De planctu naturae

Nature's answer. The maiden aforesaid, showing that the solution to this question stood waiting already at the threshold, said: "Do you not know that it was the earthly world's straying from its course, the disordering of the world's order, the neglect of the world's court, the injustice done to law, that forced me from the inner recesses of the heavenly mystery to turn aside into the common brothels of earthly things? If you were willing to gather up, in the loving affection of your mind, and store away in the treasury of your breast, what I would say, I would unravel the labyrinth of your doubt."

To this, then, with a checked and measured voice, I returned this answer in kind: "Nothing, O heavenly queen," I said, "do I hunger for with a more loving desire than the untangling of this question."

Solution to the first question. Then she said: "Since all things are bound, by the law of their origin, in obedience to my laws, and owe me the payment due as a lawful tax, almost all things, by the lawful rendering of their tributary due, regularly obey my edicts; but from this rule of the whole universe, man alone is excluded, an anomalous exception, who, stripped of the robe of modesty, and prostituted to the harlot's brothel of shamelessness, dares to stir up the tumult of a lawsuit against the majesty of his own mistress, indeed even to inflame, against his own mother, the rage of an inward war. All other things, to which I have lent the lesser gifts of my favor, are bound, by the condition of their own calling, in willing submission, to the sanctions of my decrees; but man, who has all but drained dry the whole treasury of my riches, attempting to unnature the very natures of nature, arms against me the wickedness of a criminal Venus. Consider how almost every single thing, in keeping with the promulgation of my edict, as the reason of its own native condition demands, discharges the statutes of my law. The firmament, driving all things round in its daily circuit, according to the teaching of my discipline, and not with any idle sameness of revolving, returns to the point from which it set out, and advances toward the point to which it goes. The stars, blazing for the honor of the firmament itself, clothing it with their own adornments, and completing the short day's-journeys of their own course, measuring out, in their varied circling, the distances of that same space, do military service for my majesty. The planets, according to the edict that has gone forth from my ordinance, restraining the onward drive of the firmament, journey toward the east against its force, and afterward make their way home again to the region of their own setting. The air, disciplined by my teachings, now rejoices with a favorable breeze, now weeps, as if in sympathy, with the tears of the clouds; now grows angry with the wranglings of the winds; now is lit up with flashes of lightning; now is shaken by the threatening roar of thunder; now is baked in the furnace of heat; now is roughened by the harshness of cold. The birds, marked out with their various natures, under the rule of my direction, crossing the waves of the air on the oarage of their wings, hang eagerly, with all their heart, upon my teachings; by the intervention of my counsel, the level plain of the sea, bound to the land in the firm ties of friendship, not daring to violate the sworn pledge of faith toward its sister, is afraid to wander beyond the fixed limit of its roaming into the dwelling-places of the land. Only at the pleasure of my will does it now grow angry into the wrath of a storm, now return to the peace of calm, now, lifted up in the pride of its swelling, pass into the likeness of a mountain, now stretch out, leveled, into an even plain. The fish, bound by the pledge of my provision, are afraid to depart from the rules of my canons. By the command of my edict too, the rains are wedded to the earth in a kind of nuptial embrace; and these, laboring toward the making of offspring, with an unwearied bringing-forth, never cease to be parents to the various kinds of things. The animals of the earth, under the scrutiny of my rule, profess various forms of service in obedience to my command. For the earth now grows white with the hoariness of winter, now grows her hair long with the tresses of flowers. The forest now is haired with the locks of its leaves, now is made bald by the sharp razor of winter. Winter buries the seeds hidden in the bosom of mother earth deep within her; spring lets loose those that were shut in; summer bakes the harvests; autumn shows forth its own abundance. And why do I let myself wander through each single thing in the course of my account? Man alone spurns the lyre of my governance, and runs mad beneath the lyre of a maddened Orpheus; for the human race, degenerating from its own noble birth, behaving like a barbarian in the joining of genders, and altering the rules of Venus, makes use of a far too irregular figure of grammar. Wandering away, then, from the correct spelling of Venus, man is found to be a sophist, a false writer. And likewise, avoiding the true analogy of the Dionaean art, he degenerates into a vicious inversion of word-order; and while he destroys me in such a question, he contrives, in his own madness, a wrenching-apart of me, his own mother. It grieves me that I have so often granted to men's natures the privilege of so many graces, men who, by their abuse, disgrace the very glory of beauty; who deform the fairness of form with the deformity of lust; who discolor the true hue of beauty with the dark stain of a counterfeit desire; who, in making the flower of Flora bloom into vice, rob it of its own bloom. Why did I adorn with a godlike beauty the face of Helen, who forced the true use of beauty to pass over into the abuse of harlotry, when, deserting the pledge of her royal marriage-bed, she foully bound herself in a pact with Paris? Pasiphaë too, driven by the furies of an excessive lust, under the guise of a cow, sophistically celebrating a bestial marriage with a brute beast, concluding for herself, by a still fouler false reasoning, was enclosed, to her own amazement, within the sophistry of the bull. Myrrha too, goaded by the stings of desire toward the sweetness of her own father, degenerating from a daughter's love, took on, with her father, the office that belonged to her mother. Medea, indeed, playing the stepmother to her own son, in order to seek out an inglorious deed of Venus, destroyed a glorious little work of Venus. Narcissus too, deceived by his own shadow into thinking it another Narcissus, wholly absorbed in that mere reflection, and believing himself to be another self, ran, from himself, into the peril of loving himself. Many other young men too, clothed by my favor in the honor of beauty, drunk with a love of money, have turned the hammers proper to Venus over to the service of the anvil's office. Such a multitude of monstrous men ranges abroad through the whole breadth of the world, by whose bewitching contagion chastity is poisoned. Indeed, of those men who profess the grammar of Venus, some embrace, as their own familiar practice, only the masculine gender, others the feminine, others the common, or promiscuous, gender; and some, as if irregular in their gender, are declined, out of due order, now in the feminine gender through the winter, now in the masculine through the summer. There are some who, disputing in the logic of Venus, in their conclusions, obtain by mutual exchange the rule proper to subject and predicate. There are some who, though playing the part of the subject, do not know how to be predicated. There are others who, only predicating, pay no attention to the lawful submission owed by the subject. Others, disdaining to enter the royal palace of Venus at all, keep company, at her very threshold, with a tearful game. Against all these the laws bring their complaint, statutes are armed, since they seek to have their own wrongs avenged by the sword of a punisher. Do not wonder, then, if I break out into these profane novelties of speech, since profane men dare to run wild in a far more profane fashion. For I belch forth such things in indignation, so that chaste men may hold the mark of modesty in reverence, while the unchaste may be shut out from the brothels of shamelessness. For the knowledge of what is evil is a useful caution, which brands with the guilty mark of shamelessness those who deserve to be so branded, and rewards those who are free of such things. Now the file of my solution has worn away the sharp edge of your question."

