The Anatomy of Melancholy

Vulcan’s flames are mere smoke beside this. Fire, says Xenophon, burns only those who stand near it or touch it; but love’s fire burns and scorches from far away, hotter and fiercer than any physical fire. “Fire rages within fire”: it is fire within fire, the very essence of fire. When Nero burned Rome, as Calisto argues, he set houses alight and consumed people’s bodies and possessions. But this fire devours the soul itself, and one soul is worth a hundred thousand bodies. No water can quench this raging fire.

Into his breast he drew hidden fires, Fires that water could not destroy nor rain Diminish, nor herbs nor magic whispers.

He took a fire into his breast That water could not quench, Nor herb, nor skill, nor magic spells Could still, nor any draught.

Unless it is tears and sighs: through these they may perhaps find a little relief.

So your shining neck, your open brow, So your eyes, charming Neaera, So your vermilion cheeks burn me, That, unless unending tears kept me wet, I would turn entirely to fine ashes.

So your white neck, Neaera, scorches my poor soul, Your cheeks and your roving, playful eyes; Were it not for the falling tears that prevent it, I would at once be wholly burned to cinders.

This fire strikes like lightning. That is why the ancient Greeks painted Cupid in many of their temples with Jupiter’s thunderbolts in his hands: it wounds, and no one can perceive how it struck, where it came from or where it entered.

We burn, and our breasts bear a hidden wound.

And at first it can scarcely be discerned:

The flame consumes the soft marrow, And a silent wound lives beneath the frenzied breast.

A gentle wound, an easy fire it was, Stealthy at first, passing in secret.

But presently it began to rage and burn fiercely:

Heat and love scorch the frenzied breast; Within, the fierce fire devours The inmost marrow and travels through the veins, Buried in the entrails and hidden in the veins, As a swift flame races through high beams.

This fiery heat rages in the veins And scorches the entrails, as a house fire Runs swiftly along the beams And finally brings the whole building down.

Abraham Hoffmann, in Conjugal Love, book 1, chapter 2, page 22, relates from Plato that the philosopher Empedocles was present at the dissection of someone who had died of love. His heart was burned, his liver smoke-blackened and his lungs dried up, so much so that Empedocles truly believed the soul had been either boiled or roasted by the violence of love’s fire. Perhaps this led a modern writer of love emblems to represent love’s fury as a pot hanging over a fire, with Cupid blowing the coals. As heat consumes the water:

So blind love consumes its own entrails.

So love dries up his vital moisture. Another writer compares love to a melting torch standing too close to the fire:

So the nearer a man is to his girl, The nearer the fool is to his ruin.