In the first of them, do you not see the
trembling
of her wings
against the sky?
against the sky?
Stories from the Italian Poets
The
eclipse was like that which took place when the Supreme died upon the
Cross.
Saint Peter resumed with a voice not less awfully changed than his
appearance:
"Not for the purpose of being sold for money was the spouse of Christ
fed and nourished with my blood, and with the blood of Linus,--the blood
of Cletus. Sextus did not bleed for it, nor Pius, nor Callixtus, nor
Urban; men, for whose deaths all Christendom wept. They died that souls
might be innocent and go to Heaven. Never was it intention of ours, that
the sitters in the holy chair should divide one half of Christendom
against the other; should turn my keys into ensigns of war against the
faithful; and stamp my very image upon mercenary and lying documents,
which make me, here in Heaven, blush and turn cold to think of. Arm
of God, why sleepest thou? Men out of Gascony and Cahors are even
now making ready to drink our blood. O lofty beginning, to what vile
conclusion must thou come! But the high Providence, which made Scipio
the sustainer of the Roman sovereignty of the world, will fail not its
timely succour. And thou, my son, that for weight of thy mortal clothing
must again descend to earth, see thou that thou openest thy mouth, and
hidest not from others what has not been hidden from thyself. "
As white and thick as the snows go streaming athwart the air when the
sun is in Capricorn, so the angelical spirits that had been gathered in
the air of Saturn streamed away after the Apostle, as he turned with the
other saints to depart; and the eyes of Dante followed them till they
became viewless. [49]
The divine eyes of Beatrice recalled him to herself; and at the same
instant the two companions found themselves in the ninth Heaven or
_Primum Mobile_, the last of the material Heavens, and the mover of
those beneath it.
[Footnote 49: In spite of the unheavenly nature of invective, of
something of a lurking conceit in the making an eclipse out of a blush,
and in the positive bathos, and I fear almost indecent irrelevancy of
the introduction of Beatrice at all on such an occasion, much more under
the feeble aspect of one young lady blushing for another,--this scene
altogether is a very grand one; and the violence itself of the holy
invective awful.
Here he had a glimpse of the divine essence, in likeness of a point of
inconceivably sharp brightness enringed with the angelic hierarchies.
All earth, and heaven, and nature, hung from it. Beatrice explained
many mysteries to him connected with that sight; and then vehemently
denounced the false and foolish teachers that quit the authority of the
Bible for speculations of their own, and degrade the preaching of the
gospel with ribald jests, and legends of Saint Anthony and his pig. [50]
Returning, however, to more celestial thoughts, her face became so full
of beauty, that Dante declares he must cease to endeavour to speak of
it, and that he doubts whether the sight can ever be thoroughly enjoyed
by any save its Maker. [51] Her look carried him upward as before, and
he was now in the Empyrean, or region of Pure Light;--of light made of
intellect full of love; love of truth, full of joy; joy, transcendant
above all sweetness.
Streams of living radiance came rushing and flashing round about him,
swathing him with light, as the lightning sometimes enwraps and dashes
against the blinded eyes; but the light was love here, and instead of
injuring, gave new power to the object it embraced.
With this new infusion of strength into his organs of vision, Dante
looked, and saw a vast flood of it, effulgent with flashing splendours,
and pouring down like a river between banks painted with the loveliest
flowers. Fiery living sparkles arose from it on all sides, and pitched
themselves into the cups of the flowers, where they remained awhile,
like rubies set in gold; till inebriated with the odours, they recast
themselves into the bosom of the flood; and ever as one returned,
another leaped forth. Beatrice bade him dip his eyes into the light,
that he might obtain power to see deeper into its nature; for the river,
and the jewels that sprang out of it to and fro, and the laughing
flowers on the banks, were themselves but shadows of the truth which
they included; not, indeed, in their essential selves, but inasmuch as
without further assistance the beholder's eyes could not see them as
they were. Dante rushed to the stream as eagerly as the lips of an
infant to the breast, when it has slept beyond its time; and his
eyelashes had no sooner touched it, than the length of the river became
a breadth and a circle, and its real nature lay unveiled before him,
like a face when a mask is taken off. It was the whole two combined
courts of Heaven, the angelical and the human, in circumference larger
than would hold the sun, and all blazing beneath a light, which was
reflected downwards in its turn upon the sphere of the Primum Mobile
below it, the mover of the universe. And as a green cliff by the water's
side seems to delight in seeing itself reflected from head to foot with
all its verdure and its flowers; so, round about on all sides, upon
thousands of thrones, the blessed spirits that once lived on earth sat
beholding themselves in the light. And yet even all these together
formed but the lowest part of the spectacle, which ascended above them,
tier upon tier, in the manner of an immeasurable rose,--all dilating
itself, doubling still and doubling, and all odorous with the praises
of an ever-vernal sun. Into the base of it, as into the yellow of the
flower, with a dumb glance that yet promised to speak, Beatrice drew
forward her companion, and said, "Behold the innumerable assemblage of
the white garments! Behold our city, how large its circuit! Behold our
seats, which are, nevertheless, so full, that few comers are wanted to
fill them! On that lofty one at which thou art looking, surmounted with
the crown, and which shall be occupied before thou joinest this bridal
feast, shall be seated the soul of the great Henry, who would fain set
Italy right before she is prepared for it. [52] The blind waywardness of
which ye are sick renders ye like the bantling who, while he is dying of
hunger, kicks away his nurse. And Rome is governed by one that cannot
walk in the same path with such a man, whatever be the road. [53] But God
will not long endure him. He will be thrust down into the pit with Simon
Magus; and his feet, when he arrives there, will thrust down the man of
Alagna still lower. [54]"
In the form, then, of a white rose the blessed multitude of human souls
lay manifest before the eyes of the poet; and now he observed, that the
winged portion of the blest, the angels, who fly up with their wings
nearer to Him that fills them with love, came to and fro upon the rose
like bees; now descending into its bosom, now streaming back to the
source of their affection. Their faces were all fire, their wings
golden, their garments whiter than snow. Whenever they descended on
the flower, they went from fold to fold, fanning their loins, and
communicating the peace and ardour which they gathered as they gave.
Dante beheld all,--every flight and action of the whole winged
multitude,--without let or shadow; for he stood in the region of light
itself, and light has no obstacle where it is deservedly vouchsafed.
"Oh," cries the poet, "if the barbarians that came from the north stood
dumb with amazement to behold the magnificence of Rome, thinking they
saw unearthly greatness in the Lateran, what must I have thought, who
had thus come from human to divine, from time to eternity, from the
people of Florence to beings just and sane? "
Dante stood, without a wish either to speak or to hear. He felt like a
pilgrim who has arrived within the place of his devotion, and who looks
round about him, hoping some day to relate what he sees. He gazed
upwards and downwards, and on every side round about, and saw movements
graceful with every truth of innocence, and faces full of loving
persuasion, rich in their own smiles and in the light of the smiles of
others.
He turned to Beatrice, but she was gone;--gone, as a messenger from
herself told him, to resume her seat in the blessed rose, which the
messenger accordingly pointed out. She sat in the third circle from the
top, as far from Dante as the bottom of the sea is from the region of
thunder; and yet he saw her as plainly as if she had been close at hand.
He addressed words to her of thanks for all she had done for him, and
a hope for her assistance after death; and she looked down at him and
smiled.
The messenger was St. Bernard. He bade the poet lift his eyes higher;
and Dante beheld the Virgin Mary sitting above the rose, in the centre
of an intense redness of light, like another dawn. Thousands of angels
were hanging buoyant around her, each having its own distinct splendour
and adornment, and all were singing, and expressing heavenly mirth; and
she smiled on them with such loveliness, that joy was in the eyes of all
the blessed.
At Mary's feet was sitting Eve, beautiful--she that opened the wound
which Mary closed; and at the feet of Eve was Rachel, with Beatrice; and
at the feet of Rachel was Sarah, and then Judith, then Rebecca, then
Ruth, ancestress of him out of whose penitence came the song of the
Miserere;[55] and so other Hebrew women, down all the gradations of the
flower, dividing, by the line which they made, the Christians who lived
before Christ from those who lived after; a line which, on the opposite
side of the rose, was answered by a similar one of Founders of the
Church, at the top of whom was John the Baptist. The rose also was
divided horizontally by a step which projected beyond the others, and
underneath which, known by the childishness of their looks and voices,
were the souls of such as were too young to have attained Heaven by
assistance of good works.
St. Bernard then directed his companion to look again at the Virgin, and
gather from her countenance the power of beholding the face of Christ as
God. Her aspect was flooded with gladness from the spirits around her;
while the angel who had descended to her on earth now hailed her above
with "Ave, Maria! " singing till the whole host of Heaven joined in
the song. St. Bernard then prayed to her for help to his companion's
eyesight. Beatrice, with others of the blest, was seen joining in the
prayer, their hands stretched upwards; and the Virgin, after benignly
looking on the petitioners, gazed upwards herself, shewing the way with
her own eyes to the still greater vision. Dante then looked also, and
beheld what he had no words to speak, or memory to endure.
He awoke as from a dream, retaining only a sense of sweetness that ever
trickled to his heart.
Earnestly praying afterwards, however, that grace might be so far
vouchsafed to a portion of his recollection, as to enable him to convey
to his fellow-creatures one smallest glimpse of the glory of what he
saw, his ardour was so emboldened by help of the very mystery at whose
sight he must have perished had he faltered, that his eyes, unblasted,
attained to a perception of the Sum of Infinitude. He beheld,
concentrated in one spot--written in one volume of Love--all which is
diffused, and can become the subject of thought and study throughout the
universe--all substance and accident and mode--all so compounded that
they become one light. He thought he beheld at one and the same time
the oneness of this knot, and the universality of all which it implies;
because, when it came to his recollection, his heart dilated, and in the
course of one moment he felt ages of impatience to speak of it.
But thoughts as well as words failed him; and though ever afterwards he
could no more cease to yearn towards it, than he could take defect for
completion, or separate the idea of happiness from the wish to attain
it, still the utmost he could say of what he remembered would fall as
short of right speech as the sounds of an infant's tongue while it is
murmuring over the nipple; for the more he had looked at that light,
the more he found in it to amaze him, so that his brain toiled with
the succession of the astonishments. He saw, in the deep but clear
self-subsistence, three circles of three different colours of the same
breadth, one of them reflecting one of the others as rainbow does
rainbow, and the third consisting of a fire equally breathing from
both. [56]
O eternal Light! thou that dwellest in thyself alone, thou alone
understandest thyself, and art by thyself understood, and, so
understanding, thou laughest at thyself, and lovest.
The second, or reflected circle, as it went round, seemed to be painted
by its own colours with the likeness of a human face. [57]
But how this was done, or how the beholder was to express it, threw
his mind into the same state of bewilderment as the mathematician
experiences when he vainly pores over the circle to discover the
principle by which he is to square it.
He did, however, in a manner discern it. A flash of light was vouchsafed
him for the purpose; but the light left him no power to impart the
discernment; nor did he feel any longer impatient for the gift. Desire
became absorbed in submission, moving in as smooth unison as the
particles of a wheel, with the Love that is the mover of the sun and the
stars. [58]
[Footnote 1: A curious and happy image.
"Tornan de' nostri visi le postille
Debili sì, che perla in bianca fronte
Non vien men tosto a le nostre pupille:
Tali vid' io più facce a parlar pronte. " ]
[Footnote 2: "Rodolfo da Tossignano, _Hist. Seraph. Relig. _ P. i. p.
