" My power
was so confused that my voice moved, and became extinct be-
fore it could be released by its organs.
was so confused that my voice moved, and became extinct be-
fore it could be released by its organs.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v08 - Dah to Dra
* so pleasing unto me is thy command that to obey it,
were it already done, were slow to me. Thou hast no need fur-
ther to open unto me thy will; but tell me the cause why thou
guardest not thyself from descending down here into this centre,
from the ample place whither thou burnest to return. ' 'Since
thou wishest to know so inwardly, I will tell thee briefly,' she
replied to me, 'wherefore I am not afraid to come here within.
One ought to be afraid of those things only that have power to
do another harm; of other things not, for they are not fearful.
I am made by God, thanks be to him, such that your misery
touches me not, nor does the flame of this burning assail me. A
gentle Lady is in heaven who hath pity for this hindrance where-
to I send thee, so that stern judgment there above she breaks.
She summoned Lucia in her request, and said, "Thy faithful one
now hath need of thee, and unto thee I commend him. " Lucia,t
the foe of every cruel one, rose and came to the place where I
was, seated with the ancient Rachael. She said:-"Beatrice, true
praise of God, why dost thou not succor him who so loved thee
that for thee he came forth from the vulgar throng? Dost thou
not hear the pity of his plaint? Dost thou not see the death
that combats him beside the stream whereof the sea hath no
vaunt? " In the world never were persons swift to seek their
good, and to fly their harm, as I, after these words were uttered,
came here below, from my blessed seat, putting my trust in thy
upright speech, which honors thee and them who have heard it. '
After she had said this to me, weeping she turned her lucent
eyes, whereby she made me more speedy in coming. And I
came to thee as she willed. Thee have I delivered from that wild
beast that took from thee the short ascent of the beautiful mount-
ain. What is it then? Why, why dost thou hold back? why dost
thou harbor such cowardice in thy heart? why hast thou not dar-
ing and boldness, since three blessed Ladies care for thee in the
court of Heaven, and my speech pledges thee such good? "
*The heaven of the Moon, the nearest to Earth of the nine concentric
Heavens.
The type of illuminating grace.
## p. 4364 (#134) ###########################################
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DANTE
As flowerets, bent and closed by the chill of night, after the
sun shines on them straighten themselves all open on their stem,
so my weak virtue became, and such good daring hastened to
my heart that I began like one enfranchised:-"O compassionate
she who succored! and thou courteous who didst speedily obey
the true words that she addressed to thee! Thou by thy words
hast so disposed my heart with desire of going, that I have
returned unto my first intent. Go on now, for one sole will is
in us both thou leader, thou Lord, and thou Master. " Thus I
said to him; and when he had moved on, I entered along the
deep and savage road.
-
CANTO V
THE PUNISHMENT OF CARNAL SINNERS
[The Second Circle, that of Carnal Sinners. — Minos. — Shades renowned of
old. Francesca da Rimini. ]
THUS I descended from the first circle down into the second,
which girdles less space, and so much more woe that it goads to
wailing. There abides Minos horribly, and snarls; he examines
the sins at the entrance; he judges, and he sends according as
he entwines himself. I mean that when the miscreant spirit
comes there before him, it confesses itself wholly, and that dis-
cerner of sins sees what place of Hell is for it; he girdles him-
self with his tail so many times as the degrees he wills it should
be sent down. Always before him stand many of them. They
go, in turn, each to the judgment; they speak, and hear, and
then are whirled below.
"O thou that comest to the woful inn," said Minos to me,
when he saw me, leaving the act of so great an office, "beware
how thou enterest, and to whom thou intrustest thyself; let not
the amplitude of the entrance deceive thee. " And my Leader to
him, "Why then dost thou cry out? Hinder not his fated going;
thus is it willed there where is power to do that which is willed;
and ask thou no more. "
Now the woful notes begin to make themselves heard; now
am I come where much lamentation smites me. I had come into
a place mute of all light, that bellows as the sea does in a
tempest, if it be combated by opposing winds. The infernal
hurricane that never rests carries along the spirits with its rapine;
whirling and smiting it molests them. When they arrive before
its rushing blast, here are shrieks, and bewailing, and lamenting;
## p. 4365 (#135) ###########################################
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4365
here they blaspheme the power Divine. I understood that to
such torment are condemned the carnal sinners who subject
reason unto lust. And as their wings bear along the starlings in
the cold season in a troop large and full, so that blast the evil
spirits; hither, thither, down, up, it carries them; no hope ever
comforts them, not of repose, but even of less pain.
«<
And as the cranes go singing their lays, making in air a long
line of themselves, so saw I come, uttering wails, shades borne
along by the aforesaid strife. Wherefore I said, "Master, who
are those folk whom the black air so castigates? " "The first
of these of whom thou wishest to have knowledge," said he to
me then, was empress of many tongues. To the vice of luxury
was she so abandoned that lust she made licit in her law, to
take away the blame she had incurred. She is Semiramis, of
whom it is read that she succeeded Ninus and had been his
spouse; she held the land which the Soldan rules. The other is
she who, for love, slew herself and broke faith to the ashes of
Sichæus. Next is Cleopatra, the luxurious. See Helen, for whom
so long a time of ill revolved; and see the great Achilles, who
at the end fought with love. See Paris, Tristan -" and more
than a thousand shades he showed me with his finger, and named
them whom love had parted from our life.
After I had heard my Teacher name the dames of eld and
the cavaliers, pity overcame me, and I was well-nigh bewildered.
I began, "Poet, willingly would I speak with those two that go
together, and seem to be so light upon the wind. " And he to
me, "Thou shalt see when they shall be nearer to us, and do
thou then pray them by that love which leads them, and they
will come. " Soon as the wind sways them toward us I lifted my
voice: "O weary souls, come speak to us, if One forbid it not. "
As doves, called by desire, with wings open and steady, fly
through the air to their sweet nest, borne by their will, these
issued from the troop where Dido is, coming to us through the
malign air, so strong was the compassionate cry:-
"O living creature, gracious and benign, that goest through
the lurid air visiting us who stained the world blood-red, if the
King of the universe were a friend we would pray him for thy
peace, since thou hast pity on our perverse ill. Of what it
pleases thee to hear, and what to speak, we will hear and we
will speak to you, while the wind, as now, is hushed for us.
The city where I was born sits upon the sea-shore, where the
――
-
## p. 4366 (#136) ###########################################
4366
DANTE
Po, with his followers, descends to have peace. Love, that on
gentle heart quickly lays hold, seized him for the fair person
that was taken from me, and the mode still hurts me. Love,
which absolves no loved one from loving, seized me for the
pleasing of him so strongly that, as thou seest, it does not even
now abandon me. Love brought us to one death. Caina waits
him who quenched our life. " These words were borne to us
from them.
Soon as I had heard those injured souls I bowed my face,
and held it down, until the Poet said to me, "What art thou
thinking? " When I replied, I began:-"Alas! how inany sweet
thoughts, how great desire, led these unto the woful pass. "
Then I turned me again to them, and I spoke, and began,
"Francesca, thy torments make me sad and piteous to weeping.
But tell me, at the time of the sweet sighs by what and how
did love concede to you to know the dubious desires? " And
she to me,
"There is no greater woe than in misery to remem-
ber the happy time, and that thy Teacher knows. But if to
know the first root of our love thou hast so great a longing, I
will do like one who weeps and tells.
"We were reading one day, for delight, of Lancelot, how
love constrained him. We were alone and without any suspicion.
Many times that reading made us lift our eyes, and took the
color from our faces, but only one point was that which over-
came us. When we read of the longed-for smile being kissed
by such a lover, this one, who never from me shall be divided,
kissed my mouth all trembling. Galahaut* was the book, and
he who wrote it. That day we read in it no farther. "
While one spirit said this, the other was weeping so that
through pity I swooned as if I had been dying, and fell as a
dead body falls.
* It was Galahaut who, in the Romance, prevailed on Guinevere to give a
kiss to Lancelot.
## p. 4367 (#137) ###########################################
DANTE
4367
PURGATORY
CANTO XXVII
THE FINAL PURGATION
[Seventh Ledge: the Lustful. - Passage through the flames. - Stairway in
the rock. - Night upon the stairs. - Dream of Dante. - Morning. - Ascent to
the Earthly Paradise. - Last words of Virgil. ]
As
*
S WHEN he darts forth his first rays there where his Maker
shed his blood (Ebro falling under the lofty Scales, and
the waves in the Ganges scorched by noon), so the sun
was now standing; so that the day was departing, when the glad
Angel of God appeared to us. Outside the flame he was stand-
ing on the bank, and was singing "Beati mundo corde »
[Blessed are the pure in heart], in a voice far more living than
ours: then, "No one goes further, ye holy souls, if first the fire.
sting not; enter into it, and to the song beyond be ye not deaf,"
he said to us, when we were near him. Whereat I became
such, when I heard him, as is he who in the pit is put. With
hands clasped upwards, I stretched forward, looking at the fire,
and imagining vividly human bodies I had once seen burnt.
The good Escorts turned toward me, and Virgil said to me,
"My son, here may be torment, but not death. Bethink thee!
bethink thee! and if I even upon Geryon guided thee safe, what
shall I do now that I am nearer God? Believe for certain that
if within the belly of this flame thou shouldst stand full a thou-
sand years, it could not make thee bald of one hair. And if
thou perchance believest that I deceive thee, draw near to it,
and make trial for thyself with thine own hands on the hem of
thy garments. Put aside now, put aside every fear; turn hither-
ward, and come on secure. "
And I still motionless and against conscience!
When he saw me still stand motionless and obdurate, he said,
disturbed a little, "Now see, son, between Beatrice and thee is
this wall. "
As at the name of Thisbe, Pyramus, at point of death,
opened his eyelids and looked at her, what time the mulberry
*When it is sunrise at Jerusalem it is midnight in Spain, midday at the
Ganges, and sunset in Purgatory.
To be buried alive.
## p. 4368 (#138) ###########################################
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DANTE
became vermilion, so, my obduracy becoming softened, I turned
me to the wise Leader, hearing the name that in my memory is
ever welling up. Whereat he nodded his head, and said, "How!
do we want to stay on this side? " Then he smiled as one doth
at a child who is conquered by an apple.
Then within the fire he set himself before me, praying Sta-
tius that he would come behind, who previously, on the long
road, had divided us. When I was in, into boiling glass I would
have thrown myself to cool me, so without measure was the
burning there. My sweet Father, to encourage me, went talking
ever of Beatrice, saying, "I seem already to see her eyes. ”
A voice was guiding us, which was singing on the other side,
and we, ever attentive to it, came forth there where was the
ascent. "Venite, benedicti Patris mei" [Come, ye blessed of my
Father], sounded within a light that was there such that it over-
came me, and I could not look on it. "The sun departs," it
added, "and the evening comes; tarry not, but hasten your
steps so long as the west grows not dark. "
The way mounted straight, through the rock, in such direc-
tion that I cut off in front of me the rays of the sun which was
already low. And of few stairs had we made essay ere, by the
vanishing of the shadow, both I and my Sages perceived behind
us the setting of the sun. And before the horizon in all its
immense regions had become of one aspect, and night had all
her dispensations, each of us made of a stair his bed; for the
nature of the mountain took from us the power more than the
delight of ascending.
