road of exile.
Seeking for a place wherein he might settle for a short time and hide from his
pursuers, he stayed his steps at Noli, situated at a short distance. from
Savona, on the Riviera: this town, nestled in a little bay surrounded by high
hills crowned by feudal castles and towers, was only accessible on the shore
side, and offered a grateful retreat to our philosopher. At Noli, Bruno,
obtained permission of the magistracy to teach grammar to children, and thus
secured the means. of subsistence by the small remuneration he received; but
this modest employment did not occupy him sufficiently, and he gathered round
him a few gentlemen of the district, to whom he taught the science of the
Sphere. Bruno also wrote a book upon the Sphere, which was lost. He expounded
the system of Copernicus, and talked to his pupils with enthusiasm about the
movement of the earth and of the plurality of worlds.
As in that same Liguria Columbus
first divined
another hemisphere outside the Pillars of Hercules, so Bruno discovered to those
astonished minds the, myriads of worlds which fill the immensity of space. Columbus was derided and
banished by his fellow-citizens, and the fate of our philosopher was similar to
his. In the humble schoolmaster who taught grammar to the children, the bishop,
the clergy, and the nobles, who listened eagerly to his lectures on the Sphere,
began to suspect the heretic and the innovator. After five months it behoved
him to leave Noli; he took the road to Savona,
crossed the Apennines, and arrived at Turin.
In Turin at that time reigned the great Duke Emanuele Filiberto, a man of
strong character -- one of those men who know how to found a dynasty and to fix
the destiny of a people; at that time, when Central and Southern Italy were
languishing under home and foreign tyranny, he laid the foundations of the
future Italy.
He was warrior, artist, mechanic,
and scholar. Intrepid on the field of battle, he would retire from deeds of
arms to the silence of his study, and cause the works of Aristotle to be read
to him; he spoke all the European languages; he worked at artillery, at models
of fortresses, and at the smith's craft; he brought together around him, from
all sides of Italy,
artisans and scientists to promote
industry, commerce, and science; he gathered together in Piedmont the most
excellent compositors of Italy,
and sanctioned a printer's company.
Bruno, attracted to Turin by the
favour that was shown to letters and philosophy, hoped to get occupation as
press reader; but it was precisely at that time that the Duke, instigated by
France, was combating, with every kind of weapon, the Waldensian and Huguenot
heresies, and had invited the Jesuits to Turin, offering them a substantial
subsidy; so that on Bruno's arrival he found the place he had hoped for, as
teacher in the, university, occupied by his enemies, and he therefore moved on
with little delay, and embarked for Venice.
Berti, in his Life of Bruno, remarks
that when the latter sought refuge in Turin, Torquato Tasso, also driven by
adverse fortune, arrived in the same place, and he notes the affinity between
them -- both so great, both subject to every species of misfortune and
persecution in life, and destined to immortal honours after their death: the
light of genius burned in them both, the fire of enthusiasm flamed in each
alike, and on the forehead of each one was set the sign of sorrow and of pain.
Both Bruno and Tasso entered the
cloisters as
smile of princes; while Bruno,
discoursing in the name of reason and of science, was rejected, persecuted, and
scourged, and only after three centuries of ingratitude, of calumny, and of
forgetfulness, does his country show signs of appreciating him and of doing
justice to his memory. In Tasso the poet predominates over the philosopher, in
Bruno the philosopher predominates over and eclipses the poet. The first
sacrifices thought to form; the second is careful only of the idea. Again, both
are full of a conception of the. Divine, but the God that the dying Tasso
confessed is a god that is expected and comes not; while the god that Bruno
proclaims he already finds within himself. Tasso died in his bed in the
cloister, uneasy as on a bed of thorns; Bruno, amidst the flames, stands out as
on a pedestal, and dies serene and calm. We must now follow our fugitive to Venice.
At the time Giordano Bruno arrived
in Venice that city was the, most important
typographical centre of Europe; the commerce in books extended through the
Levant, Germany, and France, and
the. philosopher hoped that here he might find some means of subsistence. The
plague at that time was devastating Venice,
and in less than one year had claimed forty-two thousand victims; but Bruno
felt
no fear, and he took a lodging in
that part or Venice
called the Frezzeria, and was soon busy preparing for the press a work called
"Segni del Tempo," hoping that the sale of it would bring a little
money for daily needs. This work was lost, as were all those which he published
in Italy, and which it was
to the interest of Rome
to destroy. Disappointed at not finding work to do in Venice, he next went to
Padua, which was the intellectual centre of Europe, as Venice was the, centre
of printing and publishing; the most celebrated professors of that epoch were
to be found in the University of Padua, but at the time of Bruno's sojourn
there, Padua, like, Venice, was ravaged by the plague; the university was
closed, and the printing-house was not in operation. He remained there only a
few days, lodging with some monks of the Order of St. Dominic, who, he relates,
"persuaded me to wear the dress again, even though I would not profess the
religion it implied, because they said it would aid me in my wayfaring to be
thus attired; and so I got a white cloth robe, and I put on the hood which I
had preserved when I left Rome." Thus habited he wandered for several
months about the cities of Venetia and Lombardy;
and although he contrived for a time to evade his persecutors, he
finally decided to leave Italy, as
it was repugnant to his disposition to live in forced dissimulation, and he
felt that he could do no good either for himself or for his country, which was
then overrun with Spaniards and scourged by petty tyrants; and with the lower
orders sunk in ignorance, and the upper classes illiterate, uncultivated, and
corrupt, the, mission of Giordano Bruno was impossible. "Altiora,
Peto" was Bruno's motto, and to realize it he had gone forth with the
pilgrim's staff in his hand, sometimes covered with the cowl of the monk, at
others wearing the simple habit of a schoolmaster, or, again, clothed with the
doublet of the mechanic he had found no resting-place -- nowhere to lay his
head, no one who could understand him, but always many ready to denounce him.
He turned his back at last on his country, crossed the Alps on foot, and
directed his steps towards Switzerland.
He visited the universities in different towns of Switzerland,
France, and Germany, and
wherever he went he left behind him traces of his visit in some hurried
writings. The only work of the Nolan, written in Italy,
which as survived is "Il Candelajo," which was published in Paris. Levi, in his Life
of Bruno, passes in review his various works; but it will suffice, here to
reproduce what he says of the
[paragraph
continues]
"Eroici Furori" the first part of which I have translated, and to
note his remarks upon the style of Bruno, which presents many difficulties to
the translator on account of its formlessness. Goethe says of Bruno's writings "Zu
allgemeiner Betrachtung und Erhebung der Geistes eigneten sich die Schriften
des Jordanus Brunous von Nola; aber freilich das gediegene Gold and Silber aus
der Masse jener zo ungleich begabten Erzgänge auszuscheiden und unter den
Hammer zu bringen erfordert fast mehr als menschliche Kräfte vermögen."'
I believe that no translation of
Giordano Bruno's works has ever been brought out in English, or, at any rate,
no translation of the "Eroici Furori," and therefore I have had no help
from previous renderings. I have, for the most part, followed the text as
closely as possible, especially in the sonnets, which are frequently rendered
line for line. Form is lacking in the original, and would, owing to the unusual
and often fantastic clothing of the ideas, be difficult to apply in the
translation. He seems to have written down his grand ideas hurriedly, and, as
Levi says, probably intended to retouch the work before printing.
Following the order of Levi's Life
of Bruno, we next find the fugitive at Geneva.
He was hardly
thirty-one, years old when he
quitted his country and crossed the Alps, and his first stopping-place, was
Chambery, where he was received in a convent of the Order of Predicatori; he
proposed going on to Lyons, but being told by in Italian priest, whom he met
there, that he was not likely to find countenance or support, either in the
place he was in or in any other place, however far he might travel, he changed
his course and made for Geneva.
The name of Giordano Bruno was not
unknown to the Italian colony who had fled from papal persecution to this
stronghold of religious reform. He went to lodge at an inn, and soon received
visits from the Marchese di Vico Napoletano, Pietro Martire Veimigli, and other
refugees, who welcomed him with affection, inquiring whether he intended to
embrace the religion of Calvin, to which Bruno replied that he did not intend
to make profession of that religion, as he did not know of what kind it was,
and he only desired to live in Geneva in freedom. He was then advised to doff
the Dominican habit, which he still wore; this he was quite willing to do, only
he had no money to buy other clothing, and was forced to have some made of the
cloth of his monkish robes, and his new friends presented him with a sword and
a hat; they also
procured some work for him in
correcting press errors.
The term of Bruno's sojourn in Geneva seems doubtful,
and the precise, nature of his employment when there is also uncertain; but his
independent spirit brought him into dispute with the rigid Calvinists of that
city, who preached and exacted a blind faith, absolute and compulsory. Bruno
could not accept any of the existing positive religious; he professed the cult
of philosophy and science, nor was his character of that mould that would have
enabled him to hide his principles. It was made known to him that he must
either adopt Calvinism or leave Geneva: he
declined the former, and had no choice as to the latter; poor he had entered Geneva, and poor he left it, and now turned his steps
towards France.
He reached Lyons, which was also at
that time a city of refuge against religious persecutions, and he addressed
himself to his compatriots, begging for work from the publishers, Aldo and
Grifi; but not succeeding in gaining enough to enable him to subsist, after a
few days he left, and went on his way to Toulouse, where there was a famous
university; and having made acquaintance with several men of intellect, Bruno
was invited to lecture on the
[paragraph
continues]
Sphere, which he did, with various other subjects, for six months, when the
chair of Philosophy becoming vacant, he took the degree of Doctor, and competed
for it; and he continued for two years in that place, teaching the philosophy
of Aristotle and of others. He took for the text of his lectures the treatise
of Aristotle, "De Anima," and this gave him the opportunity of
introducing and discussing the deepest questions -- upon the Origin and Destiny
of Humanity; The Soul, is it Matter or Spirit? Potentiality or Reality?
Individual or Universal? Mortal or Eternal? Is Man alone gifted with Soul, or
are all beings equally so? Bruno's system was in his mind complete and mature;
he taught that everything in Nature has a soul, one universal mind, penetrates
and moves all things; the world itself is a sacrum animal. Nothing is
lost, but all transmutes and becomes. This vast field afforded him scope for
teaching his doctrines upon the world, on the, movement of the earth, and on
the universal soul. The novelty and boldness of his opinions roused the
animosity of the clergy against him, and after living two years and six months
at Toulouse, he felt it wise to retire, and leaving the capital of the,
Languedoc, he set his face towards Paris.
The two books -- the fruit of his
lectures -- which
he published in Toulouse, "De Anima" and "De
Clavis Magis," were lost.
The title, of Doctor, or as he said
himself, "Maestro delle Arti," which Bruno had obtained at Toulouse,
gave him the faculty of teaching publicly in Paris, and he says "I went to
Paris, where I set myself to read a most unusual lecture, in order to make
myself known and to attract attention." He gave thirty lectures on the
thirty Divine attributes, dividing and distributing them according to the
method of St. Thomas Aquinas: these lectures excited much attention amongst the
scholars of the Sorbonne, who went in crowds to hear him; and he introduced, as
usual, his own ideas while apparently teaching the doctrines of St. Thomas. His
extraordinary memory and his eloquence caused great astonishment; and the fame
of Bruno reached the ears of King Henry III., who sent for him to the Court,
and being filled with admiration of his learning, he offered him a substantial
subsidy.
During his stay at Paris, although he was much at Court, he
spent many hours in his study, writing the works that he afterwards published.
Philosophical questions were
discussed at the Sobonne with much freedom: Bruno showed himself no partisan of
either the Platonic or the Peripatetic
school; he was not exclusive either
in philosophy or in religion; he did not favour the Huguenot faction more than
the Catholic league; and precisely by reason of this independent attitude,
which kept him free of the shackles of the sects, did he obtain the faculty of
lecturing at the Sorbonne. Nor can we ascribe this aloofness to religious
indifference, but to the fact that he sought for higher things and longed for
nobler ones. The humiliating spectacle which the positive religions, both
Catholic and Reformed, presented at that time -- the hatreds, the civil wars,
the assassinations which they Instigated -- had disgusted men of noble mould,
and had turned them against these so-called religions; so that in Naples, in
Tuscany, in Venice, in Switzerland, France, and England, there were to be found
societies of philosophers, of free-thinkers, and politicians, who repudiated
every positive religion and professed a pure Theism.
In the "Spaccio della Bestia
Trionfante" he declares that he cannot ally himself either to the Catholic
or the Lutheran Church, because he professes a more pure and complete faith
than these -- to wit, the love of humanity and the love of wisdom; and
Mocenigo, the disciple who ultimately betrayed and sold him to the Holy Office,
declares in his deposition that Bruno sought to make himself the
author of a new religion under the
name of "Philosophy." He was not a man to conceal his ideas, and in
the fervour of his improvisation he no doubt revealed what he was; some tumult
resulted from this free speaking of Bruno's, and he was forced to discontinue
his lectures at the Sorbonne.
Towards the end of the year 1583 the
King became enthralled by religious enthusiasm, and nothing was talked of in Paris but the conversion
of King Henry. This fact changed the aspect of affairs as far as Bruno was
concerned; he judged it prudent to leave Paris,
and he travelled to England.
