Image of the World - Typus Mundi
Figure of the World - Typus Mundi
1627
Anonymous
How sordid you are my land, while I contemplate the heavens!
TO THE READER
This maze and renowned engineer Archimedes once showed our ancestors in a crystalline sphere, dotted with the flamboyant rubies of the stars, a prodigious collection of the Celestial vault, to the great astonishment of Jupiter and all the Gods: but here is the Archimedes' desire deciphered in a small portrait the immense immensity of the world, not embellished with so many stars and stars, but strewn with a thousand miseries and perils, and furthermore worked by a continual antipathy of two Loves. I hope that you will contemplate it with a benign glance, and would increase this wonder, showing that the Microcosm can easily understand this Megalocosm.
The whole world is established in the evil one (in the tree of the evil one).
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I.
Without the help of Hercules, Atlas bearer of the stars,
Would have torn the sky to pieces, the Gods into a thousand disasters,
And what? Will support the great weight of the world
A worm-eaten apple tree? no, no, but the cross.
Thus the single apple grew to the misfortune of all.
II.
O cruel change! proud metamorphosis!
The seed of a fruit, what metempsychosis!
Changes into carnivorous animals, even into evils,
Who will break the world with a thousand and a thousand plagues.
I suffer to possess. I would have suffered without having possessed.
III.
Beware of follatreau, beware of these hives,
Where these little archers have set ambushes for you,
The ray is delighted, the prey is carried away:
Instead of the sweet nectar you will have a mauled hand.
Which is the lightest? to which does love add the most weight.
IV.
It is true, Light world, that the fickle broth
By the ocean of air flies, rows & swims
At the mercy of the winds, but still ahead of you
This puffy diamond, by the weight of the scales.
They are turning the world upside down.
V.
A thousand turns and returns plays the weathervane,
When the husband of summer the sweet Zephyr pants:
Do not be surprised, then, that the sphere of the world
Beaten with these whips turns from round to round.
In the cross is the only tranquility.
VI.
You work in vain, wanting this ball,
On the smooth pavement of the table, not to roll:
If you want to Cupid see this globe stale;
May the weight of the Cross order its rottenness.
The enemy hides and you lounge around.
VII.
Hello ! wake up! May Morpheus the Piper
Slip into your eyes and plunge you into misfortune.
See that ruin was close behind,
The fire having already made itself master of the mine.
They destroy each other with laughter.
VIII.
That if the Tarantula has you on edge
Gently tickled by its fatal snout;
You die laughing: such is the false pleasure
Of the disloyal world; because his laughter is dying.
It is in vain in this world to aim for a high social rank.
IX.
Be careful not to climb, mindless Peacock:
This shattered Plute, this tumbling boy
Cries: flee, flee from the inconstancy World,
If you do not want to run the risk of decadence.
The collapse of the world increases me.
X.
If the icy crystal with which Venus is painted,
Comes to slip from the hands of one of her guards
We see ten to twelve for a single face:
The fall of a scoundrel in a thousand places places him.
Until he has filled the whole earth.
XI.
At the expense of the Sun, the bicorn goddess
Enlarges her blond hair every night:
Likewise, Cupid impatient of terminal,
At your expense, mortal, engages everyone.
This one doesn't like; but love crochets.
XII.
Do you want to know why Cupid, the arrow holder,
changed the bow into nets, his old profession into fishing?
To lead you to death: flee with all force;
Death disguised itself with the mask of the leader.
How painful is the servitude that this light food engenders.
XIII.
This musician of the woods for a poppy seed
Leaves his freedom, changes grove into cage:
But alas! Cupid, you seem more foolish to me,
For a smoky meal caressing slavery.
Not everything that glitters in this lei is gold.
XIV.
This pointed glass giving the stars the bravado
Of a thousand false ducats makes an artist's parade:
Now leave this false glass, & see where you immerse yourself,
For the shadow of good, for a golden lie.
