The power of Dante

THE POWER OF DANTE

THE POWER OF
DANTE

BY
C. H. GRANDGENT, L.H.D.

CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ACCADEMIA DELLA CRVSCA
PROFESSOR OF ROMANCE LANGUAGES IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY

LONDON

GEORGE G. HARRAP & CO., LTD.
2 & 3 PORTSMOUTH ST., KINGSWAY, W. C.

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNtt
SANTA BARBARA

PREFACE

THIS book consists of a series of eight lectures
delivered at the Lowell Institute in the autumn of
1917. They are here presented substantially as
they were pronounced; but I have reinforced
them, in some of the thinner places, with material
drawn from a course on "The Artistry of Dante"
given by me in the early months of 1918 at Yale
University.

The translations are my own. While most of
them are new, some are borrowed from works
already in print. For permission to use the latter
I am indebted to the courtesy of Duffield & Co.,
publishers of my Dante (New York, 1916), and
the Harvard University Press, which published
The Ladies of Dante's Lyrics (Cambridge, 1917).

C. H. G.

CAMBRIDGE, June 6, 1918.

CONTENTS

LECTURE PAGE

I. FAITH i

II. MORALITY 32

III. TEMPERAMENT 65

IV. EXPERIENCE 94

V. VISION 127

VI. CONCEPTION. . 155

VII. WORKMANSHIP 186

VIII. DICTION , 218

THE POWER OF DANTE

LECTURE I
FAITH

WHY am I 'here to-day, lecturing about a man
who died some six hundred years ago ? Why are
other lecturers, to-day and wellnigh every day,
discoursing of the same man, so long departed,
and why are people listening to them, in so many
different lands? Why does the press pour forth,
year after year, such a flood of books and articles
on Dante that it would require a specialist's whole
time merely to keep track of them? Why does
one man of letters bring out a volume on ref-
erences to Dante in English literature, while
another writes a thick tome on Dante in France?
Why, during the last century, have so many emi-
nent men in various walks of life — not only the
poet, the scholar, the critic, but the priest, the
jurist, the king — been drawn irresistibly to de-
vote their best energies to the increase or the
diffusion of knowledge of this same ancient Flor-
entine ? Why — to pass from proofs obvious and
tangible to testimony at once more intimate and
more significant — do so many thousands of men
and women at this very day, — many of them

THE POWER OF DANTE

dwellers in lands far remote from Italy, many of
them nearly ignorant even of Dante's tongue, -
still find in his writings a spell which binds them
ever closer, a solace which comforts when all
other consolation fails? What, in other words,
is the source of Dante's enduring power? What
has given him such a mighty hold on humanity,
a grip that time seems only to strengthen? To
answer in some part these questions is the purpose
of this series of lectures.

Dante is not a recent discovery. His power
began while he was still alive, and has lasted ever
since. To be sure, it was somewhat obscured for
several centuries, but it was never lost; and for
the last hundred or hundred and fifty years it has
waxed almost continuously. Commentaries on
the Divine Comedy began appearing almost be-
fore the poem was finished, and every few years
thereafter saw a new one. Within half a century
or so of the poet's death a Dante professorship
was established in Florence, and its first incum-
bent was no less a personage than Boccaccio.
Petrarch complained that all sorts of ignorant
people were continually reciting passages of the
Divine Comedy, as even illiterate Italians do still.

Now, all the admirers of Dante are not at-
jf tracted by the same things. Our poet was a many-
sided genius, who has a message for nearly every-
one. In his own time I believe he was most
admired — at least by the educated class — for
qualities that are now, in the judgment of the
general run of readers, among the less attractive.

FAITH

Certainly he was in the fourteenth century revered
as a great teacher, a mine of philosophical and
theological lore. Like Virgil, his master, he came
to be regarded as the wisest man of his epoch, a
prodigy of recondite learning. Like Virgil, too,
he was even supposed by some to be a sorcerer, an
imputation to which, in those days, any extraor-
dinary scholar was liable. Learned and wise
he truly was; an indefatigable student, eager to
impart to mankind his hard-won stores; a close
and subtle thinker, with a strong bent for abstract
doctrine; an accomplished astronomer, fond of
setting his reader intricate scientific puzzles. ) But
all this erudition and speculation, which appealed
so mightily to the utilitarian and argumentative
spirit of his contemporaries and immediate fol-
lowers, usually appears to modern readers dry
and tiresome, and much of it is skipped by the
profane. We are utilitarian enough, to be sure;
but the greater part of Dante's erudition has lost
its immediate utility, and most of his philosophy
seems to the uninitiated to be out of key with
present-day modes of thought.

