eager attention attracted to the vulgar harlequinade between Master Adam
the false-coiner and the Greek Sinon, where the latter strikes the former
on his “inflated paunch” till it resounds—
Come fosse un tamburo.[121]
But Dante is careful to put things right in the sequel, and makes his own
blush of shame respond at once to Virgil’s chiding—
... Or pur mira
Ch’ è per poco che teco non mi risso![122]
Less broad in its grim playfulness is the taunt which the spendthrift
Jacomo da Sant’ Andrea, hunted and breathless, gasps out at his
fellow-sufferer: “Lano, at Toppo’s jousts thy legs were not so nimble”—
Lano, sì non furo accorte
Le gambe tue a le giostre dal Toppo![123]
Exquisite in the irony of its situation is in _Inf._ xix, in which Dante,
in order to find a place for solemn invective against Boniface VIII,[124]
and to assign him, while still alive, his place in Hell, makes Nicholas
III mistake the Poet’s voice for that of the Pontiff, and exclaim—
Se’ tu già costì ritto,
Se’ tu già costì ritto, Bonifazio?
Whereat Dante represents himself as quite non-plussed and unable to grasp
the speaker’s meaning!
Nor is the scene itself without a picturesque absurdity that evinces a
subtle sense of humour, especially when we remember the over-weening
pretensions of Boniface to unearthly dignity. The flaming legs of
Simonists kicking to and fro above the surface of the ground wherein the
rest of them is buried headforemost; and the neat epigram in which Pope
Nicholas describes his plight—
Su l’ avere, e qui me misi in borsa—
“I pursed wealth above, and here—myself.”[125]
Bearing in mind the Poet’s solemn and deliberate purpose, as we conceive
it, to pour scathing ridicule upon that which qualifies man for a place
in Hell, we may fairly aver that even in the most critical scenes and
episodes he does not transgress the canons of the Master whom he revered.
If there is βωμολοχία—unseemly and unrestrained jesting—in his Inferno,
it is not Dante’s, but the Demons’. Dante, as we have seen, deliberately
dissociates himself from it; and the absence of all such extravagance
from his description of Paradise and even of Purgatory confirms our
inference that the humorous element, even at its grimmest and coarsest,
is carefully proportioned to the environment with which he is dealing.
The _Purgatorio_ and _Paradiso_ are marked (like the scene with Nicholas
III) by occasional outbursts of political or quasi-political invective,
seasoned with stinging satire. In these tirades against Florence or the
Papacy Dante is sometimes his own spokesman; sometimes they are put into
another mouth.
The concluding verses of _Purg._ vi. will at once come to mind: the
famous invective in which he ironically congratulates his native city on
her “feverish” energy,[126] shown in the disinterested eagerness of her
citizens to take up the lucrative burdens of public office, and in the
amazing agility of her legislative activity, beside which the democratic
traditions of Ancient Athens—
Fecero al viver ben un picciol cenno—[127]
the laws passed in October being superseded by the middle of November—
... Che fai tanto sotili
Provedimenti, che a mezzo novembre
Non giugne quel che tu d’ ottobre fili.
Then there is the scarcely less famous passage in _Par._ xxi,[128] where
St. Peter Damian, inveighing against the Roman Curia, describes the fat
Cardinals as supported on every side as they go—held up to right and
left, and pushed and pulled along—
Or voglion quinci e quindi chi i rincalzi
Li moderni pastori, e chi gli meni
Tanto son gravi! e chi di rietro gli alzi.
And when they ride, covering their palfreys with their ample robes, “so
that two beasts are moving ’neath one hide”—
Sì che due bestie van sott’ una pelle.[129]
Or again, there is Beatrice’s tirade in _Par._ xxix.[130] against the
farce of unauthorised indulgences, and against the fashions of the
contemporary pulpit: the fashion of neglecting the Gospel, and straining
after originality, as though Christ’s mandate had been: “Go ye into all
the world, and preach—frivolities!”
Andate, e predicate al mondo ciance.[131]
The modern preacher’s “head is swelled” (if we may so translate _Gonfia
il cappuccio_), and he is perfectly content if by his jests and gibes he
can raise a laugh, while the fiend sits unseen in the corner of his hood.
This passage is as perennially applicable as any in Dante, and combines
the satire of Alexander Pope with the stern earnestness of the author of
the _Task_, so aptly compared to it by W. W. Vernon.
