' ('Minos reigned as the
presiding
judge, moving the drawing-urn, and called a jury of the silent ones .
Bruno-Cause-Principle-and-Unity
, Dean of Christ Church from ?
?
?
?
to ?
?
?
?
, and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford in ?
?
?
?
.
Promoted to Dean of Durham in ?
?
?
?
and named Bishop of York in ?
?
?
?
.
12 Martin Culpepper, Professor of Medicine and Rector of New College from ? ? ? ? to ? ? ? ? , Dean of Chichester from ? ? ? ? , and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford in ? ? ? ? .
? ? ?
Cause, principle and unity
? the suspicion (unless one is known personally) of having a completely opposite nature and character. Hence, it happens that even men noble by birth or by accident, and enriched by the principal part of nobility which is learning, are ashamed to be promoted to the title of doctor, and so con- tent themselves with merely being learned. You will find many more of these in the courts than you will among the pedants at the university.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . You will find both kinds everywhere there are doctors and priests, Armesso, so hold your complaining. Those who are true doctors and true priests, even if of modest origin, can only gain in civility and nobil- ity, because knowledge is the most expedient way of making the human soul heroic. The more those others thunder from on high with divum pater [divine father], like the giant Salmoneus,13 the more clearly they reveal their rudeness, strutting like satyrs or fauns dressed in purple, with that horrendous and imperial majesty, after having determined from the height of their magisterial chair to what declension hic [this, masc. ], haec [this, fem. ] and hoc nihil [this, nothing] belong.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Letuschangethesubject. Whatisthatbookinyourhand? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Somedialogues.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . TheSupper?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . No.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . What,then?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Others where the themes of cause, principle and unity are treated according to our system.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Whoarethespeakers? Arethere,byanychance,someother devils in it like Frulla or Prudenzio, who will land us into trouble again?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Rest assured that, except for one of them, they are all very peaceable, honest subjects.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . So that from what you say we will still have to pick some thorns out of these dialogues?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . No doubt. But you will be scratched where it itches, instead of pricked where it hurts.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Whatelse?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Here you will meet, as first speaker, that erudite, honest, affable, polite and faithful friend Alexander Dicsono, who proposes the subject of the debate, and whom the Nolan loves as his own eyes. He is introduced as the one who furnishes Teofilo with his subject. Then Teofilo (who is myself) comes second, profiting by the occasion to make
13 See Virgil, Aeneid, ? ? ? -? . ? ?
? First dialogue
? distinctions, give definitions and carry out demonstrations concerning the theme proposed. Thirdly, you have Gervasio, not a philosopher by pro- fession, but who likes to pass the time by attending our discussions; a per- son of indifferent odour who finds everything Poliinnio does comic, and from time to time gives him full rein to express his folly. The latter sacrile- gious pedant is the fourth speaker; being one of those stern censors of philosophers, he claims to be a Momus, passionately attached to his flock of students, reputed to be a follower of Socratic love, an eternal enemy of the female sex. He considers himself, therefore, in order not to seem involved with physics, an Orpheus, a Musaeus, a Tityros, an Amphion. He is one of those who, when they have put together a beautiful conceit, com- posed an elegant little epistle or made off with a nice phrase from the Ciceronian kitchen, are at once Demosthenes come back to life, Tullius rejuvenated, Sallust who lives again, or an Argus who makes out every letter, every syllable and every word. He is Rhadamanthus who umbras vocat ille silentum [calls the shadows of the silent], or the Cretan king Minos who urnam movet [shakes the drawing-urn]. 14 He is one of those men who puts every word to the test, and who mounts a debate around every phrase, saying that these are poetic, these sound comic, these are oratic; this is sweet, that is sublime, this other one is humile dicendi genus15 [humble oratory genre]; this harangue is harsh, it would be lighter if composed like this, such and such a writer is not eloquent, he is little read in the ancients, non redolet Arpinatum, desipit Latium16 [he does not smack of Arpinum, he lacks knowledge of Latin]. This word is not Tuscan, neither Boccaccio, nor Petrarch, nor other approved authors use it. One should write 'omo' and not 'homo', not 'honour' but 'onour', 'Poliinnio' instead of 'Polihimnio'. This kind of thing fills him with triumph, self-satisfaction and utmost pleasure with whatever he does. He feels himself a Jove who, from his high perch, gazes down on and contemplates the lives of other men, subject to so many errors, calamities, miseries and vain strivings. He alone is happy, only he lives a heavenly life, when he contem- plates his divinity in the mirror of a Spicilegium,17 a Dictionarium, a
14 See Virgil, Aeneid, ? ? , ? ? ? -? : 'quaesitor Minos urnam movet; ille silentium/consiliumque vocat . . .
' ('Minos reigned as the presiding judge, moving the drawing-urn, and called a jury of the silent ones . . . ').
