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.
And saw four more, never of living wight
Beheld, since Adam brought us our distress;
Heaven seemed rejoicing in their happy light.
Stories from the Italian Poets
The next was the lord of Athens,
Pisistratus, calmly reproving his wife for wishing him to put to death
her daughter's lover, who, in a transport, had embraced her in public.
"If we are to be thus severe," said Pisistratus, "with those that love
us, what is to be done with such as hate? " The last spectacle was that
of a furious multitude shouting and stoning to death a youth, who, as he
fell to the ground, still kept his face towards heaven, making his eyes
the gates through which his soul reached it, and imploring forgiveness
for his murderers. [32]
The visions passed away, leaving the poet staggering as if but half
awake. They were succeeded by a thick and noisome fog, through which he
followed his leader with the caution of a blind man, Virgil repeatedly
telling him not to quit him a moment. Here they heard voices praying in
unison for pardon to the "Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the
world. " They were the spirits of the angry. Dante conversed with one of
them on free-will and necessity; and after quitting him, and issuing by
degrees from the cloud, beheld illustrative visions of anger; such as
the impious mother, who was changed into the bird that most delights in
singing; Haman, retaining his look of spite and rage on the cross; and
Lavinia, mourning for her mother, who slew herself for rage at the death
of Turnus. [33]
These visions were broken off by a great light, as sleep is broken; and
Dante heard a voice out of it saying, "The ascent is here. " He then, as
Virgil and he ascended into the fourth circle, felt an air on his face,
as if caused by the fanning of wings, accompanied by the utterance
of the words, "Blessed are the peace-makers;" and his forehead was
lightened of the third letter. [34]
In this fourth circle was expiated Lukewarmness, or defect of zeal for
good. The sufferers came speeding and weeping round the mountain, making
amends for the old indifference by the haste and fire of the new love
that was in them. "Blessed Mary made haste," cried one, "to salute
Elizabeth. " "And Cæsar," cried another, "to smite Pompey at Lerida. "[35]
"And the disobedient among the Israelites," cried others, "died before
they reached the promised land. " "And the tired among the Trojans
preferred ease in Sicily to glory in Latium. "--It was now midnight, and
Dante slept and had a dream.
His dream was of a woman who came to him, having a tongue that tried
ineffectually to speak, squinting eyes, feet whose distortion drew her
towards the earth, stumps of hands, and a pallid face. Dante looked
earnestly at her, and his look acted upon her like sunshine upon cold.
Her tongue was loosened; her feet made straight; she stood upright; her
paleness became a lovely rose-colour; and she warbled so beautifully,
that the poet could not have refused to listen had he wished it.
"I am the sweet Syren," she said, "who made the mariners turn pale for
pleasure in the sea. I drew Ulysses out of his course with my song; and
he that harbours with me once, rarely departs ever, so well I pay him
for what he abandons. "
Her lips were not yet closed, when a lady of holy and earliest
countenance came up to shame her. "O Virgil! " she cried angrily, "who is
this? " Virgil approached, with his eyes fixed on the lady; and the lady
tore away the garments of the woman, and spewed her to be a creature so
loathly, that the sleeper awoke with the horror. [36]
Virgil said, "I have called thee three times to no purpose. Let us move,
and find the place at which we are to go higher. "
It was broad day, with a sun that came warm on the shoulders; and Dante
was proceeding with his companion, when the softest voice they ever
heard directed them where to ascend, and they found an angel with them,
who pointed his swan-like wings upward, and then flapped them against
the pilgrims, taking away the fourth letter from the forehead of Dante.
"Blessed are they that mourn," said the angel, "for they shall be
comforted. "
The pilgrims ascended into the fifth circle, and beheld the expiators of
Avarice grovelling on the ground, and exclaiming, as loud as they could
for the tears that choked them, "My soul hath cleaved to the dust. "
Dante spoke to one, who turned out to be Pope Adrian the Fifth. The
poet fell on his knees; but Adrian bade him arise and err not. "I am no
longer," said he, "spouse of the Church, here; but fellow-servant with
thee and with all others. Go thy ways, and delay not the time of my
deliverance. "
The pilgrims moving onward, Dante heard a spirit exclaim, in the
struggling tones of a woman in child-bed, "O blessed Virgin! That was a
poor roof thou hadst when thou wast delivered of thy sacred burden. O
good Fabricius! Virtue with poverty was thy choice, and not vice with
riches. " And then it told the story of Nicholas, who, hearing that a
father was about to sacrifice the honour of his three daughters for want
of money, threw bags of it in at his window, containing portions for
them all.
Dante earnestly addressed this spirit to know who he was; and the spirit
said it would tell him, not for the sake of help, for which it looked
elsewhere, but because of the shining grace that was in his questioner,
though yet alive.
"I was root," said the spirit, "of that evil plant which overshadows all
Christendom to such little profit. Hugh Capet was I, ancestor of the
Philips and Louises of France, offspring of a butcher of Paris, when the
old race of kings was worn out. [37] We began by seizing the government
in Paris; then plundered in Provence; then, to make amends, laid hold of
Poitou, Normandy, and Gascony; then, still to make amends, put Conradin
to death and seized Naples; then, always to make amends, gave Saint
Aquinas his dismissal to Heaven by poison. I see the time at hand when a
descendant of mine will be called into Italy, and the spear that Judas
_jousted with_[38] shall transfix the bowels of Florence. Another of my
posterity sells his daughter for a sum of money to a Marquis of Ferrara.
