Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 - Leigh Hunt
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"O proud, miserable, woe-begone Christians!" exclaims the poet; "ye who,
in the shortness of your sight, see no reason for advancing in the
right path! Know ye not that we are worms, born to compose the angelic
butterfly, provided we throw off the husks that impede our flight?"[22]
The souls came slowly on, each bending down in proportion to his burden.
They looked like the crouching figures in architecture that are used
to support roofs or balconies, and that excite piteous fancies in the
beholders. The one that appeared to have the most patience, yet seemed
as if he said, "I can endure no further."
The sufferers, notwithstanding their anguish, raised their voices in
a paraphrase on the Lord's Prayer, which they concluded with humbly
stating, that they repeated the clause against temptation, not for
themselves, but for those who were yet living.
Virgil, wishing them a speedy deliverance, requested them to spew the
best way of going up to the next circle. Who it was that answered him
could not be discerned, on account of their all being so bent down; but
a voice gave them the required direction; the speaker adding, that he
wished he could raise his eyes, so as to see the living creature that
stood near him. He said that his name was Omberto--that he came of
the great Tuscan race of Aldobrandesco--and that his countrymen, the
Siennese, murdered him on account of his arrogance.
Dante had bent down his own head to listen, and in so doing he was
recognised by one of the sufferers, who, eyeing him as well as he could,
addressed him by name. The poet replied by exclaiming, "Art thou not
Oderisi, the glory of Agubbio, the master of the art of illumination?"
"Ah!" said Oderisi, "Franco of Bologna has all the glory now. His
colours make the pages of books laugh with beauty, compared with what
mine do.[23] I could not have owned it while on earth, for the sin which
has brought me hither; but so it is; and so will it ever be, let a man's
fame be never so green and flourishing, unless he can secure a dull age
to come after him. Cimabue, in painting, lately kept the field against
all comers, and now the cry is 'Giotto.' Thus, in song, a new Guido has
deprived the first of his glory, and he perhaps is born who shall drive
both out of the nest.[24] Fame is but a wind that changes about from all
quarters. What does glory amount to at best, that a man should prefer
living and growing old for it, to dying in the days of his nurse and
his pap-boat, even if it should last him a thousand years? A thousand
years!--the twinkling of an eye. Behold this man, who weeps before me;
his name resounded once over all our Tuscany, and now it is scarcely
whispered in his native place. He was lord there at the time that your
once proud but now loathsome Florence had such a lesson given to its
frenzy at the battle of Arbia."
"And what is his name?" inquired Dante.
"Salvani," returned the limner. "He is here, because he had the
presumption to think that he could hold Sienna in the hollow of his
hand. Fifty years has he paced in this manner. Such is the punishment
for audacity."
"But why is he here at all," said Dante, "and not in the outer region,
among the delayers of repentance?"
"Because," exclaimed the other, "in the height of his ascendancy he did
not disdain to stand in the public place in Sienna, and, trembling in
every vein, beg money from the people to ransom a friend from captivity.
Do I appear to thee to speak with mysterious significance? Thy
countrymen shall too soon help thee to understand me."[25]
Virgil now called Dante away from Oderisi, and bade him notice the
ground on which they were treading. It was pavement, wrought all over
with figures, like sculptured tombstones. There was Lucifer among them,
struck flaming down from heaven; and Briareus, pinned to the earth with
the thunderbolt, and, with the other giants, amazing the gods with his
hugeness; and Nimrod, standing confounded at the foot of Babel; and
Niobe, with her despairing eyes, turned into stone amidst her children;
and Saul, dead on his own sword in Gilboa; and Arachne, now half spider,
at fault on her own broken web; and Rehoboam, for all his insolence,
flying in terror in his chariot; and Alcmaeon, who made his mother pay
with her life for the ornament she received to betray his father; and
Sennacherib, left dead by his son in the temple; and the head of Cyrus,
thrown by the motherless woman into the goblet of blood, that it might
swill what it had thirsted for; and Holofernes, beheaded; and his
Assyrians flying at his death; and Troy, all become cinders and hollow
places. Oh! what a fall from pride was there! Now, maintain the
loftiness of your looks, ye sons of Eve, and walk with proud steps,
bending not your eyes on the dust ye were, lest ye perceive the evil of
your ways.[26]
"Behold," said Virgil, "there is an angel coming."
The angel came on, clad in white, with a face that sent trembling beams
before it, like the morning star. He skewed the pilgrims the way up to
the second circle; and then, beating his wings against the forehead of
Dante, on which the seven initials of sin were written, told him he
should go safely, and disappeared.
