when thou
returnest
to
earth, and shalt have rested from thy long journey, remember me,--Pia.
earth, and shalt have rested from thy long journey, remember me,--Pia.
Stories from the Italian Poets
_]
[Footnote 15:
"Mentre che l'uno spirto questo disse,
L'altro piangeva sì, che di pietade
I' venni men così com'io morisse,
E caddi come corpo morto cade. "
This last line has been greatly admired for the corresponding deadness
of its expression.
While thus one spoke, the other spirit mourn'd
With wail so woful, that at his remorse
I felt as though I should have died. I turn'd
Stone-stiff; and to the ground, fell like a corse.
The poet fell thus on the ground (some of the commentators think)
because he had sinned in the same way; and if Foscolo's opinion could
be established--that the incident of the book is invention--their
conclusion would receive curious collateral evidence, the circumstance
of the perusal of the romance in company with a lady being likely enough
to have occurred to Dante. But the same probability applies in the case
of the lovers. The reading of such books was equally the taste of their
own times; and nothing is more likely than the volume's having been
found in the room where they perished. The Pagans could not be rebels
to a law they never heard of, any more than Dante could be a rebel
to Luther. But this is one of the absurdities with which the impious
effrontery or scarcely less impious admissions of Dante's teachers
avowedly set reason at defiance,--retaining, meanwhile, their right of
contempt for the impieties of Mahometans and Brahmins; "which is odd,"
as the poet says; for being not less absurd, or, as the others argued,
much more so, they had at least an equal claim on the submission of the
reason; since the greater the irrationality, the higher the theological
triumph. ]
[Footnote 16: Plutus's exclamation about Satan is a great choke-pear to
the commentators. The line in the original is
"Pape Satan, pape Satan aleppe. "
The words, as thus written, are not Italian. It is not the business of
this abstract to discuss such points; and therefore I content myself
with believing that the context implies a call of alarm on the Prince of
Hell at the sight of the living creature and his guide. ]
[Footnote 17: Phlegyas, a son of Mars, was cast into hell by Apollo for
setting the god's temple on fire in resentment for the violation of his
daughter Coronis. The actions of gods were not to be questioned, in
Dante's opinion, even though the gods turned out to be false Jugghanaut
is as good as any, while he lasts. It is an ethico-theological puzzle,
involving very nice questions; but at any rate, had our poet been a
Brahmin of Benares, we know how he would have written about it in
Sanscrit. ]
[Footnote 18: Filippo Argenti (Philip _Silver_,--so called from his
shoeing his horse with the precious metal) was a Florentine remarkable
for bodily strength and extreme irascibility. What a barbarous strength
and confusion of ideas is there in this whole passage about him!
Arrogance punished by arrogance, a Christian mother blessed for the
unchristian disdainfulness of her son, revenge boasted of and enjoyed,
passion arguing in a circle! Filippo himself might have written it.
Dante says,
"Con piangere e con lutto
Spirito maladetto, ti rimani.
Via costà con gli altri cani," &c.
Then Virgil, kissing and embracing him,
"Alma sdegnosa
Benedetta colei che 'n te s'incinse," &c.
And Dante again,
"Maestro, molto sarei vago
Di vederlo attuffare in questa broda," &c. ]
[Footnote 19: Dis, one of the Pagan names of Pluto, here used for Satan.
Within the walls of the city of Dis commence the punishments by fire. ]
[Footnote 20: Farinata was a Ghibelline leader before the time of Dante,
and had vanquished the poet's connexions at the battle of Montaperto. ]
[Footnote 21: What would Guido have said to this? More, I suspect, than
Dante would have liked to hear, or known how to answer. But he died
before the verses transpired; probably before they were written; for
Dante, in the chronology of his poem, assumes what times and seasons he
finds most convenient. ]
[Footnote 22:
"Sì che la pioggia non par che 'l maturi. "
This is one of the grandest passages in Dante. It was probably (as
English commentators have observed) in Milton's recollection when he
conceived the character of Satan. ]
[Footnote 23: The satire of friarly hypocrisy is at least as fine as
Ariosto's discovery of Discord in a monastery.
The monster Geryon, son of Chrysaor (_Golden-sword_), and the
Ocean-nymph Callirhoe (_Fair-flowing_), was rich in the possession
of sheep. His wealth, and perhaps his derivatives, rendered him this
instrument of satire. The monstrosity, the mild face, the glancing point
of venom, and the beautiful skin, make it as fine as can be. ]
[Footnote 24: "_Malebolge_," literally Evil-Budget. _Bolgia_ is an old
form of the modern _baule_, the common term for a valise or portmanteau.
"Bolgia" (says the _Vocabolario della Crusca, compendiato_, Ven. 1792),
"a valise; Latin, bulga, hippopera; Greek, ippopetha [Greek]. In
reference to valises which open lengthways like a chest, Dante uses the
word to signify those compartments which he feigns in his Hell. " (Per
similitudine di quelle valigie, che s'aprono per lo lungo, a guisa di
cassa, significa quegli spartimenti, che Dante finge nell' Inferno. )
The reader will think of the homely figurative names in Bunyan, and the
contempt which great and awful states of mind have for conventional
notions of rank in phraseology. It is a part, if well considered, of
their grandeur. ]
[Footnote 25: Boniface the Eighth was the pope then living, and one of
the causes of Dante's exile. It is thus the poet contrives to put his
enemies in hell before their time. ]
[Footnote 26: An allusion to the pretended gift of the Lateran by
Constantine to Pope Sylvester, ridiculed so strongly by Ariosto and
others. ]
[Footnote 27: A truly infernal sentiment. The original is,
"Quì vive la pietà quand' è ben morta. "
Here pity lives when it is quite dead.
"Chi è più scellerato," continues the poet, "di colui,
Ch'al giudicio divin passion porta. "
That is: "Who is wickeder than he that sets his impassioned feelings
against the judgments of God? " The answer is: He that attributes
judgments to God which are to render humanity pitiless. ]
[Footnote 28: _Ne' fianchi così poco_. Michael Scot had been in
Florence; to which circumstance we are most probably indebted for this
curious particular respecting his shape. The consignment of such men to
hell is a mortifying instance of the great poet's participation in the
vulgarest errors of his time. It is hardly, however, worth notice,
considering what we see him swallowing every moment, or pretending to
swallow. ]
[Footnote 29: "Bonturo must have sold him something cheap," exclaimed a
hearer of this passage. No:--the exception is an irony! There was not
one honest man in all Lucca! ]
[Footnote 30:
"Intorno si mira
Tutto smarrito da la grande angoscia
Ch'egli ha sofferta, e guardando sospira. "
This is one of the most terribly natural pictures of agonised
astonishment ever painted. ]
[Footnote 31: I retain this passage, horrible as it is to Protestant
ears, because it is not only an instance of Dante's own audacity, but
a salutary warning specimen of the extremes of impiety generated by
extreme superstition; for their first cause is the degradation of the
Divine character. Another, no doubt, is the impulsive vehemence of the
South. I have heard more blasphemies, in the course of half an hour,
from the lips of an Italian postilion, than are probably uttered in
England, by people not out of their senses, for a whole year. Yet the
words, after all, were mere words; for the man was a good-natured
fellow, and I believe presented no image to his mind of anything he was
saying. Dante, however, would certainly not have taught him better by
attempting to frighten him. A violent word would have only produced more
violence. Yet this was the idle round which the great poet thought it
best to run! ]
[Footnote 32: Cianfa, probably a condottiere of Mrs. Radcliffe's sort,
and robber on a large scale, is said to have been one of the Donati
family, connexions of the poet by marriage. ]
[Footnote 33: This, and the transformation that follows, may well excite
the pride of such a poet as Dante; though it is curious to see how he
selects inventions of this kind as special grounds of self-complacency.
They are the most appalling ever yet produced. ]
[Footnote 34: Guido, Conte di Montefeltro, a celebrated soldier of that
day, became a Franciscan in his old age, in order to repent of his sins;
but, being consulted in his cloister by Pope Boniface on the best mode
of getting possession of an estate belonging to the Colonna family,
and being promised absolution for his sins in the lump, including the
opinion requested, he recommended the holy father to "promise much, and
perform nothing" (_molto promettere, e nulla attendere_). ]
[Footnote 35: Dolcino was a Lombard friar at the beginning of the
fourteenth century, who is said to have preached a community of goods,
including women, and to have pretended to a divine mission for reforming
the church. He appears to have made a considerable impression, having
thousands of followers, but was ultimately seized in the mountains where
they lived, and burnt with his female companion Margarita, and many
others. Landino says he was very eloquent, and that "both he and
Margarita endured their fate with a firmness worthy of a better cause. "
Probably his real history is not known, for want of somebody in such
times bold enough to write it. ]
[Footnote 36: Literally, "under the breastplate of knowing himself to be
pure:"
"Sotto l'osbergo del sentirsi pura. "
The expression is deservedly admired; but it is not allowable in
English, and it is the only one admitting no equivalent which I have
met with in the whole poem. It might be argued, perhaps, against the
perfection of the passage, that a good "conscience," and a man's
"knowing himself to be pure," are a tautology; for Dante himself has
already used that word;
"Conscienzia m'assicura;
La buona compagnia che l'uom francheggia
Sotto l'osbergo," &c.