Another seizes the pope in Alagna, and mocks Christ over again in the
person of his Vicar. A fourth rends the veil of the temple, solely to
seize its money. O Lord, how shall I rejoice to see the vengeance which
even now thou huggest in delight to thy bosom! [39]
"Of loving and liberal things," continued Capet, "we speak while it is
light; such as thou heardest me record, when I addressed myself to the
blessed Virgin. But when night comes, we take another tone. Then we
denounce Pygmalion,[39] the traitor, the robber, and the parricide, each
the result of his gluttonous love of gold; and Midas, who obtained his
wish, to the laughter of all time; and the thief Achan, who still seems
frightened at the wrath of Joshua; and Sapphira and her husband, whom we
accuse over again before the Apostles; and Heliodorus, whom we bless the
hoofs of the angel's horse for trampling;[40] and Crassus, on whom we
call with shouts of derision to tell us the flavour of his molten gold.
Thus we record our thoughts in the night-time, now high, now low, now at
greater or less length, as each man is prompted by his impulses. And it
was thus thou didst hear me recording also by day-time, though I had no
respondent near me. "
The pilgrims quitted Hugh Capet, and were eagerly pursuing their
journey, when, to the terror of Dante, they felt the whole mountain of
Purgatory tremble, as though it were about to fall in. The island of
Delos shook not so awfully when Latona, hiding there, brought forth the
twin eyes of Heaven. A shout then arose on every side, so enormous, that
Virgil stood nigher to his companion, and bade him be of good heart.
"Glory be to God in the highest," cried the shout; but Dante could
gather the words only from those who were near him.
It was Purgatory rejoicing for the deliverance of a soul out of its
bounds. [41]
The soul overtook the pilgrims as they were journeying in amazement
onwards; and it turned out to be that of Statius, who had been converted
to Christianity in the reign of Domitian. [42] Mutual astonishment led to
inquiries that explained who the other Latin poet was; and Statius fell
at his master's feet.
Statius had expiated his sins in the circle of Avarice, not for that
vice, but for the opposite one of Prodigality.
An angel now, as before, took the fifth letter from Dante's forehead;
and the three poets having ascended into the sixth round of the
mountain, were journeying on lovingly together, Dante listening with
reverence to the talk of the two ancients, when they came up to a
sweet-smelling fruit-tree, upon which a clear stream came tumbling from
a rock beside it, and diffusing itself through the branches. The Latin
poets went up to the tree, and were met by a voice which said, "Be
chary of the fruit. Mary thought not of herself at Galilee, but of the
visitors, when she said, 'They have no wine. ' The women of oldest Rome
drank water. The beautiful age of gold feasted on acorns. Its thirst
made nectar out of the rivulet. The Baptist fed on locusts and wild
honey, and became great as you see him in the gospel. "
The poets went on their way; and Dante was still listening to the
others, when they heard behind them a mingled sound of chanting and
weeping, which produced an effect at once sad and delightful. It was the
psalm, "O Lord, open thou our lips! " and the chanters were expiators
of the sin of Intemperance in Meats and Drinks. They were condemned to
circuit the mountain, famished, and to long for the fruit and waters of
the tree in vain. They soon came up with the poets--a pallid multitude,
with hollow eyes, and bones staring through the skin. The sockets of
their eyes looked like rings from which the gems had dropped. [43] One of
them knew and accosted Dante, who could not recognise him till he
heard him speak. It was Forese Donati, one of the poet's most intimate
connexions. Dante, who had wept over his face when dead, could as little
forbear weeping to see him thus hungering and thirsting, though he had
expected to find him in the outskirts of the place, among the delayers
of repentance. He asked his friend how he had so quickly got higher.
Forese said it was owing to the prayers and tears of his good wife
Nella; and then he burst into a strain of indignation against the
contrast exhibited to her virtue by the general depravity of the
Florentine women, whom he described as less modest than the half-naked
savages in the mountains of Sardinia.
"What is to be said of such creatures? " continued he. "O my dear cousin!
I see a day at hand, when these impudent women shall be for bidden from
the pulpit to go exposing their naked bosoms. What savages or what
infidels ever needed that? Oh! if they could see what Heaven has in
store for them, their mouths would be this instant opened wide for
howling. "[44]
Forese then asked Dante to explain to himself and his astonished
fellow-sufferers how it was that he stood there, a living body of flesh
and blood, casting a shadow with his substance.
"If thou callest to mind," said Dante, "what sort of life thou and I led
together, the recollection may still grieve thee sorely. He that walks
here before us took me out of that life; and through his guidance it
is that I have visited in the body the world of the dead, and am now
traversing the mountain which leads us to the right path. "[45]
After some further explanation, Forese pointed out to his friend, among
the expiators of intemperance, Buonaggiunta of Lucca, the poet; and Pope
Martin the Fourth, with a face made sharper than the rest for the eels
which he used to smother in wine; and Ubaldino of Pila, grinding his
teeth on air; and Archbishop Boniface of Ravenna, who fed jovially on
his flock; and Rigogliosi of Forli, who had had time enough to drink in
the other world, and yet never was satisfied. Buonaggiunta and Dante
eyed one another with curiosity; and the former murmured something about
a lady of the name of Gentucca.
"Thou seemest to wish to speak with me," said Dante.
"Thou art no admirer, I believe, of my native place," said Buonaggiunta;
"and yet, if thou art he whom I take thee to be, there is a damsel there
shall make it please thee. Art thou not author of the poem beginning
"Ladies, that understand the lore of love? "[46]
"I am one," replied Dante, "who writes as Love would have him, heeding
no manner but his dictator's, and uttering simply what he suggests. "[47]
"Ay, that is the sweet new style," returned Buonaggiunta; "and I now see
what it was that hindered the notary, and Guittone, and myself, from
hitting the right natural point. " And here he ceased speaking, looking
like one contented to have ascertained a truth. [48]
The whole multitude then, except Forese, skimmed away like cranes, swift
alike through eagerness and through leanness. Forese lingered a moment
to have a parting word with his friend, and to prophesy the violent end
of the chief of his family, Corso, run away with and dragged at the
heels of his horse faster and faster, till the frenzied animal smites
him dead. Having given the poet this information, the prophet speeded
after the others.
