Martin Elsky

288

In the translation that follows, I have retained in brackets the German

words Auerbach uses to distinguish between passive feelings, such as Gefuihl,
Empfindung, sometimes Erfahrung and Wahrnehmung, as opposed to words we
associate with passion now, including the French passion and the German

Leidenschaft.
The Graduate Center and Brooklyn College, City University of New York
Notes
*The translation that follows first appeared in PMLA 56 (1941): 1179-1196.
1. Erich Auerbach, "Figura," Archivum Romanicum, 17 (1938): 320-341.
2. Erich Auerbach, Dante als Dichter der Irdischen Welt (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,
1929); published in English as Dante, Poet of the Secular World, tr. Ralph Mannheim
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961).
3. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Adam Frank, "Shame in the Cybernetic Fold: Reading
Silvan Tomkins," in Shame and Its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 1995), 1-28.
4. See Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 111.
5. 1 have discussed this at greater length in my "Church History and the Cultural Geography of Erich Auerbach: Europe and Its Eastern Other," in Opening the Borders:
Inclusivity in Early Modern Studies, Essays in Honor ofJames Vi Mirollo, Ed. Peter C.
Herman (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999), 324-349.
6. Eugen Lerch, " 'Passion' and 'Geffihl,' "Archivum Romanicum, 17 (1938): 320-341.
7. For German-Jewish identity and the Enlightenment, see Paul Mendes-Flohr, German Jews: A Dual Identity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). For Victor
Klemperer's account of writing his history of eighteenth-century French literature,
see I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941, tr. Martin Chalmers
(New York: Random House, 1998).

Erich Auerbach, "Passio as Passio" ["Passio als Leidenschaft"]*

In his paper on "passion" and "feeling" [Geffihl] (Arch. Rom., XXII, 320ff.),
E. Lerch attempts to describe the entire many-layered development of the
meaning of passio. He draws the following picture:
In antiquity and long afterwards, passio (pathos), in accordance with its
origins, has a purely "passive" meaning, whereas the modem concept of passion [passion-Leidenschaftl is essentially active. The origin of the older meaning
is to be sought, first, in a kind of seduction by language, since pathos and passio
indeed both mean "suffering"; second, in the Stoic and Christian understanding of the passions [Leidenschaften] as diseases of the soul; finally and above
all, in the original absence of the category "feeling" [Gefuhl] as an equally important component of the inner life next to thought and will, which had the
result that from antiquity until well into the eighteenth century, feelings [Gefihle] and sensations [Empfindungen] that in fact are states of suffering were

Erich Auerbach's "Passio as Passion"

289

grouped together with the passions [Leidenschaften], and both were denoted as
pathe, passiones. These words, regardless of their etymological associations,
could achieve the full unfolding of their active meaning only when, under the
influence of Shaftesbury, Rousseau, Mendelssohn, and others, the category of
"feeling" [Gefuihl] became autonomous, and thus the meanings "sentiment,"
"feeling" [Gefiihll, "sensation," [Empfindung] etc., were detached from "passion" as understood by the German word Leidenschaft.
In these propositions, which are excellently documented and instructive
in many respects, the essence of the case is clearly seen. The concept of "suffering" always lies at the bottom of the psychological meanings of the word that
in antiquity was expressed as pathos, considered in the same sense as passio,
and these meanings correspond much more to what we denote as "feelings"
and "sentiment" than "passion" [Leidenschaft]. Passions [Leidenschaften] are for
us heated, stormy, and thereby active, just what was not originally contained
in the semantic fields of pathos and passio. Lerch's exposition, however, leaves
us hanging if we ask how the heated, the stormy, the active, in short, the modem meaning of "passion" [Leidenschaft] entered the semantic field of passio.
That cannot possibly have happened by a mere release, a mere subtraction of
the meaning "feeling" [Gefihl] from the word. Instead, there must be something else in the history of passio that made the word ready to receive this
meaning. Lerch certainly seems to assume as self-evident that pathos-passio always signified "passion" [Leidenschaft] in addition to other things. But whenever he means this word in the current modem sense, then this assumption
is contradicted by his own clear and unquestionable demonstration that the
characteristic mark of pathos-passio, "suffering," is passivity. What we today
understand as passion [Leidenschaft], first took shape in passio only later, gradually and in stages. Pathos signifies a state of being afflicted, a state of being
affected, a reception or a suffering, and on this basis it comprehends to some
extent the following range of meanings or parts of them: sensory quality,
change, phases of development, periodically retuming condition (and indeed
all this, particularly in Aristotelean terminology, as much in animals, plants,
heavenly bodies, etc., and in matter generally, as in humans); further, perception [Wahrnehmung], experience [Erfahrung, Erlebnis], sensation [Empfindung],
feeling [GefuIhl]; finally, in colloquial speech, pain, sickness, suffering, misfortune.' Words that are used as the opposite of pathos include praxis [action],
poiesis [making], ergon [deed]. The above mentioned words signify "passion"
[Leidenschaft] only in so far as they can be understood (exactly like a feeling
[GeffihlI or an illness) as merely something affecting the carrier. Conceming
the active quality and intensity of the word, other Greek words, perhaps epithymia [desirel and mania [madness], or Latin words like cupiditas, or furor,
stand closer to the modem semantic field of "passion" [Leidenschaft]. But even
they do not completely convey its modem meaning. They lack the possibility

290

Martin Elsky

of the sublime: modem passion [Leidenschaft] is more than desire, craving, or

frenzy. The word always contains as a possibility, often as its dominant meaning, the noble creative fire which extinguishes itself in either struggle or surrender, and next to which temperate reason at times appears contemptible. So
far as I can see, a separate word for this meaning of "passion" [Leidenschaft]
never developed in antiquity, even though the meaning itself was naturally
well known, in the mystery cults, among the tragedians, and above all by
Plato, who in the Phaidros (265B) indeed designated that which afflicts lovers,
erotikon pathos, as one of the four kinds of divine madness, theia mania.
One can generally say that in antiquity the semantic fields were divided
up differently than they are now, but the contents of the inner life were all
available and very precisely developed; this was also true for "feeling" [Gefahl .
Not only is pathos indeed also a choice to be considered, but so too above all
is the ambiguous thymos [heart] (kata phrena kai thymon [in mind and heart]),
as is, further, enthymion [rumination], then aisthesis for perception [Wahrnehmung], daimonion for inner feeling [Geffihl], and the paired concepts hedone kai
lype [pleasure and pain] in the theoretical discussions of the feelings [Geffihlel.
This is not the place to delve into these questions; I only want to stress that it
would be imprudent to draw any conclusion about the development of the
meaning of "feeling" [Geffihl] from the absence of an exactly corresponding
Greek word. In Latin too there is no corresponding word for "thought." Cogitatio, made current since Cicero, covers our semantic field "thought" as little
as sensus does the field "feeling" [Geffthl]. In fact, one can at times use a word
derived from sentire, sententia for "thought," and "Plato's thought on beauty"
could be renewed well with quid Plato de pulchro senserit.
I return to passio and attempt to ascertain how the modem meaning of
"passion" [Leidenschaft] came to prevail in this word. Originally, as we already
said, in ordinary usage pathos meant illness, pain, suffering, and in the psychological terminology coined by Aristotle, it means everything that is passively
taken in, received, suffered: sense impression [Sinneseindruck] and perception
[Wahrnehmung], sensation [Empfindung] and experience [Erfahrung], stronger
or weaker feeling [Geffhl]. Besides passivity, pathos also carries for Aristotle the
character of ethical neutrality; no one can be praised or blamed for his pathos.
Despite many different overlappings in the corresponding word in late Latin,
passio, this use of the word-to mean suffering generally, but also to signify
heat and cold, pain and joy, love and hate, etc.-persisted very long as "illness," up to the Renaissance, as in "the suffering of Christ," and even till today
as "feeling" [Geftihl] or sensation in the psychological tradition of Aristotelianism, whose terminology proved to be astonishingly tenacious; one finds passio
as a purely passive and often ethically neutral feeling [Gefihl] not only in Scholasticism, but also much later, into the eighteenth century; cf. Lerch's gathering
2