But still we feel the impulsive beauty of the phrase; and I wish I could
have kept it. ]
[Foonote 37: This ghastly fiction is a rare instance of the meeting of
physical horror with the truest pathos. ]
[Footnote 38: The reader will not fail to notice this characteristic
instance of the ferocity of the time. ]
[Footnote 39: This is admirable sentiment; and it must have been no
ordinary consciousness of dignity in general which could have made Dante
allow himself to be the person rebuked for having forgotten it. Perhaps
it was a sort of penance for his having, on some occasion, fallen into
the unworthiness. ]
[Footnote 40: By the Saracens in Roncesvalles; afterwards so favourite
a topic with the poets. The circumstance of the horn is taken from the
Chronicle of the pretended Archbishop Turpin, chapter xxiv. ]
[Footnote 41: The gaping monotony of this jargon, full of the vowel _a_,
is admirably suited to the mouth of the vast, half-stupid speaker. It is
like a babble of the gigantic infancy of the world. ]
[Footnote 42:
"Nè sì chinato li fece dimora,
E come albero in nave si levò. "
A magnificent image! I have retained the idiomatic expression of the
original, _raised himself_, instead of saying rose, because it seemed to
me to give the more grand and deliberate image. ]
[Footnote 43: Of "_màmma_" and "_bàbbo_," says the primitive poet. We
have corresponding words in English, but the feeling they produce is not
identical. The lesser fervour of the northern nations renders them, in
some respects, more sophisticate than they suspect, compared with the
"artful" Italians. ]
[Footnote 44: Alessandro and Napoleon degli Alberti, sons of Alberto,
lord of the valley of Falterona in Tuscany. After their father's death
they tyrannised over the neighbouring districts, and finally had a
mortal quarrel. The name of Napoleon used to be so rare till of late
years, even in Italian books, that it gives one a kind of interesting
surprise to meet with it. ]
[Footnote 45:
"Se _voler_ fu, o destino o fortuna,
Non so. "
What does the Christian reader think of that? ]
[Footnote 46: Latrando. ]
[Footnote 47: Bocca degli Abbati, whose soul barks like a dog,
occasioned the defeat of the Guelfs at Montaperto, in the year 1260, by
treacherously cutting off the hand of the standard-bearer. ]
[Footnote 48: This is the famous story of Ugolino, who betrayed the
castles of Pisa to the Florentines, and was starved with his children in
the Tower of Famine. ]
[Footnote 49: I should be loath to disturb the inimitable pathos of this
story, if there did not seem grounds for believing that the poet was too
hasty in giving credit to parts of it, particularly the ages of some of
his fellow-prisoners, and the guilt of the archbishop. See the Appendix
to this volume. ]
[Footnote 50: This is the most tremendous lampoon, as far as I am aware,
in the whole circle of literature. ]
[Footnote 51: "Cortesia fu lui esser villano. " This is the foulest blot
which Dante has cast on his own character in all his poem (short of the
cruelties he thinks fit to attribute to God). It is argued that he is
cruel and false, out of hatred to cruelty and falsehood. But why then
add to the sum of both? and towards a man, too, supposed to be suffering
eternally? It is idle to discern in such barbarous inconsistencies any
thing but the writer's own contributions to the stock of them. The
utmost credit for right feeling is not to be given on every occasion to
a man who refuses it to every one else. ]
[Footnote 52: "La creatura ch'ebbe il bel sembiante. "
This is touching; but the reader may as well be prepared for a total
failure in Dante's conception of Satan, especially the English reader,
accustomed to the sublimity of Milton's. Granting that the Roman
Catholic poet intended to honour the fallen angel with no sublimity,
but to render him an object of mere hate and dread, he has overdone and
degraded the picture into caricature. A great stupid being, stuck up in
ice, with three faces, one of which is yellow, and three mouths, each
eating a sinner, one of those sinners being Brutus, is an object
for derision; and the way in which he eats these, his everlasting
_bonnes-bouches,_ divides derision with disgust. The passage must be
given, otherwise the abstract of the poem would be incomplete; but I
cannot help thinking it the worst anti-climax ever fallen into by a
great poet. ]
[Footnote 53: This silence is, at all events, a compliment to Brutus,
especially from a man like Dante, and the more because it is extorted.
Dante, no doubt, hated all treachery, particularly treachery to the
leader of his beloved Roman emperors; forgetting three things; first,
that Cæsar was guilty of treachery himself to the Roman people; second,
that he, Dante, has put Curio in hell for advising Cæsar to cross the
Rubicon, though he has put the crosser among the good Pagans; and third,
that Brutus was educated in the belief that the punishment of such
treachery as Cæsar's by assassination was one of the first of duties.
How differently has Shakspeare, himself an aristocratic rather than
democratic poet, and full of just doubt of the motives of assassins in
general, treated the error of the thoughtful, conscientious, Platonic
philosopher! ]
[Footnote 54: At the close of this medley of genius, pathos, absurdity,
sublimity, horror, and revoltingness, it is impossible for any
reflecting heart to avoid asking, _Cui bono? _ What is the good of it
to the poor wretches, if we are to suppose it true? and what to the
world--except, indeed, as a poetic study and a warning against degrading
notions of God--if we are to take it simply as a fiction? Theology,
disdaining both questions, has an answer confessedly incomprehensible.
Humanity replies: Assume not premises for which you have worse than no
proofs. ]
II.
THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY.
Argument.
Purgatory, in the system of Dante, is a mountain at the Antipodes, on
the top of which is the Terrestrial Paradise, once the seat of Adam and
Eve. It forms the principal part of an island in a sea, and possesses
a pure air. Its lowest region, with one or two exceptions of redeemed
Pagans, is occupied by Excommunicated Penitents and by Delayers of
Penitence, all of whom are compelled to lose time before their atonement
commences. The other and greater portion of the ascent is divided into
circles or plains, in which are expiated the Seven Deadly Sins. The Poet
ascends from circle to circle with Virgil and Statius, and is met in
a forest on the top by the spirit of Beatrice, who transports him to
Heaven.
THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY.
When the pilgrims emerged from the opening through which they beheld the
stars, they found themselves in a scene which enchanted them with hope
and joy. It was dawn: a sweet pure air came on their faces; and they
beheld a sky of the loveliest oriental sapphire, whose colour seemed
to pervade the whole serene hollow from earth to heaven. The beautiful
planet which encourages loving thoughts made all the orient laugh,
obscuring by its very radiance the stars in its train; and among those
which were still lingering and sparkling in the southern horizon,
Dante saw four in the shape of a cross, never beheld by man since they
gladdened the eyes of our first parents. Heaven seemed to rejoice in
their possession. O widowed northern pole! bereaved art thou, indeed,
since thou canst not gaze upon them! [1]
The poet turned to look at the north where he had been accustomed to see
stars that no longer appeared, and beheld, at his side, an old man, who
struck his beholder with a veneration like that of a son for his father.
He had grey hairs, and a long beard which parted in two down his
bosom; and the four southern stars beamed on his face with such lustre,
that his aspect was as radiant as if he had stood in the sun.
"Who are ye? " said the old man, "that have escaped from the dreadful
prison-house? Can the laws of the abyss be violated? Or has Heaven
changed its mind, that thus ye are allowed to come from the regions of
condemnation into mine? "
It was the spirit of Cato of Utica, the warder of the ascent of
purgatory.
The Roman poet explained to his countryman who they were, and how Dante
was under heavenly protection; and then he prayed leave of passage of
him by the love he bore to the chaste eyes of his Marcia, who sent him a
message from the Pagan circle, hoping that he would still own her.
Cato replied, that although he was so fond of Marcia while on earth that
he could deny her nothing, he had ceased, in obedience to new laws, to
have any affection for her, now that she dwelt beyond the evil river;
but as the pilgrim, his companion, was under heavenly protection, he
would of course do what he desired. [2] He then desired him to gird his
companion with one of the simplest and completest rushes he would see by
the water's side, and to wash the stain of the lower world out of his
face, and so take their journey up the mountain before them, by a
path which the rising sun would disclose. And with these words he
disappeared. [3]
The pilgrims passed on, with the eagerness of one who thinks every step
in vain till he finds the path he has lost. The full dawn by this time
had arisen, and they saw the trembling of the sea in the distance. [4]
Virgil then dipped his hands into a spot of dewy grass, where the sun
had least affected it, and with the moisture bathed the face of Dante,
who held it out to him, suffused with tears;[5] and then they went on
till they came to a solitary shore, whence no voyager had ever returned,
and there the loins of the Florentine were girt with the rush.
On this shore they were standing in doubt how to proceed,--moving
onward, as it were, in mind, while yet their feet were staying,--when
they be held a light over the water at a distance, rayless at first as
the planet Mars when he looks redly out of the horizon through a fog,
but speedily growing brighter and brighter with amazing swiftness. Dante
had but turned for an instant to ask his guide what it was, when, on
looking again, it had grown far brighter. Two splendid phenomena, he
knew not what, then developed themselves from it on either side; and, by
degrees, another below it. The two splendours quickly turned out to be
wings; and Virgil, who had hitherto watched its coming in silence, cried
out, "Down, down,--on thy knees! It is God's angel. Clasp thine hands.
Now thou shalt behold operancy indeed. Lo, how he needs neither sail nor
oar, coming all this way with nothing but his wings! Lo, how he holds
them aloft, using the air with them at his will, and knowing they can
never be weary. "
The "divine bird" grew brighter and brighter as he came, so that the
eye at last could not sustain the lustre; and Dante turned his to the
ground. A boat then rushed to shore which the angel had brought with
him, so light that it drew not a drop of water. The celestial pilot
stood at the helm, with bliss written in his face; and a hundred spirits
were seen within the boat, who, lifting up their voices, sang the psalm
beginning "When Israel came out of Egypt. " At the close of the psalm,
the angel blessed them with the sign of the cross, and they all leaped
to shore; upon which he turned round, and departed as swiftly as he
came.
The new-comers, after gazing about them for a while, in the manner of
those who are astonished to see new sights, inquired of Virgil and his
companion the best way to the mountain. Virgil explained who they were;
and the spirits, pale with astonishment at beholding in Dante a living
and breathing man, crowded about him, in spite of their anxiety to
shorten the period of their trials. One of them came darting out of the
press to embrace him, in a manner so affectionate as to move the poet to
return his warmth; but his arms again and again found themselves crossed
on his own bosom, having encircled nothing. The shadow, smiling at the
astonishment in the other's face, drew back; and Dante hastened as much
forward to shew his zeal in the greeting, when the spirit in a sweet
voice recommended him to desist. The Florentine then knew who it
was,--Casella, a musician, to whom he had been much attached. After
mutual explanations as to their meeting, Dante requested his friend, if
no ordinance opposed it, to refresh his spirit awhile with one of the
tender airs that used to charm away all his troubles on earth. Casella
immediately began one of his friend's own productions, commencing with
the words,
"Love, that delights to talk unto my soul Of all the wonders of my
lady's nature. "
And he sang it so beautifully, that the sweetness rang within the poet's
heart while recording the circumstance. The other spirits listened with
such attention, that they seemed to have forgotten the very purpose
of their coming; when suddenly the voice of Cato was heard, sternly
rebuking their delay; and the whole party speeded in trepidation towards
the mountain. [6]
The two pilgrims, who had at first hastened with the others, in a little
while slackened their steps; and Dante found that his body projected a
shadow, while the form of Virgil had none. When arrived at the foot of
the mountain, they were joined by a second party of spirits, of whom
Virgil inquired the way up it. One of the spirits, of a noble aspect,
but with a gaping wound in his forehead, stepped forth, and asked Dante
if he remembered him. The poet humbly answering in the negative, the
stranger disclosed a second wound, that was in his bosom; and then, with
a smile, announced himself as Manfredi, king of Naples, who was slain in
battle against Charles of Anjou, and died excommunicated. Manfredi gave
Dante a message to his daughter Costanza, queen of Arragon, begging her
to shorten the consequences of the excommunication by her prayers;
since he, like the rest of the party with him, though repenting of his
contumacy against the church, would have to wander on the outskirts of
Purgatory three times as long as the presumption had lasted, unless
relieved by such petitions from the living. [7]
Dante went on, with his thoughts so full of this request, that he did
not perceive he had arrived at the path which Virgil asked for, till the
wandering spirits called out to them to say so. The pilgrims then, with
great difficulty, began to ascend through an extremely narrow passage;
and Virgil, after explaining to Dante how it was that in this antipodal
region his eastward face beheld the sun in the north instead of the
south, was encouraging him to proceed manfully in the hope of finding
the path easier by degrees, and of reposing at the end of it, when they
heard a voice observing, that they would most likely find it expedient
to repose a little sooner. The pilgrims looked about them, and observed
close at hand a crag of a rock, in the shade of which some spirits were
standing, as men stand idly at noon. Another was sitting down, as if
tired out, with his arms about his knees, and his face bent down between
them. [8]
"Dearest master! " exclaimed Dante to his guide, "what thinkest thou of a
croucher like this, for manful journeying? Verily he seems to have been
twin-born with Idleness herself. "
The croucher, lifting up his eyes at these words, looked hard at Dante,
and said, "Since thou art so stout, push on. "
Dante then saw it was Belacqua, a pleasant acquaintance of his, famous
for his indolence.
