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Petrarch's Secret Inner Strugglefrom Secretum Meum Petrarch's Secret Inner Struggle from Secretum Meum (1358) Source: http://www.idehist.uu.se/distans/ilmh/Ren/ren-pet-secretum.htm ST. AUGUSTINE Despair is the ultimate evil, and most men give themselves to it prematurely. Therefore, I want you to know above all that there is nothing to despair about. FRANCESCO Yes, I knew that, but terror made me forget. ST. AUGUSTINE Now give me your complete attention as I recall the words of a poet most familiar to you. Behold what nations gather, what walled cities Shut their gates and sharpen the blade against You and your people See what snares the world has set for you, what vanities flit about you, how many useless cares oppress you. First of all, consider the sin which caused those noble spirits to fall at the dawn of creation. You must take every precaution not to fall as they did. How many are the things that tempt your soul to perilous flights. You have great natural abilities, but they tire you out and make you forgetful of the weakness you so often experience. They crowd in and occupy your mind, until it can think of nothing else. And thus you become so proud, self-reliant, and self-satisfied that finally you hate your Creator. But even if your gifts are as great as you imagine them to be, they ought to have inspired you with a feeling of humility rather than pride, recalling that they all came to you through no merit of your own. Set aside for a moment the relationship of God and his Creatures. Even among men, servants will be more obedient to their master, if they see him display a generosity which they did not deserve. They strive, then, by their good services to comply with their master whose generosity they should have anticipated and merited by their actions. Thus you can understand very easily how insignificant are the things you pride yourself on. You trust in your talent and in your wide reading; you pride yourself on your eloquence and take delight in the beauty of your mortal body. Yet you know in how many ways your talent often fails you and how many are the skills in which you are not a match for even the humblest of mankind. I can go further. You will find primitive and humble animals whose work you cannot imitate no matter how you try. Come, boast of your talent now. As for reading, what is the use of that? Out of all that you have read, how much has really stayed in your mind? How much of it has taken root, so to speak, and produced mature fruit? Examine your heart carefully and you will find that the sum of your knowledge, when set in contrast to the vast extent of your ignorance, can be likened to a stream dried by the summer sun when compared with the Ocean. And yet what comfort is it to have even great knowledge, if after you have learned the dimensions of heaven and earth, the extent of the seas, the course of the stars, the properties of herbs and stones, and the mysteries of nature, you still do not have self-knowledge? What comfort is it if you know from your reading of the scriptures the right and upward path to virtue, but passion makes you swerve to the downward path? Or what use is it to know the deeds of illustrious men, if it makes no impact on your day-to-day life? And what can I say about eloquence that you have not already admitted yourself? It is vain to have confidence in it. What does it matter that your audience perhaps approves of what you have said, if in your judgement it stands condemned? Although the applause of the audience may seem to be a considerable reward for the orator, how trivial is the roar of the crowd, if he cannot in his heart applaud himself. How can your oratory please others, if you yourself are not pleased with it? Therefore you were disappointed often enough in your expectations of glory from eloquence that you came to recognize how vain has been your pride in this windy nonsense. Tell me, what can be more childish, indeed more insane, than to be careless and lazy in all other matters, but waste time in the study of words and derive so much pleasure in speaking, while in your ignorance you never see your own reprehensible behavior? You are like those little birds they say take so much delight in their own singing that they sing themselves to death. And yet it often happened that in ordinary and everyday matters (to make it all the more embarrassing) you were unable to find proper words to speak of those things which you considered to be beneath the dignity of your style. Also, think how many things there are in the world which simply lack proper names; and there are many other things which do have names, but whose majesty cannot be described adequately in words by human eloquence without first experiencing them. How often have I heard you complaining and have seen you at a loss for words and angry because neither could your tongue nor your pen accurately express ideas which were so very dear and intelligible to you as you thought about them, What then is this eloquence, so limited and feeble, which can neither encompass all reality nor keep control of that which it has encompassed? […] Do you take pride in your physical attributes? "Do you not see the dangers that surround you"? What is there that pleases you about your body? Your strength and good health? Nothing is more precarious. Fatigue from trivial causes, the onset of various diseases, insect bites, a little draft, and many other things are all cause for alarm. Or maybe you are fascinated by your good looks and when you look in a mirror at your complexion and handsome face, you find something to admire, something which entrances and charms you. Are you not put on guard by the story of Narcissus? Does not an unfliching consideration of what vileness lies beneath the body's external form give you warning? No, content with superficial appearances, you look no further. Even if all the other signs failed to convince you that beauty wilts and fades, the very disquieting passage of time, which each day robs you of something, should have convinced you beyond doubt. I am sure you will not dare say it, but even if you thought you were impervious to aging, disease, and other things which alter appearance of the body, you ought not forget the thing which ultimately destroys everything and always remember this verse of the satirist, "Death alone proves how frail are the bodies of men." These, unless I am mistaken, are the reasons that you are puffed up with pride, that prevent you from recognizing your low estate and keep you from meditation on death. And there are other reasons, which I intend now to pursue. FRANCESCO Stop a while, I beg you. You are overwhelming me with such a weight of criticism that I am unable to rise to my defense. ST. AUGUSTINE Speak up. I shall gladly yield the floor. FRANCESCO I am astonished to hear you criticize me for things that I know very well never entered my mind. You say that I trusted in my intelligence, but the only sign that I have any intelligence at all is that I never put any trust in it. You say that I became proud of my reading of books, but along with some small measure of wisdom, they brought to me cause for much anxiety. You say that I sought glory from my oratory; but as you yourself said, no one ever got more angry than I that language was inadequate to my ideas. Unless you have it in mind to challenge me, you know that I have always been conscious of my own insignificance, and if by chance I ever thought I was something, this might have come about sometimes by comparing myself to the inadequacies of someone else. We are forced to acknowledge, as I often remarked in accord with Cicero's famous statement, that "we are not strong because of our strength, but because of the weakness of others." But even if I were abundantly endowed with the gifts you mention, what is so magnificent about them, that I should take pride in them? I am not so unthinking and frivolous that I would let myself be troubled by these unsubstantial things. Of little use are talent, knowledge, and eloquence, if they do not heal the disease that tears at my soul. I remember complaining of this very thing in a certain letter of mine. And what you said (in all seriousness) about my physical advantages almost made me laugh. Do you really think that I put trust in my mortal, frail, little body, when I see each day time taking its toll? May God save me from that. There was a time in my youth, when I worried about my hair style and adorning my face, but this concern quickly passed with age, and I now know the truth of the statement of the Emperor Domitian. When writing to a friend about himself, he complained of the evanescence of beauty, saying "You can be sure that nothing is more pleasing than beauty and nothing so short-lived." ST. AUGUSTINE I could say much against what you have just said, but I prefer that your own conscience inspire shame in you rather than anything I might say.
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