De planctu naturae

Nature resumes her sorrowful speech. And so, while Hymen was busy with the mysteries of his mystic embassy, Nature, weaving together an elegiac speech of grievous complaint, was recounting the wrongs of those men by whose encroaching wickedness the majesty of her commonwealth had felt an abundant wound of deep harm. Among these, she accused one more than the rest with sharper goads of reproach, one who strove more discourteously than the others to dishonor Nature. Although every grace of nobility fawned upon nature, although prudence befriended her with its gifts, and although magnanimity raised her up and largesse instructed her, still, because the whole mass labored under the sourness of a little leaven, the setting of one virtue clouded over entirely the rising of the rest. The eclipse of one uprightness forced the stars of all the other uprightnesses to die away in eclipse-like retreat. And when Largesse saw that these reproaches touched her own foster-child, not daring to color his vices with the cloak of defense, with a humble, drooping bowing of her head, she fled to the remedy of tears.

Nature consoles Largesse and condemns Prodigality. Nature, weighing what the bowing of her head, what the shedding of her tears signified, said: "O maiden, by whose prefigured design the human mind is destined to be a palace of the virtues, through whom men obtain the rewards of favorable grace; through whom the bygone ages of the golden age live again; through whom men bind themselves together with the glue of heartfelt friendship; the eternal Being, bringing you forth in begetting through the eternal kiss of its own Thought, has bestowed you upon me as a sister of the same womb. Not only does the bond of native kinship fasten you to me, but the leading bond of love links us in a chain besides. Hence, by the very scrutiny of my will, the scale of your own discernment does not allow your will to stray: for so great a union of likeness, indeed such a oneness of union, reconciles our minds in faithful peace, that this union not only is clothed in the mere image of oneness, but, setting aside the mere semblance of union, aspires to the very essence of identity. Wherefore, no wrong rages against either of us that does not also assail the other, no enticement plays the stepmother to either of us that is not likewise hostile to the other. Wherefore, he who, with the loud blasphemy of shameless conduct, labors to make effeminate the title of my own dignity, by the same insistence of injurious harassment attempts to diminish your honor as well. That man, too, who by the outpouring of excessive prodigality abuses the gifts of nature, is stripped, by the harm of excessive squandering, of the gifts of fortune. So too the harlot-like fellowship of prodigality falsely professes the honor of largesse, and the torrent of riches is drained off into the dry bed of poverty; the splendor of wisdom strays into the setting of folly; the firmness of magnanimity is loosened into the boldness of rashness. I am wearied, then, with a certain astonishment, as to why, in the condemning of that man who strives to harm us more ruinously than all the rest, you cannot restrain the flood of your tears."

Then Largesse, banishing with a surer remedy the stream of tears from the region of her face, and calling back the bowing of her head toward the heights, said: "O original source of all created things! O special support of all things! O queen of the worldly realm! O supreme and faithful vicar of the heavenly prince, who, under the authority of the eternal Emperor, corrupt your faithful administration with no taint of ferment. You, whom the whole assembly of worldly beings is bound to obey by the very requirement of its origin and kind, as the plain equality of our inmost kinship demands, bind me to you with a golden chain of affection. That man, therefore, who, selling his own nature to his own ruin, assails you with the insult of excessive rebellion, resists me too, by the same importunate shock of assault. He, though deceived by the shadowy image of false credulity, believes himself to serve in my company, and men, deceived by the theatrical semblance of prodigality, imagine they catch the scent of Largesse's footsteps in him; yet he is held suspended, by long banishment, from the benefit of our friendship. But because it is our part to feel compassion for those who wander astray in the windings of error, I cannot but be moved at the destructive display of his senseless will."

The arrival of Genius. While this discourse was being carried on, interspersed among these maidens, behold, Genius, amid the joyful applause of instrumental music, appeared in the fresh spectacle of his coming. His stature was fittingly measured by the rule of a middling height, complaining neither of any diminishing shortfall nor grieving over any excess of addition; his head, clothed with the frost-white hair of old age, bore the mark of wintry old age: yet his face, polished with a youthful smoothness, was furrowed by no trace of age. His garments, made in a manner that followed nature, knowing want of neither this nor that, seemed now to grow serene with the blue of hyacinth, now to kindle with scarlet color; now to whiten more vividly with fine linen: on them, images of things, living but for a moment, expired so quickly that they slipped from the grasp of our perception. In his right hand he carried a pen of fragile reed, never resting from the task of its own writing; in his left, a skin stripped of its fleece by the bite of the razor, on which, with the aid of an obedient stylus, images of things, passing over from the shadow of painting into the truth of real being, were granted a life of their own kind; and when these were put to sleep by the death of erasure, others, at the rising of a new birth, were called back to life. There was Helen, a demigoddess in her own loveliness, who, by the mediation of her beauty, might herself be called beauty. There, in Turnus, the lightning-bolt of boldness; in Hercules, strength reigned. There, in Capaneus, a giant's height rose up; in Ulysses, a fox-like cunning flourished. There Cato was made drunk with the wondrous nectar of chaste sobriety. Plato glowed red with the starlike splendor of his genius. There the starry tail of Cicero's peacock shone red. There Aristotle wrapped his sayings in the hidden recesses of enigmatic speech. After the solemn labor of this writing, when the right hand grew weary from the continual toil of drawing, the left hand, coming to the aid of its tired sister, took over the office of painting; while the right hand, occupied instead with the writing-tablets, straying from the path of correct spelling into the stumbling of misspelling, created figures of things, or rather shadowy masks of figures, in a half-finished painting. There Thersites, clothed in the raggedness of ugliness, called for a more skillful hand at the craft. There Paris was depicted in the softness of an incestuous desire. There the verses of Ennius, starved of graceful thought, transgressed the metrical art with unbridled license. There Pacuvius, not knowing how to shape the course of his narration, placed the beginning of his tale in a backward-running order.

