Here also, according to his own record, in rescuing a child which had
fallen into the water, he accidentally broke one of the baptismal
fonts,--a circumstance which seems to have been maliciously
misrepresented as an act of wilful sacrilege. His stern anxiety to clear
himself is characteristically indicated by the brief but dignified
attestation of the real fact, in the last line of the following singular
parallel between objects not otherwise likely to be brought into
comparison with each other. Describing the wells in which;
head-downward, simoniacal offenders (among the rest pope Nicholas III.)
were tormented with flames, that glanced from heel to toe along the
up-turned soles of their feet, he says,--
"The sides and bottom of that livid rock
Were scoop'd into round holes, of equal size,
Which seem'd not less nor larger than the fonts
For baptism, in my beautiful St. John's;
And one of which, not many years ago,
I broke to save a drowning child from death:
--Be this my seal to undeceive the world."[16]
_Dell' Inferno_, canto XIX.
Dante resided several years at Ravenna, with the noble-minded Guido da
Polenta, who, of his own accord, had invited him thither, and who, to
the last moment of his life, made him feel no other burden in his
service than gratitude for benefits bestowed with such a grace as though
the giver, and not the receiver, were laid under obligation. By him
being sent on an embassy to Venice, with the government of which Guido
had an unhappy dispute, Dante not only failed to accomplish a
reconciliation, but was even refused an audience, and compelled to
return by land for fear of the enemy's fleet, which had already
commenced hostilities along the coast. He arrived at Ravenna
broken-hearted with the disappointment, and died soon
afterwards,--according to his epitaph, on the 14th of September, 1321,
though some authorities date his demise in July preceding.
The remains of the illustrious poet were buried with a splendour
honourable to his name and worthy of his patron, who himself pronounced
the funeral eulogium of his departed guest. His own countrymen, who had
hardened their hearts against justice and humanity, in resistance of his
return amongst them while living, soon after his death became sensible
of their folly, and too late repented it. Embassy on embassy, during the
two succeeding centuries, failed to recover the bones of their outcast
fellow-citizen from his hospitable entertainers; and Florence has less
to boast of in having given him birth, than Ravenna for having given him
burial. One of those fruitless negotiations was conducted under the
auspices of Leo X., and more illustriously sanctioned by Michael Angelo,
an enthusiastic admirer of Dante, who offered to adorn the shrine, had
the desired relics been obtained. The mighty sculptor,--himself the
Dante of marble, simple, severe, sublime in style, and preternatural
almost from the fulness of reality condensed in his ideal forms,--in
many of his works, both of the chisel and the pencil, introduced figures
suggested by images of the poet, or directly embodying such. Most
conspicuous among these were the statues of Leah and Rachel, from the
twenty-seventh canto of the "Purgatorio," on the monument of pope Julius
II. His own copy of the "Divina Commedia" was embellished down the
margin with sketches from the subjects of the text; and, had it been
preserved, would surely have been classed with the most precious of
those books for which collectors are eager to give ten times or more
their weight in gold. The fate of this volume was not less singular than
its good fortune; after having been made inestimable by the hand of
Michael Angelo, it was lost at sea, and thus added to the treasures of
darkness one of the richest spoils that ever went down from the light.
It was the purpose of Guido da Polenta to erect a gorgeous sepulchre
over the ashes of the poet; but he neither reigned nor lived to
accomplish this, being soon afterwards driven from his dominions, and
dying himself a banished man at Bologna. More than a hundred and fifty
years later, Bernardo Bembo, father of the famous cardinal, completed
Polenta's design, though upon an inferior scale; and three centuries
more had elapsed, when cardinal Gonzaga raised a second and far more
sumptuous monument in the same place,--Ravenna; while in Florence, to
this day, there is none worthy of itself or the poet, who had been in
turn "its glory and its shame." The greatest honours conferred on his
memory by his native city were, the restoration to his family of his
confiscated property, after a lapse of forty years, the erection of a
bust crowned with laurel, at the public expense, a present from the
state of ten golden florins to his daughter by the hands of Boccaccio,
and the appointment of a public lecturer to expound the mysteries of the
"Divina Commedia." Boccaccio was the first professor who filled this
chair of poetry, philosophy, and theology. He commenced his
dissertations on a Sunday, in the church of St. Stephen, but died at the
end of two years, having proceeded no further than the seventeenth Canto
of the "Inferno." Similar institutions were adopted in Bologna, Pisa,
Venice, and other Italian towns; so that the renown of the man who had
lived by sufferance, died an outlaw, and been indebted to strangers for
a grave, exceeded, within two centuries, that of all his countrymen who
in polite literature had gone before him, and became the load-star of
all who, in any age, should follow. At Rome only the memory of the
Ghibelline bard was execrated, and his writings were proscribed. His
book "De Monarchia" was publicly burnt there, by order of pope John
XXII., who also sent a cardinal to the successor of Guido da Polenta, to
demand his bones, that they might be dealt with as those of an heretic,
and the ashes scattered on the wind. How impotent is the vengeance of
the great after the death of the object of their displeasure! What a
refuge, especially to fame, is the grave; a sanctuary which can never be
violated; for all human passions die on its threshold!