The principal works published by
Bruno during his stay in Paris
are "Il Candelajo" and "Umbrae Idearum." The former, says
Levi, is a work of criticism and of demolition; in this comedy he sets in
groups the principal types of hypocrisy, stupidity, and rascality, and exhibiting
them in their true colours, he lashes them with ridicule. In the "Umbrae
Idearum" he initiates the work of reconstruction, giving colour to his
thought and sketching his idea. The philosophy of Bruno is based upon that of
Pythagoras, whose system penetrates the social and intellectual history of Italy, both
ancient and modern. The method of Pythagoras is not confined, as most
philosophies are, to pure metaphysical
speculations, but connects these
with scientific observations and social practice. Bruno having resuscitated
these doctrines, stamps them with a wider scope, giving them a more positive
direction; and he may with propriety he called the second Pythagoras. The
primal idea of Pythagoras, which Bruno worked out to a more distinct
development is this: numbers are the beginning of things; in other words
numbers are the cause of the existence of material things; they are not final,
but are always changing position and attributes; they are variable and
relative. Beyond and above this mutability there must be the Immutable, the
All, the One.
The Infinite must be one, as one is
the absolute number; in the original One is contained all the numbers; in the
One is contained all the elements of the Universe.
This abstract doctrine required to
be elucidated and fixed. From a hypothesis to concentrate and reduce it to a
reality was the great work of Bruno.
One is the perfect number; it is the
primitive monad. As from the One proceeds the infinite, series of numbers which
again withdraw and are resolved into the One; so from Substance, which is one,
proceed the myriads of worlds; from the worlds proceed myriads of living
creatures; and from
the union of one with the diverse is
generated the Universe. Hence the progression from ascent to descent, from
spirit to that which we call matter; from the cause to the origin, and the
process of metaphysics, which, from the finite world of sense rises to the
intelligent, passing through the intermediate numbers of infinite substance to
active being and cosmic reason.
From the absolute One, the sun of
the sensible and intellectual world, millions of stars and suns are produced or
developed. Each sun is the centre of as many worlds which are distributed in as
many distinct series in an infinite number of concentric and systems. Each
system is attracted, repelled, and moved by an infinite, internal passion, or
attraction; each turns round its own centre, and moves in a spiral towards the
centre of the whole, towards which centre they all tend with infinite passional
ardour. For in this centre, resides the sun of suns, the unity of unities, the
temple, the altar of the universe, the sacred fire of Vesta, the vital
principle of the universe.
That which occurs in the world off
stars is reflected in the telluric world; everything has its centre, towards
which it is attracted with fervour. All is thought, passion, and aspiration.
From this unity, which governs
variety, from the movement of every world around its sun, of every sun around
its centre sun -- the sun of suns -- which informs all with the rays of the
spirit, with the light of thought -- is generated that perfect harmony of
colours, sounds, forms, which strike the sight and captivate and enthrall the
intellect. That which in the heavens is harmony becomes, in the individual,
morality, and in companies of human beings, law. That which is light in the
spheres becomes intelligence and science in the world of the spirit and in
humanity. We must study this harmony that rules the celestial worlds in order
to deduce the laws which should govern civil bodies.
In the science of numbers dwells
harmony, and therefore it behoves us to identify ourselves with this harmony,
because from it is derived the harmonic law which draws men together into companies.
Through the revolution of the worlds through space around their suns, from
their order, their constancy and their measure, the mind comprehends the
progress and conditions of men, and their duties towards each other. The Bible,
the sacred book of man, is in the heavens; there does man find written the word
of God.
Human souls are lights, distinct
from the
universal soul, which is diffused
over all and penetrates everything. A purifying process guides them from one existence
to another, from one form to another, from one world to another. The life of
man is more than an experience or trial; it is an effort, a struggle to
reproduce and represent upon earth some of that goodness, beauty, and truth
which are diffused over the universe and constitute its harmony.
Long, slow, and full of opposition
is this educational process of the soul. As the terraqueous globe becomes
formed, changed, and perfected, little by little, through the cataclysms and
convulsions which, by means of fire, flood, earthquake, and irruptions,
transform the earth, so it is with humanity. Through struggle is man educated,
fortified, and raised.
In the midst of social cataclysms
and revolutions humanity has one guiding star, a beacon which shows its light
above the storms and tempests, a mystical thread running through the labyrinth
of history -- namely, the religion of philosophy and of thought. The vulgar
creeds would not, and have not dared to reveal the Truth in its purity and
essence. They covered it with veils with allegories, with myths and mysteries,
which they called sacred; they enshrouded thought with a double
veil, and called it Revelation.
Humanity, deceived by a seductive form, adored the veil, but did not lift
itself up to the idea behind it; it saw the shadow, not the light.
But we must return to our wandering
hero.
Bruno was about thirty-six years old
when he left Paris and went to England. He was
invited to visit the University
of Oxford, and opened his
lectures there with two subjects which, apparently diverse, are in reality
intimately connected with each other -- namely, on the Quadruple Sphere and on
the Immortality of the Soul. Speaking of the immortality of the soul, he
maintained that nothing in the universe is lost, everything changes and is
transformed; therefore, soul and body, spirit and matter, are equally immortal.
The body dissolves, and is transformed; the soul transmigrates, and, drawing
round itself atom to atom, it reconstructs for itself a new body. The spirit
that animates and moves all things is one; everything differentiates according
to the different forms and bodies in which it operates. Hence, of animate
things some are inferior by reason of the meanness of the organ in which they
operate; others are, superior through the richness of the same. Thus we see
that Bruno anticipates the doctrine, proclaimed later
by Goethe and by Darwin, of the transformation of species and
of the organic unity of the animal world; and this alternation from segregation
to aggregation, which we call death and life, is no other than mutation of
form.
After having criticised and scourged
the religions of chimera, of ignorance, and hypocrisy, in "Lo Spaccio
della Bestia Trionfante" and in "L'Asino Cillenico," the author,
in "Gli Eroici Furori," lays down the basis for the religion of
thought and of science. In place of the so-called Christian perfections
(resignation, devotion, and ignorance), Bruno would put intelligence and the
progress of the intellect in the world of physics, metaphysics, and morals; the
true aim being illumination, the true morality the practice of justice, the
true redemption the liberation of the soul from error, its elevation and union
with God upon the wings of thought. This idea is developed in the work in
question, which is dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney. After treating of the
infinite universe, and contemplating the innumerable worlds in other works, he
comes, in "Gli Eroici Furori," to the consideration of virtue in the
individual, and demonstrates the potency of the human faculties. After the
Cosmos, the Microcosm; after the infinitely
great, the infinitely small. The
body is in the soul, the soul is in the mind, the mind is in God. The life of
the soul is the true life of the man. Of all his various faculties, that which
rules all, that which exalts our nature, is Thought. By means of it we rise to
the contemplation of the universe, and becoming in our turn creators, we raise
the edifice of science; through the intellect the affections become purified,
the will becomes strengthened. True liberty is acquired, and will and action
becoming one through thought, we become heroes.
This education of the soul, or
rather this elevation and glory of thought, which draws with it the will and
the affections, not by means of blind faith or supernatural grace, not through
an irrational and mystical impulse, but by the strength of a reformed intellect
and by a palpable and well-considered enthusiasm, which science and the
contemplation of Nature alone can give, this is the keynote of the poem. It is
composed of two parts, each of which is divided into five dialogues: the first
part, which may be called psychological, shows, by means of various figures and
symbols drawn from Nature, how the divine light is always present to us, is
inherent in man; it presents itself to the senses and to the
comprehension: man constantly
rejects and ignores it; sometimes the soul strives to rise up to it, and the
poet describes the struggle with the opposing affections which are involved in
this effort, and shows how at last the mail of intelligence overcomes these
contending powers and fatal impulses which conflict within us, and by virtue of
harmony and the fusion of the opposites the intellect becomes one with the
affections, and man realizes the good and rises to the knowledge of the true.
All conflicting desires being at last united, they become fixed upon one
object, one great intent -- the love of the Divine, which is the highest truth
and the highest good. In "Gli Eroici Furori" we see Bruno as a man,
as a philosopher, and as a believer: here he reveals himself as the here of
thought. Even as Christ was the hero of faith, and sacrificed himself for it,
so Bruno declares himself ready to sacrifice himself for science. It is also a
literary, a philosophical, and a, religious work; form, however, is sacrificed
to the idea -- so absorbed is the author in the idea that he often ignores form
altogether. An exile wandering from place to place, he wrote hurriedly and
seldom or ever had he the opportunity of revising what he had written down. His
mind in the impulsiveness of its improvisation was like the volcano of
his native soil, which, rent by
subterranean flames, sends forth from its vortices of fire, at the same time
smoke, ashes, turbid floods, stones, and lava. He contemplates the soul, and
seeks to understand its language; he is a physiologist and a naturalist, merged
in the mystic and the enlightened devotee.
Bruno might have made a fixed home
for himself in England, as so many of his compatriots had done, and have
continued to enjoy the society of such men as Sir Philip Sydney, Fulke
Greville, and, perchance, also of Shakespeare himself, who was in London about
that time; but his self-imposed mission allowed him no rest; he must go forth,
and carry his doctrines to the world, and forget the pleasures of friendship
and the ties of comfort in the larger love of humanity; his work was to awaken
souls out of their lethargy, to inspire them with the love of the highest good
and of truth; to teach that God is to be found in the study of Nature, that the
laws of the visible world will explain those of the invisible, the union of'
science. and humanity with Nature and with God.
Bruno returned to Paris
in 1585, being at that time tutor in the family of Manvissier, who had been
recalled from England
by his Sovereign. During Bruno's second sojourn in Paris efforts were made
by Mendoza, the Spanish and others,
to induce him to return to his allegiance to the Church, and to be reconciled
to the Pope; but Bruno, declined these overtures, and soon after left Paris for Germany,
where he arrived on foot his only burden being a few books.
He visited Marburg and Wurtemburg, remaining in the latter
place two years, earning his bread by teaching.
Prague and Frankfort were next
visited; ever the same courage and boldness characterized his teaching and ever
the same scanty welcome was accorded to it, although in every city and
university crowds of the intelligent listened to his lectures; but the Church
never lost sight of Bruno, he was always under surveillance, and few dared to
show themselves openly his friends. Absorbed in his studies and intent upon his
work, writing with feverish haste, he observed nothing of the invisible net
which his enemies kept spread about him, and while his slanderers were busy in
doing him injury he was occupied in teaching the mnemonic art, and explaining
his system of philosophy to the young Lutherans who attended his lectures; in
settling the basis of a new and rational religion, and in writing Latin verses;
using ever greater diligence with his
work, almost as if he felt that, the
time was drawing near in which he would be no longer at liberty to work and
teach.
It was during the early part of the
pontificate of Gregory XIV. that Bruno received letters from Mocenigo in Venice, urging him to return to Italy,
and to go and stay with him in Venice,
and instruct him in the secrets of science. Bruno was beginning to tire of this
perpetually wandering life, and after several letters from Mocenigo, full of
fine professions of friendship and protection, Bruno, longing to see his
country again, turned his face towards Venice.
In those days men of superior
intellect were often considered to be magicians or sorcerers; Mocenigo, after
enticing Bruno to Venice,
insisted upon his teaching him "the secret of memory and other things that
he knew."
The philosopher with untiring
patience tried to instil into this dull head the principles of logic, the
elements of mathematics, and the rudiments of the mnemonic art; but the pupil
hated study, and had no faculty of thought; yet he insisted that Bruno should
make science clearly known to him! But this was probably only to initiate a
quarrel with Bruno,
whom he intended afterwards to
betray, and deliver into the hands of the Church.
The Holy Office would have laid
hands on Bruno immediately on his arrival in Italy, but being assured by
Mocenigo that he could not escape, they left him a certain liberty, so that he
might more surely compromise himself, while his enemies were busy collecting
evidence against him. When at last his eyes became opened to what was going on
about him, and he could no longer ignore the peril of his position, it was too
late; Bruno could not get away, and was told by Mocenigo that if he stayed not
by his own will and pleasure, he would be compelled to remain where he was. Bruno,
however, made his preparations for departure, and sent his things on to
Frankfort, intending to leave the next day himself; but in the, morning, while
he was still in bed, Mocenigo entered the chamber, pretending that he wished to
speak with him; then calling his servant Bartolo and five or six gondoliers,
who waited without, they forced Bruno to rise, and conducted him to a garret,
and locked him in. There he passed the first day of that imprisonment which was
to last for eight years. The next day he went over the lagoon in a gondola, in
the company of
his Jailers, who took him to the
prison of the Holy Office, and left him there. Levi devotes many pages to the
accusations brought against Giordano Bruno by the Inquisitors, and the depositions
and denunciations. made against him by his enemies. The Court was opened
without delay, and most of the provinces of Italy were represented by their
delegates in the early part of the trial; Bruno himself, being interrogated,
gave ail account in detail of his life, of his wanderings, of his occupations
and works: serene and dignified before this terrible tribunal, he expounded his
doctrine, its principles, and logical consequences. He spoke of the universe,
of the infinite, worlds in infinite space, of the divinity in all things, of
the unity of all things, the dependence and inter-dependence of all things, and
of the existence of God in all. After nine months' imprisonment in Venice, towards the end of January 1593, Bruno, in chains,
was conveyed from the Bridge of Sighs through the lagoons to Ancona, where he remained incarcerated until
the prison of' the Roman Inquisition received him. If we look upon "Gli
Eroici Farori" as a prophetical poem, we see that his sufferings in the
loneliness of his prison -- and in the torture-chamber of the Inquisition
passed by anticipation before his
mind in the book written when he was
free and a wanderer in strange lands.