15 Humile dicendi genus is the first of the three genera dicendi which Cicero distinguishes in his tripertita varietas of styles of oration.
16 Cicero, born in Arpinium, sixty miles south-east of Rome. See the anti-Ciceronian satire of Erasmus, the Ciceronianus (? ? ? ? ).
17 Title of a work by L. G. Scoppa, the Spicilegium, which dates from ? ? ? ? .
? ? ?
Cause, principle and unity
? Calepino,18 a lexicon, a Cornucopiae,19 a Nizzolio. 20 Endowed with such self- sufficiency, he alone is everything, while each of us is but one. If he happens to laugh, he calls himself Democritus; if he by chance cries, he calls himself Heraclitus; if he argues, he baptises himself Chrysippus; if he rea- sons, his name is Aristotle; if he forges chimeras, he becomes Plato; if he bellows out some paltry speech, he is Demosthenes; if he expounds Virgil, he is Maro. So he corrects Achilles, approves Aeneas, reprehends Hector, exclaims against Pyrrhus, laments Priam, accuses Turnus, excuses Dido, praises Achates, and finally, while verbum verbo reddit [he translates word for word], chaining together his barbarous synonyms, nihil divinum a se alienum putat [he maintains that nothing divine is alien to him]. He then descends haughtily from his chair, as if he had put the heavens in order, reformed worlds, organized senates and tamed armies. He is sure that, if it were not for the injustice of the times, he would convert into action what he has accomplished in thought. O tempora, o mores! 21 [O age, o manners! ] How rare are they who understand the nature of participles, adverbs and conjunctions! How much time has flowed by without discovering the reason, the true cause, that makes the adjective agree with the noun, the relative join together with the antecedent, and the rule which places it at the beginning or end of a sentence, and the frequency and order in which one must slip in those interjections dolentis and gaudentis [of pain and joy], 'heu', 'oh', 'ahi', 'ah', 'hem', 'ohe', 'hui' and other seasonings, without which the whole discourse is totally bland!
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Youcansaywhateveryoulike,andthinkasyouwish,but I hold that in order to be happy in this life, it is better to imagine oneself Croesus, and be poor, than to imagine onself poor, and be Croesus. Is it not more conducive to beatitude to have a slattern you think beautiful and who satisfies you, rather than a Leda or a Helen who bores you and whom you end up abandoning? What does it matter, then, to those people, whether they are ignorant and ignobly occupied, when their happiness is in direct proportion to their own self-esteem? The ass likes fresh grass and the horse barley, just the same as you who like white bread and partridge; the hog is
18 Name of the lexographer Ambrogio Calepino, whose Dictionarium (which appeared before ? ? ? ? ) was so often reprinted during the 16th century that 'calepino' became synonymous with 'dictionary'.
19 Literally, 'horn of plenty', an allusion to Nicolo` Perotti, Cornucopiae sive commentaria linguae lati-
nae (Venice, ? ? ? ? ) and often reprinted during the ? ? th and ? ? th centuries.
20 Nizzolio, a synonym during the 16th century for 'Ciceronian lexicon'; See Mario Nizzoli,
Observationum in M. T. Ciceronem Prima [Secunda] pars, (? ? ? ? ), reprinted several times.
21 Cicero, Catilinam, ? , ? .
? ? ?