138, as cited by Lombardi, relates the following legend of Piccarda:
'Her brother Corso, inflamed with rage against his virgin sister,
having joined with him Farinata, an infamous assassin, and twelve other
abandoned ruffians, entered the monastery by a ladder, and carried
away his sister forcibly to his own house; and then, tearing off her
religious habit, compelled her to go in a secular garment to her
nuptials. Before the spouse of Christ came together with her new
husband, she knelt down before a crucifix, and recommended her virginity
to Christ. Soon after, her whole body was smitten with leprosy, so as
to strike grief and horror into the beholders; and thus, in a few days,
through the divine disposal, she passed with a palm of virginity to the
Lord. Perhaps (adds the worthy Franciscan), our poet not being able to
certify himself entirely of this occurrence, has chosen to pass it over
discreetly, by making Piccarda say, 'God knows how, after that, my life
was framed. '"--_Cary_, ut sup. p. 137. ]
[Footnote 3: A lovely simile indeed.
"Tanto lieta
Ch' arder parea d'amor nel primo foco. "
[Footnote 4: Costanza, daughter of Ruggieri, king of Sicily, thus taken
out of the monastery, was mother to the Emperor Frederick the Second.
"She was fifty years old or more at the time" (says Mr. Cary, quoting
from Muratori and others); "and because it was not credited that she
could have a child at that age, she was delivered in a pavilion; and it
was given out, that any lady who pleased was at liberty to see her. Many
came and saw her, and the suspicion ceased. "--_Translation of Dante_, ut
sup. p. 137. ]
[Footnote 5: Probably an allusion to Dante's own wanderings. ]
[Footnote 6:
"Hosanna Sanctus Deus Sabaoth
Superillustrans claritate tuâ
Felices ignes horum Malahoth. "
_Malahoth_; Hebrew, _kingdoms_. ]
[Footnote 7: The epithet is not too strong, as will be seen by the
nature of the inhabitants. ]
[Footnote 8: Charles Martel, son of the king of Naples and Sicily, and
crowned king of Hungary, seems to have become acquainted with Dante
during the poet's youth, when the prince met his royal father in the
city of Florence. He was brother of Robert, who succeeded the father,
and who was the friend of Petrarch.
"The adventures of Cunizza, overcome by the influence of her star," says
Cary, "are related by the chronicler Rolandino of Padua, lib. i. cap. 3,
in Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script. tom. viii. p. 173. She eloped from her
first husband, Richard of St. Boniface, in the company of Sordello (see
Purg. canto vi. and vii. ); with whom she is supposed to have cohabited
before her marriage: then lived with a soldier of Trevigi, whose wife
was living at the same time in the same city; and, on his being murdered
by her brother the tyrant, was by her brother married to a nobleman of
Braganzo: lastly, when he also had fallen by the same hand, she, after
her brother's death, was again wedded in Verona. "--_Translation of
Dante_, ut sup. p. 147. See what Foscolo says of her in the _Discorso
sul Testo_, p. 329.
Folco, the gallant Troubadour, here placed between Cunizza and Rahab,
is no other than Folques, bishop of Thoulouse, the persecutor of the
Albigenses. It is of him the brutal anecdote is related, that, being
asked, during an indiscriminate attack on that people, how the orthodox
and heterodox were to be distinguished, he said, "Kill all: God will
know his own. "
For Rahab, see _Joshua_, chap. ii. and vi. ; and _Hebrews_. xi. 31]
[Footnote 9: The reader need not be required to attend to the
extraordinary theological disclosures in the whole of the preceding
passage, nor yet to consider how much more they disclose, than theology
or the poet might have desired. ]
[Footnote 10: These fifteen personages are chiefly theologians and
schoolmen, whose names and obsolete writings are, for the most part, no
longer worth mention. The same may be said of the band that comes after
them.
Dante should not have set them dancing. It is impossible (every
respectfulness of endeavour notwithstanding) to maintain the gravity
of one's imagination at the thought of a set of doctors of the Church,
Venerable Bede included, wheeling about in giddy rapture like so many
dancing dervises, and keeping time to their ecstatic anilities with
voices tinkling like church-clocks. You may invest them with as much
light or other blessed indistinctness as you please; the beards and the
old ages will break through. In vain theologians may tell us that our
imaginations are not exalted enough. The answer (if such a charge must
be gravely met) is, that Dante's whole Heaven itself is not exalted
enough, how ever wonderful and beautiful in parts. The schools, and the
forms of Catholic worship, held even his imagination down. There is
more heaven in one placid idea of love than in all these dances and
tinklings. ]
[Footnote 11:
"Benigno a' suoi, ed a' nimici crudo. "
Cruel indeed;--the founder of the Inquisition! The "loving minion"
is Mr. Cary's excellent translation of "_amoroso drudo_. " But what a
minion, and how loving! With fire and sword and devilry, and no wish (of
course) to thrust his own will and pleasure, and bad arguments, down
other people's throats! St. Dominic was a Spaniard. So was Borgia.
So was Philip the Second. There seems to have been an inherent
semi-barbarism in the character of Spain, which it has never got rid of
to this day. If it were not for Cervantes, and some modern patriots, it
would hardly appear to belong to the right European community. Even
Lope de Vega was an inquisitor; and Mendoza, the entertaining author of
Lazarillo de Tormes, a cruel statesman. Cervantes, however, is enough to
sweeten a whole peninsula. ]
[Footnote 12: What a pity the reporter of this advice had not humility
enough to apply it to himself! ]
[Footnote 13:
"O sanguis meus, o superinfusa
Gratia Dei, sicut tibi, cui
Bis unquam coeli janua reclusa? "
The spirit says this in Latin, as if to veil the compliment to the poet
in "the obscurity of a learned language. " And in truth it is a little
strong. ]
[Footnote 14:
"Che dentro a gli occhi suoi ardeva un riso
Tal, ch' io pensai co' miei toccar lo fondo
De la mia grazia e del mio Paradiso. "
That is, says Lombardi, "I thought my eyes could not possibly be more
favoured and imparadised" (Pensai che non potessero gli occhi miei
essere graziati ed imparadisati maggiormente)--_Variorum edition of
Dante_, Padua, 1822, vol. iii. p. 373. ]
[Footnote 15: Here ensues the famous description of those earlier times
in Florence, which Dante eulogises at the expense of his own. See the
original passage, with another version, in the Appendix. ]
[Footnote 16: Bellincion Berti was a noble Florentine, of the house of
the Ravignani. Cianghella is said to have been an abandoned woman,
of manners as shameless as her morals. Lapo Salterelli, one of the
co-exiles of Dante, and specially hated by him, was a personage who
appears to have exhibited the rare combination of judge and fop. An old
commentator, in recording his attention to his hair, seems to intimate
that Dante alludes to it in contrasting him with Cincinnatus. If so,
Lapo might have reminded the poet of what Cicero says of his beloved
Cæsar;--that he once saw him scratching the top of his head with the tip
of his finger, that he might not discompose the locks. ]
[Footnote 17:
"Chi ei si furo, e onde venner quivi,
Più è tacer che ragionare onesto. "
Some think Dante was ashamed to speak of these ancestors, from the
lowness of their origin; others that he did not choose to make them a
boast, for the height of it. I suspect, with Lombardi, from his general
character, and from the willingness he has avowed to make such boasts
(see the opening of canto xvi. , Paradise, in the original), that while
he claimed for them a descent from the Romans (see Inferno, canto
xv. 73, &c. ), he knew them to be] poor in fortune, perhaps of humble
condition. What follows, in the text of our abstract, about the purity
of the old Florentine blood, even in the veins of the humblest mechanic,
may seem to intimate some corroboration of this; and is a curious
specimen of republican pride and scorn. This horror of one's neighbours
is neither good Christianity, nor surely any very good omen of that
Italian union, of which "Young Italy" wishes to think Dante such a
harbinger.
All this too, observe, is said in the presence of a vision of Christ on
the Cross! ]
[Footnote 18: The _Column, Verrey_ (vair, variegated, checkered with
argent and azure), and the _Balls_ or (Palle d'oro), were arms of old
families. I do not trouble the reader with notes upon mere family-names,
of which nothing else is recorded. ]
[Footnote 19: An allusion, apparently acquiescent, to the superstitious
popular opinion that the peace of Florence was bound up with the statue
of Mars on the old bridge, at the base of which Buondelmonte was slain.
With this Buondelmonte the dissensions in Florence were supposed to have
first begun. Macchiavelli's account of him is, that he was about to
marry a young lady of the Amidei family, when a widow of one of the
Donati, who had designed her own daughter for him, contrived that
he should see her; the consequence of which was, that he broke his
engagement, and was assassinated. _Historie Fiorentine_, lib. ii. ]
[Footnote 20:
"Tu lascerai ogni cosa diletta
Più caramente; e questo e quello strale
Che l'arco de l'esilio pria saetta.
Tu proverai sì come sa di sale
Lo pane altrui, e com'è duro calle
Lo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale.
E quel che più ti graverà le spalle,
Sarà la compagnia malvagia e scempia
Con la qual tu cadrai in questa valle:
Che tutta ingrata, tutta matta ed empia
Si farà contra te: ma poco appresso
Ella, non tu, n'avrà rossa la tempia.
Di sua bestialitate il suo processo
Farà la pruova, sì ch' a te fia bello
Averti fatta parte per te stesso. "
[Footnote 21: The Roman eagle. These are the arms of the Scaligers of
Verona. ]
[Footnote 22: A prophecy of the renown of Can Grande della Scala, who
had received Dante at his court. ]
[Footnote 23: "Letizia era ferza del paléo"]
[Footnote 24: Supposed to be one of the early Williams, Princes of
Orange; but it is doubted whether the First, in the time of Charlemagne,
or the Second, who followed Godfrey of Bouillon. Mr. Cary thinks the
former; and the mention of his kinsman Rinaldo (Ariosto's Paladin? )
seems to confirm his opinion; yet the situation of the name in the text
brings it nearer to Godfrey; and Rinoardo (the name of Rinaldo in Dante)
might possibly mean "Raimbaud," the kinsman and associate of the second
William. Robert Guiscard is the Norman who conquered Naples. ]
[Footnote 25: Exquisitely beautiful feeling!
[Footnote 29: Most beautiful is this simile of the lark:
"Prima cantando, e poi tace contenta
De l'ultima dolcezza che la sazia. "
In the _Pentameron and Pentalogia_, Petrarch is made to say, "All the
verses that ever were written on the nightingale are scarcely worth the
beautiful triad of this divine poet on the lark [and then he repeats
them].
In the first of them, do you not see the trembling of her wings
against the sky? As often as I repeat them, my ear is satisfied, my
heart (like hers) contented.
"_Boccaccio. _--I agree with you in the perfect and unrivalled beauty of
the first; but in the third there is a redundance. Is not _contenta_
quite enough without _che la sazia? _The picture is before us, the
sentiment within us; and, behold, we kick when we are full of manna.
"_Petrarch. _--I acknowledge the correctness and propriety of your
remark; and yet beauties in poetry must be examined as carefully as
blemishes, and even more. "--p. 92.
Perhaps Dante would have argued that _sazia_ expresses the satiety
itself, so that the very superfluousness becomes a propriety. ]
[Footnote 30:
"E come a buon cantor buon citarista
Fa seguitar to guizzo de la corda
In che più di piacer lo canto acquista;
Sì, mentre che parlò, mi si ricorda,
Ch'io vidi le due luci benedette,
Pur come batter d'occhi si concorda,
Con le parole muover le fiammette. " ]
[Footnote 31: A corrector of clerical abuses, who, though a cardinal,
and much employed in public affairs, preferred the simplicity of a
private life. He has left writings, the eloquence of which, according to
Tiraboschi, is "worthy of a better age. " Petrarch also makes honourable
mention of him. See _Cary_, ut sup. p. 169. Dante lived a good while
in the monastery of Catria, and is said to have finished his poem
there. --_Lombardi in loc. _ vol. III. p. 547. ]
[Footnote 32: The cardinal's hat. ]
[Footnote 33: "Sì che duo bestie van sott' una pelle. "]
[Footnote 34:
"Dintorno a questa (voce) vennero e fermarsi,
E fero un grido di sì alto suono,
Che non potrebbe qui assomigliarsi;
Nè io lo 'ntesi, sì mi vinse il tuono. "
Around this voice they flocked, a mighty crowd,
And raised a shout so huge, that earthly wonder
Knoweth no likeness for a peal so loud;
Nor could I hear the words, it spoke such thunder.
