The Heart of Life

            In a recent Management Fellows lecture, Jeanne Fuqua, the CEO of a large company, told us college students that the heart is essential to life. She stressed the importance of allowing one’s heart to inspire visions and to guide one’s life choices. Many people try to use their minds to lead them through life, but they often end up torn between what their mind tells them and what their heart tells them. Fuqua emphasized following what the heart tells you, and in Foscolo’s Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis, the reader can see the immense role that the heart plays for Jacopo.

            From the very beginning, Jacopo shows his awareness that his heart’s desires are a driving force in his life. Jacopo tells Lorenzo, “you have often heard me exclaim that everything depends on the heart!” (Foscolo 28). His heart drives him toward Teresa, and he continues to notion that his heart aches for her. Although he cannot be with her, his heart is the piece of him that just cannot seem to let go of her. Whenever Jacopo seems to be doing better, he will display the internal pain, as shown when he writes, “Now why is it that on such occasions my heart is sometimes peaceful and sometimes so stormy?” (Foscolo 52). Instead of experiencing mental anxiety or sadness, Jacopo truly feels the pain within his heart, especially since most of it is related to Teresa. He writes to Lorenzo something that he told Teresa, “‘Everything is love,’ I said. ‘The universe is nothing but love!’” (Foscolo 56). As a result of Jacopo believing that there is nothing else but love, he suffers and goes through a period of extreme sorrow. What Jacopo cannot have, he holds in his heart. Even his beloved country that he had to leave is a cause of despair, and he describes, “Rome will always be in my heart” (Foscolo 114).

            Jacopo’s heart comes to represent a source of longing and melancholy, as he seems to love all of the things that he cannot have. He loves his mother, his country, his friends, and Teresa, yet cannot have these as a part of his life due to other factors. He begins to hate life, and Foscolo shows that the heart is his source of life and that if he chose death, he would be hurting his heart. At a point of despair, Jacopo writes, “I test the point of this dagger. I clutch this dagger, and smile. Here, right in this throbbing heart- and it will all be finished” (Foscolo 125). As he tells Teresa of his plans of death and describes how he cannot handle living anymore, he speaks of how strongly his heart was attached to her, saying, “my heart believed you were all mine” (Foscolo 129). The struggle between his heart and his mind became too much for Jacopo. He even notes this, and after discussing and alluding philosophers, he says, “And yet so many times all these reasonable arguments have found no way into my heart” (Foscolo 108).

            Other characters see how strong Jacopo’s heart is. Lorenzo overhears Teresa saying, “‘But his heart cannot change,’” and she is right in noting how strong and gripping his heart is. She can sense the love that Jacopo has for her and she loved him from her heart too. Teresa did not follow her heart, she followed what her father told her and what she thought was best in her mind. Jacopo may have gotten this notion of speaking from the heart from his mother, since his mother tells Lorenzo “my heart tells me that we shall not see him ever again” as Jacopo is saying goodbye to his mother (Foscolo 131).

            Jeanne Fuqua knows the power of the heart, and reading Foscolo’s work shows how the heart has always been a compelling part of human life. As seen through Jacopo’s journey, humans listen to what their hearts tell them, but find it difficult to balance what the heart wants and what is actually attainable.

Works Cited

Foscolo, Ugo. Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis. London: Hesperus, 2002. Print.