First dialogue
? as happy with his acorns and slops as Jupiter with nectar and ambrosia. Do you want, by chance, to disabuse them of their agreeable folly when, in return for the cure, they come and break your head? I will leave aside the question of which is folly: the illusion, or its cure. A Pyrrhonist once said, 'Who knows whether our state is not death, and that of the alleged dead, life? ' Who knows if true happiness and true beatitude do not consist of the due linking and taking apart the parts of a phrase?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . The world is such that we play Democritus at the expense of the pedants and grammarians, and diligent courtiers play at being Democritus at ours, while unthinking monks and priests democratize at everybody's expense. The pedants mock us, give-and-take, we sneer at the courtiers, and everybody at the monks. The outcome is that, since one is a fool in the eyes of the other, we are all fools, differing by species, but concordant in genere et numero et casu [in their genus, number and case].
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Just so censure differs in manner, kind and degree. Yet we must bend our knees and bow our heads before that most harsh, severe, horrendous and frightening censure of our arch-pedagogues. It is towards them we must turn our gaze and lift our hands, sighing, calling out, weep- ing and begging for mercy. Thus, it is to you that I turn, to you, who hold in your hand the caduceus of Mercury in order to resolve controversies; to you, who settle the differences that arise between men and gods. You, Menippos, who, from your seats on the moon's globe, look down on us with narrowed eyes from on high, noting our actions with repugnance and scorn. You, shield-bearers of Pallas, standard-bearers of Minerva, Mercury's stewards; you, Jupiter's custodians, Apollo's milk brothers, Epimetheus' co-thieves, Bacchus' bottlers, Euhan-criers' horse-grooms; you, who scourge the Edonides, spur on the Thyiades, excite the Maenads, seduce the Bassarids; you, the riders of the Mimallonides, copulators of the Egerian nymph, moderators of enthusiasm, demagogues of wandering peoples, decipherers of the Demogorgon, Dioscures of fluctuating disci- plines, treasurers of the Pantamorpheus and bullock-emissaries of the highpriest Aron: to you we recommend our prose, submit our Muses, our premises, subsumptions, digressions, parentheses, applications, clauses, periods, constructions, adjectives and epithets. O you, sugarwater vendors, who ravish our spirits with your sweet little refinements, binding fast our hearts, fascinating our minds, and delivering our prostituted souls to the lupanar; you, who submit our barbarisms to your wise judgement, stick our solecisms with your arrows, staunch our malodorous chasms, castrate our
? ?
Cause, principle and unity
? Silenes, clap our Noahs into breeches, emasculate our macrological dis- courses, patch up our ellipses, curb our tautologies, temper our acyrolo- gies, excuse our escrologies, pardon our perissologies, forgive our cacoph- onies. I, again, conjure you all, all of you in general and you in particular, Poliinnio: halt that slanderous rage and that criminal hatred you feel towards the most noble female sex; do not ruin all that the world possesses of beauty, all that which heaven contemplates with countless eyes. Pull, pull yourselves together and recover your wits, by which you might see that your animosity is nothing but a professed madness and frenetic passion. Is there anyone more senseless and stupid than a man who doesn't see the light? Can there be a madness more miserable than becoming, on account of sex, the enemy of nature herself, like that barbarous king of Sarza, who, having learned from your kind, declared:
Nature can make nothing perfect, since she is herself a woman. 22
Consider somewhat the truth, lift your eyes to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and note the contradiction and opposition that exists between the one and the other; see what men are and what women are. You hold, on one hand, the body, masculine, to be your friend, and the soul, feminine, your enemy. On one hand, you have chaos, masculine, and on the other, organization, feminine. Here, sleep, masculine; there, wakefulness, feminine. On one side, forgetfulness, and on the other, memory. Here, hate, there, friendship; on this side, fear, on the other, serenity; on one hand, rigour and on the other, kindness; here, anger, there, calm. On one side, error, on the other, truth; here, imperfection, there, perfection; here, hell, there, happiness; on this side, the Poliinnio the pedant, on the other side, Poliinnia the Muse. In short, all the vices, imperfections and crimes are masculine, and all the virtues, merits and goodnesses are feminine. Hence, prudence, justice, strength, temperance, beauty, majesty and dignity, both in grammatical gender and in our imagination, as well as in our descrip- tions and paintings, are all feminine. But to leave aside these theoretical rea- sonings concerning grammar and nomenclature so appropriate to your argument, and to come to what is natural, real and practical, one example alone should serve to bridle your tongue and shut your mouth, yours and those of your many cohorts: imagine if someone should ask where you will
22 Ariosto, Orlando furioso, ? ? ? ? ? , ? ? ? , slightly adapted by Bruno, who has, 'Natura non puo` far cosa perfetta, / poi che natura femina vien detta. ' Ariosto writes, 'veggo che (natura) non puo` far cosa perfetta, / poi che Natura femina vien detta. '
? ? ?