If a Longinus had written after Dante, he would have put this passage
into his treatise on the Sublime. ]
[Footnote 35: Benedict, the founder of the order called after his name.
Macarius, an Egyptian monk and moralist. Romoaldo, founder of the
Camaldoli. ]
[Footnote 36: The reader of English poetry will be reminded of a passage
in Cowley
"Lo, I mount; and lo,
How small the biggest parts of earth's proud title shew!
Where shall I find the noble British land?
Lo, I at last a northern speck espy,
Which in the sea does lie,
And seems a grain o' the sand.
For this will any sin, or bleed?
Of civil wars is this the meed?
And is it this, alas, which we,
Oh, irony of words! do call Great Brittanie? "
And he afterwards, on reaching higher depths of silence, says very
finely, and with a beautiful intimation of the all-inclusiveness of the
Deity by the use of a singular instead of a plural verb,--
"Where am I now? angels and God is here. "
All which follows in Dante, up to the appearance of Saint Peter, is full
of grandeur and loveliness. ]
[Footnote 37:
"Come l' augello intra l'amate fronde,
Posato al nido de' suoi dolci nati
La notte che le cose ci nasconde,
Che per veder gli aspetti desiati,
E per trovar lo cibo onde gli pasca,
In che i gravi labor gli sono aggrati,
Previene 'l tempo in su l'aperta frasca,
E con ardente affetto il sole aspetta,
Fiso guardando pur che l'alba nasca;
Così la donna mia si stava eretta
E attenta, involta in ver la plaga
Sotto la quale il sol mostra men fretta:
Sì the veggendola io sospesa e vaga,
Fecimi quale è quei che disiando
Altro vorria, e sperando s'appaga. " ]
[Footnote 38:
"Quale ne' plenilunii sereni
Trivia ride tra le Ninfe eterne,
Che dipingono 'l ciel per tutti i seni. "
[Footnote 39: He has seen Christ in his own unreflected person. ]
[Footnote 40: The Virgin Mary. ]
[Footnote 41:
"Mi rendei
A la battaglia de' debili cigli. "]
[Footnote 42:
"Ambo le luci mi dipinse. "
[Footnote 43:
"Qualunque melodia più dolce suona
Qua giù, e più a se l'anima tira,
Parebbe nube che squarciata tuona,
Comparata al sonar di quella lira
Onde si coronava il bel zaffiro
Del quale il ciel più chiaro s' inzaffira. " ]
[Footnote 44:
"Benedicendomi cantando
Tre volte cinse me, sì com' io tacqui,
L' Apostolico lume, al cui comando
Io avea detto; sì nel dir gli piacqui. "
It was this passage, and the one that follows it, which led Foscolo to
suspect that Dante wished to lay claim to a divine mission; an opinion
which has excited great indignation among the orthodox. See his
_Discorso sul Testo_, ut sup. pp. 61, 77-90 and 335-338; and the preface
of the Milanese Editors to the "Convito" of Dante,--_Opere Minori_,
12mo, vol ii. p. xvii. Foscolo's conjecture seems hardly borne out by
the context; but I think Dante had boldness and self-estimation enough
to have advanced any claim whatsoever, had events turned out as he
expected. What man but himself (supposing him the believer he professed
to be) would have thought of thus making himself free of the courts of
Heaven, and constituting St. Peter his applauding catechist! ]
[Footnote 45: The verses quoted in the preceding note conclude the
twenty-fourth canto of Paradise; and those, of which the passage just
given is a translation, commence the twenty-fifth:
"Se mai continga, che 'l poema sacro
Al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra
Sì che m' ha fatto per più anni macro,
Vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra
Del bello ovile ov' io dormi' agnello
Nimico a' lupi che gli danno guerra;
Con altra voce omai, con altro vello
Ritornerò poeta, ed in sul fonte
Del mio battesmo prenderò 'l capello:
Perocchè ne la fede che fa conte
L' anime a Dio, quiv' entra' io, e poi
Pietro per lei sì mi girò la fronte. " ]
[Footnote 46: "Sperent in te. " _Psalm_ ix. 10. The English version says,
"And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee. "]
[Footnote 47:
"Tal volta un animal coverto broglia
Sì che l' affetto convien che si paia
Per lo seguir che face a lui la 'nvoglia. "
A natural, but strange, and surely not sufficiently dignified image for
the occasion. It is difficult to be quite content with a former one, in
which the greetings of St. Peter and St. James are compared to those of
doves murmuring and sidling round about one another; though Christian
sentiment may warrant it, if we do not too strongly present the Apostles
to one's imagination. ]
[Footnote 48:
"Tal ne la sembianza sua divenne,
Qual diverebbe Giove, s' egli e Marte
Fossero augelli e cambiassersi penne. "
Nobody who opened the Commedia for the first time at this fantastical
image would suppose the author was a great poet, or expect the
tremendous passage that ensues! ]
[Footnote 49: In spite of the unheavenly nature of invective, of
something of a lurking conceit in the making an eclipse out of a blush,
and in the positive bathos, and I fear almost indecent irrelevancy of
the introduction of Beatrice at all on such an occasion, much more under
the feeble aspect of one young lady blushing for another,--this scene
altogether is a very grand one; and the violence itself of the holy
invective awful.
A curious subject for reflection is here presented. What sort of pope
would Dante himself have made? Would he have taken to the loving or the
hating side of his genius? To the St. John or the St. Peter of his own
poem? St. Francis or St. Dominic? --I am afraid, all things considered,
we should have had in him rather a Gregory the Seventh or Julius
the Second, than a Benedict the Eleventh or a Ganganelli. What fine
Church-hymns he would have written! ]
[Footnote 50: She does not see (so blind is even holy vehemence! ) that
for the same reason the denouncement itself is out of its place. The
preachers brought St. Anthony and his pig into their pulpits; she brings
them into Heaven! ]
[Footnote 51:
"Certo io credo
Che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda. " ]
[Footnote 52: The Emperor Henry of Luxembourg, Dante's idol; at the
close of whose brief and inefficient appearance in Italy, his hopes of
restoration to his country were at an end. ]
[Footnote 53: Pope Clement the Fifth. Dante's enemy, Boniface, was now
dead, and of course in Tartarus, in the red-hot tomb which the poet had
prepared for him. ]
[Footnote 54: Boniface himself. Pope Clement's red hot feet are to
thrust down Pope Boniface into a gulf still hotter. So says the gentle
Beatrice in Heaven, and in the face of all that is angelical! ]
[Footnote 55: David. ]
[Footnote 56: The Trinity. ]
[Footnote 57: The Incarnation. ]
[Footnote 58: In the Variorum edition of Dante, ut sup. vol. iii. p.
845, we are informed that a gentleman of Naples, the Cavaliere Giuseppe
de Cesare, was the first to notice (not long since, I presume) the
curious circumstance of Dante's having terminated the three portions of
his poem with the word "stars. " He thinks that it was done as a happy
augury of life and renown to the subject. The literal intention,
however, seems to have been to shew us, how all his aspirations
terminated. ]
PULCI:
Critical Notice
of
PULCI'S LIFE AND GENIUS.
Pulci, who is the first genuine romantic poet, in point of time, after
Dante, seems, at first sight, in the juxtaposition, like farce after
tragedy; and indeed, in many parts of his poem, he is not only what he
seems, but follows his saturnine countryman with a peculiar propriety
of contrast, much of his liveliest banter being directed against the
absurdities of Dante's theology. But hasty and most erroneous would be
the conclusion that he was nothing but a banterar. He was a true poet
of the mixed order, grave as well as gay; had a reflecting mind, a
susceptible and most affectionate heart; and perhaps was never more in
earnest than when he gave vent to his dislike of bigotry in his most
laughable sallies.
Luigi Pulci, son of Jacopo Pulci and Brigida de' Bardi, was of a noble
family, so ancient as to be supposed to have come from France into
Tuscany with his hero Charlemagne. He was born in Florence on the 3d of
December, 1431, and was the youngest of three brothers, all possessed of
a poetical vein, though it did not flow with equal felicity. Bernardo,
the eldest, was the earliest translator of the Eclogues of Virgil; and
Lucca wrote a romance called the _Ciriffo Calvaneo_, and is commended
for his _Heroic Epistles_. Little else is known of these brothers; and
not much more of Luigi himself, except that he married a lady of the
name of Lucrezia degli Albizzi; journeyed in Lombardy and elsewhere; was
one of the most intimate friends of Lorenzo de Medici and his literary
circle; and apparently led a life the most delightful to a poet, always
meditating some composition, and buried in his woods and gardens.
Nothing is known of his latter days. An unpublished work of little
credit (Zilioli _On the Italian Poets_), and an earlier printed book,
which, according to Tiraboschi, is of not much greater (Scardeone _De
Antiquitatibus Orbis Patavinæ_), say that he died miserably in Padua,
and was refused Christian burial on account of his impieties. It is
not improbable that, during the eclipse of the fortunes of the Medici
family, after the death of Lorenzo, Pulci may have partaken of its
troubles; and there is certainly no knowing how badly his or their
enemies may have treated him; but miserable ends are a favourite
allegation with theological opponents. The Calvinists affirm of their
master, the burner of Servetus, that he died like a saint; but I
have seen a biography in Italian, which attributed the most horrible
death-bed, not only to the atrocious Genevese, but to the genial Luther,
calling them both the greatest villains (_sceleratissimi_); and adding,
that one of them (I forget which) was found dashed on the floor of his
bedroom, and torn limb from limb.
Pulci appears to have been slender in person, with small eyes and a
ruddy face. I gather this from the caricature of him in the poetical
paper-war carried on between him and his friend Matteo Franco, a
Florentine canon, which is understood to have been all in good
humour--sport to amuse their friends--a perilous speculation. Besides
his share in these verses, he is supposed to have had a hand in his
brother's romance, and was certainly the author of some devout poems,
and of a burlesque panegyric on a country damsel, _La Beca_, in
emulation of the charming poem _La Nencia_, the first of its kind,
written by that extraordinary person, his illustrious friend Lorenzo,
who, in the midst of his cares and glories as the balancer of the power
of Italy, was one of the liveliest of the native wits, and wrote songs
for the people to dance to in Carnival time.
The intercourse between Lorenzo and Pulci was of the most familiar kind.
Pulci was sixteen years older, but of a nature which makes no such
differences felt between associates. He had known Lorenzo from the
latter's youth, probably from his birth--is spoken of in a tone of
domestic intimacy by his wife--and is enumerated by him among his
companions in a very special and characteristic manner in his poem on
Hawking _(La Caccia col Falcone_), when, calling his fellow-sportsmen
about him, and missing Luigi, one of them says that he has strolled into
a neighbouring wood, to put something which has struck his fancy into a
sonnet:
"'Luigi Pulci ov' è, che non si sente? ' 'Egli se n' andò dianzi in quel
boschetto, Che qualche fantasia ha per la mente; Vorr à fantasticar
forse un sonetto. '"
"And where's Luigi Pulci? I saw _him_. " "Oh, in the wood there. Gone,
depend upon it, To vent some fancy in his brain--some whim, That will
not let him rest till it's a sonnet. "
In a letter written to Lorenzo, when the future statesman, then in his
seventeenth year, was making himself personally acquainted with the
courts of Italy, Pulci speaks of himself as struggling hard to keep down
the poetic propensity in his friend's absence. "If you were with me," he
says, "I should produce heaps of sonnets as big as the clubs they make
of the cherry-blossoms for May-day. I am always muttering some verse or
other betwixt my teeth; but I say to myself, 'My Lorenzo is not here--he
who is my only hope and refuge;' and so I suppress it. " Such is the
first, and of a like nature are the latest accounts we possess of the
sequestered though companionable poet. He preferred one congenial
listener who understood him, to twenty critics that were puzzled with
the vivacity of his impulses. Most of the learned men patronised by
Lorenzo probably quarrelled with him on account of it, plaguing him in
somewhat the same spirit, though in more friendly guise, as the Della
Cruscans and others afterwards plagued Tasso; so he banters them in
turn, and takes refuge from their critical rules and common-places in
the larger indulgence of his friend Politian and the laughing wisdom of
Lorenzo.
