which the "First Modern" accepts in the heyday of his life and success.
He admits the inefficacy of Cicero's admonitions. Of the Bible he says
little or nothing. Virgil's words, not David's or Paul's, come to his
mind in the depths of his perplexity. The dialogue continues as follows:
_Augustine_. We have now reached the point toward which I
have been guiding you. It is that form of meditation (on
Death) that we mentioned at the beginning, coupled with
an ever-present consciousness of our mortality, which
produces the desired result.
_Francesco_. Unless I am again misled, no one has oftener
been preoccupied by these thoughts than I.
_Augustine_. Alas, here is a new task for me.
_Francesco_. What? I am not lying?
_Augustine_. I prefer to express myself more politely.
_Francesco_. But that is your meaning.
_Augustine_. Assuredly.
_Francesco_. Then I do not think of death?
_Augustine_. Very rarely, and then so indolently that
the thought cannot penetrate into the depths of your
perversity.
_Francesco_. I had thought otherwise.
_Augustine_. You should look not to what you thought but
to what you should have thought.
The Confessor explains that he does not refer to the general
recognition of the possibility of death as a distant contingency or
even of its imminence as illustrated by the death of those who fall
about us. We can hope for no advantage except we vividly reproduce
its physical and spiritual horrors. He then enters upon a concise
description of the physical accompaniments of dissolution in its most
distressing forms, with the painful minuteness which we might expect
in a treatise upon epilepsy. He dwells upon the advantage of exposing
the bodies of the dead to the view of those earnestly struggling
toward spiritual enfranchisement, and upon the salutary and permanent
impressions that come from witnessing the preparation of the corpse for
burial. In this way the trite idea of our mortality may become vivid
and life-giving.
Francesco readily assents to Augustine's reasoning, for he recognises
in it much that he habitually turns over in his own mind. He asks,
however, for some sure sign by which he can determine whether his
ascetic meditations are doing their work, or whether he is deceiving
himself by false appearances instead of walking in the path of virtue.
Augustine explains accordingly that so long as we do not become
literally pale and rigid with the very thought of death our labours are
vain.
The soul must leave the members and stand before the judgment seat of
eternity about to render an exact account of the words and deeds of its
whole past life. It places no hope in bodily beauty or the applause
of the world, in eloquence, riches, or power; the judge cannot be
corrupted or deceived. Death may not be placated, nor is it the end
of torments but only a step toward worse things. "Let the soul sink
to Hell itself, _inter mille suppliciorum, mille tortorum genera, et
stridor et gemitus Averni et sulphurei amnes et tenebrae et ultrices
furiae_." If you can bring all these before your eyes at once, not as
mere imaginings, but as necessary, inevitable, nay as already upon you,
and yet not yield to despair but abide strong in the faith that God can
reach out his hand to snatch you from these horrors, you show yourself
curable. Anxious to rise and tenacious of purpose you will go forth
with confidence and may know that you have not meditated in vain.
This spiritual exercise appears to have been an habitual one with
Petrarch, but, as is not unnatural, he was disappointed in its results.
When I dispose my body like that of a dying person, and bring vividly
before me the hour of death and all the attendant terrors that
the mind can conjure up, so that I seem to be in the very agony of
dissolution, I sometimes behold Tartarus and all the terrors you depict
and am so afflicted by the vision that I arise terrified and trembling,
and to the horror of those about me I break forth in the words, "Alas
how shall I escape these sufferings? What is to be the end of my woes?
Jesus, help me!..."
I rave like a madman and talk to myself, as my distracted and terrified
intellect is driven this way and that. I address my friends, and my
own tears force tears from them. Yet I return to my old ways when my
burst of weeping is once past. What holds me back in spite of these
experiences? What hidden impediment has rendered these meditations up
to the present only a source of pain and terror? I am still exactly
what I was before, and what those are to whom nothing of this kind
perhaps ever happened in their life. I am indeed more miserable than
they in one respect, for whatever may be the outcome, they at least
rejoice in the pleasure of the present while I, uncertain of the end,
experience no joy that is not embittered by the reflections of which I
have spoken.
