Collected Poetical Works of Francesco Petrarch

by Francesco Petrarch

  S. Augustine. As I am not afraid that this wind of anger will cause you to make shipwreck of yourself or others, I agree willingly that without paying attention to the promises of the Stoics, who set out to extirpate root and branch all the maladies of the soul, you content yourself with the milder treatment of the Peripatetics. Leaving, then, on one side for the moment these particular failings, I hasten to treat of others more dangerous than these and against which you will need to be on guard with more care.

  Petrarch. Gracious Heaven, what is yet to come that is more dangerous still?

  S. Augustine. Well, has the sin of lust never touched you with its flames?

  Petrarch. Yes, indeed, at times so fiercely us to make me mourn sorely that I was not born without feelings. I would sooner have been a senseless stone than be tormented by so many stings of the flesh.

  S. Augustine. Ah, there is that which turns you most aside from the thought of things divine. For what does the doctrine of the heavenly Plato show but that the soul must separate itself far from the passion of the flesh and tread down its imaginings before it can rise pure and free to the contemplation of the mystery of the Divine; for otherwise the thought of its mortality will make it cling to those seducing charms. You know what I mean, and you have learned this truth in Plato’s writings, to the study of which you said not long ago you had given yourself up with ardour.

  Petrarch. Yes, I own I had given myself to studying him with great hopefulness and desire, but the novelty of a strange language and the sudden departure of my teacher cut short my purpose. For the rest this doctrine of which you speak is very well known to me from your own writings and those of the Platonists.

  S. Augustine. It matters little from whom you learned the truth, though it is a fact that the authority of a great master will often have a profound influence.

  Petrarch. Yes, in my own case I must confess I feel profoundly the influence of a man of whom Cicero in his Tusculan Orations made this remark, which has remained graven in the bottom of my heart: “When Plato vouchsafes not to bring forward any proof (you see what deference I pay him), his mere authority would make me yield consent.” Often in reflecting on this heavenly genius it has appeared to me an injustice when the disciples of Pythagoras dispense their chief from submitting proofs, that Plato should be supposed to have less liberty than he. But, not to be carried away from our subject, authority, reason and experience alike have for a long time so much commended this axiom of Plato to me that I do not believe anything more true or more truly holy could be said by any man. Every time I have raised myself up, thanks to the hand of God stretched out to me, I have recognised with infinite joy, beyond belief, who it was that then preserved me and who had cast me down in times of old. Now that I am once more fallen into my old misery, I feel with a keen sense of bitterness that failing which again has undone me. And this I tell you, that you may see nothing strange in my saying I had put Plato’s maxim to the proof.

  S. Augustine. Indeed, I think it not strange, for I have been witness of your conflicts; I have seen you fall and then once again rise up, and now that you are down once more I determined from pity to bring you my succour.

  Petrarch. I am grateful for your compassionate feeling, but of what avail is any human succour?

  S. Augustine. It avails nothing, but the succour of God is much every way. None can be chaste except God give him the grace of chastity. You must therefore implore this grace from Him above all, with humbleness, and often it may be with tears. He is wont never to deny him who asks as he should.

  Petrarch. So often have I done it that I fear I am as one too importunate.

  S. Augustine. But you have not asked with due humbleness or singleness of heart. You have ever kept a corner for your passions to creep in; you have always asked that your prayers may be granted presently. I speak from experience, for I did likewise in my old life. I said, “Give me chastity, but not now. Put it off a little while; the time will soon come. My life is still in all its vigour; let it follow its own course, obey its natural laws; it will feel it more of a shame later, to return to its youthful folly. I will give up this failing when the course of time itself shall have rendered me less inclined that way, and when satiety will have delivered me from the fear of going back.” In talking thus do you not perceive that you prayed for one thing but wished another in your heart?

  Petrarch. How so?