"That was a good lesson," said Belacqua, "that was given thee just now
in astronomy. "
The poet could not help smiling at the manner in which his acquaintance
uttered these words, it was so like his ways of old. Belacqua pretended,
even in another world, that it was of no use to make haste, since the
angel had prohibited his going higher up the mountain. He and his
companions had to walk round the foot of it as many years as they had
delayed repenting; unless, as in the case of Manfredi, their time was
shortened by the prayers of good people.
A little further on, the pilgrims encountered the spirits of such
Delayers of Penitence as, having died violent deaths, repented at the
last moment. One of them, Buonconte da Montefeltro, who died in battle,
and whose body could not be found, described how the devil, having been
hindered from seizing him by the shedding of a single tear, had raised
in his fury a tremendous tempest, which sent the body down the river
Arno, and buried it in the mud. [9]
Another spirit, a female, said to Dante, "Ah!
when thou returnest to
earth, and shalt have rested from thy long journey, remember me,--Pia.
Sienna gave me life; the Marshes took it from me. This he knows, who put
on my finger the wedding-ring. "[10]
The majority of this party were so importunate with the Florentine
to procure them the prayers of their friends, that he had as much
difficulty to get away, as a winner at dice has to free himself from the
mercenary congratulations of the by-standers. On resuming their way,
Dante quoted to Virgil a passage in the Æneid, decrying the utility of
prayer, and begged him to explain how it was to be reconciled with what
they had just heard. Virgil advised him to wait for the explanation till
he saw Beatrice, whom, he now said, he should meet at the top of the
mountain. Dante, at this information, expressed a desire to hasten their
progress; and Virgil, seeing a spirit looking towards them as they
advanced, requested him to acquaint them with the shortest road.
The spirit, maintaining a lofty and reserved aspect, was as silent as if
he had not heard the request; intimating by his manner that they might
as well proceed without repeating it, and eyeing them like a lion on the
watch. Virgil, however, went up to him, and gently urged it; but the
only reply was a question as to who they were and of what country. The
Latin poet beginning to answer him, had scarcely mentioned the word
"Mantua," when the stranger went as eagerly up to his interrogator as
the latter had done to him, and said, "Mantua! My own country! My name
is Sordello. " And the compatriots embraced.
O degenerate Italy! exclaims Dante; land without affections, without
principle, without faith in any one good thing! here was a man who could
not hear the sweet sound of a fellow-citizen's voice without feeling his
heart gush towards him, and there are no people now in any one of thy
towns that do not hate and torment one another.
Sordello, in another tone, now exclaimed, "But who are ye? "
Virgil disclosed himself, and Sordello fell at his feet. [11]
Sordello now undertook to accompany the great Roman poet and his friend
to a certain distance on their ascent towards the penal quarters of the
mountain; but as evening was drawing nigh, and the ascent could not
be made properly in the dark, he proposed that they should await the
dawning of the next day in a recess that overlooked a flowery hollow.
The hollow was a lovely spot of ground, enamelled with flowers that
surpassed the exquisitest dyes, and green with a grass brighter than
emeralds newly broken. [12] There rose from it also a fragrance of a
thousand different kinds of sweetness, all mingled into one that was new
and indescribable; and with the fragrance there ascended the chant of
the prayer beginning "Hail, Queen of Heaven,"[13] which was sung by a
multitude of souls that appeared sitting on the flowery sward.
Virgil pointed them out. They were penitent delayers of penitence, of
sovereign rank. Among them, however, were spirits who sat mute; one
of whom was the Emperor Rodolph, who ought to have attended better to
Italy, the garden of the empire; and another, Ottocar, king of Bohemia,
his enemy, who now comforted him; and another, with a small nose,[14]
Philip the Third of France, who died a fugitive, shedding the leaves of
the lily; he sat beating his breast; and with him was Henry the Third of
Navarre, sighing with his cheek on his hand. One was the father, and one
the father-in-law of Philip the Handsome, the bane of France; and it was
on account of his unworthiness they grieved.
But among the singers Virgil pointed out the strong-limbed King of
Arragon, Pedro; and Charles, king of Naples, with his masculine nose
(these two were singing together); and Henry the Third of England, the
king of the simple life, sitting by himself;[15] and below these, but
with his eyes in heaven, Guglielmo marquis of Montferrat.
It was now the hour when men at sea think longingly of home, and feel
their hearts melt within them to remember the day on which they bade
adieu to beloved friends; and now, too, was the hour when the pilgrim,
new to his journey, is thrilled with the like tenderness, when he hears
the vesper-bell in the distance, which seems to mourn for the expiring
day. [16] At this hour of the coming darkness, Dante beheld one of the
spirits in the flowery hollow arise, and after giving a signal to the
others to do as he did, stretch forth both hands, palm to palm, towards
the East, and with softest emotion commence the hymn beginning,
"Thee before the closing light. "[17]
Upon which all the rest devoutly and softly followed him, keeping their
eyes fixed on the heavens. At the end of it they remained, with pale
countenances, in an attitude of humble expectation; and Dante saw the
angels issue from the quarter to which they looked, and descend towards
them with flaming swords in their hands, broken short of the point.
Their wings were as green as the leaves in spring; and they wore
garments equally green, which the fanning of the wings kept in a state
of streaming fluctuation behind them as they came. One of them took his
stand on a part of the hill just over where the pilgrims stood, and the
other on a hill opposite, so that the party in the valley were between
them. Dante could discern their heads of hair, notwithstanding its
brightness; but their faces were so dazzling as to be undistinguishable.
"They come from Mary's bosom," whispered Sordello, "to protect the
valley from the designs of our enemy yonder,--the Serpent. "
Dante looked in trepidation towards the only undefended side of the
valley, and beheld the Serpent of Eve coming softly among the grass and
flowers, occasionally turning its head, and licking its polished back.
Before he could take off his eyes from the evil thing, the two angels
had come down like falcons, and at the whirring of their pinions the
serpent fled. The angels returned as swiftly to their stations.
Aurora was now looking palely over the eastern cliff on the other side
of the globe, and the stars of midnight shining over the heads of Dante
and his friends, when they seated themselves for rest on the mountain's
side. The Florentine, being still in the flesh, lay down for weariness,
and was overcome with sleep. In his sleep he dreamt that a golden eagle
flashed down like lightning upon him, and bore him up to the region
of fire, where the heat was so intense that it woke him, staring and
looking round about with a pale face. His dream was a shadowing of
the truth. He had actually come to another place,--to the entrance of
Purgatory itself. Sordello had been left behind, Virgil alone remained,
looking him cheerfully in the face. Saint Lucy had come from heaven,
and shortened the fatigue of his journey by carrying him upwards as he
slept, the heathen poet following them. On arriving where they stood,
the fair saint intimated the entrance of Purgatory to Virgil by a glance
thither of her beautiful eyes, and then vanished as Dante woke. [18]
The portal by which Purgatory was entered was embedded in a cliff. It
had three steps, each of a different colour; and on the highest of these
there sat, mute and watching, an angel in ash-coloured garments, holding
a naked sword, which glanced with such intolerable brightness on Dante,
whenever he attempted to look, that he gave up the endeavour. The angel
demanded who they were, and receiving the right answer, gently bade them
advance.
Dante now saw, that the lowest step was of marble, so white and clear
that he beheld his face in it. The colour of the next was a deadly
black, and it was all rough, scorched, and full of cracks. The third was
of flaming porphyry, red as a man's blood when it leaps forth under
the lancet. [19] The angel, whose feet were on the porphyry, sat on a
threshold which appeared to be rock-diamond. Dante, ascending the steps,
with the encouragement of Virgil, fell at the angel's feet, and, after
thrice beating himself on the breast, humbly asked admittance. The
angel, with the point of his sword, inscribed the first letter of the
word _peccatum_ (sin) seven times on the petitioner's forehead; then,
bidding him pray with tears for their erasement, and be cautious how he
looked back, opened the portal with a silver and a golden key. [20]
The hinges roared, as they turned, like thunder; and the pilgrims, on
entering, thought they heard, mingling with the sound, a chorus of
voices singing, "We praise thee, O God! "[21] It was like the chant that
mingles with a cathedral organ, when the words that the choristers utter
are at one moment to be distinguished, and at another fade away.
The companions continued ascending till they reached a plain. It
stretched as far as the eye could see, and was as lonely as roads across
deserts.
This was the first flat, or table-land, of the ascending gradations of
Purgatory, and the place of trial for the souls of the Proud. It was
bordered with a mound, or natural wall, of white marble, sculptured all
over with stories of humility. Dante beheld among them the Annunciation,
represented with so much life, that the sweet action of the angel seemed
to be uttering the very word, "Hail! " and the submissive spirit of the
Virgin to be no less impressed, like very wax, in her demeanour. The
next story was that of David dancing and harping before the ark,--an
action in which he seemed both less and greater than a king. Michal
was looking out upon him from a window, like a lady full of scorn and
sorrow. Next to the story of David was that of the Emperor Trajan, when
he did a thing so glorious, as moved St. Gregory to gain the greatest of
all his conquests--the delivering of the emperor's soul from hell.
A widow, in tears and mourning, was laying hold of his bridle as he rode
amidst his court with a noise of horses and horsemen, while the Roman
eagles floated in gold over his head. The miserable creature spoke out
loudly among them all, crying for vengeance on the murderers of her
sons. The emperor seemed to say, "Wait till I return. "
But she, in the hastiness of her misery, said, "Suppose thou returnest
not? "
"Then my successor will attend to thee," replied the emperor.