Erich Auerbach's "Passio as Passion"

291

of citations, pp. 332-334. Of this oldest layer available to us, the characteristic
features are, as already noted, passivity and ethical neutrality.
However, already in the dialectic of Aristotelianism there lay a certain possibility for rendering the concept pathos as active. In fact, suffering or affliction
can be considered to be in the condition of potentiality, dynamis, in relation to
the active-productive: it is ready to receive the effect; through the action of the
agent, it is moved or changed; it thus moves, and this movement is also signified as pathos; a psychic pathos thus easily becomes kinesis tes psyches, Lat.
motus animi [movement of the soul]. This thought, which I here render only
in a very simplified manner, was further developed 3 in the Middle Ages, especially in Thomism, yet remained without any influence on general usage; so
much more consequential was the Stoic development of the word. To the Stoa,
the passiones tumed into restiveness, directionless agitation and mental aimlessness that destroy the tranquility of the wise. The word passio carries a
sharply pejorative meaning; every inner reaction and movement due to goings
on in the world is to be avoided as far as possible; not to encounter the world,
at least inwardly, not to allow oneself to be unsettled by it, to be impassibilis
[unsusceptible to suffering], is the duty of the wise. In this way, the original
opposition to actio falls into the background, and passio becomes the opposite
of ratio; in contrast to the agitated passiones, reason stands as their opposite;
but agitation includes within it a kind of activeness. Here for the first time can
the word Leidenschaft be used to render this meaning into German; partly because of the agitation, partly because of the intensity always assumed by the
Stoa, the images of storms and whirlwinds of the passions [Leidenschaftenl
originate here, and for passio the clearly pejorative perturbatio is often used.
This is the second layer of the development of the meaning of pathos-passio;it
is characterized by intensity, closeness to being active, and pejorative connotation. In practice it has been ever more influential than the first, Aristotelian
meaning since it continues to live on even today in the popular moral concepts
of the most varied groups of people; in one way or another, it enters into almost every later ethical dogma; one also finds numerous uses of passio in
which both concepts-the Aristotelean as well as the Stoic-operate together
at the same time in manifold combinations, especially in late Scholasticism
and in the Renaissance.
The Stoic meaning of passio was all the more effective in that it influenced
late antique Christian writers from the very beginning. Ambrose writes: Caro
nostra diversis agitatur etfreti modofluctuat passionibus [Our flesh is driven by
different passions, and fluctuates like the sea.] (De Noe et Arca, 15; 51; PL 14,
p. 385); Augustine uses a similar image (passionum turbelis et tempestibus agitari [to be vexed by the turbulence and storms of the passions]. De civ. 8, 17);
he defines passio as motus animi contra rationem [stirrings of the soul against
reason] and says the word is understood in Latin, especially in the usage of

292

Martin Elsky

the Church, non nisi ad vituperationem [only in order to censure].' It is easy to

miss that this is Stoic. Among Christian authors, passiones became synonymous with the concupiscentiae carnis [bodily lust], often with sin itself.: On the
other hand, Augustine energetically distances himself from the Stoic doctrine
of passion (De civ. 9, 4ff.); he acknowledges bonae passiones, just as Ambrose
does (omnis enim affectus qui est praeterde formis delectationis illecebras passio
quidem est, sed bona passio [for every emotion, except for the allurements of
unseemly pleasures, is indeed a passion, but a good one], he says, loc. cit.,
p. 24, 88, p. 402), which sounds rather peripatetic. By then, both currents
already cross and mix, as is evident from Augustine's exposition; after all, Stoic
morals stood closer to Christian morals in this epoch.
And yet even then they were fundamentally different from each other. For
Christian authors contrasted the passiones not to the tranquility of the wise but
to submission to injustice, but their intention was to prevail over the world
through suffering, not to withdraw from it in order to avoid suffering and passion [Leidenschaft]. Stoic and Christian flight from the world are profoundly
different. Not the zero point of passionlessless [Leidenschaftslosigkeit] outside
the world, but a suffering against, a passionate [leidenschaftliches] suffering in
the world, and thereby against the world, is the goal of Christian enmity to the
world; and against the flesh, against the evil passiones of this world, they set
neither Stoic apathy, nor the "good feelings" [Geffihle] (bonae passiones, see
above) in order to arrive at the Aristotelian mean through rational balance, but
instead they contrast it with something entirely new, until then unheard of:
the gloriosapassio that derives from the buming love of God.6 The person who
is impassibilis [incapable of suffering] is not perfect, but he is perfectus in omnibus [perfect in every way], as Ambrose says Exp. in Ev. sex. Lucam, x, 177 PL
15 (1848), quem caro iam revocarenon posset a gloriapassionis7 [whom the flesh
could no long retrieve from the glory of suffering]; and the Scilitan martyrs
(Acta Bolland, viii, 6) call out, as they are led to death: Deo gratias, qui nos pro
suo nomine ad gloriosam passionem perducere dignatus est. [Thanks be to God,
who has deigned to lead us in behalf of his name to glorious suffering.]
Whoever relies on the difference in the meaning of "suffering" and "passion" [Leidenschaft] in such a statement as this does not have a clear sense of
the dialectic relationship of both meanings in the Christian understanding:
God's love which moved Him to take human suffering upon Himself is itself
surely a motus animi without measure and bounds.8 In the second half of the
first millennium, the theme of Christ's suffering was seldom taken up, but it
was all the more frequently after the revival of the figure of Christ in the
twelfth century, after the incarnate Christ begins once again to outshine the
rex gloriae. In a once well known passage which was much quoted by contemporaries (Serm. in Cant. LXI, PL 183, 1074), Bemard of Clairvaux speaks of
the martyr: Enim vero non sentiet sua, dum illius (Christi) vulnera intuebitur. Stat

Erich Auerbach's "Passio as Passion"

293

martyr tripudians et triumphans, toto licet lacero corpore; et rimante lateraferro,

non modofortiter, sed et alacritersacrum e carnesua circumspicit ebullire cruorem.
Ubi ego tunc anima martyris? Nempe in tuto, nempe in petra [Truly the martyr
does not feel his ovn wounds as long as he contemplates Christ's. The martyr
stands exultant and triumphant, though his entire body be tomr; and though
the iron cleaves his sides, not only more bravely but also more cheerfully does
he see the sacred blood flowing from his body. Where therefore is the soul of
the martyr at that time? Surely in safety, surely in the rock], (the subject concems a commentary on Cant. 2, 17 [2, 14] columba mea inforaminibus petrae
[o my dove, in the clefts of the rock]), nempe in visceribusJesu, vulneribus nimirum patentibus ad introeundum.... Non hocfacit stupor, sed amor ... [surely in
the entrails of Jesus, his wounds open wide for view .. . It is not stupidity, but
love that does this].9 In the open wounds of Christ, wounds which ignite the
fire of love, the martyr finds refuge, so that he ecstatically triumphs over the
torments of his own body; to him the wounds are signs of Christ's love.
Amavit, inquam, amavit: habes enim delectionis pignus Spiritum, habes et testem
fidelemJesum, et hunc crucfixum [He has loved [you], I say, he has loved [you]:
for you have the [Holy] Spirit as an assurance that you have been chosen; you
also have as a reliable witness Jesus, the Crucified.] (Epist. cvii, 8, PL 182,
246). Cistercian mysticism, which had the greatest influence on similar movements in later centuries, evolves within the framework of commentaries on the
Song of Songs; mainly allegorical, but partly typological-figurative, a form of
interpretation which is still barely accessible to us, gives rise to a fulness and
sweetness of love hardly comprehensible to us today. Facile proinde plus diligunt qui se amplius dilectos intelligunt, says Bemard in his book De diligendo Deo
(iii, 7; PL 182, 978); cui autem minus donatum est, mius diligit. Judaeus sane,
sive paganus, nequaquam talibus aculeis incitatur qualis Ecclesia experitur, quae ait
Vulnerata caritateego sum, et rursum: Fulcite me floribus, statipe me malis, quia
amore langueo (Can. 2, 5) . . . Cernit Unicum Patris, crucem sibi bajulantem;
cernit caesum et consputum dominum majestatis; cernit auctorem vitae et gloriae
confixum clavis, perciussum lancea, opprobriis saturatum, tandem illam dilectam
animam suam ponere pro amicis. Cernit haec, et suam magis ipsius animam gladius
amoris transverberat, et dicit: Fulcite me floribus, statipe me malis, quia amore
langueo. Haec sunt quippe mala punica, quae in hortum introducta dilecti sponsa
carpit ex ligno vitae, a coelesti pane proprium mutuata saporem, colorem a sanguine Christi. Videt deinde mortem mortuam.... Advertit terram quae spinas et