Boccaccio, the earliest of his biographers, though not the most
authentic, says, that in person Dante was of middle stature; that he
stooped a little from the shoulders, and was remarkable for his firm and
graceful gait. He always dressed in a manner peculiarly becoming his
rank and years. His visage was long, with an aquiline nose, and eyes
rather full than small; his cheek-bones large, and his upper lip
projecting beyond the under; his complexion was dark; his hair and beard
black, thick and curled; and his countenance exhibited a confirmed
expression of melancholy and thoughtfulness. Hence one day, at Verona,
as he passed a gateway, where several ladies were seated, one of them
exclaimed, "There goes the man who can take a walk to hell, and back
again, whenever he pleases, and bring us news of every thing that is
doing there." On which another, with equal sagacity, added, "That must
be true; for don't you see how his beard is frizzled, and his face
browned, with the heat and the smoke below!" The words, whether spoken
in sport or silliness, were overheard by the poet, who, as the fair
slanderers meant no malice, was quite willing that they should please
themselves with their own fancies. Towards the opening of the
"Purgatorio" there is an allusion to the soil which his face had
contracted on his journey with Virgil through the nether world:--
"High morn had triumph'd o'er the glimmering dawn
Which fled before her, so that I discern'd
The _tremble_ of the ocean from afar:
We walk'd along the solitary plain,
Like men retracing their erratic steps,
Who think all lost till they regain the path.
Arriving where the dew-drops with the sun
Contended, and lay thick beneath the shade,
Both hands my master delicately spread
Upon the grass:--aware of his intent,
I turn'd to him my tearful countenance,
And thence he wiped away the dusky hue,
With which the infernal air had sullied it."[17]
In his studies, Dante was so eager, earnest, and indefatigable, that his
wife and family often complained of his unsocial habits. Boccaccio
mentions, that once, when he was at Siena, having unexpectedly found at
a shop window a book which he had not seen, but had long coveted, he
placed himself on a bench before the door, at nine o'clock in the
morning, and never lifted up his eyes from the volume till vespers, when
he had run through the whole contents with such intense application, as
to have totally disregarded the festivities of processions and music
which had been passing through the streets the greater part of the day;
and when questioned about what had happened even in his presence, he
denied having had knowledge of any thing but what he was reading. As
might be expected from his other habits, he rarely spoke, except when
personally addressed, or strongly moved, and then his words were few,
well chosen, weighty, and expressed in tones of voice accommodated to
the subject. Yet when it was required, his eloquence brake forth with
spontaneous felicity, splendour, and exuberance of diction, imagery, and
thought.
Dante delighted in music. The most natural and touching incident in his
"Purgatorio" is the interview between himself and his friend Casella; an
eminent singer in his day, who must, notwithstanding, have been
forgotten within his century, but for the extraordinary good fortune
which has befallen him, to be celebrated by two of the greatest poets of
their respective countries, (Dante and Milton) from whose pages his name
cannot soon perish.
Choosing to excel in all the elegancies of life, as well as in
gentlemanly exercises and intellectual prowess, Dante attached himself
to painting not less than to music, and practised it with the pencil
(not, indeed, so triumphantly as with the pen, his picture-poetry being
unrivalled,) with sufficient facility and grace to make it a favourite
amusement in private; and none can believe that he could amuse himself
with what was worthless. His four celebrated contemporaries, Cimabue,
Odorigi, Franco Bolognese, and Giotto, are all honourably mentioned by
him in the eleventh canto of the "Purgatorio."
There is an interesting allusion to the employment which he loved in the
"Vita Nuova:--On the day that completed the year after this lady
(Beatrice) had been received among the denizens of eternal life, while
I was sitting alone, and recalling her form to my remembrance, I drew an
angel on a certain tablet," &c. It may be incidentally observed, that
Dante's angels are often painted with unsurpassable beauty as well as
inexhaustible variety of delineation throughout his poem, especially in
canto IX. of the "Inferno," and cantos II. VIII. XII. XV. XVII. XXIV. of
the "Purgatorio." Take six lines of one of these portraits; though the
inimitable original must consume the unequal version.
"A noi venia la creatura bella,
Bianco vestita, e nella faccia, quale
Par, tremolando, mattutina stella:
Le braccia aperse, e indi aperse l'ale;
Disse; 'Venite; qui son presso i gradi,
E agevolmente ornai si sale.'"
_Dell' Purgatorio_, canto XII.
"That being came, all beautiful, to meet us,
Clad in white raiment, and the morning star
Appear'd to tremble in his countenance;
His arms he spread, and then he spread his wings
And cried, 'Come on, the steps are near at hand.
And here the ascent is easy.'"
Leonardo Aretino, who had seen Dante's handwriting, mentions, with no
small commendation, that the letters were long; slender, and exceedingly
distinct,--the characteristics of what is called in ornamental writing
a fine Italian hand. The circumstance may seem small, but it is not
insignificant as a finishing stroke in the portraiture of one who,
though he was the first poet unquestionably, and not the last
philosopher, was also one of the most accomplished gentlemen of his age.
