pleasure led me astray."
"Never didst thou behold," cried the maiden, "loveliness like mine; and
if bliss failed thee because of my death, how couldst thou be allured by
mortal inferiority? That first blow should have taught thee to disdain
all perishable things, and aspire after the soul that had gone before
thee. How could thy spirit endure to stoop to further chances, or to a
childish girl, or any other fleeting vanity? The bird that is newly out
of the nest may be twice or thrice tempted by the snare; but in vain,
surely, is the net spread in sight of one that is older."[56]
Dante stood as silent and abashed as a sorry child.
"If but to hear me," said Beatrice, "thus afflicts thee, lift up thy
beard, and see what sight can do."
Dante, though feeling the sting intended by the word "beard," did as he
was desired. The angels had ceased to scatter their clouds of flowers
about the maiden; and be beheld her, though still beneath her veil, as
far surpassing her former self in loveliness, as that self had surpassed
others. The sight pierced him with such pangs, that the more he had
loved any thing else, the more he now loathed it; and he fell senseless
to the ground.
When he recovered his senses, he found himself in the hands of the lady
he had first seen in the place, who bidding him keep firm hold of her,
drew him into the river Lethe, and so through and across it to the other
side, speeding as she went like a weaver's shuttle, and immersing him
when she arrived, the angels all the while singing, "Wash me, and I
shall be whiter than snow."[57] She then delivered him into the hands of
the nymphs that had danced about the car,--nymphs on earth, but stars
and cardinal virtues in heaven; a song burst from the lips of the
angels; and Faith, Hope, and Charity, calling upon Beatrice to unveil
her face, she did so; and Dante quenched the ten-years thirst of his
eyes in her ineffable beauty.[58]
After a while he and Statius were made thoroughly regenerate with the
waters of Eunoe; and he felt pure with a new being, and fit to soar into
the stars.
[Footnote 1:
"Dolce color d'oriental zaffiro
Che s'accoglieva nel serenoaspetto
De l'aer puro infino al primo giro,
A gli occhi miei ricomincio diletto,
Tosto ch'io usci' fuor de l'aura morta
Che m'avea contristati gli occhi e 'l petto.
Lo bel pianeta, ch'ad amar conforta,
Faceva tutto rider l'oriente,
Velando i Pesci, ch'erano in sua scorta.
Io mi volsi a man destra, e posi mente
All'altro polo, e vidi quattro stelle
Non viste mai, fuor ch'a la prima gente;
Goder pareva 'l ciel di lor fiammelle.
O settentrional vedovo sito,
Poi che privato sei di mirar quelle!"
The sweetest oriental sapphire blue,
Which the whole air in its pure bosom had,
Greeted mine eyes, far as the heavens withdrew;
So that again they felt assured and glad,
Soon as they issued forth from the dead air,
Where every sight and thought had made them sad.
The beauteous star, which lets no love despair,
Made all the orient laugh with loveliness,
Veiling the Fish that glimmered in its hair.
I turned me to the right to gaze and bless,
And saw four more, never of living wight
Beheld, since Adam brought us our distress;
Heaven seemed rejoicing in their happy light.
O widowed northern pole, bereaved indeed,
Since thou hast had no power to see that sight!
Readers who may have gone thus far with the "Italian Pilgrim's
Progress," will allow me to congratulate them on arriving at this lovely
scene, one of the most admired in the poem.
This is one of the passages which make the religious admirers of Dante
inclined to pronounce him divinely inspired; for how could he otherwise
have seen stars, they ask us, which were not discovered till after
his time, and which compose the constellation of the Cross? But other
commentators are of opinion, that the Cross, though not so named till
subsequently (and Dante, we see, gives no prophetic hint about the
name), _had_ been seen, probably by stray navigators. An Arabian globe
is even mentioned by M. Artaud (see Cary), in which the Southern Cross
is set down. Mr. Cary, in his note on the passage, refers to Seneca's
prediction of the discovery of America; most likely suggested by similar
information. "But whatever," he adds, "may be thought of this, it is
certain that the four stars are here symbolical of the four cardinal
virtues;" and he refers to canto xxxi, where those virtues are
retrospectively associated with these stars. The symbol, however, is
not, necessary. Dante was a very curious inquirer on all subjects, and
evidently acquainted with ships and seamen as well as geography; and his
imagination would eagerly have seized a magnificent novelty like this,
and used it the first opportunity. Columbus's discovery, as the reader
will see, was anticipated by Pulci.]