The companions now came to a second fruit-tree, to which a multitude
were in vain lifting up their hands, just as children lift them to a man
who tantalises them with shewing something which he withholds; but a
voice out of a thicket by the road-side warned the travellers not to
stop, telling them that the tree was an offset from that of which Eve
tasted. "Call to mind," said the voice, "those creatures of the clouds,
the Centaurs, whose feasting cost them their lives. Remember the
Hebrews, how they dropped away from the ranks of Gideon to quench their
effeminate thirst. "[49]
The poets proceeded, wrapt in thought, till they heard another voice of
a nature that made Dante start and shake as if he had been some paltry
hackney.
"Of what value is thought," said the voice, "if it lose its way? The
path lies hither. "
Dante turned toward the voice, and beheld a shape glowing red as in
a furnace, with a visage too dazzling to be looked upon. It met him,
nevertheless, as he drew nigh, with an air from the fanning of its wings
fresh as the first breathing of the wind on a May morning, and fragrant
as all its flowers; and Dante lost the sixth letter on his forehead, and
ascended with the two other poets into the seventh and last circle of
the mountain.
This circle was all in flames, except a narrow path on the edge of its
precipice, along which the pilgrims walked. A great wind from outside of
the precipice kept the flames from raging beyond the path; and in the
midst of the fire went spirits expiating the sin of Incontinence. They
sang the hymn beginning "God of consummate mercy! "[50] Dante was
compelled to divide his attention between his own footsteps and theirs,
in order to move without destruction. At the close of the hymn they
cried aloud, "I know not a man! "[51] and then recommenced it; after
which they again cried aloud, saying, "Diana ran to the wood, and drove
Calisto out of it, because she knew the poison of Venus! " And then
again they sang the hymn, and then extolled the memories of chaste
women and husbands; and so they went on without ceasing, as long as
their time of trial lasted.
Occasionally the multitude that went in one direction met another
which mingled with and passed through it, individuals of both greeting
tenderly by the way, as emmets appear to do, when in passing they touch
the antennæ of one another. These two multitudes parted with loud and
sorrowful cries, proclaiming the offences of which they had been guilty;
and then each renewed their spiritual songs and prayers.
The souls here, as in former circles, knew Dante to be a living creature
by the shadow which he cast; and after the wonted explanations, he
learned who some of them were. One was his predecessor in poetry, Guido
Guinicelli, from whom he could not take his eyes for love and reverence,
till the sufferer, who told him there was a greater than himself in
the crowd, vanished away through the fire as a fish does in water. The
greater one was Arnauld Daniel, the Provençal poet, who, after begging
the prayers of the traveller, disappeared in like manner.
The sun by this time was setting on the fires of Purgatory, when an
angel came crossing the road through them, and then, standing on the
edge of the precipice, with joy in his looks, and singing, "Blessed are
the pure in heart! " invited the three poets to plunge into the flames
themselves, and so cross the road to the ascent by which the summit of
the mountain was gained. Dante, clasping his hands, and raising them
aloft, recoiled in horror. The thought of all that he had just witnessed
made him feel as if his own hour of death was come. His companion
encouraged him to obey the angel; but he could not stir. Virgil said,
"Now mark me, son; this is the only remaining obstacle between thee
and Beatrice;" and then himself and Statius entering the fire, Dante
followed them.
"I could have cast myself," said he, "into molten glass to cool myself,
so raging was the furnace. " Virgil talked of Beatrice to animate him. He
said, "Methinks I see her eyes beholding us. " There was, indeed, a great
light upon the quarter to which they were crossing; and out of the light
issued a voice, which drew them onwards, singing, "Come, blessed of my
Father! Behold, the sun is going down, and the night cometh, and the
ascent is to be gained. "
The travellers gained the ascent, issuing out of the fire; and the voice
and the light ceased, and night was come. Unable to ascend farther in
the darkness, they made themselves a bed, each of a stair in the rock;
and Dante, in his happy humility, felt as if he had been a goat lying
down for the night near two shepherds.
Towards dawn, at the hour of the rising of the star of love, he had a
dream, in which he saw a young and beautiful lady coming over a lea,
and bending every now and then to gather flowers; and as she bound the
flowers into a garland, she sang, "I am Leah, gathering flowers to adorn
myself, that my looks may seem pleasant to me in the mirror. But my
sister Rachel abides before the mirror, flowerless; contented with
her beautiful eyes. To behold is my sister's pleasure, and to work is
mine. "[52]
When Dante awoke, the beams of the dawn were visible; and they now
produced a happiness like that of the traveller, who every time he
awakes knows himself to be nearer home. Virgil and Statius were already
up; and all three, resuming their way to the mountain's top, stood upon
it at last, and gazed round about them on the skirts of the terrestrial
Paradise. The sun was sparkling bright over a green land, full of trees
and flowers. Virgil then announced to Dante, that here his guidance
terminated, and that the creature of flesh and blood was at length to
be master of his own movements, to rest or to wander as he pleased, the
tried and purified lord over himself.
The Florentine, eager to taste his new liberty, left his companions
awhile, and strolled away through the celestial forest, whose thick and
lively verdure gave coolness to the senses in the midst of the
brightest sun. A fragrance came from every part of the soil; a sweet
unintermitting air streamed against the walker's face; and as the
full-hearted birds, warbling on all sides, welcomed the morning's
radiance into the trees, the trees themselves joined in the concert with
a swelling breath, like that which rises among the pines of Chiassi,
when Eolus lets loose the south-wind, and the gathering melody comes
rolling through the forest from bough to bough. [53]
Dante had proceeded far enough to lose sight of the point at which he
entered, when he found himself on the bank of a rivulet, compared with
whose crystal purity the limpidest waters on earth were clouded. And yet
it flowed under a perpetual depth of shade, which no beam either of sun
or moon penetrated. Nevertheless the darkness was coloured with endless
diversities of May-blossoms; and the poet was standing in admiration,
looking up at it along its course, when he beheld something that took
away every other thought; to wit, a lady, all alone, on the other side
of the water, singing and culling flowers.