Brilliance springs from darkness and dies within it.
XV.
Your luster, your shine cannot last.
Coming from a brown nothingness, darkness & smoke:
But as we see everything disappear into powder,
In this dark nothing, we will see it resolve.
In this way the world abuses us.
XVI.
This little Myrmidon, in size & posture,
Appears in this crystal a giant statement:
Here, World, your arts; here is your imposture;
Cover the size of your nothing with a muffler.
So the land is better suited to games.
XVII.
Hold firm Cupid; by the breath of Aeolus
Will make this balloon fly faster and higher:
Listen arrogant: your haughty puffs
Serve these jesters as a game, and a laughing stock.
She builds so that he destroys.
XVIII.
If by a beautiful appearance Fortune sweetens you,
Caresses you with honors, and a thousand states gives you;
Fear (I know her) she considers it a delight
to see her favorites fall precipices.
They don't fit together well.
XIX.
These two Loves are opposites in everything,
They have nothing in common, they live in divorce:
Join these balls in harmony from point to point,
Still you will not point out anything of their affairs.
One preserves the good things, the other the bad.
XX.
What are you doing Cupid? These are trifles
That you collect here, brainless brain;
You seem to be in the sieve. Follow wise Love,
Who keeps the best to use it one day.
Your flight is in vain: the cross you are fleeing adheres to you.
XXI.
This snail stuck to its round cabin
Can't get out of it: do you want to carry the World?
Whether you like it or not, you must carry your cross: it's rage.
To want to undo it is to flee your own shadow.
In the cross remains sure love.
XXII.
Rather shake, grazing ground to foot,
The careful summit of a rock in the sea
Than these little boys; he will laugh at your storms,
So long that he will have the Cross for his retirement.
You are wrong: this is the way we are going towards her.
XXIII.
Hello ! pass in front through this awful door,
For there you will do nothing, it will be a dead hunt:
It is the sharp strait of thorns, & sorrows,
Which clears the way to laurels & honors.
He who throws the farthest wins.
XXIV.
Throw this Basilisk egg
stuffed with a thousand deaths far away from you, if you don't want to run the risk;
Throw away, I say, this worldly ball from you,
He who wins the game who rolls it further.
The cymbals give ardor to children through one music , and to men through the other.
XXV.
The Bellied World raps Cupid,
A playful cymbal a playful boy;
But good men feel their souls delighted
By the divine hums of celestial harmony.
On the one hand she triumphs, on the other she loses.
XXVI.
From a very close bond Daphne married
With the God Vulcan, contempt, & glory:
Hello then! be careful not to enter this way,
or you will be deprived of the price of Victory.
I dread the coming daylight.
XXVII.
The owl, and the worldling, and the spleen,
Infants of the night, the day have a horror;
They fear that Titan, through his golden gaze,
would discover their infamous ugliness in the heavens.
After darkness, I hope for light.
XVIII.
This divine Cupid, all embraced with love,
Releases a thousand sighs after this beautiful stay;
But this one trembles with fear and bristles,
Thinking that at any moment the Judgment will sound.
It rings: it is empty.
XIX.
What is this Cupid? As soon as you ring,
The world rings with a small tone:
Hear this, Worldlings: the World is empty;
Because nothing at all solid ever rang.
Here God is all things in all things, and nothing is empty.
XXX.
The World is empty & vain, without substance & marrow,
Its good is nothing, its vaporous flower, its thin pearls:
Trample it underfoot, caress the City
Where God is all in all by its immensity.
The earth will come out more uniform.
XXXI.
Scrape away, Divine Love, all these frills,
These shackles, these mirrors, these scepters, these traps,
These mortal traps, so that the false world
Does not come to drag so many people into hell.
It opens to the sky and closes to the earth.
XXXII.
Push as much as you please, this heart made to the test
Cannot be pierced, by what is here:
But if this great Shooter comes to dart his arrows,
In less than nothing you will see that he will have made the breach.