Against such a sentiment Augustine naturally protests, but somewhat
weakly; and Petrarch firmly maintains that the worldly man is the
better off.
At the close of this first dialogue Petrarch gives a brief analysis
of his character which displays his profound self-knowledge. Augustine
declares that Francesco's spiritual welfare is threatened by his want
of concentration and by the multitude and variety of conflicting
purposes which oppress his weak mind. He has not the strength or
time to accomplish half of what he lightly undertakes. "So it comes
to pass," Augustine continues," "that, as many things brought into a
narrow space are sure to interfere with one another, so your mind is
too choked up for anything useful to take root or grow. You have no
settled plan, but are turned hither and thither in an amazing whirl;
your energies are never concentrated: you are never wholly yourself."
The dialogue on the second day opens with a critical examination
by Augustine of the main sources of Francesco's pride and
self-complacency. This is, at bottom, as we shall see, a confession
of Petrarch's own misgivings that his literary ambitions are vain
and hopeless. Augustine declares that Francesco is distracted by the
phantoms and idle anxieties of ambition, which are especially likely
to drag down the more noble spirits to their ruin; and that it is high
time to endeavour to save him from such a fate. It is easy to prove
how trivial are the advantages that have aroused his pride.
You trust to your intellectual powers and your reading
of many books; you glory in the beauty of your language
and take delight in the comeliness of your mortal frame.
But do you not perceive in how many respects your powers
have disappointed you, in how many ways your skill does
not equal that of the obscurest of mankind, not to speak
of weak and lowly animals whose works no effort on your
part could possibly imitate? Exult then if you can in your
abilities! And your reading, what does it profit you? From
the mass that you have read how much sticks in your mind,
how much takes root and brings forth fruit in its season?
Examine your mind carefully and you will find that all
you know, if compared with your ignorance, would bear to
it the same relation as that borne to the ocean by a tiny
brook, shrunk by the summer heats.
Man may know much of heaven and earth, of the courses of the stars,
the virtues of herbs and stones and the secrets of nature, and still
be ignorant of himself. He may be familiar with all the deeds of
illustrious men in the past, but not heed his own conduct.
What shall I say of your eloquence [Augustine continues],
except what you yourself confess? Has not your reliance
on it often proved vain? Your hearers may perhaps have
applauded what you said, but what advantage is that, if
you yourself condemn your words? Although the applause of
the auditors seems the natural fruit of eloquence, not
to be despised, yet if the inward applause of the orator
himself be wanting, how little gratification can the
cheers of the crowd afford!
Then follows a very interesting digression upon the poverty of
language. Words are often wanting worthily to express the commonest of
our daily experiences. How many things about us have no names at all!
How many that have names can never be adequately described by human
speech! "How often have I heard you bitterly complain and seen you
silent and dejected, because thoughts that were perfectly clear and
easily understood in the mind, could not be fully expressed by tongue
or pen." This leads to a discussion of the asserted superiority of
Greek over Latin in respect to the richness of its vocabulary, and of
the opinions of Cicero and Seneca. Augustine concludes with his own
conviction that both languages are poor.
Petrarch was far too gifted a scholar not to recognise the limitations
of language. In the little guide-book which he once prepared for a
friend who was planning to visit the Holy Land, he speaks again of
his inability to describe the beauties of nature. He felt the same
discouragements that the conscientious student feels to-day, although
his field of knowledge seems to us hopefully limited and well-defined.
