The Heroic Enthusiasts | Page 4

and dies serene and calm. We must now follow
our fugitive to Venice.

At the time Giordano Bruno arrived in Venice that city was the most
important typographical centre of Europe; the commerce in books
extended through the Levant, Germany, and France, and the
philosopher hoped that here he might find some means of subsistence.
The plague at that time was devastating Venice, and in less than one
year had claimed forty-two thousand victims; but Bruno felt no fear,
and he took a lodging in that part of Venice called the Frezzeria, and
was soon busy preparing for the press a work called "Segni del
Tempo," hoping that the sale of it would bring a little money for daily
needs. This work was lost, as were all those which he published in Italy,
and which it was to the interest of Rome to destroy. Disappointed at not
finding work to do in Venice, he next went to Padua, which was the
intellectual centre of Europe, as Venice was the centre of printing and
publishing; the most celebrated professors of that epoch were to be
found in the University of Padua, but at the time of Bruno's sojourn
there, Padua, like Venice, was ravaged by the plague; the university
was closed, and the printing-house was not in operation. He remained
there only a few days, lodging with some monks of the Order of St.
Dominic, who, he relates, "persuaded me to wear the dress again, even
though I would not profess the religion it implied, because they said it
would aid me in my wayfaring to be thus attired; and so I got a white
cloth robe, and I put on the hood which I had preserved when I left
Rome." Thus habited he wandered for several months about the cities
of Venetia and Lombardy; and although he contrived for a time to
evade his persecutors, he finally decided to leave Italy, as it was
repugnant to his disposition to live in forced dissimulation, and he felt
that he could do no good either for himself or for his country, which
was then overrun with Spaniards and scourged by petty tyrants; and
with the lower orders sunk in ignorance, and the upper classes illiterate,
uncultivated, and corrupt, the mission of Giordano Bruno was
impossible. "Altiora Peto" was Bruno's motto, and to realize it he had
gone forth with the pilgrim's staff in his hand, sometimes covered with
the cowl of the monk, at others wearing the simple habit of a
schoolmaster, or, again, clothed with the doublet of the mechanic: he
had found no resting-place--nowhere to lay his head, no one who could
understand him, but always many ready to denounce him. He turned his
back at last on his country, crossed the Alps on foot, and directed his

steps towards Switzerland. He visited the universities in different towns
of Switzerland, France, and Germany, and wherever he went he left
behind him traces of his visit in some hurried writings. The only work
of the Nolan, written in Italy, which has survived is "Il Candelajo,"
which was published in Paris. Levi, in his Life of Bruno, passes in
review his various works; but it will suffice here to reproduce what he
says of the "Eroici Furori," the first part of which I have translated, and
to note his remarks upon the style of Bruno, which presents many
difficulties to the translator on account of its formlessness. Goethe says
of Bruno's writings: "Zu allgemeiner Betrachtung und Erhebung der
Geistes eigneten sich die Schriften des Jordanus Brunous von Nola;
aber freilich das gediegene Gold and Silber aus der Masse jener zo
ungleich begabten Erzgänge auszuscheiden und unter den Hammer zu
bringen erfordert fast mehr als menschliche Kräfte vermögen."
I believe that no translation of Giordano Bruno's works has ever been
brought out in English, or, at any rate, no translation of the "Eroici
Furori," and therefore I have had no help from previous renderings. I
have, for the most part, followed the text as closely as possible,
especially in the sonnets, which are frequently rendered line for line.
Form is lacking in the original, and would, owing to the unusual and
often fantastic clothing of the ideas, be difficult to apply in the
translation. He seems to have written down his grand ideas hurriedly,
and, as Levi says, probably intended to retouch the work before
printing.
Following the order of Levi's Life of Bruno, we next find the fugitive at
Geneva. He was hardly thirty-one years old when he quitted his country
and crossed the Alps, and his first stopping-place was Chambery,
where he was received in a convent of the Order of Predicatori; he
proposed going on to Lyons, but being told by an Italian priest, whom
he met there, that he was not