The Books on the Family

Leon Battista Alberti - The Books on the Family
Page 14

...given? Original: date. This fragment likely completes a sentence from the previous page: "the instructions I have given you?" Truly, it would be more pleasing to me not to have to leave this burden upon my family. Although dying does not disturb me too much, nevertheless this sweetness of living, this pleasure of being and conversing with you and with friends, this delight in seeing my possessions—it still pains me to leave it all behind. I would not wish to be deprived of it before my time. Perhaps losing these things would be less heavy and less bitingly bitter Original: acerbe. Literally "unripe" or "sour," used here to describe a premature death that has come before its natural season. if I could say of myself, as Julius Caesar used to say, that he had lived long enough for both his years and his glory Original: alla età, alla felicità. Lorenzo is paraphrasing Caesar’s famous statement, Satis vixi vel ad aetatem vel ad gloriam. Alberti renders "glory" as "happiness" or "prosperity.". But I am not at an age where death is not still bitter to me, nor am I in such prosperity that, while living, I do not desire to see myself in a happier state of fortune.

And what a most desired joy it would be to me, how much I would consider it the greatest happiness, if I were able—in my father’s house, in my own homeland The Alberti family was famously exiled from Florence for decades. Lorenzo’s longing for his "patria" (homeland) reflects the deep pain of the political exile that defined the family's history during this period.—to live with some honor, or at least to die there, and then lie among my ancestors! If fortune does not permit it, or if nature here takes its course, or if indeed I was born to suffer these miseries, I deem it would not be wisdom to face without patience that which I am compelled to do. I would certainly be more content, my sons, not to abandon you at this age, and it would pain me less to die when no longer young, if only to labor as I am accustomed for the benefit and honor of our house. But if another destiny requires this spirit of mine, I neither ought to nor wish to take it poorly, nor do I set my mind against that which it would avail me nothing to refuse. Let it be with me as it pleases God.

ADOVARDO I believe that, to overcome every fear of death, this same thought is a great help: to consider that for mortals, the ending of one’s life has always been necessary. But one should also not resign oneself to it Original: adiudicare. In this context, to give oneself up for dead or to prematurely accept defeat by illness. in times of sickness and weakness; for although it helps to overcome the fear and shadows of death, yet I believe it harms the peace and tranquility of the soul to remain with the mind in that state of anxiety from which perhaps even I would not know how to detach myself were I in such a condition—thinking of whom I leave behind, and how I set things in order, and to whom I entrust my cares and beloved things; to which...