? Second dialogue
? find a man who surpasses, or is even equal to, this celestial Elizabeth, England's ruler. She is so highly endowed, elevated, favoured, protected and supported by the heavens that physical or verbal efforts to overthrow her are both vain. There is no one in the kingdom so worthy and so heroic among the nobility, nor anyone so gifted among those who wear the gown, or so wise among the counsellors. For corporal beauty, knowledge of vernacular and learned tongues, grasp of the arts and sciences, vision in governing, grandeur of such great and long-lasting authority and other natural and civic virtues, the Sophonisbas, Faustinas, Semiramises, Didos, Cleopatras and all the earlier queens that Italy, Greece, Egypt and other parts of Europe and Asia can boast are trivial compared to her. Her results and her successes, which the present age cherishes with honest wonder- ment, bear witness to this. While across Europe's back flow the wrathful Tiber, the threatening Po, the violent Rhine, the bloody Seine, the turbid Garonne, the frenzied Ebro, the furious Tagus, the tumultuous Meuse and the unquiet Danube, she, with her splendid vision, has been able, for more than five lustres, to calm the great Ocean, which, in its constant ebb and flow, calmly and gladly gathers the beloved Thames to its bosom, flowing on unchecked and fearless, gaily and confidently twisting between its verdant banks. So then, to start over again . . .
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Quiet there, Filoteo, quiet. Do not strain yourself adding water to our ocean and light to our sun. Quit showing yourself so abstract (not to mention worse) in your polemic against those absent Poliinnios. Instead, give us some examples from the dialogues you have here, so we do not idle away our hours today.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Takethemandread.
End of first dialogue
Second dialogue
Speakers: Dicsono Arelio, Teofilo, Gervasio, Poliinnio
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Please, master Poliinnio, and you, Gervasio, do not keep inter- rupting our discussions.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Fiat[Agreed].
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . SurelyIcannotstayquietifhe,themagister[master],speaks. ? ? ? ? ? ?
12 Martin Culpepper, Professor of Medicine and Rector of New College from ? ? ? ? to ? ? ? ? , Dean of Chichester from ? ? ? ? , and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford in ? ? ? ? .
? ? ?
Cause, principle and unity
? the suspicion (unless one is known personally) of having a completely opposite nature and character. Hence, it happens that even men noble by birth or by accident, and enriched by the principal part of nobility which is learning, are ashamed to be promoted to the title of doctor, and so con- tent themselves with merely being learned. You will find many more of these in the courts than you will among the pedants at the university.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . You will find both kinds everywhere there are doctors and priests, Armesso, so hold your complaining. Those who are true doctors and true priests, even if of modest origin, can only gain in civility and nobil- ity, because knowledge is the most expedient way of making the human soul heroic. The more those others thunder from on high with divum pater [divine father], like the giant Salmoneus,13 the more clearly they reveal their rudeness, strutting like satyrs or fauns dressed in purple, with that horrendous and imperial majesty, after having determined from the height of their magisterial chair to what declension hic [this, masc. ], haec [this, fem. ] and hoc nihil [this, nothing] belong.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Letuschangethesubject. Whatisthatbookinyourhand? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Somedialogues.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . TheSupper?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . No.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . What,then?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Others where the themes of cause, principle and unity are treated according to our system.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Whoarethespeakers? Arethere,byanychance,someother devils in it like Frulla or Prudenzio, who will land us into trouble again?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Rest assured that, except for one of them, they are all very peaceable, honest subjects.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . So that from what you say we will still have to pick some thorns out of these dialogues?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . No doubt. But you will be scratched where it itches, instead of pricked where it hurts.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Whatelse?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Here you will meet, as first speaker, that erudite, honest, affable, polite and faithful friend Alexander Dicsono, who proposes the subject of the debate, and whom the Nolan loves as his own eyes. He is introduced as the one who furnishes Teofilo with his subject. Then Teofilo (who is myself) comes second, profiting by the occasion to make
