Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 - Leigh Hunt
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The sinner raised his head from the dire repast, and after wiping his
jaws with the hair of it, said, "You ask a thing which it shakes me to
the heart to think of. It is a story to renew all my misery. But since
it will produce this wretch his due infamy, hear it, and you shall see
me speak and weep at the same time. How thou tamest hither I know not;
but I perceive by thy speech that thou art Florentine.
"Learn, then, that I was the Count Ugolino, and this man was Ruggieri
the Archbishop. How I trusted him, and was betrayed into prison, there
is no need to relate; but of his treatment of me there, and how cruel a
death I underwent, bear; and then judge if he has offended me.
"I had been imprisoned with my children a long time in the tower which
has since been called from me the Tower of Famine; and many a new moon
had I seen through the hole that served us for a window, when I dreamt a
dream that foreshadowed to me what was coming. Methought that this man
headed a great chase against the wolf, in the mountains between Pisa
and Lucca. Among the foremost in his party were Gualandi, Sismondi, and
Lanfranchi, and the hounds were thin and eager, and high-bred; and in a
little while I saw the hounds fasten on the flanks of the wolf and the
wolf's children, and tear them. At that moment I awoke with the voices
of my own children in my ears, asking for bread. Truly cruel must thou
be, if thy heart does not ache to think of what I thought then. If thou
feel not for a pang like that, what is it for which thou art accustomed
to feel? We were now all awake; and the time was at hand when they
brought us bread, and we had all dreamt dreams which made us anxious. At
that moment I heard the key of the horrible tower turn in the lock of
the door below, and fasten it. I looked at my children, and said not a
word. I did not weep. I made a strong effort upon the soul within me.
But my little Anselm said, 'Father, why do you look so? Is any thing the
matter?' Nevertheless I did not weep, nor say a word all the day, nor
the night that followed. In the morning a ray of light fell upon us
through the window of our sad prison, and I beheld in those four little
faces the likeness of my own face, and then I began to gnaw my hands for
misery. My children, thinking I did it for hunger, raised themselves on
the floor, and said, 'Father, we should be less miserable if you would
eat our own flesh. It was you that gave it us. Take it again.' Then I
sat still, in order not to make them unhappier: and that day and
the next we all remained without speaking. On the fourth day, Gaddo
stretched himself at my feet, and said, 'Father, why won't you help me?'
and there he died. And as surely as thou lookest on me, so surely I
beheld the whole three die in the same manner. So I began in my misery
to grope about in the dark for them, for I had become blind; and three
days I kept calling on them by name, though they were dead; till famine
did for me what grief had been unable to do."
With these words, the miserable man, his eyes starting from his head,
seized that other wretch again with his teeth, and ground them against
the skull as a dog does with a bone.
O Pisa! scandal of the nations! since thy neighbours are so slow to
punish thee, may the very islands tear themselves up from their roots in
the sea, and come and block up the mouth of thy river, and drown every
soul within thee. What if this Count Ugolino did, as report says he did,
betray thy castles to the enemy? his children had not betrayed them; nor
ought they to have been put to an agony like this. Their age was their
innocence; and their deaths have given thee the infamy of a second
Thebes.[49]
The pilgrims passed on, and beheld other traitors frozen up in swathes
of ice, with their heads upside down. Their very tears had hindered them
from shedding more; for their eyes were encrusted with the first they
shed, so as to be enclosed with them as in a crystal visor, which forced
back the others into an accumulation of anguish. One of the sufferers
begged Dante to relieve him of this ice, in order that he might vent a
little of the burden which it repressed. The poet said he would do so,
provided he would disclose who he was. The man said he was the friar
Alberigo, who invited some of his brotherhood to a banquet in order to
slay them.
"What!" exclaimed Dante, "art thou no longer, then, among the living?"
"Perhaps I appear to be," answered the friar; "for the moment any one
commits a treachery like mine, his soul gives up his body to a demon,
who thenceforward inhabits it in the man's likeness. Thou knowest Branca
Doria, who murdered his father-in-law, Zanche? He seems to be walking
the earth still, and yet he has been in this place many years." [50]
"Impossible!" cried Dante; "Branca Doria is still alive; he eats,
drinks, and sleeps, like any other man."
"I tell thee," returned the friar, "that the soul of the man he slew had
not reached that lake of boiling pitch in which thou sawest him, ere the
soul of his slayer was in this place, and his body occupied by a demon
in its stead. But now stretch forth thy hand, and relieve mine eyes."