"So che andar diritto mi bisogna, Ch' io non ci mescolassi una bugia,
Che questa non è storia da menzogna; Che come in esco un passo de la
via,
Chi gracchia, chi riprende, e chi rampogna: Ognun poi mi riesce la
pazzia;
Tanto ch' eletto ho solitaria vita, Che la turba di questi è infinita.
La mia Accademia un tempo, o mia Ginnasia, E stata volentier ne' miei
boschetti; E puossi ben veder l' Affrica e l' Asia: Vengon le Ninfe con
lor canestretti, E portanmi o narciso o colocasia; E così fuggo mille
urban dispetti: Sì ch' io non torno a' vostri Areopaghi, Gente pur
sempre di mal dicer vaghi.
I know I ought to make no dereliction From the straight path to this
side or to that; I know the story I relate's no fiction, And that
the moment that I quit some flat, Folks are all puff, and blame, and
contradiction, And swear I never know what I'd be at; In short, such
crowds, I find, can mend one's poem, I live retired, on purpose not to
know 'em.
Yes, gentlemen, my only 'Academe,' My sole 'Gymnasium,' are my woods
and bowers; Of Afric and of Asia there I dream; And the Nymphs bring me
baskets full of flowers, Arums, and sweet narcissus from the stream; And
thus my Muse escapeth your town-hours And town-disdains; and I eschew
your bites, Judges of books, grim Areopagites. "
He is here jesting, as Foscolo has observed, on the academy instituted
by Lorenzo for encouraging the Greek language, doubtless with the
laughing approbation of the founder, who was sometimes not a little
troubled himself with the squabbles of his literati.
Our author probably had good reason to call his illustrious friend his
"refuge. " The _Morgante Maggiore_, the work which has rendered the name
of Pulci renowned, was an attempt to elevate the popular and homely
narrative poetry chanted in the streets into the dignity of a production
that should last. The age was in a state of transition on all points.
The dogmatic authority of the schoolmen in matters of religion, which
prevailed in the time of Dante, had come to nought before the advance
of knowledge in general, and the indifference of the court of Rome.
The Council of Trent, as Crescimbeni advised the critics, had not then
settled what Christendom was to believe; and men, provided they complied
with forms, and admitted certain main articles, were allowed to think,
and even in great measure talk, as they pleased. The lovers of the
Platonic philosophy took the opportunity of exalting some of its dreams
to an influence, which at one time was supposed to threaten Christianity
itself, and which in fact had already succeeded in affecting Christian
theology to an extent which the scorners of Paganism little suspect.
Most of these Hellenists pushed their admiration of Greek literature to
an excess. They were opposed by the Virgilian predilections of Pulci's
friend, Politian, who had nevertheless universality enough to sympathise
with the delight the other took in their native Tuscan, and its
liveliest and most idiomatic effusions. From all these circumstances in
combination arose, first, Pulci's determination to write a poem of a
mixed order, which should retain for him the ear of the many, and at the
same time give rise to a poetry of romance worthy of higher auditors;
second, his banter of what he considered unessential and injurious
dogmas of belief, in favour of those principles of the religion of
charity which inflict no contradiction on the heart and understanding;
third, the trouble which seems to have been given him by critics,
"sacred and profane," in consequence of these originalities; and lastly,
a doubt which has strangely existed with some, as to whether he intended
to write a serious or a comic poem, or on any one point was in earnest
at all. One writer thinks he cannot have been in earnest, because he
opens every canto with some pious invocation; another asserts that the
piety itself is a banter; a similar critic is of opinion, that to mix
levities with gravities proves the gravities to have been nought, and
the levities all in all; a fourth allows him to have been serious in his
description of the battle of Roncesvalles, but says he was laughing in
all the rest of his poem; while a fifth candidly gives up the question,
as one of those puzzles occasioned by the caprices of the human mind,
which it is impossible for reasonable people to solve. Even Sismondi,
who was well acquainted with the age in which Pulci wrote, and who, if
not a profound, is generally an acute and liberal critic, confesses
himself to be thus confounded. "Pulci," he says, "commences all his
cantos by a sacred invocation; and the interests of religion are
constantly intermingled with the adventures of his story, in a manner
capricious and little instructive. We know not how to reconcile this
monkish spirit with the semi-pagan character of society under Lorenzo
di Medici, nor whether we ought to accuse Pulci of gross bigotry or of
profane derision. " [1] Sismondi did not consider that the lively
and impassioned people of the south take what may be called
household-liberties with the objects of their worship greater than
northerns can easily conceive; that levity of manner, therefore, does
not always imply the absence of the gravest belief; that, be this as
it may, the belief may be as grave on some points as light on others,
perhaps the more so for that reason; and that, although some poems, like
some people, are altogether grave, or the reverse, there really is
such a thing as tragi-comedy both in the world itself and in the
representations of it. A jesting writer may be quite as much in earnest
when he professes to be so, as a pleasant companion who feels for his
own or for other people's misfortunes, and who is perhaps obliged to
affect or resort to his very pleasantry sometimes, because he feels more
acutely than the gravest. The sources of tears and smiles lie close to,
ay and help to refine one another. If Dante had been capable of more
levity, he would have been guilty of less melancholy absurdities. If
Rabelais had been able to weep as well as to laugh, and to love as well
as to be licentious, he would have had faith and therefore support in
something earnest, and not have been obliged to place the consummation
of all things in a wine-bottle. People's every-day experiences might
explain to them the greatest apparent inconsistencies of Pulci's muse,
if habit itself did not blind them to the illustration. Was nobody ever
present in a well-ordered family, when a lively conversation having been
interrupted by the announcement of dinner, the company, after listening
with the greatest seriousness to a grace delivered with equal
seriousness, perhaps by a clergyman, resumed it the instant afterwards
in all its gaiety, with the first spoonful of soup? Well, the sacred
invocations at the beginning of Pulci's cantos were compliances of the
like sort with a custom. They were recited and listened to just as
gravely at Lorenzo di Medici's table; and yet neither compromised the
reciters, nor were at all associated with the enjoyment of the fare that
ensued. So with regard to the intermixture of grave and gay throughout
the poem. How many campaigning adventures have been written by gallant
officers, whose animal spirits saw food for gaiety in half the
circumstances that occurred, and who could crack a jest and a helmet
perhaps with almost equal vivacity, and yet be as serious as the gravest
at a moment's notice, mourn heartily over the deaths of their friends,
and shudder with indignation and horror at the outrages committed in a
captured city? It is thus that Pulci writes, full no less of feeling
than of whim and mirth. And the whole honest round of humanity not only
warrants his plan, but in the twofold sense of the word embraces it.
If any thing more were necessary to shew the gravity with which our
author addressed himself to his subject, it is the fact, related by
himself, of its having been recommended to him by Lorenzo's mother,
Lucrezia Tornabuoni, a good and earnest woman, herself a poetess, who
wrote a number of sacred narratives, and whose virtues he more than
once records with the greatest respect and tenderness. The _Morgante_
concludes with an address respecting this lady to the Virgin, and with
a hope that her "devout and sincere" spirit may obtain peace for him
in Paradise. These are the last words in the book. Is it credible that
expressions of this kind, and employed on such an occasion, could have
had no serious meaning? or that Lorenzo listened to such praises of his
mother as to a jest?
I have no doubt that, making allowance for the age in which he lived,
Pulci was an excellent Christian. His orthodoxy, it is true, was not the
orthodoxy of the times of Dante or St. Dominic, nor yet of that of the
Council of Trent. His opinions respecting the mystery of the Trinity
appear to have been more like those of Sir Isaac Newton than of
Archdeacon Travis. And assuredly he agreed with Origen respecting
eternal punishment, rather than with Calvin and Mr. Toplady. But a man
may accord with Newton, and yet be thought not unworthy of the "starry
spheres. " He may think, with Origen, that God intends all his creatures
to be ultimately happy,[2] and yet be considered as loving a follower
of Christ as a "dealer of damnation round the land," or the burner of a
fellow-creature.
Pulci was in advance of his time on more subjects than one. He
pronounced the existence of a new and inhabited world, before the
appearance of Columbus. [3] He made the conclusion, doubtless, as
Columbus did, from the speculations of more scientific men, and the
rumours of seamen; but how rare are the minds that are foremost to throw
aside even the most innocent prejudices, and anticipate the enlargements
of the public mind! How many also are calumniated and persecuted for so
doing, whose memories, for the same identical reason, are loved, perhaps
adored, by the descendants of the calumniators! In a public library, in
Pulci's native place, is preserved a little withered relic, to which
the attention of the visitor is drawn with reverential complacency. It
stands, pointing upwards, under a glass-case, looking like a mysterious
bit of parchment; and is the finger of Galileo;--of that Galileo, whose
hand, possessing that finger, is supposed to have been tortured by the
Inquisition for writing what every one now believes. He was certainly
persecuted and imprisoned by the Inquisition. Milton saw and visited
him under the restraint of that scientific body in his own house. Yet
Galileo did more by his disclosures of the stars towards elevating our
ideas of the Creator, than all the so-called saints and polemics that
screamed at one another in the pulpits of East and West.
Like the _Commedia_ of Dante, Pulci's "Commedia" (for such also in
regard to its general cheerfulness,[4] and probably to its mediocrity of
style, he calls it) is a representative in great measure of the feeling
and knowledge of his time; and though not entirely such in a learned and
eclectic sense, and not to be compared to that sublime monstrosity in
point of genius and power, is as superior to it in liberal opinion
and in a certain pervading lovingness, as the author's affectionate
disposition, and his country's advance in civilisation, combined to
render it. The editor of the _Parnaso Italiano_ had reason to notice
this engaging personal character in our author's work. He says, speaking
of the principal romantic poets of Italy, that the reader will "admire
Tasso, will adore Ariosto, but will love Pulci. "[5] And all minds, in
which lovingness produces love, will agree with him.
The _Morgante Maggiore_ is a history of the fabulous exploits and death
of Orlando, the great hero of Italian romance, and of the wars
and calamities brought on his fellow Paladins and their sovereign
Charlemagne by the envy, ambition, and treachery of the misguided
monarch's favourite, Gail of Magauza (Mayence), Count of Poictiers. It
is founded on the pseudo-history of Archbishop Turpin, which, though it
received the formal sanction of the Church, is a manifest forgery, and
became such a jest with the wits, that they took a delight in palming
upon it their most incredible fictions. The title (_Morgante the Great_)
seems to have been either a whim to draw attention to an old subject, or
the result of an intention to do more with the giant so called than took
place; for though he is a conspicuous actor in the earlier part of the
poem, he dies when it is not much more than half completed. Orlando, the
champion of the faith, is the real hero of it, and Gan the anti-hero or
vice. Charlemagne, the reader hardly need be told, is represented,
for the most part, as a very different person from what he appears in
history. In truth, as Ellis and Panizzi have shewn, he is either an
exaggeration (still misrepresented) of Charles Martel, the Armorican
chieftain, who conquered the Saracens at Poictiers, or a concretion of
all the Charleses of the Carlovingian race, wise and simple, potent and
weak. [6]
The story may be thus briefly told. Orlando quits the court of
Charlemagne in disgust, but is always ready to return to it when the
emperor needs his help. The best Paladins follow, to seek him. He meets
with and converts the giant Morgante, whose aid he receives in many
adventures, among which is the taking of Babylon. The other Paladins,
his cousin Rinaldo especially, have their separate adventures, all more
or less mixed up with the treacheries and thanklessness of Gan (for they
assist even him), and the provoking trust reposed in him by Charlemagne;
and at length the villain crowns his infamy by luring Orlando with most
of the Paladins into the pass of Roncesvalles, where the hero himself
and almost all his companions are slain by the armies of Gan's
fellow-traitor, Marsilius, king of Spain.
eclipse was like that which took place when the Supreme died upon the
Cross.