Solution to Alan's second question. "For this reason, then, going forth from the upper chambers of the heavenly palace, I have come down to the setting-place of this fleeting earthliness, so that, concerning the detestable excesses of men, I might set forth to you, as to my own intimate and secretary, a lament of complaint, and might determine with you what answer of punishment ought to be given to such an array of crimes, so that a punishment equal to the bite of the aforesaid misdeeds might bite back with the fitting reprisal of penalty."

Then I said: "O mediator of all things, were I not afraid that the abundance of my questions might provoke distaste in your kindness, I would set forth the darkness of another doubt of mine before the light of your discernment."

Then she said: "No indeed, share with my hearing all your questions, not only the young ones, but even those grown old with the rust of age, so that, by the firmness of our solutions, the pressing force of your doubts may be set at rest."

Alan's third question. Then I said: "I wonder why, in treating the fictions of the poets, you arm the barbs of your invective only against the plagues of the human race, when we read that the gods too limped along on that same crooked foot of straying? For Jupiter, carrying off the young Ganymede to the world above, carried a mutual, reciprocal Venus over into the one so carried off; and him whom he set up, by day, at his table, to serve him his wine, he made, by night, subject to him in his bed. Bacchus too, and Apollo, joint heirs of their father's wantonness, turned boys into women by pretense, not by the command of some divine power, but by the trick of a superstitious Venus."

