Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 - Leigh Hunt
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[Footnote 22:
"Non v'accorgete voi, che noi siam vermi,
Nati a formar l'angelica farfalla,
Che vola a giustizia senza schermi?"
"Know you not, we are worms
Born to compose the angelic butterfly,
That flies to heaven when freed from what deforms?"
[Footnote 23:
"Piu ridon le carte
Che penelleggia Franco Bolognese:
L'onore e tutto or suo, e mio in parte."
[Footnote 24: The "new Guido" is his friend Guido Cavalcante (now dead);
the "first" is Guido Guinicelli, for whose writings Dante had an esteem;
and the poet, who is to "chase them from the nest," _caccera di nido_
(as the not very friendly metaphor states it), is with good reason
supposed to be himself! He was right; but was the statement becoming? It
was certainly not necessary. Dante, notwithstanding his friendship
with Guido, appears to have had a grudge against both the Cavalcanti,
probably for some scorn they had shewn to his superstition; far they
could be proud themselves; and the son has the reputation of scepticism,
as well as the father. See the _Decameron, Giorn_. vi. _Nov. 9_.]
[Footnote 25: This is the passage from which it is conjectured that
Dante knew what it was to "tremble in every vein," from the awful
necessity of begging. Mr. Cary, with some other commentators, thinks
that the "trembling" implies fear of being refused. But does it not
rather mean the agony of the humiliation? In Salvani's case it certainly
does; for it was in consideration of the pang to his pride, that the
good deed rescued him from worse punishment.]
[Footnote 26: The reader will have noticed the extraordinary mixture of
Paganism and the Bible in this passage, especially the introduction of
such fables as Niobe and Arachne. It would be difficult not to suppose
it intended to work out some half sceptical purpose, if we did not call
to mind the grave authority given to fables in the poet's treatise on
Monarchy, and the whole strange spirit, at once logical and gratuitous,
of the learning of his age, when the acuter the mind, the subtler became
the reconcilement with absurdity.]
[Footnote 27: _Beati pauperes spiritu_. "Blessed are the poor in spirit;
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven"--one of the beautiful passages of
the beautiful sermon on the Mount. How could the great poet read and
admire such passages, and yet fill his books so full of all which they
renounced? "Oh," say his idolators, "he did it out of his very love for
them, and his impatience to see them triumph." So said the Inquisition.
The evil was continued for the sake of the good which it prevented! The
result in the long-run may be so, but not for the reasons they supposed,
or from blindness to the indulgence of their bad passions.]
[Footnote 28:
"_Savia_ non fui, avvegna che _Sapia_
Fosse chiamata."
The pun is poorer even than it sounds in English: for though the Italian
name may possibly remind its readers of _sapienza_ (sapience), there is
the difference of a _v_ in the adjective _savia_, which is also accented
on the first syllable. It is almost as bad as if she had said in
English, "Sophist I found myself, though Sophia is my name." It
is pleasant, however, to see the great saturnine poet among the
punsters.--It appears, from the commentators, that Sapia was in exile at
the time of the battle, but they do not say for what; probably from some
zeal of faction]
[Footnote 29: We are here let into Dante's confessions. He owns to a
little envy, but far more pride:
"Gli occhi, diss' io, mi fieno ancor qui tolti,
Ma picciol tempo; che poch' e l'offesa
Fatta per esser con invidia volti.
Troppa e piu la paura ond' e sospesa
L'anima mia del tormento di sotto
Che gia lo 'ncarco di la giu mi pesa."
The first confession is singularly ingenuous and modest; the second,
affecting. It is curious to guess what sort of persons Dante could have
allowed himself to envy--probably those who were more acceptable to
women.]
[Footnote 29: Aglauros, daughter of Cecrops, king of Athens, was turned
to stone by Mercury, for disturbing with her envy his passion for her
sister Herse.
The passage about Cain is one of the sublimest in Dante. Truly wonderful
and characteristic is the way in which he has made physical noise and
violence express the anguish of the wanderer's mind. We are not to
suppose, I conceive, that we see Cain. We know he has passed us, by his
thunderous and headlong words. Dante may well make him invisible, for
his words are things--veritable thunderbolts.