"And what hast thou to do with the duties of another man," cried she,
"if thou attendest not to thine own? "
"Now, be of good comfort," concluded Trajan, "for verily my duty shall
be done before I go; justice wills it, and pity arrests me. "
Dante was proceeding to delight himself further with these sculptures,
when Virgil whispered hint to look round and see what was coming. He did
so, and beheld strange figures advancing, the nature of which he could
not make out at first, for they seemed neither human, nor aught else
which he could call to mind. They were souls of the proud, bent double
under enormous burdens.
"O proud, miserable, woe-begone Christians! " exclaims the poet; "ye who,
in the shortness of your sight, see no reason for advancing in the
right path! Know ye not that we are worms, born to compose the angelic
butterfly, provided we throw off the husks that impede our flight? "[22]
The souls came slowly on, each bending down in proportion to his burden.
They looked like the crouching figures in architecture that are used
to support roofs or balconies, and that excite piteous fancies in the
beholders. The one that appeared to have the most patience, yet seemed
as if he said, "I can endure no further. "
The sufferers, notwithstanding their anguish, raised their voices in
a paraphrase on the Lord's Prayer, which they concluded with humbly
stating, that they repeated the clause against temptation, not for
themselves, but for those who were yet living.
Virgil, wishing them a speedy deliverance, requested them to spew the
best way of going up to the next circle. Who it was that answered him
could not be discerned, on account of their all being so bent down; but
a voice gave them the required direction; the speaker adding, that he
wished he could raise his eyes, so as to see the living creature that
stood near him. He said that his name was Omberto--that he came of
the great Tuscan race of Aldobrandesco--and that his countrymen, the
Siennese, murdered him on account of his arrogance.
Dante had bent down his own head to listen, and in so doing he was
recognised by one of the sufferers, who, eyeing him as well as he could,
addressed him by name. The poet replied by exclaiming, "Art thou not
Oderisi, the glory of Agubbio, the master of the art of illumination? "
"Ah! " said Oderisi, "Franco of Bologna has all the glory now. His
colours make the pages of books laugh with beauty, compared with what
mine do. [23] I could not have owned it while on earth, for the sin which
has brought me hither; but so it is; and so will it ever be, let a man's
fame be never so green and flourishing, unless he can secure a dull age
to come after him. Cimabue, in painting, lately kept the field against
all comers, and now the cry is 'Giotto. ' Thus, in song, a new Guido has
deprived the first of his glory, and he perhaps is born who shall drive
both out of the nest. [24] Fame is but a wind that changes about from all
quarters. What does glory amount to at best, that a man should prefer
living and growing old for it, to dying in the days of his nurse and
his pap-boat, even if it should last him a thousand years? A thousand
years! --the twinkling of an eye. Behold this man, who weeps before me;
his name resounded once over all our Tuscany, and now it is scarcely
whispered in his native place. He was lord there at the time that your
once proud but now loathsome Florence had such a lesson given to its
frenzy at the battle of Arbia. "
"And what is his name? " inquired Dante.
"Salvani," returned the limner. "He is here, because he had the
presumption to think that he could hold Sienna in the hollow of his
hand. Fifty years has he paced in this manner. Such is the punishment
for audacity. "
"But why is he here at all," said Dante, "and not in the outer region,
among the delayers of repentance? "
"Because," exclaimed the other, "in the height of his ascendancy he did
not disdain to stand in the public place in Sienna, and, trembling in
every vein, beg money from the people to ransom a friend from captivity.
Do I appear to thee to speak with mysterious significance? Thy
countrymen shall too soon help thee to understand me. "[25]
Virgil now called Dante away from Oderisi, and bade him notice the
ground on which they were treading. It was pavement, wrought all over
with figures, like sculptured tombstones. There was Lucifer among them,
struck flaming down from heaven; and Briareus, pinned to the earth with
the thunderbolt, and, with the other giants, amazing the gods with his
hugeness; and Nimrod, standing confounded at the foot of Babel; and
Niobe, with her despairing eyes, turned into stone amidst her children;
and Saul, dead on his own sword in Gilboa; and Arachne, now half spider,
at fault on her own broken web; and Rehoboam, for all his insolence,
flying in terror in his chariot; and Alcmæon, who made his mother pay
with her life for the ornament she received to betray his father; and
Sennacherib, left dead by his son in the temple; and the head of Cyrus,
thrown by the motherless woman into the goblet of blood, that it might
swill what it had thirsted for; and Holofernes, beheaded; and his
Assyrians flying at his death; and Troy, all become cinders and hollow
places. Oh! what a fall from pride was there! Now, maintain the
loftiness of your looks, ye sons of Eve, and walk with proud steps,
bending not your eyes on the dust ye were, lest ye perceive the evil of
your ways. [26]
"Behold," said Virgil, "there is an angel coming. "
The angel came on, clad in white, with a face that sent trembling beams
before it, like the morning star. He skewed the pilgrims the way up to
the second circle; and then, beating his wings against the forehead of
Dante, on which the seven initials of sin were written, told him he
should go safely, and disappeared.
On reaching the new circle, Dante, instead of the fierce wailings that
used to meet him at every turn in hell, heard voices singing, "Blessed
are the poor in spirit. "[27] As he went, he perceived that he walked
lighter, and was told by Virgil that the angel had freed him from one of
the letters on his forehead. He put his hand up to make sure, as a man
does in the street when people take notice of something on his head of
which he is not aware; and Virgil smiled.
In this new circle the sin of Envy was expiated. After the pilgrims had
proceeded a mile, they heard the voices of invisible spirits passing
them, uttering sentiments of love and charity; for it was charity itself
that had to punish envy.
The souls of the envious, clad in sackcloth, sat leaning for support and
humiliation, partly against the rocky wall of the circle, and partly on
one another's shoulders, after the manner of beggars that ask alms near
places of worship. Their eyes were sewn up, like those of hawks in
training, but not so as to hinder them from shedding tears, which they
did in abundance; and they cried, "Mary, pray for us! --Michael, Peter,
and all the saints, pray for us! "
Dante spoke to them; and one, a female, lifted up her chin as a blind
person does when expressing consciousness of notice, and said she was
Sapia of Sienna, who used to be pleased at people's misfortunes, and had
rejoiced when her countrymen lost the battle of Colle. "_Sapia_ was
my name," she said, "but _sapient_ I was not[28], for I prayed God to
defeat my countrymen; and when he had done so (as he had willed to do),
I raised my bold face to heaven, and cried out to him, 'Now do thy
worst, for I fear thee not! ' I was like the bird in the fable, who
thought the fine day was to last for ever. What I should have done in my
latter days to make up for the imperfect amends of my repentance, I know
not, if the holy Piero Pettignano had not assisted me with his prayers.
But who art thou that goest with open eyes, and breathest in thy talk? "
"Mine eyes," answered Dante, "may yet have to endure the blindness in
this place, though for no long period. Far more do I fear the sufferings
in the one that I have just left. I seem to feel the weight already upon
me. "[29]
The Florentine then informed Sapia how he came thither, which, she said,
was a great sign that God loved him; and she begged his prayers. The
conversation excited the curiosity of two spirits who overheard it; and
one of them, Guido del Duca, a noble Romagnese, asked the poet of
what country he was. Dante, without mentioning the name of the river,
intimated that he came from the banks of the Arno; upon which the other
spirit, Rinier da Calboli, asked his friend why the stranger suppressed
the name, as though it was something horrible. Guido said he well might;
for the river, throughout its course, beheld none but bad men and
persecutors of virtue. First, he said, it made its petty way by the
sties of those brutal hogs, the people of Casentino, and then arrived at
the dignity of watering the kennels of the curs of Arezzo, who excelled
more in barking than in biting; then, growing unluckier as it grew
larger, like the cursed and miserable ditch that it was, it found in
Florence the dogs become wolves; and finally, ere it went into the sea,
it passed the den of those foxes, the Pisans, who were full of such
cunning that they held traps in contempt.
"It will be well," continued Guido, "for this man to remember what he
hears;" and then, after prophesying evil to Florence, and confessing to
Dante his sin of envy, which used to make him pale when any one looked
happy, he added, "This is Rinieri, the glory of that house of Calboli
which now inherits not a spark of it. Not a spark of it, did I say, in
the house of Calboli? Where is there a spark in all Romagna? Where is
the good Lizio? --where Manardi, Traversaro, Carpigna? The Romagnese have
all become bastards. A mechanic founds a house in Bologna! a Bernardin
di Fosco finds his dog-grass become a tree in Faenza! Wonder not,
Tuscan, to see me weep, when I think of the noble spirits that we have
lived with--of the Guidos of Prata, and the Ugolins of Azzo--of Federigo
Tignoso and his band--of the Traversaros and Anastagios, families now
ruined--and all the ladies and the cavaliers, the alternate employments
and delights which wrapped us in a round of love and courtesy, where now
there is nothing but ill-will! O castle of Brettinoro! why dost thou
not fall? Well has the lord of Bagnacavallo done, who will have no more
children. Who would propagate a race of Counties from such blood as the
Castrocaros and the Conios? Is not the son of Pagani called the Demon?
and would it not be better that such a son were swept out of the family?
Nay, let him live to chew to what a pitch of villany it has arrived.
Ubaldini alone is blest, for his name is good, and he is too old to
leave a child after him. Go, Tuscan--go; for I would be left to my
tears. "
Dante and Virgil turned to move onward, and had scarcely done so, when a
tremendous voice met them, splitting the air like peals of thunder, and
crying out, "Whoever finds me will slay me! " then dashed apart, like the
thunder-bolt when it falls. It was Cain. The air had scarcely recovered
its silence, when a second crash ensued from a different quarter near
them, like thunder when the claps break swiftly into one another. "I am
Aglauros," it said, "that was turned into stone. " Dante drew closer to
his guide, and there ensued a dead silence. [30]
The sun was now in the west, and the pilgrims were journeying towards
it, when Dante suddenly felt such a weight of splendour on his eyes, as
forced him to screen them with both his hands. It was an angel coming to
show them the ascent to the next circle, a way that was less steep than
the last. While mounting, they heard the angel's voice singing behind
them, "Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy! " and on
his leaving them to proceed by themselves, the second letter on Dante's
forehead was found to have been effaced by the splendour.
The poet looked round in wonder on the new circle, where the sin
of Anger was expiated, and beheld, as in a dream, three successive
spectacles illustrative of the virtue of patience. The first was that of
a crowded temple, on the threshold of which a female said to her son, in
the sweet manner of a mother, "Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us?
Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing:"[31]--and here she
became silent, and the vision ended. 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.
[Footnote 15:
"Mentre che l'uno spirto questo disse,
L'altro piangeva sì, che di pietade
I' venni men così com'io morisse,
E caddi come corpo morto cade. "
This last line has been greatly admired for the corresponding deadness
of its expression.
While thus one spoke, the other spirit mourn'd
With wail so woful, that at his remorse
I felt as though I should have died. I turn'd
Stone-stiff; and to the ground, fell like a corse.
The poet fell thus on the ground (some of the commentators think)
because he had sinned in the same way; and if Foscolo's opinion could
be established--that the incident of the book is invention--their
conclusion would receive curious collateral evidence, the circumstance
of the perusal of the romance in company with a lady being likely enough
to have occurred to Dante. But the same probability applies in the case
of the lovers. The reading of such books was equally the taste of their
own times; and nothing is more likely than the volume's having been
found in the room where they perished. The Pagans could not be rebels
to a law they never heard of, any more than Dante could be a rebel
to Luther. But this is one of the absurdities with which the impious
effrontery or scarcely less impious admissions of Dante's teachers
avowedly set reason at defiance,--retaining, meanwhile, their right of
contempt for the impieties of Mahometans and Brahmins; "which is odd,"
as the poet says; for being not less absurd, or, as the others argued,
much more so, they had at least an equal claim on the submission of the
reason; since the greater the irrationality, the higher the theological
triumph. ]
[Footnote 16: Plutus's exclamation about Satan is a great choke-pear to
the commentators. The line in the original is
"Pape Satan, pape Satan aleppe. "
The words, as thus written, are not Italian. It is not the business of
this abstract to discuss such points; and therefore I content myself
with believing that the context implies a call of alarm on the Prince of
Hell at the sight of the living creature and his guide. ]
[Footnote 17: Phlegyas, a son of Mars, was cast into hell by Apollo for
setting the god's temple on fire in resentment for the violation of his
daughter Coronis. The actions of gods were not to be questioned, in
Dante's opinion, even though the gods turned out to be false Jugghanaut
is as good as any, while he lasts. It is an ethico-theological puzzle,
involving very nice questions; but at any rate, had our poet been a
Brahmin of Benares, we know how he would have written about it in
Sanscrit. ]
[Footnote 18: Filippo Argenti (Philip _Silver_,--so called from his
shoeing his horse with the precious metal) was a Florentine remarkable
for bodily strength and extreme irascibility. What a barbarous strength
and confusion of ideas is there in this whole passage about him!
Arrogance punished by arrogance, a Christian mother blessed for the
unchristian disdainfulness of her son, revenge boasted of and enjoyed,
passion arguing in a circle! Filippo himself might have written it.
Dante says,
"Con piangere e con lutto
Spirito maladetto, ti rimani.
Via costà con gli altri cani," &c.
Then Virgil, kissing and embracing him,
"Alma sdegnosa
Benedetta colei che 'n te s'incinse," &c.
And Dante again,
"Maestro, molto sarei vago
Di vederlo attuffare in questa broda," &c. ]
[Footnote 19: Dis, one of the Pagan names of Pluto, here used for Satan.
Within the walls of the city of Dis commence the punishments by fire. ]
[Footnote 20: Farinata was a Ghibelline leader before the time of Dante,
and had vanquished the poet's connexions at the battle of Montaperto. ]
[Footnote 21: What would Guido have said to this? More, I suspect, than
Dante would have liked to hear, or known how to answer. But he died
before the verses transpired; probably before they were written; for
Dante, in the chronology of his poem, assumes what times and seasons he
finds most convenient. ]
[Footnote 22:
"Sì che la pioggia non par che 'l maturi. "
This is one of the grandest passages in Dante. It was probably (as
English commentators have observed) in Milton's recollection when he
conceived the character of Satan. ]
[Footnote 23: The satire of friarly hypocrisy is at least as fine as
Ariosto's discovery of Discord in a monastery.
The monster Geryon, son of Chrysaor (_Golden-sword_), and the
Ocean-nymph Callirhoe (_Fair-flowing_), was rich in the possession
of sheep. His wealth, and perhaps his derivatives, rendered him this
instrument of satire. The monstrosity, the mild face, the glancing point
of venom, and the beautiful skin, make it as fine as can be. ]
[Footnote 24: "_Malebolge_," literally Evil-Budget. _Bolgia_ is an old
form of the modern _baule_, the common term for a valise or portmanteau.
"Bolgia" (says the _Vocabolario della Crusca, compendiato_, Ven. 1792),
"a valise; Latin, bulga, hippopera; Greek, ippopetha [Greek]. In
reference to valises which open lengthways like a chest, Dante uses the
word to signify those compartments which he feigns in his Hell. " (Per
similitudine di quelle valigie, che s'aprono per lo lungo, a guisa di
cassa, significa quegli spartimenti, che Dante finge nell' Inferno. )
The reader will think of the homely figurative names in Bunyan, and the
contempt which great and awful states of mind have for conventional
notions of rank in phraseology. It is a part, if well considered, of
their grandeur. ]
[Footnote 25: Boniface the Eighth was the pope then living, and one of
the causes of Dante's exile. It is thus the poet contrives to put his
enemies in hell before their time. ]
[Footnote 26: An allusion to the pretended gift of the Lateran by
Constantine to Pope Sylvester, ridiculed so strongly by Ariosto and
others. ]
[Footnote 27: A truly infernal sentiment. The original is,
"Quì vive la pietà quand' è ben morta. "
Here pity lives when it is quite dead.
"Chi è più scellerato," continues the poet, "di colui,
Ch'al giudicio divin passion porta. "
That is: "Who is wickeder than he that sets his impassioned feelings
against the judgments of God? " The answer is: He that attributes
judgments to God which are to render humanity pitiless. ]
[Footnote 28: _Ne' fianchi così poco_. Michael Scot had been in
Florence; to which circumstance we are most probably indebted for this
curious particular respecting his shape. The consignment of such men to
hell is a mortifying instance of the great poet's participation in the
vulgarest errors of his time. It is hardly, however, worth notice,
considering what we see him swallowing every moment, or pretending to
swallow. ]
[Footnote 29: "Bonturo must have sold him something cheap," exclaimed a
hearer of this passage. No:--the exception is an irony! There was not
one honest man in all Lucca! ]
[Footnote 30:
"Intorno si mira
Tutto smarrito da la grande angoscia
Ch'egli ha sofferta, e guardando sospira. "
This is one of the most terribly natural pictures of agonised
astonishment ever painted. ]
[Footnote 31: I retain this passage, horrible as it is to Protestant
ears, because it is not only an instance of Dante's own audacity, but
a salutary warning specimen of the extremes of impiety generated by
extreme superstition; for their first cause is the degradation of the
Divine character. Another, no doubt, is the impulsive vehemence of the
South. I have heard more blasphemies, in the course of half an hour,
from the lips of an Italian postilion, than are probably uttered in
England, by people not out of their senses, for a whole year. Yet the
words, after all, were mere words; for the man was a good-natured
fellow, and I believe presented no image to his mind of anything he was
saying. Dante, however, would certainly not have taught him better by
attempting to frighten him. A violent word would have only produced more
violence. Yet this was the idle round which the great poet thought it
best to run! ]
[Footnote 32: Cianfa, probably a condottiere of Mrs. Radcliffe's sort,
and robber on a large scale, is said to have been one of the Donati
family, connexions of the poet by marriage. ]
[Footnote 33: This, and the transformation that follows, may well excite
the pride of such a poet as Dante; though it is curious to see how he
selects inventions of this kind as special grounds of self-complacency.
They are the most appalling ever yet produced. ]
[Footnote 34: Guido, Conte di Montefeltro, a celebrated soldier of that
day, became a Franciscan in his old age, in order to repent of his sins;
but, being consulted in his cloister by Pope Boniface on the best mode
of getting possession of an estate belonging to the Colonna family,
and being promised absolution for his sins in the lump, including the
opinion requested, he recommended the holy father to "promise much, and
perform nothing" (_molto promettere, e nulla attendere_). ]
[Footnote 35: Dolcino was a Lombard friar at the beginning of the
fourteenth century, who is said to have preached a community of goods,
including women, and to have pretended to a divine mission for reforming
the church. He appears to have made a considerable impression, having
thousands of followers, but was ultimately seized in the mountains where
they lived, and burnt with his female companion Margarita, and many
others. Landino says he was very eloquent, and that "both he and
Margarita endured their fate with a firmness worthy of a better cause. "
Probably his real history is not known, for want of somebody in such
times bold enough to write it. ]
[Footnote 36: Literally, "under the breastplate of knowing himself to be
pure:"
"Sotto l'osbergo del sentirsi pura. "
The expression is deservedly admired; but it is not allowable in
English, and it is the only one admitting no equivalent which I have
met with in the whole poem. It might be argued, perhaps, against the
perfection of the passage, that a good "conscience," and a man's
"knowing himself to be pure," are a tautology; for Dante himself has
already used that word;
"Conscienzia m'assicura;
La buona compagnia che l'uom francheggia
Sotto l'osbergo," &c.
