How to Achieve True Greatness Read online

  […]

  Then signor Gaspare said: ‘I remember that when these gentlemen were discussing the accomplishments of the courtier they wished him to be in love. However, when we sum up what has been said so far we could come to the conclusion that the courtier who must introduce the prince to virtue through his own merits and authority must of necessity be an elderly man, for only rarely does wisdom not wait upon age, and especially as regards what we learn from experience. So I do not see how if he is advanced in years it is fitting for the courtier to be in love, seeing that, as has already been said this evening, in old men love is futile and what women take for agreeable courtesies, pleasantries and elegance in the young are in the old inept and ridiculous follies which will cause some women to detest and everyone to deride whoever indulges in them. So if this Aristotle of yours, as an elderly courtier, were to be in love and to do the things that young lovers do (like some we have seen in our own times) I fear he would forget to instruct his prince and doubtless the children would make fun of him behind his back and the ladies would hardly derive any pleasure from him other than to mock him.’

  Then signor Ottaviano answered: ‘As all the other qualities attributed to the courtier are suitable to him, even when he is old, I don’t think it right to deprive him of the happiness of being in love.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ retorted signor Gaspare, ‘to deprive him of it adds another perfection to him and enables him to live happily, free of all calamity and misery.’

  Then Pietro Bembo added: ‘Do you not remember, signor Gaspare, that although he is untutored in love in the game he suggested the other evening signor Ottaviano evidently knew that there are some lovers who regard as pleasurable all the storms of indignation, the outbursts of temper, the wars and the torments that they experience with their ladies? And he asked to be taught the cause of this pleasure. Therefore if our courtier were to be inflamed with the kind of love that is agreeable and without bitterness, even if elderly he would not experience any misery or suffering. And then again as a wise man, which we suppose him to be, he would not deceive himself in thinking that everything suitable for a young man to do was likewise suitable in his case. If in love, he would doubtless love in a way that would not only bring him no blame but earn him great praise and complete happiness, free of all vexation, which rarely if ever happens with younger men. And so he would not neglect to instruct his prince nor would he do anything to cause children to make fun of him.’

  Then the Duchess remarked: ‘I am glad, Pietro, that you have had to make little effort in our discussion this evening, because now we can have all the more confidence in giving you the task of speaking, and of teaching us about this kind of love which is so felicitous that it brings with it neither blame nor displeasure; for doubtless it would be one of the most useful and important of the endowments yet attributed to the courtier. So please, I beg you, tell us all you know about it.’

  Pietro smiled and replied: ‘Madam, I wouldn’t wish my having said that it is permissible for old men to love to cause these ladies to suppose that I am old myself. So please give this task to someone else.’

  The Duchess replied: ‘You should not run away from being reputed old in wisdom, even if you are young in years. So please go on, and don’t make any more excuses.’

  Then Pietro Bembo answered: ‘Truly, madam, if I do have to talk on this subject I shall have to go for advice to my Lavinello’s friend, the hermit.

  At this, as if annoyed, signora Emilia exclaimed:

  ‘Pietro, no one among us is more disobedient than you. So it would be only right if the Duchess were to punish you.’

  Pietro, who was still smiling, answered:

  ‘Don’t be annoyed with me, madam, for pity’s sake. For I shall tell you what you want.’

  ‘Then please do so,’ replied signora Emilia.

  Thereupon, Pietro Bembo remained quiet for a little while. Then, having composed himself for a moment as if to speak of important things, he began as follows:

  ‘Gentlemen, to show that old men can love not only blamelessly but sometimes more happily than the young, it will be necessary for me to enter upon a little discourse in order to make it clear what love is and what is the nature of the happiness that lovers experience. So I beg you to listen attentively, because I hope to make you realize that there is no man to whom it is unbecoming to be in love, even though he should be fifteen or twenty years older than signor Morello.’