Francesco refutes Augustine's accusations with some warmth:
You say that I rely upon my abilities, although I
certainly discover no indication of genius in myself,
unless it be the fact that I place no faith in possessing
it. My reading of books, moreover, is not a source of
pride, since it has brought me little knowledge and new
causes of anxiety. I strive, you say, to gain fame by my
style, and yet, as you yourself mentioned, nothing so
vexes me as that my words are inadequate to reproduce
my conceptions. You know, unless you are merely aiming
to try me, that I have always been conscious of my
insignificance; and if I have sometimes thought otherwise,
it was due to a consideration of the ignorance of others.
It has happened to me, as I am accustomed often to repeat,
that according to the well-known saying of Cicero, we
shine rather by the obscurity of others than by our own
brightness.
Augustine sees in this the most noxious kind of pride, and says that he
would prefer that Francesco should frankly overrate himself rather than
that he should assume a haughty humility through despising everyone
else.
Augustine charges Petrarch with worldliness and avarice, which will
be sure to grow stronger as he gets older. He once delighted in the
country and its simplicity, but the life in the city has made him
sordid and grasping. Francesco admits that he dreads the thought
of poverty during his declining years. His demands are modest and
legitimate; his daily bread and a book or two are all he asks. Like
Horace, his only object is _nec turpem senectam degere, nec cythera
carentem_. Augustine acquits Francesco at least of any tendency to
over-indulgence in food and drink, and approves of his friends, who, he
has observed, are both sober and dignified in their deportment.
Purity is then spoken of. Francesco admits that he has sometimes
wished himself a senseless stone. He has made a desperate struggle to
free himself from the bonds of sensuality, but he has not been wholly
successful.
Augustine now startles Francesco by the abrupt statement that the worst
is still to come. The most serious spiritual disease has not yet been
mentioned.
_Augustine_. You suffer from a certain dismal malady of
the mind that the moderns call _acedia_ and which the
ancients termed _aegritudo._
_Francesco_. The very name of the disease fills me with
horror.
_Augustine_. No wonder, for you have long been grievously
vexed by it.
_Francesco_. I admit it; and it is because there is after
all a certain admixture of sweetness, however false,
in almost all the other things that torment me. When I
am in this sad state everything is bitter, wretched,
terrible, the road to desperation opens before me and
I behold all those things which may drive an unhappy
soul to destruction. The attacks of my other passions,
if frequent, are short and fleeting, but this plague
sometimes holds me with such persistence that it binds
and tortures me for days and nights together. Light and
life are blotted out and I seem plunged in Tartarean gloom
and the bitterness of death. But nevertheless, as the
culmination of my miseries, I feast upon the very pangs
and throes of my anguish with a certain confined pleasure,
so that I am reluctant to be torn from them.
_Augustine_. You seem to know your disease well; We will
now look to the cause. Say on; what is it that so saddens
you--some adversity in your worldly affairs, bodily pain,
or some stroke of ill fortune?
_Francesco_. Not any one of these. If I were engaged in
single combat I should certainly hold my own. But as it is
I am overwhelmed by an army.
Affliction after affliction has attacked him in rapid succession.
He has finally been forced to take refuge in the stronghold of
reason. There his ills lay siege to him and receiving constant
reënforcements they set up their battering-rams and mine the walls.
The turrets tremble and the scaling ladders are in place, and he sees
the glittering swords and the threatening visages of his enemies
appearing above the wall. "Who would not be filled with terror and
bewail his fate, even if the enemy withdrew for the moment? Liberty
is gone, the saddest of losses to the stout-hearted." Augustine finds
this figurative language a little vague and confused but thinks that
he understands Petrarch's case. He accuses him of mourning over
misfortunes long past. "No," Francesco exclaims; "on the contrary,
none of my wounds are old enough to be forgotten; those that afflict
me are all recent, and lest perchance any one of them might be healed
by time, Fortune takes care to strike me often in the same spot, so
that the gaping wound may never cicatrise. Add to these troubles a hate
and contempt for the human estate itself and I can not be otherwise
than sad and dejected when oppressed by all these woes. I by no means
exaggerate this _acedia_, or _aegritudo_, or whatever you choose to
call it; my description exactly corresponds to the facts."
