Arbitrariness

Arbitrariness is the enemy of freedom.

Passion, providence, and imitation are conventionally the respective ruling forces of these three processes. Yet to take them at face value, as an innocent reading of the poem might advise, would be to betray Garcilaso’s own efforts, in this sonnet and elsewhere, to expose the arbitrariness of grandiose idealist concepts such as Platonic love and providential history.