13 See Virgil, Aeneid, ? ? ? -? . ? ?
? First dialogue
? distinctions, give definitions and carry out demonstrations concerning the theme proposed. Thirdly, you have Gervasio, not a philosopher by pro- fession, but who likes to pass the time by attending our discussions; a per- son of indifferent odour who finds everything Poliinnio does comic, and from time to time gives him full rein to express his folly. The latter sacrile- gious pedant is the fourth speaker; being one of those stern censors of philosophers, he claims to be a Momus, passionately attached to his flock of students, reputed to be a follower of Socratic love, an eternal enemy of the female sex. He considers himself, therefore, in order not to seem involved with physics, an Orpheus, a Musaeus, a Tityros, an Amphion. He is one of those who, when they have put together a beautiful conceit, com- posed an elegant little epistle or made off with a nice phrase from the Ciceronian kitchen, are at once Demosthenes come back to life, Tullius rejuvenated, Sallust who lives again, or an Argus who makes out every letter, every syllable and every word. He is Rhadamanthus who umbras vocat ille silentum [calls the shadows of the silent], or the Cretan king Minos who urnam movet [shakes the drawing-urn]. 14 He is one of those men who puts every word to the test, and who mounts a debate around every phrase, saying that these are poetic, these sound comic, these are oratic; this is sweet, that is sublime, this other one is humile dicendi genus15 [humble oratory genre]; this harangue is harsh, it would be lighter if composed like this, such and such a writer is not eloquent, he is little read in the ancients, non redolet Arpinatum, desipit Latium16 [he does not smack of Arpinum, he lacks knowledge of Latin]. This word is not Tuscan, neither Boccaccio, nor Petrarch, nor other approved authors use it. One should write 'omo' and not 'homo', not 'honour' but 'onour', 'Poliinnio' instead of 'Polihimnio'. This kind of thing fills him with triumph, self-satisfaction and utmost pleasure with whatever he does. He feels himself a Jove who, from his high perch, gazes down on and contemplates the lives of other men, subject to so many errors, calamities, miseries and vain strivings. He alone is happy, only he lives a heavenly life, when he contem- plates his divinity in the mirror of a Spicilegium,17 a Dictionarium, a
14 See Virgil, Aeneid, ? ? , ? ? ? -? : 'quaesitor Minos urnam movet; ille silentium/consiliumque vocat . . .
' ('Minos reigned as the presiding judge, moving the drawing-urn, and called a jury of the silent ones . . . ').
15 Humile dicendi genus is the first of the three genera dicendi which Cicero distinguishes in his tripertita varietas of styles of oration.
16 Cicero, born in Arpinium, sixty miles south-east of Rome. See the anti-Ciceronian satire of Erasmus, the Ciceronianus (? ? ? ? ).
17 Title of a work by L. G. Scoppa, the Spicilegium, which dates from ? ? ? ? .
? ? ?
Cause, principle and unity
? Calepino,18 a lexicon, a Cornucopiae,19 a Nizzolio. 20 Endowed with such self- sufficiency, he alone is everything, while each of us is but one. If he happens to laugh, he calls himself Democritus; if he by chance cries, he calls himself Heraclitus; if he argues, he baptises himself Chrysippus; if he rea- sons, his name is Aristotle; if he forges chimeras, he becomes Plato; if he bellows out some paltry speech, he is Demosthenes; if he expounds Virgil, he is Maro. So he corrects Achilles, approves Aeneas, reprehends Hector, exclaims against Pyrrhus, laments Priam, accuses Turnus, excuses Dido, praises Achates, and finally, while verbum verbo reddit [he translates word for word], chaining together his barbarous synonyms, nihil divinum a se alienum putat [he maintains that nothing divine is alien to him]. He then descends haughtily from his chair, as if he had put the heavens in order, reformed worlds, organized senates and tamed armies. He is sure that, if it were not for the injustice of the times, he would convert into action what he has accomplished in thought. O tempora, o mores! 21 [O age, o manners! ] How rare are they who understand the nature of participles, adverbs and conjunctions! How much time has flowed by without discovering the reason, the true cause, that makes the adjective agree with the noun, the relative join together with the antecedent, and the rule which places it at the beginning or end of a sentence, and the frequency and order in which one must slip in those interjections dolentis and gaudentis [of pain and joy], 'heu', 'oh', 'ahi', 'ah', 'hem', 'ohe', 'hui' and other seasonings, without which the whole discourse is totally bland!
