Am I made of thistles and thorns?

 

(BOTTICELLI, Sandro, Primavera (detalhe) c. 1482)

Por sugestão de Sebastian de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell, Vintage Books, 1994, p.137, onde se pode ler:

"The Ass, where one finds the richest fantasy of physical womanhood, describes the poet's servitude to Circe's damsel. What does she look like? There are so many beautiful women. Who do we know that looks like her? Who expresses her spirit? Ghirlandaio's Giovanna tornabuoni, Botticelli's "Flora", Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine? Most possible Flora: "a woman full of beauty but fresh and leafy showed herself to me with her tresses blonde and ruffed." Niccolò's madonna, his duchess, his woman, is tall and gentle, with thick, curly, golden hair, the one with fine, arched black lashes and a mouth fashioned by Jove. She takes him by the hand, he abandons himself in her arms, she kisses his face ten times or more. Our hero blushes, feels like a new bride in the sheets alongside her husband, until his damsel taunts him with, "Am I made of thistles and thorns?" and pulls his cold hand under the coverlets and runs it over her body. "Blessed be your beauties / Blessed the hour when I put /foot in the forest... " Wrapped in angelic loveliness and pleasure, he tastes the end of all sweetness "full prostate on her sweet breast."

Long might we dally in this bower of Apuleius, Dante, and Petrarch, but it must not detain us. It is not our poet's only conception of woman. He has some crusty views, too. Take the song at the end of act 3 of Clizia:

The one who offends woman

Wrongly or rightly is mad if he believes

through prayers and weeping to find mercy in her.

As she descends in this mortal life,

with her soul she brings along

pride, haughtiness, and of pardon none;

trickery and cruelty accompany her

and give her such help

that each enterprise increases her desire;

and if contempt bitter and ugly

moves her or jealousy, she acts and handles it:

and her strength exceeds mortal strength

(Sebastian de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell, Vintage Books, 1994, p.137)