tribulos sub antiquo maledicto produxerat, ad novae benedictionis gratiam innovatam refloruisse. Et in his omnibus, illius recordataversiculi- Et refloruit caro mea,
et ex voluntate mea confitebor ei (Ps. 27, 7) passionis rmalis, quae de arbore tulerat crucis, cupit vigere, et defloribus resurrectionis, quorum praesertimfragrantia
sponsum ad se crebrius revisendam invitet.... [They therefore love more easily

who understand that they are loved more. He to whom less is granted, loves

294

Martin Elsky

less. Indeed, the Jew or Pagan is by no means urged on by such pains as is

endured by the Church, which says, I am wounded by love, and at the same
time: Support me with flowers, pile up apples around me, for I languish with love
(Cant. 2,5).... [The Church] sees the only [Son] of the Father himself bearing
the cross as a burden; she sees the Lord of majesty beaten and spat on; she
sees the author of life and glory pierced by nails, struck with a lance, steeped
in reproaches, laying down his beloved soul for his friends. She sees all this,
and the sword of love pierces her soul all the more, and she says: Support me
withflowers, pile up apples around me, for I languish with love. These are indeed
the pomegranates which, when she is brought into the garden of the Beloved,
the Bride picks from the Tree of Life, their natural taste changed by the heavenly bread, their color by Christ's blood. Thereupon she sees the death of
death.. . . She tums to the earth which brought forth thorns and thistles under
the ancient curse, and which now blooms again with the restored grace of a
new blessing. And in the midst of all this, that verse is remembered: And my
flesh bloomed again, and of my own accordI shall acknowledge him (Ps. 27,7). She
wishes to add to the fruits of the Passion which she bore from the tree of the
cross and from the flowers of the Resurrection, whose special fragrance invites
the Bridegroom to revisit her more often.] Just as Christ was drunk from the
wine of love, ebrius vino charitatis, when he sacrificed himself (Sermo de diversis
xxix, PL 183, 620), so too is the soul that immerses itself in his passio and
resurrectio. Suavissimum mihi cervical, says a successor of Bernard,10 boneJesu,
sinea illa capitis tui corona; dulcis lectulus illud crucis tuae lignum. In hoc nascor et
nutritor, creor et recreor, et super passionis tuae altariamemoriae mihi nidum libenter recolloco [Good Jesus, that crown of thorns on your head is to me the
sweetest pillow; that wood of your cross a sweet bed. In this, I am born and
nursed, I am created and re-created, and on the altar of the memory of your
Passion I will gladly place a bowl again]. But the main point of departure of
the Cistercian Passion mysticism [Passionsmystik] is the verse Cant. 1, 12: Fasciculus myrrhae dilectus meus mihi, inter ubera mea commorabitur [A bundle of
myrrh is my Beloved to me; he shall dwell between my breasts]. With reference on the one hand to the drink of myrrh before the Crucifixion (Marc. 15,
23), and on the other to the story ofJoseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, who
took Jesus down from the cross and wrapped him in linen cloth with myrrh
and aloe, the fasciculus myrrhae came to be regarded as a prefiguration of the
crucified body, or the Passion, which, like myrrh, is bitter and healing; it
should rest perennially on the breast, and thus on the heart of the beloved;
that is, the Church, or the soul, should unceasingly meditate on the Passion. II
Accordingly, the grape clusters of Cyprus wine in the next verse (botrus Cypri
dilectus meus mihi . . . [a cluster of Cyprian grapes is my Beloved to me]), because of their sweetness which gives joy to the heart, are interpreted as the
resurrection. Bernard's commentary on these verses must have made a deep

Erich Auerbach's "Passio as Passion"

295

impression at the time (it contains a variant, since he construes only the drink
of myrrh as the Passion, but the embalming as the indestructibility of the
body), I have found Bemard's most important passage quoted by Bonaventure
and Suso: Et ego,fratres, ab ineunte mea conversione, pro acervo meritorum, quae
mihi deesse sciebam, hunc mihi fasciculum colligare et inter ubera mea collocare
curavi, collectum ex omnibus anxietatibus et amaritudinibusDomini mei.... Ubi
sane inter tot odoriferae myrrhae huius ramusculus minime preatermittendamputavi etiam illam myrrham qua in cruce potatus est; sed neque illam qua unctus est
in sepultura. Quarum in prima applicuit sibi meorum amaritudinem peccatorum;
in secundafuturum incorruptionem mei corporis dedicavit. Menoriam abundantiae
suavitatis horum eructabo, quoad vixero; in aeternum non obliviscar miserationes
istas, quia in ipsis vivicatus sum. [And I, brethren, from the beginning of my
conversion, to make up for the multitude of merits that I knew I lacked, took
care to bind for myself this bundle [of myrrh] and, collected from all the anguish and bittemess of my Lord, to place it between my breasts.... And there,
surely, among so many branches of fragrant myrrh, I thought that that myrrh
from which he was made to drink on the cross ought not at all to be passed
over, nor yet that with which he was anointed in the tomb. By the first he
applied to himself the bittemess of my sins; by the second he declared the
future incorruptibility of my body. I shall pour forth my words about the
memory of the abundant sweetness of these things as long as I live; I shall
never forget for all etemity that mercy, for in it I have been brought back to
life.] (In Cant. xliii, PL 183, 994).
From these citations, which are only samples, we may infer how closely
the meaning of "suffering" and "creative, ecstatic love passion" [Liebesleidenschaft] advanced toward each other. It would require a separate treatise to discuss each of the continually recurrent themes: ebrietas spiritus, suave vulnus
charitatis, gladius amoris, pax in Christi sanguine, surgere ad passionem, calix
quem bibisti, amabilis, etc. [drunkenness of the spirit, sweet wound of love,
sword of love, peace in the blood of Christ, rising up to suffering, the cup
which you drank, loving, etc.]. The inclination toward Passion mysticism became even stronger in the following centuries. In the classic mysticism, as it
were, of Bemard, the Passion almost always appears in connection with other
love themes, depending on the occasion and context, be it the earlier life of
Christ, be it the resurrection, be it, from the viewpoint of the testimony of
love, the workings of the Holy Spirit. The visual depiction as well as the physical representation of the stations of the cross and the ecstasy effected in those
who meditate on them always maintained a certain moderation.' 2 In the following epoch, not least because of the influence of the miracle of Francis of
Assisi's stigmata, a much stronger and more concrete prominence of the Passion and Passion mysticism appeared; its disseminators seem to have been the
Franciscans and the mendicant orders in general. There are few texts here at