Dante no doubt felt a certain appropriateness which justified him
in putting these invectives into the mouths of his august _dramatis
personae_: but we are apt to hear the ring of _his_ voice in each of
them. There are, however, other passages in the _Purgatorio_ and the
_Paradiso_ of which the playfulness belongs to the characters themselves.
In _Purg._ xx. we have two instances given to show that the risible
faculties are not extinguished by the pains of purification.
Greedy Midas’ dismal surprise when, in answer to his ill-advised prayer,
his very food turned to gold and became uneatable, is a legitimate and
unfailing cause of laughter—
Per la qual sempre convien che si rida—[132]
to those who lie fettered face downwards[133] in the terrace of the
avaricious. And it is with evident relish that the same souls repeat
their last lesson: “Tell us, Crassus, for thou knowest, what is the
flavour of gold?”
Crasso,
Dilci, che ’l sai: di che sapore è l’ oro?[134]
In the next Cantos, xxi. and xxii., the Poet delights us with scenes of
a graceful and most appropriate playfulness. First there is the charming
episode, _Purg._ xxi. 100 _sqq._, where Statius, addressing Virgil, whom
he does not recognise, says: “What would I have given to have been on
earth when the author of the _Aeneid_ was alive!” and Dante, in spite
of Virgil’s unspoken but unmistakable “_Taci!_” betrays the situation
by an uncontrollable smile. Then in the next Canto (xxii.), when the
puzzled Virgil mistakes the guilt for which Statius is suffering for
_avarice_, it is Statius’ turn to laugh. The gentle, mirthful grace of
the whole scene is enhanced by the pathetic sequel, when Statius explains
that it was Virgil who converted him, by his famous fourth Eclogue,
to Christianity, like one who, walking himself in darkness, carries a
lantern behind his back to illumine the path of those who follow—
Facesti come quei che va di notte
Che porta il lume dietro, e sè non giova
Ma dopo sè fa le persone dotte.[135]
Charming too is the playful irony of the scene in the Earthly Paradise
where Matelda gravely discourses to Dante, in presence of Virgil and
Statius, about the poets who in days of yore sang of the Golden Age—
Quelli ch’ anticamente poetaro
L’ età del’ oro e suo stato felice—[136]
and Dante looks round on them and sees them smiling.
Io mi volsi in dietro allora tutto
A’ miei poeti, e vidi che con riso
Udito avevan l’ ultimo costrutto.[137]
The smiles which wreathe the lips of the denizens of the Heavenly
Paradise, like that which gleams in Beatrice’s eyes,[138] are something
ineffably solemn and sublime: like the _Gloria_ chanted in the Starry
Heaven, of which the Poet exclaims—
... mi sembiava
Un riso de l’ universo.[139]
But there is a touch of the more distinctively human in the suggestion
thrown out in the following Canto that St. Gregory woke up in heaven
to the true facts about the Angelic Hierarchy, and “smiled at his own
mistake” in departing from the Dionysian scheme.
Onde, sì tosto come li occhi aperse
In questo ciel, di sè medesmo rise.[140]
The passages we have touched upon in the _Divina Commedia_ are those
most obviously to the point. Prof. Sannia’s Italian mind can discern
subtleties of humour in places where the foreigner cannot always hope
to follow. But there is one point on which he lays much stress, namely
the importance, for our purpose, of observing Dante’s attitude towards
himself throughout the mystical journey, and especially as he passes
through the dismal regions of the First Kingdom. The Dante so graphically
depicted to us in the _Divine Comedy_ is altogether different from the
cold, abstract Dante of tradition. He is an impatiently curious child,
in whom the passion of curiosity even conquers fear. And while the
pilgrim is depicted to us in very human guise, and his motions and his
attributes described in terms which presuppose not only a remarkable
degree of self-knowledge, and a striking power of psychological analysis,
but also a very real sense of humour; the poet who sings of the pilgrim,
reveals to us by the way, a whole group of characteristics which claim
the humorous gift as their inevitable associate. Such are his broad
humanity, his sympathy, his reverence even for the noble damned, his very
modern type of tenderness shown by interest in the ways of children,
animals, birds, insects, from whose life he loves to draw his similes.
“True humour,” says Carlyle, “is sensibility in the most catholic and
deepest sense.” Virgil—the Virgil of history—had this in a pre-eminent
degree—and so has his mystic companion of the Eternal World.[141]
Popular tradition has imagined him as a heartless, unfeeling judge,
without that indulgence towards human frailty which the gift of humour
presupposes: but the entire _Purgatorio_ belies this calumny, and not a
few episodes in the _Inferno_ itself.
