Johan Huizinga

“ Thus, always and everywhere in the literature of the age, we find a confessed pessimism. As soon as the soul of these men has passed from childlike mirth and unreasoning enjoyment to reflection, deep dejection about all earthly misery takes their place and they see only the woe of life. Still this very pessimism is the ground whence their soul will soar up to the aspiration of a life of beauty and serenity. For at all times the vision of a sublime life has haunted the souls of men, and the gloomier the present is, the more strongly this aspiration will make itself felt. ”

“ This is bolder and more chilling than Machiavelli, more detached than Montaigne. But Erasmus will not have it credited to him: it is Folly who speaks. He purposely makes us tread the round of the circulus vitiosus, as in the old saw: A Cretan said, all Cretans are liars.
Wisdom is to folly as reason is to passion. And there is much more passion than reason in the world. That which keeps the world going, the fount of life, is folly. For what else is love? Why do people marry, if not out of folly, which sees no objections? All enjoyment and amusement is only a condiment of folly. ”

“ At the close of the Middle Ages, a sombre melancholy weighs on people's souls. Whether we read a chronicle, a poem, a sermon, a legal document even, the same impression of immense sadness is produced by them all. It would sometimes seem as if this period had been particularly unhappy, as if it had left behind only the memory of violence, of covetousness and mortal hatred, as if it had known no other enjoyment but that of intemperance, of pride and of cruelty.
Now in the records of all periods misfortune has left more traces than happiness. Great evils form the groundwork of history. ”

“ It is the hideous figure of the doctrinaire which Erasmus is thinking of. Which state, he exclaims, would desire such an absolutely wise man for a magistrate?
He who devotes himself to tasting all the bitterness of life with wise insight would forthwith deprive himself of life. Only folly is a remedy: to err, to be mistaken, to be ignorant is to be human. How much better it is in marriage to be blind to a wife's shortcomings than to make away with oneself out of jealousy and to fill the world with tragedy! Adulation is virtue. There is no cordial devotion without a little adulation. ”

“ All the best elements of patriotism—the spirit of sacrifice, the desire for justice and protection for the oppressed—sprouted in the soil of chivalry. It is in the classic country of chivalry, in France, that are heard, for the first time, the touching accents of love of the fatherland, irradiated by the sentiment of justice. One need not be a great poet to say these simple things with dignity. No author of those times has given French patriotism such a touching and also such a varied expression as Eustache Deschamps, whom we can only rate as a mediocre poet. ”

“ Erasmus was one of those who early feel old. He was not forty and yet fancied himself across the threshold of old age. How quickly it had come! He looks back on the course of his life: he sees himself playing with nuts as a child, as a boy eager for study, as a youth engrossed in poetry and scholasticism, also in painting. He surveys his enormous erudition, his study of Greek, his aspiration to scholarly fame. In the midst of all this, old age has suddenly come. ”

“ After the close of the Middle Ages the mortal sins of pride, anger and covetousness have never again shown the unabashed insolence with which they manifested themselves in the life of preceding centuries. The whole history of the house of Burgundy is like an epic of overweening and heroic pride, which takes the form of bravura and ambition with Philippe le Hardi, of hatred and envy with Jean sans Peur, of the lust of vengeance and fondness for display with Philip the Good, of foolhardy temerity and obstinacy with Charles the Bold. ”

“ Here there is a great deal behind the seemingly light jest: 'Christian religion seems in general to have some affinity with a certain sort of folly'. Was it not thought the apostles were full of new wine? And did not the judge say: 'Paul, thou art beside thyself'? When are we beside ourselves? When the spirit breaks its fetters and tries to escape from its prison and aspires to liberty. That is madness, but it is also other-worldliness and the highest wisdom. True happiness is in selflessness, in the furore of lovers, whom Plato calls happiest of all. ”

“ From the moment when the dream of heroism through love has intoxicated the yearning heart, fantasy grows and overflows. The first simple theme is soon left behind, the soul thirsts for new fancies, and passion colours the dream of suffering and of renunciation. The man will not be content merely to suffer, he will want to save from danger, or from suffering, the object of his desire. ”