Two of Dante's sons, Pietro and Jacopo, inherited a portion of their
father's spirit, and were among the first commentators on his works,--an
inestimable advantage to posterity, since the local and personal
histories were familiar to them; for had these not been explained by
contemporaries, many of the brief and more exquisite allusions must have
been irrecoverably lost, and some of the most affecting passages
remained as uninterpretable as though they had been carved on granite in
hieroglyphics. For example, in the fifth canto of the "Purgatorio," the
travellers meet three spirits together,--the first, Giacopo del Cassero
of Fano, who had been assassinated by order of a prince of Ferrara, for
having spoken ill of his highness;--the second, Buonconte, of
Montefeltro, who had fallen fighting on the side of the Aretines, in the
battle of Campaldino; and for whose soul a singular contention took
place between a good angel and an evil one, in which the former happily
prevailed;--the third shade was that of a female of rank, who, having
quietly waited till the two gentlemen had told their tales, thus
emphatically hinted hers:--
"Ah! when thou hast return'd to yonder world,
And art reposing from thy long, long journey,
Remember me, for I am Pia:--
* * * * *
Siena gave me birth, Maremma death,
And this _he_ knows, who, with his ring and jewel,
But newly had espoused me."[18]
This unfortunate lady was the bride of Nello della Pietra, a grandee of
Siena, who, becoming jealous of her, removed his predestined victim to
the putrid marshes of Maremma, where she soon drooped and died, without
suspicion on her part, or intimation on his, of the hideous purpose for
which she had been hurried thither; her gloomy keeper, with a dreadful
eye, watching her life go out like a lamp in a charnel-vault, and after
her death abandoning himself to despair.--One of Dante's sons above
mentioned (Pietro) was an eminent lawyer at Verona, and enjoyed the
friendship of Petrarch, who dedicated some lines to him, at Trevizi, in
1361. Jacopo is said to have been a writer of Italian verse. Of three
others, almost nothing is known, except that they died young. His
daughter Beatrice, so named after his _first_ love, took the veil in the
convent of St. Stefano del' Uliva, at Ravenna.
Dante was the author of two Latin treatises,--the one already noticed,
"De Monarchia;" and another, "De Vulgari Eloquio," on the structure of
language in general, and that of Italy in particular. But for his
celebrity he is indebted solely to his productions in the latter tongue,
consisting of "La Vita Nuova," a reverie of fact and fable, in prose and
rhyme, referring to his youthful love;--"Canzoni[19] and Sonnets" of
which his lady was the eternal theme;--"Il Convito," a critical and
mystical commentary on three of his lyrics;--and the "Divina Commedia,
or Vision of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise," by the glory of which its
forerunners have been at once eclipsed and kept in mid-day splendour,
instead of glimmering through that doubtful twilight of obscure fame
among the feeble productions of contemporaries, which must have been
their lot but for such fortunate alliance.
The prose of the "Vita Nuova" and the "Convito" is deemed, at this day,
not only nervous and racy, but in a high degree pure and elegant
Italian; while much greater praise may be unhesitatingly bestowed upon
his verse. Whether employed upon the arbitrary structure of Canzoni, the
love-knot form of the sonnet, or the interminable chain of _terze rime_,
(the triple intertwisted rhyme of the "Divina Commedia," which Dante is
supposed to have invented,) his language is not more antiquated to his
countrymen than the English of Shakspeare is to ours. The limits of the
present essay preclude further notice of his lyrics than the general
remark, that they have all the stately, brief, sententious character of
his heroics, with occasional strokes of natural tenderness, and not
unfrequently exhibit a delicacy of thought so pure, graceful, and
unaffected, that Petrarch himself has seldom reached it in his more
ornate and laboured compositions.
Dante did more than either his predecessors or contemporaries had done
to improve, ennoble, and refine his native idiom; indeed he was wont to
speak indignantly of those who would degrade it below the Provençal, the
fashionable vehicle of verse in that age of transition, when the young
languages of modern Europe, begotten between the stern tongues of the
north and the classic ones of the south, were growing up together, on
both sides of the Alps and the Pyrenees, like children in rivalry of
each other, as the nations that spoke them respectively, so often
intermingled in war or in peace. At the close of canto XXVI. of the
"Purgatorio," Arnauld Daniel is introduced as the master-minstrel of the
age gone by, singing some lines in a "Babylonish dialect," partly
Provençal and partly Catalonian; pitting infamous French against the
worst kind of Spanish (according to P. P. Venturi); and these certainly
present a striking contrast of barbarous dissonance with the full-toned
Tuscan of the context.
Like our Spenser, Dante took many freedoms with the extant Italian,
which no later writer could have used. For the sake of euphony,
emphasis, or rhyme, he occasionally modified words and terminations to
serve a present purpose only, and which he himself rejected elsewhere.
In this he was justified: he ran through the whole compass of his native
vocabulary, he tried every note of the diapason, and all that were most
pure, harmonious, or energetic, he sanctioned, by employing them in his
song, which gave them a voice through after ages, so that few,
comparatively very few, have been entirely rejected by his most
fastidious successors. It was well for the poetry of his country that he
wrote his immortal work in its language; for neither Petrarch nor
Boccaccio could have gone so far as they did in perfecting it, if they
had not had so great a model, not to equal only but to excel. They,
indeed, affected to think little of their vernacular writings, and
pretended merely to amuse themselves with such compositions as every
body could read. Dante himself began his poem in Latin; and if he had
gone forward, the finishing stroke of the last line would have been a
_coup-de-grace_, which it could never have survived.[20]
Of the origin of the "Divina Commedia" it would be in vain to speculate
here; the author himself, probably, could not have traced the first
idea. Such conceptions neither come by inspiration nor by chance:--who
can recollect the moment when he began to think, yet all his thoughts
have been consecutively allied to that? Many visions and allegories had
appeared before Dante's; and in several of these were gross
representations of the spiritual world, especially of purgatory, the
reality of which, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was urged
upon credulity with extraordinary zeal and perseverance by a corrupt
hierarchy. By all these rather than by one his mind might have been
prepared for the work.