[Footnote 2: Generous and disinterested!--Cato, the republican enemy of
Cæsar, and committer of suicide, is not luckily chosen for his present
office by the poet who has put Brutus into the devil's mouth in spite of
his agreeing with Cato, and the suicide Piero delle Vigne into hell in
spite of his virtues. But Dante thought Cato's austere manners like his
own.]
[Footnote 3: The girding with the rush (_giunco schietto_) is_ supposed
by the commentators to be an injunction of simplicity and patience.
Perhaps it is to enjoin sincerity; especially as the region of expiation
has now been entered, and sincerity is the first step to repentance.
It will be recollected that Dante's former girdle, the cord of the
Franciscan friars, has been left in the hands of Fraud.]
[Footnote 4:
"L'alba vinceva l'ora mattutina
Che fuggia 'nnanzi, sì che di lontano
Conobbi il tremolar de la marina."
The lingering shadows now began to flee
Before the whitening dawn, so that mine eyes
Discerned far off the trembling of the sea.
"Conobbi il tremolar de la marina"
is a beautiful verse, both for the picture and the sound.]
[Footnote 5: This evidence of humility and gratitude on the part of
Dante would be very affecting, if we could forget all the pride and
passion he has been shewing elsewhere, and the torments in which he has
left his fellow-creatures. With these recollections upon us, it looks
like an overweening piece of self-congratulation at other people's
expense.]
[Footnote 6:
"Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona
De la mia donna disiosamente,"
is the beginning of the ode sung by Dante's friend. The incident is
beautifully introduced; and Casella's being made to select a production
from the pen of the man who asks him to sing, very delicately implies a
graceful cordiality in the musician's character.
Milton alludes to the passage in his sonnet to Henry Lawes:
"Thou honour'st verse, and verse must lend her wing
To honour thee, the priest of Phoebus' quire,
That tun'st their happiest lines in hymn or story.
Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher
Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing,
Met in the milder shades of Purgatory." ]
[Footnote 7: Manfredi was the natural son of the Emperor Frederick the
Second. "He was lively and agreeable in his manners," observes Mr. Cary,
"and delighted in poetry, music, and dancing. But he was luxurious
and ambitious, void of religion, and in his philosophy an epicurean."
_Translation of Dante_, Smith's edition, p. 77. Thus King Manfredi ought
to have been in a red-hot tomb, roasting for ever with Epicurus himself,
and with the father of the poet's beloved friend, Guido Cavalcante: but
he was the son of an emperor, and a foe to the house of Anjou; so Dante
gives him a passport to heaven. There is no ground whatever for the
repentance assumed in the text.]
[Footnote 8: The unexpected bit of comedy here ensuing is very
remarkable and pleasant. Belacqua, according to an old commentator, was
a musician.]
[Footnote 9: Buonconte was the son of that Guido da Montefeltro, whose
soul we have seen carried off from St. Francis by a devil, for having
violated the conditions of penitence. It is curious that both father and
son should have been contested for in this manner.]
[Footnote 10: This is the most affecting and comprehensive of all brief
stories.
"Deh quando to sarai tornato al mondo,
E riposato de la lunga via,
Seguitò 'l terzo spirito al secondo,
Ricorditi di me che son la Pia:
Siena mi fè; disfecemi Maremma;
Salsi colui che 'nnanellata pria
Disposando m' avea con la sua gemma."
Ah, when thou findest thee again on earth
(Said then a female soul), remember me,--
Pia. Sienna was my place of birth,
The Marshes of my death. This knoweth he,
Who placed upon my hand the spousal ring.
"Nello della Pietra," says M. Beyle, in his work entitled _De l'Amour,_
"obtained in marriage the hand of Madonna Pia, sole heiress of the
Ptolomei, the richest and most noble family of Sienna. Her beauty, which
was the admiration of all Tuscany, gave rise to a jealousy in the
breast of her husband, that, envenomed by wrong reports and suspicions
continually reviving, led to a frightful catastrophe. It is not easy to
determine at this day if his wife was altogether innocent; but Dante
has represented her as such. Her husband carried her with him into
the marshes of Volterra, celebrated then, as now, for the pestiferous
effects of the air. Never would he tell his wife the reason of her
banishment into so dangerous a place. His pride did not deign to
pronounce either complaint or accusation. He lived with her alone, in a
deserted tower, of which I have been to see the ruins on the seashore;
he never broke his disdainful silence, never replied to the questions of
his youthful bride, never listened to her entreaties. He waited, unmoved
by her, for the air to produce its fatal effects. The vapours of
this unwholesome swamp were not long in tarnishing features the most
beautiful, they say, that in that age had appeared upon earth. In a few
months she died. Some chroniclers of these remote times report that
Nello employed the dagger to hasten her end: she died in the marshes in
some horrible manner; but the mode of her death remained a mystery, even
to her contemporaries. Nello della Pietra survived, to pass the rest
of his days in a silence which was never broken." Hazlitt's _Journey
through France and Italy_, p. 315.]