As goats, who have been swift and wayward on the peaks ere
they are fed, become tranquil as they ruminate, silent in the
shade while the sun is hot, watched by the herdsman, who on
his staff is leaning and leaning guards them; and as the shep-
herd, who lodges out of doors, passes the night beside his quiet.
flock, watching that the wild beast may not scatter it: such were
we all three then, I like a goat, and they like shepherds, hemmed
in on this side and on that by the high rock. Little of the out-
side could there appear, but through that little I saw the stars
both brighter and larger than their wont. Thus ruminating, and
thus gazing upon them, sleep overcame me, sleep which oft
before a deed be done knows news thereof.
At the hour, I think, when from the east on the mountain first
beamed Cytherea, who with fire of love seems always burning,
## p. 4369 (#139) ###########################################
DANTE
4369
I seemed in dream to see a lady, young and beautiful, going
through a meadow gathering flowers, and singing; she was saying,
"Let him know, whoso asks my name, that I am Leah, and I go
moving my fair hands around to make myself a garland. To
please me at the glass here I adorn me, but my sister Rachel
never withdraws from her mirror, and sits all day. She is as fain
to look with her fair eyes as I to adorn me with my hands. Her
seeing, and me doing, satisfies. "*
And now before the splendors which precede the dawn, and
rise the more grateful unto pilgrims as in returning they lodge
less remote, the shadows fled away on every side, and my sleep
with them; whereupon I rose, seeing my great Masters already
risen. "That pleasant apple which through so many branches
the care of mortals goes seeking, to-day shall put in peace thy
hungerings. " Virgil used words such as these toward me, and
never were there gifts which could be equal in pleasure to these.
Such wish upon wish came to me to be above, that at every
step thereafter I felt the feathers growing for my flight.
When beneath us all the stairway had been run, and we were
on the topmost step, Virgil fixed his eyes on me, and said, "The
temporal fire and the eternal thou hast seen, son, and art come
to a place where of myself no further onward I discern. I have
brought thee here with understanding and with art: thine own
pleasure now take thou for guide; forth art thou from the steep
ways, forth art thou from the narrow. See there the sun, which
on thy front doth shine; see the young grass, the flowers, the
shrubs, which here the earth of itself alone produces. Until
rejoicing come the beautiful eyes which weeping made me come
to thee, thou canst sit down and thou canst go among thein.
Expect no more or word or sign from me. Free, upright, and
sane is thine own free will, and it would be wrong not to act
according to its pleasure; wherefore thee over thyself I crown
and mitre. »
*Leah and Rachel are respectively the types of the virtuous active and
contemplative life.
As they come nearer home.
VIII-274
## p. 4370 (#140) ###########################################
4370
DANTE
CANTOS XXX AND XXXI
THE MEETING WITH HIS LADY IN THE EARTHLY PARADISE
[Beatrice appears. — Departure of Virgil. — Reproof of Dante by Beatrice. -
Confession of Dante. - Passage of Lethe. - Unveiling of Beatrice. ]
WHEN the septentrion of the first heaven,* which never set-
ting knew, nor rising, nor veil of other cloud than sin,—and
which was making every one there acquainted with his duty, as
the lower makes whoever turns the helm to come to port,-
stopped still, the truthful people who had come first between the
griffon and it, turned to the chariot as to their peace, and one of
them, as if sent from heaven, singing, cried thrice, «Veni,
sponsa, de Libano" [Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse],
and all the others after.
As the blessed at the last trump will arise swiftly, each from
his tomb, singing Hallelujah with recovered voice, so upon the
divine chariot, ad vocem tanti senis [at the voice of so great an
elder], rose up a hundred ministers and messengers of life eter-
nal. All were saying, "Benedictus, qui venis" [Blessed thou
that comest], and, scattering flowers above and around, "Mani-
bus o date lilia plenis " [Oh, give lilies with full hands]. t
I have seen ere now at the beginning of the day the eastern
region all rosy, while the rest of the heaven was beautiful with
fair clear sky; and the face of the sun rise shaded, so that
through the tempering of vapors the eye sustained it a long
while. Thus within a cloud of flowers, which from the angelic
hands was ascending, and falling down again within and without,
a lady, with olive wreath above a white veil, appeared to me,
robed with the color of living flame beneath a green mantle. §
And my spirit that now for so long a time had not been bro-
ken down, trembling with amazement at her presence, without
* In the preceding canto a mystic procession, symbolizing the Old and
New Dispensation, has appeared in the Earthly Paradise. At its head were
seven candlesticks, symbols of the sevenfold spirit of the Lord; it was fol-
lowed by personages representing the truthful books of the Old Testament,
and these by the chariot of the Church drawn by a griffon, who in his double
form, half eagle and half lion, represented Christ in his double nature, human
and divine.
The lower septentrion, the seven stars of the Great Bear.
Words from the Eneid (vi. 884), sung by the angels.
§ The olive is the symbol of wisdom and of peace; the three colors are
those of Faith, Charity and Hope.
## p. 4371 (#141) ###########################################
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4371
having more knowledge by the eyes, through occult virtue that
proceeded from her, felt the great potency of ancient love.
Soon as upon my sight the lofty virtue smote, which already
had transfixed me ere I was out of boyhood, I turned me to the
left with the confidence with which the little child runs to his
mother when he is frightened, or when he is troubled, to say to
Virgil, “Less than a drachm of blood remains in me that doth
not tremble; I recognize the signals of the ancient flame,»* —–
but Virgil had left us deprived of himself; Virgil, sweetest
Father, Virgil, to whom I for my salvation gave me. Nor did
all which the ancient mother lost avail unto my cheeks, cleansed
with dew, that they should not turn dark again with tears.
"Dante, though Virgil be gone away, weep not yet, for it
behoves thee to weep by another sword. "
Like an admiral who, on poop or on prow, comes to see the
people that are serving on the other ships, and encourages them
to do well, upon the left border of the chariot - when I turned
me at the sound of my own name, which of necessity is regis-
tered here - I saw the Lady, who had first appeared to me
veiled beneath the angelic festival, directing her eyes toward
me across the stream; although the veil which descended from
her head, circled by the leaf of Minerva, did not allow her to
appear distinctly. Royally, still haughty in her mien, she went
on, as one who speaks and keeps back his warmest speech:
"Look at me well: I am indeed, I am indeed Beatrice. How
hast thou deigned to approach the mountain? Didst thou know
that man is happy here? " My eyes fell down into the clear
fount; but seeing myself in it I drew them to the grass, such
great shame burdened my brow. As to the son the mother
seems proud, so she seemed to me; for somewhat bitter tasteth
the savor of stern pity.
She was silent, and the angels sang of a sudden, "In te,
Domine, speravi" [In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust]; § but
beyond "pedes meos" [my feet] they did not pass. Even as
the snow, among the living rafters upon the back of Italy, is
congealed, blown, and packed by Slavonian winds, then melting
*Words from the Eneid, iv. 23.
All the joy and beauty of Paradise which Eve lost, and which were now
surrounding Dante.
When he had entered Purgatory.
§ The words are from Psalm xxxi. , verses 1 to 8.
## p. 4372 (#142) ###########################################
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DANTE
trickles through itself, if only the land that loses shadow* breathe
so that it seems a fire that melts the candle: so was I without
tears and sighs before the song of those who time their notes
after the notes of the eternal circles. But when I heard in
their sweet accords their compassion for me, more than if they
had said, "Lady, why dost thou so confound him? " the ice that
was bound tight around my heart became breath and water, and
with anguish poured from my breast through my mouth and eyes.
She, still standing motionless on the aforesaid side of the
chariot, then turned her words to those pious + beings thus: -"Ye
watch in the eternal day, so that nor night nor slumber robs
from you one step the world may make along its ways; wherefore
my reply is with greater care, that he who is weeping yonder
may understand me, so that fault and grief may be of one
measure. Not only through the working of the great wheels,
which direct every seed to some end according as the stars are
its companions, but through largess of divine graces, which have
for their rain vapors so lofty that our sight goes not near
thereto, this man was such in his new life, virtually, that every
right habit would have made admirable proof in him. But so
much the more malign and more savage becomes the land ill-
sown and untilled, as it has more of good terrestrial vigor.
Some time did I sustain him with my face; showing my youth-
ful eyes to him, I led him with me turned in right direction.
So soon as I was upon the threshold of my second age, and had
changed life, this one took himself from me, and gave himself
to others. When from flesh to spirit I had ascended, and beauty
and virtue were increased in me, I was less dear and less pleas-
ing to him; and he turned his steps along a way not true,
following false images of good, which pay no promise in full.
Nor did it avail me to win by entreaty § inspirations with which,
both in dream and otherwise, I called him back; so little did he
heed them. So low he fell that all means for his salvation were
already short, save showing him the lost people. For this I
visited the gate of the dead, and to him, who has conducted
him up hither, my prayers were borne with weeping. The high
K
*If the wind blow from Africa.
Both devout and piteous.
Through the influences of the circling heavens.
§ From divine grace.
| In Hell.
## p. 4373 (#143) ###########################################
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4373
decree of God would be broken, if Lethe should be passed, and
such viands should be tasted without any scot of repentance
which may pour forth tears.
"O thou who art on the further side of the sacred river,"
turning her speech with the point to me, which only by the
edge had seemed to me keen, she began anew, going on with-
out delay, "say, say if this be true: to so great an accusation it
behoves that thine own confession be conjoined.
" My power
was so confused that my voice moved, and became extinct be-
fore it could be released by its organs. A little she bore it;
then she said, "What thinkest thou? Reply to me; for the sad
memories in thee are not yet injured by the water. "* Confusion
and fear together mingled forced such a "Yes" from my mouth
that the eyes were needed for the understanding of it.
As a crossbow breaks its cord and its bow when it shoots
with too great tension, and with less force the shaft hits the
mark, so did I burst under that heavy load, pouring forth tears.
and sighs, and the voice slackened along its passage. Where-
upon she to me: "Within those desires of mine that were
leading thee to love the Good beyond which there is nothing
whereto man may aspire, what trenches running traverse, or
what chains didst thou find, for which thou wert obliged thus
to abandon the hope of passing onward? And what entice-
ments, or what advantages on the brow of the others were dis-
played, for which thou wert obliged to court them? " After the
drawing of a bitter sigh, hardly had I the voice that answered,
and the lips with difficulty gave it form. Weeping, I said, "The
present things with their false pleasure turned my steps soon as
your face was hidden. " And she: -"Hadst thou been silent, or
hadst thou denied that which thou dost confess, thy fault would
be not less noted, by such a Judge is it known. But when
the accusation of the sin bursts from one's own cheek, in our
court the wheel turns itself back against the edge.