"By what condition, nature, or
fell chance,
In living death, dead life I live?"
he writes eight years and more
before he ever breathed the stifling air of a dungeon; and again:
The soul nor yields nor bends to
these rough blows,
But bears, exulting, this long martyrdom,
And makes a harmony of these sharp pangs."
Further details of the trial of
Giordano Bruno are to be found in Levi's book. It is well known how he received
the sentence of death passed upon him, saying: "You, O judges! feel
perchance more terror in pronouncing this judgment than I do in hearing
it." The day fixed for the burning, which was to take place in the Campo
dei Fiori, was the 17th February in the year 1600. Rome was full of pilgrims from all parts,
come to celebrate the jubilee of Pope Clement VIII. Bruno was hardly fifty
years old at this time; his face was thin and pale, with dark, fiery eyes; the
forehead luminous with thought, his body frail and bearing the signs of
torture; his hands in chains, his feet bare, he walked with slow steps in the
early morning towards the funeral pile. Brightly shone the sun, and the
TANSILLO,
CICADA.
TANS. The enthusiasms most suitable
to be first brought forward and considered are those that I now place before
you in the order that seems to me most fitting.
CIC. Begin, then, to read.
TANSILLO.
I.
Ye Muses, that so oft I have
repulsed,
That, now importuned, haste to cure my pain,
And to console me in my woes
With verses, rhymes, and exaltation
Such as to others ye did never show,
Who yet do vaunt themselves of laurel and of myrtle,
Be near me now, my anchor and my port,
Lest I for sport should towards some others turn.
O Mount! O Goddesses! O Fountain!
Where and with whom I dwell, converse and nourish me,
Where peacefully I ponder and grow fair;
I rise, I live: heart, spirit, brows adorn;
Death, cypresses, and hells
You change to life, to laurels, and eternal stars!
It is to be supposed that he oftimes
and for divers reasons had repulsed the Muses; first, because he could not be
idle as a priest of the Muses should be, for idleness cannot exist there, where
the ministers and servants of envy, ignorance, and malignity are to be
combated. Moreover, he could not force himself to the study of philosophies,
which though they be not the most mature, yet ought, as kindred of the Muses,
to precede them. Besides which, being drawn on one side by the tragic
Melpomene, with more matter than spirit, and on the other side by the comic
Thalia, with more spirit than matter, it came to pass that, oscillating between
the two, he remained neutral and inactive, rather than operative. Finally, the
dictum of the censors, who, restraining him from that which was high and
worthy, and towards which he was naturally inclined, sought to enslave his
genius, and from being free in virtue they would have rendered him contemptible
under a most vile and stupid hypocrisy. At last, in the great whirl of
annoyances by which he was
surrounded, it happened that, not
having wherewith to console him, he listened to those who are said to
intoxicate him with such exaltation, verses, and rhymes, as they had never
demonstrated to others; because this work shines more by its originality than
by its conventionality.
CIC. Say, what do you mean by those
who vaunt themselves of myrtle and laurel?
TANS. Those may and do boast of the
myrtle who sing of love: if they bear themselves nobly, they may wear a crown
of that plant consecrated to Venus, of which they know the potency. Those may
boast of the laurel who sing worthily of things pertaining to heroes,
substituting heroic souls for speculative and moral philosophy, and praising
them and setting as mirrors and exemplars for political and civil actions.
CIC. There are then many species of
poets and crowns?
TAM. Not only as many as there are
Muses, but a great many more; for although genius is to be met with, yet
certain modes and species of human ingenuity cannot be thus classified.
CIC. There are certain schoolmen who
barely allow Homer to be a poet, and set down Virgil, Ovid, Martial, Hesiod,
Lucretius, and many others
as versifiers, judging them by the
rules of poetry of Aristotle.
TANS. Know for certain, my brother,
that such as these are beasts. They do not consider that those rules serve
principally as a frame for the Homeric poetry, and for other similar to it, and
they set up one as a great poet, high as Homer, and disallow those of other
vein, and art, and enthusiasm, who in their various kinds are equal, similar,
or greater.
CIC. So that Homer was not a poet
who depended upon rules, but was the cause, of the rules which serve for those
who are more apt at imitation than invention, and they have been used by him
who, being no poet, yet knew how to take the rules of Homeric poetry into
service, so as to become, not a poet or a Homer, but one who apes the Muse of
others?
TANS. Thou dost well conclude that
poetry is not born in rules, or only slightly and accidentally so; the rules
are derived from the poetry, and there are as many kinds and sorts of true,
rules as there are kinds and sorts of true poets.
CIC. How then are the true poets to
be known?
TANS. By the singing of their
verses; in that singing they give delight, or they edify, or they edify and
delight together.
CIC. To whom then are the rules of
Aristotle useful?
TANS. To him who, unlike Homer,
Hesiod, Orpheus, and others, could not sing without the rules of Aristotle, and
who, having no Muse of his own, would coquette with that of Homer.
CIC. Then they are wrong, those
stupid pedants of our days, who exclude from the number of poets those who do
not use words and metaphors conformable to, or whose principles are not in
union with, those of Homer and Virgil; or because they do not observe the
custom of invocation, or because they weave one history or tale with another,
or because they finish the song with an epilogue on what has been said and a
prelude on what is to be said, and many other kinds of criticism and censure,
from whence it seems they would imply that they themselves, if the fancy took
them, could be the true poets; and yet in fact they are no other than worms,
that know not how to do anything well, but are born only to gnaw and befoul the
studies and labours of others; and not being able to attain celebrity by their
own virtue and ingenuity, seek to put themselves in the front, by hook or by
crook, through the defects and errors of others.
TANS. Now, to return from this long
digression,
[paragraph
continues] I
say that there are as many sorts of poets as there are human sentiments and
ideas; and to these it is possible to adapt garlands, not only of every species
of plant, but also of other kinds of material. SO the crowns of poets are made
not only of myrtle and of laurel, but of vine leaves for the white-wine verses,
and of ivy for the bacchanals; of olive for sacrifice and laws; of poplar, of
elm, and of corn for agriculture; of cypress for funerals, and innumerable
others for other occasions; and, if it please you, also of that material
signified by a good fellow when he exclaimed:
O
Friar Leek! O Poetaster!
That in Milan didst buckle on thy wreath
Composed of salad, sausage, and the pepper-caster.
CIC. Now surely he of divers moods,
which he exhibits in various ways, may cover himself with the branches of
different plants, and may hold discourse worthily with the Muses, for they are
his aura or comforter, his anchor or support, and his harbour, to which he
retires in times of labour, of agitation, and storm. Hence he cries: "O mountain of Parnassus, where I abide! Muses, with
whom I converse! Fountain of Helicon, where I
am nourished. Mountain, that affordest me a quiet dwelling-place! Muses, that
inspire me with profound
doctrines. Fountain, that cleanses
me! Mountain, on whose ascent my heart uprises! Muses, that in discourse revive
my spirit. Well, whose arbours cool my brows! Change my death into life, my
cypress to laurels, and my hells into heavens: that is, give me immortality,
make me poet, render me illustrious!"
TANS. Well; because to those whom
Heaven favours the greatest evils turn to greatest good, for needs or
necessities bring forth labours and studies, and these most often bring the
glory of immortal splendour.
CIC. For to die in one age makes us
live in all the rest. Go on.
TANS. Then follows:
2.
In form and place like to Parnassus is
my heart,
And up unto this mount for safety I ascend;
My Muses are my thoughts, and they present to me
At every hour new beauties counted out.
The frequent tears that from my eyes do pour,
These make my fount of Helicon.
By such a mount, such nymphs, such floods,
As Heaven did please, was I a poet born.
No king of any kingdom,
No favouring hand of emperor,
No highest priest nor great pastòr,
Has given to me such graces, honours, privileges,
As are those laurel leaves with which
O'ershadowed are my heart, my thoughts, my tears.
Here he declares his mountain to be
the exalted affection of his heart, his Muses he calls the beauties and
attributes of the object of his affections, and the fountain is his tears. In
that mountain affection is kindled; through those beauties enthusiasm is
conceived, and by those tears the enthusiastic affection is demonstrated; and
he esteems himself not less grandly crowned by his heart, his thoughts, and his
tears than others are by the band of kings, emperors, and popes.
CIC. Explain to me what he means by
his heart being in form like Parnassus.
TANS. Because the human heart has
two summits, which terminate in one base or root; and, spiritually, from one
affection of the heart proceed two opposites, love and hate; and the mountain of Parnassus has two summits and one base.
CIC. On to the next!
3.
The captain calls his warriors to
arms,
And at the trumpet's sound they all
Under one sign and standard come.
But yet for some in vain the call is heard,
Heedless and unprepared, they mind it not.
One foe he kills, and the insane
He banishes from out the camp in scorn.
And thus the soul, when foiled her high designs,
Would have all those opponents dead or gone;
One object only I regard,
One face alone my mind does fill,
One beauty keeps me fixed and still;
One arrow pierced my heart, and one
The fire with which alone I burn,
And towards one paradise I turn.
This captain is the human will,
which dwells in the depths of the, soul with the small helm of reason to govern
and guide the interior powers against the wave of natural impulses. He, with
the sound of the trumpet -- that is, by fixed resolve -- calls all the warriors
or invokes all the powers; called warriors because they are in continual strife
and opposition; and their affections, which are all contrary thoughts, some
towards one and some towards the other side inclining, and he tries to bring
them all under one flag -- one settled end and aim. Some are called in vain to
put in a ready appearance, and are chiefly those which proceed from the lower
instincts, and which obey the reason either not at all, or very little; and
forcing himself to prevent their actions and condemn those which cannot be
prevented, he shows himself as one who would kill those and banish these, now
by the scourge of scorn, now by the sword of anger. One only is the object of
his regards, and on this he is
intently fixed; one prospect delights and fills his imagination, one beauty
pleases, and he rests in that, because the operation of the intelligence is not
a work of movement but of quiet; from thence alone he derives that barb which,
killing him, constitutes the consummation of perfection. He burns with one fire
alone; that is, one affection. consumes him.
CIC. Why is love symbolized by fire?
TANS. For many reasons, but at
present let this one suffice thee: that as love converts the thing loved into
the lover, so amongst the elements fire is active and potent to convert all the
others, simple and composite, into itself.
CIC. Go on.
TANS. He knows one paradise -- that
is, one consummation, because paradise commonly signifies the end; which is
again distinguished from that which is absolute in truth and essence from that
which is so in appearance and shadow or form. Of the first there can only be
one, as there can be only one ultimate and one primal good. Of the second the
modes are infinite.
4.
Love, Fate, Love's object, and cold
Jealousy,
Delight me, and torment, content. me, and afflict.
The insensate boy, the blind and sinister,
The loftiest beauty, and my death alone
Show to me paradise, and take away.
Present me with all good, and steal it from me,
So that the heart, the mind, the spirit, and the soul,
Have joy, pain, cold, and weight in their control.
Who will deliver me from war?
Who give to me the fruit of love in peace?
And that which vexes that which pleases me
(Opening the gates of heaven and closing them)
Who will set far apart
To make acceptable my fires and tears?
He shows the reason and origin of
passion; and whence it is conceived; and how enthusiasm is born, by ploughing
the field of the Muses and scattering the seed of his thoughts and waiting for
the fruitful harvest, discovering in himself the fervour of the affections
instead of in the sun, and in place of the rain is the moisture of his eyes. He
brings forward four things: Love, Fate, the Object, and Jealousy. Here love is
not a low, ignoble, and unworthy motor, but a noble lord and chief. Fate is
none other than the pre-ordained disposition and order of casualties to which
he is subject by his destiny. The object is the thing loved and the correlative
of the lover. Jealousy, it is clear, must be the ardour of the lover about the
thing loved, of which it boots not to speak to him who knows what
love is, and which it is vain to try
to explain to others. Love delights, because to him who loves it is a pleasure
to love; and he who really loves would not cease from loving. This is referred
to in the following sonnet:
5.
Beloved, sweet, and honourable
wound,
From fairest dart that love did choose,
Lofty, most beauteous and potential zeal,
That makes the soul in its own flames find weal!
What power or spell of herb or magic art
Can tear thee from the centre of my heart,
Since he, who with an ever-growing zest,
Tormenting most, yet most does make me blest?
How can I of this weight unburdened be,
If pain the cure, and joy the sore give me?
Sweet is my pain: to this world new and rare.
Eyes! ye are the bow and torches of my lord!
Double the flames and arrows in my breast,
For languishing is sweet and burning best.