Cain comes in rapid successions of thunder-claps. The voice of Aglauros
is thunder-claps crashing into one another--broken thunder. This is
exceedingly fine also, and wonderful as a variation upon that awful
music; but Cain is the astonishment and the overwhelmingness. If it were
not, however, for the second thunder, we should not have had the two
silences; for I doubt whether they are not better even than one. At all
events, the final silence is tremendous.]
[Footnote 30: St. Luke ii. 48.]
[Footnote 31: The stoning of Stephen.]
[Footnote 32: These illustrative spectacles are not among the best
inventions of Dante. Their introduction is forced, and the instances not
always pointed. A murderess, too, of her son, changed into such a bird
as the nightingale, was not a happy association of ideas in Homer, where
Dante found it; and I am surprised he made use of it, intimate as
he must have been with the less inconsistent story of her namesake,
Philomela, in the _Metamorphoses_.]
[Footnote 33: So, at least, I conceive, by what appears afterwards; and
I may here add, once for all, that I have supplied the similar requisite
intimations at each successive step in Purgatory, the poet seemingly
having forgotten to do so. It is necessary to what he implied in the
outset. The whole poem, it is to be remembered, is thought to have
wanted his final revision.]
[Footnote 34: What an instance to put among those of haste to do good!
But the fame and accomplishments of Caesar, and his being at the head of
our Ghibelline's beloved emperors, fairly overwhelmed Dante's boasted
impartiality.]
[Footnote 35: A masterly allegory of Worldly Pleasure. But the close of
it in the original has an intensity of the revolting, which outrages the
last recesses of feeling, and disgusts us with the denouncer.]
[Footnote 36: The fierce Hugh Capet, soliloquising about the Virgin in
the tones of a lady in child-bed, is rather too ludicrous an association
of ideas. It was for calling this prince the son of a butcher, that
Francis the First prohibited the admission of Dante's poem into his
dominions. Mr. Cary thinks the king might have been mistaken in his
interpretation of the passage, and that "butcher" may be simply a
metaphorical term for the blood-thirstiness of Capet's father. But when
we find the man called, not _the_ butcher, or _that_ butcher, or butcher
in reference to his species, but in plain local parlance "a butcher of
Paris" (_un beccaio di Parigi_), and when this designation is followed
up by the allusion to the extinction of the previous dynasty, the
ordinary construction of the words appears indisputable. Dante seems
to have had no ground for what his aristocratical pride doubtless
considered a hard blow, and what King Francis, indeed, condescended to
feel as such. He met with the notion somewhere, and chose to believe it,
in order to vex the French and their princes. The spirit of the taunt
contradicts his own theories elsewhere; for he has repeatedly said, that
the only true nobility is in the mind. But his writings (poetical truth
excepted) are a heap of contradictions.]
[Footnote 37: Mr. Cary thought he had seen an old romance in which there
is a combat of this kind between Jesus and his betrayer. I have an
impression to the same effect.]
[Footnote 38:
"O Signor mio, quando saro io lieto
A veder la vendetta the nascosa
Fa dolce l'ira tua nel tuo segreto!"
The spirit of the blasphemous witticism attributed to another Italian,
viz. that the reason why God prohibited revenge to mankind was its being
"too delicate a morsel for any but himself," is here gravely anticipated
as a positive compliment to God by the fierce poet of the thirteenth
century, who has been held up as a great Christian divine! God hugs
revenge to his bosom with delight! The Supreme Being confounded with a
poor grinning Florentine!]
[Footnote 39: A ludicrous anti-climax this to modern ears! The allusion
is to the Pygmalion who was Dido's brother, and who murdered her
husband, the priest Sichaeus, for his riches. The term "parricide" is
here applied in its secondary sense of--the murderer of any one to whom
we owe reverence.]
[Footnote 40: Heliodorus was a plunderer of the Temple, thus
supernaturally punished. The subject has been nobly treated by Raphael.]
[Footnote 41: A grand and beautiful fiction.]
