The Heroic Enthusiasts, Part I (Gli Eroici Furori) · 59 of 63 · tr. L. Williams
Fifth Dialogue-o
For love, while it is finite, contented, and fixed in a certain measure, is not in the form of the species of divine beauty, but as it goes on with ever higher aspirations, it may be said to verge towards the infinite.
Cic.
.
How is breathing made to mean aspiring?
What relation has desire with the winds?
Tans.
Whosoever in this present condition aspires, also sighs, and the same breathes; and therefore the vehemence of the aspiration is noted by the hieroglyph of strong breathing.
Cic.
But there is a difference between sighing and breathing.
Tans.
Therefore it is not put as if one stood for the other, or as being identical, but as being similar.
Cic.
Go on then with our proposition.
Tans.
The infinite aspiration then, indicated by the sighs and symbolized by the winds, is not under the dominion of Æolus in the Æolic caverns, but of the aforementioned two lights, which are not only blameless, but benevolent in killing the enthusiast, inasmuch as they cause him to die to every other thing, except the absorbing affection; at the same time, they, being closed and concealed, render him unquiet, and being open, they will tranquillize him, because at this time, when the eyes of the human mind in this body are covered with a nebulous veil, the soul, through such studies, becomes troubled and harassed, and he being thus torn and goaded, will attain only that amount of quiet as will satisfy the condition of his nature.
Cic.
.
How can our finite intellect follow after the infinite ideal?
Tans.
Through the infinite potency it possesses.
Cic.
This would be useless, if ever it came into effect.
Tans.
It would be useless, if it had to do with a finite action, where infinite potency would be wanting, but not with the infinite action where infinite potency is positive perfection.
Cic.
If the human intellect is finite in nature and in act, how can it have an infinite potency?
Tans.
Because it is eternal, and in this ever has delight, so that it enjoys happiness without end or measure; and because, as it is finite in itself, so it may be infinite in the object.
Cic.
What difference is there between the infinity of the object and the infinity of the potentiality?
Tans.
This is finitely infinite, and that infinitely infinite.
But to return to ourselves.
The legend there says: "Novæ Liparææ æoliæ," because it seems as if we are to believe that all the winds which are in the abysmal caverns of Æolus were converted into sighs, if we include those which proceed from the affection, which aspires continually to the highest good and to the infinite beauty.
XIII.
Cic.
Here we see the signification of that burning light around which is written: "Ad vitam, non ad horam." Tans.
Persistence in such a love and ardent desire of true goodness, by which in this temporal state the enthusiast is consumed.
This, I think, is shown in the following tablet: 37.
[A]What time the day removes the orient vault, The rustic peasant leaves his humble home, And when the sun with fiercer tangent strikes, Fatigued and parched, he sits him in the shade; Then plods again with hard, laborious toil, Until black night the hemisphere enshrouds.
And then he rests.
But I must ever chafe At morning, noon-day, evening, and at night.
These fiery rays Which stream from those two arches of my sun, Ne'er fade from the horizon of my soul.
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.
Breathing and sighs are noted as hieroglyphs symbolizing aspiration, linking physical acts to spiritual states.
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 soul becomes 'troubled and harassed' and is 'torn and goaded' by the veil covering the mind.
Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.
The enthusiast must 'die to every other thing' except the absorbing affection, indicating radical letting-go.
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] The text describes the 'enthusiast' and 'furore' as a passionate rapture driving the soul toward divine wisdom beyond ordinary reason.
Sufi self-effacement in God — the via by which the lover is unmade as a separate ego and recovered as God's act; specifies the practice/event rather than mystical_union's resulting state.
The text explicitly states the enthusiast must 'die to every other thing' except the absorbing affection.
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 explicitly discusses the 'enthusiast' driven by 'ardent desire' and 'vehemence of aspiration,' which defines Bruno's concept of heroic furor.
The doctrine of the universe as boundless and without center or circumference, populated by innumerable worlds — Bruno's rejection of the closed Aristotelian sphere; the divine and the cosmos as ontologically infinite.
[auto] The dialogue centers on the tension between finite intellect and 'infinite ideal' or 'infinite potency,' reflecting Bruno's ontology of infinity.
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.
Love is described as having 'ever higher aspirations' verging towards the infinite, mirroring the scala amoris.
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 requirement to 'die to every other thing' aligns with radical spiritual poverty.
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 soul is 'troubled and harassed' because the eyes of the mind are covered with a 'nebulous veil'.