"Ah, lady! " said the poet, "who, to judge by the cordial beauty in thy
looks, hast a heart overflowing with love, be pleased to draw thee
nearer to the stream, that I may understand the words thou singest. Thou
remindest me of Proserpine, of the place she was straying in, and of
what sort of creature she looked, when her mother lost her, and she
herself lost the spring-time on earth. "
As a lady turns in the dance when it goes smoothest, moving round with
lovely self-possession, and scarcely seeming to put one foot before
the other, so turned the lady towards the water over the yellow and
vermilion flowers, dropping her eyes gently as she came, and singing
so that Dante could hear her. Then when she arrived at the water, she
stopped, and raised her eyes towards him, and smiled, shewing him the
flowers in her hands, and shifting them with her fingers into a display
of all their beauties. Never were such eyes beheld, not even when Venus
herself was in love. The stream was a little stream; yet Dante felt
it as great an intervention between them, as if it had been Leander's
Hellespont.
The lady explained to him the nature of the place, and how the rivulet
was the Lethe of Paradise;--Lethe, where he stood, but called Eunoe
higher up; the drink of the one doing away all remembrance of evil
deeds, and that of the other restoring all remembrance of good. [54] It
was the region, she said, in which Adam and Eve had lived; and the poets
had beheld it perhaps in their dreams on Mount Parnassus, and hence
imagined their golden age;--and at these words she looked at Virgil and
Statius, who by this time had come up, and who stood smiling at her
kindly words.
Resuming her song, the lady turned and passed up along the rivulet the
contrary way of the stream, Dante proceeding at the same rate of time on
his side of it; till on a sudden she cried, "Behold, and listen! " and a
light of exceeding lustre came streaming through the woods, followed
by a dulcet melody. The poets resumed their way in a rapture of
expectation, and saw the air before them glowing under the green boughs
like fire. A divine spectacle ensued of holy mystery, with evangelical
and apocalyptic images, which gradually gave way and disclosed a car
brighter than the chariot of the sun, accompanied by celestial nymphs,
and showered upon by angels with a cloud of flowers, in the midst of
which stood a maiden in a white veil, crowned with olive.
The love that had never left Dante's heart from childhood told him who
it was; and trembling in every vein, he turned round to Virgil for
encouragement. Virgil was gone. At that moment, Paradise and Beatrice
herself could not requite the pilgrim for the loss of his friend; and
the tears ran down his cheeks.
"Dante," said the veiled maiden across the stream, "weep not that Virgil
leaves thee. Weep thou not yet. The stroke of a sharper sword is coming,
at which it will behove thee to weep. " Then assuming a sterner attitude,
and speaking in the tone of one who reserves the bitterest speech
for the last, she added, "Observe me well. I am, as thou suspectest,
Beatrice indeed;--Beatrice, who has to congratulate thee on deigning to
seek the mountain at last. And hadst thou so long indeed to learn, that
here only can man be happy? "
Dante, casting down his eyes at these words, beheld his face in the
water, and hastily turned aside, he saw it so full of shame.
Beatrice had the dignified manner of an offended parent; such a flavour
of bitterness was mingled with her pity.
She held her peace; and the angels abruptly began singing, "In thee, O
Lord, have I put my trust;" but went no farther in the psalm than the
words, "Thou hast set my feet in a large room. " The tears of Dante had
hitherto been suppressed; but when the singing began, they again rolled
down his cheeks.
Beatrice, in a milder tone, said to the angels, "This man, when he
proposed to himself in his youth to lead a new life, was of a truth so
gifted, that every good habit ought to have thrived with him; but the
richer the soil, the greater peril of weeds. For a while, the innocent
light of my countenance drew him the right way; but when I quitted
mortal life, he took away his thoughts from remembrance of me, and gave
himself to others. When I had risen from flesh to spirit, and increased
in worth and beauty, then did I sink in his estimation, and he turned
into other paths, and pursued false images of good that never keep their
promise. In vain I obtained from Heaven the power of interfering in his
behalf, and endeavoured to affect him with it night and day. So little
was he concerned, and into such depths he fell, that nothing remained
but to shew him the state of the condemned; and therefore I went to
their outer regions, and commended him with tears to the guide that
brought him hither. The decrees of Heaven would be nought, if Lethe
could be passed, and the fruit beyond it tasted, without any payment of
remorse. [55]
"O thou," she continued, addressing herself to Dante, "who standest on
the other side of the holy stream, say, have I not spoken truth? "
Dante was so confused and penitent, that the words failed as they passed
his lips.
"What could induce thee," resumed his monitress, "when I had given thee
aims indeed, to abandon them for objects that could end in nothing? "
Dante said, "Thy face was taken from me, and the presence of false
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. "
His having been taken out of that kind of life by Virgil (construed in
the literal sense, in which, among other senses, he has directed us to
construe him), may imply, either that the delight of reading Virgil
first made him think of living in a manner more becoming a man of
intellect, or (possibly) that the Latin poet's description of Æneas's
descent into hell turned his thoughts to religious penitence. Be this
as it may, his life, though surely it could at no time have been of any
very licentious kind, never, if we are to believe Boccaccio, became
spotless. ]
[Footnote 46: The mention of Gentucca might be thought a compliment to
the lady, if Dante had not made Beatrice afterwards treat his regard for
any one else but herself with so much contempt. (See page 216 of the
present volume. ) Under that circumstance, it is hardly acting like a
gentleman to speak of her at all; unless, indeed, he thought her a
person who would be pleased with the notoriety arising even from the
record of a fugitive regard; and in that case the good taste of the
record would still remain doubtful. The probability seems to be, that
Dante was resolved, at all events, to take this opportunity of bearding
some rumour.