  S. Augustine. Because to ask for a thing to-morrow is to put it aside for to-day.

  Petrarch. With tears have I often asked for it to-day. My hope was that after breaking the chain of my passions and casting away the misery of life, I should escape safe and sound, and after so many storms of vain anxieties, I might swim ashore in some haven of safety; but you see, alas, how many shipwrecks I have suffered among the same rocks and shoals, and how I shall still suffer more if I am left to myself.

  S. Augustine. Trust me, there has always been something wanting in your prayer; otherwise the Supreme Giver would have granted it or, as in the case of the Apostle, would have only denied you to make you more perfect in virtue and convince you entirely of your own frailty.

  Petrarch. That is my conviction also; and I will go on praying constantly, unwearied, unashamed, undespairing. The Almighty, taking pity on my sorrows, will perchance lend an ear to my prayer, sent up daily to His throne, and even as He would not have denied His grace if my prayers had been pure, so He will also purify them.

  S. Augustine. You are quite right, but redouble your efforts; and, as men wounded and fallen in battle raise themselves on their elbow, so do you keep a look out on all sides for the dangers that beset you, for fear that some foe; unseen come near and do you hurt yet more, where you lie on the ground. In the mean time, pray instantly for the aid of Him who is able to raise you up again. He will perchance be nearer to you just then when you think Him furthest off. Keep ever in mind that saying of Plato we were speaking of just now, “Nothing so much hinders the knowledge of the Divine as lust and the burning desire of carnal passion.” Ponder well, therefore, this doctrine; it is the very basis of our purpose that we have in hand.

  Petrarch. To let you see how much I welcome this teaching, I have treasured it with earnest care, not only when it dwells in the court of Plato’s royal demesne, but also where it lurks hidden in the forests of other writers, and I have kept note in my memory of the very place where it was first perceived by my mind.

  S. Augustine. I wonder what is your meaning. Do you mind being more explicit?

  Petrarch. You know Virgil: you remember through what dangers he makes his hero pass in that last awful night of the sack of Troy?

  S. Augustine. Yes, it is a topic repeated over and over again in all the schools. He makes him recount his adventures thus —

  “What tongue could tell the horrors of that night,

  Paint all the forms of death, or who have tears

  Enough to weep so many wretched wights?

  Hath the great city that so long was queen

  Fallen at last? Behold in all the streets

  The bodies of the dead by thousands strewn,

  And in their homes and on the temple’s steps!

  Yet is there other blood than that of Troy,

  What time her vanquished heroes gathering up

  Their quenchless courage smite anon their foes,

  They, though triumphant, fall. Everywhere grief,

  Dread everywhere, and in all places Death!”

  Petrarch. Now wherever he wandered accompanied by the goddess of Love, through crowding foes, through burning fire, he could not discern, though his eyes were open, the wrath of the angered gods, and so long as Venus was speaking to him he only had understanding for things of earth. But as soon as she left him you remember what happened; he immediately beheld the frowning faces of the deities, and recognised what dangers beset him round about.

  “Then I beheld the awe-inspiring form

  Of gods in anger for the fall of Troy.”

  From wh
ich my conclusion is that commerce with Venus takes away the vision of the Divine.

  S. Augustine. Among the clouds themselves you have clearly discerned the light of truth. It is in this way that truth abides in the fictions of the poets, and one perceives it shining out through the crevices of their thought. But, as we shall have to return to this question later on, let us reserve what we have to say for the end of our discourse.

  Petrarch. That I may not get lost in tracks unknown to me, may I ask when you propose to return to this point?

  S. Augustine. I have not yet probed the deepest wounds of your soul, and I have purposely deferred to do so, in order that, coming at the end, my counsels may be more deeply graven in your remembrance. In another dialogue we will treat more fully of the subject of the desires of the flesh, on which we have just now lightly touched.

  Petrarch. Go on, then, now as you proposed.

