The Consolation of Philosophy by as translated by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius Geoffrey Chaucer and rendered into modern English by Tom Powers Table of Contents (click on a heading for direct link) Introduction Background The Message of The Consolation This “Rendering” Acknowledgements Book I Book II Book III Book IV Book V Meter 1 Prose 1 Prose 1 Prose 1 Prose 1 The prisoner Fortune’s stability is To see true Why does crime pay The true nature of bemoans his fate. in her continual flux. happiness, you must so well? chance occurrences. first understand false happiness. Prose 1 Meter 1 Meter 1 Meter 1 Meter 1 He is visited by a Fortune’s wheel lifts Honey is sweeter if Rise above earthly The law of divine regal lady. and crushes. mouths have first things to see divine order diects tasted flavors that are truth. seemingly chance bitter. happenings. Meter 2 Prose 2 Prose 2 Prose 2 Prose 2 This special man has Fortune’s gifts are Men search for The power of good Does free will exist? yielded to defeat. hers to give and take. happiness in riches, people; the honors, power, fame, impotence of the bad. and carnal joy. Prose 2 Meter 2 Meter 2 Meter 2 Meter 2 She determines to The greedy man is All things seek to The slavery of God sees everything cure his depression. never rich enough. return to their own wickedness. in one stroke of path. thought. Meter 3 Prose 3 Prose 3 Prose 3 Prose 3 His grief subsides; See and cherish the She demonstrates The true reward for How can God’s his vision clears. gifts you still have. how false goods goodness is precognition coexist bring no happiness. goodness. Wicked with man’s free will? people are like If God knows all that various animals. will happen, isn’t he to blame for all evil? Prose 3 Meter 3 Meter 3 Meter 3 Meter 3 He recognizes Nothing that lives is Greed is never Story of Ulysses and Earthly existence has Philosophy, the foe unchanging. satisfied by riches. Circes. Evil may not obscured man’s of evil. conquer a good vision from seeing or man’s heart. remembering the truth. 1 Book I Book II Book III Book IV Book V Meter 4 Prose 4 Prose 4 Prose 4 Prose 4 Hope for nothing; Men are either Honors may be Bad men are Man perceives with dread nothing to be miserable over what fouled by rogues, unhappier when body, imagination, free. they have lost, or dim over time, or be unpunished than reason. Each higher over what they may scorned by the when they are than the other. God lose. people. chastised righteously. perceives differently with simple intelligence. Prose 4 Meter 4 Meter 4 Meter 4 Meter 4 Boethius’ bio and his Build your house on What happiness is in Why are men Whence comes the complaints. a solid foundation. the lordship of a addicted to deadly self-knowledge that Nero? war? probes and beholds all things? Meter 5 Prose 5 Prose 5 Prose 5 Prose 5 Why does God fail to Why do you embrace Those who have Boethius is baffled The different levels rule man? alien goods as if they power live in fear. why good God lets of mind perceive were yours? bad people inflict reality differently pain on good people. and cannot know the perceptions of the higher levels. Prose 5 Meter 5 Meter 5 Meter 5 Meter 5 Philosophy: God has Happy was the first A truly mighty ruler The ignorant are Of all animals, only not abandoned you; age of men. They must conquer baffled and agitated man can look up to you have fled the were content with himself. by unusual natural the divine presence. safety of your true little. events home. Meter 6 Prose 6 Prose 6 Prose 6 Prose 6 The rebel against Honor does not come What value is glory Comparison and The simple stability nature’s laws must to virtue through or fame to the contrast of of the divine mind fail. dignity, but the other conscience of wise Providence and perceives all time as way around. men? destiny. one. Prose 6 Meter 6 Meter 6 Meter 6 Philosophy, as The horror of joining Since all men come All things desire to doctor, diagnosis his evil with power. from God, no one is be under the rule of ills. ignoble unless given good. over to vice. Meter 7 Prose 7 Prose 7 Prose 7 Abandon joy, drive Man’s glory is tiny The sickness of Philosophy argues away fear, dispel and soon forgotten. carnal joys. why all fortune is hope, and do not let good! sorrow approach. Meter 7 Meter 7 Meter 7 Death equalizes the Carnal joy is like a Tales of men who highest and lowest. bee: first honey, then conquered nature and a sting. themselves. Prose 8 Prose 8 Mean Fortune can be Worldly goods instructive. cannot give what they promise because they lack the union of all their various good qualities. 