ea acturum, per quae posteris prosit. (With what spirit does the wise man enter into leisure? Indeed, he knows that there also he will be doing something that will benefit posterity.)185 Seneca implied that the “something that will benefit posterity” was contemplation: “Natura autem utrumque facere me voluit, et agere et contemplationi vacare. Utrumque facio, quoniam ne contemplatio quidem sine actione est.” (But nature intended me to do both, to be active and to have leisure for contemplation, and I do both, because even contemplation is not devoid of action.)186 For Seneca the highest good was to live according to nature.187 Seneca’s “highest good” involved contemplation subordinated to action.
Like Seneca, Petrarch privileged contemplation and the solitude that he claimed makes it possible. In De Vita Solitaria 1.3, Petrarch reinterpreted leisure as solitude, where he quoted Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations and Seneca’s Epistles:
Equidem solitudo sine literis exilium est, carcer, eculeus; adhibe literas, patria est, libertas, delectatio. Nam de otio quidem illud Ciceronis notum: “Quid dulcius otio literato?” Contraque, non minus illud Senecae vulgatum: “Otium sine literis mors est, et hominis vivi sepultura.”
(Indeed, solitude without literature is exile, prison and torture; supply literature, and it becomes homeland, liberty and delight. For well known is that saying of Cicero’s about leisure: “What is sweeter than leisure devoted to literature?” No less familiar is Seneca’s “Leisure without literature is death, and a tomb for the living man.”)188
Petrarch’s phrase “Solitude without literature is exile” is virtually identical to Seneca’s “Otium sine literis mors est,” except that Petrarch substituted the word solitudo for the word otium. The effect of this substitution is to transform the meaning of leisure. Solitudo is retreat, not only from business, but from society altogether. By implying that the leisure of Cicero and Seneca was solitude, Petrarch gave solitude the same relationship to intellectual activity that leisure had for those ancient Roman philosophers. The thought of a life of solitude deprived of literary and philosophical studies was as unbearable for Petrarch as the thought of otium without litterae was for Seneca. Petrarch interpreted the writings of Seneca and Cicero to mean that they could not engage in intellectual activity without solitude.
In Petrarch’s view, solitude was necessary for more than contemplation. By asserting that the infusion of solitude with intellectual activity produces “homeland, liberty and delight,” Petrarch made solitude necessary for happiness, just as Aristotle made skole necessary for happiness. In De Vita Solitaria, solitudo is described as productive of happiness because it is characterized by litteras. Although Petrarch’s solitudo had the same relationship to intellectual activity as Cicero’s and Seneca’s otium, it was not a means to an end. Solitude for Petrarch, like contemplation for Aristotle, was an end in itself.189
Leisure and Villa Life: Alberti, Rinuccini, and Ficino
In the writings of Leon Battista Alberti on villa life, leisure plays a role in what he described as the dual purpose of the villa, which is not only to nourish one’s family, as he said in the essay he entitled Villa, but also to give pleasure. He suggested both purposes in the following passage from book 3 of I Libri della Famiglia:
Sempre si dice La Villa essere opera de’ veri buoni uomini e giusti massari, e conosce ogni uomo La Villa in prima essere di guadagno non piccolo, e, come tu dicevi, dilettoso e onesto.
(The villa is always said to be the work of truly good men and just stewards, and everyone knows the villa to be, in the first place, more than a little profitable, and, as you were saying, delightful and honorable.)190
The pleasure Alberti found in villa life was not self-indulgent but self-defensive; miserable social conditions in the city warranted fleeing to the countryside, as he explained:
Agiugni qui che tu puoi ridurti in villa e viverti in riposo pascendo la famigliuola tua, procurando tu stessi a’ fatti tuoi, la festa sotto l’ombra ragionarti piacevole del bue, della lana, delle vigne o delle sementi, senza sentire romori, o relazioni, o alcuna altra di quelle furie quali dentro alla terra fra’ cittadini mai restano,—sospetti, paure, maledicenti, ingiustizie, risse, e l’altre molte bruttissime a ragionarne cose, e orribili a ricordarsene.
(Add to this that you can retire to your villa and live there in repose, nurturing your family, getting things done yourself, on holidays talking pleasantly in the shade about oxen, wool, vines or seeds, without hearing rumors, or tales, or some of those other rages that never stop in the land of city dwellers–suspicions, fears, slanders, injuries, feuds, and other things too ugly to mention and too horrible to remember.)191
Here riposo (repose) is one of the blessings of villa life, which Alberti, like Taegio after him, contrasted with the maladies of city life. Another blessing is delight in the countryside. Immediately following the passage quoted above, Alberti called the villa “uno proprio paradiso” (one’s own paradise), because
vi godete in villa quelli giorni aerosi e puri, aperti e lietissimi; avete leggiadrissimo spettacolo rimirando que’ colletti fronditi, e que’ piani verzosi, e quelli fonti e rivoli chiari, che seguono saltellando e perdendosi fra quelle chiome dell’erba.
(at the villa you enjoy clean and airy days, open and very delightful. You have a very lovely view, beholding those leafy hills and verdant plains, and those springs and clear streams, which go leaping through and losing themselves in the waving grass.)192
In order to enjoy these blessings it was necessary, according to Alberti, to flee the maladies of the city, as he went on to say: “Puoi alla villa fuggire questi strepiti, questi tumulti, questa tempesta della terra, della piazza, del palagio” (At the villa you can flee these uproars, these tumults, this tempest of the land, piazza, and palace.)193 The sense of leisure gained from Alberti’s I Libri della Famiglia involves the ideas of repose, flight from the city, and enjoyment of the countryside.
In the second half of the fifteenth century, Marsilio Ficino and Alamanno Rinuccini developed further the interpretation of leisure as fuggire (fleeing). Ficino embellished a wall of the villa given him by Cosimo de’ Medici with the following inscription: “A bono in bonum omnia diriguntur. Laetus in praesens. Neque censum existimes, neque appetas dignitatem; fuge excessum, fuge negotia, laetus in praesens.” (All things are directed from the good to the good. Be joyful in the present. You must not value property or desire dignity. Flee excess, flee business, be joyful in the present.)194 The words “laetus in praesens” recall Horace’s verses:
laetus in praesens animus quod ultra est
oderit curare et amara lento temperet risu.
nihil est ab omni parte beatum.
(Let the soul be joyful in the present, let it disdain to be anxious for what the future has in store, and temper bitterness with a smile serene. Nothing is happy altogether.)195
Ficino’s inscription is pregnant with meaning because of the associations it makes. Not only does it link the serenity of which Horace wrote with the ancient Roman sense of leisure, retreat from negotium; it also connects both serenity and leisure with the villa and intellectual activity, by virtue of the fact that the setting in which it appeared was a particular villa, which Ficino named Academia after Plato’s Academy.
Rinuccini also associated leisure with serenity in his Dialogus de Libertate (1479), and he used a word for “serenity” that appears frequently in Taegio’s La Villa: tranquillità. From the beginning of the preface to his dialogue,
