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38. How we weep and laugh at the same thing

[An understanding of the complexity of conflicting emotions helps us to avoid trivial interpretations of great men and their grief.]

[A] When we read in our history books that Antigonus was severely displeased with his son for having brought him the head of his enemy King Pyrrhus who had just been killed fighting against him and that he burst into copious tears when he saw it;1 and that Duke René of Lorraine also lamented the death of Duke Charles of Burgundy whom he had just defeated, and wore mourning at his funeral; and that at the battle of Auroy which the Count de Montfort won against Charles de Blois, his rival for the Duchy of Brittany, the victor showed great grief when he happened upon his enemy’s corpse: we should not at once exclaim,

Et cosi aven che l’animo ciascuna Sua passion sotto et contrario manto Ricopre, con la vista hor’ chiara hor bruna.

[Thus does the mind cloak every passion with its opposite, our faces showing now joy, now sadness.]2

When they presented Caesar with the head of Pompey our histories say3 that he turned his gaze away as from a spectacle both ugly and displeasing. There had been such a long understanding and fellowship between them in the management of affairs of State, they had shared the same fortunes and rendered each other so many mutual services as allies, that we should not believe that his behaviour was quite false and counterfeit – as this other poet thinks it was:

tutumque putavit Jam bonus esse socer; lachrimas non sponte cadentes Effudit, gemitusque expressit pectore læto.

[And now he thought it was safe to play the good father-in-law; he poured out tears, but not spontaneous ones, and he forced out groans from his happy breast.]4

For while it is true that most of our actions are but mask and cosmetic, and that it is sometimes true that

Hæredis fletus sub persona risus est;

[Behind the mask, the tears of an heir are laughter;]5

nevertheless we ought to consider when judging such events how our souls are often shaken by conflicting emotions. Even as there is said to be a variety of humours assembled in our bodies, the dominant one being that which normally prevails according to our complexion, so too in our souls: although diverse emotions may shake them, there is one which must remain in possession of the field; nevertheless its victory is not so complete but that the weaker ones do not sometimes regain lost ground because of the pliancy and mutability of our soul and make a brief sally in their turn. That is why we can see that not only children, who artlessly follow Nature, often weep and laugh at the same thing, but that not one of us either can boast that, no matter how much he may want to set out on a journey, he still does not feel his heart a-tremble when he says goodbye to family and friends: even if he does not actually burst into tears at least he puts a foot over to stirrup with a sad and gloomy face. And however noble the passion which enflames the heart of a well-born bride, she still has to have her arms prised from her mother’s neck before being given to her husband, no matter what that merry fellow may say:

Est ne novis nuptis odio venus, arme parentum Frustrantur falsis gaudia lachrimulis, Ubertim thalami quas intra limina fundunt? Non, ita me divi, vera gemunt, juverint.

[Is Venus really hated by our brides, or do they mock their parents’ joy with those false tears which they pour forth in abundance at their chamber-door? No. So help me, gods, their sobs are false ones.]6

And so it is not odd to lament the death of a man whom we would by no means wish to be still alive.

When I rail at my manservant I do so sincerely with all my mind: my curses are real not feigned. But once I cease to fume, if he needs help from me I am glad to help him: I turn over the page. [C] When I call him a dolt or a calf I have no intention of stitching such labels on to him for ever: nor do I believe I am contradicting myself when I later call him an honest fellow. No one characteristic clasps us purely and universally in its embrace. If only talking to oneself did not look mad, no day would go by without my being heard growling to myself, against myself, ‘You silly shit!’ Yet I do not intend that to be a definition of me.

[B] If anyone should think when he sees me sometimes look bleakly at my wife and sometimes lovingly that either emotion is put on, then he is daft. When Nero took leave of his mother whom he was sending to be drowned, he nevertheless felt some emotion at his mother’s departure and felt horror and pity.7

[A] The sun, they say, does not shed its light in one continuous flow but ceaselessly darts fresh rays so thickly at us, one after another, that we cannot perceive any gap between them:

[B] Largus enim liquidi fons luminis, ætherius sol Inrigat assidue cælum candore recenti, Suppeditatque novo confestim famine lumen.

[That generous source of liquid light, the aethereal sun, assiduously floods the heavens with new rays and ceaselessly sheds light upon new light.]8

So, too, our soul darts its arrows separately but imperceptibly.

[C] Artabanus happened to take his nephew Xerxes by surprise. He teased him about the sudden change which he saw come over his face. But Xerxes was in fact thinking about the huge size of his army as it was crossing the Hellespont for the expedition against Greece; he first felt a quiver of joy at seeing so many thousands of men devoted to his service and showed this by a happy and festive look on his face; then, all of a sudden his thoughts turned to all those lives which would wither in a hundred years at most: he knit his brow and was saddened to tears.9

[A] We have pursued revenge for an injury with a resolute will; we have felt a singular joy at our victory… and we weep: yet it is not for that that we weep. Nothing has changed; but our mind contemplates the matter in a different light and sees it from another aspect: for everything has many angles and many different sheens. Thoughts of kinship, old acquaintanceships and affections suddenly seize our minds and stir them each according to their worth: but the change is so sudden that it escapes us:

[B] Nil adeo fieri celeri ratione videtur Quam si mens fieri proponit et inchoat ipsa. Ocius ergo animus quam res se perciet ulla, Ante oculos quarum in promptu natura videtur.

[Nothing can be seen to match the rapidity of the thoughts which the mind produces and initiates. The mind is swifter than anything which the nature of our eyes allows them to see.]10

[A] That is why we deceive ourselves if we want to make this never-ending succession into one continuous whole. When Timoleon weeps for the murder which, with noble determination, he committed, he does not weep for the liberty he has restored to his country; he does not weep for the Tyrant: he weeps for his brother.11 He has done one part of his duty: let us allow him to do the other.