[Footnote 42: Readers need hardly be told that there is no foundation
for this fancy, except in the invention of the churchmen. Dante, in
another passage, not necessary to give, confounds the poet Statius who
was from Naples, with a rhetorician of the same name from Thoulouse.]
[Footnote 43:
"Paren l'occhiaje anella senza gemme."
This beautiful and affecting image is followed in the original by one
of the most fantastical conceits of the time. The poet says, that the
physiognomist who "reads the word OMO (_homo_, man), written in the face
of the human being, might easily have seen the letter _m_ in theirs."
"Chi nel viso de gli uomini legge _o m o_,
Bene avria quivi conosciuto l'_emme_."
The meaning is, that the perpendicular lines of the nose and temples
form the letter M, and the eyes the two O's. The enthusiast for Roman
domination must have been delighted to find that Nature wrote in Latin!]
[Footnote 44:
"Se le svergognate fosser certe
Di quel che l' ciel veloce loro ammanna,
Gia per urlare avrian le bocche aperte."
This will remind the reader of the style of that gentle Christian, John
Knox, who, instead of offering his own "cheek to the smiters," delighted
to smite the cheeks of women. Fury was his mode of preaching meekness,
and threats of everlasting howling his reproof of a tune on Sundays.
But, it will be said, he looked to consequences. Yes; and produced the
worst himself, both spiritual and temporal. Let the whisky-shops answer
him. However, he helped to save Scotland from Purgatory: so we must take
good and bad together, and hope the best in the end.
Forese, like many of Dante's preachers, seems to have been one of those
self-ignorant or self-exasperated denouncers, who "Compound for sins
they are inclined to, By damning those they have no mind to." He was
a glutton, who could not bear to see ladies too little clothed. The
defacing of "God's image" in his own person he considered nothing.]
[Footnote 45: The passage respecting his past life is unequivocal
testimony to the fact, confidently disputed by some, of Dante's having
availed himself of the license of the time; though, in justice to such
candour, we are bound not to think worse of it than can be helped. The
words in the original are
"Se ti riduci a mente
Qual fosti meco, e quale io teco fui,
Ancor fia grave il memorar presente."
Literally: "If thou recallest to mind what (sort of person) thou wast
with me, and what I was with thee, the recollection may oppress thee
still."
His having been taken out of that kind of life by Virgil (construed in
the literal sense, in which, among other senses, he has directed us to
construe him), may imply, either that the delight of reading Virgil
first made him think of living in a manner more becoming a man of
intellect, or (possibly) that the Latin poet's description of AEneas's
descent into hell turned his thoughts to religious penitence. Be this
as it may, his life, though surely it could at no time have been of any
very licentious kind, never, if we are to believe Boccaccio, became
spotless.]
[Footnote 46: The mention of Gentucca might be thought a compliment to
the lady, if Dante had not made Beatrice afterwards treat his regard for
any one else but herself with so much contempt. (See page 216 of the
present volume.) Under that circumstance, it is hardly acting like a
gentleman to speak of her at all; unless, indeed, he thought her a
person who would be pleased with the notoriety arising even from the
record of a fugitive regard; and in that case the good taste of the
record would still remain doubtful. The probability seems to be, that
Dante was resolved, at all events, to take this opportunity of bearding
some rumour.]
[Footnote 47: A celebrated and charming passage:
"Io mi son un, che quando
Amore spira, noto; e a quel modo
Che detta dentro, vo significando."
I am one that notes
When Love inspires; and what he speaks I tell
In his own way, embodying but his thoughts.
[Footnote 48: Exquisite truth of painting! and a very elegant compliment
to the handsome nature of Buonaggiunta. Jacopo da Lentino, called the
Notary, and Fra Guittone of Arezzo, were celebrated verse-writers of
the day. The latter, in a sonnet given by Mr. Cary in the notes to his
translation, says he shall be delighted to hear the trumpet, at the last
day, dividing mankind into the happy and the tormented (sufferers under
_crudel martire_), _because_ an inscription will then be seen on his
forehead, shewing that he had been a slave to love! An odd way for a
poet to shew his feelings, and a friar his religion!]