Saint Peter resumed with a voice not less awfully changed than his
appearance:
"Not for the purpose of being sold for money was the spouse of Christ
fed and nourished with my blood, and with the blood of Linus,--the blood
of Cletus. Sextus did not bleed for it, nor Pius, nor Callixtus, nor
Urban; men, for whose deaths all Christendom wept. They died that souls
might be innocent and go to Heaven. Never was it intention of ours, that
the sitters in the holy chair should divide one half of Christendom
against the other; should turn my keys into ensigns of war against the
faithful; and stamp my very image upon mercenary and lying documents,
which make me, here in Heaven, blush and turn cold to think of. Arm
of God, why sleepest thou? Men out of Gascony and Cahors are even
now making ready to drink our blood. O lofty beginning, to what vile
conclusion must thou come! But the high Providence, which made Scipio
the sustainer of the Roman sovereignty of the world, will fail not its
timely succour. And thou, my son, that for weight of thy mortal clothing
must again descend to earth, see thou that thou openest thy mouth, and
hidest not from others what has not been hidden from thyself. "
As white and thick as the snows go streaming athwart the air when the
sun is in Capricorn, so the angelical spirits that had been gathered in
the air of Saturn streamed away after the Apostle, as he turned with the
other saints to depart; and the eyes of Dante followed them till they
became viewless. [49]
The divine eyes of Beatrice recalled him to herself; and at the same
instant the two companions found themselves in the ninth Heaven or
_Primum Mobile_, the last of the material Heavens, and the mover of
those beneath it.
[Footnote 49: In spite of the unheavenly nature of invective, of
something of a lurking conceit in the making an eclipse out of a blush,
and in the positive bathos, and I fear almost indecent irrelevancy of
the introduction of Beatrice at all on such an occasion, much more under
the feeble aspect of one young lady blushing for another,--this scene
altogether is a very grand one; and the violence itself of the holy
invective awful.
Here he had a glimpse of the divine essence, in likeness of a point of
inconceivably sharp brightness enringed with the angelic hierarchies.
All earth, and heaven, and nature, hung from it. Beatrice explained
many mysteries to him connected with that sight; and then vehemently
denounced the false and foolish teachers that quit the authority of the
Bible for speculations of their own, and degrade the preaching of the
gospel with ribald jests, and legends of Saint Anthony and his pig. [50]
Returning, however, to more celestial thoughts, her face became so full
of beauty, that Dante declares he must cease to endeavour to speak of
it, and that he doubts whether the sight can ever be thoroughly enjoyed
by any save its Maker. [51] Her look carried him upward as before, and
he was now in the Empyrean, or region of Pure Light;--of light made of
intellect full of love; love of truth, full of joy; joy, transcendant
above all sweetness.
Streams of living radiance came rushing and flashing round about him,
swathing him with light, as the lightning sometimes enwraps and dashes
against the blinded eyes; but the light was love here, and instead of
injuring, gave new power to the object it embraced.
With this new infusion of strength into his organs of vision, Dante
looked, and saw a vast flood of it, effulgent with flashing splendours,
and pouring down like a river between banks painted with the loveliest
flowers. Fiery living sparkles arose from it on all sides, and pitched
themselves into the cups of the flowers, where they remained awhile,
like rubies set in gold; till inebriated with the odours, they recast
themselves into the bosom of the flood; and ever as one returned,
another leaped forth. Beatrice bade him dip his eyes into the light,
that he might obtain power to see deeper into its nature; for the river,
and the jewels that sprang out of it to and fro, and the laughing
flowers on the banks, were themselves but shadows of the truth which
they included; not, indeed, in their essential selves, but inasmuch as
without further assistance the beholder's eyes could not see them as
they were. Dante rushed to the stream as eagerly as the lips of an
infant to the breast, when it has slept beyond its time; and his
eyelashes had no sooner touched it, than the length of the river became
a breadth and a circle, and its real nature lay unveiled before him,
like a face when a mask is taken off. It was the whole two combined
courts of Heaven, the angelical and the human, in circumference larger
than would hold the sun, and all blazing beneath a light, which was
reflected downwards in its turn upon the sphere of the Primum Mobile
below it, the mover of the universe. And as a green cliff by the water's
side seems to delight in seeing itself reflected from head to foot with
all its verdure and its flowers; so, round about on all sides, upon
thousands of thrones, the blessed spirits that once lived on earth sat
beholding themselves in the light. And yet even all these together
formed but the lowest part of the spectacle, which ascended above them,
tier upon tier, in the manner of an immeasurable rose,--all dilating
itself, doubling still and doubling, and all odorous with the praises
of an ever-vernal sun. Into the base of it, as into the yellow of the
flower, with a dumb glance that yet promised to speak, Beatrice drew
forward her companion, and said, "Behold the innumerable assemblage of
the white garments! Behold our city, how large its circuit! Behold our
seats, which are, nevertheless, so full, that few comers are wanted to
fill them! On that lofty one at which thou art looking, surmounted with
the crown, and which shall be occupied before thou joinest this bridal
feast, shall be seated the soul of the great Henry, who would fain set
Italy right before she is prepared for it. [52] The blind waywardness of
which ye are sick renders ye like the bantling who, while he is dying of
hunger, kicks away his nurse. And Rome is governed by one that cannot
walk in the same path with such a man, whatever be the road. [53] But God
will not long endure him. He will be thrust down into the pit with Simon
Magus; and his feet, when he arrives there, will thrust down the man of
Alagna still lower. [54]"
In the form, then, of a white rose the blessed multitude of human souls
lay manifest before the eyes of the poet; and now he observed, that the
winged portion of the blest, the angels, who fly up with their wings
nearer to Him that fills them with love, came to and fro upon the rose
like bees; now descending into its bosom, now streaming back to the
source of their affection. Their faces were all fire, their wings
golden, their garments whiter than snow. Whenever they descended on
the flower, they went from fold to fold, fanning their loins, and
communicating the peace and ardour which they gathered as they gave.
Dante beheld all,--every flight and action of the whole winged
multitude,--without let or shadow; for he stood in the region of light
itself, and light has no obstacle where it is deservedly vouchsafed.
"Oh," cries the poet, "if the barbarians that came from the north stood
dumb with amazement to behold the magnificence of Rome, thinking they
saw unearthly greatness in the Lateran, what must I have thought, who
had thus come from human to divine, from time to eternity, from the
people of Florence to beings just and sane? "
Dante stood, without a wish either to speak or to hear. He felt like a
pilgrim who has arrived within the place of his devotion, and who looks
round about him, hoping some day to relate what he sees. He gazed
upwards and downwards, and on every side round about, and saw movements
graceful with every truth of innocence, and faces full of loving
persuasion, rich in their own smiles and in the light of the smiles of
others.
He turned to Beatrice, but she was gone;--gone, as a messenger from
herself told him, to resume her seat in the blessed rose, which the
messenger accordingly pointed out. She sat in the third circle from the
top, as far from Dante as the bottom of the sea is from the region of
thunder; and yet he saw her as plainly as if she had been close at hand.
He addressed words to her of thanks for all she had done for him, and
a hope for her assistance after death; and she looked down at him and
smiled.
The messenger was St. Bernard. He bade the poet lift his eyes higher;
and Dante beheld the Virgin Mary sitting above the rose, in the centre
of an intense redness of light, like another dawn. Thousands of angels
were hanging buoyant around her, each having its own distinct splendour
and adornment, and all were singing, and expressing heavenly mirth; and
she smiled on them with such loveliness, that joy was in the eyes of all
the blessed.
At Mary's feet was sitting Eve, beautiful--she that opened the wound
which Mary closed; and at the feet of Eve was Rachel, with Beatrice; and
at the feet of Rachel was Sarah, and then Judith, then Rebecca, then
Ruth, ancestress of him out of whose penitence came the song of the
Miserere;[55] and so other Hebrew women, down all the gradations of the
flower, dividing, by the line which they made, the Christians who lived
before Christ from those who lived after; a line which, on the opposite
side of the rose, was answered by a similar one of Founders of the
Church, at the top of whom was John the Baptist. The rose also was
divided horizontally by a step which projected beyond the others, and
underneath which, known by the childishness of their looks and voices,
were the souls of such as were too young to have attained Heaven by
assistance of good works.
St. Bernard then directed his companion to look again at the Virgin, and
gather from her countenance the power of beholding the face of Christ as
God. Her aspect was flooded with gladness from the spirits around her;
while the angel who had descended to her on earth now hailed her above
with "Ave, Maria! " singing till the whole host of Heaven joined in
the song. St. Bernard then prayed to her for help to his companion's
eyesight. Beatrice, with others of the blest, was seen joining in the
prayer, their hands stretched upwards; and the Virgin, after benignly
looking on the petitioners, gazed upwards herself, shewing the way with
her own eyes to the still greater vision. Dante then looked also, and
beheld what he had no words to speak, or memory to endure.
He awoke as from a dream, retaining only a sense of sweetness that ever
trickled to his heart.
Earnestly praying afterwards, however, that grace might be so far
vouchsafed to a portion of his recollection, as to enable him to convey
to his fellow-creatures one smallest glimpse of the glory of what he
saw, his ardour was so emboldened by help of the very mystery at whose
sight he must have perished had he faltered, that his eyes, unblasted,
attained to a perception of the Sum of Infinitude. He beheld,
concentrated in one spot--written in one volume of Love--all which is
diffused, and can become the subject of thought and study throughout the
universe--all substance and accident and mode--all so compounded that
they become one light. He thought he beheld at one and the same time
the oneness of this knot, and the universality of all which it implies;
because, when it came to his recollection, his heart dilated, and in the
course of one moment he felt ages of impatience to speak of it.
But thoughts as well as words failed him; and though ever afterwards he
could no more cease to yearn towards it, than he could take defect for
completion, or separate the idea of happiness from the wish to attain
it, still the utmost he could say of what he remembered would fall as
short of right speech as the sounds of an infant's tongue while it is
murmuring over the nipple; for the more he had looked at that light,
the more he found in it to amaze him, so that his brain toiled with
the succession of the astonishments. He saw, in the deep but clear
self-subsistence, three circles of three different colours of the same
breadth, one of them reflecting one of the others as rainbow does
rainbow, and the third consisting of a fire equally breathing from
both. [56]
O eternal Light! thou that dwellest in thyself alone, thou alone
understandest thyself, and art by thyself understood, and, so
understanding, thou laughest at thyself, and lovest.
The second, or reflected circle, as it went round, seemed to be painted
by its own colours with the likeness of a human face. [57]
But how this was done, or how the beholder was to express it, threw
his mind into the same state of bewilderment as the mathematician
experiences when he vainly pores over the circle to discover the
principle by which he is to square it.
He did, however, in a manner discern it. A flash of light was vouchsafed
him for the purpose; but the light left him no power to impart the
discernment; nor did he feel any longer impatient for the gift. Desire
became absorbed in submission, moving in as smooth unison as the
particles of a wheel, with the Love that is the mover of the sun and the
stars. [58]
[Footnote 1: A curious and happy image.
"Tornan de' nostri visi le postille
Debili sì, che perla in bianca fronte
Non vien men tosto a le nostre pupille:
Tali vid' io più facce a parlar pronte. " ]
[Footnote 2: "Rodolfo da Tossignano, _Hist. Seraph. Relig. _ P. i. p.
138, as cited by Lombardi, relates the following legend of Piccarda:
'Her brother Corso, inflamed with rage against his virgin sister,
having joined with him Farinata, an infamous assassin, and twelve other
abandoned ruffians, entered the monastery by a ladder, and carried
away his sister forcibly to his own house; and then, tearing off her
religious habit, compelled her to go in a secular garment to her
nuptials. Before the spouse of Christ came together with her new
husband, she knelt down before a crucifix, and recommended her virginity
to Christ. Soon after, her whole body was smitten with leprosy, so as
to strike grief and horror into the beholders; and thus, in a few days,
through the divine disposal, she passed with a palm of virginity to the
Lord. Perhaps (adds the worthy Franciscan), our poet not being able to
certify himself entirely of this occurrence, has chosen to pass it over
discreetly, by making Piccarda say, 'God knows how, after that, my life
was framed. '"--_Cary_, ut sup. p. 137. ]
[Footnote 3: A lovely simile indeed.