But yet,
that thou mayst now bear shame for thy error, and that another
time, hearing the Sirens, thou mayst be stronger, lay aside the
seed of weeping and listen; so shalt thou hear how in opposite
direction my buried flesh ought to have moved thee. Never
did nature or art present to thee pleasure such as the fair limbs
―
―――
*Not yet obliterated by the waters of Lethe.
Inspired by me.
Other objects of desire.
## p. 4374 (#144) ###########################################
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DANTE
wherein I was inclosed; and they are scattered in earth. And
if the supreme pleasure thus failed thee through my death, what
mortal things ought then to have drawn thee into its desire?
Forsooth thou oughtest, at the first arrow of things deceitful, to
have risen up, following me who was no longer such. Nor
should thy wings have weighed thee downward to await more
blows, either girl or other vanity of so brief a use.
The young
little bird awaits two or three; but before the eyes of the full-
fledged the net is spread in vain, the arrow shot. "
As children, ashamed, dumb, with eyes upon the ground,
stand listening and conscience-stricken and repentant, so was I
standing. And she said, "Since through hearing thou art grieved,
lift up thy beard and thou shalt receive more grief in seeing. "
With less resistance is a sturdy oak uprooted by a native wind,
or by one from the land of Iarbas,* than I raised up my chin at
her command; and when by the beard she asked for my eyes,
truly I recognized the venom of the argument. †
And as my
face stretched upward, my sight perceived that those primal
creatures were resting from their strewing, and my eyes, still
little assured, saw Beatrice turned toward the animal that is only
one person in two natures. Beneath her veil and beyond the
stream she seemed to me more to surpass her ancient self, than
she surpassed the others here when she was here. So pricked
me there the nettle of repentance, that of all other things the
one which most turned me aside unto its love became most
hostile to me. t
Such contrition stung my heart that I fell overcome; and
what I then became she knows who afforded me the cause.
Then, when my heart restored my outward faculties, I saw
above me the lady whom I had found alone,§ and she was saying,
"Hold me, hold me. " She had drawn me into the stream up to
the throat, and dragging me behind was moving upon the water
light as a shuttle. When I was near the blessed shore, "Asper-
ges me" I heard so sweetly that I cannot remember it, far less
* Numidia, of which Iarbas was king.
The beard being the sign of manhood, which should be accompanied by
wisdom.
The one which by its attractions most diverted me from Beatrice.
SA solitary lady whom he had met on first entering the Earthly Paradise,
and who had accompanied him thus far.
The first words of the 7th verse of the 51st Psalm: "Purge me with hyssop,
and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. ”
## p. 4375 (#145) ###########################################
DANTE
4375
can write it. The beautiful lady opened her arms, clasped my
head, and plunged me in where it behoved that I should swallow
the water. Then she took me, and, thus bathed, brought me
within the dance of the four beautiful ones,* and each of them
covered me with her arm. "Here we are nymphs, and in heaven
we are stars; ere Beatrice had descended to the world we were
ordained unto her for her handmaids. We will lead thee to her
eyes; but in the joyous light which is within them, the three
yonder who deeper gaze shall make keen thine own. " Thus
singing they began; and then to the breast of the griffon they
led me with them, where Beatrice was standing turned towa:
us. They said, "See that thou sparest not thy sight: we have
placed thee before the emeralds whence Love of old drew his
arrows upon thee. " A thousand desires hotter than flame bound
my eyes to the relucent eyes which only upon the griffon were
standing fixed. As the sun in a mirror, not otherwise, the two-
fold animal was gleaming therewithin, now with one, now with
another mode. Think, Reader, if I marveled when I saw the
thing stand quiet in itself, while in its image it was transmuting
itself.
While, full of amazement and glad, my soul was tasting that
food which, sating of itself, causes hunger for itself, the other
three, showing themselves in their bearing of loftier order, came
forward dancing to their angelic melody. "Turn, Beatrice, turn
thy holy eyes," was their song, "upon thy faithful one, who to
see thee has taken so many steps. For grace do us the grace
that thou unveil to him thy mouth, so that he may discern the
second beauty which thou concealest. "
O splendor of living light eternal! Who hath become so
pallid under the shadow of Parnassus, or hath so drunk at its
cistern, that he would not seem to have his mind incumbered,
trying to represent thee as thou didst appear there where in
harmony the heaven overshadows thee, when in the open air thou
didst thyself disclose?
*The four cardinal virtues.
The three evangelic virtues.
Now with the divine, now with the human.
## p. 4376 (#146) ###########################################
4376
DANTE
PARADISE
CANTO XXXIII
THE BEATIFIC VISION
[Dante, having been brought by Beatrice to Paradise in the Empyrean, is
left by her in charge of St. Bernard, while she takes her place among the
blessed. Prayer of St. Bernard to the Virgin. - Her intercession. -The vision
of God. -The end of desire. ]
"VIRG
JIRGIN MOTHER, daughter of thine own Son, humble and
exalted more than any creature, fixed term of the eternal
counsel, thou art she who didst so ennoble human nature
that its own Maker disdained not to become His own making.
Within thy womb was rekindled the love through whose warmth
this flower has thus blossomed in the eternal peace. Here thou
art to us the noonday torch of charity, and below, among mor-
tals, thou art the living fount of hope. Lady, thou art so great,
and so availest, that whoso wishes grace, and has not recourse
to thee, wishes his desire to fly without wings. Thy benignity
not only succors him who asks, but oftentimes freely foreruns
the asking. In thee mercy, in thee pity, in thee magnificence,
in thee whatever of goodness is in any creature, are united.
Now doth this man, who, from the lowest abyss of the universe,
far even as here, has seen one by one the lives of spirits, sup-
plicate thee, through grace, for virtue such that he may be able
with his eyes to uplift himself higher toward the Ultimate Salva-
tion. And I, who never for my own vision burned more than I
do for his, proffer to thee all my prayers, and pray that they be
not scant, that with thy prayers thou wouldst dissipate for him.
every cloud of his mortality, so that the Supreme Pleasure may
be displayed to him. Further I pray thee, Queen, who canst
what so thou wilt, that, after so great a vision, thou wouldst
preserve his affections sound. May thy guardianship vanquish
human impulses. Behold Beatrice with all the blessed for my
prayers clasp their hands to thee. "
The eyes beloved and revered by God, fixed on the speaker,
showed to us how pleasing unto her are devout prayers. Then
to the Eternal Light were they directed, on which it is not to be
believed that eye so clear is turned by any creature.
And I, who to the end of all desires was approaching, even
as I ought, ended within myself the ardor of my longings.
## p. 4377 (#147) ###########################################
DANTE
4377
Bernard was beckoning to me, and was smiling, that I should
look upward; but I was already, of my own accord, such as he
wished; for my sight, becoming pure, was entering more and
more through the radiance of the lofty Light which of itself is
true. *
Thenceforward my vision was greater than our speech, which
yields to such a sight, and the memory yields to such excess.
As is he who dreaming sees, and after the dream the passion
remains imprinted, and the rest returns not to the mind, such
am I; for my vision almost wholly fails, while the sweetness
that was born of it yet distills within my heart. Thus the snow
is by the sun unsealed; thus on the wind, in the light leaves,
was lost the saying of the Sibyl.
O Supreme Light, that so high upliftest Thyself from mortal
conceptions, re-lend a little to my mind of what Thou didst
appear, and make my tongue so powerful that it may be able to
leave one single spark of Thy glory for the future people; for
by returning somewhat to my memory and by sounding a little
in these verses, more of Thy victory shall be conceived.
I think that by the keenness of the living ray which I en-
dured, I should have been dazzled if my eyes had been averted
from it. And it comes to my mind that for this reason I was
the more hardy to sustain so much, that I joined my look unto
the Infinite Goodness.
O abundant Grace, whereby I presumed to fix my eyes
through the Eternal Light so far that there I consummated my
vision!
In its depth I saw that whatsoever is dispersed through the
universe is there included, bound with love in one volume; sub-
stance and accidents and their modes, fused together, as it were,
in such wise, that that of which I speak is one simple Light.
The universal form of this knott I believe that I saw, because
in saying this I feel that I more abundantly rejoice. One
instant only is greater oblivion for me than five-and-twenty cen-
turies to the emprise which made Neptune wonder at the shadow
of Argo.
* Light in its essence; all other light is derived from it.
This union of substance and accident.
So overwhelming was the vision that the memory could not retain it
completely even for an instant.
## p. 4378 (#148) ###########################################
4378
DANTE
Thus my mind, wholly rapt, was gazing fixed, motionless,
and intent, and ever with gazing grew enkindled. In that Light
one becomes such that it is impossible he should ever consent to
turn himself from it for other sight; because the Good which is
the object of the will is all collected in it, and outside of it that
is defective which is perfect there.
Now will my speech be shorter even in respect to that which
I remember, than an infant's who still bathes his tongue at the
breast. Not because more than one simple semblance was in the
Living Light wherein I was gazing, which is always such as it
was before; but through my sight, which was growing strong in
me as I looked, one sole appearance, as I myself changed, was
altering itself to me.
Within the profound and clear subsistence of the lofty Light
appeared to me three circles of three colors and of one dimen-
sion; and one appeared reflected by the other, as Iris by Iris,
and the third appeared fire which from the one and from the
other is equally breathed forth.
O how short is the telling, and how feeble toward my con-
ception! and this toward what I saw is such that it suffices not
to call it little.
O Light Eternal, that sole dwellest in Thyself, sole under-
standest Thyself, and, by Thyself understood and understanding,
lovest and smilest on Thyself! That circle, which, thus con-
ceived, appeared in Thee as a reflected light, being somewhile
regarded by my eyes, seemed to me depicted within itself, of its
own very color, by our effigy, wherefore my sight was wholly
set upon it. As is the geometer who wholly applies himself to
measure the circle, and finds not by thinking that principle of
which he is in need, such was I at that new sight. I wished to
see how the image accorded with the circle, and how it has its
place therein; but my own wings were not for this, had it not
been that my mind was smitten by a flash in which its wish
came. *
To my high fantasy here power failed; but now my desire
and my will, like a wheel which evenly is moved, the Love was
turning which moves the Sun and the other stars. †
*The wish to see the mystery of the union of the two natures, the divine
and human in Christ.
That Love which makes sun and stars revolve was giving a concordant
revolution to my desire and my will.
## p. 4379 (#149) ###########################################
4379
JAMES DARMESTETER
(1849-1894)
GOOD example of the latter-day enlightened savant is the
French Jew, James Darmesteter, whose premature death
robbed the modern world of scholarship of one of its most
distinguished figures. Scholars who do noble service in adding to
the sum total of human knowledge often are specialists, the nature
of whose work excludes them from general interest and appreciation.
It was not so with this man,- not alone an Oriental philologist of
more than national repute, but a broadly cultured, original mind, an
enlightened spirit, and a master of literary expression. Darmesteter
calls for recognition as a maker of literature as well as a scientist.
