
D’UN SEUL ATTOUCHEMENT
Volupté soüille l’ame.
D’Un simple frayement, bien qu’il semble petit,
La poix colle à nos doigts une soüillante bave:
Et l’eau, qui purge tout, difficillement lave
La tache, qui long temps y paroit un petit.
La glus de Volupté, qui le bon subvertit,
Plus que la poix encor visqueusement entrave:
Car, pour peu qu’on la touche, une marque elle engrave,
Que l’eau de la raison à grand peine amortit.
Si tost que derogeant aux coustumes antiques
La Volupté flestrit les façons Laconiques,
Sparte en un temps perdit & l’Empire, & son los.
La poix souîlle le corps, la Volupté nostre ame:
Celle là nous ternit, ceste cy nous diffame:
Et par elle nous pend l’ire Divine au dos.

Ad Anatolium Tydaeum.[1]
Solo tactu inquinat.[2]
It pollutes by touch alone.
PIx tractata manum solo tactu inquinat: Et dat
Difficilem, quam non eluat unda, notam.
Sic semel, & modicum quamvis gustata Voluptas
Inficit, & turpi stigmate tacta nocet.
Pitch, once touched, defiles the hand by one touch alone and produces a difficult mark which water does not wash away. So in the same way, however little Voluptas may have been tasted, she infects and harms what she has touched with a filthy stain.
1. Anatolius Tydaeus: unidentified; he is also referred to in Boissard’s Disticha in icones..., p. 52, in which context it seems he was somehow connected to the Rye family, prominent nobles in the Franche-Comté.
2. A reference (supported by the pictura and the quatrain) to Ecclesiaticus 13:1 - ‘Qui tetigerit picem inquinabitur’ (He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled).
Iconclass Keywords
Relating to the image:
- adult man [31D14] Search | Browse Iconclass
- adult woman (+ four persons) [31D15(+74)] Search | Browse Iconclass
- arm stretched forward [31A2512] Search | Browse Iconclass
- base (~ column, pillar) [48C1613] Search | Browse Iconclass
- beard [31A534] Search | Browse Iconclass
- city-view in general; 'veduta' [25I1] Search | Browse Iconclass
- cleaning (the house) [42F31] Search | Browse Iconclass
- clothing for the lower part of the body [41D23] Search | Browse Iconclass
- clothing for the upper part of the body [41D223] Search | Browse Iconclass
- column, pillar ~ architecture [48C161] Search | Browse Iconclass
- dress, gown [41D211] Search | Browse Iconclass
- Greek script [49L13] Search | Browse Iconclass
- hand on the heart [31A25162] Search | Browse Iconclass
- inscription [49L8] Search | Browse Iconclass
- laying the hand on another person's shoulder [33A15] Search | Browse Iconclass
- low hill country [25H114] Search | Browse Iconclass
- Roman script; scripts based on the Roman alphabet [49L12] Search | Browse Iconclass
- walls ~ fortified city [45K141] Search | Browse Iconclass
- washing and bathing [31A54] Search | Browse Iconclass
Relating to the text:
- Damage, Disservice; 'Danno' (Ripa) [54BB31] Search | Browse Iconclass
- God's wrath [11A3] Search | Browse Iconclass
- infections and wounds [31A4632] Search | Browse Iconclass
- Licentiousness, Lasciviousness; 'Lascivia', 'Licenza' (Ripa) [57AA51] Search | Browse Iconclass
- other fluids (with the exception of oil) (with NAME) [25D42(PITCH)] Search | Browse Iconclass
- Reason; 'Ragione' (Ripa) [52B51] Search | Browse Iconclass
- spirit (or soul) versus body [31C] Search | Browse Iconclass
- the soul [31G] Search | Browse Iconclass
- Voluptas as Roman personification [96A5(VOLUPTAS)] Search | Browse Iconclass
- water (one of the four elements) [21D] Search | Browse Iconclass
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