Virgil and Ovid were, in Dante's day, held in
high repute as allegorists, and were eagerly
studied for the intricate hidden lessons that might
be extracted from their verses. Dante really was
an allegorist, and as such was justly esteemed.
But his early commentators read into his work, as
into that of Ovid and Virgil, all sorts of minute
secondary meanings that were not there. Just as
Christian preachers, from time immemorial, have

[3]

THE POWER OF DANTE

given to separate verses in the Bible any signi-
ficance that might at the moment suit their fancy,
so Dante expositors have found in single phrases
and incidents of their author whatever their par-
ticular hobby suggested. This practice has con-
tinued, both for the Bible and for the Divine
Comedy, down to our own day. But in the
fourteenth century the interpretations of both
books nearly always took an allegorical turn. At
present, generally speaking, we care little for al-
legory, which, when it does not bore us, puzzles
and baffles us. Probably few modern readers of
Dante are really interested in his symbolism, ex-
cept in its broadest outlines.

Two attributes, then, which fascinated Dante's
contemporaries — utility and symbolic inventive-
ness— have lost a large portion of their spell.
But there are enough left; and some of them, no
doubt, are more effective to-day than they were
six hundred years ago. His uncompromising faith
and his rigid code of morals have now become so
rare as to assume the interest of strangeness,
whereas in the author's own era they were matters
of course. His pronounced temperament is prob-
ably more appreciated in our epoch of aggressive
individualism than in his own communal age.
The course of his life, which furnished him with
the experience that he translated into poetry, seems
nowadays extraordinarily diversified, but was nor-
mal enough then. The clearness and compre-
hensiveness of both his physical and his intel-
lectual sight are a wonder fit to appeal potently

[4]

to the fourteenth century as to the twentieth;
possibly the twentieth, which has been schooled by
a long series of intervening talents to follow the
higher flights of the imagination, contemplates this
wonder more intelligently than did the fourteenth.
As to the deep symbolism of his primal concep-
tion, and the unparalleled unity and symmetry
with which he developed it, I am inclined to think
that, on the whole, the fourteenth century readers
were more competent judges than the twentieth
century public; partly because, having far less to
read than the people of our day, they read more
closely and thoughtfully; partly because symbol-
ism and symmetry were ever before them, mystic
symbolism as the basis of their religious service
and their whole outlook on the world, richly
diversified symmetry as the underlying principle
of their eccleciastical architecture at a time when
the church was the one great meeting-place of the
community. On the other hand, I believe that the
really sympathetic specialist of to-day compre-
hends the poet's conception more clearly than did
the best qualified specialist of the Trecento; I be-
lieve that Longfellow, Charles Eliot Norton,
Edward Moore, alien though they were in race,
time, and faith, grasped Dante's fundamental
idea more closely than did Boccaccio or Ben-
venuto da Imola, the reason being that the modern
interpreters possessed a broader experience in
literature and had at their disposal the results
of centuries of study of their author. Dante's
technical skill — his use of harmony and contrast,

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THE POWER OF DANTE

suspense, surprise, climax, of metaphor and simile,
his choice of words — was as astounding to his
age as it is to ours; even more astounding, because
it was then something quite unprecedented in
modern literature. Though Dante as a crafts-
man is still unsurpassed, he has in the course of
six centuries found a few fellows; in his own day
he had none nearer than Virgil and Ovid, who
were thirteen hundred years away.

It is to these elements of Dante's power that
I intend to devote my eight lectures : Faith, Mo-
rality, Temperament, Experience, Vision, Concep-
tion, Workmanship, Diction. I hope by the dis-
cussion of these themes, and especially by the
citation of illustrative passages from the author
hmself, to throw some light on the secret of the
lasting poetic supremacy of a man who not only
lived six hundred years ago, but distinctly belonged
to his own epoch — an epoch whose ideas and
interests seem so remote from ours.