Pisistratus, calmly reproving his wife for wishing him to put to death
her daughter's lover, who, in a transport, had embraced her in public.
"If we are to be thus severe," said Pisistratus, "with those that love
us, what is to be done with such as hate? " The last spectacle was that
of a furious multitude shouting and stoning to death a youth, who, as he
fell to the ground, still kept his face towards heaven, making his eyes
the gates through which his soul reached it, and imploring forgiveness
for his murderers. [32]
The visions passed away, leaving the poet staggering as if but half
awake. They were succeeded by a thick and noisome fog, through which he
followed his leader with the caution of a blind man, Virgil repeatedly
telling him not to quit him a moment. Here they heard voices praying in
unison for pardon to the "Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the
world. " They were the spirits of the angry. Dante conversed with one of
them on free-will and necessity; and after quitting him, and issuing by
degrees from the cloud, beheld illustrative visions of anger; such as
the impious mother, who was changed into the bird that most delights in
singing; Haman, retaining his look of spite and rage on the cross; and
Lavinia, mourning for her mother, who slew herself for rage at the death
of Turnus. [33]
These visions were broken off by a great light, as sleep is broken; and
Dante heard a voice out of it saying, "The ascent is here. " He then, as
Virgil and he ascended into the fourth circle, felt an air on his face,
as if caused by the fanning of wings, accompanied by the utterance
of the words, "Blessed are the peace-makers;" and his forehead was
lightened of the third letter. [34]
In this fourth circle was expiated Lukewarmness, or defect of zeal for
good. The sufferers came speeding and weeping round the mountain, making
amends for the old indifference by the haste and fire of the new love
that was in them. "Blessed Mary made haste," cried one, "to salute
Elizabeth. " "And Cæsar," cried another, "to smite Pompey at Lerida. "[35]
"And the disobedient among the Israelites," cried others, "died before
they reached the promised land. " "And the tired among the Trojans
preferred ease in Sicily to glory in Latium. "--It was now midnight, and
Dante slept and had a dream.
His dream was of a woman who came to him, having a tongue that tried
ineffectually to speak, squinting eyes, feet whose distortion drew her
towards the earth, stumps of hands, and a pallid face. Dante looked
earnestly at her, and his look acted upon her like sunshine upon cold.
Her tongue was loosened; her feet made straight; she stood upright; her
paleness became a lovely rose-colour; and she warbled so beautifully,
that the poet could not have refused to listen had he wished it.
"I am the sweet Syren," she said, "who made the mariners turn pale for
pleasure in the sea. I drew Ulysses out of his course with my song; and
he that harbours with me once, rarely departs ever, so well I pay him
for what he abandons. "
Her lips were not yet closed, when a lady of holy and earliest
countenance came up to shame her. "O Virgil! " she cried angrily, "who is
this? " Virgil approached, with his eyes fixed on the lady; and the lady
tore away the garments of the woman, and spewed her to be a creature so
loathly, that the sleeper awoke with the horror. [36]
Virgil said, "I have called thee three times to no purpose. Let us move,
and find the place at which we are to go higher. "
It was broad day, with a sun that came warm on the shoulders; and Dante
was proceeding with his companion, when the softest voice they ever
heard directed them where to ascend, and they found an angel with them,
who pointed his swan-like wings upward, and then flapped them against
the pilgrims, taking away the fourth letter from the forehead of Dante.
"Blessed are they that mourn," said the angel, "for they shall be
comforted. "
The pilgrims ascended into the fifth circle, and beheld the expiators of
Avarice grovelling on the ground, and exclaiming, as loud as they could
for the tears that choked them, "My soul hath cleaved to the dust. "
Dante spoke to one, who turned out to be Pope Adrian the Fifth. The
poet fell on his knees; but Adrian bade him arise and err not. "I am no
longer," said he, "spouse of the Church, here; but fellow-servant with
thee and with all others. Go thy ways, and delay not the time of my
deliverance. "
The pilgrims moving onward, Dante heard a spirit exclaim, in the
struggling tones of a woman in child-bed, "O blessed Virgin! That was a
poor roof thou hadst when thou wast delivered of thy sacred burden. O
good Fabricius! Virtue with poverty was thy choice, and not vice with
riches. " And then it told the story of Nicholas, who, hearing that a
father was about to sacrifice the honour of his three daughters for want
of money, threw bags of it in at his window, containing portions for
them all.
Dante earnestly addressed this spirit to know who he was; and the spirit
said it would tell him, not for the sake of help, for which it looked
elsewhere, but because of the shining grace that was in his questioner,
though yet alive.
"I was root," said the spirit, "of that evil plant which overshadows all
Christendom to such little profit. Hugh Capet was I, ancestor of the
Philips and Louises of France, offspring of a butcher of Paris, when the
old race of kings was worn out. [37] We began by seizing the government
in Paris; then plundered in Provence; then, to make amends, laid hold of
Poitou, Normandy, and Gascony; then, still to make amends, put Conradin
to death and seized Naples; then, always to make amends, gave Saint
Aquinas his dismissal to Heaven by poison. I see the time at hand when a
descendant of mine will be called into Italy, and the spear that Judas
_jousted with_[38] shall transfix the bowels of Florence. Another of my
posterity sells his daughter for a sum of money to a Marquis of Ferrara.
Another seizes the pope in Alagna, and mocks Christ over again in the
person of his Vicar. A fourth rends the veil of the temple, solely to
seize its money. O Lord, how shall I rejoice to see the vengeance which
even now thou huggest in delight to thy bosom! [39]
"Of loving and liberal things," continued Capet, "we speak while it is
light; such as thou heardest me record, when I addressed myself to the
blessed Virgin. But when night comes, we take another tone. Then we
denounce Pygmalion,[39] the traitor, the robber, and the parricide, each
the result of his gluttonous love of gold; and Midas, who obtained his
wish, to the laughter of all time; and the thief Achan, who still seems
frightened at the wrath of Joshua; and Sapphira and her husband, whom we
accuse over again before the Apostles; and Heliodorus, whom we bless the
hoofs of the angel's horse for trampling;[40] and Crassus, on whom we
call with shouts of derision to tell us the flavour of his molten gold.