But still we feel the impulsive beauty of the phrase; and I wish I could
have kept it. ]
[Foonote 37: This ghastly fiction is a rare instance of the meeting of
physical horror with the truest pathos. ]
[Footnote 38: The reader will not fail to notice this characteristic
instance of the ferocity of the time. ]
[Footnote 39: This is admirable sentiment; and it must have been no
ordinary consciousness of dignity in general which could have made Dante
allow himself to be the person rebuked for having forgotten it. Perhaps
it was a sort of penance for his having, on some occasion, fallen into
the unworthiness. ]
[Footnote 40: By the Saracens in Roncesvalles; afterwards so favourite
a topic with the poets. The circumstance of the horn is taken from the
Chronicle of the pretended Archbishop Turpin, chapter xxiv. ]
[Footnote 41: The gaping monotony of this jargon, full of the vowel _a_,
is admirably suited to the mouth of the vast, half-stupid speaker. It is
like a babble of the gigantic infancy of the world. ]
[Footnote 42:
"Nè sì chinato li fece dimora,
E come albero in nave si levò. "
A magnificent image! I have retained the idiomatic expression of the
original, _raised himself_, instead of saying rose, because it seemed to
me to give the more grand and deliberate image. ]
[Footnote 43: Of "_màmma_" and "_bàbbo_," says the primitive poet. We
have corresponding words in English, but the feeling they produce is not
identical. The lesser fervour of the northern nations renders them, in
some respects, more sophisticate than they suspect, compared with the
"artful" Italians. ]
[Footnote 44: Alessandro and Napoleon degli Alberti, sons of Alberto,
lord of the valley of Falterona in Tuscany. After their father's death
they tyrannised over the neighbouring districts, and finally had a
mortal quarrel. The name of Napoleon used to be so rare till of late
years, even in Italian books, that it gives one a kind of interesting
surprise to meet with it. ]
[Footnote 45:
"Se _voler_ fu, o destino o fortuna,
Non so. "
What does the Christian reader think of that? ]
[Footnote 46: Latrando. ]
[Footnote 47: Bocca degli Abbati, whose soul barks like a dog,
occasioned the defeat of the Guelfs at Montaperto, in the year 1260, by
treacherously cutting off the hand of the standard-bearer. ]
[Footnote 48: This is the famous story of Ugolino, who betrayed the
castles of Pisa to the Florentines, and was starved with his children in
the Tower of Famine. ]
[Footnote 49: I should be loath to disturb the inimitable pathos of this
story, if there did not seem grounds for believing that the poet was too
hasty in giving credit to parts of it, particularly the ages of some of
his fellow-prisoners, and the guilt of the archbishop. See the Appendix
to this volume. ]
[Footnote 50: This is the most tremendous lampoon, as far as I am aware,
in the whole circle of literature. ]
[Footnote 51: "Cortesia fu lui esser villano. " This is the foulest blot
which Dante has cast on his own character in all his poem (short of the
cruelties he thinks fit to attribute to God). It is argued that he is
cruel and false, out of hatred to cruelty and falsehood. But why then
add to the sum of both? and towards a man, too, supposed to be suffering
eternally? It is idle to discern in such barbarous inconsistencies any
thing but the writer's own contributions to the stock of them. The
utmost credit for right feeling is not to be given on every occasion to
a man who refuses it to every one else. ]
[Footnote 52: "La creatura ch'ebbe il bel sembiante. "
This is touching; but the reader may as well be prepared for a total
failure in Dante's conception of Satan, especially the English reader,
accustomed to the sublimity of Milton's. Granting that the Roman
Catholic poet intended to honour the fallen angel with no sublimity,
but to render him an object of mere hate and dread, he has overdone and
degraded the picture into caricature. A great stupid being, stuck up in
ice, with three faces, one of which is yellow, and three mouths, each
eating a sinner, one of those sinners being Brutus, is an object
for derision; and the way in which he eats these, his everlasting
_bonnes-bouches,_ divides derision with disgust. The passage must be
given, otherwise the abstract of the poem would be incomplete; but I
cannot help thinking it the worst anti-climax ever fallen into by a
great poet. ]
[Footnote 53: This silence is, at all events, a compliment to Brutus,
especially from a man like Dante, and the more because it is extorted.
Dante, no doubt, hated all treachery, particularly treachery to the
leader of his beloved Roman emperors; forgetting three things; first,
that Cæsar was guilty of treachery himself to the Roman people; second,
that he, Dante, has put Curio in hell for advising Cæsar to cross the
Rubicon, though he has put the crosser among the good Pagans; and third,
that Brutus was educated in the belief that the punishment of such
treachery as Cæsar's by assassination was one of the first of duties.
How differently has Shakspeare, himself an aristocratic rather than
democratic poet, and full of just doubt of the motives of assassins in
general, treated the error of the thoughtful, conscientious, Platonic
philosopher! ]
[Footnote 54: At the close of this medley of genius, pathos, absurdity,
sublimity, horror, and revoltingness, it is impossible for any
reflecting heart to avoid asking, _Cui bono? _ What is the good of it
to the poor wretches, if we are to suppose it true? and what to the
world--except, indeed, as a poetic study and a warning against degrading
notions of God--if we are to take it simply as a fiction? Theology,
disdaining both questions, has an answer confessedly incomprehensible.
Humanity replies: Assume not premises for which you have worse than no
proofs. ]
II.
THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY.
Argument.
Purgatory, in the system of Dante, is a mountain at the Antipodes, on
the top of which is the Terrestrial Paradise, once the seat of Adam and
Eve. It forms the principal part of an island in a sea, and possesses
a pure air. Its lowest region, with one or two exceptions of redeemed
Pagans, is occupied by Excommunicated Penitents and by Delayers of
Penitence, all of whom are compelled to lose time before their atonement
commences. The other and greater portion of the ascent is divided into
circles or plains, in which are expiated the Seven Deadly Sins. The Poet
ascends from circle to circle with Virgil and Statius, and is met in
a forest on the top by the spirit of Beatrice, who transports him to
Heaven.
THE JOURNEY THROUGH PURGATORY.
When the pilgrims emerged from the opening through which they beheld the
stars, they found themselves in a scene which enchanted them with hope
and joy. It was dawn: a sweet pure air came on their faces; and they
beheld a sky of the loveliest oriental sapphire, whose colour seemed
to pervade the whole serene hollow from earth to heaven. The beautiful
planet which encourages loving thoughts made all the orient laugh,
obscuring by its very radiance the stars in its train; and among those
which were still lingering and sparkling in the southern horizon,
Dante saw four in the shape of a cross, never beheld by man since they
gladdened the eyes of our first parents. Heaven seemed to rejoice in
their possession. O widowed northern pole! bereaved art thou, indeed,
since thou canst not gaze upon them! [1]
The poet turned to look at the north where he had been accustomed to see
stars that no longer appeared, and beheld, at his side, an old man, who
struck his beholder with a veneration like that of a son for his father.
He had grey hairs, and a long beard which parted in two down his
bosom; and the four southern stars beamed on his face with such lustre,
that his aspect was as radiant as if he had stood in the sun.
"Who are ye? " said the old man, "that have escaped from the dreadful
prison-house? Can the laws of the abyss be violated? Or has Heaven
changed its mind, that thus ye are allowed to come from the regions of
condemnation into mine? "
It was the spirit of Cato of Utica, the warder of the ascent of
purgatory.
The Roman poet explained to his countryman who they were, and how Dante
was under heavenly protection; and then he prayed leave of passage of
him by the love he bore to the chaste eyes of his Marcia, who sent him a
message from the Pagan circle, hoping that he would still own her.
Cato replied, that although he was so fond of Marcia while on earth that
he could deny her nothing, he had ceased, in obedience to new laws, to
have any affection for her, now that she dwelt beyond the evil river;
but as the pilgrim, his companion, was under heavenly protection, he
would of course do what he desired. [2] He then desired him to gird his
companion with one of the simplest and completest rushes he would see by
the water's side, and to wash the stain of the lower world out of his
face, and so take their journey up the mountain before them, by a
path which the rising sun would disclose. And with these words he
disappeared. [3]
The pilgrims passed on, with the eagerness of one who thinks every step
in vain till he finds the path he has lost. The full dawn by this time
had arisen, and they saw the trembling of the sea in the distance. [4]
Virgil then dipped his hands into a spot of dewy grass, where the sun
had least affected it, and with the moisture bathed the face of Dante,
who held it out to him, suffused with tears;[5] and then they went on
till they came to a solitary shore, whence no voyager had ever returned,
and there the loins of the Florentine were girt with the rush.
On this shore they were standing in doubt how to proceed,--moving
onward, as it were, in mind, while yet their feet were staying,--when
they be held a light over the water at a distance, rayless at first as
the planet Mars when he looks redly out of the horizon through a fog,
but speedily growing brighter and brighter with amazing swiftness. Dante
had but turned for an instant to ask his guide what it was, when, on
looking again, it had grown far brighter. Two splendid phenomena, he
knew not what, then developed themselves from it on either side; and, by
degrees, another below it. The two splendours quickly turned out to be
wings; and Virgil, who had hitherto watched its coming in silence, cried
out, "Down, down,--on thy knees! It is God's angel. Clasp thine hands.
Now thou shalt behold operancy indeed. Lo, how he needs neither sail nor
oar, coming all this way with nothing but his wings! Lo, how he holds
them aloft, using the air with them at his will, and knowing they can
never be weary. "
The "divine bird" grew brighter and brighter as he came, so that the
eye at last could not sustain the lustre; and Dante turned his to the
ground. A boat then rushed to shore which the angel had brought with
him, so light that it drew not a drop of water. The celestial pilot
stood at the helm, with bliss written in his face; and a hundred spirits
were seen within the boat, who, lifting up their voices, sang the psalm
beginning "When Israel came out of Egypt. " At the close of the psalm,
the angel blessed them with the sign of the cross, and they all leaped
to shore; upon which he turned round, and departed as swiftly as he
came.
The new-comers, after gazing about them for a while, in the manner of
those who are astonished to see new sights, inquired of Virgil and his
companion the best way to the mountain. Virgil explained who they were;
and the spirits, pale with astonishment at beholding in Dante a living
and breathing man, crowded about him, in spite of their anxiety to
shorten the period of their trials. One of them came darting out of the
press to embrace him, in a manner so affectionate as to move the poet to
return his warmth; but his arms again and again found themselves crossed
on his own bosom, having encircled nothing. The shadow, smiling at the
astonishment in the other's face, drew back; and Dante hastened as much
forward to shew his zeal in the greeting, when the spirit in a sweet
voice recommended him to desist. The Florentine then knew who it
was,--Casella, a musician, to whom he had been much attached. After
mutual explanations as to their meeting, Dante requested his friend, if
no ordinance opposed it, to refresh his spirit awhile with one of the
tender airs that used to charm away all his troubles on earth. Casella
immediately began one of his friend's own productions, commencing with
the words,
"Love, that delights to talk unto my soul Of all the wonders of my
lady's nature. "
And he sang it so beautifully, that the sweetness rang within the poet's
heart while recording the circumstance. The other spirits listened with
such attention, that they seemed to have forgotten the very purpose
of their coming; when suddenly the voice of Cato was heard, sternly
rebuking their delay; and the whole party speeded in trepidation towards
the mountain. [6]
The two pilgrims, who had at first hastened with the others, in a little
while slackened their steps; and Dante found that his body projected a
shadow, while the form of Virgil had none. When arrived at the foot of
the mountain, they were joined by a second party of spirits, of whom
Virgil inquired the way up it. One of the spirits, of a noble aspect,
but with a gaping wound in his forehead, stepped forth, and asked Dante
if he remembered him. The poet humbly answering in the negative, the
stranger disclosed a second wound, that was in his bosom; and then, with
a smile, announced himself as Manfredi, king of Naples, who was slain in
battle against Charles of Anjou, and died excommunicated. Manfredi gave
Dante a message to his daughter Costanza, queen of Arragon, begging her
to shorten the consequences of the excommunication by her prayers;
since he, like the rest of the party with him, though repenting of his
contumacy against the church, would have to wander on the outskirts of
Purgatory three times as long as the presumption had lasted, unless
relieved by such petitions from the living. [7]
Dante went on, with his thoughts so full of this request, that he did
not perceive he had arrived at the path which Virgil asked for, till the
wandering spirits called out to them to say so. The pilgrims then, with
great difficulty, began to ascend through an extremely narrow passage;
and Virgil, after explaining to Dante how it was that in this antipodal
region his eastward face beheld the sun in the north instead of the
south, was encouraging him to proceed manfully in the hope of finding
the path easier by degrees, and of reposing at the end of it, when they
heard a voice observing, that they would most likely find it expedient
to repose a little sooner. The pilgrims looked about them, and observed
close at hand a crag of a rock, in the shade of which some spirits were
standing, as men stand idly at noon. Another was sitting down, as if
tired out, with his arms about his knees, and his face bent down between
them. [8]
"Dearest master! " exclaimed Dante to his guide, "what thinkest thou of a
croucher like this, for manful journeying? Verily he seems to have been
twin-born with Idleness herself. "
The croucher, lifting up his eyes at these words, looked hard at Dante,
and said, "Since thou art so stout, push on. "
Dante then saw it was Belacqua, a pleasant acquaintance of his, famous
for his indolence.