Before I enter upon the subject of Faith, which
is to be my text to-day, I must make one more
preliminary remark. I spoke, a moment ago, of
the diverse habits of reading in the Middle Ages
and now. Remember this: Dante must be read
in the medieval way. He must be read slowly
(if possible, aloud), intently, ponderingly, re-
peatedly. Whosoever tries to speed through him
as one rushes through the season's best seller,
gets nothing, or next to nothing. We have al-
most lost the art of reading. So prodigious is the
mass of printed matter which year by year, month

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FAITH

by month, day by day, obtrudes itself on our at-
tention, and with which we feel in some fashion
obliged to acquire at least a semblance of famili-
arity, that we have formed the habit of skimming,
of leaping from peak to peak, instead of following
the road up hill and down dale; and honest,
thorough perusal has for most of us become nearly
inpossible. Chief blame for our mental degen-
eracy falls on the daily paper, — I say nothing
of the Sunday paper, which contains no news and
therefore need corrupt only those willing to be
corrupted, — but the daily paper, which we have
to examine, to learn what is going on in the world,
— the daily paper, which, with its preposterous
bulk, its interminable long-windedness, its chaotic
arrangement, forces us to practice every day for
an hour or so a system of violent intellectual
gymastics adopted by us for the purpose of win-
nowing the few grains of corn which we assume
to be there from the enormous mass of chaff
which we know is there. That is, we engage every
day on a struggle to extricate from a formless and
mostly void heap of print the few things we want
while reading just as little as possible of the things
that are of no interest. This method, slightly
relaxed, we carry into our perusal of the weekly
short-story periodical, to which we have been
lured by the illustrations. With only a little
diminution of tenseness, we apply it to the monthly
magazine. Then, if we ever have time to read a
book, the habit has become such a second nature
that we find ourselves dodging from page to page,

THE POWER OF DANTE

from chapter to chapter, breathless, cramped, un-
enlightened, and unamused. How happy were the
people of the Middle Ages, most of whom could
not read at all, while those who possessed the art
could devote an undisturbed lifetime to the five-
foot shelf, studying their choice authors phrase
by phrase, reflecting, turning back, unconsciously
committing to memory — something as we (I
mean those of us who have lived half a century
and more) used in our childhood to peruse the
Bible and Shakespeare and Dickens. The prac-
tice of real communion with an author, which until
our own generation has been the chief delight and
the chief education of cultivated people, has well-
nigh disappeared. It can be restored only by a
firm resolve, on the part of the seekers for light,
to devote a certain portion of their week or their
year to quiet concentration upon some writer
whose unquestioned greatness is sure to repay
them for the precious time thus spent. The tend-
ency to half-attentive fleetness can be counter-
acted in some measure by reading aloud. To me
it seems — as it has seemed to many others, better
judges than I — that among the authors who best
reward such sacrifice Dante stands preeminent.

I may be mistaken, but I cannot help thinking
that the same superficiality which vitiates our read-
ing is apparent in our religion. I do not mean
that most of those who profess religion (of course
vast numbers nowadays make no such profession)
are insincere. I mean that very generally their
faith is not a constant, vital force in their lives,

[8]

FAITH

determining or at least influencing their every act
and every thought. More and more we take our
articles of belief in a Pickwickian sense, if we
think of them at all ; and when there comes among
us a revivalist who really accepts in all literalness
the dogmas to which he, in common with millions
of others, has subscribed, he seems grotesque.
And yet there is a very widespread craving for
some absolute faith — a craving deep but usually
unspoken, often unconscious. How many of our
fellow countrymen, when cut adrift from their
traditional religious support, are eager to clutch
at any straw of supernatural comfort! How
many strange, uncouth churches and sects have
sprung up and flourished among us, testifying to a
persistent hunger for the " bread of the angels,"
for spiritual teaching, for assured truth !