Fate vexes and grieves by
undesirable and unfortunate events, or because it makes the subject feel
unworthy of the object, and out of proportion with the dignity of the latter,
or because a perfect sympathy does not exist, or for other reasons and
obstacles that arise. The object satisfies the subject, which is nourished by
no other, seeks no other, is. occupied by no other, and banishes every other
thought. Jealousy torments, because although she
is the daughter of Love, and is
derived from him, and is his companion who always goes with him, and is a sign
of the same, being understood as a necessary consequence wherever love is found
(as may be observed of whole generations who, from the coldness of the region
and lateness of development, learn little, love less, and of jealousy know
nothing), yet, notwithstanding its kinship, association, and signification,
jealousy comes to trouble and poisons all that it finds of beautiful and of
good in Love. Therefore I said in another sonnet:
6.
Oh, wicked child of Envy and of
Love!
That turnest into pain thy father's joys,
To evil Argus-eyed, but blind as mole to good.
Minister of torment! Jealousy!
Fetid harpy! Tisiphone infernal!
Who steals and poisons others' good,
Under thy cruel breath does languish
The sweetest flower of all my hopes.
Proud of thyself, unlovely one,
Bird of sorrow and harbinger of ill,
The heart thou visitest by thousand doors;
If entrance unto thee could be denied,
The reign of Love would so much fairer be,
As would this world were death and hate away.
To the above is added, that Jealousy
not only is sometimes the ruin and death of the lover, but
often kills Love itself, because Love
comes to be so much under its influence that it is impelled to despise the
object, and in fact becomes alienated from it, especially when it engenders
disdain.
CIC. Explain now the ideas which
follow. Why is Love called the "insensate boy"?
TANS. I will tell you. Love is
called the insensate boy, not because he is so of himself, but because he
brings certain ones into subjection, and dwells in such subjects, since the
more intellectual and speculative one is, the more Love raises the genius and
purifies the intellect, rendering it alert, studious, and circumspect,
promoting a condition of valorous animosity and an emulation of virtues and
dignities by the desire to please and to make itself worthy of the thing loved;
others, and they are the largest number, call him mad and foolish, because he
drives them distracted, and hurries them into excesses, by which the spirit,
soul, and body become sickly, and inept to consider and distinguish that which
is seemly from that which is distorted; thus rendering them subject to scorn,
derision, and reproach.
CIC. It is commonly said that love
makes fools of the old and makes the young wise.
TANS. That drawback does not happen
to all the
aged, nor that advantage to all the
young; the one is true of the weak, and the other of the robust. One thing is
certain, that he who loves wisely in youth will in age not go astray. But
derision is for those of mature age, into whose hands Love puts the alphabet.
CIC. Tell me now why Fate is called
blind and bad.
TANS. Again, blind and bad is not
said of Destiny itself, because it is of the same order and number and measure
as the universe; but as to the subjects it is said to be blind, for they are,
blind to fate, she being so uncertain. So also is Fate said to be evil, because
every living mortal who laments and complains, blames her. As the Apulian poet
says:
How is it, or what means it,
Mæcenas,
That none on earth contented with that fate appear,
Which Reason or Heaven has assigned to them?
In the same way he calls the object
the highest beauty, as it is that alone which has power of attracting him to
itself; and this he holds it more worthy, more noble, and feels it predominant
and superior as he becomes subject and captive to it. "My death
itself," he says of Jealousy, because as Love has no more close companion
than she, so also he feels he has no greater enemy; as nothing is
more hurtful to iron than rust,
which is produced by it.
CIC. Now, since you have begun so,
continue to show bit by bit that which remains.
TANS. So will I. He says next of
Love: he shows me Paradise, in order to prove that Love himself is not blind,
and does not himself render any lovers blind, except through the ignoble
characteristics of the subject; even as the birds of night become blind in the
sunshine. As for himself, Love brightens, clears, and opens the intellect,
permeating all and producing miraculous effects.
CIC. Much of this, it seems to me,
the Nolano demonstrates in another sonnet:
7.
Love, through whom high truth I do
discern,
Thou openest the black diamond doors;
Through the eyes enters my deity, and through seeing
Is born, lives, is nourished, and has eternal reign;
Shows forth what heaven holds, earth and hell:
Makes present true images of the absent;
Gains strength: and drawing with straight aim,
Wounds, lays bare and frets the inmost heart.
Attend now, thou. base hind unto the truth,
Bend down the
car to m unerring word;
Open, open, if thou canst the eyes, foolish perverted one!
Thou understanding little, call'st him child,
Because thou swiftly changest, fugitive he seems,
Thyself not seeing, call'st him blind.
[paragraph
continues]
Love shows Paradise in order that the highest
things may be heard, understood, and accomplished; or it makes the things
loved, grand-at least in appearance. He says, Fate takes love away; because,
often in spite of the lover, it does not concede, and that which he sees and
desires is distant and adverse to him. Every good he sets before me, he says of
the object, because that which is indicated by the finger of Love seems to him
the only thing, the principal, and the whole. "Steals it from me," he
says of Jealousy, not simply in order that it may not be present to me; removing
it from my eyesight, but in order that good may not be good, but an acute evil;
sweet, not sweet, but an agonized longing; while the heart -- that is, the
will, has joy by the great force of love, whatever may be the result; the mind
-- that is, the intellectual part, has pain through the Fear of Fate, which
fate does not favour the lover; the spirit -- that is, the natural affections,
are cold because they are snatched from the object which gives joy to the
heart, and which might give pleasure to the mind; the soul -- that is, the
suffering and sensitive soul, is heavy -- that is, finds itself oppressed with
the heavy burden of jealousy which torments it. To this consideration of his
state he adds a tearful lament, and says: "Who
will deliver me from war, and give
me peace? or who will separate that which pains and injures me from that which
I so love, and which opens to me the gates of heaven, so that the fervid flames
in my heart may be acceptable, and fortunate the fountains of my tears?"
Continuing this proposition, he adds:
8.
Ah me! oppress some other, spiteful
Fate!
Jealousy, get thee hence -- begone! away!
These may suffice to show me all the grace
Of changeful Love, and of that noble face.
He takes my life, she gives me death,
She wings, he burns my heart,
He murders it, and she revives the soul:
My succour she, my grievous burden he!
But what say I of Love?
If he and she one subject be, or form,
If with one empire and one rule they stamp
One sole impression in my heart of hearts,
Then are they two, yet one, on which do wait
The mirth and melancholy of my state!
Four beginnings and extremes of two
opposites he would reduce to two beginnings and one opposite: he says, then,
oppress others -- that is, let it suffice thee, O my Fate! that thou hast so
much oppressed me; and since thou canst not exist without exercise of thyself,
turn elsewhere thy anger. Get thee hence out of the world, thou Jealousy,
because one of those
two others which remain can supply
your functions and offices; yet, O Fate! thou art none other than. my love; and
thou, Jealousy, art not external to the substance of the same. He alone, then,
remains; to deprive me of life, to burn me, to give me death, and to be to me
the burden of my bones; for he delivers me from death -- wings, enlivens, and
sustains. Then two beginnings and one opposite he reduces to one beginning and
one result, exclaiming But what do I say of Love? If this presence, this
object, is his empire, and appears none other than the empire of Love, the rule
of Love and its own rule; the impression of Love which appears in the substance
of my heart, is then no other impression than its own, and therefore after
having said "Noble face," replies "Inconstant Love." 1
TANSILLO.
Now begins the enthusiast to display
the affections. and uncover the wounds which are for a sign in his body, and in
substance or essence in his soul, and he says thus:
9.
Of Love the standard-bearer I;
My hopes are ice, and glowing my desires.
At once I tremble, sparkle, freeze, and burn;
Am mute, and fill the air with clamorous plaints.
Water my eyes distil, sparks from my heart.
I live, I die, make merry and lament.
Living the waters, the burning never dies,
For in my eyes is Thetys, and Vulcan in my heart.
Others I love; myself I hate.
If I be winged, others are changed to stone;
They high as heaven, if I be lowly set.
I cease not to pursue, they ever flee away;
If I do call, yet none will answer me.
The more I search, the more is hid from me.
In accordance with this, I will
continue with that which just before I said to thee, that one should
not strive so hard to prove that
which is so very evident-namely, that there is nothing pure and unalloyed; and
some have said that no mixed thing is a real entity, as alloyed gold is not
real gold, manufactured wine is not real simple wine. Almost all things are
made up of opposites, whence it comes that the success of our affections,
through the mixture that is in things, can afford no pleasure without some
bitterness; and more than this, I will say, that were it not for the bitter,
there would be no sweet; seeing that it is through fatigue that we find pleasure
in repose; separation is the cause of our pleasure in union and, examining
generally, we shall ever find that one opposite is the reason that the other
opposite pleases and is desired.
CIC. Then there is no delight
without the contrary?
TANS. Certainly not; as without the
opposite there is no pain; as is shown by that golden Pythagorean poet when he
says:
Hinc metuunt cupiuntque, dolent
gaudentque, nec
Respiciunt, clausæ tenebris, e carcere cæco.
This, then, is what the mixture of things
causes, and hence it is that no one is pleased with his own state, except some
senseless blockhead, who is so all the more the deeper is the degree of obscure
folly
in which he is sunk; then he has
little or no apprehension of pain; he enjoys the actual present without fearing
the future; he enjoys that which is and that in which he finds himself, and has
neither care nor sorrow for what may be; and, in short, has no sense of that
opposition which is symbolized by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
CIC. From this we see that ignorance
is the mother of sensual felicity and beatitude, and this same is the garden of
paradise of the animals; as is made clear in the dialogues of the Kabala of the
horse Pegasus; and as says the wise Solomon, "Whose increases knowledge
increases sorrow."
TANS. Hence it appears that heroic
love is a torment, because it does not enjoy the present, as does animal love,
but is of the future and the absent; and, on the contrary, it feels ambition,
emulation, suspicion and dread. One evening, after supper, a certain neighbour
of ours said: "Never was I more, jolly than I am now." John Bruno,
father of the Nolano, answered him: "Never wert thou more foolish than
now."
CIC. You would imply, then, that he
who is sad is wise, and that other who is more sad is wiser?
TANS. On the contrary, I mean that
there
is in these another species of
foolishness and a worse.
CIC. Who, then, is wise, if foolish
is he who is content, and foolish he who is sad?
TANS. He who is neither merry nor
sad.
CIC. Who? He who sleeps? He who is
without feeling -- who is dead?
TANS. No; but he who is quick, both
seeing and hearing, and who, considering evil and good, estimating the one and
the other as variable, and consistent in motion, mutation, and vicissitude, in
such wise that the end of one opposite is the commencement of another, and the
extreme of the one is the beginning of the other; whose spirit is neither
depressed nor elated, but is moderate in inclinations and temperate in desires;
to him pleasure is not pleasure, having ever present the end of it; equally,
pain to him is not pain, because by the force of reasoning he has present the
end of that too. So the sage holds all mutable things as things that are not,
and affirms that they are no other than vanity and nothingness, because time
has to eternity the proportion of the point to the line.
CIC. So that we can never hold the
proposition of being contented or discontented, without holding the proposition
of our own foolishness, which we
thereby confess; therefore no one
who reasons, and consequently no one who participates, can be wise; in short,
all men are fools.
TANS. I do not intend to infer that;
for I will hold of highest wisdom him who could really say at one time the
opposite of what he says at another -- never was I less gay than now; or, never
was I less sad than at present.
CIC. How? Do you not make two
contrary qualities where there are two opposite affections? Why, I say, do you
take as two virtues, and not as one vice and one virtue, the being less gay and
the being less sad?
TANS. Because both the contraries in
excess -- that is, in so far as they exceed -- are vices, because they pass the
line; and the same, in so far as they diminish, come to be virtues, because
they are contained within limits.
CIC. How? The being less merry and
the being less sad are not one virtue and one vice, but are two virtues?
TANS. On the contrary, I say they
are one and the same virtue; because the vice is there where the opposite is;
the opposite is chiefly there where the extreme is; the greatest opposite is
the nearest to the extreme; the least or nothing is in the
middle, where the opposites meet,
and are one and identical; as between the coldest and hottest and the hotter
and colder, in the middle point is that which you may call hot and cold, or
neither hot nor cold, without contradiction. In that way whoso is least content
and least joyful is in the degree of indifference, and finds himself in the habitation
of temperance, where the virtue and condition of a strong soul exist, which
bends not to the south wind nor to the north. This, then, to return to the
point, is how this enthusiastic hero, who explains himself in the present part,
is different from the other baser ones -- not as virtue from vice, but as a
vice which exists in a subject more divine or divinely, from a vice which
exists in a subject more savage or savagely; so that the difference is
according to the different subjects and modes, and not according to the form of
vice.
CIC. I can very well conceive, from
what you have said, the condition of that heroic enthusiast, who says, "My
hopes are ice and my desires are glowing," because he is not in the
temperance of mediocrity, but, in the excess of contradictions, his soul is
discordant, he shivers in his frozen hopes and burns in his glowing desires; in
his eagerness he is clamorous, and he is mute from fear; his
heart burns in its affection for
others, and for compassion of himself he sheds tears from his eyes; dying in
the laughter of others, he is alive in his own lamentations; and like him who
no longer belongs to himself, he loves others and hates himself; because
matter, as say the physicists, with that measure with which it loves the absent
form, hates the present one. And so in the octave finishes the war which the
soul has within itself; and when he says in the sistina, but if I be winged,
others change to stone and that which follows; he shows his passion for the
warfare which he wages with external contradictions. I remember having read in
Jamblichus, where he treats of the Egyptian mysteries, this sentence:
"Impius animam dissidentem habet: unde nec secum ipse convenire potest,
neque cum aliis."