We must not allow ourselves to be misled by Petrarch's use of the word
_acedia_, which is really quite inapplicable to his trouble. The term
is a common one among mediæval writers and appears in the catalogue
of the seven mortal sins. It is sometimes inadequately rendered as
"sloth," but it appears to have been loosely applied to all varieties
of depression and inertia, whether physical or moral. In the case of
monks it might take the form of a natural reaction which followed
the first enthusiasm of leaving the world and beginning a religious
life. Even the most earnest, Saint Jerome says, were sometimes plunged
into melancholy by the dampness of their cells, the loneliness and
excessive fasts that made up their lives. For such troubles, he dryly
adds, the fomentations of Hippocrates would be more in place than our
admonitions. A twelfth century theologian says, "_Acedia_ fears to
undertake anything great, and soon wearies of what it once begins.
Everything seems a burden and an obstacle to it, and nothing is light
or easy." Dante found those guilty of _acedia_ fixed in the slime of
the sixth circle of hell, and they said to him: "Sullen were we in the
sweet air that by the sun is gladdened, bearing within ourselves the
sluggish fume."
But this surely was not Petrarch's trouble. No one was ever more
prone to conceive new and noble enterprises, or more patient and
conscientious in their execution. He was as far removed from such
intellectual apathy as from the vulgar physical laziness which the
monkish chroniclers sometimes comprehend under the name _acedia_, and
which took the form of a notable reluctance to leave a warm bed for
the chilly morning service. We may then assume that Petrarch uses the
word in the very general sense of bodily depression, discouragement,
and intellectual misgiving, without any reference to its usage among
theologians and monks.[2]
The Confessor pronounces the case to be one demanding radical
treatment. "What," he asks, "seems to you the worst of all these
troubles?"
_Francesco_. What I happen first to see, hear or think of.
_Augustine_. There is then almost nothing which gives you
any satisfaction?
_Francesco_. Little or nothing.
_Augustine_. Would that you enjoyed at least the more
salutary things of life. But what displeases you most?
Tell me, I beg of you.
_Francesco_. I've already answered you.
_Augustine_. This _acedia_ then, as I call it, affects
everything; everything connected with yourself disgusts
you?
_Francesco_. And not less everything that has to do with
others.
Fortune has not been simply niggardly in her treatment of him but
bitterly unjust, disdainful, and cruel. He rejects any comfort which
might come from considering the destitution that he sees among the
still less fortunate. He claims that he is not unreasonable in his
demands.
I take it hard that no one with whom I am acquainted among
my contemporaries has been more modest in his claims than
I, and yet no one has found it more difficult to reach
his end. I never have longed for the highest place. I
call to witness Him who knows my thoughts as He knows all
things else, that I have never supposed that the peace and
tranquillity of mind, which I believe are to be esteemed
above all other things, are to be found in acme of
fortune. Hence, as I have always abhorred a life filled
with care and anxiety, a middle station has, in my sober
judgment, ever seemed the best, ... and yet, to my sorrow,
I have never been able to gratify so moderate a desire. I
am always in doubt as to the future, always in suspense.
I find no pleasure in the favours of fortune, for, as you
see, up to the present I live dependent on others, which
is the worst of all. God grant that it may come about,
even in the extreme of old age, that one who has all his
life been tossed about on a stormy sea, shall at least die
in port.
Petrarch has often been criticised for his subserviency to the princes
of his time, upon whom he seems to have depended for support, so far
as his revenue from several minor preferments in the Church failed to
satisfy his needs. He loved independence, however, and the concessions
that were necessary in order to maintain the favour of his patrons
evidently galled him, as is shown by the passage just cited. Augustine
comforts him with the assurance that it is given to very few indeed to
be absolutely independent. Philosophical resignation can alone bring
freedom and true wealth.
