The Grace of Fioravante

One of the comments I received from my friend, Laura on this website for my poem, Fioravante, really struck me:

«…Non è che Fioravante ami la natura in modo astratto - è che la natura è l’unica che gli risponde. Gli umani sono distratti, connessi solo ai loro dispositivi, mentre lui è rimasto lì, fedele a un mondo che si è ormai dimenticato di lui…

"...It's not that Fioravante loves nature in an abstract way – it's that nature is the only one that responds to him. Humans are distracted, connected only to their devices, while he remained there, faithful to a world that has by now forgotten about him…” 

What she noticed is true: behind the image of this poetic character – who speaks to flowers, a cat, and the wind – lies the lonely reality that no human being responds to him. 

This is both tragic and beautiful.

It is tragic because being isolated leaves Fioravante with a wound. To me, the deepest form of cruelty is not an insult, but indifference. Putting someone in isolation – ignoring them, excluding them from a group, not responding to them, blocking them – is a subtle but devastating act of dehumanization. 

At the same time, this image of Fioravante alone is also beautiful, because he personifies grace in abandonment. Even though Fioravante is not loved, not seen, not heard, he has not become bitter or closed off from the world. Instead, he connects with what remains: the cat, the flowers, the wind, the bells.

He still flourishes – maybe not in the modern sense of fame or worldly success, but in a way that recalls the Renaissance ideal of success: someone who refines their mind, and character through knowledge, virtue, and beauty, in service of the common good.*

During the Renaissance, humanists held human dignity in highest esteem. Taking Petrarch’s lead, they celebrated human beings as relational creatures, who were capable of benevolence and reciprocity. Civilization was built on eloquence, and dialogue. Silence that was imposed on someone threatened not only the loss of social standing, but also of human dignity itself.

Today, isolation is perhaps a psychological cost of progress. People in the modern world often grow more disconnected from one another, and their values also seem to have shifted away from being to doing, from relationship to productivity.

Against all logic, and for no obvious reason, Fioravante thrives in the modern world – like flowers that grow in crevasses or a fresco, weathered but still intact. He offers us the possibility that we, too, can still flourish today by drawing inspiration from those who once lived with grace.

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*Renaissance thinkers also sought fame and often struggled with the tension between earthly recognition and eternal meaning. But the true humanistic ideal was the full realization of the human being, not notoriety.