"Tanto lieta
Ch' arder parea d'amor nel primo foco. "
[Footnote 4: Costanza, daughter of Ruggieri, king of Sicily, thus taken
out of the monastery, was mother to the Emperor Frederick the Second.
"She was fifty years old or more at the time" (says Mr. Cary, quoting
from Muratori and others); "and because it was not credited that she
could have a child at that age, she was delivered in a pavilion; and it
was given out, that any lady who pleased was at liberty to see her. Many
came and saw her, and the suspicion ceased. "--_Translation of Dante_, ut
sup. p. 137. ]
[Footnote 5: Probably an allusion to Dante's own wanderings. ]
[Footnote 6:
"Hosanna Sanctus Deus Sabaoth
Superillustrans claritate tuâ
Felices ignes horum Malahoth. "
_Malahoth_; Hebrew, _kingdoms_. ]
[Footnote 7: The epithet is not too strong, as will be seen by the
nature of the inhabitants. ]
[Footnote 8: Charles Martel, son of the king of Naples and Sicily, and
crowned king of Hungary, seems to have become acquainted with Dante
during the poet's youth, when the prince met his royal father in the
city of Florence. He was brother of Robert, who succeeded the father,
and who was the friend of Petrarch.
"The adventures of Cunizza, overcome by the influence of her star," says
Cary, "are related by the chronicler Rolandino of Padua, lib. i. cap. 3,
in Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script. tom. viii. p. 173. She eloped from her
first husband, Richard of St. Boniface, in the company of Sordello (see
Purg. canto vi. and vii. ); with whom she is supposed to have cohabited
before her marriage: then lived with a soldier of Trevigi, whose wife
was living at the same time in the same city; and, on his being murdered
by her brother the tyrant, was by her brother married to a nobleman of
Braganzo: lastly, when he also had fallen by the same hand, she, after
her brother's death, was again wedded in Verona. "--_Translation of
Dante_, ut sup. p. 147. See what Foscolo says of her in the _Discorso
sul Testo_, p. 329.
Folco, the gallant Troubadour, here placed between Cunizza and Rahab,
is no other than Folques, bishop of Thoulouse, the persecutor of the
Albigenses. It is of him the brutal anecdote is related, that, being
asked, during an indiscriminate attack on that people, how the orthodox
and heterodox were to be distinguished, he said, "Kill all: God will
know his own. "
For Rahab, see _Joshua_, chap. ii. and vi. ; and _Hebrews_. xi. 31]
[Footnote 9: The reader need not be required to attend to the
extraordinary theological disclosures in the whole of the preceding
passage, nor yet to consider how much more they disclose, than theology
or the poet might have desired. ]
[Footnote 10: These fifteen personages are chiefly theologians and
schoolmen, whose names and obsolete writings are, for the most part, no
longer worth mention. The same may be said of the band that comes after
them.
Dante should not have set them dancing. It is impossible (every
respectfulness of endeavour notwithstanding) to maintain the gravity
of one's imagination at the thought of a set of doctors of the Church,
Venerable Bede included, wheeling about in giddy rapture like so many
dancing dervises, and keeping time to their ecstatic anilities with
voices tinkling like church-clocks. You may invest them with as much
light or other blessed indistinctness as you please; the beards and the
old ages will break through. In vain theologians may tell us that our
imaginations are not exalted enough. The answer (if such a charge must
be gravely met) is, that Dante's whole Heaven itself is not exalted
enough, how ever wonderful and beautiful in parts. The schools, and the
forms of Catholic worship, held even his imagination down. There is
more heaven in one placid idea of love than in all these dances and
tinklings. ]
[Footnote 11:
"Benigno a' suoi, ed a' nimici crudo. "
Cruel indeed;--the founder of the Inquisition! The "loving minion"
is Mr. Cary's excellent translation of "_amoroso drudo_. " But what a
minion, and how loving! With fire and sword and devilry, and no wish (of
course) to thrust his own will and pleasure, and bad arguments, down
other people's throats! St. Dominic was a Spaniard. So was Borgia.
So was Philip the Second. There seems to have been an inherent
semi-barbarism in the character of Spain, which it has never got rid of
to this day. If it were not for Cervantes, and some modern patriots, it
would hardly appear to belong to the right European community. Even
Lope de Vega was an inquisitor; and Mendoza, the entertaining author of
Lazarillo de Tormes, a cruel statesman. Cervantes, however, is enough to
sweeten a whole peninsula. ]
[Footnote 12: What a pity the reporter of this advice had not humility
enough to apply it to himself! ]
[Footnote 13:
"O sanguis meus, o superinfusa
Gratia Dei, sicut tibi, cui
Bis unquam coeli janua reclusa? "
The spirit says this in Latin, as if to veil the compliment to the poet
in "the obscurity of a learned language. " And in truth it is a little
strong. ]
[Footnote 14:
"Che dentro a gli occhi suoi ardeva un riso
Tal, ch' io pensai co' miei toccar lo fondo
De la mia grazia e del mio Paradiso. "
That is, says Lombardi, "I thought my eyes could not possibly be more
favoured and imparadised" (Pensai che non potessero gli occhi miei
essere graziati ed imparadisati maggiormente)--_Variorum edition of
Dante_, Padua, 1822, vol. iii. p. 373. ]
[Footnote 15: Here ensues the famous description of those earlier times
in Florence, which Dante eulogises at the expense of his own. See the
original passage, with another version, in the Appendix. ]
[Footnote 16: Bellincion Berti was a noble Florentine, of the house of
the Ravignani. Cianghella is said to have been an abandoned woman,
of manners as shameless as her morals. Lapo Salterelli, one of the
co-exiles of Dante, and specially hated by him, was a personage who
appears to have exhibited the rare combination of judge and fop. An old
commentator, in recording his attention to his hair, seems to intimate
that Dante alludes to it in contrasting him with Cincinnatus. If so,
Lapo might have reminded the poet of what Cicero says of his beloved
Cæsar;--that he once saw him scratching the top of his head with the tip
of his finger, that he might not discompose the locks. ]
[Footnote 17:
"Chi ei si furo, e onde venner quivi,
Più è tacer che ragionare onesto. "
Some think Dante was ashamed to speak of these ancestors, from the
lowness of their origin; others that he did not choose to make them a
boast, for the height of it. I suspect, with Lombardi, from his general
character, and from the willingness he has avowed to make such boasts
(see the opening of canto xvi. , Paradise, in the original), that while
he claimed for them a descent from the Romans (see Inferno, canto
xv. 73, &c. ), he knew them to be] poor in fortune, perhaps of humble
condition. What follows, in the text of our abstract, about the purity
of the old Florentine blood, even in the veins of the humblest mechanic,
may seem to intimate some corroboration of this; and is a curious
specimen of republican pride and scorn. This horror of one's neighbours
is neither good Christianity, nor surely any very good omen of that
Italian union, of which "Young Italy" wishes to think Dante such a
harbinger.
All this too, observe, is said in the presence of a vision of Christ on
the Cross! ]
[Footnote 18: The _Column, Verrey_ (vair, variegated, checkered with
argent and azure), and the _Balls_ or (Palle d'oro), were arms of old
families. I do not trouble the reader with notes upon mere family-names,
of which nothing else is recorded. ]
[Footnote 19: An allusion, apparently acquiescent, to the superstitious
popular opinion that the peace of Florence was bound up with the statue
of Mars on the old bridge, at the base of which Buondelmonte was slain.
With this Buondelmonte the dissensions in Florence were supposed to have
first begun. Macchiavelli's account of him is, that he was about to
marry a young lady of the Amidei family, when a widow of one of the
Donati, who had designed her own daughter for him, contrived that
he should see her; the consequence of which was, that he broke his
engagement, and was assassinated. _Historie Fiorentine_, lib. ii. ]
[Footnote 20:
"Tu lascerai ogni cosa diletta
Più caramente; e questo e quello strale
Che l'arco de l'esilio pria saetta.
Tu proverai sì come sa di sale
Lo pane altrui, e com'è duro calle
Lo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale.
E quel che più ti graverà le spalle,
Sarà la compagnia malvagia e scempia
Con la qual tu cadrai in questa valle:
Che tutta ingrata, tutta matta ed empia
Si farà contra te: ma poco appresso
Ella, non tu, n'avrà rossa la tempia.
Di sua bestialitate il suo processo
Farà la pruova, sì ch' a te fia bello
Averti fatta parte per te stesso. "
[Footnote 21: The Roman eagle. These are the arms of the Scaligers of
Verona. ]
[Footnote 22: A prophecy of the renown of Can Grande della Scala, who
had received Dante at his court. ]
[Footnote 23: "Letizia era ferza del paléo"]
[Footnote 24: Supposed to be one of the early Williams, Princes of
Orange; but it is doubted whether the First, in the time of Charlemagne,
or the Second, who followed Godfrey of Bouillon. Mr. Cary thinks the
former; and the mention of his kinsman Rinaldo (Ariosto's Paladin? )
seems to confirm his opinion; yet the situation of the name in the text
brings it nearer to Godfrey; and Rinoardo (the name of Rinaldo in Dante)
might possibly mean "Raimbaud," the kinsman and associate of the second
William. Robert Guiscard is the Norman who conquered Naples. ]
[Footnote 25: Exquisitely beautiful feeling!
[Footnote 29: Most beautiful is this simile of the lark:
"Prima cantando, e poi tace contenta
De l'ultima dolcezza che la sazia. "
In the _Pentameron and Pentalogia_, Petrarch is made to say, "All the
verses that ever were written on the nightingale are scarcely worth the
beautiful triad of this divine poet on the lark [and then he repeats
them].
In the first of them, do you not see the trembling of her wings
against the sky? As often as I repeat them, my ear is satisfied, my
heart (like hers) contented.
"_Boccaccio. _--I agree with you in the perfect and unrivalled beauty of
the first; but in the third there is a redundance. Is not _contenta_
quite enough without _che la sazia? _The picture is before us, the
sentiment within us; and, behold, we kick when we are full of manna.
"_Petrarch. _--I acknowledge the correctness and propriety of your
remark; and yet beauties in poetry must be examined as carefully as
blemishes, and even more. "--p. 92.
Perhaps Dante would have argued that _sazia_ expresses the satiety
itself, so that the very superfluousness becomes a propriety. ]
[Footnote 30:
"E come a buon cantor buon citarista
Fa seguitar to guizzo de la corda
In che più di piacer lo canto acquista;
Sì, mentre che parlò, mi si ricorda,
Ch'io vidi le due luci benedette,
Pur come batter d'occhi si concorda,
Con le parole muover le fiammette. " ]
[Footnote 31: A corrector of clerical abuses, who, though a cardinal,
and much employed in public affairs, preferred the simplicity of a
private life. He has left writings, the eloquence of which, according to
Tiraboschi, is "worthy of a better age. " Petrarch also makes honourable
mention of him. See _Cary_, ut sup. p. 169. Dante lived a good while
in the monastery of Catria, and is said to have finished his poem
there. --_Lombardi in loc. _ vol. III. p. 547. ]
[Footnote 32: The cardinal's hat. ]
[Footnote 33: "Sì che duo bestie van sott' una pelle. "]
[Footnote 34:
"Dintorno a questa (voce) vennero e fermarsi,
E fero un grido di sì alto suono,
Che non potrebbe qui assomigliarsi;
Nè io lo 'ntesi, sì mi vinse il tuono. "
Around this voice they flocked, a mighty crowd,
And raised a shout so huge, that earthly wonder
Knoweth no likeness for a peal so loud;
Nor could I hear the words, it spoke such thunder.
