The Heroic Enthusiasts, Part I (Gli Eroici Furori) · 40 of 63 · tr. L. Williams
Fourth Dialogue-g
Behold me, miserable one, deprived of heart, abandoned of thoughts, left by hope, I, who had fixed my all in them.
Nothing is left to me but the sense of my poverty, my unhappiness and misery; why does not this too leave me?
Why does not death succour me, now that I am deprived of life?
To what use do I possess these natural powers if I be deprived of the use of them?
How can I alone nourish myself with intelligible conceptions as with intellectual bread, if the substance of this bread be composed of this contingency.
How can I linger in the intimacy of these friendly and dear members which I have woven round me, adjusting them with the symmetry of the elementary conditions, if my thoughts and all my affections abandon me, intent upon the care of the bread that is immaterial and divine?
Up, up; oh my flying thoughts; up, oh my rebel heart; let live the sense of things that are felt, and the understanding of things intelligible, come to the succour of the body with matter and corporeal subject, and let the understanding delight in its own objects, to the end that this composition of the body may be realized, that this machine dissolve not, in which, by means of the spirit, the soul is united to the body.
Why, unhappy as I am (more through domestic circumstances than through external violence), am I doomed to see this horrible divorce between my parts and members?
Why does the intellect trouble itself to give laws to the sense and yet deprive it of its food?
and this, on the other hand, resists; desiring to live according to its own decrees, and not according to the decree of others; for these and not those are able to maintain and bless it, therefore it ought to attend to its own comfort and life, and not to that of others.
There is no harmony and concord where there is only one, where one individual absorbs the whole being, but where there is order and analogy in things diverse; where each thing serves its own nature.
Therefore let the sense feed according to the law of things that can be felt, the flesh be obedient to the law of the spirit, the reason to its own law.
Let them not be confounded nor mixed.
Enough that one neither mar nor prejudice the law of the other, since it is not just that the sense outrage the law of reason.
And verily it is a shameful thing that one should tyrannize over the other, particularly where the intellect is a pilgrim and strange, and the sense is more domesticated and at home.
I am forced by you, my thoughts, to remain at home in charge of the house, while others may wander wherever they will.
This is a law of Nature, and therefore a law of the author and originator of Nature.
Sin on then, now that all of you, seduced by the charm of the intellect, leave the other part of me to the peril of death.
How have you gotten this melancholy and perverse humour, which breaks the certain and natural laws of the true life, and which is in your own hands, for one, uncertain, and which has no existence except in shadow, beyond the limits of fantastic thought?
Seems it to you a natural thing that they should live divinely and not as animals and humanly, they being not gods, but men and animals?
It is a law of fate and Nature that everything should adapt itself to the condition of its own being, wherefore then, while you follow after the niggard nectar of the gods, do you lose that which is present and is your own, and trouble yourself about the vain hopes of others?
Ought not Nature to refuse to give you the other good, if that which she at present offers to you, you stupidly despise?
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The text posits that order and analogy exist in diverse things, reflecting a structural harmony across levels.
The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.
The argument for order and analogy among diverse parts implies a hidden affinity binding the cosmos.
John of the Cross's stage of contemplative purgation: a felt absence and aridity of God that strips the soul of attachments to its own consolations en route to deeper union.
The speaker describes a state of spiritual desolation, feeling deprived of heart, thoughts, and hope.
Ecstatic irrational rapture — Plato's mania, Bruno's furore — by which the soul transcends ordinary reason and attains direct contact with divine reality; madness reframed as higher knowledge.
[auto] References to a 'rebel heart' and 'flying thoughts' align with the concept of heroic enthusiasm as a form of divine madness.
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
The text references a 'law of Nature' established by an 'author and originator,' implying divine ordering.
Bruno's eroici furori — a passionate, ennobling spiritual ardor that drives the soul toward divine wisdom; distinguished from base or animal passions by its orientation to infinite truth.
[auto] The passage is from Bruno's work defining this concept and depicts the internal struggle of the enthusiast between intellect and nature.
Diotima's staged ascent from love of beautiful bodies → beautiful souls → beautiful pursuits → beautiful knowledge → Beauty itself; the canonical scala amoris that grounds Plotinus's On the Beautiful and Bruno's Eroici Furori — distinct from generic spiritual_ascent in that eros is the specific motive force.
As a work by Bruno based on Diotima's ascent, the text reflects the struggle between lower affections and higher intellectual love.
Disciplined inward attention — sitting, focused, or open-awareness practice — as a stand-alone term that umbrellas active_contemplation, inner_silence, and dhyana-style sitting.
The focus on internal understanding and intelligible conceptions indicates a meditative practice.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
The human composition is governed by the same laws as Nature and its Author, reflecting cosmic order within the self.
Eckhart's radical reading of Matthew 5:3 — the saint as one who wants nothing, knows nothing, and has nothing, having emptied even the will and the self with which to receive God; distinct from renunciation_of_wealth (material poverty).
The speaker explicitly identifies with a 'sense of my poverty, my unhappiness and misery.'
The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.
The intellect is described as a 'pilgrim and strange,' indicating a sense of exile from its divine origin.