Introduction to the Kabbalah

you should not attribute it to a fault in him, for he was able to discourse with you elegantly, at length, and to your great admiration on any subject proposed from these disciplines; rather, you should from this more wisely understand the inconstancy of the human condition, or at least confirm your own wise understanding of that matter. For my part, I have fallen from that great hope of the illustrious works of learning he was preparing, down to small books like this one I now give you. It is as if I have woken from a sweet dream—in which I saw myself most pleasantly carried toward a destiny of extraordinary happiness and obtaining treasures of immense value—only to find myself now awakened to the hardships of this world.

I find that I understand, in some way more accurately than before, maxims of this kind: All human things hang by a slender thread, and those that were strong collapse in a sudden fall. original: Omnia sunt hominum tenui pendentia filo, Et subito casu, quæ valuere ruunt; a quote from the Roman poet Ovid, illustrating how quickly fortune can change. For just as someone who had never felt the power of fire or other burning things would not truly understand descriptions of the sharp power of heat, but would instead measure it by a vague comparison to minor discomforts; so for me, whose heart the fiery arrow of fortune had not previously pierced, the true weight of such sayings has now for the first time pressed upon my soul and settled deep within. And while it grips and weighs me down, it urges me to frequently repeat in my mind that saying of Cicero: O deceptive hope of men, and fragile fortune, and our empty struggles, which are often broken and collapse in mid-course, and are overwhelmed in the race itself before they could glimpse the harbor. original: O fallacem hominum spem...; Cicero wrote this in his work On the Orator regarding the sudden death of the statesman Crassus.

And I do not know whether the experience of this grief, acting as a most powerful teacher, has enlightened my reason to understand more than is usual, or whether its violence has instead so inclined me toward easily embracing errors that the most famous maxim of that truly divine man referring to the poet Virgil does not seem entirely true to me: But to extend one's fame by deeds— original: Sed famam extendere factis; part of a line from Virgil's Aeneid (10.468): "To extend fame by deeds, this is the work of virtue." The editor is questioning if even great deeds can withstand death.