The son of a humble Jewish bookbinder, subjected to the disad-
vantages and hardships of poverty, James Darmesteter was born at
Chateau-Salins in Lorraine in 1849, but got his education in Paris,
early imbibing the Jewish traditions, familiar from youth with the
Bible and the Talmud. At the public school, whence he was gradu-
ated at eighteen, he showed his remarkable intellectual powers and
attracted the attention of scholars like Bréal and Burnouf, who, not-
ing his aptitude for languages, advised devotion to Oriental linguis-
tics. After several years of uncertainty, years spent with books
and in travel, and in the desultory production of poetry and fiction,
philological study was undertaken as his life work, with remarkable
results. For twenty years he labored in this field, and his appoint-
ment in 1882 to succeed Renan as Secretary of the Asiatic Society of
France speaks volumes for the position he won. In 1885 he became
professor of Iranian languages and literature in the College of France.
Other scholastic honors fell to him in due course and good measure.
As a scholar Darmesteter's most important labors were the expo-
sition of Zoroastrianism, the national faith of ancient Persia, which
he made a specialty; and his French translation of and commentary
on the Avesta, the Bible of that religion. As an interpreter of Zoro-
aster he sought to unite synthetically two opposing modern schools:
that which relied solely upon native traditions, and that which, re-
garding these as untrustworthy, drew its conclusions from an exam-
ination of the text, supplemented by the aid of Sanskrit on the side
of language and of the Vedas on the side of religion. Darmesteter's
work was thus boldly comprehensive. He found in the Avesta the
influence of such discordant elements as the Bible, Buddha, and
## p. 4380 (#150) ###########################################
4380
JAMES DARMESTETER
Greek philosophy, and believed that in its present form it was com-
posed at a later time than has been supposed. These technical ques-
tions are still mooted points with the critics. The translation of the
Avesta will perhaps stand as his greatest achievement. A herculean
labor of four years, it was rewarded by the Academy of Inscriptions
and Belles-Lettres with the 20,000-franc prize given but once in a
decade for the work which, in the Academy's opinion, had best
served or brought most honor to the country.
But the technical accomplishments of learning represent but a
fragment of Darmesteter's amazing mental activity. He wrote a
striking book on the Mahdi, the tenacious belief in the Mohammedan
Messiah taking hold on his imagination. He was versed in English
literature, edited Shakespeare, and introduced his countrymen to
Browning. While in Afghanistan on a philological mission he gath-
ered, merely as a side pursuit, a unique collection of Afghan folk-
songs, and the result was a fascinating and valuable paper in a new
field. He helped to found a leading French review. Articles of
travel, critiques on subjects political, religious, literary, and social, fell
fast from his pen. In his general essays on these broader, more vital
aspects of thought and life, he is an artist in literary expression, a
writer with a distinct and great gift for form. Here his vigorous
mind, ample training, his humanistic tastes and humanitarian aspira-
tions, are all finely in evidence.
The English reader who seeks an introduction to Darmesteter is
directed to his 'Selected Essays,' translated by Helen B. Jastrow,
edited with a memoir by Professor Morris Jastrow, Jr. (Houghton,
Mifflin and Company, Boston). There is a translation by Ada S.
Ballin of his 'The Mahdi' (Harper and Brothers, New York); and in
the Contemporary Review for January, 1895, is a noble appreciation
of Darmesteter by his friend Gaston Paris. In the Sacred Books of
the East' will be found an English rendering of the Avesta by
Darmesteter and Mills.
As a thinker in the philosophical sense Darmesteter was remark-
able. Early breaking away from orthodox Judaism, his philological
and historical researches led him to accept the conclusions of de-
structive criticism with regard to the Bible; and a disciple of Renan,
he became enrolled among those scholars who see in science the one
explanation of the universe. But possessing, along with his keen.
analytic powers, a nature dominantly ethical, he made humanity his
idol. His patriotism for France was intense; and, a Jew always
sympathetic to the wonderful history of his people,-in his later
years by a brilliant, poetical, almost audacious interpretation of the
Old Testament,- he found a solution of the riddle of life in the
Hebrew prophets. What he deemed their essential faith — Judaism
## p. 4381 (#151) ###########################################
JAMES DARMESTETER
4381
stripped of ritual and legend - he declared to be in harmony with
the scientific creed of the present: belief in the unity of moral law,—
the Old Testament Jehovah; and belief in the eventual triumph of
justice upon this earth, the modern substitute for the New Testa-
ment heaven. This doctrine, which in most hands would be cold and
comfortless enough, he makes vital, engaging, through the passionate
presentation of an eloquent lover of his fellow-man. In a word,
Darmesteter was a Positivist, dowered, like that other noble Pos-
itivist George Eliot, with a nature sensitive to spiritual issues.
An idyllic passage in Darmesteter's toilful scholar life was his
tender friendship with the gifted English woman, A. Mary F. Robin-
son. Attracted by her lovely verse, the intellectual companionship
ripened into love, and for his half-dozen final years he enjoyed her
wifely aid and sympathy in what seems to have been an ideal union.
The end, when it came, was quick and painless. Always of a frail
constitution, stunted in body from childhood, he died in harness,
October 19th, 1894, his head falling forward on his desk as he wrote.
The tributes that followed make plain the enthusiastic admiration
James Darmesteter awakened in those who knew him best. The
leading Orientalist of his generation, he added to the permanent
acquisitions of scholarship, and made his impress as one of the
remarkable personalities of France in the late nineteenth century.
In the language of a friend, "a Jew by race, a Greek by culture, a
Frenchman in heart," he furnishes another illustration of that strain
of genius which seems like a compensatory gift to the Jewish folk for
its manifold buffetings at the hand of Fate.
ERNEST RENAN
From 'Selected Essays': copyrighted 1895 by Houghton, Mifflin and Company
Renan are due to
THE
HE mistaken judgments passed upon M.
the fact that in his work he did not place the emphasis
upon the Good, but upon the True. Men concluded that
for him, therefore, science was the whole of life. The environ-
ment in which he was formed was forgotten,—an environment
in which the moral sense was exquisite and perfect, while the
scientific sense was nil. He did not need to discover the
moral sense, it was the very atmosphere in which he lived.
When the scientific sense awoke in him, and he beheld the
world and history transfigured by it, he was dazzled, and the
influence lasted throughout his life. He dreamed of making
France understand this new revelation; he was the apostle of
-
## p. 4382 (#152) ###########################################
4382
JAMES DARMESTETER
this gospel of truth and science, but in heart and mind he
never attacked what is permanent and divine in the other
gospel. Thus he was a complete man, and deserved the
disdain of dilettantes morally dead, and of mystics scientifically
atonic.
What heritage has M. Renan left to posterity? As a
scholar he created religious criticism in France, and prepared
for universal science that incomparable instrument, the Corpus.
As an author he bequeathed to universal art, pages which will
endure, and to him may be applied what he said of George
Sand:-"He had the divine faculty of giving wings to his sub-
ject, of producing under the form of fine art the idea which in
other hands remained crude and formless. " As a philosopher
he left behind a mass of ideas which he did not care to collect
in doctrinal shape, but which nevertheless constitute a coherent
whole. One thing only in this world is certain,-duty. One
truth is plain in the course of the world as science reveals it:
the world is advancing to a higher, more perfect form of
being. The supreme happiness of man is to draw nearer to
this God to come, contemplating him in science, and preparing,
by action, the advent of a humanity nobler, better endowed,
and more akin to the ideal Being.
JUDAISM
From 'Selected Essays': copyrighted 1895 by Houghton, Mifflin and Company
Ju
UDAISM has not made the miraculous the basis of its dogma,
nor installed the supernatural as a permanent factor in the
progress of events. Its miracles, from the time of the Mid-
dle Ages, are but a poetic detail, a legendary recital, a picturesque
decoration; and its cosmogony, borrowed in haste from Babylon
by the last compiler of the Bible, with the stories of the apple
and the serpent, over which so many Christian generations have
labored, never greatly disturbed the imagination of the rabbis,
nor weighed very heavily upon the thought of the Jewish phi-
losophers. Its rites were never "an instrument of faith," an
expedient to "lull" rebellious thought into faith; they are merely
cherished customs, a symbol of the family, of transitory value,
and destined to disappear when there shall be but one family in
a world converted to the one truth. Set aside all these miracles,
## p. 4383 (#153) ###########################################
JAMES DARMESTETER
4383
all these rites, and behind them will be found the two great
dogmas which, ever since the prophets, constitute the whole of
Judaism-the Divine unity and Messianism; unity of law through-
out the world, and the terrestrial triumph of justice in humanity.
These are the two dogmas which at the present time illuminate
humanity in its progress, both in the scientific and social order
of things, and which are termed in modern parlance unity of
forces and belief in progress.
For this reason, Judaism is the only religion that has never
entered into conflict, and never can, with either science or social
progress, and that has witnessed, and still witnesses, all their
conquests without a sense of fear. These are not hostile forces
that it accepts or submits to merely from a spirit of toleration
or policy, in order to save the remains of its power by a com-
promise. They are old friendly voices, which it recognizes and
salutes with joy; for it has heard them resound for centuries.
already, in the axioms of free thought and in the cry of the
suffering heart. For this reason the Jews, in all the countries
which have entered upon the new path, have begun to take a
share in all the great works of civilization, in the triple field of
science, of art, and of action; and that share, far from being an
insignificant one, is out of all proportion to the brief time that
has elapsed since their enfranchisement.
Does this mean that Judaism should nurse dreams of ambi-
tion, and think of realizing one day that "invisible church of the
future" invoked by some in prayer? This would be an illusion,
whether on the part of a narrow sectarian, or on that of an
enlightened individual. The truth however remains, that the
Jewish spirit can still be a factor in this world, making for the
highest science, for unending progress; and that the mission of
the Bible is not yet complete. The Bible is not responsible for
the partial miscarriage of Christianity, due to the compromises
made by its organizers, who, in their too great zeal to conquer
and convert Paganism, were themselves converted by it. But
everything in Christianity which comes in a direct line from
Judaism lives, and will live; and it is Judaism which through
Christianity has cast into the old polytheistic world, to ferment
there until the end of time, the sentiment of unity, and an
impatience to bring about charity and justice. The reign of the
Bible, and also of the Evangelists in so far as they were inspired
by the Bible, can become established only in proportion as the
## p. 4384 (#154) ###########################################
4384
JAMES DARMESTETER
positive religions connected with it lose their power. Great reli-
gions outlive their altars and their priests. Hellenism, abolished,
counts less skeptics to-day than in the days of Socrates and
Anaxagoras. The gods of Homer died when Phidias carved
them in marble, and now they are immortally enthroned in the
thought and heart of Europe. The Cross may crumble into
dust, but there were words spoken under its shadow in Galilee,
the echo of which will forever vibrate in the human conscience.
And when the nation who made the Bible shall have disap-
peared, the race and the cult, though leaving no visible
trace of its passage upon earth, its imprint will remain in the
depth of the heart of generations, who will, unconsciously per-
haps, live upon what has thus been implanted in their breasts.
Humanity, as it is fashioned in the dreams of those who desire
to be called freethinkers, may with the lips deny the Bible and
its work; but humanity can never deny it in its heart, without
the sacrifice of the best that it contains, faith in unity and hope
for justice, and without a relapse into the mythology and the
"might makes right" of thirty centuries ago.