Seven cantos of the "Inferno" are understood to have been written before
the author's banishment; it is manifest, however, that if this were the
case they must have been considerably altered afterwards; indeed the
whole character of the poem, however the original outline may have been
followed, must have undergone a very remarkable, and (afflictive as the
occasion may have been for himself) a very auspicious change, from his
misfortunes. To the latter, his poem owes many of its most splendid
passages, and almost all its personal interest; an interest wherein
consists, if not its _principal_, its _prevailing_ and preserving charm.
Had the whole been composed in prosperity, amidst honours, and
affluence, and learned ease, in his native city, it would no doubt have
been a mighty achievement of genius; but much that enhances and endears
both its moral and its fable could never have been suggested, indeed
would not have existed, under happier circumstances. That moral, indeed,
is often as mistaken as that fable is monstrous; but the one and the
other should be judged according to the times. The poet's romantic and
unearthly love to Beatrice would have wanted that sombre and terrible
relief which is now given to it by the gloom of his own character, the
expression of his feelings under the sense of unmerited wrongs,
invectives thundered out against his persecutors, and exposures of
atrocities which were every-day deeds of every-day men, in those
distracted countries, of which his poem has left such fearful records.
Much unsatisfactory discussion has arisen upon the title "Divina
Commedia," which Dante gave to his poem; it being presumed that he had
never seen a regular drama either in letter or exhibition, as the Greek
and Latin authors of that class were scarcely known in Italy till after
his time. The religious spectacles, however, common in the darkest of
the middle ages, consisting not of pantomime only, but of dialogue and
song, may have suggested to him the designation as well as the subject
of his strange adventure. Be this as it may, the character of the work
is dramatic throughout, consisting of a series of scenes, which conduct
to one catastrophe; for however miscellaneous or insulated they may seem
in respect to _each other_,--in respect to _the author_ (who is his own
hero, and for whose warning, instruction, and final recovery from an
evil course of life, the whole are collocated,) they all bear directly
upon _him_, and accomplish by just gradations the purpose for which they
were intended. Dante is a changed man when he emerges, from the infernal
regions in the centre of the globe, upon the shore of the island of
Purgatory at the Antipodes; and is further so refined by his ascent up
that perilous mount, that when he reaches the terrestrial paradise at
the top, he is prepared for translation from thence through the nine
spheres of the celestial universe. Many of the interviews between the
visiters of the invisible worlds which they explore, and the inhabitants
of these, are scenes which involve all the peculiarities of
stage-exhibitions,--dialogue, action, passion,--secrecy, surprise,
interruption. Examples may be named. The meeting and conversations with
Sordello, in the sixth and seventh cantos of the "Purgatorio," in which
there are two instances of unexpected discoveries which bring out the
whole beauty and grandeur of that mysterious personage's character; as a
patriot, when at the mere sound of the word "Mantua" he embraces Virgil
with transport, not yet knowing, nor even enquiring, any thing further
about him, except that he is his countryman; and afterwards as a poet,
when, Virgil disclosing his name, Sordello is overpowered with
delightful astonishment, like one who suddenly beholds something
wonderful before him, and, scarcely believing his own eyes for joy,
exclaims, in a breath, "It is! it is not!" (_Ell' è, non è._) The
parties are thus introduced to each other. Dante and Virgil are
considering which road they shall take, when the latter observes:--
"Yonder I see a spirit, fix'd in thought,
Alone and gazing earnestly upon us,
He will point out the readier way to take.
Tow'rds him we went--Soul of a Longobardian!
How didst thou stand aloof with haughty bearing,
And lordly eyes, slow-moving as we moved!
--He utter'd not a word, but let us pass,
On-looking like a lion from his lair:
But Virgil, drawing near, entreated him
To show the easiest path for our ascent:
Still to that meek request he answer'd not,
But of our country and our way of life
Enquired;--my courteous guide began then, 'Mantua';
Straight at the word, that spirit, erewhile so wrapt
Within himself, sprang from his place, and cried,
'O Mantuan! I'm thy countryman, Sordello;'
And one the other instantly embraced."[21]
The reserve of Sordello is generally attributed to stubbornness or
pride; but is it not manifest that, on the first sight of the strangers,
he had a misgiving hope (if the phrase be allowable) which he feared
might deceive him, that they were countrymen of his, wherefore, absorbed
in that sole idea, he disregards their question concerning the road, and
directly comes to the point which he was anxious to ascertain; and this
being resolved by the single word "Mantua," his soul flies forth at once
to embrace the speaker?
In the tenth canto of the "Inferno," where heretics are described as
being tormented in tombs of fire, the lids of which are suspended over
them till the day of judgment, Dante finds Farinata d'Uberti, an
illustrious commander of the Ghibellines, who, at the battle of Monte
Aperto, in 1260, had so utterly defeated the Guelfs of Florence, that
the city lay at the mercy of its enemies, by whom counsel was taken to
raze it to the ground: but Farinata, because his bowels yearned towards
his native city, stood up alone to oppose the barbarous design; and
partly by menace--having drawn his sword in the midst of the
assembly--and partly by persuasion, preserved the city from destruction.
The interview is thus painted; but to prepare the reader for well
understanding the nature of the by-play which intervenes, it is
necessary to state that Cavalcante Cavalcanti, whose head appears out of
an adjacent sepulchre, was the father of Guido Cavalcanti, a poet, the
particular friend of Dante, and chief of the Bianchi party banished
during his priorship.
"'O Tuscan! Thou, who, through this realm of fire,
Alive dost walk, thus courteously conversing
Pause, if it please thee, here. Thy dialect
Proclaims thy lineage from that noble land,
Which I, perhaps, too much have wrong'd.'