296

Martin Elsky

my disposal, almost nothing besides the above quoted edition of the work of
Bonaventure; and the writings of the Franciscan-Spirituals are entirely inaccessible to me. Yet even in so moderate a personality as Bonaventure, the development is clearly recognizable, and the citations are so numerous and extensive
that I cannot present them here, but can only refer to the most important ones:
the Breviloquium pars iv caput ix: Diaetasalutis Tit. vii, cap vii; the Itinerarium
chapter 7 (De excessu mentali et mystico); the preface of the Lignum vitae; chapter 6 of the De perfectione vitae; the chapter de specialibus orationibus (II, 23) in
the apparently inauthentic work De perfectu religiosorum; the preface and the
sexta Feria of the Meditationes Vitae Christi; and the first pages of the Stimulus
Amoris of Bonaventure's student Jacob von Mailand. Undoubtedly, many more
have eluded me. 13 Everywhere the reader will encounter the strong elaboration
of passion and the inner proximity of the meaning of "suffering" and "passion"
[Leidenschaft], passio and fervor. Christus homo hunc (ignem charitatis) accendit
infervore suae ardentissimaepassionis-devotionisfervorperfrequentem passionis
Christi memnoriam nutritur-transfige, dulcissime Dominejesu, medulas animae
meae suavissimo ac saluberrimo vulnere amoris tui animam (AMariae) passionis
gladius pertransivit-inpassione et cruce Domini gloriari desidero-curre, curre,
DomineJesu, curre et me vulnera [Christ as man kindles this fire (fire of love)
with the heat of his most buming suffering-the heat of devotion is fed by the
frequent recollection of the suffering of Christ-pierce, most sweet LordJesus,
the inmost recess of my soul with the most sweet and most salutary wound of
your love just as the sword of the Passion penetrated the soul (of Mary)-I
long to be glorified in the Passion and the cross of the Lord-hurry, hurry,
Lord Jesus, hurry and wound me.] There are only some excerpted sentences,
and many related ones could not be so briefly quoted since they are only intelligible in context. Naturally, not only do crux, vulnera, gladius [cross, wounds,
sword], etc., often stand for passio, but they were also among the countless
images which allegorical or figural Biblical interpretation placed into the hand
of the medieval theologian, and ardor, ebrietas, dulcedo, suavitas, excessus [heat,
drunkeness, sweetness, delight, excess] etc., often signifyfervor. I would like
to give one more example of the imagistic language that emerges of Biblical
interpretation, from chapter 6 de perfectione viale ad soreres; Bonaventure, addressing a nun, paraphrases Is. xii, 3: (Haurietis aquas in gaudio defontibus salvatoris): Quicumque desiderat aquas gratiarum, aquas lachrymarum, iste hauriat
defontibus Salvatoris, id est de vulneribusJesus Christi. Accede ergo tu, ofamula,
pedibus affectionum tuarum adJesum vulneratum, ad Jesum spinis coronatum, ad
Jesum patibulo crucis affixum, et cum beato Thoma apostolo non solum intuere in
manibus eiusfiguras clarovum, non solum mitte manum tuam in latus eius, sed totaliter per ostium laterus eius ingredere usque ad cor ipsius Jesu; ubique ardentissimo amore crucifixi in Christum transformata, clavis divini timoris affixa, lancea

Erich Auerbach's "Passioas Passion"

297

praecordialisdilectionis transfixa, gladio intimae compassionis transverberata, nihil

aliud quaeras, nihil aliud desideres, et nullo alio velis consolari, quam ut cum
Christo tu possis mori in cruce; et tunc cum Apostolo Paulo (Gal. 2, 19/20) exclames, dicens: Christo confixus sum cruci; vivo iam non ego, vivit vero in me
Christus. [(You will draw water in joy from the springs of the Savior): Whoever
longs for the waters of grace, the water of tears, let him draw it from the
springs of the Savior, that is, from the wounds of Jesus Christ. Walk therefore
with affection to the wounded Jesus, o maidservant, to Jesus crowned with
thoms, to Jesus nailed to the yoke of the cross, and with the blessed Thomas
the Apostle, do not only contemplate the marks of the nails in his hands, do
not only place your hand in his side, but completely enter into the door of his
side all the way to the very heart of Jesus himself; and there transformed in
Christ by the most buming love of the Crucified, nailed by the nails of divine
veneration, penetrated by the lance of heartfelt love, pierced with the sword
of intimate mercy, you may seek nothing else, you may long for nothing else,
you may wish to be comforted by nothing else than [the thought] that you
may be able to die with Christ on the cross; and then with the Apostle Paul
(Gal. 2:19/20) you may exclaim, saying: with Christ I am nailed to the cross;
no longer do I live, but Christ lives in me.]'4
It is not only the coming together of "suffering" and "passion" [Leidenschaft], of passio andfervor, which appears significant to us in these mystical
texts, but even more important is the striving for both, desiderium et gloriapassionis [the longing for, and glory of suffering]. 5 In stark contrast to all ancient,
especially Stoic concepts, passio is praised and longed for; the life and stigmatization of St. Francis of Assisi concretely realize the union of passion [Leidenschaft] and suffering, the mystical leap of one to the other. The passion of love
leads through suffering to an excessus mentis and to union with Christ; whoever is without passio is without grace: whoever does not give himself over to
the passio of the Savior lives in hardness of heart, obduratio cordis, and one
finds in the mystical tracts much instruction about how to overcome this condition. Yet, Lerch's criterion, the activeness of passio, in many respects important and decisive, should not be imprudently exaggerated. The soul is in a
dynamic-potential state more than it is truly active; it is receptive and longing
rather than actually active; it is decidedly bride-like. Whatever tempestuous
rapture, whatever buming surrender the soul may reach on its own, it is always overwhelmed by the force of Christ or Grace from which the activity
originates. The love wounds, thefervor spiritus, the unio passionatus, are a gift
of grace; one may very well prepare to receive it, one can wish it for oneself
and pray for it; indeed such powerful longing can thereby force its own fulfillment into being, just as Jacob prevailed over the angel. But then grace was
already in the supplicant:

298

Martin7 Elsky
Regnum coelorum violenza pate
De caldo amore eda viva speranza
Che vince la divina volontate;
Non a giusa che l'uom all'uom sobranza,
Ma vince lei perche vuol esser vinta,
E vinta vince con sua beninanza. (Dante, Par. 20, 94ff.)
[The Kingdom of Heaven suffers the violent force of hot love and
living hope, which conquers the Divine Will, not as man conquers
man, but love conquers the Divine Will because it wants to be
conquered, and once conquered, it conquers with its own kindness.]

And in this sense the passiones are and remain something that the soul suffers
and by which it is afflicted. In this sense the root meaning and the Aristotelian
tradition remain preserved. The novelty and, as it were, the active quality of
the Christian concept subsists in the spontaneity and creative force of love kindled by passio (even this is fundamentally Aristotelian); but it always originates
from the heights or depths of superhuman forces and is received and suffered
as a magnificent or terrifying gift.
Similarly, the viewpoint of the "positive evaluation" of passio in the mystical ecstacy of love requires careful qualification. All Christian thought, especially all mystical concepts, move within the polarity of opposites. Love of God
is also tormenting love, even when it is answered; for God is too strong for the
soul. If He took it to heart, "it [the soull would perish from His stronger
being"; the soul would die a Liebestod in real torment and real rapture at the
same time. As an illustration, I want to quote some verses from Jacopone da
Todi, from the Cantico dell'amorsuperardente:
Amor di caritate,
Perche m'hai si ferito?
Lo cor tutto partito,
Et che arde per amore?
Arde et incende, e nullo trova loco;
Non puo fugir perb ched e ligato;
Si si consuma come cera a foco;
Vivendo mor, languisce stemperato:
Dimanda di poter fugir un poco,
et in fomace trovasi locato.
Oime do 'son menato
A si forte languire?
Vivendo si e morire,
Tanto monta l'ardore.
Nante che lo il provassi dimandava

Erich Auerbach's "Passio as Passion"

299

AmarJesu, credendo cio dolzura.