-
―――
## p.
were it already done, were slow to me. Thou hast no need fur-
ther to open unto me thy will; but tell me the cause why thou
guardest not thyself from descending down here into this centre,
from the ample place whither thou burnest to return. ' 'Since
thou wishest to know so inwardly, I will tell thee briefly,' she
replied to me, 'wherefore I am not afraid to come here within.
One ought to be afraid of those things only that have power to
do another harm; of other things not, for they are not fearful.
I am made by God, thanks be to him, such that your misery
touches me not, nor does the flame of this burning assail me. A
gentle Lady is in heaven who hath pity for this hindrance where-
to I send thee, so that stern judgment there above she breaks.
She summoned Lucia in her request, and said, "Thy faithful one
now hath need of thee, and unto thee I commend him. " Lucia,t
the foe of every cruel one, rose and came to the place where I
was, seated with the ancient Rachael. She said:-"Beatrice, true
praise of God, why dost thou not succor him who so loved thee
that for thee he came forth from the vulgar throng? Dost thou
not hear the pity of his plaint? Dost thou not see the death
that combats him beside the stream whereof the sea hath no
vaunt? " In the world never were persons swift to seek their
good, and to fly their harm, as I, after these words were uttered,
came here below, from my blessed seat, putting my trust in thy
upright speech, which honors thee and them who have heard it. '
After she had said this to me, weeping she turned her lucent
eyes, whereby she made me more speedy in coming. And I
came to thee as she willed. Thee have I delivered from that wild
beast that took from thee the short ascent of the beautiful mount-
ain. What is it then? Why, why dost thou hold back? why dost
thou harbor such cowardice in thy heart? why hast thou not dar-
ing and boldness, since three blessed Ladies care for thee in the
court of Heaven, and my speech pledges thee such good? "
*The heaven of the Moon, the nearest to Earth of the nine concentric
Heavens.
The type of illuminating grace.
## p. 4364 (#134) ###########################################
4364
DANTE
As flowerets, bent and closed by the chill of night, after the
sun shines on them straighten themselves all open on their stem,
so my weak virtue became, and such good daring hastened to
my heart that I began like one enfranchised:-"O compassionate
she who succored! and thou courteous who didst speedily obey
the true words that she addressed to thee! Thou by thy words
hast so disposed my heart with desire of going, that I have
returned unto my first intent. Go on now, for one sole will is
in us both thou leader, thou Lord, and thou Master. " Thus I
said to him; and when he had moved on, I entered along the
deep and savage road.
-
CANTO V
THE PUNISHMENT OF CARNAL SINNERS
[The Second Circle, that of Carnal Sinners. — Minos. — Shades renowned of
old. Francesca da Rimini. ]
THUS I descended from the first circle down into the second,
which girdles less space, and so much more woe that it goads to
wailing. There abides Minos horribly, and snarls; he examines
the sins at the entrance; he judges, and he sends according as
he entwines himself. I mean that when the miscreant spirit
comes there before him, it confesses itself wholly, and that dis-
cerner of sins sees what place of Hell is for it; he girdles him-
self with his tail so many times as the degrees he wills it should
be sent down. Always before him stand many of them. They
go, in turn, each to the judgment; they speak, and hear, and
then are whirled below.
"O thou that comest to the woful inn," said Minos to me,
when he saw me, leaving the act of so great an office, "beware
how thou enterest, and to whom thou intrustest thyself; let not
the amplitude of the entrance deceive thee. " And my Leader to
him, "Why then dost thou cry out? Hinder not his fated going;
thus is it willed there where is power to do that which is willed;
and ask thou no more. "
Now the woful notes begin to make themselves heard; now
am I come where much lamentation smites me. I had come into
a place mute of all light, that bellows as the sea does in a
tempest, if it be combated by opposing winds. The infernal
hurricane that never rests carries along the spirits with its rapine;
whirling and smiting it molests them. When they arrive before
its rushing blast, here are shrieks, and bewailing, and lamenting;
## p. 4365 (#135) ###########################################
DANTE
4365
here they blaspheme the power Divine. I understood that to
such torment are condemned the carnal sinners who subject
reason unto lust. And as their wings bear along the starlings in
the cold season in a troop large and full, so that blast the evil
spirits; hither, thither, down, up, it carries them; no hope ever
comforts them, not of repose, but even of less pain.
«<
And as the cranes go singing their lays, making in air a long
line of themselves, so saw I come, uttering wails, shades borne
along by the aforesaid strife. Wherefore I said, "Master, who
are those folk whom the black air so castigates? " "The first
of these of whom thou wishest to have knowledge," said he to
me then, was empress of many tongues. To the vice of luxury
was she so abandoned that lust she made licit in her law, to
take away the blame she had incurred. She is Semiramis, of
whom it is read that she succeeded Ninus and had been his
spouse; she held the land which the Soldan rules. The other is
she who, for love, slew herself and broke faith to the ashes of
Sichæus. Next is Cleopatra, the luxurious. See Helen, for whom
so long a time of ill revolved; and see the great Achilles, who
at the end fought with love. See Paris, Tristan -" and more
than a thousand shades he showed me with his finger, and named
them whom love had parted from our life.
After I had heard my Teacher name the dames of eld and
the cavaliers, pity overcame me, and I was well-nigh bewildered.
I began, "Poet, willingly would I speak with those two that go
together, and seem to be so light upon the wind. " And he to
me, "Thou shalt see when they shall be nearer to us, and do
thou then pray them by that love which leads them, and they
will come. " Soon as the wind sways them toward us I lifted my
voice: "O weary souls, come speak to us, if One forbid it not. "
As doves, called by desire, with wings open and steady, fly
through the air to their sweet nest, borne by their will, these
issued from the troop where Dido is, coming to us through the
malign air, so strong was the compassionate cry:-
"O living creature, gracious and benign, that goest through
the lurid air visiting us who stained the world blood-red, if the
King of the universe were a friend we would pray him for thy
peace, since thou hast pity on our perverse ill. Of what it
pleases thee to hear, and what to speak, we will hear and we
will speak to you, while the wind, as now, is hushed for us.
The city where I was born sits upon the sea-shore, where the
――
-
## p. 4366 (#136) ###########################################
4366
DANTE
Po, with his followers, descends to have peace. Love, that on
gentle heart quickly lays hold, seized him for the fair person
that was taken from me, and the mode still hurts me. Love,
which absolves no loved one from loving, seized me for the
pleasing of him so strongly that, as thou seest, it does not even
now abandon me. Love brought us to one death. Caina waits
him who quenched our life. " These words were borne to us
from them.
Soon as I had heard those injured souls I bowed my face,
and held it down, until the Poet said to me, "What art thou
thinking? " When I replied, I began:-"Alas! how inany sweet
thoughts, how great desire, led these unto the woful pass. "
Then I turned me again to them, and I spoke, and began,
"Francesca, thy torments make me sad and piteous to weeping.
But tell me, at the time of the sweet sighs by what and how
did love concede to you to know the dubious desires? " And
she to me,
"There is no greater woe than in misery to remem-
ber the happy time, and that thy Teacher knows. But if to
know the first root of our love thou hast so great a longing, I
will do like one who weeps and tells.
"We were reading one day, for delight, of Lancelot, how
love constrained him. We were alone and without any suspicion.
Many times that reading made us lift our eyes, and took the
color from our faces, but only one point was that which over-
came us. When we read of the longed-for smile being kissed
by such a lover, this one, who never from me shall be divided,
kissed my mouth all trembling. Galahaut* was the book, and
he who wrote it. That day we read in it no farther. "
While one spirit said this, the other was weeping so that
through pity I swooned as if I had been dying, and fell as a
dead body falls.
* It was Galahaut who, in the Romance, prevailed on Guinevere to give a
kiss to Lancelot.
## p. 4367 (#137) ###########################################
DANTE
4367
PURGATORY
CANTO XXVII
THE FINAL PURGATION
[Seventh Ledge: the Lustful. - Passage through the flames. - Stairway in
the rock. - Night upon the stairs. - Dream of Dante. - Morning. - Ascent to
the Earthly Paradise. - Last words of Virgil. ]
As
*
S WHEN he darts forth his first rays there where his Maker
shed his blood (Ebro falling under the lofty Scales, and
the waves in the Ganges scorched by noon), so the sun
was now standing; so that the day was departing, when the glad
Angel of God appeared to us. Outside the flame he was stand-
ing on the bank, and was singing "Beati mundo corde »
[Blessed are the pure in heart], in a voice far more living than
ours: then, "No one goes further, ye holy souls, if first the fire.
sting not; enter into it, and to the song beyond be ye not deaf,"
he said to us, when we were near him. Whereat I became
such, when I heard him, as is he who in the pit is put. With
hands clasped upwards, I stretched forward, looking at the fire,
and imagining vividly human bodies I had once seen burnt.
The good Escorts turned toward me, and Virgil said to me,
"My son, here may be torment, but not death. Bethink thee!
bethink thee! and if I even upon Geryon guided thee safe, what
shall I do now that I am nearer God? Believe for certain that
if within the belly of this flame thou shouldst stand full a thou-
sand years, it could not make thee bald of one hair. And if
thou perchance believest that I deceive thee, draw near to it,
and make trial for thyself with thine own hands on the hem of
thy garments. Put aside now, put aside every fear; turn hither-
ward, and come on secure. "
And I still motionless and against conscience!
When he saw me still stand motionless and obdurate, he said,
disturbed a little, "Now see, son, between Beatrice and thee is
this wall. "
As at the name of Thisbe, Pyramus, at point of death,
opened his eyelids and looked at her, what time the mulberry
*When it is sunrise at Jerusalem it is midnight in Spain, midday at the
Ganges, and sunset in Purgatory.
To be buried alive.
## p. 4368 (#138) ###########################################
4368
DANTE
became vermilion, so, my obduracy becoming softened, I turned
me to the wise Leader, hearing the name that in my memory is
ever welling up. Whereat he nodded his head, and said, "How!
do we want to stay on this side? " Then he smiled as one doth
at a child who is conquered by an apple.
Then within the fire he set himself before me, praying Sta-
tius that he would come behind, who previously, on the long
road, had divided us. When I was in, into boiling glass I would
have thrown myself to cool me, so without measure was the
burning there. My sweet Father, to encourage me, went talking
ever of Beatrice, saying, "I seem already to see her eyes. ”
A voice was guiding us, which was singing on the other side,
and we, ever attentive to it, came forth there where was the
ascent. "Venite, benedicti Patris mei" [Come, ye blessed of my
Father], sounded within a light that was there such that it over-
came me, and I could not look on it. "The sun departs," it
added, "and the evening comes; tarry not, but hasten your
steps so long as the west grows not dark. "
The way mounted straight, through the rock, in such direc-
tion that I cut off in front of me the rays of the sun which was
already low. And of few stairs had we made essay ere, by the
vanishing of the shadow, both I and my Sages perceived behind
us the setting of the sun. And before the horizon in all its
immense regions had become of one aspect, and night had all
her dispensations, each of us made of a stair his bed; for the
nature of the mountain took from us the power more than the
delight of ascending.