On reaching the new circle, Dante, instead of the fierce wailings that
used to meet him at every turn in hell, heard voices singing, "Blessed
are the poor in spirit."[27] As he went, he perceived that he walked
lighter, and was told by Virgil that the angel had freed him from one of
the letters on his forehead. He put his hand up to make sure, as a man
does in the street when people take notice of something on his head of
which he is not aware; and Virgil smiled.
In this new circle the sin of Envy was expiated. After the pilgrims had
proceeded a mile, they heard the voices of invisible spirits passing
them, uttering sentiments of love and charity; for it was charity itself
that had to punish envy.
The souls of the envious, clad in sackcloth, sat leaning for support and
humiliation, partly against the rocky wall of the circle, and partly on
one another's shoulders, after the manner of beggars that ask alms near
places of worship. Their eyes were sewn up, like those of hawks in
training, but not so as to hinder them from shedding tears, which they
did in abundance; and they cried, "Mary, pray for us!--Michael, Peter,
and all the saints, pray for us!"
Dante spoke to them; and one, a female, lifted up her chin as a blind
person does when expressing consciousness of notice, and said she was
Sapia of Sienna, who used to be pleased at people's misfortunes, and had
rejoiced when her countrymen lost the battle of Colle. "_Sapia_ was
my name," she said, "but _sapient_ I was not[28], for I prayed God to
defeat my countrymen; and when he had done so (as he had willed to do),
I raised my bold face to heaven, and cried out to him, 'Now do thy
worst, for I fear thee not!' I was like the bird in the fable, who
thought the fine day was to last for ever. What I should have done in my
latter days to make up for the imperfect amends of my repentance, I know
not, if the holy Piero Pettignano had not assisted me with his prayers.
But who art thou that goest with open eyes, and breathest in thy talk?"
"Mine eyes," answered Dante, "may yet have to endure the blindness in
this place, though for no long period. Far more do I fear the sufferings
in the one that I have just left. I seem to feel the weight already upon
me."[29]
The Florentine then informed Sapia how he came thither, which, she said,
was a great sign that God loved him; and she begged his prayers. The
conversation excited the curiosity of two spirits who overheard it; and
one of them, Guido del Duca, a noble Romagnese, asked the poet of
what country he was. Dante, without mentioning the name of the river,
intimated that he came from the banks of the Arno; upon which the other
spirit, Rinier da Calboli, asked his friend why the stranger suppressed
the name, as though it was something horrible. Guido said he well might;
for the river, throughout its course, beheld none but bad men and
persecutors of virtue. First, he said, it made its petty way by the
sties of those brutal hogs, the people of Casentino, and then arrived at
the dignity of watering the kennels of the curs of Arezzo, who excelled
more in barking than in biting; then, growing unluckier as it grew
larger, like the cursed and miserable ditch that it was, it found in
Florence the dogs become wolves; and finally, ere it went into the sea,
it passed the den of those foxes, the Pisans, who were full of such
cunning that they held traps in contempt.
"It will be well," continued Guido, "for this man to remember what he
hears;" and then, after prophesying evil to Florence, and confessing to
Dante his sin of envy, which used to make him pale when any one looked
happy, he added, "This is Rinieri, the glory of that house of Calboli
which now inherits not a spark of it. Not a spark of it, did I say, in
the house of Calboli? Where is there a spark in all Romagna? Where is
the good Lizio?--where Manardi, Traversaro, Carpigna? The Romagnese have
all become bastards. A mechanic founds a house in Bologna! a Bernardin
di Fosco finds his dog-grass become a tree in Faenza! Wonder not,
Tuscan, to see me weep, when I think of the noble spirits that we have
lived with--of the Guidos of Prata, and the Ugolins of Azzo--of Federigo
Tignoso and his band--of the Traversaros and Anastagios, families now
ruined--and all the ladies and the cavaliers, the alternate employments
and delights which wrapped us in a round of love and courtesy, where now
there is nothing but ill-will! O castle of Brettinoro! why dost thou
not fall? Well has the lord of Bagnacavallo done, who will have no more
children. Who would propagate a race of Counties from such blood as the
Castrocaros and the Conios? Is not the son of Pagani called the Demon?
and would it not be better that such a son were swept out of the family?
Nay, let him live to chew to what a pitch of villany it has arrived.
