Introduction to the Kabbalah

...had ever seen the form original: figuram arranged by himself concinnata?; then he would have had no reason why he would not have thought any time suitable for seeking death with a peaceful mind. For he would have satisfied abundantly both his fatherland, his family, himself, and you, reader: and the expectation that his character, shining out at the very beginning of his life, had stirred up about itself, the fervor of his own mind would have surpassed, rather than the force of fortune original: fortuna having failed him in any part. This fortune—which, just like some stormy and pestilential wind, constantly rages across the whole world as if over the sea, and perverts the plans of men with its force—seems to have blazed with a certain singular anger against our house for a long time now, and to have waited for a suitable time to manifest the power of its cruelty to us. Thus, when we had both known what sort of young man this was, and yet held in a sure hand no fruits of honor (which we had seen sprouting most amply from him) as grown and perfected, Fortune then rushed in, stirred by fury, to devastate and destroy that great hope for us. It seized an opportunity so favorable that it left even these books, written by his hand—over which I am often tormented in turning through—to us for no other purpose than as a continuous monument monument original: monumentum; here used not just as a memorial, but as a reminder or a legal record of a tragedy. of our grief and its own atrocity, like certain empty corpses of his virtues original: virtutum before our eyes. In this way, the wound of this calamity original: calamitas, struck into our family as if by a poisoned dart, might endure as incurable. For such are these funerals funerals original: funera; Marco uses this startling metaphor to describe the manuscripts as the unburied remains of his brother's mind. of books—since no other name remains for them now—that they neither allow themselves to be consumed by flames and abolished from our sight (since they present from themselves to one attempting this destruction a certain spirit and a capacity still aspiring to this light, which it would be a sin to suppress, and they hold out certain strong conditions worthy of life), nor, however, do they ever seem able to enter the light they reach for; since with that...