If a Longinus had written after Dante, he would have put this passage
into his treatise on the Sublime. ]
[Footnote 35: Benedict, the founder of the order called after his name.
Macarius, an Egyptian monk and moralist. Romoaldo, founder of the
Camaldoli. ]
[Footnote 36: The reader of English poetry will be reminded of a passage
in Cowley
"Lo, I mount; and lo,
How small the biggest parts of earth's proud title shew!
Where shall I find the noble British land?
Lo, I at last a northern speck espy,
Which in the sea does lie,
And seems a grain o' the sand.
For this will any sin, or bleed?
Of civil wars is this the meed?
And is it this, alas, which we,
Oh, irony of words! do call Great Brittanie? "
And he afterwards, on reaching higher depths of silence, says very
finely, and with a beautiful intimation of the all-inclusiveness of the
Deity by the use of a singular instead of a plural verb,--
"Where am I now? angels and God is here. "
All which follows in Dante, up to the appearance of Saint Peter, is full
of grandeur and loveliness. ]
[Footnote 37:
"Come l' augello intra l'amate fronde,
Posato al nido de' suoi dolci nati
La notte che le cose ci nasconde,
Che per veder gli aspetti desiati,
E per trovar lo cibo onde gli pasca,
In che i gravi labor gli sono aggrati,
Previene 'l tempo in su l'aperta frasca,
E con ardente affetto il sole aspetta,
Fiso guardando pur che l'alba nasca;
Così la donna mia si stava eretta
E attenta, involta in ver la plaga
Sotto la quale il sol mostra men fretta:
Sì the veggendola io sospesa e vaga,
Fecimi quale è quei che disiando
Altro vorria, e sperando s'appaga. " ]
[Footnote 38:
"Quale ne' plenilunii sereni
Trivia ride tra le Ninfe eterne,
Che dipingono 'l ciel per tutti i seni. "
[Footnote 39: He has seen Christ in his own unreflected person. ]
[Footnote 40: The Virgin Mary. ]
[Footnote 41:
"Mi rendei
A la battaglia de' debili cigli. "]
[Footnote 42:
"Ambo le luci mi dipinse. "
[Footnote 43:
"Qualunque melodia più dolce suona
Qua giù, e più a se l'anima tira,
Parebbe nube che squarciata tuona,
Comparata al sonar di quella lira
Onde si coronava il bel zaffiro
Del quale il ciel più chiaro s' inzaffira. " ]
[Footnote 44:
"Benedicendomi cantando
Tre volte cinse me, sì com' io tacqui,
L' Apostolico lume, al cui comando
Io avea detto; sì nel dir gli piacqui. "
It was this passage, and the one that follows it, which led Foscolo to
suspect that Dante wished to lay claim to a divine mission; an opinion
which has excited great indignation among the orthodox. See his
_Discorso sul Testo_, ut sup. pp. 61, 77-90 and 335-338; and the preface
of the Milanese Editors to the "Convito" of Dante,--_Opere Minori_,
12mo, vol ii. p. xvii. Foscolo's conjecture seems hardly borne out by
the context; but I think Dante had boldness and self-estimation enough
to have advanced any claim whatsoever, had events turned out as he
expected. What man but himself (supposing him the believer he professed
to be) would have thought of thus making himself free of the courts of
Heaven, and constituting St. Peter his applauding catechist! ]
[Footnote 45: The verses quoted in the preceding note conclude the
twenty-fourth canto of Paradise; and those, of which the passage just
given is a translation, commence the twenty-fifth:
"Se mai continga, che 'l poema sacro
Al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra
Sì che m' ha fatto per più anni macro,
Vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra
Del bello ovile ov' io dormi' agnello
Nimico a' lupi che gli danno guerra;
Con altra voce omai, con altro vello
Ritornerò poeta, ed in sul fonte
Del mio battesmo prenderò 'l capello:
Perocchè ne la fede che fa conte
L' anime a Dio, quiv' entra' io, e poi
Pietro per lei sì mi girò la fronte. " ]
[Footnote 46: "Sperent in te. " _Psalm_ ix. 10. The English version says,
"And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee. "]
[Footnote 47:
"Tal volta un animal coverto broglia
Sì che l' affetto convien che si paia
Per lo seguir che face a lui la 'nvoglia. "
A natural, but strange, and surely not sufficiently dignified image for
the occasion. It is difficult to be quite content with a former one, in
which the greetings of St. Peter and St. James are compared to those of
doves murmuring and sidling round about one another; though Christian
sentiment may warrant it, if we do not too strongly present the Apostles
to one's imagination. ]
[Footnote 48:
"Tal ne la sembianza sua divenne,
Qual diverebbe Giove, s' egli e Marte
Fossero augelli e cambiassersi penne. "
Nobody who opened the Commedia for the first time at this fantastical
image would suppose the author was a great poet, or expect the
tremendous passage that ensues! ]
[Footnote 49: In spite of the unheavenly nature of invective, of
something of a lurking conceit in the making an eclipse out of a blush,
and in the positive bathos, and I fear almost indecent irrelevancy of
the introduction of Beatrice at all on such an occasion, much more under
the feeble aspect of one young lady blushing for another,--this scene
altogether is a very grand one; and the violence itself of the holy
invective awful.
A curious subject for reflection is here presented. What sort of pope
would Dante himself have made? Would he have taken to the loving or the
hating side of his genius? To the St. John or the St. Peter of his own
poem? St. Francis or St. Dominic? --I am afraid, all things considered,
we should have had in him rather a Gregory the Seventh or Julius
the Second, than a Benedict the Eleventh or a Ganganelli. What fine
Church-hymns he would have written! ]
[Footnote 50: She does not see (so blind is even holy vehemence! ) that
for the same reason the denouncement itself is out of its place. The
preachers brought St. Anthony and his pig into their pulpits; she brings
them into Heaven! ]
[Footnote 51:
"Certo io credo
Che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda. " ]
[Footnote 52: The Emperor Henry of Luxembourg, Dante's idol; at the
close of whose brief and inefficient appearance in Italy, his hopes of
restoration to his country were at an end. ]
[Footnote 53: Pope Clement the Fifth. Dante's enemy, Boniface, was now
dead, and of course in Tartarus, in the red-hot tomb which the poet had
prepared for him. ]
[Footnote 54: Boniface himself. Pope Clement's red hot feet are to
thrust down Pope Boniface into a gulf still hotter. So says the gentle
Beatrice in Heaven, and in the face of all that is angelical! ]
[Footnote 55: David. ]
[Footnote 56: The Trinity. ]
[Footnote 57: The Incarnation. ]
[Footnote 58: In the Variorum edition of Dante, ut sup. vol. iii. p.
845, we are informed that a gentleman of Naples, the Cavaliere Giuseppe
de Cesare, was the first to notice (not long since, I presume) the
curious circumstance of Dante's having terminated the three portions of
his poem with the word "stars. " He thinks that it was done as a happy
augury of life and renown to the subject. The literal intention,
however, seems to have been to shew us, how all his aspirations
terminated. ]
PULCI:
Critical Notice
of
PULCI'S LIFE AND GENIUS.
Pulci, who is the first genuine romantic poet, in point of time, after
Dante, seems, at first sight, in the juxtaposition, like farce after
tragedy; and indeed, in many parts of his poem, he is not only what he
seems, but follows his saturnine countryman with a peculiar propriety
of contrast, much of his liveliest banter being directed against the
absurdities of Dante's theology. But hasty and most erroneous would be
the conclusion that he was nothing but a banterar. He was a true poet
of the mixed order, grave as well as gay; had a reflecting mind, a
susceptible and most affectionate heart; and perhaps was never more in
earnest than when he gave vent to his dislike of bigotry in his most
laughable sallies.
Luigi Pulci, son of Jacopo Pulci and Brigida de' Bardi, was of a noble
family, so ancient as to be supposed to have come from France into
Tuscany with his hero Charlemagne. He was born in Florence on the 3d of
December, 1431, and was the youngest of three brothers, all possessed of
a poetical vein, though it did not flow with equal felicity. Bernardo,
the eldest, was the earliest translator of the Eclogues of Virgil; and
Lucca wrote a romance called the _Ciriffo Calvaneo_, and is commended
for his _Heroic Epistles_. Little else is known of these brothers; and
not much more of Luigi himself, except that he married a lady of the
name of Lucrezia degli Albizzi; journeyed in Lombardy and elsewhere; was
one of the most intimate friends of Lorenzo de Medici and his literary
circle; and apparently led a life the most delightful to a poet, always
meditating some composition, and buried in his woods and gardens.
Nothing is known of his latter days. An unpublished work of little
credit (Zilioli _On the Italian Poets_), and an earlier printed book,
which, according to Tiraboschi, is of not much greater (Scardeone _De
Antiquitatibus Orbis Patavinæ_), say that he died miserably in Padua,
and was refused Christian burial on account of his impieties. It is
not improbable that, during the eclipse of the fortunes of the Medici
family, after the death of Lorenzo, Pulci may have partaken of its
troubles; and there is certainly no knowing how badly his or their
enemies may have treated him; but miserable ends are a favourite
allegation with theological opponents. The Calvinists affirm of their
master, the burner of Servetus, that he died like a saint; but I
have seen a biography in Italian, which attributed the most horrible
death-bed, not only to the atrocious Genevese, but to the genial Luther,
calling them both the greatest villains (_sceleratissimi_); and adding,
that one of them (I forget which) was found dashed on the floor of his
bedroom, and torn limb from limb.
Pulci appears to have been slender in person, with small eyes and a
ruddy face. I gather this from the caricature of him in the poetical
paper-war carried on between him and his friend Matteo Franco, a
Florentine canon, which is understood to have been all in good
humour--sport to amuse their friends--a perilous speculation. Besides
his share in these verses, he is supposed to have had a hand in his
brother's romance, and was certainly the author of some devout poems,
and of a burlesque panegyric on a country damsel, _La Beca_, in
emulation of the charming poem _La Nencia_, the first of its kind,
written by that extraordinary person, his illustrious friend Lorenzo,
who, in the midst of his cares and glories as the balancer of the power
of Italy, was one of the liveliest of the native wits, and wrote songs
for the people to dance to in Carnival time.
The intercourse between Lorenzo and Pulci was of the most familiar kind.
Pulci was sixteen years older, but of a nature which makes no such
differences felt between associates. He had known Lorenzo from the
latter's youth, probably from his birth--is spoken of in a tone of
domestic intimacy by his wife--and is enumerated by him among his
companions in a very special and characteristic manner in his poem on
Hawking _(La Caccia col Falcone_), when, calling his fellow-sportsmen
about him, and missing Luigi, one of them says that he has strolled into
a neighbouring wood, to put something which has struck his fancy into a
sonnet:
"'Luigi Pulci ov' è, che non si sente? ' 'Egli se n' andò dianzi in quel
boschetto, Che qualche fantasia ha per la mente; Vorr à fantasticar
forse un sonetto. '"
"And where's Luigi Pulci? I saw _him_. " "Oh, in the wood there. Gone,
depend upon it, To vent some fancy in his brain--some whim, That will
not let him rest till it's a sonnet. "
In a letter written to Lorenzo, when the future statesman, then in his
seventeenth year, was making himself personally acquainted with the
courts of Italy, Pulci speaks of himself as struggling hard to keep down
the poetic propensity in his friend's absence. "If you were with me," he
says, "I should produce heaps of sonnets as big as the clubs they make
of the cherry-blossoms for May-day. I am always muttering some verse or
other betwixt my teeth; but I say to myself, 'My Lorenzo is not here--he
who is my only hope and refuge;' and so I suppress it. " Such is the
first, and of a like nature are the latest accounts we possess of the
sequestered though companionable poet. He preferred one congenial
listener who understood him, to twenty critics that were puzzled with
the vivacity of his impulses. Most of the learned men patronised by
Lorenzo probably quarrelled with him on account of it, plaguing him in
somewhat the same spirit, though in more friendly guise, as the Della
Cruscans and others afterwards plagued Tasso; so he banters them in
turn, and takes refuge from their critical rules and common-places in
the larger indulgence of his friend Politian and the laughing wisdom of
Lorenzo.