In answer to Augustine's question whether he suffered from bodily
weakness, Francesco admits that his body, if a bit troublesome at
times, is very tractable as compared with many of those he sees about
him. He refuses with propriety to enumerate his physical disabilities.
The life in a city was a constant source of irritation to the sensitive
man of letters. "Who could adequately express my weariness of life,"
he exclaims, "and the daily loathing for this sad distracted world and
for the low, degraded dregs of humanity, given over to all manner of
uncleanness, that fill it! Who can find words to describe the sickening
disgust aroused by the stinking alleys full of howling curs and filthy
hogs, the din of the passing wheels which shake the very walls, the
crooked ways blocked by carts, the confused mass of passers-by,
the revolting crowd of beggars and cut-purses!" "Add to these
distractions," Petrarch characteristically continues, "the conflicting
aims, the bewildering variety of occupations, the confused clamour of
voices, and the bitter rivalry of interests among the people; these
combine to wear out a spirit accustomed to happier surroundings,
destroy the peace of generous minds, and prevent attention to higher
things."
His Confessor reminds him, however, that he has chosen of his own free
will to live in town and may easily retire to the country if he wishes.
On the other hand he may so accustom himself in time to the sounds of
the city that, far from distracting him, they may become as grateful
to his ears as the roar of a waterfall. "If," Augustine continues,
"you could but succeed in quieting the inward tumult of your mind, the
uproar about you might indeed strike your senses, but could not affect
the soul."
He farther recommends the careful perusal of Seneca, and especially of
Cicero's _Tusculan Disputations:_
_Francesco_. You should be aware that I have already read
these carefully.
_Augustine_. And have they not profited you?
_Francesco_. Nay, when one reads a great deal, no sooner
is a book laid down than its effect ceases.
_Augustine_. The common fate of readers, which produces
those accursed monstrosities, able to read indeed, but
forming a disgraceful, unstable band who dispute much in
the schools on the art of living but put few of their
principles to the test.
Petrarch was urged to make notes, as was indeed his invariable habit,
at those passages in his reading which were likely to prove most useful
for moral support and stimulus. These notes served as hooks by which
the memory might cling to thoughts that would otherwise escape it. With
such reënforcement he might face with complacency all his ills, even
the heaviness of heart that he describes.
Petrarch, it may be added, believed that he derived a double benefit
from the classical authors, upon whom he depended for moral strength
and solace. There were, of course, the numerous precepts to be found in
the writings of Cicero, Horace, and Seneca, which might be taken quite
literally. In Virgil, however, as is well known, he espied a deeper,
allegorical, meaning below the surface. In the famous description of a
storm in the first book of the _Æneid_ he sees in Æolus, for example,
reason controlling the unruly passions that are ready to carry away
heaven and earth if their master relaxes his vigilance. Petrarch
was, however, a scholar of too great insight not to suspect that
Virgil perhaps had no such moral end in view. Augustine, in a passage
that ought to be considered in any discussion of Petrarch's view of
allegory, says: "I commend these secrets of poetical narration in which
I see you abound, whether Virgil himself thought of them when he wrote,
or whether, far removed from such considerations, he simply intended in
these verses to describe a storm at sea and nothing more."
Important as are the first two dialogues for the light they shed upon
the poet's inner life, his motives and doubts, the interest of the
Confessions culminates perhaps in the conversation of the third and
last day, during which Petrarch's love for Laura and his longing for
fame are considered.
Of the woman who is the theme of nearly all of Petrarch's Italian
lyrics we know almost nothing. There is the memorable record of her
death on the fly-leaf of her lovers favourite copy of Virgil, and two
or three more or less vague references to his passion for her in his
voluminous prose correspondence. In a Latin metrical epistle he has
something to say of the matter to his friend Giacomo Colonna. The
Confessions, however, afford us the clearest picture of the lover
turned philosopher, and no one can read them without understanding the
Italian sonnets better and grasping more clearly a fundamental contrast
between the mediæval and modern theory of life.[3]