Ubaldini alone is blest, for his name is good, and he is too old to
leave a child after him. Go, Tuscan--go; for I would be left to my
tears."
Dante and Virgil turned to move onward, and had scarcely done so, when a
tremendous voice met them, splitting the air like peals of thunder, and
crying out, "Whoever finds me will slay me!" then dashed apart, like the
thunder-bolt when it falls. It was Cain. The air had scarcely recovered
its silence, when a second crash ensued from a different quarter near
them, like thunder when the claps break swiftly into one another. "I am
Aglauros," it said, "that was turned into stone." Dante drew closer to
his guide, and there ensued a dead silence.[30]
The sun was now in the west, and the pilgrims were journeying towards
it, when Dante suddenly felt such a weight of splendour on his eyes, as
forced him to screen them with both his hands. It was an angel coming to
show them the ascent to the next circle, a way that was less steep than
the last. While mounting, they heard the angel's voice singing behind
them, "Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy!" and on
his leaving them to proceed by themselves, the second letter on Dante's
forehead was found to have been effaced by the splendour.
The poet looked round in wonder on the new circle, where the sin
of Anger was expiated, and beheld, as in a dream, three successive
spectacles illustrative of the virtue of patience. The first was that of
a crowded temple, on the threshold of which a female said to her son, in
the sweet manner of a mother, "Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us?
Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing:"[31]--and here she
became silent, and the vision ended. The next was the lord of Athens,
Pisistratus, calmly reproving his wife for wishing him to put to death
her daughter's lover, who, in a transport, had embraced her in public.
"If we are to be thus severe," said Pisistratus, "with those that love
us, what is to be done with such as hate?" The last spectacle was that
of a furious multitude shouting and stoning to death a youth, who, as he
fell to the ground, still kept his face towards heaven, making his eyes
the gates through which his soul reached it, and imploring forgiveness
for his murderers.[32]
The visions passed away, leaving the poet staggering as if but half
awake. They were succeeded by a thick and noisome fog, through which he
followed his leader with the caution of a blind man, Virgil repeatedly
telling him not to quit him a moment. Here they heard voices praying in
unison for pardon to the "Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the
world." They were the spirits of the angry. Dante conversed with one of
them on free-will and necessity; and after quitting him, and issuing by
degrees from the cloud, beheld illustrative visions of anger; such as
the impious mother, who was changed into the bird that most delights in
singing; Haman, retaining his look of spite and rage on the cross; and
Lavinia, mourning for her mother, who slew herself for rage at the death
of Turnus.[33]
These visions were broken off by a great light, as sleep is broken; and
Dante heard a voice out of it saying, "The ascent is here." He then, as
Virgil and he ascended into the fourth circle, felt an air on his face,
as if caused by the fanning of wings, accompanied by the utterance
of the words, "Blessed are the peace-makers;" and his forehead was
lightened of the third letter.[34]
In this fourth circle was expiated Lukewarmness, or defect of zeal for
good. The sufferers came speeding and weeping round the mountain, making
amends for the old indifference by the haste and fire of the new love
that was in them. "Blessed Mary made haste," cried one, "to salute
Elizabeth." "And Caesar," cried another, "to smite Pompey at Lerida."[35]
"And the disobedient among the Israelites," cried others, "died before
they reached the promised land." "And the tired among the Trojans
preferred ease in Sicily to glory in Latium."--It was now midnight, and
Dante slept and had a dream.
His dream was of a woman who came to him, having a tongue that tried
ineffectually to speak, squinting eyes, feet whose distortion drew her
towards the earth, stumps of hands, and a pallid face. Dante looked
earnestly at her, and his look acted upon her like sunshine upon cold.
Her tongue was loosened; her feet made straight; she stood upright; her
paleness became a lovely rose-colour; and she warbled so beautifully,
that the poet could not have refused to listen had he wished it.
"I am the sweet Syren," she said, "who made the mariners turn pale for
pleasure in the sea. I drew Ulysses out of his course with my song; and
he that harbours with me once, rarely departs ever, so well I pay him
for what he abandons."
Her lips were not yet closed, when a lady of holy and earliest
countenance came up to shame her. "O Virgil!" she cried angrily, "who is
this?" Virgil approached, with his eyes fixed on the lady; and the lady
tore away the garments of the woman, and spewed her to be a creature so
loathly, that the sleeper awoke with the horror.[36]
Virgil said, "I have called thee three times to no purpose. Let us move,
and find the place at which we are to go higher."