"Such sounds
Suddenly issued forth from one of those
Sepulchral caverns.--Tremblingly I crept
A little nearer to my guide, but he
Cried, 'Turn again! What would'st thou do? Behold,
'Tis Farinata that hath raised himself:
There may'st thou see him, upward from the loins.'
Already had I fix'd mine eyes on his,
Who stood, with bust and visage so erect,
As though he look'd on hell itself with scorn.
My master then, with prompt and resolute hands,
Thrust me among the charnel-vaults towards him,
Saying,--'Thy words be plain.' When I had reach'd
His tombstone-foot, he look'd at me a while
As in disdain, then loftily demanded--
'Who were thine ancestors?'
----"Eager to tell,
Nought I conceal'd, but utter'd all the truth.
Arching his brow a little, he return'd;--
'Bitter antagonists of mine, of me,
And of my party, were thy sires; but twice
I scatter'd them.'
"'If scatter'd twice,' said I,
'Once and again they came from all sides back,--
A lesson which _thy_ friends have not well learn'd.'
"Just then a second figure, at his side,
Emerged to view; unveil'd above the chin,
And kneeling, as methought.--It look'd around
So wistfully, as though it hoped to find
Some other with me; but, that hope dispell'd,
Weeping it spake:--'If through this dungeon-gloom,
Grandeur of genius guide thy venturous way,
My son!--where is he?--and why not with _thee?_'
Then I to him:--"Not of myself I came;
He who awaits me yonder brought me hither,--
One whom perhaps thy Guido held in scorn.[22]
His speech and form of penance had already
Taught me his name; my words were therefore pointed.
Upstarting he exclaim'd:--"How?--said'st thou _held?_
Lives he not then? and doth not heaven's sweet light
Fall on his eyes?'--When I w as slow to answer,
Backward he sunk, and re-appear'd no more.
"Meanw'hile that other most majestic form,
Near which I stood, neither changed countenance,
Nor turn'd his neck, nor lean'd to either side:
'And if,' quoth he, our first debate resuming,
'They have not well that lesson learn'd, the thought
Torments me more than this infernal bed:
And yet, not fifty times her changing face,
Who here reigns sovereign, shall be re-illumined,
Ere _thou_ shalt know how hard that lesson is.[23]
--But tell me,--so may'st thou return in peace
To the dear world above!--why are thy people
In all their acts so mad against my race?'
--'The slaughter and discomfiture,' said I,
'That turn'd the river red at Mont-Aperto,
Have caused such dire proscriptions in our temples.'
"He shook his head, deep-sighing, then rejoin'd,--
'I was not _there_ alone; nor without cause
Engaged with others; but I _was_ alone,
And stood in her defence with open brow,
When all our council, with one voice, decreed
That Florence should be razed from her foundation.'
"'So may thy kindred find repose, as thou
Shalt loose a knot which hath entangled me!'
Thus I adjured him:--'ye foresee what time
(If rightly I have heard) will bring to pass,
But to the present, otherwise, are blind.'
"'We see, like him who hath an evil eye,
Far distant things,' said he; 'so highest God
Enlightens us: but yet, when they approach,
Or when they are, our intellect falls short;
Nor can we know, save by report from others,
Aught of the state of man beneath the sun.
Hence may'st thou comprehend how all our knowledge
Shall cease for ever from the point that shuts
The portal of the future.'[24]
"At that moment
Compunction smote me for my recent fault,
And I cried out--'Oh! tell that fallen one,
His son is yet among the living.--Say,
That if I falter'd to reply at first
With that assurance, 'twas because my thoughts
Were harass'd by the doubt which thou hast solved.'"[25]
The reader of these lines (however inferior the translation may be),
cannot have failed to perceive by what natural action and speech the
paternal anxiety of Cavalcante respecting his son is indicated. On his
bed of torture he hears a voice which he knows to be that of his son's
friend; he starts up, looks eagerly about, as expecting to see that son;
but observing the friend only, he at once interrupts the dialogue with
Farinata, and in broken exclamations enquires concerning him. Dante
happening to employ the past tense of a verb in reference to what his
"Guido" might have done, the miserable parent instantly lays hold of
that minute circumstance as an intimation of his death, and asks
questions of which he dreads the answers, precisely in the manner of
Macduff when he learns that his wife and children had been murdered by
Macbeth. The poet hesitating to reply. Cavalcante takes the worst for
granted, falls back in despair, and appears not again. Thus,
"Even from _his_ tomb the voice of Nature cries."
Dante, however, at the close of the scene, unexpectedly recurs to his
own fault with the tenderness of compunction and delicacy of respect due
to an unfortunate being, whom he had unintentionally agonised with his
silence, and sends a message to the old man that his son yet lives.[26]
Contrasted with this trembling sensibility of a father's affection,
stronger than death, and out-feeling the pains of hell, is the stern,
calm, patient dignity of Farinata, who, though wounded to the quick by
the retort of Dante at the moment when their discourse was broken upon,
stands unmoved in mind, in look, in posture, till the interlude is
ended; and then, without the slightest allusion to it, he takes up the
suspended argument at the last words of his opponent, as though his
thoughts had all the while been ruminating on the disgrace of his
friends, the afflictions of his family, and the inextinguishable enmity
of his countrymen against himself. His noble rejoinder, on Dante's
reference to the carnage at Monte Aperto as the cause of his people's
implacability, is above all praise. Indeed, it would be difficult to
point out, in ancient or modern tragedy, a passage of more sublimity or
pathos, in which so few words express so much, yet leave so much more to
be imagined by any one who has "a human heart," as the whole of this
scene in the original exhibits.