“ We should call nothing profane that is pious and conduces to good morals. No more dignified view of life was ever found than that which Cicero propounds in De Senectute.
In order to understand Erasmus's mind and the charm which it had for his contemporaries, one must begin with the ideal of life that was present before his inward eye as a splendid dream. It is not his own in particular. The whole Renaissance cherished that wish of reposeful, blithe, and yet serious intercourse of good and wise friends in the cool shade of a house under trees, where serenity and harmony would dwell. ”

“ It would be a mistake to think that the medieval mind, lacking the ideas of progress and conscious reform, had only known the religious form of the aspiration to ideal life. For there is a third path to a world more beautiful, trodden in all ages and civilizations, the easiest and also the most fallacious of all, that of the dream. A promise of escape from the gloomy actual is held out to all; we have only to colour life with fancy, to enter upon the quest of oblivion, sought in the delusion of ideal harmony. ”

“ Concord, peace, sense of duty and kindliness, were all valued highly by Erasmus; yet he rarely saw them realized in practical life. He becomes disillusioned. After the short spell of political optimism he never speaks of the times any more but in bitter terms—a most criminal age, he says—and again, the most unhappy and most depraved age imaginable. In vain had he always written in the cause of peace: Querela pacis, the complaint of peace, the adage Dulce bellum inexpertis, war is sweet to those who have not known it, Oratio de pace et discordia, and more still. ”

“ If chivalry had to yield to strategy and tactics, none the less it remained of importance in the exterior apparatus of warfare. An army of the fifteenth century, with its splendid show of rich ornament and solemn pomp, still offered the spectacle of a tournament of glory and honour. The multitude of banners and pennons, the variety of heraldic bearings, the sound of clarions, the war-cries resounding all day long, all this, with the military costume itself and the ceremonies of dubbing knights before the battle, tended to give war the appearance of a noble sport. ”

“ And the necessary driving power of all human action is 'Philautia', Folly's own sister: self-love. He who does not please himself effects little. Take away that condiment of life and the word of the orator cools, the poet is laughed at, the artist perishes with his art.
Folly in the garb of pride, of vanity, of vainglory, is the hidden spring of all that is considered high and great in this world. The state with its posts of honour, patriotism and national pride; the stateliness of ceremonies, the delusion of caste and nobility—what is it but folly? ”

“ The contrast between silence and sound, darkness and light, like that between summer and winter, was more strongly marked than it is in our lives. The modern town hardly knows silence or darkness in their purity, nor the effect of a solitary light or a single distant cry.
All things presenting themselves to the mind in violent contrasts and impressive forms, lent a tone of excitement and of passion to everyday life and tended to produce that perpetual oscillation between despair and distracted joy, between cruelty and pious tenderness which characterize life in the Middle Ages. ”

“ It also results from a consciousness of the indefiniteness of the ground of all things, from the awe of the ambiguity of all that is. If Erasmus so often hovers over the borderline between earnestness and mockery, if he hardly ever gives an incisive conclusion, it is not only due to cautiousness, and fear to commit himself. Everywhere he sees the shadings, the blending of the meaning of words. The terms of things are no longer to him, as to the man of the Middle Ages, as crystals mounted in gold, or as stars in the firmament. ”

“ In the fifteenth century they were dominating still. Instead of the full rich style, the blitheness and the harmony characteristic of Italy and the Renaissance, here it is bizarre pomp, cumbrous forms of expreesion, a worn-out fancy and an atmosphere of melancholy gravity which prevail. It is not the Middle Ages, it is the new coming culture, which might easily be forgotten.
In literature classical forms could appear without the spirit having changed. An interest in the refinement of Latin style was enough, it seems, to give birth to humanism. ”

“ Herbs are beautiful, because they are green; precious stones, because they sparkle; the human body, the dromedary and the camel, because they are appropriate to their purpose; the earth, because it is long and large; the heavenly bodies, because they are round and light. Mountains are admirable for their enormous dimensions, rivers for the length of their course, fields and woods for their vast surface, the earth for its immeasurable mass.
Medieval theory reduced the idea of beauty to that of perfection, proportion and splendour. ”

“ It seems a hard thing to say that genuine loyalty and fervent gratefulness were strange to Erasmus. And yet such was his nature. In characters like his a kind of mental cramp keeps back the effusions of the heart. He subscribes to the adage: 'Love so, as if you may hate one day, and hate so, as if you may love one day'. He cannot bear benefits. In his inmost soul he continually retires before everybody. He who considers himself the pattern of simple unsuspicion, is indeed in the highest degree suspicious towards all his friends. ”

