A small passage from a book I am writing.
The Greeks knew very well of the “immortal origin of the yearning for immortality,” as one philosopher spoke of it. They made of this yearning the very beginning of philosophy. They knew very well of man’s longing for the infinite and the eternal, and that sorrow which so thoroughly imbues this life; a sorrow that, in the final case, may be reckoned the greater constituent of his very soul. For when we draw upon our recollections of life, how very unreal do the moments we felt ourselves closest to the truth become, how quickly are our “eternal confidences” in them wholly annulled; moments precious to us in their fruition for, as Sophocles said, “there is no happiness without wisdom.” Who could have imagined that wisdom fades from our life more readily than happiness, that it is after all an even more ephemeral shade. The title of that poem of Gongora, Vana Rosa, may have served for the banner of wisdom-- it might as well have served as the banner for all of life. In the light of recollection the truth of these moments cannot be discerned, wisdom abandons us, and we taste the bitterness of that sorrow which draws our very soul aloft most distinctly. The most vivid moments, too, so deeply endued with passion, do perversely offer themselves to us in our recollection, and seduce and cheat us. One should never reflect too deeply upon himself, for it is both a vain and cheerless endeavor, one that neither secures wisdom for us or gives us a second taste of the beauty of our illusions. We become like the man in Leonardi Aretini’s Comedia Polyxena, when he compares his love to a wide sea in which, lost, he dies of thirst, unable to draw any life from the sweetness of his memories of young happiness, lui minima multe no amo sicit amat, or pehaps we are rather disposed to sing over our heart that verse from Adrianus’s Galatea,
Tempore forma perit, paucisque ea carpitur annis;
Dum licet, Idalii pellite tela Dei.
To beauty time lays waste, that is assured;
though I shan’t even permit her fruit to bear;
as long as it is permitted me to drive out amor’s dart, upon Aphrodite’s very temple.
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