Dante's poem is certainly neither the greatest nor the best in the
world; but it is, perhaps, the most extraordinary one which resolute
intellect ever planned, or persevering talents successfully executed. It
stands alone; and must be read and judged according to rules and
immunities adapted to its peculiar structure, plot, and purpose, formed
upon principles affording scope to the exercise of the highest powers,
with little regard to precedent. If these principles, then, have
intrinsic excellence, and the work be found uniformly consistent with
them, fulfilling to the utmost the aims of the author, the "Divina
Commedia" must be allowed to stand among the proudest trophies of
original genius, challenging, encountering, and overcoming unparalleled
difficulties. Though the fields of action, or rather of vision, are
nominally Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise,--the Paradise, Purgatory, and
Hell of Dante, with all their terrors, and splendours, and preternatural
fictions, are but representations of scenes transacted on earth, and
characters that lived antecedently or contemporaneously with himself.
Though altogether _out_ of the world, the whole is of the world. Men and
women seem fixed in eternal torments, passing through purifying flames,
or exalted to celestial beatitude; yet in all these situations they are
what they were; and It is their former history, more than their present
happiness, hope, or despair, which constitutes, through a hundred
cantos, the interest, awakened and kept up by the successive exhibition
of more than a thousand individual actors and sufferers. Of every one of
these something terrible or touching is intimated or told, briefly at
the utmost, but frequently by mere hints of narrative or gleams of
allusion, which excite curiosity in the breast of the reader; who is
surprised at the poet's forbearance, when, in the notes of commentators,
he finds complex, strange, and fearful circumstances, on which a modern
versifier or novelist would expend pages, treated here as ordinary
events, on which it would be impertinent to dwell. These, in the
author's own age, were generally understood; the bulk of the materials
being gathered up during a period of restlessness and confusion among
the republican states of Italy.
Hence, though the first appearance of the "Divina Commedia," in any
intelligible edition, is repulsive from the multitude of notes, and the
text is not seldom difficult and dark with the oracular compression of
strong ideas in few and pregnant words, yet will the toil and patience
of any reader he well repaid, who perseveringly proceeds but a little
way, quietly referring, as occasion may require, from the obscurity of
the original to the illustrations below; for when he returns from the
latter to the former (as though his own eye had been refreshed with new
light, the darkness having been in it, and not in the verse), what was
colourless as a cloud is radiant with beauty, and what before was
undefined in form becomes exquisitely precise and symmetrical, from
comprehending in so small a compass so vast a variety of thought,
feeling, or fact. Dante, in this respect, must be studied as an author
in a dead language by a learner, or rather as one who employs a living
language on forgotten themes; then will his style grow easier and
clearer as the reader grows more and more acquainted with his subject,
his manner, and his materials. For whatever be the corruptions of the
text (which perhaps has never been sufficiently collated), the
remoteness of the allusions, and our countrymen's want of that previous
knowledge of almost every thing treated upon, which best prepares the
mind for the perception and highest enjoyment of poetical beauty and
poetical pleasure, Dante will be found, in reality, one of the most
clear, minute, and accurate writers in sentiment, as he is one of the
most perfectly natural and graphic painters to the life of persons,
characters, and actions. His draughts have the freedom of etchings, and
the sharpness of proof impressions. His poem is well worth all the pains
which the most indolent reader may take to master it.
Ordinary poetry is often striking and captivating at first view, but all
its merit is at once elicited; and frequently that which charmed so much
at first becomes less and less affecting, less and less defined, the
more it is examined, till light turns to mist, and mist to shadow in the
end; whereas the highest order of poetry--that which is
_intellectual_--the longer it is dwelt upon, the lovelier, the nobler,
the more delightful it appears, and when fully understood remains
imperishable in its graces and effects; repetition a thousand times does
not impair it; its creations, like those of nature,--familiar, indeed,
as the sun and the stars,--are never less glorious and beautiful, though
daily before us. Dante's poetry (extravagant and imaginative as he often
may be) is thoroughly intellectual; there is no enthusiasm of feeling,
but there is much of philosophical and theological subtlety, and of
course much absurdity in some of his reveries; yet his passion is always
pure and unaffected, his descriptions are daylight realities, and his
heroes men of flesh and blood. Probably no other work of human genius so
far exceeds in its development the expectation of prejudiced or
unprepared readers, as the "Divina Commedia;" or performs, in fact, so
much more than it seems to promise.
