|
As the years pass and this dear aching wound
penetrates my heart ever more deeply, my dream hurts less and less. Gone is my peace, yet my cure is the damage inflicted. Strange: an exhausting delight, a useful delusion, a sweet terror I yearn for wherever I am. I only feel gay following a lie I am not fooled by. Once reason restrained my sorrow, then checked my sensual longing, now freed by these idealizing reveries she flies from the physical pain in my wretched womb, so if this mortal hurt overwhelms me the faster will I slip off beyond pain. |
An image of the Italian text from Visconti's 1840 edition |
|
Notes: V XX:20. From B A1:52:29. See also R LXXXIIII:235. Comment: the modern tendency is to interpret this poem platonically (e.g, McAuliffe, 81-3); Ruscelli is more truthful, pp 235-8. Key |
