THE
HEROIC ENTHUSIASTS
(GLI EROICI FURORI)
An Ethical Poem
BY GIORDANO BRUNO
PART THE SECOND
TRANSLATED BY
L. WILLIAMS
LONDON
BERNARD QUARITCH
PICCADILLY
1889
LONDON:
G. NORMAN AND SON, PRINTERS, HART STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.
PREFACE.
The second part of "The Heroic Enthusiasts"which I am now sending to the press is on thesame subject as the first, namely the struggles ofthe soul in its upward progress towards purificationand freedom, and the author makes use oflower things to picture and suggest the higher.The aim of the Heroic Enthusiast is to get at theTruth and to see the Light, and he considers thatall the trials and sufferings of this life, are thecords which draw the soul upwards, and the spurwhich quickens the mind and purifies the will.
The blindness of the soul may signify the descentinto the material body, and "visit the variouskingdoms" may be an allusion to the soul passingthrough the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdomsbefore it arrives at man.
It is interesting to note that in the first part of"The Heroic Enthusiasts" (page 122), Brunomakes a distinct allusion to the power of steam,and in the second part, one might almost think,that in using the number nine in connexion withthe blind men, he intended a reference to electricity,for we read in "The Secret Doctrine," by H.P.Blavatsky, "There exists an universal agent uniqueof all forms and of life, that is called Od, Ob, andAour, active and passive, positive and negative,like day and night; it is the first light in creation;and the first light of the primordial Elo-him—theA-dam,—male and female, or, (scientifically) Electricityand Life. Its universal value is nine, forit is the ninth letter of the alphabet and the ninthdoor of the fifty portals or gateways, that lead tothe concealed mysteries of being.... Od is thepure life-giving Light or magnetic fluid."
The notices of the press upon the first half ofthis work, were for the most part such, as to leadme to hope that the appearance of the second partwill meet with a favourable reception.
When I first began this translation little wasknown about Giordano Bruno except through thevaluable works of Sig. Berti and Sig. Levi, andsince then Mrs. Firth has given us a life of theNolan, written in English, and several able articlesin the magazines have been published, in one ofwhich, by C.E. Plumptre (Westminster Review,August, 1889), an interesting parallel is drawnbetween Shelley and Bruno.
I will close this short notice with a sentence froman article in the Nineteenth Century, September,1889, entitled "Criticism as a trade." "There isprobably no author who does not feel how muchhe owes to the writers who have reviewed hisbooks, whether he has occasion to acknowledge itor not. It is humiliating to find how many errorsremain in writings that seemed comparatively freefrom them. Everyone who knows his subject, andhas any modesty, is aware that there are defects inhis work which his own eye has not seen; and heis more than grateful for the correction of everyerror that is pointed out to him by