To pass from the _Divina Commedia_ to the _Convivio_ is in any case a
drop down. If it is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous,
the sublimity of the _Divina Commedia_ should bring us very close to
the regions where laughter is generated. The _Convivio_, with all its
manifold interest is obviously far below the level on which thought and
feeling habitually move in the _Divine Comedy_. Has it therefore less
promise in the matter of our quest?
I venture to think that there is a strain of playfulness underlying a
good deal of the argument of this work; and that even if we can bring
ourselves to believe Dante’s own solemnly elaborate interpretation of his
love-songs to be quite serious in the main.
And apart from this, if we take the _Convivio_ with the utmost
seriousness, we may remember for our comfort that πορίζεσθαι τὰ
γέλοια[142] is one of the qualifications of Aristotle’s εὐτράπελος and
the willingness to be laughed at another; and see in Dante (with all
reverence) an example of those who, more or less unconsciously provide
matter for amusement to posterity. Nay, we may treat him as he treats St.
Gregory, and look upon him as laughing now at his own certitude about
the ten heavens and the angelic hierarchy, from his place in the mystic
rose—or are we to say on the terrace of Pride?
But to return to the _Convivio_. It is here, as we have already
suggested, that Dante gives us his description of the ideal nature of
Laughter. “Ridere,” he says, “è una corruscazione della dilettazione de
l’ anima.”[143] On the Aristotelian principle of the Mean (though his
actual reference is not to Aristotle, but to Pseudo-Seneca “On the Four
Cardinal Virtues”), he urges that laughter should be moderate and modest,
with no violent movement (such as convulses the pages, e.g. of Franco
Sacchetti) and no “cackling” noise. Laughter is, in fact—like little
children—“best seen and not heard.”
From each of the four extant treatises, quotations may be adduced which
at any rate show the writer’s sympathy with that view of life which
fastens on the incongruous and sees in it matter for genial irony or for
bitter sarcasm, according to the moral context.
_Tratt. I._ Chapter xi. opens with a delicious satire on the “sheep-like
opinion” of the multitude, which I have elsewhere compared to the
charmingly nonsensical scene—“Less Bread, More Taxes!”—with which Lewis
Carroll inaugurates his _Sylvie and Bruno_.
The “man in the street,” says Dante, is ready to follow any cry that is
raised. Thus the populace will be found exclaiming “Viva la lor morte!
Muoia la lor vita!—purchè alcuno cominci.” They are for all the world
like sheep who follow their leader blindly over a high precipice or down
a well. He goes on to rail at “a bad workman who blames his tools,” the
many who “_sempre danno colpa alla materia dell’ arte apparecchiata,
overo alo strumento; siccome lo mal fabro biasima ferro appresentato a
lui_.”[144]
Nor can we fail to find in the next chapter (I, xii.) a touch of the
drily humorous spirit; in the passage which Dr. Toynbee in his Anthology
entitles _Of Silly Questions_.
“If flames were plainly to be seen issuing from the windows of a house,
and a bystander were to enquire whether that house were on fire, and
another man to reply that it was, I should find it difficult to decide
which of the two was the more ridiculous.”[145]
What are we to say of the _Trattato II_? Here, if anywhere, Dante poses
as the unconscious humorist; here, if anywhere, in his elaborately solemn
disquisition upon arrangement of the heavens and their analogues in the
_trivium_ and _quadrivium_, he is qualifying himself to play the _rôle_
of St. Gregory in the other world! But even here he finds leisure to cast
occasionally a satirist’s eye on the contemporary world—
l’ aiuolo che ci fa tanto feroci;
and the naïveté of his references to it is delightful. They sometimes
come in incidentally in the form of similes. In Chapter vii.,[146] for
instance, is an illusion to the perennial banishments and sieges with
which the factions of Guelf and Ghibelline, Black and White, harassed the
cities of the peninsula: “When we speak of ‘the city,’” he says, “we
are wont to mean those who are in possession of it, not those who are
attacking it, albeit the one and the other be citizens.” Or again, in
Chapter xi.,[147] a reference to the decline of good taste and culture
is ingeniously worked into a question of etymology. “_Cortesia_” is
equivalent to “_onestade_,” and “because in courts of old time virtuous
and fair manners were in use (as now the contrary), this word was derived
from courts, and ‘courtesy’ was as much as to say ‘after the usage of
courts.’ If the word had been derived in modern days from the same
origin, it could have signified nothing else than _turpezza_.”