Thus we record our thoughts in the night-time, now high, now low, now at
greater or less length, as each man is prompted by his impulses. And it
was thus thou didst hear me recording also by day-time, though I had no
respondent near me. "
The pilgrims quitted Hugh Capet, and were eagerly pursuing their
journey, when, to the terror of Dante, they felt the whole mountain of
Purgatory tremble, as though it were about to fall in. The island of
Delos shook not so awfully when Latona, hiding there, brought forth the
twin eyes of Heaven. A shout then arose on every side, so enormous, that
Virgil stood nigher to his companion, and bade him be of good heart.
"Glory be to God in the highest," cried the shout; but Dante could
gather the words only from those who were near him.
It was Purgatory rejoicing for the deliverance of a soul out of its
bounds. [41]
The soul overtook the pilgrims as they were journeying in amazement
onwards; and it turned out to be that of Statius, who had been converted
to Christianity in the reign of Domitian. [42] Mutual astonishment led to
inquiries that explained who the other Latin poet was; and Statius fell
at his master's feet.
Statius had expiated his sins in the circle of Avarice, not for that
vice, but for the opposite one of Prodigality.
An angel now, as before, took the fifth letter from Dante's forehead;
and the three poets having ascended into the sixth round of the
mountain, were journeying on lovingly together, Dante listening with
reverence to the talk of the two ancients, when they came up to a
sweet-smelling fruit-tree, upon which a clear stream came tumbling from
a rock beside it, and diffusing itself through the branches. The Latin
poets went up to the tree, and were met by a voice which said, "Be
chary of the fruit. Mary thought not of herself at Galilee, but of the
visitors, when she said, 'They have no wine. ' The women of oldest Rome
drank water. The beautiful age of gold feasted on acorns. Its thirst
made nectar out of the rivulet. The Baptist fed on locusts and wild
honey, and became great as you see him in the gospel. "
The poets went on their way; and Dante was still listening to the
others, when they heard behind them a mingled sound of chanting and
weeping, which produced an effect at once sad and delightful. It was the
psalm, "O Lord, open thou our lips! " and the chanters were expiators
of the sin of Intemperance in Meats and Drinks. They were condemned to
circuit the mountain, famished, and to long for the fruit and waters of
the tree in vain. They soon came up with the poets--a pallid multitude,
with hollow eyes, and bones staring through the skin. The sockets of
their eyes looked like rings from which the gems had dropped. [43] One of
them knew and accosted Dante, who could not recognise him till he
heard him speak. It was Forese Donati, one of the poet's most intimate
connexions. Dante, who had wept over his face when dead, could as little
forbear weeping to see him thus hungering and thirsting, though he had
expected to find him in the outskirts of the place, among the delayers
of repentance. He asked his friend how he had so quickly got higher.
Forese said it was owing to the prayers and tears of his good wife
Nella; and then he burst into a strain of indignation against the
contrast exhibited to her virtue by the general depravity of the
Florentine women, whom he described as less modest than the half-naked
savages in the mountains of Sardinia.
"What is to be said of such creatures? " continued he. "O my dear cousin!
I see a day at hand, when these impudent women shall be for bidden from
the pulpit to go exposing their naked bosoms. What savages or what
infidels ever needed that? Oh! if they could see what Heaven has in
store for them, their mouths would be this instant opened wide for
howling. "[44]
Forese then asked Dante to explain to himself and his astonished
fellow-sufferers how it was that he stood there, a living body of flesh
and blood, casting a shadow with his substance.
"If thou callest to mind," said Dante, "what sort of life thou and I led
together, the recollection may still grieve thee sorely. He that walks
here before us took me out of that life; and through his guidance it
is that I have visited in the body the world of the dead, and am now
traversing the mountain which leads us to the right path. "[45]
After some further explanation, Forese pointed out to his friend, among
the expiators of intemperance, Buonaggiunta of Lucca, the poet; and Pope
Martin the Fourth, with a face made sharper than the rest for the eels
which he used to smother in wine; and Ubaldino of Pila, grinding his
teeth on air; and Archbishop Boniface of Ravenna, who fed jovially on
his flock; and Rigogliosi of Forli, who had had time enough to drink in
the other world, and yet never was satisfied. Buonaggiunta and Dante
eyed one another with curiosity; and the former murmured something about
a lady of the name of Gentucca.
"Thou seemest to wish to speak with me," said Dante.
"Thou art no admirer, I believe, of my native place," said Buonaggiunta;
"and yet, if thou art he whom I take thee to be, there is a damsel there
shall make it please thee. Art thou not author of the poem beginning
"Ladies, that understand the lore of love? "[46]
"I am one," replied Dante, "who writes as Love would have him, heeding
no manner but his dictator's, and uttering simply what he suggests. "[47]
"Ay, that is the sweet new style," returned Buonaggiunta; "and I now see
what it was that hindered the notary, and Guittone, and myself, from
hitting the right natural point. " And here he ceased speaking, looking
like one contented to have ascertained a truth. [48]
The whole multitude then, except Forese, skimmed away like cranes, swift
alike through eagerness and through leanness. Forese lingered a moment
to have a parting word with his friend, and to prophesy the violent end
of the chief of his family, Corso, run away with and dragged at the
heels of his horse faster and faster, till the frenzied animal smites
him dead. Having given the poet this information, the prophet speeded
after the others.