Dante has created a hell, purgatory, and paradise of his own; and, being
satisfied with the present world as a nursery for his personages, he has
peopled his ultramundane regions with these, assigning to all their
abodes "sulphureous or ambrosial," or refining those who were yet
corrigible after death, according to his own pleasure, his theological
views, and his moral feelings. It must be confessed that, whatever were
his passions, prejudices, or failings, his attachments or antipathies,
as an arbiter of fate he appears honestly to have distributed justice,
to the best of his knowledge, to all whom he has cited before his
tribunal, leaving in the case of every one (perhaps) a judgment
unimpeachable and unappealable; so forcibly does he impress the mind
with the truth and reality of the evidence of their merit or turpitude,
which he produces to warrant his sentences. As a man, he is, indeed,
fierce, splenetic, and indignant at times, especially in execrating his
countrymen for their profligacy and injustice towards himself; yet
(though there may have been primary motives less noble than the apparent
ones, at the bottom of his heart, unsuspected even by himself,) his
anger and his vengeance seem always directed against those who deserved
to be swept from the face of the earth, as venal, treacherous,
parricidal wretches. With the wonders which he beheld in his invisible
world, in his complicated travels through its triple round of
labyrinths;--as, in hell, wheel within wheel, diminishing downward to
the centre; in purgatory, circle above circle, terminating in the garden
of Eden; and, in his paradise, orb beyond orb, through the solar system
to the heaven of heavens, where he "presumed, an earthly guest, and drew
empyreal air;"--with these he has constructed a poem of a thousand
pages, exhibiting the greatest diversity of characters, scenes,
circumstances, and events, that were ever embraced in an equal compass;
while all are made perfectly to harmonise and conduce to one process,
carried on at every step of his pilgrimage, namely, the gradual
purification of the poet himself, by the examples which he sees and the
lessons which he hears; as well as by the toils he undergoes, the pains
he endures, and the bliss he partakes, in his long and dreary path down
into the nether regions, where there is no hope; up the steep hill,
where, though there is suffering, there is no fear of ultimate release;
and on his flight through the "nine-enfolded spheres," where all are as
happy as they can be in their present station, yet, as they pass from
stage to stage, rise in capacity and means of enjoyment to fulness of
felicity in the beatific vision.
Dante was the very poet, and the "Divina Commedia" the very poem, to be
expected from the influence of all existing circumstances in church and
state at the time when he flourished. The poet and his age were
homogeneous, and his song was as truly in season as that of the
nightingale in spring; the winter of barbarism had broken up, the summer
heat of refinement had not yet come on: a century earlier there would
have been too much ignorance, a century later too much intelligence, to
form such a theme and such a minstrel; for though Dante, in any age,
must have been one of its greatest bards, yet the bard that he was he
could not have been in any other than that in which he lived.
Dante, as hath already been intimated, is the hero of his own poem; and
the "Divina Commedia" is the only example of an attempt triumphantly
achieved, and placed beyond the reach of scorn or neglect, wherein, from
beginning to end, the author discourses concerning himself individually.
Had this been done in any other way than the consummately simple,
delicate, and unobtrusive one which he has adopted, the whole would have
been insufferable egotism, disgusting coxcombry, or oppressive
dulness,--whereas this personal identity is the charm, the strength, the
soul of the book: he lives, he breathes, he moves through it; his pulse
beats or stands still, his eye kindles or fades, his cheek grows pale
with horror, colours with shame, or burns with indignation; we hear his
voice, his step, in every page; we see his shape by the flames of hell,
his shadow in the land where there is no _other_ shadow ("Purgatorio"),
and his countenance gaining angelic elevation from "colloquy sublime"
with glorified intelligences in the paradise above. Nor does he ever go
out of his actual character;--he is, indeed, the lover from infancy of
Beatrice, the aristocratic magistrate of a fierce democracy, the valiant
soldier in the field of Campaldino, the fervent patriot in the feuds of
Guelfs and Ghibellines, the eloquent and subtle disputant in the schools
of theology; the melancholy exile, wandering from court to court,
depending for bread and shelter on petty princes who knew not his worth,
except as a splendid captive in their train; and, above all (though not
obtrusively so), he is the poet anticipating his own assured renown, and
dispensing at his will honour or infamy to others, whom he need but to
name, and the sound must be heard to the end of time, and echoed from
all regions of the globe. Dante, in his vision, is Dante as he lived, as
he died, and as he expected to live in both worlds beyond death,--an
immortal spirit in the one, an unforgotten poet in the other. Pride of
birth, consciousness of genius, religious feeling almost to fanaticism,
and the sense of wrongs, under which he is alternately inflamed with
rage, withered with disappointment, or saddened with despair,--these are
continually reminding the reader of the man as he was; stimulating his
jaded hope with the bitter sweet of revenge, which he could wreak at
will upon his enemies; and solacing a wounded spirit with the thought of
fame in possession, which his fellow-citizens could not confiscate, and
fame in _reversion_, of which contemporaries could not cut off the
entail.
Yet while he is thus in every point an individual, he is at the same
time an exemplar of the whole species; and he may emphatically say to
the reader who can follow him in his journeys, receive his inspirations,
and share in his troubles, anxieties, joys, and disappointments:--"Am I
not a man and a brother?" Dante, though in this sense the hero of his
own poem, is any thing but a hero, either in the vulgar or the
chivalrous sense of the term. He is a human being, with all the faults,
frailties, and imperfections of our common nature, as they really
existed in himself, and as they more or less exist in every other
person; nor can a less sophisticated character be found in all the
volumes of prose and rhyme that have appeared since this
auto-biographical poem. He assumes nothing; he conceals nothing; his
fears, his ignorance, his loves, and his enmities, are all undisguisedly
set forth, as though he were all the while communing with his own heart,
without the cowardly apprehension of blame, or the secret desire of
applause from a fellow-creature. He is always, indeed, noble, manly, and
candid, but travelling continually in company of some superior
intelligence,--Virgil in hell and purgatory, and Beatrice in purgatory
and heaven,--he always defers to the one or the other in difficulty,
doubt, or danger, and clings for protection, as well as looks up for
instruction, with childlike simplicity and docility; returning with the
most reverent and affectionate gratitude every token of kindness
received from either.
Marvellous and incredible, it must be confessed, are many of the stories
which he tells; but he tells them with the plainness and
straight-forwardness of a man who is speaking the truth, and nothing
else, of his own knowledge.