Nature's response. Then she, tumultuously composing her face into a look of authentic serenity, said: "Are you, by usurping a question unworthy of the very appearance of a doubt, trying to give it the mere image and clothing of a real question? Or are you trying to lend credence to the shadowy fictions of the poets, which the craft of the poetic art has painted? Does not the elder treatise of philosophy, with the finer file of its discernment, eliminate those things that are debated in the childish cradle of poetic teaching? Do you not know how the poets, without any remedy of disguise, prostitute naked falsehood to their hearers, so as to intoxicate, as if enchanted, the ears of their audience with a certain honeyed sweetness? How they disguise that very falsehood with a kind of hypocrisy of plausibility, so that, through the images of their examples, they may stamp the minds of men upon the anvil of good conduct? Yes, on the outer surface, in the bark of the letter, the poetic lyre sounds a falsehood, but within, it speaks to its hearers a hidden meaning of a deeper understanding, so that, once the outer husk of falsehood has been thrown away, the reader may find, secretly within, the sweeter kernel of truth. Yet the poets sometimes join together historical events with fabulous jestings, in a certain elegant fiction, so that, from the fitting combination of different things, a more elegant picture of the very narrative may result. But nevertheless, when a plurality of gods is dreamed up by the poets, or when the gods themselves are said to have put their hands under the rod of Venus, in these things the shadow of falsehood is plain to see, nor, in this, is the poet found to have strayed from the true kind of his own calling. For though the dreams of Epicurus are now put to sleep, the madness of Mani cured, the sharp arguments of Aristotle refuted, the deceits of Arius exposed as false, reason proves the single unity of God, the world proclaims it, faith believes it, Scripture bears witness to it; in which no flaw at all is found, which no plague of vice assails, with which no motion of temptation joins battle. This is the splendor that never fails, the life unwearied, undying, the ever-welling fountain, the wise seed-plot of life's own seed, the principal first principle, the initial beginning of goodness. Although, then, as the poets have borne witness, many men have abused, quite literally, such terms belonging to Venus, that narrative nevertheless lies, whether in saying that they were gods, or that they themselves lurked in the schools of Venus, and it sinks into the evening of an excessive falsehood; and so I have drawn over this matter the cloud of silence, but have set forth other matters in the light of a true narrative."

To this I said: "Now I recognize that my question breathes the ember of far too much crudeness, but if some other poor little question of mine might dare to win the hearing of your dignity, I would ask something more, in asking it."

To this she said: "Have I not already, some time ago, without any obstacle of restraint, let loose the free reins of your asking?"

Fourth question. Then I said: "I wonder why certain portions of your tunic, which ought to be joined as closely as the weave of a marriage, suffer, in that part, a divorce of their union, in the very place where the dreamlike images of the picture represent the figure of man?"

Solution to the question. Then she said: "You can already gather, from what has been explained, what mystical meaning the figured parenthesis of that tear represents: for since, as we have said, so many men arm themselves with wrongs against their own mother, the vices, thereby establishing between themselves and her the greatest chaos of discord, they lay violent hands upon me in violence, they tear apart, piece by piece, my own garments, and force me, stripped (so far as lies in them) of the garments they ought rather to clothe with the honor of reverence, to play the harlot. In this covering, then, through this tear, it is depicted that, under the vicious assaults of man alone, my ornaments of modesty suffer the insult of being torn."

Then I said: "Now that the waves of my doubts have been calmed by the clear serenity of your solutions, my mind is granted a truce in which to press further questions. If it should please your kindness, I would eagerly wish to know—"

Alan's fifth question. "What reasonable reason, what undiscerning lack of discernment, what crooked misdirection of love, has so forced the spark of reason to sleep in man, that man, made drunk by the draught of sensuality's forgetfulness, should become an apostate from your laws; indeed, should even wage lawless war against your very laws?"

Solution to the question. To this she said: "If you wish to know the origin of so foul a plague, kindle the small flame of your mind to a higher pitch, and you will find a more eager appetite for understanding: let subtlety drive away dullness of wit, let steadiness of attention check the wandering flood of thoughts. For, taking my beginning from a higher point, I wish to weave the thread of my account from a more excellent starting-point of inquiry. For I do not wish, as before, to set forth my proposals in the plain, level ground of ordinary words, nor to profane profane things with profane novelties of speech; but rather to gild shameful things with the golden trappings of modest words, and to clothe them in the various colors of graceful speech. For it follows that I should give a purple sheen, with gilded readings, to the dross of the aforesaid vices, and perfume the vicious stench of such words with a honeyed fragrance, lest, if the stench of so great a dung-heap should reach the ears through too plain a telling, it should invite the people to the disgust of indignation, and to the vomiting of nausea. But nevertheless, at times, as we have already touched upon above, since it is fitting that our words be akin to the things of which we speak, the deformity of speech ought to be made to match the formlessness of the things themselves. But in the following treatise, lest the harshness of plain speech offend the hearing of my readers, or shamefulness find a place in a maiden's mouth, I wish to grant a cloak of pleasing speech to the aforesaid monsters of vice."

Then I said: "Now the hunger of my understanding, the keen edge of my burning wit, the ardor of my kindled mind, the steadiness and constancy of my attention, all demand those things which you promise."