Dante relieved them not. Ill manners, he said, were the only courtesy
fit for such a wretch.[51]
O ye Genoese! he exclaims,--men that are perversity all over, and full
of every corruption to the core, why are ye not swept from the face of
the earth? There is one of you whom you fancy to be walking about like
other men, and he is all the while in the lowest pit of hell!
"Look before thee," said Virgil, as they advanced: "behold the banners
of the King of Hell."
Dante looked, and beheld something which appeared like a windmill in
motion, as seen from a distance on a dark night. A wind of inconceivable
sharpness came from it.
The souls of those who had been traitors to their benefactors were here
frozen up in depths of pellucid ice, where they were seen in a variety
of attitudes, motionless; some upright, some downward, some bent double,
head to foot.
At length they came to where the being stood who was once eminent for
all fair seeming.[52] This was the figure that seemed tossing its arms
at a distance like a windmill.
"Satan," whispered Virgil; and put himself in front of Dante to
re-assure him, halting him at the same time, and bidding him summon all
his fortitude. Dante stood benumbed, though conscious; as if he himself
had been turned to ice. He felt neither alive nor dead.
The lord of the dolorous empire, each of his arms as big as a giant,
stood in the ice half-way up his breast. He had one head, but three
faces; the middle, vermilion; the one over the right shoulder a pale
yellow; the other black. His sails of wings, huger than ever were beheld
at sea, were in shape and texture those of a bat; and with these be
constantly flapped, so as to send forth the wind that froze the depths
of Tartarus. From his six eyes the tears ran down, mingling at his three
chins with bloody foam; for at every mouth he crushed a sinner with his
teeth, as substances are broken up by an engine. The middle sinner was
the worst punished, for he was at once broken and flayed, and his head
and trunk were inside the mouth. It was Judas Iscariot.
Of the other two, whose heads were hanging out, one was Brutus, and the
other Cassius. Cassius was very large-limbed. Brutus writhed with agony,
but uttered not a word.[53]
"Night has returned," said Virgil, "and all has been seen. It is time to
depart onward."
Dante then, at his bidding, clasped, as Virgil did, the huge inattentive
being round the neck; and watching their opportunity, as the wings
opened and shut, they slipped round it, and so down his shaggy and
frozen sides, from pile to pile, clutching it as they went; till
suddenly, with the greatest labour and pain, they were compelled to turn
themselves upside down, as it seemed, but in reality to regain their
proper footing; for they had passed the centre of gravity, and become
Antipodes.
Then looking down at what lately was upward, they saw Lucifer with his
feet towards them; and so taking their departure, ascended a gloomy
vault, till at a distance, through an opening above their heads, they
beheld the loveliness of the stars.[54]
[Footnote 1: "Parea che l'aer ne temesse."]
[Footnote 2: "La dove 'l sol tace." "The sun to me is dark, And _silent_
is the moon, Hid in her vacant interlunar cave."--Milton.]
[Footnote 3: There is great difference among the commentators respecting
the meaning of the three beasts; some supposing them passions, others
political troubles, others personal enemies, &c. The point is not of
much importance, especially as a mystery was intended; but nobody, as
Mr. Cary says, can doubt that the passage was suggested by one in the
prophet Jeremiah, v. 6: "Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay
them, and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them; a leopard shall watch
over their cities."]
[Footnote 4:
"Che quello 'mperador che la su regna
Perch' i' fu'ribellante a la sua legge,
Non vuol che 'n sua citta per me si vegna." ]
[Footnote 5:
"Quale i fioretti dal notturno gelo
Chinati e chiusi, poi che 'l sol gl'imbianca,
Si drizzan tutti aperti in loro stelo."
Like as the flowers that with the frosty night
Are bowed and closed, soon as the sun returns,
Rise on their stems, all open and upright.]
[Footnote 6: This loss of intellectual good, and the confession of the
poet that he finds the inscription over hell-portal hard to understand
(_il senso lor m'e duro_), are among the passages in Dante which lead
some critics to suppose that his hell is nothing but an allegory,
intended at once to imply his own disbelief in it as understood by the
vulgar part of mankind, and his employment of it, nevertheless, as a
salutary check both to the foolish and the reflecting;--to the foolish,
as an alarm; and to the reflecting, as a parable. It is possible, in the
teeth of many appearances to the contrary, that such may have been the
case; but in the doubt that it affects either the foolish or the wise to
any good purpose, and in the certainty that such doctrines do a world
of mischief to tender consciences and the cause of sound piety, such
monstrous contradictions, in terms, of every sense of justice and
charity which God has implanted in the heart of man, are not to be
passed over without indignant comment.]