As goats, who have been swift and wayward on the peaks ere
they are fed, become tranquil as they ruminate, silent in the
shade while the sun is hot, watched by the herdsman, who on
his staff is leaning and leaning guards them; and as the shep-
herd, who lodges out of doors, passes the night beside his quiet.
flock, watching that the wild beast may not scatter it: such were
we all three then, I like a goat, and they like shepherds, hemmed
in on this side and on that by the high rock. Little of the out-
side could there appear, but through that little I saw the stars
both brighter and larger than their wont. Thus ruminating, and
thus gazing upon them, sleep overcame me, sleep which oft
before a deed be done knows news thereof.
At the hour, I think, when from the east on the mountain first
beamed Cytherea, who with fire of love seems always burning,
## p. 4369 (#139) ###########################################
DANTE
4369
I seemed in dream to see a lady, young and beautiful, going
through a meadow gathering flowers, and singing; she was saying,
"Let him know, whoso asks my name, that I am Leah, and I go
moving my fair hands around to make myself a garland. To
please me at the glass here I adorn me, but my sister Rachel
never withdraws from her mirror, and sits all day. She is as fain
to look with her fair eyes as I to adorn me with my hands. Her
seeing, and me doing, satisfies. "*
And now before the splendors which precede the dawn, and
rise the more grateful unto pilgrims as in returning they lodge
less remote, the shadows fled away on every side, and my sleep
with them; whereupon I rose, seeing my great Masters already
risen. "That pleasant apple which through so many branches
the care of mortals goes seeking, to-day shall put in peace thy
hungerings. " Virgil used words such as these toward me, and
never were there gifts which could be equal in pleasure to these.
Such wish upon wish came to me to be above, that at every
step thereafter I felt the feathers growing for my flight.
When beneath us all the stairway had been run, and we were
on the topmost step, Virgil fixed his eyes on me, and said, "The
temporal fire and the eternal thou hast seen, son, and art come
to a place where of myself no further onward I discern. I have
brought thee here with understanding and with art: thine own
pleasure now take thou for guide; forth art thou from the steep
ways, forth art thou from the narrow. See there the sun, which
on thy front doth shine; see the young grass, the flowers, the
shrubs, which here the earth of itself alone produces. Until
rejoicing come the beautiful eyes which weeping made me come
to thee, thou canst sit down and thou canst go among thein.
Expect no more or word or sign from me. Free, upright, and
sane is thine own free will, and it would be wrong not to act
according to its pleasure; wherefore thee over thyself I crown
and mitre. »
*Leah and Rachel are respectively the types of the virtuous active and
contemplative life.
As they come nearer home.
VIII-274
## p. 4370 (#140) ###########################################
4370
DANTE
CANTOS XXX AND XXXI
THE MEETING WITH HIS LADY IN THE EARTHLY PARADISE
[Beatrice appears. — Departure of Virgil. — Reproof of Dante by Beatrice. -
Confession of Dante. - Passage of Lethe. - Unveiling of Beatrice. ]
WHEN the septentrion of the first heaven,* which never set-
ting knew, nor rising, nor veil of other cloud than sin,—and
which was making every one there acquainted with his duty, as
the lower makes whoever turns the helm to come to port,-
stopped still, the truthful people who had come first between the
griffon and it, turned to the chariot as to their peace, and one of
them, as if sent from heaven, singing, cried thrice, «Veni,
sponsa, de Libano" [Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse],
and all the others after.
As the blessed at the last trump will arise swiftly, each from
his tomb, singing Hallelujah with recovered voice, so upon the
divine chariot, ad vocem tanti senis [at the voice of so great an
elder], rose up a hundred ministers and messengers of life eter-
nal. All were saying, "Benedictus, qui venis" [Blessed thou
that comest], and, scattering flowers above and around, "Mani-
bus o date lilia plenis " [Oh, give lilies with full hands]. t
I have seen ere now at the beginning of the day the eastern
region all rosy, while the rest of the heaven was beautiful with
fair clear sky; and the face of the sun rise shaded, so that
through the tempering of vapors the eye sustained it a long
while. Thus within a cloud of flowers, which from the angelic
hands was ascending, and falling down again within and without,
a lady, with olive wreath above a white veil, appeared to me,
robed with the color of living flame beneath a green mantle. §
And my spirit that now for so long a time had not been bro-
ken down, trembling with amazement at her presence, without
* In the preceding canto a mystic procession, symbolizing the Old and
New Dispensation, has appeared in the Earthly Paradise. At its head were
seven candlesticks, symbols of the sevenfold spirit of the Lord; it was fol-
lowed by personages representing the truthful books of the Old Testament,
and these by the chariot of the Church drawn by a griffon, who in his double
form, half eagle and half lion, represented Christ in his double nature, human
and divine.
The lower septentrion, the seven stars of the Great Bear.
Words from the Eneid (vi. 884), sung by the angels.
§ The olive is the symbol of wisdom and of peace; the three colors are
those of Faith, Charity and Hope.
## p. 4371 (#141) ###########################################
DANTE
4371
having more knowledge by the eyes, through occult virtue that
proceeded from her, felt the great potency of ancient love.
Soon as upon my sight the lofty virtue smote, which already
had transfixed me ere I was out of boyhood, I turned me to the
left with the confidence with which the little child runs to his
mother when he is frightened, or when he is troubled, to say to
Virgil, “Less than a drachm of blood remains in me that doth
not tremble; I recognize the signals of the ancient flame,»* —–
but Virgil had left us deprived of himself; Virgil, sweetest
Father, Virgil, to whom I for my salvation gave me. Nor did
all which the ancient mother lost avail unto my cheeks, cleansed
with dew, that they should not turn dark again with tears.
"Dante, though Virgil be gone away, weep not yet, for it
behoves thee to weep by another sword. "
Like an admiral who, on poop or on prow, comes to see the
people that are serving on the other ships, and encourages them
to do well, upon the left border of the chariot - when I turned
me at the sound of my own name, which of necessity is regis-
tered here - I saw the Lady, who had first appeared to me
veiled beneath the angelic festival, directing her eyes toward
me across the stream; although the veil which descended from
her head, circled by the leaf of Minerva, did not allow her to
appear distinctly. Royally, still haughty in her mien, she went
on, as one who speaks and keeps back his warmest speech:
"Look at me well: I am indeed, I am indeed Beatrice. How
hast thou deigned to approach the mountain? Didst thou know
that man is happy here? " My eyes fell down into the clear
fount; but seeing myself in it I drew them to the grass, such
great shame burdened my brow. As to the son the mother
seems proud, so she seemed to me; for somewhat bitter tasteth
the savor of stern pity.
She was silent, and the angels sang of a sudden, "In te,
Domine, speravi" [In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust]; § but
beyond "pedes meos" [my feet] they did not pass. Even as
the snow, among the living rafters upon the back of Italy, is
congealed, blown, and packed by Slavonian winds, then melting
*Words from the Eneid, iv. 23.
All the joy and beauty of Paradise which Eve lost, and which were now
surrounding Dante.
When he had entered Purgatory.
§ The words are from Psalm xxxi. , verses 1 to 8.
## p. 4372 (#142) ###########################################
4372
DANTE
trickles through itself, if only the land that loses shadow* breathe
so that it seems a fire that melts the candle: so was I without
tears and sighs before the song of those who time their notes
after the notes of the eternal circles. But when I heard in
their sweet accords their compassion for me, more than if they
had said, "Lady, why dost thou so confound him? " the ice that
was bound tight around my heart became breath and water, and
with anguish poured from my breast through my mouth and eyes.
She, still standing motionless on the aforesaid side of the
chariot, then turned her words to those pious + beings thus: -"Ye
watch in the eternal day, so that nor night nor slumber robs
from you one step the world may make along its ways; wherefore
my reply is with greater care, that he who is weeping yonder
may understand me, so that fault and grief may be of one
measure. Not only through the working of the great wheels,
which direct every seed to some end according as the stars are
its companions, but through largess of divine graces, which have
for their rain vapors so lofty that our sight goes not near
thereto, this man was such in his new life, virtually, that every
right habit would have made admirable proof in him. But so
much the more malign and more savage becomes the land ill-
sown and untilled, as it has more of good terrestrial vigor.
Some time did I sustain him with my face; showing my youth-
ful eyes to him, I led him with me turned in right direction.
So soon as I was upon the threshold of my second age, and had
changed life, this one took himself from me, and gave himself
to others. When from flesh to spirit I had ascended, and beauty
and virtue were increased in me, I was less dear and less pleas-
ing to him; and he turned his steps along a way not true,
following false images of good, which pay no promise in full.
Nor did it avail me to win by entreaty § inspirations with which,
both in dream and otherwise, I called him back; so little did he
heed them. So low he fell that all means for his salvation were
already short, save showing him the lost people. For this I
visited the gate of the dead, and to him, who has conducted
him up hither, my prayers were borne with weeping. The high
K
*If the wind blow from Africa.
Both devout and piteous.
Through the influences of the circling heavens.
§ From divine grace.
| In Hell.
## p. 4373 (#143) ###########################################
DANTE
4373
decree of God would be broken, if Lethe should be passed, and
such viands should be tasted without any scot of repentance
which may pour forth tears.
"O thou who art on the further side of the sacred river,"
turning her speech with the point to me, which only by the
edge had seemed to me keen, she began anew, going on with-
out delay, "say, say if this be true: to so great an accusation it
behoves that thine own confession be conjoined.
" My power
was so confused that my voice moved, and became extinct be-
fore it could be released by its organs. A little she bore it;
then she said, "What thinkest thou? Reply to me; for the sad
memories in thee are not yet injured by the water. "* Confusion
and fear together mingled forced such a "Yes" from my mouth
that the eyes were needed for the understanding of it.
As a crossbow breaks its cord and its bow when it shoots
with too great tension, and with less force the shaft hits the
mark, so did I burst under that heavy load, pouring forth tears.
and sighs, and the voice slackened along its passage. Where-
upon she to me: "Within those desires of mine that were
leading thee to love the Good beyond which there is nothing
whereto man may aspire, what trenches running traverse, or
what chains didst thou find, for which thou wert obliged thus
to abandon the hope of passing onward? And what entice-
ments, or what advantages on the brow of the others were dis-
played, for which thou wert obliged to court them? " After the
drawing of a bitter sigh, hardly had I the voice that answered,
and the lips with difficulty gave it form. Weeping, I said, "The
present things with their false pleasure turned my steps soon as
your face was hidden. " And she: -"Hadst thou been silent, or
hadst thou denied that which thou dost confess, thy fault would
be not less noted, by such a Judge is it known. But when
the accusation of the sin bursts from one's own cheek, in our
court the wheel turns itself back against the edge.
But yet,
that thou mayst now bear shame for thy error, and that another
time, hearing the Sirens, thou mayst be stronger, lay aside the
seed of weeping and listen; so shalt thou hear how in opposite
direction my buried flesh ought to have moved thee. Never
did nature or art present to thee pleasure such as the fair limbs
―
―――
*Not yet obliterated by the waters of Lethe.