In _Tratt. III_, as elsewhere, the playfulness is for the most part so
spread out that it is difficult to quote. There is, however, a touch of
real satire in such passages as that in which Dante twits the lawyers,
physicians, and members of religious orders with their disqualification
for the reputation of a true philosopher.[148]
“We are not to call him a real philosopher who is a friend of wisdom for
profit’s sake, as are lawyers, physicians, and almost all the members of
the religious orders, who do not study in order to know, but in order
to get money or office; and if any one would give them that which it is
their purpose to acquire, they would linger over their study no longer.”
_Trattato IV_ is more obviously fruitful. Here again he girds at
the lawyers and doctors, suggesting that they might at least give
_un_professional advice gratis, and, in another place, ventures timidly
to assert that it may be possible “to be religious though married.”[149]
Again, in Ch. xvi., if _nobile_ simply meant _notus_, then the Obelisk
of St. Peter would be the noblest stone on earth, and Asdente the
cobbler (of whom Salimbene gives us so lively a sketch) would be noblest
among the citizens of Parma.[150]
Some arguments are so senseless, he says a little earlier, that they
deserve to be answered not with a word, but with a knife. “Risponder si
vorrebbe non colle parole ma col coltello a tanta bestialità.”[151]
Lastly, he has in this treatise the audacity to depict to us the
sublimest sage, “il maestro di color che sanno,” as indulging in a burst
of hypothetical laughter at the idea of a double origin of the human
race. “Senza dubbio, forte riderebbe Aristotile”; and, he adds, “those
who would divide mankind into two separate species like horses and asses
are (with apologies to Aristotle) themselves the asses.”[152]
In the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_, as we have already hinted, the “idioma
incomptum et ineptum” of various localities, alike on the right and on
the left of the Apennines, gives play for pleasantry of which does Dante
not fail to take advantage. It is with evident relish that he puts on
record typical uncouth phrases of each dialect: the Roman _Mezzure quinto
dici_, the _Chignamente_, _frate_, _sc-tate_ of the Marches of Ancona,
the Milanese _Mes d’ ochiover_, the _Çes fastú_ which men of Aquileja and
Istria “crudeliter accentuando, eructuant.” The feminine softness of the
Romagna, and especially of Forlì, with its _corada mea_;[153] the more
than masculine roughness of the men of Verona, Vicenza, Brescia—all those
who say “Magara”; the _nof_ and _vif_ of Treviso.
In Chapter xi. he has his knife into mediaeval Rome, the proud and
corrupt. “Sicut ergo Romani se cunctis preponendos extimant, in hac
eradicatione sive discerptione non immerito eos aliis preponamus,
protestantes eosdem in nulla vulgaris eloquentie ratione fore tangendos.”
The primacy which the Romans claim in all things may certainly be theirs
in this. In our eliminating process they shall be first to be rejected
from the candidature to furnish a classical vernacular for all Italy!
Their dialect (he goes on), like their morals, is the most degraded
in the whole peninsula, and has spread its corrupting influence into
neighbouring districts. It is indeed not worthy to be called a _vulgare_
(vernacular), but rather a depraved misuse of speech (_tristiloquium_),
and is “italorum vulgarium omnium ... turpissimum.”[154]
At the end of Chapter xiii. he tilts at the Genoese Z—an ugly sound in
itself, but one which, if lost or mislaid by defect of memory, would
leave the poor people of Genoa without a means of transmitting their
thoughts! The loss of this one letter would leave them dumb, or impose
on them the necessity of inventing an entirely new mode of speech. “Si
per oblivionem Ianuenses ammitterent _z_ litteram, vel mutire totaliter
eos vel novam reperare oporteret loquelam: est enim _z_ maxima pars eorum
locutionis: que quidem littera non sine multa rigiditate profertur.”[155]
On a different plane is Dante’s lamentation in Ch. xii. over the decay
of literary culture in Sicily since the glorious days of Frederic and
Manfred, which gave the title “Sicilianum” to the work of Dante’s
predecessors in the vernacular: a passage (to me at least) somewhat
obscure, in which Frederic II of Sicily, Charles II of Naples, Azzo
Marquis of Este, and John Marquis of Montferrat are accused of
blood-thirstiness, treachery and avarice: “Venite carnifices; venite
attriplices; venite avaritiae sectatores....”[156]
Turning to Bk. II we find the same Azzo ironically praised in Chapter
vi., in a “copy-book phrase” of which the incidental introduction gives
point to the satire: “Laudabilis discretio marchionis Estensis et sua
magnificentia preparata cunctis, cunctis illum facit esse dilectum.”
