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.