[Footnote 49: Judges vii. 6.]
[Footnote 50: _Summae Deus clementiae_. The ancient beginning of a hymn in
the Roman Catholic church; now altered, say the commentators, to "Summae
parens clementiae."]
[Footnote 51: _Virum non cognosco_. "Then said Mary unto the angel, How
shall this be, seeing I know not a man?"--_Luke_ i. 34.
The placing of Mary's interview with the angel, and Ovid's story of
Calisto, upon apparently the same identical footing of authority, by
spirits in all the sincerity of agonised penitence, is very remarkable.
A dissertation, by some competent antiquary, on the curious question
suggested by these anomalies, would be a welcome novelty in the world of
letters.]
[Footnote 52: An allegory of the Active and Contemplative Life;--not, I
think, a happy one, though beautifully painted. It presents, apart
from its terminating comment no necessary intellectual suggestion; is
rendered, by the, comment itself, hardly consistent with Leah's express
love of ornament; and, if it were not for the last sentence, might be
taken for a picture of two different forms of Vanity.]
[Footnote 53:
"Tal, qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie
Per la pineta in sul lito di Chiassi,
Quand' Eolo scirocco fuor discioglie."
Even as from branch to branch
Along the piny forests on the shore
Of Chiassi, rolls the gathering melody,
When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed
The dripping south."--_Cary_.
"This is the wood," says Mr. Cary, "where the scene of Boccaccio's
sublimest story (taken entirely from Elinaud, as I learn in the notes to
the Decameron, ediz. Giunti, 1573, p. 62) is laid. See Dec., G. 5, N.
8, and Dryden's Theodore and Honoria. Our poet perhaps wandered in
it during his abode with Guido Novello da Polenta."--_Translation of
Dante_, ut sup. p. 121.]
[Footnote 54: Lethe, _Forgetfulness_; Eunoe, _Well-mindedness_.]
[Footnote 55:
"Senza alcuno scotto
Di pentimento."
Literally, _scot-free_.--"Scotto," scot;--"payment for dinner or supper
in a tavern" (says Rubbi, the Petrarchal rather than Dantesque editor
of the _Parnaso Italiano_, and a very summary gentleman); "here used
figuratively, though it is not a word fit to be employed on serious and
grand occasions" (in cose gravi ed illustri). See his "Dante" in that
collection, vol. ii. p. 297.]
[Footnote 56: The allusion to the childish girl (_pargoletta_) or any
other fleeting vanity,
"O altra vanita con si breve use,"
is not handsome. It was not the fault of the childish girls that he
liked them; and he should not have taunted them, whatever else they
might have been. What answer could they make to the great poet?
Nor does Beatrice make a good figure throughout this scene, whether as
a woman or an allegory. If she is Theology, or Heavenly Grace, &c. the
sternness of the allegory should not have been put into female shape;
and when she is to be taken in her literal sense (as the poet also tells
us she is), her treatment of the poor submissive lover, with leave of
Signor Rubbi, is no better than _snubbing_;--to say nothing of the
vanity with which she pays compliments to her own beauty.
I must, furthermore, beg leave to differ with the poet's thinking it an
exalted symptom on his part to hate every thing he had loved before, out
of supposed compliment the transcendental object of his affections and
his own awakened merits. All the heights of love and wisdom terminate in
charity; and charity, by very reason of its knowing the poorness of so
many things, hates nothing. Besides, it is any thing but handsome or
high-minded to turn round upon objects whom we have helped to lower with
our own gratified passions, and pretend a right to scorn them.]
[Footnote 57:
"Tu asperges me, et mundabor," &c. "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be
clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."--Psalm li. 7.]
[Footnote 58: Beatrice had been dead ten years.]
III.
THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN. Argument.
