CAPUT VI. De vitio imaginationis et sensualitatis
The Vice of Sensuality
The author introduces the need to examine the vices of the soul, beginning with sensuality's insatiable thirst for pleasure, which is never satisfied.
We've looked at their service, but I don't think we should keep silent about their vice either. For Bala is talkative, and Zelpha is drunk.1 For even Bala's own mistress, Rachel, can't rein in her talkativeness; and what's more, even her mistress's great abundance can't entirely quench Zelpha's thirst. The wine Zelpha thirsts for is the joy of pleasure. The more she drinks of it, the thirstier she gets: for the whole world is not enough to satisfy the appetite of sensuality. So because, no matter how much she drinks, she is always gaping for more, she is rightly called Zelpha—that is, a gaping mouth—whose thirst is never quenched.2
The Vice of Imagination
The author describes imagination's incessant chatter, which disturbs prayer and reflection, and explains its etymology as 'the inveterate one'.
Imagination, though, clatters so insistently in the ears of the heart that, as we have said, Rachel herself can scarcely—or not at all—restrain its outcry.3 This is why, often when we chant the psalms or pray, we want to push the fantasies of our thoughts, or any images of things whatever, away from the eyes of the heart—and we can't. So then, because every day we endure this kind of clamoring thought—even unwillingly—daily experience teaches us what Bala's chatter is like, and how great it is. For she brings back to memory whatever we've seen or heard, and at times what we ourselves have done or said; and what she has already laid out in the telling, she never stops repeating again and again. And often, when the will of the heart gives her no assent to listening, she still unfolds her story anyway—though almost no one is listening. Just so the frail old men, or the aged women, will recount anything with no hearer at all, and talk as if someone were present to converse with them. So it's not without reason that she's called Bala—that is, 'the inveterate one'—since she imitates the habit of the inveterate.4
The Knowledge of Self
The author concludes by asking who does not know these vices, except the one who does not know himself, tying self-knowledge to awareness of these failings.
But who doesn't know about Bala's chatter and Zelpha's drunkenness—except, perhaps, the person who doesn't know himself?5
Read the original Latin
Vidimus de earum obsequio, sed nec de earum vitio silendum puto. Est enim Bala, garrula; Zelpha, tumulenta. Bala namque loquacitatem nec ipsa ejus domina Rachel compescere potest; sed et Zelphae quidem sitim dominae suae copia tanta omnino exstinguere non potest. Vinum, quod Zelpha sitit, gaudium est voluptatis. De quo quanto plus bibit, tanto amplius sitit: nam ad satiandum sensualitatis appetitum, totus mundus non sufficit. Quia ergo quantumcunque bibat, semper ad bibendum inhiat, recte Zelpha, hoc est os inhians, vocatur, sitis cujus nunquam exstinguitur. Imaginatio autem cum tanta importunitate in auribus cordis perstrepit, quatenus ejus clamorem, ut diximus, ipsa Rachel vix vel omnino cohibere non possit. Hinc est quod saepe dum psallimus vel oramus, phantasias cogitationum vel quaslibet imagines rerum ab oculis cordis amovere volumus, nec valemus.
Quoniam ergo hujusmodi perstrepentium cogitationum quotidie etiam inviti patimur, qualis vel quanta sit Balae garrulitas quotidiano experimento docemur. Quaeque etenim visa, vel audita, quandoque quae ipsi gessimus vel diximus, ad memoriam revocat, et quae ipsa jam enarrando explicaverit, eadem iterum atque iterum replicare non cessat. Et saepe, cum nulla voluntas cordis ei audiendi assensum praebeat, ipsa nihilominus (quamvis nullo quasi audiente) narrationem suam explicat. Sic utique decrepiti senes, vel inveteratae anus, solent quaelibet absque omni auditore referre, et quasi aliquibus praesentibus cum eis sermonem conferre. Unde non immerito Bala (hoc est inveterata ) dicitur, quae inveteratorum morem imitatur. Sed de garrulitate Balae, et temulentia Zelphae quis nesciat, nisi forte qui seipsum ignorat?
Notes
- 1 ↩Source reads tumulenta; neighboring section uses temulentia of Zelpha (drunkenness), and the chapter allegory of wine-thirst supports temulenta/drunken rather than tumulenta/tumultuous.
- 2 ↩Medieval name-etymology: Zelpha interpreted as os inhians ('gaping mouth'), not a modern philological claim about Hebrew Zilpah.
- 3 ↩Latin vix vel omnino cohibere non possit is a compressed 'scarcely or not at all can restrain' construction; rendered as ability almost or fully failing, not as double-negative 'can scarcely fail to restrain.'
- 4 ↩Medieval etymology of Bala (Bilhah) as inveterata, 'grown old / inveterate,' tying imagination's chatter to the self-talk of the aged just described.
- 5 ↩Earlier in the chapter Zelpha is called tumulenta ('tumultuous'); here the vice is temulentia ('drunkenness'), which matches the wine-thirst allegory already given.
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