The Anatomy of Melancholy

but also all talk of them, their names, any mention or thought of them, and any other women, people, circumstances, love books or stories that may provide a reminder. Prosper advises young men not to read the Song of Songs or some parts of Genesis even at other times; but for those in love, these authorities forbid, as already said, even the mention of the name, and so forth. Above all, they forbid seeing the beloved: lovers must not even come near or look at them.

And flee the images and nourishment of love, Abstain from them; turn the mind elsewhere.

“Do not gaze at a maiden,” says the son of Sirach; “turn your eyes away from a beautiful woman,” chapter 9, verses 5, 7 and 8. “Turn away your eyes,” says David. Or if you do see them, as Ficino advises, do not let your eye be “intent on lust”; pay her no more attention than the rest. For, as Propertius maintains, “love itself provides its own greatest nourishment”: like a snowball, love grows through looking. But, as Jerome writes to Nepotian, “either love all equally or disregard all equally”: either look at all alike or leave all alone. Make a covenant with your eyes, as Job did; and that is the safest course: leave all alone, look at none of them.

Nothing revives sooner, “or becomes painful again,” as Petrarch maintains, than love does through sight. “As pomp renews ambition, and the sight of gold greed, so a beautiful object sets this burning lust on fire.”

And leaping water greatly stirs up thirst.

The sight of drink makes one thirsty, and the sight of food increases appetite. Looking is therefore dangerous. A young gentleman, for a joke, insisted on putting on his mistress’s clothes and walking out alone. Some of her suitors saw him and carried him off, taking him for the woman he represented. Such is the force of sight. Especially if a man has been in love before, seeing his mistress throws him into a fresh fit and makes him rave for many days afterwards.

A slight cause harms the weak. As nearly dead embers touched with sulphur Will live, and the smallest fire become the greatest, So, unless you avoid whatever will renew love, The flame that was just now gone will flare again.

A little thing can hurt a sickly man; As sulphur brings a dying fire to life And makes it burn again, so love’s dead flames revive If love looks once more at its former object.

Or, as the poet compares it to embers in ashes stirred by the wind, “as happens through the winds,” and so forth: a diseased scalp, as the saying goes, is easily broken, dry wood quickly catches fire, and when lovers have already been wounded by sight, how can looking fail to inflame them? Ismenias admits as much of himself. After a long absence, when he had almost forgotten his mistress, “at the first sight of her, like straw in a fire, I burned afresh, more fiercely than ever before.”

Chariclea was just as moved at the sight of her dear Theagenes after a long separation.