Inspired by me.
Other objects of desire.
## p. 4374 (#144) ###########################################
4374
DANTE
wherein I was inclosed; and they are scattered in earth. And
if the supreme pleasure thus failed thee through my death, what
mortal things ought then to have drawn thee into its desire?
Forsooth thou oughtest, at the first arrow of things deceitful, to
have risen up, following me who was no longer such. Nor
should thy wings have weighed thee downward to await more
blows, either girl or other vanity of so brief a use.
The young
little bird awaits two or three; but before the eyes of the full-
fledged the net is spread in vain, the arrow shot. "
As children, ashamed, dumb, with eyes upon the ground,
stand listening and conscience-stricken and repentant, so was I
standing. And she said, "Since through hearing thou art grieved,
lift up thy beard and thou shalt receive more grief in seeing. "
With less resistance is a sturdy oak uprooted by a native wind,
or by one from the land of Iarbas,* than I raised up my chin at
her command; and when by the beard she asked for my eyes,
truly I recognized the venom of the argument. †
And as my
face stretched upward, my sight perceived that those primal
creatures were resting from their strewing, and my eyes, still
little assured, saw Beatrice turned toward the animal that is only
one person in two natures. Beneath her veil and beyond the
stream she seemed to me more to surpass her ancient self, than
she surpassed the others here when she was here. So pricked
me there the nettle of repentance, that of all other things the
one which most turned me aside unto its love became most
hostile to me. t
Such contrition stung my heart that I fell overcome; and
what I then became she knows who afforded me the cause.
Then, when my heart restored my outward faculties, I saw
above me the lady whom I had found alone,§ and she was saying,
"Hold me, hold me. " She had drawn me into the stream up to
the throat, and dragging me behind was moving upon the water
light as a shuttle. When I was near the blessed shore, "Asper-
ges me" I heard so sweetly that I cannot remember it, far less
* Numidia, of which Iarbas was king.
The beard being the sign of manhood, which should be accompanied by
wisdom.
The one which by its attractions most diverted me from Beatrice.
SA solitary lady whom he had met on first entering the Earthly Paradise,
and who had accompanied him thus far.
The first words of the 7th verse of the 51st Psalm: "Purge me with hyssop,
and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. ”
## p. 4375 (#145) ###########################################
DANTE
4375
can write it. The beautiful lady opened her arms, clasped my
head, and plunged me in where it behoved that I should swallow
the water. Then she took me, and, thus bathed, brought me
within the dance of the four beautiful ones,* and each of them
covered me with her arm. "Here we are nymphs, and in heaven
we are stars; ere Beatrice had descended to the world we were
ordained unto her for her handmaids. We will lead thee to her
eyes; but in the joyous light which is within them, the three
yonder who deeper gaze shall make keen thine own. " Thus
singing they began; and then to the breast of the griffon they
led me with them, where Beatrice was standing turned towa:
us. They said, "See that thou sparest not thy sight: we have
placed thee before the emeralds whence Love of old drew his
arrows upon thee. " A thousand desires hotter than flame bound
my eyes to the relucent eyes which only upon the griffon were
standing fixed. As the sun in a mirror, not otherwise, the two-
fold animal was gleaming therewithin, now with one, now with
another mode. Think, Reader, if I marveled when I saw the
thing stand quiet in itself, while in its image it was transmuting
itself.
While, full of amazement and glad, my soul was tasting that
food which, sating of itself, causes hunger for itself, the other
three, showing themselves in their bearing of loftier order, came
forward dancing to their angelic melody. "Turn, Beatrice, turn
thy holy eyes," was their song, "upon thy faithful one, who to
see thee has taken so many steps. For grace do us the grace
that thou unveil to him thy mouth, so that he may discern the
second beauty which thou concealest. "
O splendor of living light eternal! Who hath become so
pallid under the shadow of Parnassus, or hath so drunk at its
cistern, that he would not seem to have his mind incumbered,
trying to represent thee as thou didst appear there where in
harmony the heaven overshadows thee, when in the open air thou
didst thyself disclose?
*The four cardinal virtues.
The three evangelic virtues.
Now with the divine, now with the human.
## p. 4376 (#146) ###########################################
4376
DANTE
PARADISE
CANTO XXXIII
THE BEATIFIC VISION
[Dante, having been brought by Beatrice to Paradise in the Empyrean, is
left by her in charge of St. Bernard, while she takes her place among the
blessed. Prayer of St. Bernard to the Virgin. - Her intercession. -The vision
of God. -The end of desire. ]
"VIRG
JIRGIN MOTHER, daughter of thine own Son, humble and
exalted more than any creature, fixed term of the eternal
counsel, thou art she who didst so ennoble human nature
that its own Maker disdained not to become His own making.
Within thy womb was rekindled the love through whose warmth
this flower has thus blossomed in the eternal peace. Here thou
art to us the noonday torch of charity, and below, among mor-
tals, thou art the living fount of hope. Lady, thou art so great,
and so availest, that whoso wishes grace, and has not recourse
to thee, wishes his desire to fly without wings. Thy benignity
not only succors him who asks, but oftentimes freely foreruns
the asking. In thee mercy, in thee pity, in thee magnificence,
in thee whatever of goodness is in any creature, are united.
Now doth this man, who, from the lowest abyss of the universe,
far even as here, has seen one by one the lives of spirits, sup-
plicate thee, through grace, for virtue such that he may be able
with his eyes to uplift himself higher toward the Ultimate Salva-
tion. And I, who never for my own vision burned more than I
do for his, proffer to thee all my prayers, and pray that they be
not scant, that with thy prayers thou wouldst dissipate for him.
every cloud of his mortality, so that the Supreme Pleasure may
be displayed to him. Further I pray thee, Queen, who canst
what so thou wilt, that, after so great a vision, thou wouldst
preserve his affections sound. May thy guardianship vanquish
human impulses. Behold Beatrice with all the blessed for my
prayers clasp their hands to thee. "
The eyes beloved and revered by God, fixed on the speaker,
showed to us how pleasing unto her are devout prayers. Then
to the Eternal Light were they directed, on which it is not to be
believed that eye so clear is turned by any creature.
And I, who to the end of all desires was approaching, even
as I ought, ended within myself the ardor of my longings.
## p. 4377 (#147) ###########################################
DANTE
4377
Bernard was beckoning to me, and was smiling, that I should
look upward; but I was already, of my own accord, such as he
wished; for my sight, becoming pure, was entering more and
more through the radiance of the lofty Light which of itself is
true. *
Thenceforward my vision was greater than our speech, which
yields to such a sight, and the memory yields to such excess.
As is he who dreaming sees, and after the dream the passion
remains imprinted, and the rest returns not to the mind, such
am I; for my vision almost wholly fails, while the sweetness
that was born of it yet distills within my heart. Thus the snow
is by the sun unsealed; thus on the wind, in the light leaves,
was lost the saying of the Sibyl.
O Supreme Light, that so high upliftest Thyself from mortal
conceptions, re-lend a little to my mind of what Thou didst
appear, and make my tongue so powerful that it may be able to
leave one single spark of Thy glory for the future people; for
by returning somewhat to my memory and by sounding a little
in these verses, more of Thy victory shall be conceived.
I think that by the keenness of the living ray which I en-
dured, I should have been dazzled if my eyes had been averted
from it. And it comes to my mind that for this reason I was
the more hardy to sustain so much, that I joined my look unto
the Infinite Goodness.
O abundant Grace, whereby I presumed to fix my eyes
through the Eternal Light so far that there I consummated my
vision!
In its depth I saw that whatsoever is dispersed through the
universe is there included, bound with love in one volume; sub-
stance and accidents and their modes, fused together, as it were,
in such wise, that that of which I speak is one simple Light.
The universal form of this knott I believe that I saw, because
in saying this I feel that I more abundantly rejoice. One
instant only is greater oblivion for me than five-and-twenty cen-
turies to the emprise which made Neptune wonder at the shadow
of Argo.
* Light in its essence; all other light is derived from it.
This union of substance and accident.
So overwhelming was the vision that the memory could not retain it
completely even for an instant.
## p. 4378 (#148) ###########################################
4378
DANTE
Thus my mind, wholly rapt, was gazing fixed, motionless,
and intent, and ever with gazing grew enkindled. In that Light
one becomes such that it is impossible he should ever consent to
turn himself from it for other sight; because the Good which is
the object of the will is all collected in it, and outside of it that
is defective which is perfect there.
Now will my speech be shorter even in respect to that which
I remember, than an infant's who still bathes his tongue at the
breast. Not because more than one simple semblance was in the
Living Light wherein I was gazing, which is always such as it
was before; but through my sight, which was growing strong in
me as I looked, one sole appearance, as I myself changed, was
altering itself to me.
Within the profound and clear subsistence of the lofty Light
appeared to me three circles of three colors and of one dimen-
sion; and one appeared reflected by the other, as Iris by Iris,
and the third appeared fire which from the one and from the
other is equally breathed forth.
O how short is the telling, and how feeble toward my con-
ception! and this toward what I saw is such that it suffices not
to call it little.
O Light Eternal, that sole dwellest in Thyself, sole under-
standest Thyself, and, by Thyself understood and understanding,
lovest and smilest on Thyself! That circle, which, thus con-
ceived, appeared in Thee as a reflected light, being somewhile
regarded by my eyes, seemed to me depicted within itself, of its
own very color, by our effigy, wherefore my sight was wholly
set upon it. As is the geometer who wholly applies himself to
measure the circle, and finds not by thinking that principle of
which he is in need, such was I at that new sight. I wished to
see how the image accorded with the circle, and how it has its
place therein; but my own wings were not for this, had it not
been that my mind was smitten by a flash in which its wish
came. *
To my high fantasy here power failed; but now my desire
and my will, like a wheel which evenly is moved, the Love was
turning which moves the Sun and the other stars. †
*The wish to see the mystery of the union of the two natures, the divine
and human in Christ.
That Love which makes sun and stars revolve was giving a concordant
revolution to my desire and my will.
## p. 4379 (#149) ###########################################
4379
JAMES DARMESTETER
(1849-1894)
GOOD example of the latter-day enlightened savant is the
French Jew, James Darmesteter, whose premature death
robbed the modern world of scholarship of one of its most
distinguished figures. Scholars who do noble service in adding to
the sum total of human knowledge often are specialists, the nature
of whose work excludes them from general interest and appreciation.
It was not so with this man,- not alone an Oriental philologist of
more than national repute, but a broadly cultured, original mind, an
enlightened spirit, and a master of literary expression. Darmesteter
calls for recognition as a maker of literature as well as a scientist.