E'n pace di dolcezza star pensava,
Fuor d'ogni pena possedendo altura:
Provo tormento qual io non stimava,
Chel cor si mi fendesse per calura.
Non posso dar figura,
Di che veggio sembianza;
Che moio in delettanza,
e vivo senza core.
[Love of Divine Love, why have you hurt me? My heart is completely
torn and burns with love? Bums and is on fire, and does not find a
place [to rest]; it cannot escape because it is bound; it is consumed
so, like wax by fire; living it dies, pining away it languishes: it asks to
be able to escape for a short time, so much the fervor grows. Before I
had experienced it, I asked to love Jesus, believing that it would be
sweet. And I thought I would be in a sweet peace, occupying the
heights out of reach of any pain. Instead, I feel an agony that I did
not believe possible, as if my heart burns from the heat. I cannot give
a face to what I seem to see, since I die in pleasure and live without
my heart.]
Now all these themes are found, as we know, in profane love poetry,
sometimes so strongly that one may actually doubt whether one is dealing
with secular poetry. To be without love is to be unworthy of a noble heart;
love is the path to all virtue and insight; and yet love is just as much rapture
as torment; suffering and passion [Leidenschaft] are one; the lover suffers not
only because of longing, but also because the closeness of the beloved, her
greeting and her words, convulse him to such a degree that he feels he will
perish. These are all well known themes of love poetry, which, even if gradually secularized and often made shallow, can be traced from the Provencal
through Dante and Petrarch till well into the modem era, vigorously and spontaneously reawakened wherever there was a strong mystical movement. The
imagistic language of mysticism, the images of burning, wounding, piercing,
of intoxication, imprisonment, martyrdom, etc., although they are often of
older origin, are found wherever there is a specifically mystical tone; Fra Francisco Tresatti da Lugano, who provided me with the early seventeenth-century
edition ofJacopone which lies before me, can everywhere cite passages in later
secular poets (Petrarch, Bembo, etc.) that parallel verses in his author.
I believe, and the reader will have already inferred my thoughts from what
I have said, that Passion mysticism, with its correlation between Passio and

300

Martin Elsky

ecstasy also influenced the development of passio-Leidenschaft; Passion mysticism made passio more receptive to the modem meaning of "passion" [Leidenschaft], and in this regard gave an advantage over the competing expression,
affectus. What in particular, in my opinion, "passion" [passion-Leidenschaft]
drew from Passion mysticism is the deepening of the meaning of "suffering"
in a double, dialectical sense, in that it can mean delight and rapture at the
same time. It is what Eckhart (see note 9 above) calls "inhitzige minne" [ardent
love]. This influence is indeed incontestable for this meaning of the word; it is
formed in close accord with the mysticism of the polar-dialectical meaning of
"passion" [Leidenschaft] even in profane love poetry, which describes its experiences as martiri, tormenti, dolcifurori [martyrdom, torments, sweet madness],
etc. Nevertheless, the impact on the secular use of the word passio itself was at
first very weak. To be sure, in the canzone E'm 'incresce di me si duramente [And
it pains me so deeply], Dante characterizes his experience on the day his Lady
appears in his world, an experience he relates unmistakably to the rapture of
Acts 9, as a passion nuova,16 which leads to a mystical Liebestod; to be sure, at
the beginning of his Convivio, he describes the mystical work of his youth, the
Vita Nouva, using the well known expressionfervida e passionata, taken from
the mystical texts; to be sure, it may well be concluded from one of his Latin
letters (Exulti Pistoriensi, p. 417), that passio, at least in the colloquial speech
of certain circles, was commonly used to mean erotic passion [Liebesleidenschaft], and finally, Boccaccio too uses passione and passionato for the suffering
and passion of love, and occasionally he speaks of the piacevolissimapassione
d'amore (suavissima passio amoris) [the most pleasing suffering of love]-but
with these instances our examples from the Trecento and Quatrocento are exhausted. " In the overwhelming majority of cases, Dante himself uses passio in
the Aristotelian sense, in contrast to actio, and occasionally with a Stoic undertone, in contrast to ratio; and the same is true of the rest of the philosophical
authors of the late middle ages; for them passio means suffering (without its
secondary dialectical meaning), feeling [Geftihll, experience [Erfahrung], and
sometimes passion [Leidenschaft] in the purely pejorative Stoic sense; the Aristotelian element prevails by far, the Stoic sense is weak, and the mystical sense
is absent. Passiowas at the time a technical word smacking of the Schools, and
precisely for that reason love poetry avoided it altogether; even Jacopone always speaks of croce, never passione. Dante, whose concept of the high style
incorporated the philosophy of the Schools, had no lasting influence, since directly after him an early anti-scholastic, humanistic current got the upper
hand; Petrarch, who uses very many images of mystical origin, never uses passio. In the high style and with the meaning of passion [Leidenschaft] in the
modem sense, this word was accepted only when the influence of the Aristotelian Scholastic tradition receded. Less tied to the Scholastic tradition was passionatus, but at the time even this word meant "passionate" [leidenschaftlich] in

Erich Auerbach's "Passio as Passion"

301

the pejorative Stoic sense-but with a new variation to boot: "biased in favor
of." This is how it was already used by Dante, who even uses passionare(Mon.
i, 11): bene repellentur, qui iudicem passionare conantur [those who attempt to
prejudice a judge should be banished]. Other passages can be found in a report about the College of Cardinals at Pisa (1409), which Ducange cites (consilium . .. fuit ex personis ... passionatis contra iustitiam.. . Suae Sanctitatis [the
council ... was made up of persons ... biased against the justice of His Holiness]), in the Imitation of Christ and in several Italian texts which were cited
by Tommaseo-Bellini. 18
In the sixteenth century, when the power of the Thomist-Aristotelian
schools receded, and when Stoic as well as renewed mystical currents made
an impact on literature, passio began to establish itself as "passion" [Leidenschaft] in the modem sense, and indeed this occurred in the way amorous suffering and passion [Liebesleiden und-leidenschaft] were described above. Yet it
was still a long time before this meaning was unequivocally and exclusively
secured. Passio-Leidenschaft, nourished by mystical and stoic sources, had to
wage a battle on two fronts, as it were: against its own Aristotelian meaning
(as experience [Erfahrung], feeling [Gefuihll, or completely passionless [leidenschaftsfreies] suffering) and against competition from affectus, affectio. The various Aristotelian nuances are still found for example in Montaigne,'9 Th. de
Beze,20 Gamier, 2 1Lecoq; 22 moreover, they still had aftereffects in the Scholastic
psychological systems of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Italian
and French equivalents of affectus are found in competition with passiopassion [passio-Leidenschaft]in the Italian love treatises; and in two so different
writers as Alexandre Hardy and Honore d'Urfe, I have come across feux,
flammes, blessures [fires, flames, wounds], above all affections, but, so far as I
know their work, never passion. On the other hand, passio as passion [Leidenschaft], especially erotic passion, is found in Italy since about Boiardo 23 and
Lorenzo de'Medici 24 (however, I remember no instance in Ariosto or Tasso),
and in France mainly in Marguerite de Navarre.25 Alongside passion, she also
uses affection, feux, flammes. Almost everywhere it appears, passion also suggests the concept of suffering; at times it even carries the trace of a critical ring,
but everywhere it means without a doubt "erotic passion" [Liebesleidenschaft],
and any reproach often falls into the realm of the forgotten; sympathy and admiration for the grand agitations of the heart are intermingled. From then on,
passion in this sense never again disappears, 26 while the older meanings of the
word are gradually lost. In seventeenth-century France, the word steps out of
the technical scholarly sphere into the sphere of the cultured and the literary;
at this point it unequivocally and exclusively signifies "passion" [Leidenschaft]
in the modern sense, for the most part erotic passion [Liebesleidenschaftlthough side by side with a passionate [leidenschaftlichl and power-seeking selflove and self-assertion identified as ambition and later, more characteristically,