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Youcansaywhateveryoulike,andthinkasyouwish,but I hold that in order to be happy in this life, it is better to imagine oneself Croesus, and be poor, than to imagine onself poor, and be Croesus. Is it not more conducive to beatitude to have a slattern you think beautiful and who satisfies you, rather than a Leda or a Helen who bores you and whom you end up abandoning? What does it matter, then, to those people, whether they are ignorant and ignobly occupied, when their happiness is in direct proportion to their own self-esteem? The ass likes fresh grass and the horse barley, just the same as you who like white bread and partridge; the hog is
18 Name of the lexographer Ambrogio Calepino, whose Dictionarium (which appeared before ? ? ? ? ) was so often reprinted during the 16th century that 'calepino' became synonymous with 'dictionary'.
19 Literally, 'horn of plenty', an allusion to Nicolo` Perotti, Cornucopiae sive commentaria linguae lati-
nae (Venice, ? ? ? ? ) and often reprinted during the ? ? th and ? ? th centuries.
20 Nizzolio, a synonym during the 16th century for 'Ciceronian lexicon'; See Mario Nizzoli,
Observationum in M. T. Ciceronem Prima [Secunda] pars, (? ? ? ? ), reprinted several times.
21 Cicero, Catilinam, ? , ? .
? ? ?
First dialogue
? as happy with his acorns and slops as Jupiter with nectar and ambrosia. Do you want, by chance, to disabuse them of their agreeable folly when, in return for the cure, they come and break your head? I will leave aside the question of which is folly: the illusion, or its cure. A Pyrrhonist once said, 'Who knows whether our state is not death, and that of the alleged dead, life? ' Who knows if true happiness and true beatitude do not consist of the due linking and taking apart the parts of a phrase?
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . The world is such that we play Democritus at the expense of the pedants and grammarians, and diligent courtiers play at being Democritus at ours, while unthinking monks and priests democratize at everybody's expense. The pedants mock us, give-and-take, we sneer at the courtiers, and everybody at the monks. The outcome is that, since one is a fool in the eyes of the other, we are all fools, differing by species, but concordant in genere et numero et casu [in their genus, number and case].
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Just so censure differs in manner, kind and degree. Yet we must bend our knees and bow our heads before that most harsh, severe, horrendous and frightening censure of our arch-pedagogues. It is towards them we must turn our gaze and lift our hands, sighing, calling out, weep- ing and begging for mercy. Thus, it is to you that I turn, to you, who hold in your hand the caduceus of Mercury in order to resolve controversies; to you, who settle the differences that arise between men and gods. You, Menippos, who, from your seats on the moon's globe, look down on us with narrowed eyes from on high, noting our actions with repugnance and scorn. You, shield-bearers of Pallas, standard-bearers of Minerva, Mercury's stewards; you, Jupiter's custodians, Apollo's milk brothers, Epimetheus' co-thieves, Bacchus' bottlers, Euhan-criers' horse-grooms; you, who scourge the Edonides, spur on the Thyiades, excite the Maenads, seduce the Bassarids; you, the riders of the Mimallonides, copulators of the Egerian nymph, moderators of enthusiasm, demagogues of wandering peoples, decipherers of the Demogorgon, Dioscures of fluctuating disci- plines, treasurers of the Pantamorpheus and bullock-emissaries of the highpriest Aron: to you we recommend our prose, submit our Muses, our premises, subsumptions, digressions, parentheses, applications, clauses, periods, constructions, adjectives and epithets. O you, sugarwater vendors, who ravish our spirits with your sweet little refinements, binding fast our hearts, fascinating our minds, and delivering our prostituted souls to the lupanar; you, who submit our barbarisms to your wise judgement, stick our solecisms with your arrows, staunch our malodorous chasms, castrate our
? ?