The Paradise or Heaven of Dante, in whose time the received system of
astronomy was the Ptolemaic, consists of the Seven successive Planets
according to that system, or the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn; of the Eighth Sphere beyond these, or that of the
Fixed Stars; of the Primum Mobile, or First Mover of them all round the
moveless Earth; and of the Empyrean, or Region of Pure Light, in which
is the Beatific Vision. Each of these ascending spheres is occupied by
its proportionate degree of Faith and Virtue; and Dante visits each
under the guidance of Beatrice, receiving many lessons, as he goes,
on theological and other subjects (here left out), and being finally
admitted, after the sight of Christ and the Virgin, to a glimpse of the
Great First Cause.
THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN.
It was evening now on earth, and morning on the top of the hill in
Purgatory, when Beatrice having fixed her eyes upon the sun, Dante fixed
his eyes upon hers, and suddenly found himself in Heaven.
He had been transported by the attraction of love, and Beatrice was by
his side.
The poet beheld from where he stood the blaze of the empyrean, and heard
the music of the spheres; yet he was only in the first or lowest Heaven,
the circle of the orb of the moon.
This orb, with his new guide, he proceeded to enter. It had seemed,
outside, as solid, though as lucid, as diamond; yet they entered it, as
sunbeams are admitted into water without dividing the substance. It now
appeared, as it enclosed them, like a pearl, through the essence of
which they saw but dimly; and they beheld many faces eagerly looking at
them, as if about to speak, but not more distinct from the surrounding
whiteness than pearls themselves are from the forehead they adorn.[1]
Dante thought them only reflected faces, and turned round to see to whom
they belonged, when his smiling companion set him right; and he entered
into discourse with the spirit that seemed the most anxious to accost
him. It was Piccarda, the sister of his friend Forese Donati, whom he
had met in the sixth region of Purgatory. He did not know her, by reason
of her wonderful increase in beauty. She and her associates were such
as had been Vowed to a Life of Chastity and Religion, but had been
Compelled by Others to Break their Vows. This had been done, in
Piccarda's instance, by her brother Corso.[2] On
Dante's asking if they did not long for a higher state of bliss, she and
her sister-spirits gently smiled; and then answered, with faces as happy
as first love,[3] that they willed only what it pleased God to give
them, and therefore were truly blest. The poet found by this answer,
that every place in Heaven was Paradise, though the bliss might be of
different degrees. Piccarda then shewed him the spirit at her side,
lustrous with all the glory of the region, Costanza, daughter of the
king of Sicily, who had been forced out of the cloister to become the
wife of the Emperor Henry. Having given him this information, she began
singing _Ave Maria_; and, while singing, disappeared with the rest, as
substances disappear in water.[4]
A loving will transported the two companions, as before, to the next
circle of Heaven, where they found themselves in the planet Mercury, the
residence of those who had acted rather out of Desire of Fame than Love
of God. The spirits here, as in the former Heaven, crowded towards them,
as fish in a clear pond crowd to the hand that offers them food. Their
eyes sparkled with celestial joy; and the more they thought of their
joy, the brighter they grew; till one of them who addressed the poet
became indistinguishable for excess of splendour. It was the soul of
the Emperor Justinian. Justinian told him the whole story of the Roman
empire up to his time; and then gave an account of one of his associates
in bliss, Romeo, who had been minister to Raymond Beranger, Count of
Provence. Four daughters had been born to Raymond Beranger, and every
one became a queen; and all this had been brought about by Romeo, a poor
stranger from another country. The courtiers, envying Romeo, incited
Raymond to demand of him an account of his stewardship, though he had
brought his master's treasury twelve-fold for every ten it disbursed.
Romeo quitted the court, poor and old; "and if the world," said
Justinian, "could know the heart such a man must have had, begging his
bread as he went, crust by crust--praise him as it does, it would praise
him a great deal more."[5]
"Hosanna, Holy God of Sabaoth,
Superillumining with light of light
The happy fires of these thy Malahoth!"[6]
Thus began singing the soul of the Emperor Justinian; and then, turning
as he sang, vanished with those about him, like sparks of fire.
Dante now found himself, before he was aware, in the third Heaven,
or planet Venus, the abode of the Amorous.[7] He only knew it by the
increased loveliness in the face of his companion.