302

Martilt Elsky

as gloire. Of course, Cartesian psychology, which at least in its terminology still

depends on Aristotelian Scholasticism, identifies all emotional states, including feelings [Gefuihlel and sensations [Empfindungen], as passions; but, despite
Descartes's considerable impact on cultured society, his use of the word was
received as technical language and remained without any influence whatever
on common usage; neither self-satisfaction, cowardice, or a tendency to sarcasm, nor even illness, hunger, cold were spontaneously characterized as passion at that time. Passion and soufffrance, passion and sentiment go their separate
ways; while Th. de Beze still said, retirez-vous, humains passions [stay down,
my human passions] (see note 20), one finds ettoufant tout sentiment humain
[stifling human sentiment] in Racine (Iph. 4, 6). In fact, the eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century 27 distinction between passion and sentiment was in essence
already made; there is no clear borderline between them, since some feelings
[Gefuhlel, as soon as they become very intense, become desire and thereby
passions [Leidenschaften]. Yet already in the verse of Corneille-J'ai tendresse
pour toi, j'ai passion pour elle [I have tendemess for you, I have passion for her]
(Nicomede 4, 3)-which still sounds a little strange to our ears, there lies a
clear intensification of the word: passion should express an intense, passionate
[leidesnschaftlichl feeling [Geffihl] of love, in contrast to the natural fatherly
feelings [Empfindenl unrelated to desire. Later, one not seldom finds an explicit
separation of passion from sentiment, for example in St. Evremond's wellknown criticism of Andromaque. 2 8 The relationship of passion [Leidesnschaft]
to Lerch's criterion, the quality of being active, was expressed by Pascal in a
way which is entirely traditional and yet corresponds to feeling [Empfindenl as
we think of it today: L'homme est ne pour penser; aussi n'est-il pas un moment
sans lefaire; mais les pensees pures, qui le rendraient heureux s'il pouvait toujours
les soutenir, lefatiguent et l'abattent. C'est une vie unie &laquelle il ne peut s'accommoder; il luifaut du remuement et de l'action, c'est-a-dire qu'il est necessaire qu'il
soit quelquefois agite des passions, dont il sent dans son coeur des sources si vives et
si profondes.29 [Man was bom to think: and there is not a moment when he is
not doing it; but pure ideas, which would make him happy if he could always
hold on to them, tire him, wear him down. It is a consistent life to which he
cannot accommodate himself; he needs movement and action; in other words
he sometimes needs to be moved by the passions, whose powerful and profound source he feels in his heart.]
The passions in seventeenth-century France are the great human desires,
and what is particular about them is the clear inclination to regard them as
tragic, heroic, sublime and worthy of admiration. At the beginning of the century, the pejorative Stoic judgment is still sounded quite frequently, yet it soon
changes into a dialectic combination in which the terrible and the noble unite
in the sublime. That is already to be sensed in Comeille and Pascal, perhaps
already in Descartes, and it reaches its high point in the tragedy of Racine,

Erich Auerbach's "Passio as Passion"

303

whose goal it is to excite and glorify the passions [Leidenschaften]. He speaks

of les belles passions and les passions genereuses, and critics judged a tragedy according to the authenticity, depth, and beauty of the passions it represents; for
the sensitive spectator, the torment and rapture of passion [Leidenschaft] become the highest form of life. Ce n'est point une necessite, says Racine in the
preface to Berenice, qui'il y ait du sang et des morts dans une tragedie:il suffit que
l'action en soit grande, que les acteurs en soient heroiques, que les passionsy soient
excites, et que tout s'y ressente de cette tristesse magesteuse quifait tout le plaisir
de la tragedie. [It is not necessary that there be blood and death in a tragedy:
it is enough that the action have grandeur, that the actors be heroic, that the
passions be aroused, and that all feel that majestic sadness which creates the
entire pleasure of tragedy.] A combination of timidity, cant, incipient understanding and inchoate remorse led him later, in the preface to Phedre, to express himself completely differently; but he is manifestly sophistic when he
says there: les passions n'y sont presentees que pour montrer tout le desordre dont
elles sont cause [the passions are presented only to show all the disorder of
which they are the cause]; for the listeners admired, even envied Phedre despite all the horror evoked by her fate. The exaltation of the passions [Leidenschaften] is no longer the target of a Stoic polemic, but is instead the target of
an ecclesiastical polemic (Nicole, Bossuet), which now recognized the situation far more clearly than the majority of other critics. This polemic recognized
that the most real, the most sublime, and therefore, from its viewpoint, the
most dangerous passions [Leidenschaften] were amourand ambition. Pascal calls
it ambition, later writers, using an extremely significant term for the epoch,
called it gloire. Dites-moi, says Bossuet,3 0 que veut un Correille dans son Cid,
sinon qu'on aime Chimene, qu'on l'adoreavec Rodrigue, qu'on tremble avec lui lorsqu'il est dans la crainte de la perdre, et qu'avec lui on s'estime heureux lorsqu'il
espere de la posseder? Le premier principe sur lequel agissent les poetes tragiques et
comiques, c'est qu'ilfait interesser le spectateur; est si l'auteur d'une tragedie ne le
sait pas emouvoir et le transporterde la passion qu'il veux exprimer, oft tombe-t-il,
si ne dans lefroid, dans le ennuyeux, dans le ridicule . . . ?Ainsi, tout le dessin d'un
poate, toute la fin de son travail, c'est qu'on soit, comme ses heros, epris de belles
personnes, qu'on les serve comme des divinites; en un mot qu'on leur sacrifie tout,
si ne c'est peut-etre la gloire, dont l'amour est plus dangereux que celui de la beaute
meme.... On se voit soit-meme dans ceux qui nous paraissentcomme transportes
par de semblables objets: on devient bientot un acteur secret dans la tragedie; on y
joue sa propre passion; et lafiction au dehors estfroide et sans agrement si elle ne
trouve au dedans une verite qui lui reponde. [Tell me, what does a Comeille want
but to make us love Chimene, to make us adore her with Rodrigue, to make
us tremble with him when he fears losing her, and to make us rejoice with him
when he dares hope he will make her his own. The first principle upon which
tragic and comic poets act is the engagement of the spectator's interest, and if

304

Martin Elsky

the author of, or actor in a tragedy does not know how to move or transport
the spectator through the passion he wants to express, where will he fall but
into coldness, boredom, and ridicule . . . ? Hence the poet's entire design, the
entire purpose of his efforts is to make us, like his heroes, fall in love with his
beautiful characters, and serve them as if they were gods; in a word, to make
us sacrifice everything for them, if perhaps only for the glory the love of which
is more dangerous than that of beauty itself. ... We see ourselves in those who
appear to us to be transported by the same objects that move us: we soon become secret actors in the tragedy; we act out our own passion; and the extemal
fiction is cold and unattractive if it does not find an inner truth to which it
corresponds.J For the spiritual sensibility, the concept of the passions [Leidenschaften] in the tragedy of the seventeenth century was a dangerous enemy;
passion [Leidenschaft] was not just the ordinary "disorder" which the earthly life
always entails, but was itself a kind of religion, a presumed elevation of human
existence, which appeared worthy of aspiration, and by which one demonstrated greatness and nobility of heart. I have dealt with this issue before;"' and
I say nothing entirely new when I find that the sublime idea of the passions in
its double, dialectic meaning represents a secularized anti-Christian tum of Passion mysticism, for this thought is frequently reflected in the modem critique
of Racine, even if it lacks an explicit historical grounding. It should also provide
the key for a comparison of Racine to his ancient prototypes.
But in any case, the modem meaning of passion [Leidenschaft] is already
completely realized in the seventeenth century not only in visual circumlocutions likefeu andflamme, but also in the word passion. I even doubt whether
Lerch's emphasis on the eighteenth-century development of the meaning of
"feeling" [GeffhlI contributed much to a clearer distinction between feeling
[Gefiihl] and passion [Leidenschaft]; that distinction, at least in general, holds
true only in scientific psychology. There were also currents, from pietism to
romanticism, which allowed the feelings [Gefuhle] to grow to such an extent
that they again approached the passions [Leidenschaften] and ultimately differed from them only by their blurred and vague object of desire. Senancour
once calls it passion universelle. In the fourth book of Obermann, after a night of
melancholic meditation at the lake of Neuchatel, he writes: Indicible sensibilite,
charrne et tourment de nos vaines annees; vaste conscience d'une nature partout
accablante et partout impenetrable, passion universelle, sagesse avancee, voluptueux abandon; tout ce qu 'un coeur mortel peut contenir de besoins et d'ennui profonds, j'ai tout senti, tout eprouve dans cette nuit memorable. J'aifaitun pas sinistre
vers l'dge d'affaiblissement;j'aidevore dix annees de ma vie. Heureux l'homme simple dont le coeur est toujoursjeune. [Inexpressible sensation, enchantment and
torment of our wasted years; vast consciousness of a nature everywhere overwhelming and everywhere impenetrable, universal passion, highest wisdom,
sensual abandon; every desire and profound boredom that a mortal heart can