[Footnote 7: It is seldom that a boast of this kind--not, it must be
owned, bashful--has been allowed by posterity to be just; nay, in four
out of the five instances, below its claims.]
[Footnote 8:
"Genti v'eran, con occhi tardi e gravi,
Di grande autorita ne' lor sembianti
Parlavan rado, con voci soavi." ]
[Footnote 9: "Sopra 'l verde smalto." Mr. Cary has noticed the
appearance, for the first time, of this beautiful but now commonplace
image.]
[Footnote 10: "Il maestro di color che sanno."]
[Footnote 11: This is the famous episode of Paulo and Francesca. She
was daughter to Count Guido da Polenta, lord of Ravenna, and wife to
Giovanni Malatesta, one of the sons, of the lord of Rimini. Paulo was
her brother-in-law. They were surprised together by the husband, and
slain on the spot. Particulars of their history will be found in the
Appendix, together with the whole original passage.
"Quali colombe, dal disio chiamate,
Con l'ali aperte e ferme, al dolce nido
Volan per l'aer dal voler portate
Cotali uscir de la schiera ov'e Dido,
A noi venendo per l'aer maligno,
Si forte fu l'affettuoso grido."
As doves, drawn home from where they circled still,
Set firm their open wings, and through the air
Come sweeping, wafted by their pure good-will
So broke from Dido's flock that gentle pair,
Cleaving, to where we stood, the air malign,
Such strength to bring them had a loving prayer. ]
[Footnote 12: Francesca is to be conceived telling her story in anxious
intermitting sentences--now all tenderness for her lover, now angry at
their slayer; watching the poet's face, to see what he thinks, and
at times averting her own. I take this excellent direction from Ugo
Foscolo.]
[Footnote 13:
"Nessun maggior dolore,
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Ne la miseria." ]
[Footnote 14:
"Per piu fiate gli occhi ci sospinse
Quella lettura."
"To look at one another," says Boccaccio; and his interpretation
has been followed by Cary and Foscolo; but, with deference to such
authorities, I beg leave to think that the poet meant no more than he
says, namely, that their eyes were simply "suspended"--hung, as it were,
over the book, without being able to read on; which is what I intended
to express (if I may allude to a production of which both those critics
were pleased to speak well), when, in my youthful attempt to enlarge
this story, I wrote "And o'er the book they hung, and nothing said,
And every lingering page grew longer as they read."
_Story of Rimini._]
[Footnote 15:
"Mentre che l'uno spirto questo disse,
L'altro piangeva si, che di pietade
I' venni men cosi com'io morisse,
E caddi come corpo morto cade."
This last line has been greatly admired for the corresponding deadness
of its expression.
While thus one spoke, the other spirit mourn'd
With wail so woful, that at his remorse
I felt as though I should have died. I turn'd
Stone-stiff; and to the ground, fell like a corse.
The poet fell thus on the ground (some of the commentators think)
because he had sinned in the same way; and if Foscolo's opinion could
be established--that the incident of the book is invention--their
conclusion would receive curious collateral evidence, the circumstance
of the perusal of the romance in company with a lady being likely enough
to have occurred to Dante. But the same probability applies in the case
of the lovers. The reading of such books was equally the taste of their
own times; and nothing is more likely than the volume's having been
found in the room where they perished. The Pagans could not be rebels
to a law they never heard of, any more than Dante could be a rebel
to Luther. But this is one of the absurdities with which the impious
effrontery or scarcely less impious admissions of Dante's teachers
avowedly set reason at defiance,--retaining, meanwhile, their right of
contempt for the impieties of Mahometans and Brahmins; "which is odd,"
as the poet says; for being not less absurd, or, as the others argued,
much more so, they had at least an equal claim on the submission of the
reason; since the greater the irrationality, the higher the theological
triumph.]
[Footnote 16: Plutus's exclamation about Satan is a great choke-pear to
the commentators. The line in the original is
"Pape Satan, pape Satan aleppe."
The words, as thus written, are not Italian. It is not the business of
this abstract to discuss such points; and therefore I content myself
with believing that the context implies a call of alarm on the Prince of
Hell at the sight of the living creature and his guide.]
[Footnote 17: Phlegyas, a son of Mars, was cast into hell by Apollo for
setting the god's temple on fire in resentment for the violation of his
daughter Coronis. The actions of gods were not to be questioned, in
Dante's opinion, even though the gods turned out to be false Jugghanaut
is as good as any, while he lasts. It is an ethico-theological puzzle,
involving very nice questions; but at any rate, had our poet been a
Brahmin of Benares, we know how he would have written about it in
Sanscrit.]