Then she said: "When God wished to trace out, from the ideal chamber of his preconception, the fabric of the world's palace, wishing also to depict, by the real existence of that same thing, as if by a material word, the mental word that he had conceived from eternity concerning the constitution of the world—like the elegant architect of the world, like the goldsmith of a golden work, like the skillful craftsman of an astonishing craft, like the maker of a wonder-working work—not laboring with the aid of any outer instrument, not with the help of matter lying ready beforehand, not under the compulsion of some driving need, but by the command of his sole and free will alone, God fashioned the admirable beauty of the world's palace; and, assigning to the world's palace the various kinds of things, kinds set apart from one another by the strife of discordant genders, he tempered them into the harmony of a lawful order, gave them laws, and bound them with sanctions: and so, things that were opposed to one another by the opposition of their kinds, between which a natural gap had set opposites apart, he changed, joining them by the mutual kisses of a certain reciprocal relation, into the peace of friendship, turning the strife of their conflict into concord. So, then, with all things brought into harmony by the subtle, invisible chains of their joining, plurality returned to unity, diversity to identity, dissonance to consonance, discord to concord, in a peaceful union. But after the universal craftsman had clothed all things in the appearance of their own natures, and had wedded them all, one to another, in the lawful marriages of due proportion, wishing that, through the cycle of the mutual relation of being born and dying, stability might be granted to perishable things through instability, infinity through an end, eternity through time-boundedness, and that the ordered succession of things might be perpetually woven together by the repeated cycle of being born, he ordained that, stamped with the seal of an expressed likeness, along the lawful path of a propagation to be handed down, like things should be brought forth from like. Me, then, he appointed as his own deputy, as the coiner charged with stamping the seal upon the kinds of things, so that I, striking the images of things upon my own anvils, should not allow the thing so shaped to stray from the form of the anvil, but that, through my own working skill, the face of the thing copied should in no way stray from the face of the model, defrauded of the endowments of no natures. Obeying, then, the command of him who commands, and working, as it were, by stamping the various kindred things according to the image of the model, fashioning the likeness of the copy after the pattern of the model thing, and shaping like things, in conformity, from things alike, I have given back the sealed faces of each single thing. Yet I carried out the ministry of this work under the command of divine power in such a way that the right hand of the majesty above guided the hand of my own attention, since the pen of my writing would stray, in a sudden swerving off course, unless it were guided by the finger of the supreme disposer. But since, without the assisting craft of a subordinate craftsman, I was not able to polish so many kinds of things, and since it pleased me to dwell in the delightful palace of the ethereal region, where the quarreling of the winds does not destroy the peace of serenity, where the accidental night of clouds does not bury the untiring brightness of the upper air, where no injury of storm rages, where no madness of raging thunder threatens, I set Venus, skilled in an ineffable knowledge, as an under-deputy of my own work, in the suburb of the world, so that, under the direction of my own command, with the aid of the industry of her husband Hymenaeus and her son Cupid, laboring in the varied fashioning of earthly animals, fitting the craftsman's hammers regularly to their anvils, she might weave together, in an unwearied continuation, the ongoing line of the human race, and might repair the wrongs done by the hands of the Fates as they cut life's thread. While, in the course of this narrative, some mention of Cupid arose, I inserted the substance of this question, interrupting the aforesaid narrative with this parenthesis of my own words."

Alan's sixth question. "Ha, ha—unless I feared, by the offense of interrupting your speech, and by my hunting after so many questions, to incur the displeasure of your kindness, I would wish to learn the nature of Cupid, of whom your discourse has already made some slight mention, through the picture of your own description. For although many authors have depicted his nature under the wrapping cover of enigmas, they have nevertheless left us no sure trace of certainty: whose power and authority over the human race is read, by experience, to be so great, that no one, whether marked with the seal of nobility, or clothed in the graceful privilege of wisdom, or fortified with the armor of courage, or robed in the mantle of beauty, or endowed with the honors of other graces, can manage to exempt himself from the general dominion of Cupid's rule."

Solution to the question. Then she, with a measured movement of her head, and with words that promised a rebuke, said: "I believe you are serving, as a hired soldier, in the camp of Cupid, and are joined to him by a kind of close, familiar kinship; for you try, with such eager interest, to search out his inextricable labyrinth, when you ought rather to fit the attention of your mind, with greater care, to my own account, enriched as it is with the wealth of its judgments. But nevertheless, before the course of my speech passes on to what follows, since I feel compassion for the weakness of your human frailty, I wish, so far as lies within my power, to root out the darkness of your ignorance. Moreover, I am bound, by the pledge of my promise, to the solutions of your questions; and so, whether by describing it with a sure description, or by defining it with a lawful definition, I will demonstrate a thing that cannot be shown, I will untangle a thing that cannot be untangled; although this thing itself, bound by no obligation to any of nature's own workings, and not awaiting the searching-out of the understanding, could be marked out by the seal of no description at all. Let this description, then, be given of a thing that cannot be circumscribed; let this explanation go forth of a nature that cannot be explained; let this be held as knowledge of the unknown, let this be gained as the science of the knowable, tempered, nonetheless, to a restrained height of style:"