Le Opere Italiane di Giordano Bruno

1 —a young woman of twenty-five years, more beautiful than whom it is not easy to find in Naples: and you are in love?
Bon. By the words you have just spoken, I believe you know 3

just how tangled and absurd the kingdom of love is. If you wish
5 to know the order—or rather, the disorder—of my loves, I pray you, listen to me.
Ba. Speak, Master Bonifacio, for we are not like the beasts who
engage in servile coitus only for the act of generation; therefore, | they have 4

a fixed law of time and place. Like the donkeys whose 8

backs are warmed by the sun, or principally by the month of May, and who
10 breed in warm and temperate climates, and not in the cold ones like the
seventh climate In ancient and medieval geography, the "climates" were zones of latitude; the seventh was the northernmost inhabited zone, considered very cold. and other parts closer to the pole. We humans do so in every time and place.
Bo. I have lived for 42 years in the world in such a way that I have not been defiled by women. original Latin: "mulieribus non sum coinquinato." This is a biblical allusion to Revelation 14:4, used here ironically by Bonifacio to boast of his previous chastity or marital fidelity. Having reached this age, in which
the first white hairs begin to appear on one's head, and in which 14

15 love usually cools and begins to fade—
Ba. In some it ceases; in others, it changes.
Bon. It usually begins to fade like the heat in the time of
Autumn; it was then that I was seized by the love of Karubina. Karubina is Bonifacio's wife; her name is a play on "Cherubina" (little cherub). She
seemed to me the most beautiful among all the beauties; she warmed me, | she B

20 set me ablaze in such a flame, that it burned me in such a way that I
became tinder. Now, through habit and constant use between me and her,
that first flame being extinguished, my heart has remained ready
to be ignited by new fires.
Bar. If the fire had been of a better quality, it would not have
25 made you into tinder, but into ashes. And if I had been in your wife's place,
I would have done just that.
Bon. Let me finish my speech, and then say whatever
you please.
Ba. Continue that fine simile.
30 Bon. Now, that flame which tempered my heart into tinder
having ceased: I was easily set ablaze this April by another flame.
Ba. It was at this time of year that Petrarch fell in love, and the donkeys 33

too begin to raise their tails.
35 Bon. What did you say?
Barth. I said that at this time Petrarch fell in love, 5

and the souls [animi], they too, raise themselves toward contemplation. Bartolomeo makes a crude pun in Italian between "asini" (donkeys) and "animi" (souls/minds) to cover up his insult when Bonifacio questions him. For the
spirits in winter are contracted by the cold; in the summer, by the heat, they are
dispersed; in the spring, they are in a moderate and quiet temperament.
40 Thus the soul is more fit for contemplation because of the tranquility of the—