2 Book I Book II Book III Book IV Book V Meter 8 Meter 8 Man would be happy Men seek good in all if Love that rules the the wrong places. universe ruled his heart. Prose 9 Philosophy proves the unity of the qualities of true good. Meter 9 Prayer to God the Engineer of the universe. Prose 10 Philosophy uses the tools of rational argument to prove the origin of true good. Meter 10 See the brightness by which the heavens are governed; then reject this dark domination over your soul. Prose 11 All things strive to keep the unity of their parts. Meter 11 Seek truth within yourself, not externally Prose 12 Philosophy continues her rational argument for God’s supremacy. Meter 12 The story of Orpheus and Eurydice 3 Introduction Let me begin by saying that this is a work of love, rather than of scholarship. I am proficient in neither Latin, Greek, nor Middle English. I have not deeply studied the classics of the ancient Greeks, Romans, nor early Christians…so, I am decidedly an amateur! So, what has drawn me to the Consolation of Philosophy, its sixth century Roman creator, Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius, and its fourteenth century English interpreter, Geoffrey Chaucer? From childhood, I have felt a keen revulsion for much of the life of superficial emotion that is on unashamed parade all around us. It seems to me that almost every influence on human life is aimed at stealing from us the desire and ability to experience life in a sober, meaningful way. I see people wallowing in grief and self-pity in response to imposed or imagined losses or dangers. I see people hysterically titillated by truly trivial events that have nothing to do with them. I see people trapped in blind rages or sullen, annoyed pouts at imagined slights or snubs. Then with extreme reluctance, I occasionally see myself doing all these things and being no better, no different than other people – except, perhaps, for a lingering wish to be other than I am…in fact, to be. I was raised in an unusual household. My parents, having early on eschewed all attachment to organized religion as well as to theism, were deeply committed to struggles for social, economic, and racial justice. They fought to encourage young people to become progressive leaders in the hope of displacing the old and corrupt guard. My parents had no interest in accumulating wealth and spent what little they had on their various projects. They endured betrayal by colleagues, repeated failure, and even jail without becoming defeated by the bitterness or regret that felled so many of their comrades. Their strength was founded on an unshakable faith, not in God, but in the basic decency of mankind. Observing such a serious family at close range, it was, perhaps not strange that at a young age, I found sympathetic vibrations in such works as The Manual by Epictetus, The Holy Rule by St. Benedict, The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, the transcendental poems of William Wordsworth, and The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton. Only much later in life was I introduced to the ideas of G. I. Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky1 and joined the Gurdjieff Foundation of Illinois. It was from Gurdjieff that I began learning to see myself in the faces around me and to sense the compelling need to look inside myself for the energy to strip away layers of accreted falseness that had clung to my essence from years of survival in a world of deceit. It seems to me that having spent much of my life as an atheist enabled me to absorb philosophical and theosophical writings with something of a child’s questioning naiveté, and without the automatic associations that can shut down or dim the perceptions of a person who has been steeped in religious dogma and doctrine. Gurdjieff wrote the shocking assertion that people who do not succeed in working on themselves have no being, do not exist as humans. Boethius wrote, “Perhaps it seems to some folks a fantastical thing to say that the wicked, who are the majority of men, are nothing–have no being; but nevertheless, it is true” (Book III, Prose 2). I first read the Consolation of Philosophy during the summer after high school having been inspired by a quirky and brilliant teacher, Ms. Margaret Annan. Ms. Annan pointed out the sometimes gentle, sometimes bitter satire that underlie many of Chaucer’s tales.