The companions now came to a second fruit-tree, to which a multitude
were in vain lifting up their hands, just as children lift them to a man
who tantalises them with shewing something which he withholds; but a
voice out of a thicket by the road-side warned the travellers not to
stop, telling them that the tree was an offset from that of which Eve
tasted. "Call to mind," said the voice, "those creatures of the clouds,
the Centaurs, whose feasting cost them their lives. Remember the
Hebrews, how they dropped away from the ranks of Gideon to quench their
effeminate thirst. "[49]
The poets proceeded, wrapt in thought, till they heard another voice of
a nature that made Dante start and shake as if he had been some paltry
hackney.
"Of what value is thought," said the voice, "if it lose its way? The
path lies hither. "
Dante turned toward the voice, and beheld a shape glowing red as in
a furnace, with a visage too dazzling to be looked upon. It met him,
nevertheless, as he drew nigh, with an air from the fanning of its wings
fresh as the first breathing of the wind on a May morning, and fragrant
as all its flowers; and Dante lost the sixth letter on his forehead, and
ascended with the two other poets into the seventh and last circle of
the mountain.
This circle was all in flames, except a narrow path on the edge of its
precipice, along which the pilgrims walked. A great wind from outside of
the precipice kept the flames from raging beyond the path; and in the
midst of the fire went spirits expiating the sin of Incontinence. They
sang the hymn beginning "God of consummate mercy! "[50] Dante was
compelled to divide his attention between his own footsteps and theirs,
in order to move without destruction. At the close of the hymn they
cried aloud, "I know not a man! "[51] and then recommenced it; after
which they again cried aloud, saying, "Diana ran to the wood, and drove
Calisto out of it, because she knew the poison of Venus! " And then
again they sang the hymn, and then extolled the memories of chaste
women and husbands; and so they went on without ceasing, as long as
their time of trial lasted.
Occasionally the multitude that went in one direction met another
which mingled with and passed through it, individuals of both greeting
tenderly by the way, as emmets appear to do, when in passing they touch
the antennæ of one another. These two multitudes parted with loud and
sorrowful cries, proclaiming the offences of which they had been guilty;
and then each renewed their spiritual songs and prayers.
The souls here, as in former circles, knew Dante to be a living creature
by the shadow which he cast; and after the wonted explanations, he
learned who some of them were. One was his predecessor in poetry, Guido
Guinicelli, from whom he could not take his eyes for love and reverence,
till the sufferer, who told him there was a greater than himself in
the crowd, vanished away through the fire as a fish does in water. The
greater one was Arnauld Daniel, the Provençal poet, who, after begging
the prayers of the traveller, disappeared in like manner.
The sun by this time was setting on the fires of Purgatory, when an
angel came crossing the road through them, and then, standing on the
edge of the precipice, with joy in his looks, and singing, "Blessed are
the pure in heart! " invited the three poets to plunge into the flames
themselves, and so cross the road to the ascent by which the summit of
the mountain was gained. Dante, clasping his hands, and raising them
aloft, recoiled in horror. The thought of all that he had just witnessed
made him feel as if his own hour of death was come. His companion
encouraged him to obey the angel; but he could not stir. Virgil said,
"Now mark me, son; this is the only remaining obstacle between thee
and Beatrice;" and then himself and Statius entering the fire, Dante
followed them.
"I could have cast myself," said he, "into molten glass to cool myself,
so raging was the furnace. " Virgil talked of Beatrice to animate him. He
said, "Methinks I see her eyes beholding us. " There was, indeed, a great
light upon the quarter to which they were crossing; and out of the light
issued a voice, which drew them onwards, singing, "Come, blessed of my
Father! Behold, the sun is going down, and the night cometh, and the
ascent is to be gained. "
The travellers gained the ascent, issuing out of the fire; and the voice
and the light ceased, and night was come. Unable to ascend farther in
the darkness, they made themselves a bed, each of a stair in the rock;
and Dante, in his happy humility, felt as if he had been a goat lying
down for the night near two shepherds.
Towards dawn, at the hour of the rising of the star of love, he had a
dream, in which he saw a young and beautiful lady coming over a lea,
and bending every now and then to gather flowers; and as she bound the
flowers into a garland, she sang, "I am Leah, gathering flowers to adorn
myself, that my looks may seem pleasant to me in the mirror. But my
sister Rachel abides before the mirror, flowerless; contented with
her beautiful eyes. To behold is my sister's pleasure, and to work is
mine. "[52]
When Dante awoke, the beams of the dawn were visible; and they now
produced a happiness like that of the traveller, who every time he
awakes knows himself to be nearer home. Virgil and Statius were already
up; and all three, resuming their way to the mountain's top, stood upon
it at last, and gazed round about them on the skirts of the terrestrial
Paradise. The sun was sparkling bright over a green land, full of trees
and flowers. Virgil then announced to Dante, that here his guidance
terminated, and that the creature of flesh and blood was at length to
be master of his own movements, to rest or to wander as he pleased, the
tried and purified lord over himself.
The Florentine, eager to taste his new liberty, left his companions
awhile, and strolled away through the celestial forest, whose thick and
lively verdure gave coolness to the senses in the midst of the
brightest sun. A fragrance came from every part of the soil; a sweet
unintermitting air streamed against the walker's face; and as the
full-hearted birds, warbling on all sides, welcomed the morning's
radiance into the trees, the trees themselves joined in the concert with
a swelling breath, like that which rises among the pines of Chiassi,
when Eolus lets loose the south-wind, and the gathering melody comes
rolling through the forest from bough to bough. [53]
Dante had proceeded far enough to lose sight of the point at which he
entered, when he found himself on the bank of a rivulet, compared with
whose crystal purity the limpidest waters on earth were clouded. And yet
it flowed under a perpetual depth of shade, which no beam either of sun
or moon penetrated. Nevertheless the darkness was coloured with endless
diversities of May-blossoms; and the poet was standing in admiration,
looking up at it along its course, when he beheld something that took
away every other thought; to wit, a lady, all alone, on the other side
of the water, singing and culling flowers.