“ Not often has the reviewer to welcome a new writer and a new novel so directly conveying the impression of power and an easy mastery of material. Here there are qualities of style and thought which awaken a sense of satisfaction and delight; a taste in the selection of words; a keen insight into the humour (and not merely the humours) of life; and a challenge to its accepted courses. It is told with a deftness, a lightness, a grace of touch, and a radiant atmosphere of humour which mark a strength and capacity giving large promise for the future.”—Daily News. ”

“ What he writes is never vague, never dark—it is always plausible. Everything seemingly flows of itself like a fountain. It always rings true as to tone, turn of phrase and accent. It has almost the light harmony of Ariosto. And it is, like Ariosto, never tragic, never truly heroic. It carries us away, indeed, but it is never itself truly enraptured.
The more artistic aspects of Erasmus's talent come out most clearly—though they are everywhere in evidence—in those two recreations after more serious labour, the Moriae Encomium and the Colloquia. ”

“ Among those vehemently passionate, drastically energetic and violent natures of the great ones of his day, Erasmus stands as the man of too few prejudices, with a little too much delicacy of taste, with a deficiency, though not, indeed, in every department, of that stultitia which he had praised as a necessary constituent of life. Erasmus is the man who is too sensible and moderate for the heroic.
What a surprising difference there is between the accent of Erasmus and that of Luther, Calvin, and Saint Teresa! ”

“ At the close Genius throws the taper into the besieged fortress; its flame sets the universe on fire. Venus also throws her torch; then Shame and Fear flee, the castle is taken, and Bel-Accueil allows the lover to pluck the rose.
Here, then, in the Roman de la Rose, the sexual motif is again placed in the centre of erotic poetry, but enveloped by symbolism and mystery and presented in the guise of saintliness. It is impossible to imagine a more deliberate defiance of the Christian ideal. The dream of love had taken a form as artistic as it was passionate. ”

“ The sensible old man of the Colloquium Senile has an easy post of honour, a safe mediocrity, he judges no one and nothing and smiles upon all the world. Quiet for oneself, surrounded by books—that is of all things most desirable.
On the outskirts of this ideal of serenity and harmony numerous flowers of aesthetic value blow, such as Erasmus's sense of decorum, his great need of kindly courtesy, his pleasure in gentle and obliging treatment, in cultured and easy manners. Close by are some of his intellectual peculiarities. He hates the violent and extravagant. ”

“ For the most part the praises of a frugal life and of hard work in the fields are not based on the delights of simplicity and labour in themselves, nor on the security and independence they seemed to confer; the positive content of the ideal is the longing for natural love. The pastoral is the idyllic form assumed by erotic thought. Just like the dream of heroism which is at the bottom of the ideas of chivalry, the bucolic dream is somewhat more than a literary genre. It is a craving to reform life itself. ”

“ Folly is gaiety and lightheartedness, indispensable to happiness. The man of mere reason without passion is a stone image, blunt and without any human feeling, a spectre or monster, from whom all fly, deaf to all natural emotions, susceptible neither to love nor compassion. Nothing escapes him, in nothing he errs; he sees through everything, he weighs everything accurately, he forgives nothing, he is only satisfied with himself ”

“ The Church has always feared the excesses of mysticism, and with reason. For the fire of contemplative rapture, consuming all forms and images, must needs burn all formulas, concepts, dogmas, and sacraments too. However, the very nature of mystic transport implied a safeguard for the Church. To be uplifted to the clarity of ecstasy, to wander on the solitary heights of contemplation stripped of forms and images, tasting union with the only and absolute principle, was to the mystic never more than the rare grace of a single moment. ”

“ In lamenting the frailty of the lives of women, it is still the briefness of joy that is deplored, and with the grave tone of the memento mori is mixed the regret for lost beauty.
Nothing betrays more clearly the excessive fear of death felt in the Middle Ages than the popular belief, then widely spread, according to which Lazarus, after his resurrection, lived in continual misery and horror at the thought that he should have again to pass through the gate of death. If the just had so much to fear, how could the sinner soothe himself? ”