O Dolce amore, ch’ai morto l’amore
The Call to Die in Love
The speaker pleads with divine Love to be consumed and captured by its power, mirroring the sacrificial death of Christ.
O sweet Love, you who killed love, I pray that you will kill me with love. Love, you led the one you loved to such a cruel death; why did you do it? Because you didn't want me to perish. Don't spare me; don't let me escape dying in love’s embrace. If you didn't spare the one you loved so deeply, how can you intend to spare me? If you love me, prove it by hooking me to yourself like a fish that cannot escape.1 And don't spare me, for in loving I must die, drowned in love.2
Hanging Upon the Cross
The speaker identifies with the crucified Christ, seeking to fasten their own soul to the cross to find true life through death.
Love hangs there: the cross has seized him and won't let him go. I come running, and now I hang myself there, so that I can't lose my way.3 For fleeing from it would make me disappear, since I would no longer be inscribed in love.4 O cross, I hang upon you and fasten myself to you, so that in dying I may taste life. For you are adorned with it, O honey-sweet death; how wretched I am not to have known you!5 O soul, so bold as to receive its wound—may I die with my heart pierced by love.6
The Book of Blood
The cross is revealed as a divine book of wisdom, leading the soul into a holy madness of love that transcends human understanding.
I run there to read from the cross, from the book written in blood.7 For that writing has taught me both nature and philosophy.8 O sealed book, golden within and blossoming all over with love!9 O love of the Lamb, greater than the boundless sea—and who could ever speak of you? Whoever is submerged in it, surrounded on every side, no longer knows where they are; and madness seems to them the straight road—the way to go mad with love.
Read the original Latin
O Dolce amore, ch’ai morto l’amore, prego che m’occidi d’amore.
Amor ch’ai menato lo tuo enamorato ad cusì forte morire, Perché l facesti? ché non uolesti ch’io douesse perire. Non me parcire, non uoler soffrire ch’io non moia abracciato d’amore.
Se non perdonasti a quel che sì amasti, como a me uoi perdonare? Segno è, se m’ami, che tu me c’enhami como pesce che non pò scampare. Et non perdonare, cha el m’è en amare ch’io moia anegato en amore.
L’amore sta appeso, la croce l’à preso et non lassa partire. Vocce currendo et mo me cce appendo, ch’io non possa smarrire. Cha lo fugire farìame sparire, ch’io non serìa scripto en amore.
O croce, io m’apicco et ad te m’aficco, ch’io gusti morendo la uita. Ché tu ne sè ornata, o morte melata; tristo che non t’ò sentita! O alma sì ardita d’auer sua ferita, ch’io moia accorato d’amore.
Vocce currendo, en croce legendo, nel libro che c’è ensanguinato. Cha essa scriptura me fa en natura et en phylosophia conuentato. O libro signato che dentro sè aurato, et tutto fiorito d’amore!
O amor d’agno, magior che mar magno, et chi de te dir porrìa? A chi c’è anegato de sotto & da lato et non sa doue sia, Et la pazìa gli par ricta uia de gire empazato d’amore.
Notes
- 1 ↩The dialect form is understood as an image of catching or fastening with a hook, continued by the comparison to a fish.
- 2 ↩The dialect phrase is rendered as expressing the speaker's destined or necessary end in loving.
- 3 ↩The medieval Italian “smarrire” can mean to lose one’s way, go astray, or become lost; the spatial sense fits the image of clinging to the cross.
- 4 ↩“Scripto en amore” literally means “written in love” and may carry the stronger sense of being inscribed or enrolled within love.
- 5 ↩Literally “honeyed death,” a paradoxical image of death made sweet through the cross.
- 6 ↩Rendered “with my heart pierced” to preserve the word’s force here: inwardly wounded or stricken, in parallel with “ferita.”
- 7 ↩The cross is pictured as a blood-written book whose meaning the speaker hastens to read.
- 8 ↩“Conuentato” is understood here as meaning taught or made learned.
- 9 ↩“Sealed book” may evoke the sealed scroll of Revelation, but the allusion remains unresolved.
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