How Truth accompanied Genius. While Genius, then, was solemnly devoting his attention to these skillful paintings, Truth stood by him, as a modest daughter attending her father in humble service, a daughter not brought forth by the promiscuous itch of Aphrodite, but derived from this alone, the genial kiss of Nature and her offspring, when the eternal Idea, contemplating in Hyle the mirror of forms, greeted her, kissing her through the intervening agency of an image acting as interpreter. In her face could be read the divinity of a beauty truly divine, one that scorned the nature of our mortality. Her garments, speaking of the right hand of a heavenly craftsman, kindled with the unwearying brilliance of their splendor, could be gnawed by no moth of age: they were joined to her virgin body by so close a bond that no unclothing division could ever make them, as it were, mere Pharisees to that virgin body. Other garments, however, like additions foreign to her nature, hanging as appendages before her, now offered their small tribute to the eyes of onlookers, now shaped themselves to the searching gaze of those eyes. Opposite her stood Falsehood, hostile to Truth, more intent upon her; her face, clouded with the soot of ugliness, confessed in itself no gift of nature, but old age, sinking her face into valleys of wrinkles, had drawn it entirely together and enclosed it. Her head appeared clothed with no covering of hair, nor did the veil of any headdress excuse her baldness, but a countless multitude of little rags, which the countless multitude of her children had woven for her, served as her garment. This Falsehood, lying secretly in wait for the painting of Truth, deformed in a shapeless way whatever Truth shaped in conformity with the real.

How Nature went to meet Genius as he arrived. Nature, then, granting looser reins to her own steps, and solemnly offering a solemn welcome, presented to the arriving Genius kisses leavened with no poison of unlawful desire, but signifying the embrace of a mystic longing, and shaping too the harmony of a mystic affection.

Genius addresses Nature. When their mutual rejoicing had been brought to the fullness of its close, Genius called for silence, his hand demanding quiet, and then coined the substance of his voice into this form of speech: "O Nature, not without the breathing inspiration of an inward, divine afflatus, has this imperial edict gone forth from the scale of your discernment, that all who, by an abusive falling away from custom, strive to render our laws obsolete, and who profane the holy day of our solemnity by their own profanation, should be struck by the sword of excommunication. And because the law of this lawful promulgation does not oppose the law of justice, and the scale of your judgment rests upon the scrutiny of my own discernment, I hasten swiftly to confirm the rule of your edict. For although my mind, straitened by the misshapen vices of men, wandering in the hell of sorrow, knows not the paradise of gladness, yet in this I catch the first scent of a pleasant joy, that I see you sighing with me toward the sighs of a rightful vengeance. Nor is it any wonder, if, in the like union of our wills, I find the melody of harmony, since the conception of a single exemplary Idea brought us forth into our native being, since the condition of a single, official administration shapes us alike, since it is not a hypocritical love that joins our minds by some merely superficial bond of affection, but the modesty of chaste love that dwells in the inward recesses of our souls."

While Genius, in this brief compass of words, was shaping the course of his speech, as though the dawn of his own utterance were rising and drawing back a little the darkness of sorrow, Nature, with the honor of her own dignity preserved, rendered to Genius her due thanks.

Here Genius pronounces excommunication upon those named before. Then Genius, after laying aside his ordinary garment, was invested with the more solemn ornaments of priestly vesture, and under this form of words called forth from the inmost recesses of his mind, and uttered outwardly, the aforesaid sentence of excommunication, beginning his speech in this course: "By the authority of the Being above all being, and of its eternal Thought, with the assent of the heavenly host, and with the favoring service of Nature and of the other virtues, let him be separated from the kiss of heavenly love, let him, by the deserved merit of his ingratitude, be degraded from the grace of Nature, let him be cut off from the uniform assembly of natural things, whoever either turns aside from the lawful course of Venus, or falls into the shipwreck of gluttony, or feels the sleeplessness of drunkenness, or, thirsting, suffers the burning fire of avarice, or climbs the shadowy height of insolent arrogance, or endures the heartfelt ruin of envy, or shares in the counterfeit love of flattery. Whoever, then, makes an irregular exception to the rule of Venus, let him be stripped of Venus's own seal. Whoever is sunk in the abyss of gluttony, let him be chastened with the shame of beggary. Whoever is lulled to sleep by the river of Lethean drunkenness, let him be tormented with the fires of unending thirst. He in whom the thirst for possessing burns hot, let him fall into unending want. Whoever, exalted on the precipice of arrogance, belches forth the spirit of self-exaltation, let him fall ruinously down into the valley of cast-down humility. Whoever, envying, gnaws with the worm of detraction at the riches of another's happiness, let him find there, first of all, his own enemy. Whoever, with the hypocrisy of flattery, hunts small gifts from the rich, let him be cheated of the reward of his counterfeit merit." After Genius had brought his speech to its end with this utter destruction of a curse, the company of the maidens, applauding this imprecation, confirmed Genius's edict with a swift word of assent, and the candle-flames in the maidens' hands, their light sinking down toward the earth with a kind of scorn and drooping, seemed to sink, overcome by the drowsiness of their own extinguishing.

Conclusion of the work. When the mirror of this imaginary vision was withdrawn, and I was roused from my trance in sleep, the former appearance of that mystic apparition left me.