[Footnote 11: Sordello was a famous Provençal poet; with whose writings
the world has but lately been made acquainted through the researches of
M. Raynouard, in his _Choix des Poésies des Troubadours_, &c.]
[Footnote 12: "Fresco smeraldo in l'ora che si fiacca." An exquisite
image of newness and brilliancy.]
[Footnote 13: "Salve, Regina:" the beginning of a Roman-Catholic chant
to the Virgin.]
[Footnote 14: "With nose deprest," says Mr. Cary. But Dante says,
literally, "small nose,"--_nasetto_. So, further on, he says, "masculine
nose,"--_maschio naso_. He meant to imply the greater or less
determination of character, which the size of that feature is supposed
to indicate.]
[Footnote 15: An English reader is surprised to find here a sovereign
for whom he has been taught to entertain little respect. But Henry was a
devout servant of the Church.]
[Footnote 16:
"Era già l'ora che volge 'l desio
A' naviganti, e intenerisce 'l cuore
Lo dì ch' an detto a' dolci amici a Dio;
E che lo nuovo peregrin d'amore
Punge, se ode squilla di lontano
Che paia 'l giorno pianger che si muore."
A famous passage, untiring in the repetition. It is, indeed, worthy to
be the voice of Evening herself.
'Twas now the hour, when love of home melts through
Men's hearts at sea, and longing thoughts portray
The moment when they bade sweet friends adieu;
And the new pilgrim now, on his lone way,
Thrills, if he hears the distant vesper-bell,
That seems to mourn for the expiring day.
Every body knows the line in Gray's Elegy, not unworthily echoed from
Dante's--
"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day."
Nothing can equal, however, the _tone_ in the Italian original,--the
"Pàia 'l giorno pianger the si muòre."
Alas! why could not the great Tuscan have been superior enough to his
personal griefs to write a whole book full of such beauties, and so have
left us a work truly to be called Divine?]
[Footnote 17:
"Te lucis ante terminum;"--a hymn sung at evening service.]
[Footnote 18: Lucy, _Lucia_ (supposed to be derived from _lux, lucis_),
is the goddess (I was almost going to say) who in Roman Catholic
countries may be said to preside over _light_, and who is really invoked
in maladies of the eyes. She was Dante's favourite saint, possibly for
that reason among others, for he had once hurt his eyes with study, and
they had been cured. In her spiritual character she represents the light
of grace.]
[Footnote 19: The first step typifies consciousness of sin; the second,
horror of it; the third, zeal to amend.]
[Footnote 20: The keys of St. Peter. The gold is said by the
commentators to mean power to absolve; the silver, the learning and
judgment requisite to use it.]
[Footnote 21: "Te Deum laudamus," the well-known hymn of St. Ambrose and
St. Augustine.]
[Footnote 22:
"Non v'accorgete voi, che noi siam vermi,
Nati a formar l'angelica farfalla,
Che vola a giustizia senza schermi?"
"Know you not, we are worms
Born to compose the angelic butterfly,
That flies to heaven when freed from what deforms?"
[Footnote 23:
"Più ridon le carte
Che penelleggia Franco Bolognese:
L'onore è tutto or suo, e mio in parte."
[Footnote 24: The "new Guido" is his friend Guido Cavalcante (now dead);
the "first" is Guido Guinicelli, for whose writings Dante had an esteem;
and the poet, who is to "chase them from the nest," _caccerà di nido_
(as the not very friendly metaphor states it), is with good reason
supposed to be himself! He was right; but was the statement becoming? It
was certainly not necessary. Dante, notwithstanding his friendship
with Guido, appears to have had a grudge against both the Cavalcanti,
probably for some scorn they had shewn to his superstition; far they
could be proud themselves; and the son has the reputation of scepticism,
as well as the father. See the _Decameron, Giorn_. vi. _Nov. 9_.]
[Footnote 25: This is the passage from which it is conjectured that
Dante knew what it was to "tremble in every vein," from the awful
necessity of begging. Mr. Cary, with some other commentators, thinks
that the "trembling" implies fear of being refused. But does it not
rather mean the agony of the humiliation? In Salvani's case it certainly
does; for it was in consideration of the pang to his pride, that the
good deed rescued him from worse punishment.]
