The Banquet (Il Convito) by Dante Alighieri
page 86 of 270 (31%)
page 86 of 270 (31%)
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known that this Lady is Philosophy; which truly is a Lady full of
sweetness, adorned with modesty, wonderful for wisdom, the glory of freedom, as in the Third Treatise, where her Nobility will be described, it is made manifest. And then where it says: "Who seeks where his Salvation lies, Must gaze intently in this Lady's eyes;" the eyes of this Lady are her demonstrations, which look straight into the eyes of the intellect, enamour the Soul, and set it free from the trammels of circumstance. Oh, most sweet and ineffable forms, swift stealers of the human mind, which appear in these demonstrations, that is, in the eyes of Philosophy, when she discourses to her faithful friends! Verily in you is Salvation, whereby he is made blessed who looks at you, and is saved from the death of Ignorance and Vice. Where it says, "Nor dread the sighs of anguish, joys debarred," the wish is to signify, if he fear not the labour of study and the strife of conflicting opinions, which flow forth ever multiplying from the living Spring in the eyes of this Lady, and then her light still continuing, they fall away, almost like little morning clouds before the Sun. And now the intellect, become her friend, remains free and full of certain Truth, even as the atmosphere is rendered pure and bright by the shining of the midday Sun. The third passage again is explained by the Literal exposition as far as to where it says, "Still therefore the Soul weeps." Here it is desirable to attend to a certain moral sense which may be observed in these words: that a man ought not for the sake of the greater friend to forget the service received from the lesser; but if one must follow the one and leave the other, the greater is to be followed, with honest lamentation for desertion of the other, whereby he gives occasion to the one whom he follows to bestow more love on him. Then there where it says, "Of my eyes," has no other meaning except that |
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