"That was a good lesson," said Belacqua, "that was given thee just now
in astronomy. "
The poet could not help smiling at the manner in which his acquaintance
uttered these words, it was so like his ways of old. Belacqua pretended,
even in another world, that it was of no use to make haste, since the
angel had prohibited his going higher up the mountain. He and his
companions had to walk round the foot of it as many years as they had
delayed repenting; unless, as in the case of Manfredi, their time was
shortened by the prayers of good people.
A little further on, the pilgrims encountered the spirits of such
Delayers of Penitence as, having died violent deaths, repented at the
last moment. One of them, Buonconte da Montefeltro, who died in battle,
and whose body could not be found, described how the devil, having been
hindered from seizing him by the shedding of a single tear, had raised
in his fury a tremendous tempest, which sent the body down the river
Arno, and buried it in the mud. [9]
Another spirit, a female, said to Dante, "Ah!
when thou returnest to
earth, and shalt have rested from thy long journey, remember me,--Pia.
Sienna gave me life; the Marshes took it from me. This he knows, who put
on my finger the wedding-ring. "[10]
The majority of this party were so importunate with the Florentine
to procure them the prayers of their friends, that he had as much
difficulty to get away, as a winner at dice has to free himself from the
mercenary congratulations of the by-standers. On resuming their way,
Dante quoted to Virgil a passage in the Æneid, decrying the utility of
prayer, and begged him to explain how it was to be reconciled with what
they had just heard. Virgil advised him to wait for the explanation till
he saw Beatrice, whom, he now said, he should meet at the top of the
mountain. Dante, at this information, expressed a desire to hasten their
progress; and Virgil, seeing a spirit looking towards them as they
advanced, requested him to acquaint them with the shortest road.
The spirit, maintaining a lofty and reserved aspect, was as silent as if
he had not heard the request; intimating by his manner that they might
as well proceed without repeating it, and eyeing them like a lion on the
watch. Virgil, however, went up to him, and gently urged it; but the
only reply was a question as to who they were and of what country. The
Latin poet beginning to answer him, had scarcely mentioned the word
"Mantua," when the stranger went as eagerly up to his interrogator as
the latter had done to him, and said, "Mantua! My own country! My name
is Sordello. " And the compatriots embraced.
O degenerate Italy! exclaims Dante; land without affections, without
principle, without faith in any one good thing! here was a man who could
not hear the sweet sound of a fellow-citizen's voice without feeling his
heart gush towards him, and there are no people now in any one of thy
towns that do not hate and torment one another.
Sordello, in another tone, now exclaimed, "But who are ye? "
Virgil disclosed himself, and Sordello fell at his feet. [11]
Sordello now undertook to accompany the great Roman poet and his friend
to a certain distance on their ascent towards the penal quarters of the
mountain; but as evening was drawing nigh, and the ascent could not
be made properly in the dark, he proposed that they should await the
dawning of the next day in a recess that overlooked a flowery hollow.
The hollow was a lovely spot of ground, enamelled with flowers that
surpassed the exquisitest dyes, and green with a grass brighter than
emeralds newly broken. [12] There rose from it also a fragrance of a
thousand different kinds of sweetness, all mingled into one that was new
and indescribable; and with the fragrance there ascended the chant of
the prayer beginning "Hail, Queen of Heaven,"[13] which was sung by a
multitude of souls that appeared sitting on the flowery sward.
Virgil pointed them out. They were penitent delayers of penitence, of
sovereign rank. Among them, however, were spirits who sat mute; one
of whom was the Emperor Rodolph, who ought to have attended better to
Italy, the garden of the empire; and another, Ottocar, king of Bohemia,
his enemy, who now comforted him; and another, with a small nose,[14]
Philip the Third of France, who died a fugitive, shedding the leaves of
the lily; he sat beating his breast; and with him was Henry the Third of
Navarre, sighing with his cheek on his hand. One was the father, and one
the father-in-law of Philip the Handsome, the bane of France; and it was
on account of his unworthiness they grieved.
But among the singers Virgil pointed out the strong-limbed King of
Arragon, Pedro; and Charles, king of Naples, with his masculine nose
(these two were singing together); and Henry the Third of England, the
king of the simple life, sitting by himself;[15] and below these, but
with his eyes in heaven, Guglielmo marquis of Montferrat.
It was now the hour when men at sea think longingly of home, and feel
their hearts melt within them to remember the day on which they bade
adieu to beloved friends; and now, too, was the hour when the pilgrim,
new to his journey, is thrilled with the like tenderness, when he hears
the vesper-bell in the distance, which seems to mourn for the expiring
day. [16] At this hour of the coming darkness, Dante beheld one of the
spirits in the flowery hollow arise, and after giving a signal to the
others to do as he did, stretch forth both hands, palm to palm, towards
the East, and with softest emotion commence the hymn beginning,
"Thee before the closing light. "[17]
Upon which all the rest devoutly and softly followed him, keeping their
eyes fixed on the heavens. At the end of it they remained, with pale
countenances, in an attitude of humble expectation; and Dante saw the
angels issue from the quarter to which they looked, and descend towards
them with flaming swords in their hands, broken short of the point.
Their wings were as green as the leaves in spring; and they wore
garments equally green, which the fanning of the wings kept in a state
of streaming fluctuation behind them as they came. One of them took his
stand on a part of the hill just over where the pilgrims stood, and the
other on a hill opposite, so that the party in the valley were between
them. Dante could discern their heads of hair, notwithstanding its
brightness; but their faces were so dazzling as to be undistinguishable.
"They come from Mary's bosom," whispered Sordello, "to protect the
valley from the designs of our enemy yonder,--the Serpent. "
Dante looked in trepidation towards the only undefended side of the
valley, and beheld the Serpent of Eve coming softly among the grass and
flowers, occasionally turning its head, and licking its polished back.
Before he could take off his eyes from the evil thing, the two angels
had come down like falcons, and at the whirring of their pinions the
serpent fled. The angels returned as swiftly to their stations.
Aurora was now looking palely over the eastern cliff on the other side
of the globe, and the stars of midnight shining over the heads of Dante
and his friends, when they seated themselves for rest on the mountain's
side. The Florentine, being still in the flesh, lay down for weariness,
and was overcome with sleep. In his sleep he dreamt that a golden eagle
flashed down like lightning upon him, and bore him up to the region
of fire, where the heat was so intense that it woke him, staring and
looking round about with a pale face. His dream was a shadowing of
the truth. He had actually come to another place,--to the entrance of
Purgatory itself. Sordello had been left behind, Virgil alone remained,
looking him cheerfully in the face. Saint Lucy had come from heaven,
and shortened the fatigue of his journey by carrying him upwards as he
slept, the heathen poet following them. On arriving where they stood,
the fair saint intimated the entrance of Purgatory to Virgil by a glance
thither of her beautiful eyes, and then vanished as Dante woke. [18]
The portal by which Purgatory was entered was embedded in a cliff. It
had three steps, each of a different colour; and on the highest of these
there sat, mute and watching, an angel in ash-coloured garments, holding
a naked sword, which glanced with such intolerable brightness on Dante,
whenever he attempted to look, that he gave up the endeavour. The angel
demanded who they were, and receiving the right answer, gently bade them
advance.
Dante now saw, that the lowest step was of marble, so white and clear
that he beheld his face in it. The colour of the next was a deadly
black, and it was all rough, scorched, and full of cracks. The third was
of flaming porphyry, red as a man's blood when it leaps forth under
the lancet. [19] The angel, whose feet were on the porphyry, sat on a
threshold which appeared to be rock-diamond. Dante, ascending the steps,
with the encouragement of Virgil, fell at the angel's feet, and, after
thrice beating himself on the breast, humbly asked admittance. The
angel, with the point of his sword, inscribed the first letter of the
word _peccatum_ (sin) seven times on the petitioner's forehead; then,
bidding him pray with tears for their erasement, and be cautious how he
looked back, opened the portal with a silver and a golden key. [20]
The hinges roared, as they turned, like thunder; and the pilgrims, on
entering, thought they heard, mingling with the sound, a chorus of
voices singing, "We praise thee, O God! "[21] It was like the chant that
mingles with a cathedral organ, when the words that the choristers utter
are at one moment to be distinguished, and at another fade away.
The companions continued ascending till they reached a plain. It
stretched as far as the eye could see, and was as lonely as roads across
deserts.
This was the first flat, or table-land, of the ascending gradations of
Purgatory, and the place of trial for the souls of the Proud. It was
bordered with a mound, or natural wall, of white marble, sculptured all
over with stories of humility. Dante beheld among them the Annunciation,
represented with so much life, that the sweet action of the angel seemed
to be uttering the very word, "Hail! " and the submissive spirit of the
Virgin to be no less impressed, like very wax, in her demeanour. The
next story was that of David dancing and harping before the ark,--an
action in which he seemed both less and greater than a king. Michal
was looking out upon him from a window, like a lady full of scorn and
sorrow. Next to the story of David was that of the Emperor Trajan, when
he did a thing so glorious, as moved St. Gregory to gain the greatest of
all his conquests--the delivering of the emperor's soul from hell.
A widow, in tears and mourning, was laying hold of his bridle as he rode
amidst his court with a noise of horses and horsemen, while the Roman
eagles floated in gold over his head. The miserable creature spoke out
loudly among them all, crying for vengeance on the murderers of her
sons. The emperor seemed to say, "Wait till I return. "
But she, in the hastiness of her misery, said, "Suppose thou returnest
not? "
"Then my successor will attend to thee," replied the emperor.
