Everything had become pain to him—even love[1] and even virtue.[2]
"La mia allegrez' è la maninconia."[3]
No being was ever less fitted for experiencing joy and better fitted for sorrow. It was sorrow alone which he saw—sorrow alone which he felt in the immense universe. The whole pessimism of the world is summed up in this sublimely unjust cry of despair:
"Mille placer non vaglion un tormento!"[4]
"His devouring energy," says Condivi, "almost entirely separated him from all human society." He stood alone. He hated and was hated. He loved but was not loved in return. He was admired and feared. In the end he inspired a religious respect. He dominated his century. He was then assuaged a little. He saw men from above, and they saw him from below. But never was he two men in one. Never did he know repose and the happiness which is accorded to the humblest of beings—that of being able, for one minute of his life, to fall asleep in the affection of another. A woman's love was refused him. Alone, for a moment, there shone in that solitary sky the cold, pure star of the friendship of
- ↑
"Che degli amanti è men felicc stato
Quelle ove 'l gran desir gran copia affrena
C'una miseria, di speranza piena.""The fulness of pleasure which extinguishes desire is, to him who loves, less blissful than misery, which is full of hope." (Sonnet cix., 48.)
- ↑ "Everything saddens me," he wrote…. "Even virtue, on account of its too short duration, overwhelms and oppresses my soul no less than evil itself."
- ↑ "Melancholy—that is my joy." (Poems, lxxxi.)
- ↑ "A thousand joys are not as good as a single torment." (Poems, lxxxiv.)