[Footnote 18: Filippo Argenti (Philip _Silver_,--so called from his
shoeing his horse with the precious metal) was a Florentine remarkable
for bodily strength and extreme irascibility. What a barbarous strength
and confusion of ideas is there in this whole passage about him!
Arrogance punished by arrogance, a Christian mother blessed for the
unchristian disdainfulness of her son, revenge boasted of and enjoyed,
passion arguing in a circle! Filippo himself might have written it.
Dante says,
"Con piangere e con lutto
Spirito maladetto, ti rimani.
Via costa con gli altri cani," &c.
Then Virgil, kissing and embracing him,
"Alma sdegnosa
Benedetta colei che 'n te s'incinse," &c.
And Dante again,
"Maestro, molto sarei vago
Di vederlo attuffare in questa broda," &c. ]
[Footnote 19: Dis, one of the Pagan names of Pluto, here used for Satan.
Within the walls of the city of Dis commence the punishments by fire.]
[Footnote 20: Farinata was a Ghibelline leader before the time of Dante,
and had vanquished the poet's connexions at the battle of Montaperto.]
[Footnote 21: What would Guido have said to this? More, I suspect, than
Dante would have liked to hear, or known how to answer. But he died
before the verses transpired; probably before they were written; for
Dante, in the chronology of his poem, assumes what times and seasons he
finds most convenient.]
[Footnote 22:
"Si che la pioggia non par che 'l maturi."
This is one of the grandest passages in Dante. It was probably (as
English commentators have observed) in Milton's recollection when he
conceived the character of Satan.]
[Footnote 23: The satire of friarly hypocrisy is at least as fine as
Ariosto's discovery of Discord in a monastery.
The monster Geryon, son of Chrysaor (_Golden-sword_), and the
Ocean-nymph Callirhoe (_Fair-flowing_), was rich in the possession
of sheep. His wealth, and perhaps his derivatives, rendered him this
instrument of satire. The monstrosity, the mild face, the glancing point
of venom, and the beautiful skin, make it as fine as can be.]
[Footnote 24: "_Malebolge_," literally Evil-Budget. _Bolgia_ is an old
form of the modern _baule_, the common term for a valise or portmanteau.
"Bolgia" (says the _Vocabolario della Crusca, compendiato_, Ven. 1792),
"a valise; Latin, bulga, hippopera; Greek, ippopetha [Greek]. In
reference to valises which open lengthways like a chest, Dante uses the
word to signify those compartments which he feigns in his Hell." (Per
similitudine di quelle valigie, che s'aprono per lo lungo, a guisa di
cassa, significa quegli spartimenti, che Dante finge nell' Inferno.)
The reader will think of the homely figurative names in Bunyan, and the
contempt which great and awful states of mind have for conventional
notions of rank in phraseology. It is a part, if well considered, of
their grandeur.]
[Footnote 25: Boniface the Eighth was the pope then living, and one of
the causes of Dante's exile. It is thus the poet contrives to put his
enemies in hell before their time.]
[Footnote 26: An allusion to the pretended gift of the Lateran by
Constantine to Pope Sylvester, ridiculed so strongly by Ariosto and
others.]
[Footnote 27: A truly infernal sentiment. The original is,
"Qui vive la pieta quand' e ben morta."
Here pity lives when it is quite dead.
"Chi e piu scellerato," continues the poet, "di colui,
Ch'al giudicio divin passion porta."
That is: "Who is wickeder than he that sets his impassioned feelings
against the judgments of God?" The answer is: He that attributes
judgments to God which are to render humanity pitiless.]
[Footnote 28: _Ne' fianchi cosi poco_. Michael Scot had been in
Florence; to which circumstance we are most probably indebted for this
curious particular respecting his shape. The consignment of such men to
hell is a mortifying instance of the great poet's participation in the
vulgarest errors of his time. It is hardly, however, worth notice,
considering what we see him swallowing every moment, or pretending to
swallow.]
[Footnote 29: "Bonturo must have sold him something cheap," exclaimed a
hearer of this passage. No:--the exception is an irony! There was not
one honest man in all Lucca!]
[Footnote 30:
"Intorno si mira
Tutto smarrito da la grande angoscia
Ch'egli ha sofferta, e guardando sospira."
This is one of the most terribly natural pictures of agonised
astonishment ever painted.]