  S. Augustine. Yes, there need be nothing to hinder me, unless you are obstinately bent on stopping me.

  Petrarch. Indeed, nothing will please me better than to banish for ever every cause of dispute from the earth. I have never engaged in disputation, even on things perfectly familiar, without regretting it; for the contentions that arise, even between friends, have a certain character of sharpness and hostility contrary to the laws of friendship.

  But pass on to those matters in which you think I shall welcome your good counsel.

  S. Augustine. You are the victim of a terrible plague of the soul — melancholy; which the moderns call accidie, but which in old days used to be called ægritudo.

  Petrarch. The very name of this complaint makes me shudder.

  S. Augustine. Nor do I wonder, for you have endured its burden long enough.

  Petrarch. Yes, and though in almost all other diseases which torment me there is mingled a certain false delight, in this wretched state everything is harsh, gloomy, frightful. The way to despair is for ever open, and everything goads one’s miserable soul to self-destruction. Moreover, while other passions attack me only in bouts, which, though frequent, are but short and for a moment, this one usually has invested me so closely that it clings to and tortures me for whole days and nights together. In such times I take no pleasure in the light of day, I see nothing, I am as one plunged in the darkness of hell itself, and seem to endure death in its most cruel form. But what one may call the climax of the misery is, that I so feed upon my tears and sufferings with a morbid attraction that I can only be rescued from it by main force and in despite of myself.

  S. Augustine. So well do you know your symptoms, so familiar are you become with their cause, that I beg you will tell me what is it that depresses you most at the present hour? Is it the general course of human affairs? Is it some physical trouble, or some disgrace of fortune in men’s eyes?

  Petrarch. It is no one of these separately. Had I only been challenged to single combat, I would certainly have come off victorious; but now, as it is, I am besieged by a whole host of enemies.

  S. Augustine. I pray you will tell me fully all that torments you.

  Petrarch. Every time that fortune pushes me back one step, I stand firm and courageous, recalling to myself that often before I have been struck in the same way and yet have come off conqueror; if, after that, she presently deals me a sterner blow, I begin to stagger somewhat; if then she returns to the charge a third and fourth time, driven by force, I retreat, not hurriedly but step by step, to the citadel of Reason.

  If fortune still lays siege to me there with all her troops, and if, to reduce me to surrender, she piles up the sorrows of our human lot, the remembrance of my old miseries and the dread of evils yet to come, then, at lost, hemmed in on all sides, seized with terror at these heaped-up calamities, I bemoan my wretched fate, and feel rising in my very soul this bitter disdain of life. Picture to yourself some one beset with countless enemies, with no hope of escape or of pity, with no comfort anywhere, with every one and everything against him; his foes bring up their batteries, they mine the very ground beneath his feet, the towers are already falling, the ladders are at the gates, the grappling-hooks are fastened to the walls, the fire is seen crackling through the roofs, and, at sight of those gleaming swords on every side, those fierce faces of his foes, and that utter ruin that is upon him, how should he not be utterly dismayed and overwhelmed, since, even if life itself should be left, yet to men not quite bereft of every feeling the loss of liberty alone is a mortal stroke?

  S. Augustine. Although your confession is a little confused, I make out that your misfortunes all proceed from a single false conception which has in the past claimed and in futuro will still claim innumerable victims. You have a bad conceit of yourself.

  Petrarch. Yes, truly, a very bad one.

  S. Augustine. And why?

  Petrarch. Not for one, but a thousand reasons.

  S. Augustine. You are like people who on the slightest offence rake up all the old grounds of quarrel they ever had.

  Petrarch. In my case there is no wound old enough for it to have been effaced and forgotten: my sufferings are all quite fresh, and if anything by chance were made better through time, Fortune has so soon redoubled her strokes that the open wound has never been perfectly healed over. I cannot, moreover, rid myself of that hate and disdain of our life which I spoke of. Oppressed with that, I cannot but be grieved and sorrowful exceedingly. That you call this grief accidie or ægritudo makes no difference; in substance we mean one and the same thing.