TANS. Now listen to another sonnet,
as sequel to what has been said:
10.
By what condition, nature, or fell
chance,
In living death, dead life I live?
Love has me dead, alack! and such a death,
That death and life together I must lose.
Devoid of hope, I reach the gates of hell,
And laden with desire arrive at heaven:
Thus am I subject to eternal opposites,
And, banished both from heaven and from hell,
No pause nor rest my torments know,
Because between two running wheels I go,
Of which one here, the other there compels,
And like Ixion I pursue and flee;
For to the double discourse do I fit
The crosswise lesson of the spur and bit.
He shows how much he suffers from
this dislocation and distraction in himself; while the affections, leaving the
mean and middle way of temperance, tend towards the one and the other extreme,
and so are wafted on high or towards the right, and are also transported
downwards to the left.
CIC. How is it, that, not being
really of one or the other extreme, it does not come to be in the conditions or
terms of virtue?
TANS. It is then in a state of
virtue when it keeps to the middle, declining from one to the other opposite;
but when it leads towards the extremes, inclining to one or the other of those,
it fails so entirely from being virtue, that it is a double vice, which
consists in this, that the thing recedes from its nature, the perfection of
which consists in unity, and there where the opposites meet, its composition
and virtue exist. This, then, is how he is dead alive, or living dying; whence
he says, "In a living death a dead life I live." He is not dead,
because
he lives in the object; not alive,
because he is dead in himself; deprived of death, because he gives birth to
thoughts; deprived of life, because he does not grow or feel in himself. He is
now most dejected through meditating on the high intelligence, and the
perceived feebleness of power; and most elated by the aspiration of heroic
longing, which passes far beyond his limits, and is most exalted by the
intellectual appetite; which has not for its fashion or aim to add number to
number, is most dejected by the violence done to him by the sensual opposite
which drags him down towards hell. So that, finding himself thus ascending and
descending, he feels within his soul the greatest dissension that is possible
to be felt, and he remains in a state of confusion through this rebellion of
the senses, which urge him thither where reason restrains, and vice versâ.
This same is thoroughly demonstrated in the following sentences, where the
Reason, under the name of "Filenio" asks, and the enthusiast replies
under the name of "Shepherd," who labours in the care of the flocks
and herds of his thoughts, which he nourishes in the submission to and service
of his nymph, which is the affection of that object to which he is captive.
S. Not at all.
F. Is he silent?
S. Yes, for so much purity (omestà) robs me of my boldness.
F. Thou ravest.
S, How so?
F. In vain efforts.
S. His scorn more than my torments do I fear.
Here he says that he craves for
love, and he complains of it, yet not because he loves -- seeing, that to no
true lover can love be displeasing; but because he loves unhappily, whilst
those beams which are the rays of those lights, and which themselves, according
as they are perverse and antagonistic, or really kind and gracious, become the
gates which lead towards heaven or towards hell. In this way he is kept in hope
of future and uncertain mercy, but actually in a state of present and certain
torment, and although he sees his folly quite clearly, nevertheless he does not
care to correct himself in it, or even to feel displeased with it, but rather
does he feel satisfied with it, as he shows when he says:
Never let me of Love complain,
For Love alone can ease my pain.
Here is shown another species of
enthusiasm born from the light of reason, which excites fear and suppresses the
aforesaid reason in order not to
commit any action which might vex or
irritate the thing loved. He says, then, that hope rests in the future, without
anything being promised or denied; therefore, he is silent and asks nothing for
fear of offending purity (l'onestade). He does not venture to explain
himself and make a proposition, lest he be rejected with repugnance or accepted
with reserve; for he thinks the evil that there might be in the one would be
overbalanced by the good in the other. He shows himself, then, ready to suffer
for ever his own torment, rather than to open the door to an opportunity
through which the thing loved might be perturbed and saddened.
CIC. Herein he proves that his love
is truly heroic; because he proposes to himself as the chief aim, not corporeal
beauty, but rather the grace of the spirit, and the inclination of the
affections in which, rather than in the beauty of the body, that love that has
in it the divine, is eternal.
TANS. Thou knowes't that, as the
Platonic ideas are divided into three species, of which one tends to the
contemplative or speculative life, one to active morality, and the third to the
idle and voluptuous, so are there three species of love, of which one raises
itself from the contemplation of bodily form to the,
consideration of the spiritual and
divine; the other only continues in the delight of seeing and conversing; the
third from seeing proceeds to precipitate into the concupiscence of touch. Of
these three modes others are composed, according as the first may be coupled
with the second or the third, or as all the three modes may combine together,
of which one and all may be divided into others, according to the affections of
the enthusiast, as these tend more towards the spiritual object, or more
towards the corporeal, or equally towards the one and the other. Hence it
comes, that of those who find themselves in this warfare, and are entangled in
the meshes of love, some aim at enjoying, and they are incited to pluck the
apple from the tree of corporeal beauty, without which acquisition, or at least
the hope of it, they hold vain and worthy only of derision every amorous care;
and in suchwise run all those who are of a barbarous nature, who neither do nor
can seek to exalt themselves by loving worthy things, and aspiring to
illustrious things, and higher still to things divine, by suitable studies and
exercises, to which nothing can more richly and easily supply the wings than
heroic love; others put before themselves the fruit of delight, which they take
in the aspect of the beauty and grace of the
spirit, which glitters and shines in
the beauty of the body, and certain of these, although they love the body and
greatly desire to be united to it, bewailing its absence and being afflicted by
separation, at the same time fear, lest presuming in this they may be deprived
of that affability, conversation, friendship, and sympathy which are most
precious to them; because to attempt this there cannot be more guarantee of
success than there is risk of forfeiting that favour, which appears before the
eyes of thought as a thing so glorious and worthy.
CIC. It is a worthy thing, oh Tansillo!
for its many virtues and perfections, and it behoves human genius to seek,
accept, nourish, and preserve a love like that; but one should take great care
not to, bow down or become enslaved to an object unworthy and base, lest we
become sharers of the baseness and unworthiness of the same: appositely the
Ferrarese poet says
Who sets his foot upon the amorous
snare,
Lest he besmear his wings, let him beware.
TANS. To say the truth, that object,
which beyond the beauty of the body has no other splendour, is not worthy of
being loved otherwise than to make the race; and it seems to me the work of a
pig or
TANSILLO.
THERE are several varieties of
enthusiasts, which may all be reduced to two kinds. While some only display
blindness, stupidity, and irrational impetuosity, which tend towards savage
madness, others by divine abstraction become in reality superior to ordinary
men. And these again are of two kinds, for some having become the habitation of
gods or divine spirits, speak and perform wonderful things, without themselves
understanding the reason. Many such have been uncultured and ignorant persons,
into whom, being void of spirit and sense of their own, as into an empty
chamber, the divine spirit and sense intrude, as it would have less power to
show itself in those who are full of their own reason and sense. This divine
spirit often desires that the world should know for certain, that those do not
speak from their own knowledge and experience,
but speak and act through some
superior intelligence; for such, the mass of men vouchsafe more admiration and
faith, while others, being skilful in contemplation and possessing innately a
clear intellectual spirit, have an internal stimulus and natural fervour,
excited by the love of the divine, of justice, of truth, of glory, and by the
fire of desire and the breath of intention, sharpen their senses, and in the
sulphur of the cogitative faculty, these kindle the rational light, with which
they see more than ordinarily; and they come in the end to speak and act, not
as vessels and instruments, but as chief artificers and experts.
CIC. Of these two which dost thou
esteem higher?
TANS. The first have more dignity,
power, and efficacy within themselves, because they have the divinity; the
second are themselves worthy, potential, and efficacious, and are
divine. The first are worthy, as is the ass which carries the sacraments; the
second are as a sacred thing. In the first is contemplated and seen in effect
the divinity, and that is beheld, adored, and obeyed; in the second is
contemplated and seen the excellency of humanity itself. But now to the
question. These enthusiasms of which we speak, and which we see exemplified in
these sentences, are not oblivion,
but a memory; they are not neglect of one's self, but love and desire of the
beautiful and good, by means of which we are able to make ourselves perfect, by
transforming and assimilating ourselves to it. It is not a precipitation, under
the laws of a tyrannous fate, into the noose of animal affections, but a
rational impetus, which follows the intellectual apprehension of the beautiful
and the good, which knows whom it wishes to obey and to please, so that, by its
nobility and light, it kindles and invests itself with qualities and conditions
through which it appears illustrious and worthy. He (the enthusiast) becomes a
god by intellectual contact with the divine object, and he has no thought for
other than divine things, and shows himself insensible and impassive towards
those things which are commonly felt, and about which others are mostly tormented;
he fears nothing, and for love of the divine he despises other pleasures and
gives no thought to this life. It is not, a fury of black bile which sends him
drifting outside, of judgment, reason, and acts of prudence, and tossed by the
discordant tempest, like those who, having violated certain laws of the divine
Adrastia, are condemned to be scourged by the Furies, in order that they may be
excited by a dissonance as corporeal
through seditions, destructions, and
plagues, as it is spiritual, through the forfeiture of harmony between the
perceptive and enjoying powers; but ~t is a glow kindled by the intellectual
sun in the soul, and a divine impetus which lends it wings, with which, drawing
nearer and nearer to the intellectual sun, and ridding itself of the rust of
human cares, it becomes a gold tried and pure, has the perception of divine and
internal harmony, and its thoughts and acts accord with the symmetry of the
law, innate in all things. Not, as drunk from the cups of Circe, does he go
dashing and stumbling, now in this and then in that ditch, now against this or
that rock, or like a shifting Proteus, changing now to this, now to the other
aspect, never finding place, fashion, or ground to stay and settle in; but,
without spoiling the harmony, conquers and overcomes the horrid monsters, and
however much he may swerve, he easily returns to himself 1 by means of those inward instincts
that, like the nine Muses, dance and sing round the splendours of the universal
Apollo, and under tangible images and material things, he comes to comprehend
divine laws and counsels. It is true that
sometimes, having love for his
trusty escort, who is double, and because sometimes through occasional
impediments he Ends himself defrauded of his strength, then, as one insane and
furious, he squanders away the love of that which he cannot comprehend; whence,
confused by the obscurity of the divinity, he sometimes abandons the work, and
then again returns, to force himself with his will thither, where, he, cannot
arrive with the intellect. It is true also that be commonly wanders, and
transports himself, now into one, now into another form of the double, Eros;
therefore, the principal lesson that Love gives to him is, that he contemplate
the divine beauty in shadow, when he cannot do so in the mirror, and, like the
suitors of Penelope, he entertain himself with the maids when he is not
permitted to converse, with the mistress. Now, in conclusion, you can
comprehend, from what has been said, what is this enthusiast whose picture is
put forth, when it is said:
12.
If towards the shining light the
butterfly,
Winging his way knows not the burning flame,
And if the thirsty stag, unmindful of the dart,
Runs fainting to the brook,
Or unicorn, unto the chaste breast running,
Ignores the snare that is for him prepared,
I, in the light, the fount, the bosom of my love
Behold the flames, the arrows, and the chains.
If it be sweet in plaintiveness to droop,
Why does that lofty splendour dazzle me?
Wherefore the sacred arrow sweetly wound?
Why in this knot is my desire involved?
And why to me eternal irksomeness
Flames to my heart, darts to my breast and snares unto my soul?
Here he shows his love not to be
like that of the butterfly, of the stag and of the unicorn, who would flee away
if they had knowledge of the. fire, of the arrow, and of the snares, and who
have no other sense than that of pleasure; but he is moved by a most sensible
and only too evident passion, which forces him to love that fire more than any
coolness; more that wound than any wholeness; more those fetters than any
liberty. For this evil is not absolutely evil, but, through comparison with
good (according to opinion), it is deceptive, like the sauce that old Saturn
gets when he devours his own sons; for this evil absolutely in the eye of the
Eternal, is comprehended either for good, or for guide which conduces to it,
since this fire is the ardent desire of divine things, this arrow is the
impression of the ray of the beauty of supernal light, these snares are the
species of truth which unite our mind to the,
primal verity, and the species of
good which unite and join to the primal and highest good. To that meaning I
approached when I said:
13.
With such a fire and such a noble
noose,
Beauty enkindles me, and pureness binds,
So that in flames and servitude I take delight,
Liberty takes
flight and dreads the ice.
Such is the heat, that though I burn yet am I not destroyed,
The tie is such, the world with me gives praise.
Fear cannot freeze, nor pain unshackle me;
For soothing is the ardour, sweet the smart.
So high the light that burns me I discern,
And of so rich a thread the noose contrived
That, thought being born, the longing dies.
And since, within my heart shines such pure flames,
And so supreme a tie compels my will,
Let, my shade serve, and let ray ashes burn.
