Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 - Leigh Hunt
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"Thou art now," said his guide, "so near the summit of thy prayers, that
it behoves thee to take a last look at things below thee, and see
how little they should account in thine eyes." Dante turned his
eyes downwards through all the seven spheres, and saw the earth so
diminutive, that he smiled at its miserable appearance. Wisest, thought
he, is the man that esteems it least; and truly worthy he that sets his
thoughts on the world to come. He now saw the moon without those spots
in it which made him formerly attribute the variation to dense and rare.
He sustained the brightness of the face of the sun, and discerned all
the signs and motions and relative distances of the planets. Finally, he
saw, as he rolled round with the sphere in which he stood, and by virtue
of his gifted sight, the petty arena, from hill to harbour, which filled
his countrymen with such ferocious ambition; and then he turned his eyes
to the sweet eyes beside him.[36]
Beatrice stood wrapt in attention, looking earnestly towards the south,
as if she expected some appearance. She resembled the bird that sits
among the dewy leaves in the darkness of night, yearning for the coming
of the morning, that she may again behold her young, and have light by
which to seek the food, that renders her fatigue for them a joy. So
stood Beatrice, looking; which caused Dante to watch in the same
direction, with the feelings of one that is already possessed of some
new delight by the assuredness of his expectation.[37]
The quarter on which they were gazing soon became brighter and brighter,
and Beatrice exclaimed, "Behold the armies of the triumph of Christ!"
Her face appeared all fire, and her eyes so full of love, that the poet
could find no words to express them.
As the moon, when the depths of heaven are serene with her fulness,
looks abroad smiling among her eternal handmaids the stars, that paint
every gulf of the great hollow with beauty;[38] so brightest, above
myriads of splendours around it, appeared a sun which gave radiance to
them all, even as our earthly sun gives light to the constellations.
"O Beatrice!" exclaimed Dante, overpowered, "sweet and beloved guide!"
"Overwhelming," said Beatrice, "is the virtue with which nothing can
compare. What thou hast seen is the Wisdom and the Power, by whom the
path between heaven and earth has been laid open."[39]
Dante's soul--like the fire which falls to earth out of the swollen
thunder-cloud, instead of rising according to the wont of fire--had
grown too great for his still mortal nature; and he could afterwards
find within him no memory of what it did.
"Open thine eyes," said Beatrice, "and see me now indeed. Thou hast
beheld things that empower thee to sustain my smiling."
Dante, while doing as he was desired, felt like one who has suddenly
waked up from a dream, and endeavours in vain to recollect it.
"Never," said he, "can that moment be erased from the book of the past.
If all the tongues were granted me that were fed with the richest milk
of Polyhymnia and her sisters, they could not express one thousandth
part of the beauty of that divine smile, or of the thorough perfection
which it made of the whole of her divine countenance."
But Beatrice said, "Why dost thou so enamour thee of this face, and
lose the sight of the beautiful guide, blossoming beneath the beams of
Christ? Behold the rose, in which the Word was made flesh.[40] Behold
the lilies, by whose odour the way of life is tracked."
Dante looked, and gave battle to the sight with his weak eyes.[41]
As flowers on a cloudy day in a meadow are suddenly lit up by a gleam of
sunshine, he beheld multitudes of splendours effulgent with beaming rays
that smote on them from above, though he could not discern the source of
the effulgence. He had invoked the name of the Virgin when he looked;
and the gracious fountain of the light had drawn itself higher up within
the heaven, to accommodate the radiance to his faculties. He then beheld
the Virgin herself bodily present,--her who is fairest now in heaven,
as she was on earth; and while his eyes were being painted with her
beauty,[42] there fell on a sudden a seraphic light from heaven, which,
spinning into a circle as it came, formed a diadem round her head, still
spinning, and warbling as it spun. The sweetest melody that ever drew
the soul to it on earth would have seemed like the splitting of a
thunder-cloud, compared with the music that sung around the head of that
jewel of Paradise.[43]
"I am Angelic Love," said the light, "and I spin for joy of the womb in
which our Hope abided; and ever, O Lady of Heaven, must I thus attend
thee, as long as thou art pleased to attend thy Son, journeying in his
loving-kindness from sphere to sphere."
All the other splendours now resounded the name of Mary. The Virgin
began ascending to pursue the path of her Son; and Dante, unable to
endure her beauty as it rose, turned his eyes to the angelical callers
on the name of Mary, who remained yearning after her with their hands
outstretched, as a babe yearns after the bosom withdrawn from his lips.
Then rising after her themselves, they halted ere they went out of
sight, and sung "O Queen of Heaven" so sweetly, that the delight never
quitted the air.
A flame now approached and thrice encircled Beatrice, singing all the
while so divinely, that the poet could retain no idea expressive of its
sweetness. Mortal imagination cannot unfold such wonder. It was Saint
Peter, whom she had besought to come down from his higher sphere, in
order to catechise and discourse with her companion on the subject of
faith.
The catechising and the discourse ensued, and were concluded by the
Apostle's giving the poet the benediction, and encircling his forehead
thrice with his holy light. "So well," says Dante, "was he pleased with
my answers."[44]
"If ever," continued the Florentine, "the sacred poem to which heaven
and earth have set their hands, and which for years past has wasted my
flesh in the writing, shall prevail against the cruelty that shut me out
of the sweet fold in which I slept like a lamb, wishing harm to none but
the wolves that beset it,--with another voice, and in another guise than
now, will I return, a poet, and standing by the fount of my baptism,
assume the crown that belongs to me; for I there first entered on the
faith which gives souls to God; and for that faith did Peter thus
encircle my forehead."[45]
A flame enclosing Saint James now succeeded to that of Saint Peter, and
after greeting his predecessor as doves greet one another, murmuring and
moving round, proceeded to examine the mortal visitant on the subject
of Hope. The examination was closed amidst resounding anthems of,"
Let their hope be in thee;"[46] and a third apostolic flame ensued,
enclosing Saint John, who completed the catechism with the topic of
Charity. Dante acquitted himself with skill throughout; the spheres
resounded with songs of "Holy, holy," Beatrice joining in the warble;
and the poet suddenly found Adam beside him. The parent of the human
race knew by intuition what his descendant wished to learn of him; and
manifesting his assent before he spoke, as an animal sometimes does by
movements and quiverings of the flesh within its coat, corresponding
with its good-will,[47] told him, that his fall was not owing to the
fruit which he tasted, but to the violation of the injunction not to
taste it; that he remained in the Limbo on hell-borders upwards of five
thousand years; and that the language he spoke had become obsolete
before the days of Nimrod.
The gentle fire of Saint Peter now began to assume an awful brightness,
such as the planet Jupiter might assume, if Mars and it were birds,
and exchanged the colour of their plumage.[48] Silence fell upon the
celestial choristers; and the Apostle spoke thus:
"Wonder not if thou seest me change colour. Thou wilt see, while I
speak, all which is round about us colour in like manner. He who usurps
my place on earth,--_my_ place, I say,--ay, _mine_,--which before God is
now vacant,--has converted the city in which my dust lies buried into a
common-sewer of filth and blood; so that the fiend who fell from hence
rejoices himself down there."
At these words of the Apostle the whole face of Heaven was covered with
a blush, red as dawn or sunset; and Beatrice changed colour, like a
maiden that shrinks in alarm from the report of blame in another. 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 si, che perla in bianca fronte
Non vien men tosto a le nostre pupille:
Tali vid' io piu 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 tua
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.