  S. Augustine. As from what I can understand the evil is so deep-seated, it will do no good to heal it slightly, for it will soon throw out more shoots. It must be entirely rooted up. Yet I know not where to begin, so many complications alarm me. But to make the task of dividing the matter easier, I will examine each point in detail. Tell me, then, what is it that has hurt you most?

  Petrarch. Whatever I see, or hear, or feel.

  S. Augustine. Come, come, does nothing please you?

  Petrarch. Nothing, or almost nothing.

  S. Augustine. Would to God that at least the better things in your life might be dear, to you. But tell me what is it that is to you the most displeasing of all? I beg you give me an answer.

  Petrarch. I have already answered.

  S. Augustine. It is this melancholy I spoke of which is the true cause of all your displeasure with yourself.

  Petrarch. I am just as displeased with what I see in others as with what I see in myself.

  S. Augustine. That too comes from the same source. But to get a little order into our discourse, does what you see in yourself truly displease you as much as you say?

  Petrarch. Stop worrying me with your petty questions, that are more than I know how to reply to.

  S. Augustine. I see, then, that those things which make many other people envy you are nevertheless in your own eyes of no account at all?

  Petrarch. Any one who envies a wretch like me must indeed himself be wretched.

  S. Augustine. But now please tell me what is it that most displeases you?

  Petrarch. I am sure I do not know.

  S. Augustine. If I guess right will you acknowledge it?

  Petrarch. Yes, I will, quite freely.

  S. Augustine. You are vexed with Fortune.

  Petrarch. And am I not right to hate her? Proud, violent, blind, she makes a mock of mankind.

  S. Augustine. It is an idle complaint. Let us look now at your own troubles. If I prove you have complained unjustly, will you consent to retract?

  Petrarch. You will find it very hard to convince me. If, however, you prove me in the wrong, I will give in.

  S. Augustine. You find that Fortune is to you too unkind.

  Petrarch. Not too unkind; too unjust, too proud, too cruel.

  S. Augustine. The comic poets have more than one comedy called “The Grumbler.” There are scores of them. And now you are making yourself one of the crowd. I should rather find you in more select company. But as this subject is so very threadbare that no one can ad
d anything new on it, will you allow me to offer you an old remedy for an old complaint?

  Petrarch. As you wish.

  S. Augustine. Well then, has poverty yet made you endure hunger and thirst and cold?

  Petrarch. No, Fortune has not yet brought me to this pass.

  S. Augustine. Yet such is the hard lot of a great many people every day of their lives. Is it not?

  Petrarch. Use some other remedy than this if you can, for this brings me no relief. I am not one of those who in their own misfortunes rejoice to behold the crowd of other wretched ones who sob around them; and not seldom I mourn as much for the griefs of others as for my own.

  S. Augustine. I wish no man to rejoice in witnessing the misfortunes of others, but they ought at any rate to give him some consolation, and teach him not to complain of his own lot. All the world cannot possibly occupy the first and best place. How could there be any first unless there was also a second following after? Only be thankful, you mortal men, if you are not reduced to the last of all; and that of so many blows of outrageous Fortune you only bear her milder strokes. For the rest, to those who are doomed to endure the extremes of misery, one must offer more potent remedies than you have need of whom Fortune has wounded but a little. That which casts men down into these doleful moods is that each one, forgetting his own condition, dreams of the highest place, and, like every one else, as I just now pointed out, cannot possibly attain it; then when he fails he is discontented. If they only knew the sorrows that attend on greatness they would recoil from that which they now pursue. Let me call as witnesses those who by dint of toil have reached the pinnacle, and who no sooner have arrived than they forthwith bewail the too easy accomplishment of their wish. This truth should be familiar to every one, and especially to you, to whom long experience has shown that the summit of rank, surrounded as it is with trouble and anxieties, is only deserving of pity. It follows that no earthly lot of man is free from complaint, since those who have attained what they desire and those who have missed it alike show some reason for discontent. The first allege they have been cheated, and the second that they have suffered neglect.