The son of a humble Jewish bookbinder, subjected to the disad-
vantages and hardships of poverty, James Darmesteter was born at
Chateau-Salins in Lorraine in 1849, but got his education in Paris,
early imbibing the Jewish traditions, familiar from youth with the
Bible and the Talmud. At the public school, whence he was gradu-
ated at eighteen, he showed his remarkable intellectual powers and
attracted the attention of scholars like Bréal and Burnouf, who, not-
ing his aptitude for languages, advised devotion to Oriental linguis-
tics. After several years of uncertainty, years spent with books
and in travel, and in the desultory production of poetry and fiction,
philological study was undertaken as his life work, with remarkable
results. For twenty years he labored in this field, and his appoint-
ment in 1882 to succeed Renan as Secretary of the Asiatic Society of
France speaks volumes for the position he won. In 1885 he became
professor of Iranian languages and literature in the College of France.
Other scholastic honors fell to him in due course and good measure.
As a scholar Darmesteter's most important labors were the expo-
sition of Zoroastrianism, the national faith of ancient Persia, which
he made a specialty; and his French translation of and commentary
on the Avesta, the Bible of that religion. As an interpreter of Zoro-
aster he sought to unite synthetically two opposing modern schools:
that which relied solely upon native traditions, and that which, re-
garding these as untrustworthy, drew its conclusions from an exam-
ination of the text, supplemented by the aid of Sanskrit on the side
of language and of the Vedas on the side of religion. Darmesteter's
work was thus boldly comprehensive. He found in the Avesta the
influence of such discordant elements as the Bible, Buddha, and
## p. 4380 (#150) ###########################################
4380
JAMES DARMESTETER
Greek philosophy, and believed that in its present form it was com-
posed at a later time than has been supposed. These technical ques-
tions are still mooted points with the critics. The translation of the
Avesta will perhaps stand as his greatest achievement. A herculean
labor of four years, it was rewarded by the Academy of Inscriptions
and Belles-Lettres with the 20,000-franc prize given but once in a
decade for the work which, in the Academy's opinion, had best
served or brought most honor to the country.
But the technical accomplishments of learning represent but a
fragment of Darmesteter's amazing mental activity. He wrote a
striking book on the Mahdi, the tenacious belief in the Mohammedan
Messiah taking hold on his imagination. He was versed in English
literature, edited Shakespeare, and introduced his countrymen to
Browning. While in Afghanistan on a philological mission he gath-
ered, merely as a side pursuit, a unique collection of Afghan folk-
songs, and the result was a fascinating and valuable paper in a new
field. He helped to found a leading French review. Articles of
travel, critiques on subjects political, religious, literary, and social, fell
fast from his pen. In his general essays on these broader, more vital
aspects of thought and life, he is an artist in literary expression, a
writer with a distinct and great gift for form. Here his vigorous
mind, ample training, his humanistic tastes and humanitarian aspira-
tions, are all finely in evidence.
The English reader who seeks an introduction to Darmesteter is
directed to his 'Selected Essays,' translated by Helen B. Jastrow,
edited with a memoir by Professor Morris Jastrow, Jr. (Houghton,
Mifflin and Company, Boston). There is a translation by Ada S.
Ballin of his 'The Mahdi' (Harper and Brothers, New York); and in
the Contemporary Review for January, 1895, is a noble appreciation
of Darmesteter by his friend Gaston Paris. In the Sacred Books of
the East' will be found an English rendering of the Avesta by
Darmesteter and Mills.
As a thinker in the philosophical sense Darmesteter was remark-
able. Early breaking away from orthodox Judaism, his philological
and historical researches led him to accept the conclusions of de-
structive criticism with regard to the Bible; and a disciple of Renan,
he became enrolled among those scholars who see in science the one
explanation of the universe. But possessing, along with his keen.
analytic powers, a nature dominantly ethical, he made humanity his
idol. His patriotism for France was intense; and, a Jew always
sympathetic to the wonderful history of his people,-in his later
years by a brilliant, poetical, almost audacious interpretation of the
Old Testament,- he found a solution of the riddle of life in the
Hebrew prophets. What he deemed their essential faith — Judaism
## p. 4381 (#151) ###########################################
JAMES DARMESTETER
4381
stripped of ritual and legend - he declared to be in harmony with
the scientific creed of the present: belief in the unity of moral law,—
the Old Testament Jehovah; and belief in the eventual triumph of
justice upon this earth, the modern substitute for the New Testa-
ment heaven. This doctrine, which in most hands would be cold and
comfortless enough, he makes vital, engaging, through the passionate
presentation of an eloquent lover of his fellow-man. In a word,
Darmesteter was a Positivist, dowered, like that other noble Pos-
itivist George Eliot, with a nature sensitive to spiritual issues.
An idyllic passage in Darmesteter's toilful scholar life was his
tender friendship with the gifted English woman, A. Mary F. Robin-
son. Attracted by her lovely verse, the intellectual companionship
ripened into love, and for his half-dozen final years he enjoyed her
wifely aid and sympathy in what seems to have been an ideal union.
The end, when it came, was quick and painless. Always of a frail
constitution, stunted in body from childhood, he died in harness,
October 19th, 1894, his head falling forward on his desk as he wrote.
The tributes that followed make plain the enthusiastic admiration
James Darmesteter awakened in those who knew him best. The
leading Orientalist of his generation, he added to the permanent
acquisitions of scholarship, and made his impress as one of the
remarkable personalities of France in the late nineteenth century.
In the language of a friend, "a Jew by race, a Greek by culture, a
Frenchman in heart," he furnishes another illustration of that strain
of genius which seems like a compensatory gift to the Jewish folk for
its manifold buffetings at the hand of Fate.
ERNEST RENAN
From 'Selected Essays': copyrighted 1895 by Houghton, Mifflin and Company
Renan are due to
THE
HE mistaken judgments passed upon M.
the fact that in his work he did not place the emphasis
upon the Good, but upon the True. Men concluded that
for him, therefore, science was the whole of life. The environ-
ment in which he was formed was forgotten,—an environment
in which the moral sense was exquisite and perfect, while the
scientific sense was nil. He did not need to discover the
moral sense, it was the very atmosphere in which he lived.
When the scientific sense awoke in him, and he beheld the
world and history transfigured by it, he was dazzled, and the
influence lasted throughout his life. He dreamed of making
France understand this new revelation; he was the apostle of
-
## p. 4382 (#152) ###########################################
4382
JAMES DARMESTETER
this gospel of truth and science, but in heart and mind he
never attacked what is permanent and divine in the other
gospel. Thus he was a complete man, and deserved the
disdain of dilettantes morally dead, and of mystics scientifically
atonic.
What heritage has M. Renan left to posterity? As a
scholar he created religious criticism in France, and prepared
for universal science that incomparable instrument, the Corpus.
As an author he bequeathed to universal art, pages which will
endure, and to him may be applied what he said of George
Sand:-"He had the divine faculty of giving wings to his sub-
ject, of producing under the form of fine art the idea which in
other hands remained crude and formless. " As a philosopher
he left behind a mass of ideas which he did not care to collect
in doctrinal shape, but which nevertheless constitute a coherent
whole. One thing only in this world is certain,-duty. One
truth is plain in the course of the world as science reveals it:
the world is advancing to a higher, more perfect form of
being. The supreme happiness of man is to draw nearer to
this God to come, contemplating him in science, and preparing,
by action, the advent of a humanity nobler, better endowed,
and more akin to the ideal Being.
JUDAISM
From 'Selected Essays': copyrighted 1895 by Houghton, Mifflin and Company
Ju
UDAISM has not made the miraculous the basis of its dogma,
nor installed the supernatural as a permanent factor in the
progress of events. Its miracles, from the time of the Mid-
dle Ages, are but a poetic detail, a legendary recital, a picturesque
decoration; and its cosmogony, borrowed in haste from Babylon
by the last compiler of the Bible, with the stories of the apple
and the serpent, over which so many Christian generations have
labored, never greatly disturbed the imagination of the rabbis,
nor weighed very heavily upon the thought of the Jewish phi-
losophers. Its rites were never "an instrument of faith," an
expedient to "lull" rebellious thought into faith; they are merely
cherished customs, a symbol of the family, of transitory value,
and destined to disappear when there shall be but one family in
a world converted to the one truth. Set aside all these miracles,
## p. 4383 (#153) ###########################################
JAMES DARMESTETER
4383
all these rites, and behind them will be found the two great
dogmas which, ever since the prophets, constitute the whole of
Judaism-the Divine unity and Messianism; unity of law through-
out the world, and the terrestrial triumph of justice in humanity.
These are the two dogmas which at the present time illuminate
humanity in its progress, both in the scientific and social order
of things, and which are termed in modern parlance unity of
forces and belief in progress.
For this reason, Judaism is the only religion that has never
entered into conflict, and never can, with either science or social
progress, and that has witnessed, and still witnesses, all their
conquests without a sense of fear. These are not hostile forces
that it accepts or submits to merely from a spirit of toleration
or policy, in order to save the remains of its power by a com-
promise. They are old friendly voices, which it recognizes and
salutes with joy; for it has heard them resound for centuries.
already, in the axioms of free thought and in the cry of the
suffering heart. For this reason the Jews, in all the countries
which have entered upon the new path, have begun to take a
share in all the great works of civilization, in the triple field of
science, of art, and of action; and that share, far from being an
insignificant one, is out of all proportion to the brief time that
has elapsed since their enfranchisement.
Does this mean that Judaism should nurse dreams of ambi-
tion, and think of realizing one day that "invisible church of the
future" invoked by some in prayer? This would be an illusion,
whether on the part of a narrow sectarian, or on that of an
enlightened individual. The truth however remains, that the
Jewish spirit can still be a factor in this world, making for the
highest science, for unending progress; and that the mission of
the Bible is not yet complete. The Bible is not responsible for
the partial miscarriage of Christianity, due to the compromises
made by its organizers, who, in their too great zeal to conquer
and convert Paganism, were themselves converted by it. But
everything in Christianity which comes in a direct line from
Judaism lives, and will live; and it is Judaism which through
Christianity has cast into the old polytheistic world, to ferment
there until the end of time, the sentiment of unity, and an
impatience to bring about charity and justice. The reign of the
Bible, and also of the Evangelists in so far as they were inspired
by the Bible, can become established only in proportion as the
## p. 4384 (#154) ###########################################
4384
JAMES DARMESTETER
positive religions connected with it lose their power. Great reli-
gions outlive their altars and their priests. Hellenism, abolished,
counts less skeptics to-day than in the days of Socrates and
Anaxagoras. The gods of Homer died when Phidias carved
them in marble, and now they are immortally enthroned in the
thought and heart of Europe. The Cross may crumble into
dust, but there were words spoken under its shadow in Galilee,
the echo of which will forever vibrate in the human conscience.
And when the nation who made the Bible shall have disap-
peared, the race and the cult, though leaving no visible
trace of its passage upon earth, its imprint will remain in the
depth of the heart of generations, who will, unconsciously per-
haps, live upon what has thus been implanted in their breasts.
Humanity, as it is fashioned in the dreams of those who desire
to be called freethinkers, may with the lips deny the Bible and
its work; but humanity can never deny it in its heart, without
the sacrifice of the best that it contains, faith in unity and hope
for justice, and without a relapse into the mythology and the
"might makes right" of thirty centuries ago.
-
―――
## p.