All the loves, if they be heroic and
not purely animal, or what is called natural, and slaves to generation, as
instruments of nature in a certain way, have for object the divinity, tend
towards divine beauty, which first is communicated to souls and shines in them,
and from them, or rather through them, it is communicated to bodies; whence it
is that well-ordered affection loves the body or corporeal beauty, insomuch as
it is an indication of beauty of
spirit. Thus that which causes the
attraction of love to the body is a certain spirituality which we see in it,
and which is called beauty, and which does not consist in major or minor
dimensions, nor in determined colours or forms, but in harmony and consonance
of members and colours. This shows an affinity between the spirit and the most
acute and penetrative senses; whence it follows that such become more easily
and intensely enamoured, and also more easily and intensely disgusted, which
might be through a change of the deformed spirit, which in some gesture and
expressed intention reveals itself in such wise that this deformity extends
from the soul to the body, and makes it appear no longer beautiful as before.
The beauty, then, of the body has power to kindle, but not to bind, and the
lover, unless aided by the graces of the spirit, such as purity, gratitude,
courtesy, circumspection, is unable to escape. Therefore, said I, beautiful is
that fire which burns me, and noble that tie which binds.
CIC. I do not believe it is always
like that, Tansillo; because, sometimes, notwithstanding that we discover the
spirit to be vicious, we remain heated and entangled; so that, although reason
perceives the evil and unworthiness of such a love,
it yet has not power to alienate the
disordered appetite. In this disposition, I believe, was the Nola-no when he
said:
14.
Woe's me! my fury forces me
To union with the bad within,
And makes it seem a love supreme and good.
Wearied, my soul cares nought
That I opposing counsels entertain,
And with the savage, tyrant
Nourished with want,
And made to put myself in exile,
More than with liberty contented am.
I spread my sails to the wind,
To draw me forth from this detested bliss,
And I reclaim me from the cloying hurt.
TANS. This occurs when spirits are
vicious and tinged as with the same hue; since, through conformity, love is
excited, enkindled, and confirmed. Thus the vicious easily concur in acts of
the same vice; and I will not refrain from repeating that which I know by
experience, for although I may have discovered in a soul vices very much
abominated by me -- as, for instance, filthy avarice, base greediness for
money, ingratitude for favours and courtesies received, or a love of quite vile
persons, of which this last most displeases, because it takes away the hope
from the lover, that
by becoming or making himself more
worthy he may become more acceptable -- in spite of all this, it is trite that
I did burn for corporeal beauty. But how? I loved against my will; for, were it
not so, I should have been more, saddened than cheered by troubles and
misfortunes.
CIC. It is a very proper and nice
distinction that is made between loving and liking.
TANS. Truly; because we like many --
that is, we desire that they be wise and just; but we love them not because
they are unjust and ignorant; many we love because they are beautiful, but we
do not like them, because they do not deserve it; and amongst other things of
which the lover deems the loved one undeserving, the first is, being loved; and
yet, although he cannot abstain from loving, nevertheless he regrets it, and
shows his regret like him who said, "Woe is me! who am compelled by
passion to coalesce with evil." In the opposite mood was he, either
through some corporeal object in similitude or through a divine subject in
reality, when he said:
15.
Although to many pains thou dost
subject me,
Yet do I thank thee, love, and owe thee much,
That thou my breast dost cleave with noble wound,
And then dost take my heart and master it.
Thus true it is, that I, on earth, adore
A living object, image most beautiful of God.
Let him who will think that my fate is bad
That kills in hope and quickens in desire.
My pasture is the high emprise,
And though the end desired be not attained,
And though my soul in many thoughts is spent,
Enough that she enkindle noble fire,
Enough that she has lifted me on high,
And from the ignoble crowd has severed me.
Here his love is entirely heroic and
divine, and as such, I wish it to be understood; although he says that through
it he is subject to many pangs, every lover who is separated from the thing loved
(to which being joined by affection he would also wish to be actually), being
in anguish and pain, he torments himself, not forsooth because he loves, since
he feels his love is engaged most worthily and most nobly, but because he feels
deprived of that fruition which he would obtain if he arrived at that end to
which he tends. He suffers, not from the desire which animates him, but from
the difficulty in the cultivation of it which so tortures him. Others esteem
him unhappy through this appearance of an evil destiny, as being condemned to
these pangs, for he will never cease from acknowledging the obligation he is
under to love, nor cease from rendering thanks to him because he has presented
before the eyes of his mind such an intelligible
conception through which, in this earthly life, shut in this prison of the
flesh, wrapped in these nerves and supported by these bones, it is permitted to
him to contemplate the divinity in a more suitable manner than if other
conceptions and similitudes than these had offered themselves.
CIC. The divine and living object,
then, of which he speaks, is the highest intelligible conception that he has
been able to form to himself of the divinity, and is not some corporeal beauty
which might overshadow his thought and appear superficially to the senses.
TANS. Even so; because no tangible
thing nor conception of such can raise itself to so much dignity.
CIC. Why, then, does be mention that
conception as the object, if, as appears to me, the true object is the divinity
itself?
TANS. The divinity is the final
object, the ultimate and most perfect, but not in this state, where we cannot
see God except as in a, shadow or a mirror, and therefore He cannot be the
object except in some similitude, but not in such as may be extracted or
acquired from corporeal beauty and excellence, by virtue of the senses, but
such as may
be formed in the mind, by virtue of
the intellect. In which state, finding himself, he comes to lose the love and
affection for every other thing senseful as well as intellectual, because this,
conjoined to that light, itself also becomes light, and in consequence becomes
a god: because it contracts the divinity into itself, it being in God through
the intention with which it penetrates into the divinity so far as it can, and
God being in it, so that after penetrating it comes to conceive, and so far as
it can, receive and comprehend. the divinity in its conception. Now in such
conceptions and similitudes the human intellect of this lower world nourishes
itself, till such time as it, will be lawful to behold with purer eye the
beauty of the divinity. As happens to him, who, absorbed in the contemplation
of some elaborate architectural work, goes on examining one thing after another
in it, enchanted and feeding in a wonder of delight; but if it should happen
that he sees the lord of all those pictures, who is of a beauty incomparably
greater, leaving all care and thought of them, he is turned intently to the
examination of him. Here, then, is the difference between that state where we
see divine beauty in intelligible conceptions apart from the effects, labours,
works, shadows, and similitudes of it, and that other state
in which it is lawful to behold it
in real presence. He says: "My pasture is the high emprise," because
as the Pythagoreans remark, "The soul moves and turns round God, as the
body round the soul."
CIC. Then the body is not the
habitation of the soul?
TANS. No; because the soul is not in
the body locally, but as intrinsic form and extrinsic framer, as that which
forms the limbs indicates the internal and external composition. The body,
then, is in the soul, the soul in the mind, the mind either is God or is in
God, as Plotinus said. As in its essence it, is in God who is its life,
similarly through the intellectual operation, and the will consequent upon such
operation, it agrees with its bright and beatific object. Fitly, therefore,
this rapture of heroic enthusiasm feeds on such "high emprise." For
the object is infinite, and in action most simple, and our intellectual power
cannot apprehend the infinite except in speech or in a certain manner of
speech, so to say in a certain potential or relative inference, as one who
proposes to himself the infinite, so that he may constitute for himself a
finality where no finality is.
CIC. Fitly so, because the ultimate
ought not to
have an end seeing that it is
ultimate. For it is infinite in intention, in perfection, in essence, and in
any other manner whatsoever of being final.
TANS. Thou sayest truly. Now in this
life, that food is such that excites more than it can appease, as that divine
poet shows when he says: "My soul is wearied, longing for the living
God," and in another place; "Attenuati sunt oculi mei suspicientes in
excelsa." Therefore he says, "And though the end desired be not
attained, And that my soul in many thoughts is spent, Enough that she enkindle
noble fire:" meaning to say that the soul comforts itself, and receives
all the glory which it is able in that state to receive, and that it is a
participator in that ultimate enthusiasm of man, in so far as he is a man in
this present condition, as we see him.
CIC. It appears to me that the
Peripatetics, as explained by Averroes, mean this, when they say that the
highest felicity of man consists in perfection through the speculative
sciences.
TANS. It is true, and they say well;
because we, in this state, cannot desire nor obtain greater perfection than
that in which we are, when our intellect, by means of some noble and
intelligible conception, unites itself either to the substance of things hoped
for, as those say, or to the divine
mind, as it is the fashion to say of the Platonists. For the present, I will
leave reasoning about the soul, or man in another state or mode of being than
be can find himself or believe himself to be in.
CIC. But what perfection or
satisfaction can man find in that knowledge which is not perfect?
TANS. It will never be perfect, so
far as understanding the highest object is concerned; but in so far as our
intellect can understand it. Let it suffice that in this and other states there
be present to him the divine beauty so far as the horizon of his vision
extends.
CIC. But all men cannot arrive at
that, which one or two may reach.
TANS. Let it suffice that all
"run well," and that each does his utmost, for the heroic nature is
content and shows its dignity rather in falling, or in failing worthily in the
high undertaking, in which it shows the dignity of its spirit, than in
succeeding to perfection in lower and less noble things.
CIC. Truly a dignified and heroic
death is better than a mean, low triumph.
TANS. On that theme I made this
sonnet:
16.
Since I have spread my wings to my
desire,
The more I feel the air beneath my feet,
So much the more towards the wind I bend
My swiftest pinions,
And spurn the world and up towards heaven I go.
Not the sad fate of Daedalus's son
Does warn me to turn downwards,
But ever higher will I rise.
Well do I see, I shall fall dead to earth;
But what life is there can compare with this my death?
Out on the air my heart's voice do I hear:
"Whither dost thou carry me, thou fearless one?
Turn back. Such over-boldness rarely grief escapes."
Fear not the utmost ruin then," I said,
Cleave confident the clouds and die content,
That heaven has destined thee to such illustrious death."
CIC. I understand when you say:
"Enough that thou hast lifted me on high;" but not: "And from
the ignoble crowd hast severed me;" unless it means his having come out
from the Platonic groove on account of the stupid and low condition of the
crowd; for those, that find profit in this contemplation cannot be numerous.
TANS. Thou understandest well; but
thou mayst also understand, by the "ignoble crowd," the body, and
sensual cognition, from which he must arise and free himself who would unite
with a nature of a contrary kind.
CIC. The Platonists say there are
two kinds of knots which link the soul to the body. One is a certain vivifying
action which from the soul descends into the body, like a ray; the other is a
certain vital quality, which is produced from that action in the body. Now this
active and most noble number, which is the soul, in what way do you understand
that it may be severed from the ignoble number, which is the body?
TANS. Certainly it was not
understood according to any of these modes, but according to that mode whereby,
those powers which are not comprehended and imprisoned in the womb of matter,
sometimes as if inebriated and stupefied, find that they also are occupied in
the formation of matter and in the vivification of the body; then, as if
awakened and brought to themselves, recognizing its principle and genius, they
turn towards superior things and force themselves on the intelligible world as
to their native abode, and from thence, through their conversion to inferior
things, they are thrust into the fate and conditions of generation. These two
impulses are symbolized in the two kinds of metamorphosis expressed in the
following:
17.
That god who shakes the sounding
thunder,
Asteria as a furtive eagle saw;
Mnemosyne as shepherd; Danae gold;
Alcmene as a fish: Antiope a goat;
Cadmus and his sister a white bull;
Leda as swan, and Dolida as dragon;
And through the lofty object I become,
From subject viler still, a god.
A horse was Saturn;
And in a calf and dolphin Neptune dwelt;
Ibis and shepherd Mercury became;
Bacchus a grape; Apollo was a crow;
And I by help of love,
From an inferior thing, do change we to a god.
In Nature is one revolution and one
circle, by means of which, for the perfection and help of others, superior
things lower themselves to things inferior, and, by their own excellence and
felicity, inferior things raise themselves to superior ones. Therefore the
Pythagoreans and Platonists say it is given to the soul that at certain times,
not only by spontaneous will, which turns it to-wards, tae comprehension of
Nature, but also by the, necessity of an internal law, written and registered
by the destined decree, they seek their own justly determined fate; and they
also say that souls, not so much by determination. of their own will as through
a certain order, by which they become inclined towards matter, decline as
rebels
from divinity; wherefore, not by
free intention, but by a certain occult consequence, they fall. And this is the
inclination that they have to generation, as towards a minor good. Minor, I
say, in so far as it appertains to that particular nature; not in so far as it
appertains to the universal nature, where nothing happens without the highest
aim, and which disposes of all things according to justice. In which generation
finding themselves once more through the changes which permutably succeed, they
return again to the superior forms.
CIC. So that they mean, that souls
are impelled by the necessity of fate, and have no proper counsel which guides
them at all.
TANS. Necessity, fate, nature,
counsel, will, those things, justly and rightfully ordained, all agree in one.