Erich Auerbach's "Passio as Passion"

305

contain, I felt it all, experienced it all on that memorable night. I took a catastrophic step toward the age of enfeeblement. I devoured ten years of my life.
Happy the simple man, whose heart is always young.]
P.S. To the objections which Lerch, p. 336ff., raised conceming details in
my "Remarques sur le mot passion" ["Remarks on the Word Passion"] (Neuphil. Mitt. XXXVIII, 218), I would like to make the following comments:
1. Conceming the survival of passio in vulgar Latin, I believe just as he does,
namely, that it survived as a leamed and ecclesiastical word, with the meaning
of illness, as in Christ's suffering. I too have written that, and have attached
far greater importance to the ecclesiastical usage. Godefroy, moreover, cites
popular forms as well. 2. I stand by my explanation of the disappearance of
passion as "illness" in the seventeenth century as the secondary meaning of a
word henceforth received into the formal language of the cultured. Lerch apparently misunderstood me. I did not assert that "suffering" had to make way
for "passion" [Leidenschaft], but that inferior, physical illness had to give way
to the sublime movements of the soul. His own explanation that passio-illness
must have given way as a specialized word does not contradict mine, but complements it. 3. In contrast, Lerch is correct, contra Furetiere and myself, when
he sees a reminder of Christ's Passion in the expression souffrir mort et passion.
It appears already in crusader songs, as in the song Chevaliermult estes guariz,
in Bedier-Aubry, Les Chansons de croisade, Paris, 1909, and in Provencal by
Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, in Bartsch's Chrestomathie, 6th ed., 139, 10.
Martin Elsky, translation
The Graduate Center and Brooklyn College, CUNY
Notes
*1would like to thank Gerhard Sharon, John Collins, Monica Callibritto, Ottavio di
Camillo, and Jacob Steme for their help. My special thanks to Julia Hirsch.
1. Cf. Liddell-Scott, A Greek-English Lexikon: A New Edition, by Henry Stuart Jones
(Oxford). See also specialized dictionaries, especially the Aristotle-Index by Bonitz.
2. Thucydides VI, 59, 1, has erotike lype. Cf. Bultmann in Theologisches Worterbuch
zum Neuen Testament under [ad. v.] lype, where parallel problems to the pathosquestion are treated.
3. Instructive in this context is a passage in Boethius, De Cons. Phil., 5, 4: Praecedit
(that is the perceiving activity of the spirit) tamen excitans I Ac vires animi movens /
Vivo in corpore passio [Suffering excels, nevertheless, in rousing and stirring the
powers of the soul in the living body]. We are not really dealing here with psychology, but with epistemology, and passio signifies "sense perception." But it is excitans and movens. The excerpt contains a defense of the Aristotelian doctrine of the
spontaneous cognitive power of the soul against the Stoic theory that the soul is
only a [passive] receptor (the theory of the tabula rasa upon which sense impressions leave their inscriptions like a stylus). An example of the development of the
above mentioned Aristotelian relationships between the agential to the suffering

306

4.
5.

6.

7.

8.

Martin Elsky

can be found in Dante's Convivio, III, 10, beginning Dov'e da sapere, etc. Cf. the
explanation in Businelli and Vandelli's edition (Florence 1934), 1,376. But Stoic,
even already mystical motifs are indeed suggested here in Dante.
De nuptiis et conscupisc., 2, 33; it is not certain that nisi is in the text, but the sense
demands it.
This is already the case in the Roman Vulgate, l, 26; Romans 7, 5: Thess. 1, 4, 5;
see also Z. B. Cassian, De Coen. inst., V, 2,: Coll., V, 19 and 20; a Provencal text
translates peccata in the Liber scintillarum as passios; cf. Bartsch, Chrestomathie
provencale, 61' ed., p. 58 and PL, 88, 600.
L. Spitzer has made me aware of the following passages in Malebranche, Entretiens
XI, XIV: Je croix de plus que Dieu afigure, meme par les dispositions du corps, celles
de I'ame sainte deJesu, et principalement l'excrs de son amourpour son Eglise; car saint
Paul (Eph., 5, v. 25-33) nous apprend que cette passion violente de l'amour, quifait
qu'on quitte avec joie son pere et sa mere pour sa femme, est une figure de L'exces de
l'amour de Jesu-Christ pour son epouse... [I believe, moreover, that God represented the sacred soul of Jesus even through the state of his body, and especially
the surfeit of his love for the Church; for Saint Paul teaches us that the violent passion of love, which makes us joyfully leave our father and mother for our wife, is a
figure of the surfeit of love that Jesus Christ feels for his spouse.... 1
Jesus was impassibilis before his Incamation. See Bernard of Clairvaux (Tract. de
grad. humil., 111, 9, PL, 182, 946): Beatus quippe Deus, beatus Deifilius, in eaforma
qua non rapinam arbitratusest esse se aqualem Patri, procul dubio impassibilis, priusquam se exinanissetformamservi accipiens (Phil., 2, 6-7), sicut miseriam vel subjectionem expertus non erat, sic misericordiam et obedientiam non noverat experimento.
Sciebat quidem per naturam, non autem sciebat per experientiam. At ubi minoratus est
non solum a se ipso, sed etiam paulo minus ab angelis, qui et ipsi impassibiles sunt per
gratiam, non per naturam, usque ad illam formam, in qua pati et subjici posset....
[Certainly, blessed God, the blessed Son of God, in that form which is not considered to be theft to be equal to the Father, without doubt immune to suffering before he emptied himself to take on the form of a servant (Phil., 2, 6-7). Just as he
felt no affliction or subjection, so too he did not know pity or obedience through
experience. Indeed, he knew that by nature, not by experience. And where he was
reduced not only from himself, but also a little less from the angels, who are themselves immune to suffering through grace not nature, all the way down to that
form in which he could suffer and be subjected.] After the resurrection, He was
again impassibilis. Cf. Bonaventure, Breviloquium, IV, 10 (Opera omnia cura et studio A. C. Peltier, Aug. Tur., VII, 294): Christi corpus . . . primo fuerat passibile et
mortale, postea autem impassibile et immortale. [Christ's body was first mortal and
capable of suffering, but afterwards immortal and not capable of suffering.] For the
impassibilitasof God, cf. Isidor., VII, 1, 24, discussed by Spitzer in a note rich in
content in Romania, LXV, 123f. Passibilis in this sense is also occasionally rendered
with sensibilis; they appear almost as synonyms in the Stimulus Amoris (ob. gen.
Bonaventura-Ausgabe, XII) p. 636-637. Cf. Roman d'Eneas, 2883: Sire . . ge voil
saveir, se ce puet estre ... veir que cil .. - aientformne corporel, passibleseient et mortel.
In contrast, see Dante, Inf., 2, 151:1 sensibilmente.
Of course not a passio, for God is, as noted above, impassibilis. A love dialogue of
the Renaissance, 11Raverta di G. Betussi, in the Trattati d'amore del Cinquecento, ed.
Zonta (Bari, 1912), explains, loc.ciL [a.a.O.], P. 39: .. . Quello affetto suo voluntario
non e suggetto a passione, come il nostro, non essendo in lui difetto d'alcuna cosa. [That

Erich Auerbach's "Passio as Passion"

9.