The spirits in this orb, who came and went in the light of it like
sparks in fire, or like voices chanting in harmony with voice, were spun
round in circles of delight, each with more or less swiftness, according
to its share of the beatific vision. Several of them came sweeping out
of their dance towards the poet who had sung of Love, among whom was his
patron, Charles Martel, king of Hungary, who shewed him the reason why
diversities of natures must occur in families; and Cunizza, sister of
the tyrant Ezzelino, who was overcome by this her star when on earth;
and Folco the Troubadour, whose place was next Cunizza in Heaven; and
Rahab the harlot, who favoured the entrance of the Jews into the Holy
Land, and whose place was next Folco.[8] Cunizza said that she did not
at all regret a lot which carried her no higher, whatever the vulgar
might think of such an opinion. She spoke of the glories of the jewel
who was close to her, Folco--contrasted his zeal with the inertness of
her contemptible countrymen--and foretold the bloodshed that awaited the
latter from wars and treacheries. The Troubadour, meanwhile, glowed
in his aspect like a ruby stricken with the sun; for in heaven joy is
expressed by effulgence, as on earth by laughter. He confessed the
lawless fires of his youth, as great (he said) as those of Dido or
Hercules; but added, that he had no recollection of them, except a
joyous one, not for the fault (which does not come to mind in heaven),
but for the good which heaven brings out of it. Folco concluded with
explaining how Rahab had come into the third Heaven, and with denouncing
the indifference of popes and cardinals (those adulterers of the Church)
to every thing but accursed money-getting.[9]
In an instant, before he could think about it, Dante was in the fourth
Heaven, the sun, the abode of Blessed Doctors of the Church. A band of
them came encircling him and his guide, as a halo encircles the moon,
singing a song, the beauty of which, like jewels too rich to be
exported, was not conveyable by expression to mortal fancy. The spirits
composing the band were those of St. Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus,
Gratian the Benedictine, Pietro Lombardo, Solomon, Saint Dionysius
the Areopagite, Paulus Orosius, Boetius, Isidore, the Venerable Bede,
Richard of St. Victor, and Sigebert of Gemblours. St. Thomas was the
namer of them to Dante. Their song had paused that he might speak; but
when he had done speaking, they began resuming it, one by one, and
circling as they moved, like the wheels of church-clocks that sound one
after another with a sweet tinkling, when they summon the hearts of the
devout to morning prayer.[10]
Again they stopped, and again St. Thomas addressed the poet. He was of
the order of St. Dominic; but with generous grace he held up the founder
of the Franciscans, with his vow of poverty, as the example of what a
pope should be, and reproved the errors of no order but his own. On
the other hand, a new circle of doctors of the Church making their
appearance, and enclosing the first as rainbow encloses rainbow, rolling
round with it in the unison of a two-fold joy, a voice from the new
circle attracted the poet's ear, as the pole attracts the needle,
and Saint Buonaventura, a Franciscan, opened upon the praises of St.
Dominic, the loving minion of Christianity, the holy wrestler,--benign
to his friends and cruel to his enemies;[11]--and so confined his
reproofs to his own Franciscan order. He then, as St. Thomas had done
with the doctors in the inner circle, named those who constituted the
outer: to wit, Illuminato, and Agostino, and Hugues of St. Victor, and
Petrus Comestor, and Pope John the Twenty-first, Nathan the Prophet,
Chrysostom, Anselmo of Canterbury, Donatus who deigned to teach grammar,
Raban of Mentz, and Joachim of Calabria. The two circles then varied
their movement by wheeling round one another in counter directions; and
after they had chanted, not of Bacchus or Apollo, but of Three Persons
in One, St. Thomas, who knew Dante's thoughts by intuition, again
addressed him, discoursing of mysteries human and divine, exhorting
him to be slow in giving assent or denial to propositions without
examination, and bidding him warn people in general how they presumed
to anticipate the divine judgment as to who should be saved and who
not.[12] The spirit of Solomon then related how souls could resume their
bodies glorified; and the two circles uttering a rapturous amen, glowed
with such intolerable brightness, that the eyes of Beatrice only were
able to sustain it. Dante gazed on her with a delight ineffable, and
suddenly found himself in the fifth Heaven.