"Ah, lady! " said the poet, "who, to judge by the cordial beauty in thy
looks, hast a heart overflowing with love, be pleased to draw thee
nearer to the stream, that I may understand the words thou singest. Thou
remindest me of Proserpine, of the place she was straying in, and of
what sort of creature she looked, when her mother lost her, and she
herself lost the spring-time on earth. "
As a lady turns in the dance when it goes smoothest, moving round with
lovely self-possession, and scarcely seeming to put one foot before
the other, so turned the lady towards the water over the yellow and
vermilion flowers, dropping her eyes gently as she came, and singing
so that Dante could hear her. Then when she arrived at the water, she
stopped, and raised her eyes towards him, and smiled, shewing him the
flowers in her hands, and shifting them with her fingers into a display
of all their beauties. Never were such eyes beheld, not even when Venus
herself was in love. The stream was a little stream; yet Dante felt
it as great an intervention between them, as if it had been Leander's
Hellespont.
The lady explained to him the nature of the place, and how the rivulet
was the Lethe of Paradise;--Lethe, where he stood, but called Eunoe
higher up; the drink of the one doing away all remembrance of evil
deeds, and that of the other restoring all remembrance of good. [54] It
was the region, she said, in which Adam and Eve had lived; and the poets
had beheld it perhaps in their dreams on Mount Parnassus, and hence
imagined their golden age;--and at these words she looked at Virgil and
Statius, who by this time had come up, and who stood smiling at her
kindly words.
Resuming her song, the lady turned and passed up along the rivulet the
contrary way of the stream, Dante proceeding at the same rate of time on
his side of it; till on a sudden she cried, "Behold, and listen! " and a
light of exceeding lustre came streaming through the woods, followed
by a dulcet melody. The poets resumed their way in a rapture of
expectation, and saw the air before them glowing under the green boughs
like fire. A divine spectacle ensued of holy mystery, with evangelical
and apocalyptic images, which gradually gave way and disclosed a car
brighter than the chariot of the sun, accompanied by celestial nymphs,
and showered upon by angels with a cloud of flowers, in the midst of
which stood a maiden in a white veil, crowned with olive.
The love that had never left Dante's heart from childhood told him who
it was; and trembling in every vein, he turned round to Virgil for
encouragement. Virgil was gone. At that moment, Paradise and Beatrice
herself could not requite the pilgrim for the loss of his friend; and
the tears ran down his cheeks.
"Dante," said the veiled maiden across the stream, "weep not that Virgil
leaves thee. Weep thou not yet. The stroke of a sharper sword is coming,
at which it will behove thee to weep. " Then assuming a sterner attitude,
and speaking in the tone of one who reserves the bitterest speech
for the last, she added, "Observe me well. I am, as thou suspectest,
Beatrice indeed;--Beatrice, who has to congratulate thee on deigning to
seek the mountain at last. And hadst thou so long indeed to learn, that
here only can man be happy? "
Dante, casting down his eyes at these words, beheld his face in the
water, and hastily turned aside, he saw it so full of shame.
Beatrice had the dignified manner of an offended parent; such a flavour
of bitterness was mingled with her pity.
She held her peace; and the angels abruptly began singing, "In thee, O
Lord, have I put my trust;" but went no farther in the psalm than the
words, "Thou hast set my feet in a large room. " The tears of Dante had
hitherto been suppressed; but when the singing began, they again rolled
down his cheeks.
Beatrice, in a milder tone, said to the angels, "This man, when he
proposed to himself in his youth to lead a new life, was of a truth so
gifted, that every good habit ought to have thrived with him; but the
richer the soil, the greater peril of weeds. For a while, the innocent
light of my countenance drew him the right way; but when I quitted
mortal life, he took away his thoughts from remembrance of me, and gave
himself to others. When I had risen from flesh to spirit, and increased
in worth and beauty, then did I sink in his estimation, and he turned
into other paths, and pursued false images of good that never keep their
promise. In vain I obtained from Heaven the power of interfering in his
behalf, and endeavoured to affect him with it night and day. So little
was he concerned, and into such depths he fell, that nothing remained
but to shew him the state of the condemned; and therefore I went to
their outer regions, and commended him with tears to the guide that
brought him hither. The decrees of Heaven would be nought, if Lethe
could be passed, and the fruit beyond it tasted, without any payment of
remorse. [55]
"O thou," she continued, addressing herself to Dante, "who standest on
the other side of the holy stream, say, have I not spoken truth? "
Dante was so confused and penitent, that the words failed as they passed
his lips.
"What could induce thee," resumed his monitress, "when I had given thee
aims indeed, to abandon them for objects that could end in nothing? "
Dante said, "Thy face was taken from me, and the presence of false
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. "
His having been taken out of that kind of life by Virgil (construed in
the literal sense, in which, among other senses, he has directed us to
construe him), may imply, either that the delight of reading Virgil
first made him think of living in a manner more becoming a man of
intellect, or (possibly) that the Latin poet's description of Æneas's
descent into hell turned his thoughts to religious penitence. Be this
as it may, his life, though surely it could at no time have been of any
very licentious kind, never, if we are to believe Boccaccio, became
spotless. ]
[Footnote 46: The mention of Gentucca might be thought a compliment to
the lady, if Dante had not made Beatrice afterwards treat his regard for
any one else but herself with so much contempt. (See page 216 of the
present volume. ) Under that circumstance, it is hardly acting like a
gentleman to speak of her at all; unless, indeed, he thought her a
person who would be pleased with the notoriety arising even from the
record of a fugitive regard; and in that case the good taste of the
record would still remain doubtful. The probability seems to be, that
Dante was resolved, at all events, to take this opportunity of bearding
some rumour.
