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The Second Treatise - CHAPTER XIII
Since the Literal meaning has been sufficiently explained, we must now
proceed to the Allegorical and true exposition. And, therefore,
beginning again from the first head, I say that when I had lost the
chief delight of my Soul in former time, I was left so stung with
sadness that no consolation whatever availed me. Nevertheless, after
some time, my mind, reasoning with itself to heal itself, took heed,
since neither my own nor that of another availed to comfort it, to
turn to the method which a certain disconsolate one had adopted when
he looked for Consolation. And I set myself to read that book of
Boethius, not known to many, in which, when a captive exile, he had
consoled himself. And, again, hearing that Tullius had written another
book, in which, treating of Friendship, he had spoken words for the
consolation of Laelius, a most excellent man, on the death of his
friend Scipio, I set myself to read it. And although at first it was
difficult to me to enter into their meaning, yet, finally, I entered
into it so much as the knowledge of grammar that I possessed, together
with some slight power of intellect, enabled me to do: by which power
of intellect I formerly beheld many things almost like a person in a
dream, as may be seen in the Vita Nuova. And as it is wont to be that
a man goes seeking for silver, and beyond his purpose he finds gold,
whose hidden cause appears not perhaps without the Divine Will; I, who
sought to console myself, found not only a remedy for my tears, but
words of authors and of sciences and of books; reflecting on which I
judged well that Philosophy, who was the Lady of these authors, of
these sciences, and of these books, might be a supreme thing. And I
imagined her in the form of a gentle Lady; and I could imagine her in
no other attitude than a compassionate one, because if willingly the
sense of Truth beheld her, hardly could it turn away from her. And
with this imagination I began to go where she is demonstrated
truthfully, that is, to the Schools of the Religious, and to the
disputations of the Philosophers; so that in a short time, perhaps of
thirty months, I began to feel her sweetness so much that my love for
her chased away and destroyed all other thought. Wherefore I, feeling
myself to rise from the thought of the first Love to the virtue of
this new one, as if wondering at myself, opened my mouth in the speech
of the proposed Song, showing my condition under the figure of other
things: for of the Lady with whom I was enamoured, no rhyme of any
Vernacular was worthy to speak openly, neither were the hearers so
well prepared that they could have easily understood the words without
figure: neither would faith have been given by them to the true
meaning, as to the figurative; since if the truth of the whole was
believed, that I was inclined to that love, it would not be believed
of this. I then begin to speak: "Ye who, intent of thought, the third
Heaven move."
And because, as has been said, this Lady was the daughter of God, the
Queen of all, the most noble and most beautiful Philosophy, it remains
to be seen who these Movers were, and what this third Heaven. And
firstly of the third Heaven, according to the order which has been
gone through. And here it is not needful to proceed to division, and
to explanation of the letter, for, having turned the fictitious speech
away from that which it utters to that which it means, by the
exposition just gone through, this meaning is sufficiently made
evident. _
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