  After there was some laughter at this, Pietro Bembo continued:

  ‘I say, therefore, that as defined by the philosophers of the ancient world Love is simply a certain longing to possess beauty; and since this longing can only be for things that are known already, knowledge must always of necessity precede desire, which by its nature wishes for what is good, but of itself is blind and so cannot perceive what is good. So Nature has ruled that every appetitive faculty, or desire, be accompanied by a cognitive faculty or power of understanding. Now in the human soul there are three faculties by which we understand or perceive things: namely, the senses, rational thought and intellect. Thus the senses desire things through sensual appetite or the kind of appetite which we share with the animals; reason desires things through rational choice, which is, strictly speaking, proper to man; and intellect, which links man to the angels, desires things through pure will. It follows that the sensual appetite desires only those things that are perceptible by the senses, whereas man’s will finds its satisfaction in the contemplation of spiritual things that can be apprehended by intellect. And then man, who is rational by his very nature and is placed between the two extremes of brute matter and pure spirit, can choose to follow the senses or to aspire to the intellect, and so can direct his appetites or desires now in the one direction, now in the other. In either of these two ways, therefore, he can long for beauty, which is the quality possessed by all natural or artificial things that are composed in the good proportion and due measure that befit their nature.

  ‘However, I shall speak of the kind of beauty I now have in mind, which is that seen in the human body and especially the face and which prompts the ardent desire we call love; and we shall argue that this beauty is an influx of the divine goodness which, like the light of the sun, is shed over all created things but especially displays itself in all its beauty when it discovers and informs a countenance which is well proportioned and composed of a certain joyous harmony of various colours enhanced by light and shadow and by symmetry and clear definition. This goodness adorns and illumines with wonderful splendour and grace the object in which it shines, like a sunbeam striking a lovely vase of polished gold set with precious gems. And thus it attracts to itself the gaze of others, and entering through their eyes it impresses itself upon the human soul, which it stirs and delights with its charm, inflaming it with passion and desire. Thus the mind is seized by desire for the beauty which it recognizes as good, and, if it allows itself to be guided by what its senses tell it, it falls into the gravest errors and judges that the body is the chief cause of the beauty which it enshrines, and so to enjoy that beauty it must necessarily achieve with it as intimate a union as possible. But this is untrue; and anyone who thinks to enjoy that beauty by possessing the body is deceiving himself and is moved not by true knowledge, arrived at by rational choice, but by a false opinion derived from the desire of the senses. So the pleasure that follows is also necessarily false and deceptive. Consequently, all those lovers who satisfy their impure desires with the women they love meet with one of two evils: either as soon as they achieve the end they desire they experience satiety and distaste and even begin to hate what they love, as if their desire repented of its error and recognized the way it had been deceived by the false judgement of the senses, which had made it believe that evil was good; or else they are still troubled by the same avidity and desire, since they have not in fact attained the end they were seeking. Admittedly, confused by their short-sighted view of things, they imagine that they are experiencing pleasur
e, just as sometimes a sick man dreams that he is drinking from a clear fountain. Nevertheless, they enjoy neither rest nor satisfaction, and these are precisely what they would enjoy as the natural consequences of desiring and then possessing what is good. On the contrary, deceived by the resemblance they see, they soon experience unbridled desire once more and in the same agitation as before they again find themselves with a raging and unquenchable thirst for what they hope to possess utterly. Lovers of this kind, therefore, are always most unhappy; for either they never attain their desires, and this causes them great misery, or if they do attain them they find themselves in terrible distress, and their wretchedness is even greater. For both at the beginning and during the course of this love of theirs they never know other than anguish, torment, sorrow, exertion and distress; and so lovers, it is supposed, must always be characterized by paleness and dejection, continuous sighings and weepings, mournfulness and lamentations, silences and the desire for death.

  ‘We see, therefore, that the senses are the chief cause of this desolation of the spirit; and they are at their full strength in youth, when they are stimulated by the urges of the flesh which sap a man’s powers of reason in exact proportion to their own vigour and so easily persuade the soul to yield to desire. For since it is sunk in an earthly prison and deprived of spiritual contemplation, the soul cannot of itself clearly perceive the truth when it is carrying out its duties of governing the body. So in order to understand things properly it must appeal to the senses for its first notions. In consequence it believes whatever they tell it and respects and trusts them, especially when they are so vigorous that they almost compel it; and because the senses are deceptive they fill the soul with errors and mistaken ideas. As a result, young men are invariably absorbed by this sensual kind of love and wholly rebellious against reason, and so they make themselves unworthy of enjoying the blessings and advantages that love gives to its true devotees; and the only pleasures they experience in love are the same as those enjoyed by unreasoning animals, though the distress they suffer is far more terrible than theirs. Therefore on this premise, which I insist is the absolute truth, I argue that lovers who are more mature in age experience the contrary; for in their case the soul is no longer so weighed down by the body and their natural ardour has begun to cool, and so if they are inflamed by beauty and their desire for it is guided by rational choice, they are not deceived and they possess completely the beauty they love. Consequently its possession brings them nothing but good, since beauty is goodness and so the true love of beauty is good and holy and always benefits those in whose souls the bridle of reason restrains the iniquity of the senses; and this is something the old can do far more easily than the young.

