Let us love winter: Pietro Aretino’s Renaissance genius and wit

April 20, 1492

Dearest reader,

On this day, in the winter of the fifteenth century, a man was born beneath the Italian sun whose pen would sting and sing in equal measure — Pietro Aretino, the audacious poet who wielded wit like a pruning knife, cutting away hypocrisy with every line.

Known not only for his literary daring but for his scandalous talent for blackmail, Aretino was both admired and feared. He was critical of the powerful and sympathetic to the reformers who whispered heresies in candlelit corners.

And yet, it is not his vitriol but his vision that lingers, for he once wrote,

“Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius.”

Ah, what a notion for those of us who toil in the garden!

To love winter, when the borders lie bare and the roses sleep beneath frost—could it be that Aretino saw in that stillness the quiet incubation of creation itself?

Tell me, dear gardener, what grows in your mind when the earth rests?

What dreams are sown in the cold months, waiting to bloom when the thaw comes?

Winter, after all, is not death but renewal disguised in silver.

The gardener’s genius, like the poet’s, stirs unseen beneath apparent silence. Aretino’s words remind us that life—whether of the mind or the soil—requires its season of repose.

Perhaps he, scandalous though he was, understood that we too must withdraw sometimes from the tyranny of blooms and applause to tend our inner roots. As frost kisses leaf and thorn, so reflection cools the fever of creation, giving form and structure to the wild growth of thought.

I wonder, might Aretino have found in his Italian winters inspiration for his formidable wit?

Did he gaze upon cypress and snow, thinking how divine contradictions make beauty richer—the purity of white against evergreen shadow, much as truth and vice entwined in his life and works?

We will never know, but one suspects the garden of his mind was as tangled as any neglected bower, filled with both fragrance and sting.

So, dearest reader, as autumn deepens and your garden begins its long exhale, think of Aretino and his wintry genius.

While the last rose petal fades, your thoughts may yet take seed in the fertile silence.

And when spring comes again, as it always does, may your ideas, like new shoots, emerge bright and unrepentant—worthy of a poet, or at least, of a bold gardener or two.