Besides which, as Plotinus relates, some believe that certain souls can escape
from their own evil, if knowing the danger, they seek refuge in the mind before
the corporeal habit is confirmed; because the mind raises to things sublime, as
the imagination lowers to inferior things. The mind always understands one, as
the imagination is one in movement and in diversity; the mind always
understands one, as the imagination is always inventing for itself various
images. In the midst is the
rational faculty, which is a mixture
of all, like that in which the one agrees with the many, sameness with variety,
movement with fixedness, the inferior with the superior. Now these
transmutations and con versions are symbolized in the wheel of metamorphosis,
where man sits on the upper part, a beast lies at the bottom, a half-man,
half-beast descends from the left, and a half-beast, half-man ascends from the
right. This transmutation is shown where Jove, according to the diversity of
the affections and the behaviour of those towards inferior things, invests
himself with divers figures, entering into the form of beasts; and so also the
other gods transmigrate into base and alien forms. And, on the contrary,
through the knowledge of their own nobility, they re-take their own divine
form; as the passionate hero, raising himself through conceived kinds of divine
beauty and goodness, with the wings of the intellect and rational will, rises
to the divinity, leaving the form of the lower subject. And therefore he said,
"I become from subject viler still, a god. From in inferior thing do
change me to a god."
TANSILLO
THUS is described the discourse of heroic
love, in all which tends to its own object, which is the highest good; and
heroic intellect, which devotes itself to the study of its own object, which is
the primal verity, or absolute truth. Now the first discourse holds the sum of
this and the intention, the order of which is described in five others
following:
18.
To the woods, the mastiffs and the
greyhounds young Actæon leads,
When destiny directs him into the doubtful and neglected
Upon the track of savage beasts in forests wild.
And here, between the waters, he sees a bust and face more beautiful than e'er
was seen
By mortal or divine, of scarlet, alabaster, and fine gold;
He sees: and the great hunter straight becomes that which he hunts.
The stag, that towards still thicker shades now goes with lighter steps,
His own great dogs swiftly devour.
So I extend my thoughts to higher prey, and these
Now turning on me give me death with cruel savage bite.
Actæon signifies the intellect,
intent on the pursuit of divine wisdom and the comprehension of divine beauty.
He lets loose the mastiffs and the greyhounds, of whom the latter are more
swift and the, former more strong, because the operation of the intellect
precedes that of the will; but this is more. vigorous and effectual than that;
seeing that, to the human intellect, divine goodness and beauty are more
loveable than comprehensible, and love it is that moves and urges the
intellect, and precedes it as a lantern. The woods, uncultivated and solitary
places, visited and penetrated by few, and where there are few traces of men.
The, youth of little skill and practice, as of one of short life and of
wavering enthusiasm. In the doubtful road of uncertain and distorted reason --
a disposition assigned to the character of Pythagoras -- where you see the most
thorny, uncultivated, and deserted to be the right and difficult path, where he
lets loose the greyhounds and the mastiffs upon the track of savage beasts,
that is, the intelligible kinds of ideal conceptions, which are occult, followed
by few, visited but rarely, and which do not disclose themselves to
all those who seek them. Here,
amongst the waters, -- that is, in the mirror of similitude, in those works
where shines the brightness of divine goodness and splendour, which works are
symbolized by the waters superior and inferior, which are above and below the
firmament, he sees the most beautiful bust and face -- that is, external power
and operation, which it is possible to see, by the habit and act of
contemplation and the application of mortal or divine mind, of man or any god.
CIC. I do not believe that he makes
a comparison, nor puts as the same kind the divine and the human mode of
comprehending, which are. very diverse, but as to the subject they are the
same.
TANS. So it is. He says "of red
and alabaster and gold," because that which in bodily beauty is red,
white, and fair, in divinity signifies the scarlet of divine vigorous power,
the gold of divine wisdom, the alabaster of divine beauty, through the contemplation
of which the Pythagoreans, Chaldeans, Platonists, and others, strive in the
best way that they can to elevate themselves. "The great hunter saw,"
he understood as much as was possible, and became the hunted. He went out for
prey, and this hunter became himself the prey, by the operation of the
intellect converting the things learned into itself.
CIC. I understand. He forms
intelligible conceptions in his own way and proportions them to his capacity,
so that they are received according to the manner of the recipient.
TANS. And does he hunt through the
operation of the will, by the act of which he converts himself into the object?
CIC. As I understand: because love
transforms and converts into the thing loved.
TANS. Well dost thou know that the intellect
learns things intelligibly -- i.e., in its own way, and the will pursues
things naturally, that is, according to the reason that is in themselves. So
Actæon with those thoughts -- those dogs -- which hunted outside themselves for
goodness, wisdom, and beauty, thus came into the presence of the same, and
ravished out of himself by so much splendour, he became the prey, saw himself
converted into that for which he was seeking, and perceived, that of his dogs
or thoughts, he himself came to be the longed for prey; for having absorbed the
divinity into himself it was not necessary to search outside himself for it.
CIC. For this reason it is said
"the kingdom of Heaven is in us;" divinity dwells within through the
reformed intellect and will.
TANS. It is so. See then, Actæon
hunted by his own dogs -- pursued by his own thoughts -- runs and directs these
novel paces, invigorated so as to proceed divinely and "more easily,"
that is, with greater facility and with refreshed vigour "towards the
denser places," to the deserts and the region of thing s incomprehensible.
From being such as he first was, a common ordinary man, he becomes rare and
heroic, his habits and ideas are strange, and he leads an unusual life. Here
his great dogs "give him death," and thus ends his life according to
the mad, sensual, blind, and fantastic world, and he begins to live
intellectually; he lives the life of the gods, fed on ambrosia and drunk with
nectar.
Next we see under the form of
another Similitude the manner in which he arms himself to obtain the object. He
says:
19.
My solitary bird! away unto that
region
Which overshadows and which occupies my thought,
Go swiftly, and there nestle; there every
Need of thine be strengthened,
There all thy industry and art be spent!
There be thou born again, and there on high,
Gather and train up thy wandering fledglings
Since adverse fate has drawn away the bars
With which she ever sought to block thy way.
Go! I desire for thee a nobler dwelling-place,
And thou shalt have for guide a god,
Who is called blind by him who nothing sees.
Go! and ever be by thee revered,
Each deity of that wide sphere,
And come not back to me till thou art mine.
The progress symbolized above by the
hunter who excites his dogs, is here illustrated by a winged heart, which is
sent out of the cage, in which it lived idle and quiet, to make its nest on
high and bring up its fledglings, its thoughts, the time being come in which
those impediments are removed, which were caused, externally, in a thousand
different ways, and internally by natural feebleness. He dismisses his heart
then to make more magnificent surroundings, urging him to the highest
propositions and intentions, now that those powers of the soul are more fully
fledged, which Plato signifies by the two wings, and he commits him to the
guidance of that god, who, by the unseeing crowd, is considered insane and
blind, that is Love, who, by the mercy and favour of heaven, has power to
transform him into that nature towards which he aspires, or into that state
from which, a pilgrim, he is banished. Whence he says, "Come not back to
me till thou art mine," and not unworthily may I say with that other --
Thou has left me, oh, my heart,
And thou, light of my eyes, art no more with me.
Here he describes the death of the
soul, which by the Kabbalists is called the death by kisses, symbolized in the
Song of Solomon, where the friend says:
Let him kiss me with the kisses of
his mouth,
For, when he wounds me,
I suffer with a cruel love.
By others it is called sleep; the
Psalmist says
It shall be, that give sleep unto
mine eyes,
And mine eyelids shall slumber,
And I shall have in him peaceful repose.
The soul then is said to be faint,
because it is dead in itself, and alive in the object:
20.
Give heed, enthusiasts, unto the
heart!
For mine condemns me to a life apart,
Bound by unmerciful and cruel ties,
He dwells with joy, there where he faints and dies.
At every hour I call him back by thoughts:
A rebel he, like gerfalcon insane,
He feels no more the hand that did restrain,
And is I one forth not to return again.
Thou beauteous beast that dost in punishment
Knit up the soul, spirit and heart content'st
With pricks, with lightnings, and with chains!
From looks, from accents, and from usages,
Which faint and burn and keep thee bound,
Where shall he that heals, that cools, and loosens thee be found?
Here the soul, sorrowful, not from
real discontent, but on account of pains which she suffers, directs the
discourse to those who are affected by passions similar to her own: as if she
had not of her own free will and of her own desire dismissed her heart, which
goes running whither it cannot arrive, stretches out to that which it cannot
reach, and tries to enfold that which it cannot comprehend, and with this,
because he vainly separates from her, ever more and more goes on aspiring
towards the infinite.
CIC. Whence comes it, oh Tansillo,
that the soul in such progression delights in its own torments? Whence comes
that spur which urges it ever beyond that which it possesses?
TANS. From this, which I will tell
thee now. The intellect being developed to the comprehension of a certain
definite and specific form, and the will to a love commensurate with such
comprehension; the intellect does not stop there, bat by its own light it is
prompted to think of this: that it contains within itself the germ of
everything intelligible and desirable, until it comes to comprehend with the
intellect the depth of the fountain of
ideas, the ocean of every truth and goodness. So that it happens, that whatever
conception is presented to the mind, and becomes understood by it, from that
which is so presented and comprehended it judges, that above it, is other
greater and greater, and finds itself ever in a certain way discoursing and
moving with it. Because it sees that all which it possesses is only a limited
thing, and therefore cannot be sufficient of itself, nor good of itself, nor
beautiful of itself; because it is not the universal nor the absolute entity;
but contracted into being this nature, this species, this form, represented to
the intellect and present to the soul. Then from the beautiful that is
understood, and consequently limited, and therefore beautiful through participation,
it progresses towards that which is really beautiful, which has no margin, nor
any boundaries.
CIC. This progression appears to me
useless.
TANS. Not so. For it is not natural
nor suitable that the infinite be restricted, nor give itself definitely, for
it would not then be infinite. To be infinite, it must be infinitely pursued
with that form of pursuit which is not incited physically, but metaphysically,
and is not from imperfect to perfect, but goes circulating through the grades
of perfection to
arrive at that infinite centre which
is not form, and is not formed.
CIC. I should like to know how, by
circumambulating, one is to arrive at the centre?
TANS. I cannot know that.
CIC. Why do you say it?
TANS. I can say it, and leave it to
you to consider.
CIC. If you do not mean that he who
pursues the infinite is like him who talks about the circumference when he is
seeking for the centre, I do not know what you mean.
TANS. Quite the contrary.
CIC. Now if you will not explain
yourself, I cannot understand you; but tell me, prythee, what he means by
saying the heart is bound by cruel, spiteful bonds.
TANS. He speaks in similitude or
metaphor; as you would say, cruel was one who did not allow a full enjoyment,
and who lives more in the desire than in possession, and who, partially
possessing, is not content, but desires, faints, and dies.
CIC. What are those thoughts that
call him back from the noble enterprise?
TAMS. The sensual and natural
affections, which regard the government of the body.
CIC. What have they to do with it,
that in no way can either help or favour it?
TANS. They have not to do with it,
but with the, soul, which, being so absorbed in one work or study, becomes
remiss and careless in others.
CIC. Why does he call him insane?
TANS. Because he surpasses in
knowledge.
CIC. It is usual to call insane
those, who know nothing.
TANS. On the contrary. Those are
called insane who know not in the ordinary way, or who rise above the ordinary
from having more intellect.
CIC. I perceive that thou sayest
truly. Now tell me what are the pricks, the lightnings, and the chains?
TANS. Pricks are those experiences
that stimulate and awaken the affection, to make it on the alert; lightnings
are the rays of the present beauty, which enlighten those who watch and wait
for them; chains are those effects and circumstances which keep fixed the eyes
of attention and unite together the object and the powers.
CIC. What are the looks, the
accents, and the customs?
TANS. Looks are the means by which
the object is made present to us; accents are the means through which we are
inspired and informed; customs are
the circumstances which are most
pleasant and agreeable to us. So that the heart that gently suffers, patiently burns
and constantly perseveres in the work, fears that its hurt will heal, its fire
be extinguished, and its bands be loosened.
CIC. Now relate that which follows.
TANS.:
21.
Lofty, profound, and stirring
thoughts of mine,
Ye long to sever the maternal ties
Of the afflicted soul, and like to proud
And able bowmen, draw at the mark,
"Which is the germ of all your high conceits.
In those steep paths where cruel beasts may be,
Let not heaven leave ye!
Remember to return, and summon back
The heart that tarries with the wild wood nymph;
Arm ye with love,
Warn with the flame of domesticity,
And with strong repression guard thy sight,
That strangers keep thee not companioned with my heart;
At least bring news of that,
Which unto him is such delight and joy.
Here he describes the natural
solicitude of the attentive soul on the subject, of its inclination towards
generation, which it has contracted with matter. She dispatches the armed
thoughts, which, solicited and urged by disagreement with the inferior nature,
are sent to recall the heart. The
soul instructs them how they should conduct themselves, so that, being allured
and attracted by the object, they do not become induced to remain, they also,
captive and companions of the heart. She says, then, they are to arm themselves
with love, with that love that is fired by the domestic flame; that is, the
friend of generation, to whom they are bound, and in whose jurisdiction,
ministry, and warfare they find themselves. Anon she orders them to repress their
eyesight and to close their eyes, so that they may not behold other beauty or
goodness than that which is present, friend and mother; and concludes at last
with this, that if no other reason will cause them to return, they should at
least do so, to give account of the discourse and of the state of the heart.
CIC. Before you proceed further, I
would understand from you what is that which the soul means when she tells the
thoughts to repress the sight vigorously.