[Footnote 26: The reader will have noticed the extraordinary mixture of
Paganism and the Bible in this passage, especially the introduction of
such fables as Niobe and Arachne. It would be difficult not to suppose
it intended to work out some half sceptical purpose, if we did not call
to mind the grave authority given to fables in the poet's treatise on
Monarchy, and the whole strange spirit, at once logical and gratuitous,
of the learning of his age, when the acuter the mind, the subtler became
the reconcilement with absurdity.]
[Footnote 27: _Beati pauperes spiritu_. "Blessed are the poor in spirit;
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"--one of the beautiful passages of
the beautiful sermon on the Mount. How could the great poet read and
admire such passages, and yet fill his books so full of all which they
renounced? "Oh," say his idolators, "he did it out of his very love for
them, and his impatience to see them triumph." So said the Inquisition.
The evil was continued for the sake of the good which it prevented! The
result in the long-run may be so, but not for the reasons they supposed,
or from blindness to the indulgence of their bad passions.]
[Footnote 28:
"_Sàvia_ non fui, avvegna che _Sapìa_
Fosse chiamata."
The pun is poorer even than it sounds in English: for though the Italian
name may possibly remind its readers of _sapienza_ (sapience), there is
the difference of a _v_ in the adjective _savia_, which is also accented
on the first syllable. It is almost as bad as if she had said in
English, "Sophist I found myself, though Sophia is my name." It
is pleasant, however, to see the great saturnine poet among the
punsters.--It appears, from the commentators, that Sapia was in exile at
the time of the battle, but they do not say for what; probably from some
zeal of faction]
[Footnote 29: We are here let into Dante's confessions. He owns to a
little envy, but far more pride:
"Gli occhi, diss' io, mi fieno ancor qui tolti,
Ma picciol tempo; che poch' è l'offesa
Fatta per esser con invidia volti.
Troppa è più la paura ond' è sospesa
L'anima mia del tormento di sotto
Che già lo 'ncarco di là giù mi pesa."
The first confession is singularly ingenuous and modest; the second,
affecting. It is curious to guess what sort of persons Dante could have
allowed himself to envy--probably those who were more acceptable to
women.]
[Footnote 29: Aglauros, daughter of Cecrops, king of Athens, was turned
to stone by Mercury, for disturbing with her envy his passion for her
sister Herse.
The passage about Cain is one of the sublimest in Dante. Truly wonderful
and characteristic is the way in which he has made physical noise and
violence express the anguish of the wanderer's mind. We are not to
suppose, I conceive, that we see Cain. We know he has passed us, by his
thunderous and headlong words. Dante may well make him invisible, for
his words are things--veritable thunderbolts.
Cain comes in rapid successions of thunder-claps. The voice of Aglauros
is thunder-claps crashing into one another--broken thunder. This is
exceedingly fine also, and wonderful as a variation upon that awful
music; but Cain is the astonishment and the overwhelmingness. If it were
not, however, for the second thunder, we should not have had the two
silences; for I doubt whether they are not better even than one. At all
events, the final silence is tremendous.]
[Footnote 30: St. Luke ii. 48.]
[Footnote 31: The stoning of Stephen.]
[Footnote 32: These illustrative spectacles are not among the best
inventions of Dante. Their introduction is forced, and the instances not
always pointed. A murderess, too, of her son, changed into such a bird
as the nightingale, was not a happy association of ideas in Homer, where
Dante found it; and I am surprised he made use of it, intimate as
he must have been with the less inconsistent story of her namesake,
Philomela, in the _Metamorphoses_.]
[Footnote 33: So, at least, I conceive, by what appears afterwards; and
I may here add, once for all, that I have supplied the similar requisite
intimations at each successive step in Purgatory, the poet seemingly
having forgotten to do so. It is necessary to what he implied in the
outset. The whole poem, it is to be remembered, is thought to have
wanted his final revision.]
[Footnote 34: What an instance to put among those of haste to do good!
But the fame and accomplishments of Cæsar, and his being at the head of
our Ghibelline's beloved emperors, fairly overwhelmed Dante's boasted
impartiality.]
[Footnote 35: A masterly allegory of Worldly Pleasure. But the close of
it in the original has an intensity of the revolting, which outrages the
last recesses of feeling, and disgusts us with the denouncer.]