[Footnote 31: I retain this passage, horrible as it is to Protestant
ears, because it is not only an instance of Dante's own audacity, but
a salutary warning specimen of the extremes of impiety generated by
extreme superstition; for their first cause is the degradation of the
Divine character. Another, no doubt, is the impulsive vehemence of the
South. I have heard more blasphemies, in the course of half an hour,
from the lips of an Italian postilion, than are probably uttered in
England, by people not out of their senses, for a whole year. Yet the
words, after all, were mere words; for the man was a good-natured
fellow, and I believe presented no image to his mind of anything he was
saying. Dante, however, would certainly not have taught him better by
attempting to frighten him. A violent word would have only produced more
violence. Yet this was the idle round which the great poet thought it
best to run!]
[Footnote 32: Cianfa, probably a condottiere of Mrs. Radcliffe's sort,
and robber on a large scale, is said to have been one of the Donati
family, connexions of the poet by marriage.]
[Footnote 33: This, and the transformation that follows, may well excite
the pride of such a poet as Dante; though it is curious to see how he
selects inventions of this kind as special grounds of self-complacency.
They are the most appalling ever yet produced.]
[Footnote 34: Guido, Conte di Montefeltro, a celebrated soldier of that
day, became a Franciscan in his old age, in order to repent of his sins;
but, being consulted in his cloister by Pope Boniface on the best mode
of getting possession of an estate belonging to the Colonna family,
and being promised absolution for his sins in the lump, including the
opinion requested, he recommended the holy father to "promise much, and
perform nothing" (_molto promettere, e nulla attendere_).]
[Footnote 35: Dolcino was a Lombard friar at the beginning of the
fourteenth century, who is said to have preached a community of goods,
including women, and to have pretended to a divine mission for reforming
the church. He appears to have made a considerable impression, having
thousands of followers, but was ultimately seized in the mountains where
they lived, and burnt with his female companion Margarita, and many
others. Landino says he was very eloquent, and that "both he and
Margarita endured their fate with a firmness worthy of a better cause."
Probably his real history is not known, for want of somebody in such
times bold enough to write it.]
[Footnote 36: Literally, "under the breastplate of knowing himself to be
pure:"
"Sotto l'osbergo del sentirsi pura."
The expression is deservedly admired; but it is not allowable in
English, and it is the only one admitting no equivalent which I have
met with in the whole poem. It might be argued, perhaps, against the
perfection of the passage, that a good "conscience," and a man's
"knowing himself to be pure," are a tautology; for Dante himself has
already used that word;
"Conscienzia m'assicura;
La buona compagnia che l'uom francheggia
Sotto l'osbergo," &c.
But still we feel the impulsive beauty of the phrase; and I wish I could
have kept it.]
[Foonote 37: This ghastly fiction is a rare instance of the meeting of
physical horror with the truest pathos.]
[Footnote 38: The reader will not fail to notice this characteristic
instance of the ferocity of the time.]
[Footnote 39: This is admirable sentiment; and it must have been no
ordinary consciousness of dignity in general which could have made Dante
allow himself to be the person rebuked for having forgotten it. Perhaps
it was a sort of penance for his having, on some occasion, fallen into
the unworthiness.]
[Footnote 40: By the Saracens in Roncesvalles; afterwards so favourite
a topic with the poets. The circumstance of the horn is taken from the
Chronicle of the pretended Archbishop Turpin, chapter xxiv.]
[Footnote 41: The gaping monotony of this jargon, full of the vowel _a_,
is admirably suited to the mouth of the vast, half-stupid speaker. It is
like a babble of the gigantic infancy of the world.]
[Footnote 42:
"Ne si chinato li fece dimora,
E come albero in nave si levo."
A magnificent image! I have retained the idiomatic expression of the
original, _raised himself_, instead of saying rose, because it seemed to
me to give the more grand and deliberate image.]
[Footnote 43: Of "_mamma_" and "_babbo_," says the primitive poet. We
have corresponding words in English, but the feeling they produce is not
identical. The lesser fervour of the northern nations renders them, in
some respects, more sophisticate than they suspect, compared with the
"artful" Italians.]
[Footnote 44: Alessandro and Napoleon degli Alberti, sons of Alberto,
lord of the valley of Falterona in Tuscany. After their father's death
they tyrannised over the neighbouring districts, and finally had a
mortal quarrel. The name of Napoleon used to be so rare till of late
years, even in Italian books, that it gives one a kind of interesting
surprise to meet with it.]
[Footnote 45:
"Se _voler_ fu, o destino o fortuna,
Non so."