TANS. I will tell thee. All love
proceeds from seeing: intelligent love, from seeing intelligently; sensuous
love, from seeing sensuously. Now this seeing has two meanings: either it means
the visual power, that is the sight, which is the intellect, or truly the
sense; or it means the act of that power,
that is, that application which the
eye or the intellect makes to the material or intellectual object. When the
thoughts are counselled to repress the sight, it is not the first, but the
second, mode that is meant, because that is the father of the subsequent
affection of the sensuous or intellectual desire.
CIC. This is what I wished to hear
from you. Now, if the act of the visual power is the cause of the evil or good
which proceed from seeing, whence comes it that in things divine we have more
love, than knowledge?
TANS. We desire to see, because in
some way we perceive the value of seeing. We are aware that, through the act of
seeing, beautiful things offer themselves to us; and therefore we desire
beautiful things.
CIC. We desire the beautiful and the
good; but seeing is not beautiful nor good, rather is it the touchstone or
light by which we see, not only the beautiful. and good, but also the evil and
bad. Therefore it seems to me that seeing may be equally beautiful or good, as
the thing seen may be white or black. If, then, the sight, which is an act, is
not beautiful nor good, how can it fall into desire?
TANS. If not for itself, yet
certainly for some
other reason, it is desired, seeing
that there can be no apprehension of that other without it.
CIC. What wilt thou say, if that
other is not within the knowledge of the, senses nor of the intellect? How, I
say, can that be desired which is not seen, if there is no knowledge whatever
of it -- if towards it neither the intellect nor the sense has exercised any
act whatever; but, on the contrary, it is even dubious whether it be
intellectual or sensuous, whether a thing corporeal or incorporeal, whether it
be one or two or more, or of one fashion or of another?
TANS. I answer, that in the sense
and the intellect there is one desire and one impulse to the sensuous in
general; because the intellect will hear the whole truth, so that it may learn
all that is beautiful or good intelligently; the power of the senses will inform
itself of all that is sensuous, so that it may know all that is good and
beautiful in the world of the senses. Hence it follows that not less do we
desire to see things unknown and unseen than those known and seen. And from
this it does not follow that the desire does not proceed from cognition, and
that we desire something that is not known; but I say that it is certain and
sure that we do not desire unknown things. Because, if they
be occult as to particulars, they are
not occult as to generals; as in the entire visual power is found the whole of
the visible appositely, and in the intellect all the intelligible. Therefore,
as the inclination to the act lies in its appropriateness, the result is that
both these powers incline towards the universal action, as to a thing naturally
comprehended as good. The soul, then, did not speak to the deaf or the blind
when she counselled her thoughts to repress the sight, which, although it may
not be the immediate cause of the will, is yet the primal and principal cause.
CIC. What do you mean by this last
saying?
TANS. I mean that it is not the
figure or the conception, sensibly or intelligently represented, which of
itself moves us; because while one stands beholding the figure manifested to
the eyes, he does not yet arrive at loving; but from that instant that the soul
conceives within itself that figure, not visible, but thinkable; no longer
dividual, but individual; no longer classed among things in general, but among
things good and beautiful; then immediately love is born. Now this is the
seeing, from which the soul desires to divert the eyes of her thoughts. Here
the sight usually moves the affection to a greater love than the love of that
which is
seen; for, as I have just said, it
always considers, through the universal knowledge that it holds of the
beautiful and the good, that, besides the degrees of known conceptions of
goodness and beauty, there are others and yet others ad infinitum.
CIC. How is it that after we become
informed of that conception of the beautiful which is begotten in the soul, we
yet desire to satisfy the exterior vision?
TANS. From this, that the soul would
ever love that which it loves, and ever see that which it sees. Therefore she
wills that, the conception which has been produced in her through seeing,
should not become weakened, enervated and lost; but would ever see more and
more, and that which becomes obscure in the interior affection, should be
frequently brightened by the exterior aspect, which as it is the principle of
being, must also be the principle of conservation. This results proportionately
in the act of understanding and of considering, for as the sight has reference
to visible things, so has the, intellect to intelligible things. I believe now
that you understand to what end and in what manner the soul tends, when she
says "repress the sight."
CIC. I understand very well. Now
continue to unfold what happens to these thoughts.
TANS. Now follows the disagreement
between the mother and the aforesaid children, who having, contrary to her
orders, opened their eyes, and, having fixed them on the splendour of the
object, they remained in company with the heart.
22.
Cruel sons are ye to me, me whom ye
left
Still farther to exasperate my pain;
And ever without cease ye weary me,
Taking away from me my every hope!
Why should the sense remain? oh, grasping heavens!
Wherefore these broken ruined powers, if not
To make me subject and exemplar
Of such heavy martyrdom, such lengthened pain?
Leave, dear sons, my winged fire enchained,
And let me, some of you once more behold,
Come back to me from those retaining claws!
Oh, weariness! not one returns
To bring a late refreshment to my pains.
Behold me, miserable one, deprived
of heart, abandoned of thoughts, left by hope, 1, who had fixed my all in them.
Nothing is left to me but the sense of my poverty, my unhappiness and misery;
why does not this too leave me? Why does not death succour me, now that I am
deprived of life? To what use do I possess these natural powers if I be
deprived of the use of them? How can I alone nourish
myself with intelligible conceptions
as with intellectual bread, if the substance of this bread be composed of this
contingency. How can I linger in the intimacy of these friendly and dear
members which I have woven round me, adjusting them with the symmetry of the
elementary conditions, if my thoughts and all my affections abandon me, intent
upon the care of the bread that is immaterial and divine? Up, up; oh, my flying
thoughts; up, oh my rebel heart; let live the sense of things that are felt,
and the understanding of things intelligible, come to the succour of the body
with matter and corporeal subject, and let the understanding delight in its own
objects to the end that this composition of the body may be realized, that this
machine dissolve not, in which, by means of the spirit, the soul is united to
the body. Why, unhappy as I am (more through domestic circumstances than
through external violence), am I doomed to see this horrible divorce between my
parts and members? Why does the intellect trouble itself to give laws to the
sense and yet deprive it of its food? and this, on the other hand, resists;
desiring to live according to its own decrees, and not according to the decree
of others; for these and not those are able to maintain and bless it, therefore
it ought to attend to its own comfort and life, and not to that
of others. There is no harmony and
concord where there is only one, where one individual absorbs the whole being,
but where there is order and analogy in things diverse; where each thing serves
its own nature. Therefore lot the sense feed according to the law of things
that can be felt, the flesh be obedient to the? law of the spirit, the reason
to its own law. Let them not be confounded nor mixed. Enough that one neither
mar nor prejudice the law of the other, since it is not just that the sense
outrage the law of reason. And verily it is a shameful thing that one, should
tyrannize over the other, particularly where the intellect is a pilgrim and
strange, and the sense is more domesticated and at home. I am forced by you, my
thoughts, to remain at home in charge of the house, while others may wander
wherever they will. This is a law of Nature, and therefore a law of the author
and originator of Nature. Sin on then, now that all of you, seduced by the
charm of the intellect, leave the other part of me to the peril of death. How
have you gotten this melancholy and perverse humour, which breaks the certain
and natural laws of the true life, and which is in your own hands, for one,
uncertain, and which has no existence except in shadow, beyond the limits of
fantastic thought? Seems it to you a natural thing that they should
live divinely and not as animals and
humanly, they being not gods, but men and animals? It is a law of fate and
Nature that everything should adapt itself to the condition of its own being,
wherefore then, while you follow after the niggard nectar of the gods, do you
lose that which is present and is your own, and trouble yourself about the vain
hopes of others? Ought not Nature to refuse to give you the other good, if that
which she at present offers to you,. you stupidly despise?
Heaven the second gift denies,
To him who does the first despise.
With these and similar reasons the
soul, taking part with the weakest, seeks to recall the thoughts to the care of
the body. And these, although late, come and show themselves, but not in that
form in which they departed, but only to declare their rebellion, and force her
to follow. And the sorrowing one thus laments:
23.
Ah, dogs of Actæon, ah, proud
ingrates!
Whom to the abode of my divinity I sent;
Without hope do ye return to me;
And, coming to the mother's side, ye bring
Back unto me a too unhappy boon;
Ye mangle me, and will that I live not.
Leave me, life, that I may mount up to my sun,
A double streamlet, mad, without my fount!
When shall this ponderous mass of me dissolve?
When shall it be, that, taking myself hence,
And swiftly rising to the heights above,
Together with my heart I may abide,
And with my thoughts I may be deified?
The Platonists say that the soul, as
to its superior part, always consists in the intellect, in which it has more of
understanding than of soul, seeing that it is called soul only in so far as it
vivifies the body and sustains it. So here, the same essence which nourishes
and maintains the thoughts on high, together with the exalted heart, is induced
by the inferior part to afflict itself, and recall them as rebels.
CIC. So that they are not two
contrary existences, but one, subject to two contradictory terms?
TANS. So it is, precisely. As the
ray of the sun which touches the earth, and is joined to obscure and to
inferior things, which it brightens, vivifies, and kindles, and is then joined
to the element of fire -- that is, to the star, whence it proceeds, and has its
beginning, and is diffused, and in which it has its own and original subsistence
-- so the soul, which is in the horizon of Nature, is corporeal and
incorporeal, and contains that with which it rises to superior
things and declines to things
inferior. And this, you may perceive, does not happen by reason and order of
local motion, but solely through the impulse of one and of another power or
faculty. As when the sense rises to the imagination, the imagination to the
reason, the reason to the intellect, the intellect to the mind, then the whole
soul is converted into God, and inhabits the intelligible world; whence, on the
other hand, she descends in an inverse manner to the world of feeling, through
the intellect, reason, imagination, sense, vegetation.
CIC. It is true that I have heard
that the soul, in order to put itself in the ultimate degree of divine things,
descends into the mortal body, and from this goes up again to the divine
degrees, which are three degrees of intelligence. For there are others in which
the intellectual surpasses the animal, which are said to be the celestial
intelligences; and others in which the animal surpasses the intellectual, which
are the human intelligences; others there are, of which those things are equal,
as those of demons or heroes.
TANS. The mind then cannot desire
except that which is near, close, known, and familiar. The pig cannot desire to
be a man, nor wish for those things that are suitable to the human appetite. He
likes
better to turn about in mud than in
a bed of linen, he would prefer a sow to the most beautiful of women, because
the affection follows the reason of the species. And amongst men the same thing
is seen, according as some resemble one species of brute beast and some
another: these having something of the quadruped, and those of birds, and, may
be, some affinity, which I will not explain, but through which those have been
known who are affected by certain sorts of beasts. Now, it is lawful for the
mind which finds itself oppressed by the material conjunction of the soul, to
raise itself to the contemplation of another state, to which the soul may
arrive, comparing the two, and so through the future despise the present. If a
beast had a sense of the difference which exists between his own condition and
that of man, and the meanness of his own state with the nobility of the human
state, which he would deem it not impossible to be able to reach, he would love
death, which would open to him that road, more than that life which keeps him
in the present state of being. When the soul complains, saying, "Ah! dogs
of Actæon!" she is represented as a thing which appears only in the
inferior powers, and against which the mind rebels for having taken away the
heart with it; that is to
say, the entire affections, with all
the army of the thoughts. So that, having a knowledge of the present state, and
being ignorant of every other, and not believing that others exist about which
she can have any knowledge, she complains of her thoughts, which, tardily
turning towards her, come rather to draw her up than, to make themselves
accepted by her. And through the distraction which she endures on account of
the ordinary love of the material and of things intelligible, she feels herself
lacerated and mangled, so that at last she is forced to yield to the more
vigorous impulse. And if, by virtue of contemplation, she rises or is caught up
above the horizon of the natural affections, whence with purer eye she learns
the difference between the one life and the other, then, vanquished by the
lofty thoughts, and, as if dead to the body, she aspires to that which is
elevated, and, although alive in the body, she vegetates there as if dead,
being present as an animating principle and absent in operative activity; not
because she does not act while the body is alive, but that the actions of this
mass are intermittent, weak, and, as it were, purposeless.
CIC. Thus a certain theologian, who
was said to be transported to the third heaven and enchanted with the view of
it, said that what he desired was the dissolution of his body.
TANS. So; first complaining of the
heart and quarrelling with the thoughts, she now desires to rise on high with
them, and exhibits her regret for the connection and familiarity contracted
with corporeal matter, and. says: "Leave me life (corporeal), and do not
impede my progress upwards to my native home, to my sun. Leave me now, for no
longer do my eyes weep tears; neither because I cannot succour them (the
thoughts), nor because I cannot remain divided from my happiness. Leave me, for
it is not fit nor possible that these two streams should run without their
source, that is, without the heart. I will not, I say, make two rivers of tears
here below, while my heart, which is the source of such rivers, is flown away
on high with its nymphs, which are my thoughts." Thus, little by little,
from dislike and regret, she proceeds to the hatred of inferior things, which
she partly shows, saying, When shall this ponderous mass of me dissolve? and
that which follows.
CIC. This I understand right well,
and also that which you would infer about the principal intention; that is to
say, that these are the degrees of the loves, of the affections, and of the
enthusiasms, according to the degrees of greater and lesser