More delightful still is a sentence which closely follows, quoted
solemnly like the former merely as an example of good phraseology
appropriate to a lofty subject, in which Charles of Valois plays the
_rôle_ of a “second Totila,” and his calamitous dealings with Florence
(including, presumably, Dante’s own banishment) are adduced as a fitting
prelude to his futile descent upon Sicily. “Ejecta maxima parte florum de
sinu tuo, Florentia, nequicquam Trinacriam Totila secundus adivit.”[157]
Earlier in the book there is another humorous touch with which we may
conclude our list, at the risk, perchance, of an anti-climax. A passage
near the end of Chapter i. recalls, in a curious way, a line from the
_Epistles_ of Horace.
Dante, having premised that every one should adorn (_exornare_) his
verses as far as possible, goes on to point out that there are limits
beyond which adornment becomes incongruous and absurd. “We do not speak
of an ox caparisoned like a horse or a belted pig as _ornatus_; we
laugh at them, and would rather apply the word _deturpatus_.” This _bos
ephippiatus_ most aptly typifies incongruity of adornment. In Horace’s
well-known line—
Optat ephippia bos piger, optat arare caballus,[158]
the point of the satire is different. It is the Roman poet’s favourite
theme of universal discontent—each envying another’s lot.
In Dante’s phrase we may perhaps detect an unconscious or semi-conscious
adoption or adaptation of a classical image: parallel, in a humble
way, with those splendid thefts from Virgil and Ovid with which he has
enriched the _Divina Commedia_: conceptions too unquestionably original
in their new form to be classed as mere plagiarisms.
“Cicero hath observed,” says the _Spectator_ of Nov. 5, 1714,[159] “that
a jest is never uttered with a better grace than when it is accompanied
with a serious countenance.”
If this be true, our quest may perhaps modestly congratulate itself on
the avoidance of undue levity. Nor need we take it seriously to heart if
we have failed to vindicate for Dante the character of a humorist in the
modern sense, and of the American type. The most that our investigation
can be said to have proved is that Dante, embittered as he was by his
exile, and emaciated by long and serious study, was not devoid of that
sense of humour whereby man is able to wring matter for cheerfulness and
mirth out of the most unlikely material, and, going through this vale of
misery—“questo aspro disorto”—to “use it for a well.” But neither is he
the cold abstraction, both less and more than human, which tradition,
of a sort, has handed down to us. His works display, for those who care
to look for them, a breadth of sympathy, a capacity for observation
and discernment, a keenness of interest, an eye for the incongruous,
a richness and sureness of self-expression that are guarantees of the
possession of the sense of humour.[160] The manifold play of the forces
of one of the most picturesque ages of human history found a sympathetic
response in Dante’s genius, though the sublimity and the restraint of
his work has obscured this. This side of his genius is well summed up by
Sannia.[161]
“La coscienza lucidissima di sè stesso, l’ attitudine all’ analisi
psicologica, la febbrile curiosità del mondo esterno, naturale ed umano,
lo spirito d’ osservazione, il senso più squisito dell’ arte, la divina
serenità, la multiforme impressionabilità dell’ artista, il senso del
tenero, la pietà umana, il pessimismo furono note spiccatissime, eminenti
del suo genio.”
IV
DANTE AND MEDIAEVAL THOUGHT
Vidi ’l maestro di color che sanno
Seder tra filosofica famiglia.
Tutti lo miran, tutti onor li fanno.
—_Inf._ iv. 131-3.
Those who were privileged to listen to Mr. Trevelyan’s lecture on
“Italy’s Part in the War,” and to see the wonderful slides presented to
him by the _Comando Supremo_, will remember the thrill contributed by
the last picture—the great statue of Dante at Trento, with the fugitive
Austrian soldiers at its base, fleeing, as it were, before his face.
Dante, we felt, has at last come to his own; the Trentino is at last
indefeasibly—
Suso in Italia bella,
and the “alps above Tiralli” effectively “bar out” the Teuton![162]
Dante’s inspiration has indeed brooded over the heroic efforts and
struggles of Italy’s twentieth century patriots, even as over their
forefathers of the Risorgimento. And this living influence of the Divine
Poet’s genius has been brought before our readers in the first two Essays
of this collection.