  *

  ‘So it is not unreasonable to argue also that the old can love blamelessly and more happily than the young, accepting that by old we do not mean those who are senile or whose bodily organs have grown so feeble that the soul cannot perform its operations through them, but men whose intellectual powers are still in their prime. I must also add this: namely, that in my opinion although sensual love is bad at every age, yet in the young it may be excused and perhaps in some sense even permitted. For although it brings them afflictions, dangers, exertions and all the unhappiness we have mentioned, yet there are many who perform worthy acts in order to win the favour of the women whom they love, and though these acts are not directed to a good end they are good in themselves. And so from all that bitterness they extract a little sweetness, and the adversities they endure finally teach them the error of their ways. So just as I think those young people who subdue their desires and love in a rational manner are truly heroic, I excuse those who allow themselves to be overcome by the sensual love to which human weakness inclines them, provided that they then display gentleness, courtesy, worthiness and all the other qualities these gentlemen mentioned, and that when they are no longer young they abandon it completely and leave sensual desire behind them, as the lowest rung of the ladder by which we can ascend to true love. But no blame is too severe for those who when they are old still allow the fires of passion to burn in their cold hearts and make strong reason obey their feeble senses; for they deserve the endless shame of being numbered like idiots among the animals which lack reason, because the thoughts and ways of sensual love are wholly unbecoming to men of mature years.’

  Bembo then paused for a moment, as if to rest; and as everyone remained silent, signor Morello da Ortona said:

  ‘But if there were to be found an old man more able-bodied, more vigorous and more handsome than many youths, why would you not wish that he should be allowed to love in their way?’

  The Duchess laughed at this and remarked:

  ‘If love is such an unhappy experience for the young, why, signor Morello, do you want old men as well to suffer the same unhappiness? But if you were old, as these gentlemen say, you would not plot such evil against old men.’

  Signor Morello replied: ‘It seems to me that the one who is plotting evil against old men is Pietro Bembo, because he wishes them to love in a way that I, for one, cannot understand. And I also think that to possess the beauty he praises so much without the body is a fantasy.’

  ‘Do you believe, signor Morello,’ asked Count Lodovico, ‘that beauty is always as good as Pietro Bembo says?’

  ‘I certainly do not,’ answered signor Morello. ‘On the contrary, I remember having seen many beautiful women who were evil, cruel and spiteful; and this seems to me to be nearly always the case, since beauty makes them proud, and pride makes them cruel.’

  Count Lodovico replied with a smile: ‘Doubtless they seem cruel to you because they do not grant you what you want. But let Pietro Bembo teach you how old men ought to desire beauty, and what they should seek from women, and with what they ought to be satisfied; and provided you keep within these limits you will discover that they are neither proud nor cruel, and they will also grant you what you want.’

  Signor Morello showed his irritation at this, and he retorted:

  ‘I don’t want to learn what doesn’t concern me. Let someone teach you the way in which this beauty ought to be desired by young men who are not so able-bodied or vigorous as the old.’

  Then Federico, in order to calm signor Morello and to change the subject, interrupted before Count Lodovico could reply and said:

  ‘Perhaps signor Morello is not altogether wrong in saying that beauty is not always good, for often woman’s beauty causes the world endless evil, enmity, war, death and destruction, as was shown very clearly, for example, by the downfall of Troy. And for the most part beautiful women are either proud and cruel or else, as has been said, unchaste; though this last signor Morello would not consider a fault. There are also many wicked men who are endowed with good looks, and it seems that Nature has made them so in order that they may be better able to deceive, and that their agreeable appearance is the bait concealing the hook.’

  Then Pietro Bembo stated: ‘Do not believe that beauty is not always good.’

  Here, in order to return to the original subject, Count Lodovico broke in and remarked:

  ‘Since signor Morello is not interested in learning what concerns him so deeply, teach it to me, and show me how old men may win the happiness of love; for I shall not worry if I cause myself to be considered old, provided I profit by it.’

  Pietro Bembo said with a smile: ‘First I wish to correct the error made by these gentlemen, and then I shall satisfy you as well.’