In the last cantos of the "Purgatorio," and throughout the "Paradiso,"
there is a prodigious putting forth of power to describe ineffable and
eternal things; with inexhaustible prodigality of illustration, and
transmutation of the same symbols, to constitute different gradations of
blessedness and glory. Of these, however, there are scarcely any types
except light, colour, sound, and motion, variously combined to represent
spiritual beings, their forms, their occupations, and manner of
discoursing; but even amongst such inexpressible, nay, unimaginable
scenes and passages, the human nature which cleaves to the poet, and
shows itself, under every transmigration, allied to flesh and blood,
gives an interest which allegorical pictures of invisible realities can
never keep up beyond the first brilliant impression. Yet the vitality
and strength of the poem reside chiefly in the first and second parts;
diminishing just in proportion as the author rises above the regions
which exhibit the sins and sufferings of creatures like ourselves,
punished with everlasting destruction in hell, or "burnt and purged
away," through the penal inflictions of purgatory. It may, however, be
said, with regard to the whole, that no ideal beings, ideal scenes, or
ideal occurrences, in any poem or romance, have ever more perfectly
_personified_ truth and nature than those in this composition, which,
though the theatre is figuratively beyond the limits of human action, is
nevertheless full of such action in its most common as well as its most
extraordinary forms.
There is scarcely a decorous attitude of the human frame, a look
expressive of the most concealed sentiment, or a feeling of pain,
pleasure, surprise, doubt, fear, agony, hope, delight, which is not
described with a minuteness of discrimination alike curious and
admirable; the poet himself frequently being the subject of the same,
and exciting our sympathy by the lively or poignant remembrance of
having ourselves done, looked, felt like him, when we were far from
being ingenuous enough to acknowledge the weakness implied. There is
scarcely a phenomenon in the visible heavens, the earth, the sea, and
the phases of nature, which he has not presented in the most striking
manner. In such instances he frequently descends to the nicest
particulars, that he may realise the exact view of them which he wishes
to be taken; they being necessarily illustrations of invisible and
preternatural subjects. This leads to the remark, that the poem abounds
with similes of the greatest variety, beauty, and elegance; often,
likewise, of the most familiar, touching, or grotesque character. Among
these, birds are favourite images, especially the stork and the
falcon,--the two last that an English poet of the nineteenth century
would think of, but which happily remind us, as often as they are seen
here, of the country of the author, while they present pictures of times
gone by,--the stork having long ago deserted our shores, and falconry,
poetical and captivating as it is to the eye and the fancy, having been
abandoned in the fashionable rage for preserves, where game are bred
like poultry, and massacred by wholesale on field-days. Next to birds,
children are the darlings, in the similes, of this stern, and harsh,
and gloomy being, as he is often, though unjustly, represented to have
been. Amidst his most dazzling, terrific, or monstrous creations, these
little ones, in all their loveliness and hilarity, are introduced, to
re-invigorate the tired thoughts, and cool the over-heated imagination
with reminiscence of that which, in this world, may be looked upon with
the least pain, and which cannot be looked upon with pleasure without
our being the better for it; the love of children, and the delight of
seeing them happy, being a test of every other species of kindness
towards our fellow-creatures.
It is unnecessary to pursue general criticism further. Any analysis of
the plot would be preposterous here; for nothing less than a progressive
abstract of the whole, with examples from every stage, would be
satisfactory, or indeed intelligible, to those who are not acquainted
with the original, or the translation into English by the Reverend H. F.
Cary, which may be said to fail in nothing except the versification--and
that, perhaps, only in consequence of the writer's attention to what
constitutes the chief merit of his performance, fidelity to the meaning
of the text.
It was the purpose of the writer of the foregoing memoir to have
concluded his strictures on the "Divina Commedia" with a series of
newly-translated specimens from the same (like the foregoing ones), in
the various kinds of style for which the author was distinguished, in
order to give the English reader some faint idea of this poet's very
peculiar manner of handling his subject, and the general cast of his
mind and mode of thinking: but the limits of the present work precluding
any further extension of this article, these are reserved, and may be
laid before the public at some future opportunity.
[Footnote 1: The heaven of heavens.]
[Footnote 2: The sun in the sign of the Twins.]
[Footnote 3: "S' io torni mai, Lettore, a quel devoto
Trionfo, per lo quale io piango spesso
Le mie peccata, e 'l petto mi percuoto,
Tu non avresti in tanto tratto e messo
Nel fuoco il dito, in quanto io vidi 'l segno.
Che segue 'l tauro, e fui dentro da esso.
O gloriose stelle! O lume pregno
Di gran virtù, 'dal quale io riconosco
Tutto (qual che si sia) il mio ingegno;
Con voi nasceva, e s'ascendeva vosco
Quegli, ch' è padre d'ogni mortal vita,
Quand' io senti' da prima l'aer Tosco.
E poi quando mi fu grazia largita
D'entrar nell' alta ruota che vi gira,
La vostra región mi fu sortita.
A voi divotamente ora sospira
L' ánima mia, per aquistar virtute
Al passo forte che a se la tira."]
[Footnote 4: In religious processions on saint-days.]
[Footnote 5: This passage is remarkable for having been imitated by
Spenser in his personification of Forgetfulness: he, however, makes the
feet and face at variance, which Dante does not, reversing the aspect of
the one and the motion of the other:--
"But very uncouth sight was to behold
How he did fashion his untoward pace;
For as he forward moved his footing old,
To backward still was turn'd his wrinkled face,
Unlike to men, who, ever as they trace
Both feet and face one way are wont to lead."
_Færie Queene_, book I. canto VIII. st. 31.