"And what hast thou to do with the duties of another man," cried she,
"if thou attendest not to thine own? "
"Now, be of good comfort," concluded Trajan, "for verily my duty shall
be done before I go; justice wills it, and pity arrests me. "
Dante was proceeding to delight himself further with these sculptures,
when Virgil whispered hint to look round and see what was coming. He did
so, and beheld strange figures advancing, the nature of which he could
not make out at first, for they seemed neither human, nor aught else
which he could call to mind. They were souls of the proud, bent double
under enormous burdens.
"O proud, miserable, woe-begone Christians! " exclaims the poet; "ye who,
in the shortness of your sight, see no reason for advancing in the
right path! Know ye not that we are worms, born to compose the angelic
butterfly, provided we throw off the husks that impede our flight? "[22]
The souls came slowly on, each bending down in proportion to his burden.
They looked like the crouching figures in architecture that are used
to support roofs or balconies, and that excite piteous fancies in the
beholders. The one that appeared to have the most patience, yet seemed
as if he said, "I can endure no further. "
The sufferers, notwithstanding their anguish, raised their voices in
a paraphrase on the Lord's Prayer, which they concluded with humbly
stating, that they repeated the clause against temptation, not for
themselves, but for those who were yet living.
Virgil, wishing them a speedy deliverance, requested them to spew the
best way of going up to the next circle. Who it was that answered him
could not be discerned, on account of their all being so bent down; but
a voice gave them the required direction; the speaker adding, that he
wished he could raise his eyes, so as to see the living creature that
stood near him. He said that his name was Omberto--that he came of
the great Tuscan race of Aldobrandesco--and that his countrymen, the
Siennese, murdered him on account of his arrogance.
Dante had bent down his own head to listen, and in so doing he was
recognised by one of the sufferers, who, eyeing him as well as he could,
addressed him by name. The poet replied by exclaiming, "Art thou not
Oderisi, the glory of Agubbio, the master of the art of illumination? "
"Ah! " said Oderisi, "Franco of Bologna has all the glory now. His
colours make the pages of books laugh with beauty, compared with what
mine do. [23] I could not have owned it while on earth, for the sin which
has brought me hither; but so it is; and so will it ever be, let a man's
fame be never so green and flourishing, unless he can secure a dull age
to come after him. Cimabue, in painting, lately kept the field against
all comers, and now the cry is 'Giotto. ' Thus, in song, a new Guido has
deprived the first of his glory, and he perhaps is born who shall drive
both out of the nest. [24] Fame is but a wind that changes about from all
quarters. What does glory amount to at best, that a man should prefer
living and growing old for it, to dying in the days of his nurse and
his pap-boat, even if it should last him a thousand years? A thousand
years! --the twinkling of an eye. Behold this man, who weeps before me;
his name resounded once over all our Tuscany, and now it is scarcely
whispered in his native place. He was lord there at the time that your
once proud but now loathsome Florence had such a lesson given to its
frenzy at the battle of Arbia. "
"And what is his name? " inquired Dante.
"Salvani," returned the limner. "He is here, because he had the
presumption to think that he could hold Sienna in the hollow of his
hand. Fifty years has he paced in this manner. Such is the punishment
for audacity. "
"But why is he here at all," said Dante, "and not in the outer region,
among the delayers of repentance? "
"Because," exclaimed the other, "in the height of his ascendancy he did
not disdain to stand in the public place in Sienna, and, trembling in
every vein, beg money from the people to ransom a friend from captivity.
Do I appear to thee to speak with mysterious significance? Thy
countrymen shall too soon help thee to understand me. "[25]
Virgil now called Dante away from Oderisi, and bade him notice the
ground on which they were treading. It was pavement, wrought all over
with figures, like sculptured tombstones. There was Lucifer among them,
struck flaming down from heaven; and Briareus, pinned to the earth with
the thunderbolt, and, with the other giants, amazing the gods with his
hugeness; and Nimrod, standing confounded at the foot of Babel; and
Niobe, with her despairing eyes, turned into stone amidst her children;
and Saul, dead on his own sword in Gilboa; and Arachne, now half spider,
at fault on her own broken web; and Rehoboam, for all his insolence,
flying in terror in his chariot; and Alcmæon, who made his mother pay
with her life for the ornament she received to betray his father; and
Sennacherib, left dead by his son in the temple; and the head of Cyrus,
thrown by the motherless woman into the goblet of blood, that it might
swill what it had thirsted for; and Holofernes, beheaded; and his
Assyrians flying at his death; and Troy, all become cinders and hollow
places. Oh! what a fall from pride was there! Now, maintain the
loftiness of your looks, ye sons of Eve, and walk with proud steps,
bending not your eyes on the dust ye were, lest ye perceive the evil of
your ways. [26]
"Behold," said Virgil, "there is an angel coming. "
The angel came on, clad in white, with a face that sent trembling beams
before it, like the morning star. He skewed the pilgrims the way up to
the second circle; and then, beating his wings against the forehead of
Dante, on which the seven initials of sin were written, told him he
should go safely, and disappeared.
On reaching the new circle, Dante, instead of the fierce wailings that
used to meet him at every turn in hell, heard voices singing, "Blessed
are the poor in spirit. "[27] As he went, he perceived that he walked
lighter, and was told by Virgil that the angel had freed him from one of
the letters on his forehead. He put his hand up to make sure, as a man
does in the street when people take notice of something on his head of
which he is not aware; and Virgil smiled.
In this new circle the sin of Envy was expiated. After the pilgrims had
proceeded a mile, they heard the voices of invisible spirits passing
them, uttering sentiments of love and charity; for it was charity itself
that had to punish envy.
The souls of the envious, clad in sackcloth, sat leaning for support and
humiliation, partly against the rocky wall of the circle, and partly on
one another's shoulders, after the manner of beggars that ask alms near
places of worship. Their eyes were sewn up, like those of hawks in
training, but not so as to hinder them from shedding tears, which they
did in abundance; and they cried, "Mary, pray for us! --Michael, Peter,
and all the saints, pray for us! "
Dante spoke to them; and one, a female, lifted up her chin as a blind
person does when expressing consciousness of notice, and said she was
Sapia of Sienna, who used to be pleased at people's misfortunes, and had
rejoiced when her countrymen lost the battle of Colle. "_Sapia_ was
my name," she said, "but _sapient_ I was not[28], for I prayed God to
defeat my countrymen; and when he had done so (as he had willed to do),
I raised my bold face to heaven, and cried out to him, 'Now do thy
worst, for I fear thee not! ' I was like the bird in the fable, who
thought the fine day was to last for ever. What I should have done in my
latter days to make up for the imperfect amends of my repentance, I know
not, if the holy Piero Pettignano had not assisted me with his prayers.
But who art thou that goest with open eyes, and breathest in thy talk? "
"Mine eyes," answered Dante, "may yet have to endure the blindness in
this place, though for no long period. Far more do I fear the sufferings
in the one that I have just left. I seem to feel the weight already upon
me. "[29]
The Florentine then informed Sapia how he came thither, which, she said,
was a great sign that God loved him; and she begged his prayers. The
conversation excited the curiosity of two spirits who overheard it; and
one of them, Guido del Duca, a noble Romagnese, asked the poet of
what country he was. Dante, without mentioning the name of the river,
intimated that he came from the banks of the Arno; upon which the other
spirit, Rinier da Calboli, asked his friend why the stranger suppressed
the name, as though it was something horrible. Guido said he well might;
for the river, throughout its course, beheld none but bad men and
persecutors of virtue. First, he said, it made its petty way by the
sties of those brutal hogs, the people of Casentino, and then arrived at
the dignity of watering the kennels of the curs of Arezzo, who excelled
more in barking than in biting; then, growing unluckier as it grew
larger, like the cursed and miserable ditch that it was, it found in
Florence the dogs become wolves; and finally, ere it went into the sea,
it passed the den of those foxes, the Pisans, who were full of such
cunning that they held traps in contempt.
"It will be well," continued Guido, "for this man to remember what he
hears;" and then, after prophesying evil to Florence, and confessing to
Dante his sin of envy, which used to make him pale when any one looked
happy, he added, "This is Rinieri, the glory of that house of Calboli
which now inherits not a spark of it. Not a spark of it, did I say, in
the house of Calboli? Where is there a spark in all Romagna? Where is
the good Lizio? --where Manardi, Traversaro, Carpigna? The Romagnese have
all become bastards. A mechanic founds a house in Bologna! a Bernardin
di Fosco finds his dog-grass become a tree in Faenza! Wonder not,
Tuscan, to see me weep, when I think of the noble spirits that we have
lived with--of the Guidos of Prata, and the Ugolins of Azzo--of Federigo
Tignoso and his band--of the Traversaros and Anastagios, families now
ruined--and all the ladies and the cavaliers, the alternate employments
and delights which wrapped us in a round of love and courtesy, where now
there is nothing but ill-will! O castle of Brettinoro! why dost thou
not fall? Well has the lord of Bagnacavallo done, who will have no more
children. Who would propagate a race of Counties from such blood as the
Castrocaros and the Conios? Is not the son of Pagani called the Demon?
and would it not be better that such a son were swept out of the family?
Nay, let him live to chew to what a pitch of villany it has arrived.
Ubaldini alone is blest, for his name is good, and he is too old to
leave a child after him. Go, Tuscan--go; for I would be left to my
tears. "
Dante and Virgil turned to move onward, and had scarcely done so, when a
tremendous voice met them, splitting the air like peals of thunder, and
crying out, "Whoever finds me will slay me! " then dashed apart, like the
thunder-bolt when it falls. It was Cain. The air had scarcely recovered
its silence, when a second crash ensued from a different quarter near
them, like thunder when the claps break swiftly into one another. "I am
Aglauros," it said, "that was turned into stone. " Dante drew closer to
his guide, and there ensued a dead silence. [30]
The sun was now in the west, and the pilgrims were journeying towards
it, when Dante suddenly felt such a weight of splendour on his eyes, as
forced him to screen them with both his hands. It was an angel coming to
show them the ascent to the next circle, a way that was less steep than
the last. While mounting, they heard the angel's voice singing behind
them, "Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy! " and on
his leaving them to proceed by themselves, the second letter on Dante's
forehead was found to have been effaced by the splendour.
The poet looked round in wonder on the new circle, where the sin
of Anger was expiated, and beheld, as in a dream, three successive
spectacles illustrative of the virtue of patience. The first was that of
a crowded temple, on the threshold of which a female said to her son, in
the sweet manner of a mother, "Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us?
Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing:"[31]--and here she
became silent, and the vision ended. 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.