Cause, principle and unity
? Silenes, clap our Noahs into breeches, emasculate our macrological dis- courses, patch up our ellipses, curb our tautologies, temper our acyrolo- gies, excuse our escrologies, pardon our perissologies, forgive our cacoph- onies. I, again, conjure you all, all of you in general and you in particular, Poliinnio: halt that slanderous rage and that criminal hatred you feel towards the most noble female sex; do not ruin all that the world possesses of beauty, all that which heaven contemplates with countless eyes. Pull, pull yourselves together and recover your wits, by which you might see that your animosity is nothing but a professed madness and frenetic passion. Is there anyone more senseless and stupid than a man who doesn't see the light? Can there be a madness more miserable than becoming, on account of sex, the enemy of nature herself, like that barbarous king of Sarza, who, having learned from your kind, declared:
Nature can make nothing perfect, since she is herself a woman. 22
Consider somewhat the truth, lift your eyes to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and note the contradiction and opposition that exists between the one and the other; see what men are and what women are. You hold, on one hand, the body, masculine, to be your friend, and the soul, feminine, your enemy. On one hand, you have chaos, masculine, and on the other, organization, feminine. Here, sleep, masculine; there, wakefulness, feminine. On one side, forgetfulness, and on the other, memory. Here, hate, there, friendship; on this side, fear, on the other, serenity; on one hand, rigour and on the other, kindness; here, anger, there, calm. On one side, error, on the other, truth; here, imperfection, there, perfection; here, hell, there, happiness; on this side, the Poliinnio the pedant, on the other side, Poliinnia the Muse. In short, all the vices, imperfections and crimes are masculine, and all the virtues, merits and goodnesses are feminine. Hence, prudence, justice, strength, temperance, beauty, majesty and dignity, both in grammatical gender and in our imagination, as well as in our descrip- tions and paintings, are all feminine. But to leave aside these theoretical rea- sonings concerning grammar and nomenclature so appropriate to your argument, and to come to what is natural, real and practical, one example alone should serve to bridle your tongue and shut your mouth, yours and those of your many cohorts: imagine if someone should ask where you will
22 Ariosto, Orlando furioso, ? ? ? ? ? , ? ? ? , slightly adapted by Bruno, who has, 'Natura non puo` far cosa perfetta, / poi che natura femina vien detta. ' Ariosto writes, 'veggo che (natura) non puo` far cosa perfetta, / poi che Natura femina vien detta. '
? ? ?
? Second dialogue
? find a man who surpasses, or is even equal to, this celestial Elizabeth, England's ruler. She is so highly endowed, elevated, favoured, protected and supported by the heavens that physical or verbal efforts to overthrow her are both vain. There is no one in the kingdom so worthy and so heroic among the nobility, nor anyone so gifted among those who wear the gown, or so wise among the counsellors. For corporal beauty, knowledge of vernacular and learned tongues, grasp of the arts and sciences, vision in governing, grandeur of such great and long-lasting authority and other natural and civic virtues, the Sophonisbas, Faustinas, Semiramises, Didos, Cleopatras and all the earlier queens that Italy, Greece, Egypt and other parts of Europe and Asia can boast are trivial compared to her. Her results and her successes, which the present age cherishes with honest wonder- ment, bear witness to this. While across Europe's back flow the wrathful Tiber, the threatening Po, the violent Rhine, the bloody Seine, the turbid Garonne, the frenzied Ebro, the furious Tagus, the tumultuous Meuse and the unquiet Danube, she, with her splendid vision, has been able, for more than five lustres, to calm the great Ocean, which, in its constant ebb and flow, calmly and gladly gathers the beloved Thames to its bosom, flowing on unchecked and fearless, gaily and confidently twisting between its verdant banks. So then, to start over again . . .
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Quiet there, Filoteo, quiet. Do not strain yourself adding water to our ocean and light to our sun. Quit showing yourself so abstract (not to mention worse) in your polemic against those absent Poliinnios. Instead, give us some examples from the dialogues you have here, so we do not idle away our hours today.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Takethemandread.
End of first dialogue
Second dialogue
Speakers: Dicsono Arelio, Teofilo, Gervasio, Poliinnio
? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Please, master Poliinnio, and you, Gervasio, do not keep inter- rupting our discussions.
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . Fiat[Agreed].
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . SurelyIcannotstayquietifhe,themagister[master],speaks. ? ? ? ? ? ?