It was broad day, with a sun that came warm on the shoulders; and Dante
was proceeding with his companion, when the softest voice they ever
heard directed them where to ascend, and they found an angel with them,
who pointed his swan-like wings upward, and then flapped them against
the pilgrims, taking away the fourth letter from the forehead of Dante.
"Blessed are they that mourn," said the angel, "for they shall be
comforted."
The pilgrims ascended into the fifth circle, and beheld the expiators of
Avarice grovelling on the ground, and exclaiming, as loud as they could
for the tears that choked them, "My soul hath cleaved to the dust."
Dante spoke to one, who turned out to be Pope Adrian the Fifth. The
poet fell on his knees; but Adrian bade him arise and err not. "I am no
longer," said he, "spouse of the Church, here; but fellow-servant with
thee and with all others. Go thy ways, and delay not the time of my
deliverance."
The pilgrims moving onward, Dante heard a spirit exclaim, in the
struggling tones of a woman in child-bed, "O blessed Virgin! That was a
poor roof thou hadst when thou wast delivered of thy sacred burden. O
good Fabricius! Virtue with poverty was thy choice, and not vice with
riches." And then it told the story of Nicholas, who, hearing that a
father was about to sacrifice the honour of his three daughters for want
of money, threw bags of it in at his window, containing portions for
them all.
Dante earnestly addressed this spirit to know who he was; and the spirit
said it would tell him, not for the sake of help, for which it looked
elsewhere, but because of the shining grace that was in his questioner,
though yet alive.
"I was root," said the spirit, "of that evil plant which overshadows all
Christendom to such little profit. Hugh Capet was I, ancestor of the
Philips and Louises of France, offspring of a butcher of Paris, when the
old race of kings was worn out.[37] We began by seizing the government
in Paris; then plundered in Provence; then, to make amends, laid hold of
Poitou, Normandy, and Gascony; then, still to make amends, put Conradin
to death and seized Naples; then, always to make amends, gave Saint
Aquinas his dismissal to Heaven by poison. I see the time at hand when a
descendant of mine will be called into Italy, and the spear that Judas
_jousted with_[38] shall transfix the bowels of Florence. Another of my
posterity sells his daughter for a sum of money to a Marquis of Ferrara.
Another seizes the pope in Alagna, and mocks Christ over again in the
person of his Vicar. A fourth rends the veil of the temple, solely to
seize its money. O Lord, how shall I rejoice to see the vengeance which
even now thou huggest in delight to thy bosom![39]
"Of loving and liberal things," continued Capet, "we speak while it is
light; such as thou heardest me record, when I addressed myself to the
blessed Virgin. But when night comes, we take another tone. Then we
denounce Pygmalion,[39] the traitor, the robber, and the parricide, each
the result of his gluttonous love of gold; and Midas, who obtained his
wish, to the laughter of all time; and the thief Achan, who still seems
frightened at the wrath of Joshua; and Sapphira and her husband, whom we
accuse over again before the Apostles; and Heliodorus, whom we bless the
hoofs of the angel's horse for trampling;[40] and Crassus, on whom we
call with shouts of derision to tell us the flavour of his molten gold.
Thus we record our thoughts in the night-time, now high, now low, now at
greater or less length, as each man is prompted by his impulses. And it
was thus thou didst hear me recording also by day-time, though I had no
respondent near me."
The pilgrims quitted Hugh Capet, and were eagerly pursuing their
journey, when, to the terror of Dante, they felt the whole mountain of
Purgatory tremble, as though it were about to fall in. The island of
Delos shook not so awfully when Latona, hiding there, brought forth the
twin eyes of Heaven. A shout then arose on every side, so enormous, that
Virgil stood nigher to his companion, and bade him be of good heart.
"Glory be to God in the highest," cried the shout; but Dante could
gather the words only from those who were near him.
It was Purgatory rejoicing for the deliverance of a soul out of its
bounds.[41]
The soul overtook the pilgrims as they were journeying in amazement
onwards; and it turned out to be that of Statius, who had been converted
to Christianity in the reign of Domitian.[42] Mutual astonishment led to
inquiries that explained who the other Latin poet was; and Statius fell
at his master's feet.
Statius had expiated his sins in the circle of Avarice, not for that
vice, but for the opposite one of Prodigality.
