TANS. Look at this other who bears the device of an anvil and a hammer,
round which is the legend "ab Aetna!" But here Vulcan is introduced:
34.
Not now to my Sicilian mount I turn,
Where thou dost forge the thunderbolts of Jove,
Here, rugged Vulcan will I stay;
Here, where a prouder giant moves,
Who burns and rages against Heaven in vain,
Soliciting new cares and divers trials.
Here is a better smith and Mongibello[F]
A better anvil, better forge and hammer;
For here behold a bosom full of sighs,
Which blows the furnace and the fire revives.
The soul nor yields nor bends to these rough blows,
But bears exulting this long martyrdom,
And makes a harmony from these sharp pangs.
[F] Mount Etna.
Here are shown the pains and troubles which beset love, principally love
of a low kind, which is no other than the forge of Vulcan, that smith
who makes the bolts of Jove which torment offending souls. For
ill-ordered love has in itself the beginning of its own pain, seeing
that there is a God near us, in us, and with us. There is in us a
certain sacred mind and intelligence, which supplies an affection of its
own, which has its own avenger, which, through remorse for certain
shortcomings, flagellates the transgressing spirit as with a hammer. It
notes our actions and our affections, and as it is treated by us, so are
we treated by it. In every lover I say there is this smith Vulcan, and
as there is no man that has not a god within him, so there is no lover
that has not a god within him, and no lover within whom this god is not.
Most certainly there is a god in every man, but what god it is in each
one is not so easy to know. And even though we should examine and
distinguish, yet do I believe that none other than Love could declare
it, he being the one who pulls the oars, and fills the sails, and
modifies this compound, so that it comes to be well or ill affected. I
say well or ill affected as to that which it puts in execution through
the moral actions and through contemplation; for the rest, all lovers
are apt to experience some difficulties, things being as they are, so
entangled; there being no good whatever, either of conception or of the
affections, which is not joined to or stands in opposition to evil, as
there is no truth which is not joined or opposed to what is false, so
there is no love without fear, ardour, jealousy, rancour, and other
passions, which proceed from their opposites, and which disturb us, as
the other opposite causes satisfaction. Thus the soul striving to
recover its natural beauty seeks to purify itself, to heal itself, and
to reform itself, and to this end it uses fire, because, being like
gold, mixed with earth and crude, with a certain rigour it tries to
liberate itself from defilement, and this result is obtained when the
intellect, the real smith of Jove, puts itself to the work and causes an
active exercise of the intellectual powers.
CIC. It seems to me that this is referred to in the "Banquet" of Plato,
where it says that Love has inherited from his mother, Poverty, that
dried-up, thin, pale, bare-footed, and submissive condition without a
home, without anything, and through these is signified the torture of
the soul that is torn with contrary affections.
TANS. So it is; because the spirit, full of this enthusiasm, becomes
absorbed in profound thoughts, stricken with urgent cares, kindled with
fervent desires, excited by frequent crises: whence the soul, finding
itself in suspense, becomes less diligent and active in the government
of the body through the acts of the vegetative power; thus the body
becomes lean, ill-nourished, attenuated, poor in blood, and rich in
melancholy humours, and these, if they do not administer to the
disciplined soul, or to a clear and lucid spirit, may lead to insanity,
folly, and brutal fury, or at least to a certain disregard of self, and
a contempt of its own being, which is symbolized by Plato in the bare
feet. Love becomes subjected and flies suddenly down to earth when it is
attached to low things, but flies high when it is fixed upon more worthy
enterprises. In conclusion, whatever love it may be, it is ever
afflicted and tormented in such a way that it cannot fail to supply
material for the forge of Vulcan; because the soul, being a divine
thing, and by nature, not a servant but the mistress of corporeal
matter, she becomes troubled in that she voluntarily serves the body
wherein she finds nothing to satisfy her, and albeit, fixed in the thing
loved, yet now and then she becomes agitated, and fluctuates amidst the
waves of hope, fear, doubt, ardour, conscience, remorse, determination,
repentance, and other scourges, which are the bellows, the coals, the
forge, the hammer, the pincers, and other instruments which are found in
the workshop of the sordid grimy consort of Venus.