10.
11.
12.

13.

14.

307

love of his, by his own will, is not subject to passion, as our love is, since there is
no defect of any kind in him.l On this problem, see Thomas Aq. S. Th. Ia, xx, 1.
Cf. Eckhart, Sermon CVII, ed. v. Pfeifer, 3 ed. (G6ttingen 1914): Ez wundert vil
menschen, wie doie lieben heiligen in sa grazer suiezikeit sa grOz liden getragen
haben. Wer des wunders wil ledic werden, der erfulle daz die heiligen mit gr6zem
flize erfullet hant unde hant Jesu KristO mit inhitziger minne nach gevolget.
Gilbert von Hoyland, PL, 184, 21, on Cant. 3, 1.
For this tradition, cf. perhaps Beda on Cant. Cant. alleg. expos., 2, 4; PL, 91, 1097.
Lerch cites as an especially effective example of the radical tum to the active in the
meaning of passio in the modem period some texts of the eighteenth century (Bonnet, Wieland, Choderlos de Laclos), which speak of "active passions" [Leidenschaften], passions actives. In Les liaisons dangereuses, Valmont commends the passions as
the only path to happiness. However, Bemard of Clairvaux already says ofJesus in
a sermon about the Passion (in Feria quarta Hebdomadae Sanctae, 11, PL, 183,
268): Et in vita passivam habuit actionem, et in morte passione activam sustinuit, dum
salutem operareturin medio terrae. [And in life he took passive action, and in death
he endured active suffering, provided that he might bring about salvation on
earth.]
In the Ottimo Commento, I find on Par., 11, 118, in the framework of a biography
of Saint Francis the following sentence: Da quella ora (since Christ himself had appeared to him in San Damiano) innanzi l'anima suafu tutta liquefatta, e la passione
del Crucifisso nel suo cuorefu mirabilmentefitta ffrom that moment, his soul completely melted, and the suffering of the Crucifixion was miraculously fixed in his
heart].
Whoever knows the tendency to antithetical paradoxes in European love poetry
from the Provencal through Petrarch and the Renaissance (typical examples
[Typus]: Pace non trovo, e non ho dafar guerra [I find no peace, and I have nothing
with which to make warl) will hardly be able to escape the impression when reading medieval mystical texts that the great paradoxes of the Passion created the fertile soil in which such forms could grow. The following text is to be sure relatively
late (it is from the Stimulus Amoris, written in the second half of the thirteenth century, thus just about contemporary with the rise of the Stil Nuovo), but already
since the beginning of the twelfth century similar motives can be found: Si ergo,
anima, carnem diligis, nullam carnem nisi carnem Christi ames. Haec enim pro tua et
totius humani generis salute et super aram crucis oblata, cuius passionem in corde rumines quotidie. Huius enim passionis Christi meditatio continua mentem elevabit.... 0
passio desiderabilis! 0 mors admirabilis! Quid mirabilius quam quod mors vivificet,
vulnera sanent, sanguis albumfaciat, et mundet intima, nimius dolor nimium dulcorem
inducat, apertio lateris cor cordi coniungat?Sed adhuc mirari non ceses, quia sol obscuratusplus solito illuminat, ignis extinctus magis inflammat, passio ignominiosaglorificat.
Sed vere mirabile est, quod Christus in croce sitiens inebriat, nudus existens virtutem
vestimentis ornat, sed et eius manus ligno conclavatae nos solvunt, pedes confossi nos
currerefaciunt, etc. [If therefore, my soul, you love the flesh, may you love no flesh
but the flesh of Christ. For lifted up on the altar of the cross, this flesh, whose
suffering you should contemplate daily in your heart, is for you and for the salvation of the entire human race. For uninterrupted meditation on Christ's suffering
will elevate the mind.... 0 suffering to be wished for! 0 marvelous death! What
can be more wondrous than that death may restore life, that wounds may heal,
that blood may make you white, and cleanse your inner being, that great pain

308

15.

16.

17.
18.

19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.

27.

28.
29.

30.
31.

Martin Elsky

brings great sweetness, that an opened side may join heart to heart? But may you
not cease to look with wonder that a darkened sun shines more than usual, that
an extinguished fire has greater flames, that inglorious suffering glorifies. But it is
truly marvelous that Christ thirsting on the cross makes one drunk; that being
naked, he adoms virtue with garments; and indeed his hands nailed to the tree
unbind us, his pierced feet make us run.l The passage is already almost excessively
artistic.
See also Chapter 14 of Suso's Horologium sapientiae (I am using the edition of
J. Strange, rev. ed., Cologne 1861). For an understanding of this passage, one must
take into account that the rose is a symbol of heavenly joy. Cf. M. Gorce 0. P., Le
Roman de la Rose, Paris, 1933, 29-36. The Passion mysticism of German women
mystics like Mechthild von Magdeburg and Margaretha Ebner is highly developed.
One must take care here, as in Dante generally, conceming the meaning of novo
(which depends on passages in Ezechiel and Paul). E. Eberwein has made me
aware of this.
The Catalan texts, which Spitzer quotes (Romania, LXV, 124), are not available to me.
The meaning "biased preference" later became an epistolary flourish. Guez de Balzac and Descartes conclude their letters with que je suis passionnement or avec une
tres ardente passion-votretres humble, etc. This corresponds to our "vorzuiglichen"
Hochachtung [respectfully yours] or the "partiality" with which a tradesman assures
us he is dedicated to our service. In 1724, Prince Eugen concludes a letter to Vico
with the words: e sono parzialite, etc. Vico, L'Autobiografia., etc. (Bari 1929), 180.
See vol. 5 of Lexique de la langue des Essais, Edition Municipale (Bordeaux 1933).
Darmesteter-Hatzfield, Morceaux choisi . . . du XVIe siecle, 315.
Ibid., 342 and 349.
Ibid., 327.
For example. Orlando inam., I, Il, 19, and 1, XII, 49.
For example, his portrayal of the origins of Italian love poetry, in d'Ancona and
Bacci, Manuale della letL ital., II, 85ff.
L'Heptameron des nouvelles, passim.
Cf. for example, Monchrestien, in Dannesteter-Hatzfield, 359. and Regnier, ibid.,
291. In addition, according to Spitzer, loc. cit., also Mairet in Sophonisbe. In Grimmelshausen, Simpl. Simpl., 3, 19, one finds the sentence: '. . . wann der Herrnicht
selbsten wasste wie einem Buhler ums Herz ist, so hatte er dieses Weibes Passiones nicht
so wohl ausfahren oder vor Augen stellen konnen" [if one did not himself know how
the heart of a lover feels, he would not be able to represent and show so well the
passions of this woman].
As soon as this was consciously theorized, the old Aristotelean nomenclature for
passion reappears very easily for all movements of the emotions. That can be determined not only in the eighteenth century (cf. the cited texts in Lerch, 334, from
the Encyclopedie and from Rousseau), but also sometimes still in the nineteenth.
Oeuvres melees, Amsterdam 1706, II, 320. Cf. also 1, 65 and passim.
Pensees et opuscules, ed. Brunscwicg, 123 (Discourssur les passions del'amour). One
notices that here all inner processes except the passions [Leidenschaften] belong to
pensees, even the sentiments; cf. Brunscwicg's note.
Maximes et niflexions sur la comedie, IV.
"Racine und die Leideschaften" ["Racine and the Passions"], Germanischromanische Monatsschrift 1926: Dasfranzosiche Publikum des 17. Jahrhunderts(Munich, 1933), 47ff.

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

TITLE: Erich Auerbach, "Passio as passio" <"Passio als

Leidenschaft">
SOURCE: Criticism 43 no3 Summ 2001
WN: 0119603658011
The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it
is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in
violation of the copyright is prohibited. To contact the publisher:
http://wsupress.wayne.edu/.

Copyright 1982-2002 The H.W. Wilson Company.

All rights reserved.