An angel now, as before, took the fifth letter from Dante's forehead;
and the three poets having ascended into the sixth round of the
mountain, were journeying on lovingly together, Dante listening with
reverence to the talk of the two ancients, when they came up to a
sweet-smelling fruit-tree, upon which a clear stream came tumbling from
a rock beside it, and diffusing itself through the branches. The Latin
poets went up to the tree, and were met by a voice which said, "Be
chary of the fruit. Mary thought not of herself at Galilee, but of the
visitors, when she said, 'They have no wine.' The women of oldest Rome
drank water. The beautiful age of gold feasted on acorns. Its thirst
made nectar out of the rivulet. The Baptist fed on locusts and wild
honey, and became great as you see him in the gospel."
The poets went on their way; and Dante was still listening to the
others, when they heard behind them a mingled sound of chanting and
weeping, which produced an effect at once sad and delightful. It was the
psalm, "O Lord, open thou our lips!" and the chanters were expiators
of the sin of Intemperance in Meats and Drinks. They were condemned to
circuit the mountain, famished, and to long for the fruit and waters of
the tree in vain. They soon came up with the poets--a pallid multitude,
with hollow eyes, and bones staring through the skin. The sockets of
their eyes looked like rings from which the gems had dropped.[43] One of
them knew and accosted Dante, who could not recognise him till he
heard him speak. It was Forese Donati, one of the poet's most intimate
connexions. Dante, who had wept over his face when dead, could as little
forbear weeping to see him thus hungering and thirsting, though he had
expected to find him in the outskirts of the place, among the delayers
of repentance. He asked his friend how he had so quickly got higher.
Forese said it was owing to the prayers and tears of his good wife
Nella; and then he burst into a strain of indignation against the
contrast exhibited to her virtue by the general depravity of the
Florentine women, whom he described as less modest than the half-naked
savages in the mountains of Sardinia.
"What is to be said of such creatures?" continued he. "O my dear cousin!
I see a day at hand, when these impudent women shall be for bidden from
the pulpit to go exposing their naked bosoms. What savages or what
infidels ever needed that? Oh! if they could see what Heaven has in
store for them, their mouths would be this instant opened wide for
howling."[44]
Forese then asked Dante to explain to himself and his astonished
fellow-sufferers how it was that he stood there, a living body of flesh
and blood, casting a shadow with his substance.
"If thou callest to mind," said Dante, "what sort of life thou and I led
together, the recollection may still grieve thee sorely. He that walks
here before us took me out of that life; and through his guidance it
is that I have visited in the body the world of the dead, and am now
traversing the mountain which leads us to the right path."[45]
After some further explanation, Forese pointed out to his friend, among
the expiators of intemperance, Buonaggiunta of Lucca, the poet; and Pope
Martin the Fourth, with a face made sharper than the rest for the eels
which he used to smother in wine; and Ubaldino of Pila, grinding his
teeth on air; and Archbishop Boniface of Ravenna, who fed jovially on
his flock; and Rigogliosi of Forli, who had had time enough to drink in
the other world, and yet never was satisfied. Buonaggiunta and Dante
eyed one another with curiosity; and the former murmured something about
a lady of the name of Gentucca.
"Thou seemest to wish to speak with me," said Dante.
"Thou art no admirer, I believe, of my native place," said Buonaggiunta;
"and yet, if thou art he whom I take thee to be, there is a damsel there
shall make it please thee. Art thou not author of the poem beginning
"Ladies, that understand the lore of love?"[46]
"I am one," replied Dante, "who writes as Love would have him, heeding
no manner but his dictator's, and uttering simply what he suggests."[47]
"Ay, that is the sweet new style," returned Buonaggiunta; "and I now see
what it was that hindered the notary, and Guittone, and myself, from
hitting the right natural point." And here he ceased speaking, looking
like one contented to have ascertained a truth.[48]
The whole multitude then, except Forese, skimmed away like cranes, swift
alike through eagerness and through leanness. Forese lingered a moment
to have a parting word with his friend, and to prophesy the violent end
of the chief of his family, Corso, run away with and dragged at the
heels of his horse faster and faster, till the frenzied animal smites
him dead. Having given the poet this information, the prophet speeded
after the others.
The companions now came to a second fruit-tree, to which a multitude
were in vain lifting up their hands, just as children lift them to a man
who tantalises them with shewing something which he withholds; but a
voice out of a thicket by the road-side warned the travellers not to
stop, telling them that the tree was an offset from that of which Eve
tasted. "Call to mind," said the voice, "those creatures of the clouds,
the Centaurs, whose feasting cost them their lives. Remember the
Hebrews, how they dropped away from the ranks of Gideon to quench their
effeminate thirst."[49]