"So che andar diritto mi bisogna, Ch' io non ci mescolassi una bugia,
Che questa non è storia da menzogna; Che come in esco un passo de la
via,
Chi gracchia, chi riprende, e chi rampogna: Ognun poi mi riesce la
pazzia;
Tanto ch' eletto ho solitaria vita, Che la turba di questi è infinita.
La mia Accademia un tempo, o mia Ginnasia, E stata volentier ne' miei
boschetti; E puossi ben veder l' Affrica e l' Asia: Vengon le Ninfe con
lor canestretti, E portanmi o narciso o colocasia; E così fuggo mille
urban dispetti: Sì ch' io non torno a' vostri Areopaghi, Gente pur
sempre di mal dicer vaghi.
I know I ought to make no dereliction From the straight path to this
side or to that; I know the story I relate's no fiction, And that
the moment that I quit some flat, Folks are all puff, and blame, and
contradiction, And swear I never know what I'd be at; In short, such
crowds, I find, can mend one's poem, I live retired, on purpose not to
know 'em.
Yes, gentlemen, my only 'Academe,' My sole 'Gymnasium,' are my woods
and bowers; Of Afric and of Asia there I dream; And the Nymphs bring me
baskets full of flowers, Arums, and sweet narcissus from the stream; And
thus my Muse escapeth your town-hours And town-disdains; and I eschew
your bites, Judges of books, grim Areopagites. "
He is here jesting, as Foscolo has observed, on the academy instituted
by Lorenzo for encouraging the Greek language, doubtless with the
laughing approbation of the founder, who was sometimes not a little
troubled himself with the squabbles of his literati.
Our author probably had good reason to call his illustrious friend his
"refuge. " The _Morgante Maggiore_, the work which has rendered the name
of Pulci renowned, was an attempt to elevate the popular and homely
narrative poetry chanted in the streets into the dignity of a production
that should last. The age was in a state of transition on all points.
The dogmatic authority of the schoolmen in matters of religion, which
prevailed in the time of Dante, had come to nought before the advance
of knowledge in general, and the indifference of the court of Rome.
The Council of Trent, as Crescimbeni advised the critics, had not then
settled what Christendom was to believe; and men, provided they complied
with forms, and admitted certain main articles, were allowed to think,
and even in great measure talk, as they pleased. The lovers of the
Platonic philosophy took the opportunity of exalting some of its dreams
to an influence, which at one time was supposed to threaten Christianity
itself, and which in fact had already succeeded in affecting Christian
theology to an extent which the scorners of Paganism little suspect.
Most of these Hellenists pushed their admiration of Greek literature to
an excess. They were opposed by the Virgilian predilections of Pulci's
friend, Politian, who had nevertheless universality enough to sympathise
with the delight the other took in their native Tuscan, and its
liveliest and most idiomatic effusions. From all these circumstances in
combination arose, first, Pulci's determination to write a poem of a
mixed order, which should retain for him the ear of the many, and at the
same time give rise to a poetry of romance worthy of higher auditors;
second, his banter of what he considered unessential and injurious
dogmas of belief, in favour of those principles of the religion of
charity which inflict no contradiction on the heart and understanding;
third, the trouble which seems to have been given him by critics,
"sacred and profane," in consequence of these originalities; and lastly,
a doubt which has strangely existed with some, as to whether he intended
to write a serious or a comic poem, or on any one point was in earnest
at all. One writer thinks he cannot have been in earnest, because he
opens every canto with some pious invocation; another asserts that the
piety itself is a banter; a similar critic is of opinion, that to mix
levities with gravities proves the gravities to have been nought, and
the levities all in all; a fourth allows him to have been serious in his
description of the battle of Roncesvalles, but says he was laughing in
all the rest of his poem; while a fifth candidly gives up the question,
as one of those puzzles occasioned by the caprices of the human mind,
which it is impossible for reasonable people to solve. Even Sismondi,
who was well acquainted with the age in which Pulci wrote, and who, if
not a profound, is generally an acute and liberal critic, confesses
himself to be thus confounded. "Pulci," he says, "commences all his
cantos by a sacred invocation; and the interests of religion are
constantly intermingled with the adventures of his story, in a manner
capricious and little instructive. We know not how to reconcile this
monkish spirit with the semi-pagan character of society under Lorenzo
di Medici, nor whether we ought to accuse Pulci of gross bigotry or of
profane derision. " [1] Sismondi did not consider that the lively
and impassioned people of the south take what may be called
household-liberties with the objects of their worship greater than
northerns can easily conceive; that levity of manner, therefore, does
not always imply the absence of the gravest belief; that, be this as
it may, the belief may be as grave on some points as light on others,
perhaps the more so for that reason; and that, although some poems, like
some people, are altogether grave, or the reverse, there really is
such a thing as tragi-comedy both in the world itself and in the
representations of it. A jesting writer may be quite as much in earnest
when he professes to be so, as a pleasant companion who feels for his
own or for other people's misfortunes, and who is perhaps obliged to
affect or resort to his very pleasantry sometimes, because he feels more
acutely than the gravest. The sources of tears and smiles lie close to,
ay and help to refine one another. If Dante had been capable of more
levity, he would have been guilty of less melancholy absurdities. If
Rabelais had been able to weep as well as to laugh, and to love as well
as to be licentious, he would have had faith and therefore support in
something earnest, and not have been obliged to place the consummation
of all things in a wine-bottle. People's every-day experiences might
explain to them the greatest apparent inconsistencies of Pulci's muse,
if habit itself did not blind them to the illustration. Was nobody ever
present in a well-ordered family, when a lively conversation having been
interrupted by the announcement of dinner, the company, after listening
with the greatest seriousness to a grace delivered with equal
seriousness, perhaps by a clergyman, resumed it the instant afterwards
in all its gaiety, with the first spoonful of soup? Well, the sacred
invocations at the beginning of Pulci's cantos were compliances of the
like sort with a custom. They were recited and listened to just as
gravely at Lorenzo di Medici's table; and yet neither compromised the
reciters, nor were at all associated with the enjoyment of the fare that
ensued. So with regard to the intermixture of grave and gay throughout
the poem. How many campaigning adventures have been written by gallant
officers, whose animal spirits saw food for gaiety in half the
circumstances that occurred, and who could crack a jest and a helmet
perhaps with almost equal vivacity, and yet be as serious as the gravest
at a moment's notice, mourn heartily over the deaths of their friends,
and shudder with indignation and horror at the outrages committed in a
captured city? It is thus that Pulci writes, full no less of feeling
than of whim and mirth. And the whole honest round of humanity not only
warrants his plan, but in the twofold sense of the word embraces it.
If any thing more were necessary to shew the gravity with which our
author addressed himself to his subject, it is the fact, related by
himself, of its having been recommended to him by Lorenzo's mother,
Lucrezia Tornabuoni, a good and earnest woman, herself a poetess, who
wrote a number of sacred narratives, and whose virtues he more than
once records with the greatest respect and tenderness. The _Morgante_
concludes with an address respecting this lady to the Virgin, and with
a hope that her "devout and sincere" spirit may obtain peace for him
in Paradise. These are the last words in the book. Is it credible that
expressions of this kind, and employed on such an occasion, could have
had no serious meaning? or that Lorenzo listened to such praises of his
mother as to a jest?
I have no doubt that, making allowance for the age in which he lived,
Pulci was an excellent Christian. His orthodoxy, it is true, was not the
orthodoxy of the times of Dante or St. Dominic, nor yet of that of the
Council of Trent. His opinions respecting the mystery of the Trinity
appear to have been more like those of Sir Isaac Newton than of
Archdeacon Travis. And assuredly he agreed with Origen respecting
eternal punishment, rather than with Calvin and Mr. Toplady. But a man
may accord with Newton, and yet be thought not unworthy of the "starry
spheres. " He may think, with Origen, that God intends all his creatures
to be ultimately happy,[2] and yet be considered as loving a follower
of Christ as a "dealer of damnation round the land," or the burner of a
fellow-creature.
Pulci was in advance of his time on more subjects than one. He
pronounced the existence of a new and inhabited world, before the
appearance of Columbus. [3] He made the conclusion, doubtless, as
Columbus did, from the speculations of more scientific men, and the
rumours of seamen; but how rare are the minds that are foremost to throw
aside even the most innocent prejudices, and anticipate the enlargements
of the public mind! How many also are calumniated and persecuted for so
doing, whose memories, for the same identical reason, are loved, perhaps
adored, by the descendants of the calumniators! In a public library, in
Pulci's native place, is preserved a little withered relic, to which
the attention of the visitor is drawn with reverential complacency. It
stands, pointing upwards, under a glass-case, looking like a mysterious
bit of parchment; and is the finger of Galileo;--of that Galileo, whose
hand, possessing that finger, is supposed to have been tortured by the
Inquisition for writing what every one now believes. He was certainly
persecuted and imprisoned by the Inquisition. Milton saw and visited
him under the restraint of that scientific body in his own house. Yet
Galileo did more by his disclosures of the stars towards elevating our
ideas of the Creator, than all the so-called saints and polemics that
screamed at one another in the pulpits of East and West.
Like the _Commedia_ of Dante, Pulci's "Commedia" (for such also in
regard to its general cheerfulness,[4] and probably to its mediocrity of
style, he calls it) is a representative in great measure of the feeling
and knowledge of his time; and though not entirely such in a learned and
eclectic sense, and not to be compared to that sublime monstrosity in
point of genius and power, is as superior to it in liberal opinion
and in a certain pervading lovingness, as the author's affectionate
disposition, and his country's advance in civilisation, combined to
render it. The editor of the _Parnaso Italiano_ had reason to notice
this engaging personal character in our author's work. He says, speaking
of the principal romantic poets of Italy, that the reader will "admire
Tasso, will adore Ariosto, but will love Pulci. "[5] And all minds, in
which lovingness produces love, will agree with him.
The _Morgante Maggiore_ is a history of the fabulous exploits and death
of Orlando, the great hero of Italian romance, and of the wars
and calamities brought on his fellow Paladins and their sovereign
Charlemagne by the envy, ambition, and treachery of the misguided
monarch's favourite, Gail of Magauza (Mayence), Count of Poictiers. It
is founded on the pseudo-history of Archbishop Turpin, which, though it
received the formal sanction of the Church, is a manifest forgery, and
became such a jest with the wits, that they took a delight in palming
upon it their most incredible fictions. The title (_Morgante the Great_)
seems to have been either a whim to draw attention to an old subject, or
the result of an intention to do more with the giant so called than took
place; for though he is a conspicuous actor in the earlier part of the
poem, he dies when it is not much more than half completed. Orlando, the
champion of the faith, is the real hero of it, and Gan the anti-hero or
vice. Charlemagne, the reader hardly need be told, is represented,
for the most part, as a very different person from what he appears in
history. In truth, as Ellis and Panizzi have shewn, he is either an
exaggeration (still misrepresented) of Charles Martel, the Armorican
chieftain, who conquered the Saracens at Poictiers, or a concretion of
all the Charleses of the Carlovingian race, wise and simple, potent and
weak. [6]
The story may be thus briefly told. Orlando quits the court of
Charlemagne in disgust, but is always ready to return to it when the
emperor needs his help. The best Paladins follow, to seek him. He meets
with and converts the giant Morgante, whose aid he receives in many
adventures, among which is the taking of Babylon. The other Paladins,
his cousin Rinaldo especially, have their separate adventures, all more
or less mixed up with the treacheries and thanklessness of Gan (for they
assist even him), and the provoking trust reposed in him by Charlemagne;
and at length the villain crowns his infamy by luring Orlando with most
of the Paladins into the pass of Roncesvalles, where the hero himself
and almost all his companions are slain by the armies of Gan's
fellow-traitor, Marsilius, king of Spain.