[Footnote 36: The fierce Hugh Capet, soliloquising about the Virgin in
the tones of a lady in child-bed, is rather too ludicrous an association
of ideas. It was for calling this prince the son of a butcher, that
Francis the First prohibited the admission of Dante's poem into his
dominions. Mr. Cary thinks the king might have been mistaken in his
interpretation of the passage, and that "butcher" may be simply a
metaphorical term for the blood-thirstiness of Capet's father. But when
we find the man called, not _the_ butcher, or _that_ butcher, or butcher
in reference to his species, but in plain local parlance "a butcher of
Paris" (_un beccaio di Parigi_), and when this designation is followed
up by the allusion to the extinction of the previous dynasty, the
ordinary construction of the words appears indisputable. Dante seems
to have had no ground for what his aristocratical pride doubtless
considered a hard blow, and what King Francis, indeed, condescended to
feel as such. He met with the notion somewhere, and chose to believe it,
in order to vex the French and their princes. The spirit of the taunt
contradicts his own theories elsewhere; for he has repeatedly said, that
the only true nobility is in the mind. But his writings (poetical truth
excepted) are a heap of contradictions.]
[Footnote 37: Mr. Cary thought he had seen an old romance in which there
is a combat of this kind between Jesus and his betrayer. I have an
impression to the same effect.]
[Footnote 38:
"O Signor mio, quando sarò io lieto
A veder la vendetta the nascosa
Fa dolce l'ira tua nel tuo segreto!"
The spirit of the blasphemous witticism attributed to another Italian,
viz. that the reason why God prohibited revenge to mankind was its being
"too delicate a morsel for any but himself," is here gravely anticipated
as a positive compliment to God by the fierce poet of the thirteenth
century, who has been held up as a great Christian divine! God hugs
revenge to his bosom with delight! The Supreme Being confounded with a
poor grinning Florentine!]
[Footnote 39: A ludicrous anti-climax this to modern ears! The allusion
is to the Pygmalion who was Dido's brother, and who murdered her
husband, the priest Sichæus, for his riches. The term "parricide" is
here applied in its secondary sense of--the murderer of any one to whom
we owe reverence.]
[Footnote 40: Heliodorus was a plunderer of the Temple, thus
supernaturally punished. The subject has been nobly treated by Raphael.]
[Footnote 41: A grand and beautiful fiction.]
[Footnote 42: Readers need hardly be told that there is no foundation
for this fancy, except in the invention of the churchmen. Dante, in
another passage, not necessary to give, confounds the poet Statius who
was from Naples, with a rhetorician of the same name from Thoulouse.]
[Footnote 43:
"Parèn l'occhiaje anella senza gemme."
This beautiful and affecting image is followed in the original by one
of the most fantastical conceits of the time. The poet says, that the
physiognomist who "reads the word OMO (_homo_, man), written in the face
of the human being, might easily have seen the letter _m_ in theirs."
"Chi nel viso de gli uomini legge _o m o_,
Bene avria quivi conosciuto l'_emme_."
The meaning is, that the perpendicular lines of the nose and temples
form the letter M, and the eyes the two O's. The enthusiast for Roman
domination must have been delighted to find that Nature wrote in Latin!]
[Footnote 44:
"Se le svergognate fosser certe
Di quel che l' ciel veloce loro ammanna,
Gia per urlare avrian le bocche aperte."
This will remind the reader of the style of that gentle Christian, John
Knox, who, instead of offering his own "cheek to the smiters," delighted
to smite the cheeks of women. Fury was his mode of preaching meekness,
and threats of everlasting howling his reproof of a tune on Sundays.
But, it will be said, he looked to consequences. Yes; and produced the
worst himself, both spiritual and temporal. Let the whisky-shops answer
him. However, he helped to save Scotland from Purgatory: so we must take
good and bad together, and hope the best in the end.
Forese, like many of Dante's preachers, seems to have been one of those
self-ignorant or self-exasperated denouncers, who "Compound for sins
they are inclined to, By damning those they have no mind to." He was
a glutton, who could not bear to see ladies too little clothed. The
defacing of "God's image" in his own person he considered nothing.]
[Footnote 45: The passage respecting his past life is unequivocal
testimony to the fact, confidently disputed by some, of Dante's having
availed himself of the license of the time; though, in justice to such
candour, we are bound not to think worse of it than can be helped. The
words in the original are
"Se ti riduci a mente
Qual fosti meco, e quale io teco fui,
Ancor fia grave il memorar presente."
Literally: "If thou recallest to mind what (sort of person) thou wast
with me, and what I was with thee, the recollection may oppress thee
still."