This underlying need is, I think, accountable,
to some extent, for the strong reaction produced
by the Divine Comedy on so many men who do
not pass for religious. In Dante they see a great
intelligence, admired for centuries, an absolutely
authentic and undoubted genius, whose faith in
the revealed word of God is unwavering, to whom
the doctrines of his Church are even more real
than the events and the people of this mortal
world which he knew so well. Such an example
is encouraging to one who longs for faith, yet has
been checked by the suspicion that faith dwells
with babes and simpletons alone. No one need
fear shame at doing what a Dante did, or bowing
to what a Dante revered, or worshiping as a

[9]

THE POWER OF DANTE

Dante prayed. Even to him who cannot believe,
the spectacle of such a staunch believer is reassur-
ing, especially if that believer be a man of evi-
dently superior intellectual power. As to the
reader who is already devout, he finds in Dante
a fellow and a champion after his own heart, a
comrade who corroborates his credence before his
own eyes and justifies it in the eyes of others.
Both to the religious and to the superficially irre-
ligious our poet offers, then, the comfort of a
stalwart faith.

No mental reservation impairs Dante's accept-
ance of divine authority. Not a backward look
does he cast when he entrusts himself to its keep-
ing. " No man, having put his hand to the
plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom
of God." When, on his allegorical journey,
Dante reaches with Virgil, his guide, the gate of
Purgatory, the angelic keeper warns the travelers
of their danger:

The angel pusht the sacred portal wide,
And said : " Now enter, but I caution you
That he who looks behind must go outside."

When we had past the open portal thro', —
A rusty gate, because the greed of men
Maketh to them the crooked way look true, —

My hearing told me it was closed again ;
And if I had allowed mine eyes to turn,
Whatever could my fault have mended then ?

Through Purgatory, Dante mounts to Heaven,
and there, in the starry sphere, he undergoes an
examination in the three Christian virtues by their
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FAITH

accepted representatives, St. Peter, St. James, and
St. John, who question him respectively on Faith,
Hope, and Love. Behold him, introduced by his
guide, in the presence of St. Peter, who appears
only as a great light. " Even as the candidate,
before the master puts the question, prepares his
defense in silence (to debate the problem, not to
decide it), so, while Beatrice was speaking, I was
equipping myself with every argument, to be ready
for so great an examiner and so great a profes-
sion. ' Speak, good Christian ! declare thyself !
What is faith? ' At that I lifted my brow toward
the light whence these words were breathed. Then
I turned to Beatrice, who quickly signaled to me
that I should pour forth the water of my soul's
fountain. ' May that grace,' I began, ' which
grants me the privilege of confessing to the high
commander, lend clear expression to my ideas I'
Then I continued : ' O father, as hath been writ-
ten for us by the truthful pen of thy dear brother,
who, with thee, brought Rome into the line of
righteousness, faith is the substance of things
hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.
This seemeth to me to be its essence.' Thereupon
I heard: 'Right is thy thought, if thou under-
standest well why he [St. Paul] classed faith first
among substances, then among evidences.' And
I followed with my answer: 'The deep things
which I am here allowed to behold are so hidden
from men's eyes on earth that their existence,
down below, abides in belief alone, whereof our
profound hope is built; and therefore it falleth

THE POWER OF DANTE

into the category of substance. Moreover, from
this same belief men are compelled to argue, with-
out other proof; and therefore it belongeth to the
class of evidences.' Then I heard: ' If all that is
learned as doctrine, down on earth, were so clearly
understood, there would be no place for the cun-
ning of the sophist.' This was breathed from that
flaming love, which then added: 'Already have
the fineness and the weight of this coin been in-
spected carefully enough; but tell me whether thou
hast it in thy purse.' And I replied: ' Yes, I have
it, so round and bright that nothing in its stamp is
obscure to me.' From the deep light that was
glowing there, issued next these words : ' This
precious jewel, foundation of all virtues, whence
came it to thee?' 'The broad shower of the
Holy Ghost,' said I, ' which is spread on the old
parchments and the new, is a syllogism which
hath proved it to me so sharply that, in compari-
son, every other demQnstration appeareth dull to
me.' ' The old and the new premise,' I then
heard, ' which lead thee to this conclusion, why
dost thou accept them as the word of God?'
' The proof that reveals the truth to me,' said I,
'is in the works performed [the miracles], for
which nature never heated iron or struck anvil.'
' Speak ! ' was the answer : ' what warrant hast
thou that these works really occurred? Thine
only pledge is the very writ which is to be tested.'
' If the world,' I said, ' turned to Christianity
without miracles, this one marvel is so great that
all the others are but the hundredth part. For

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FAITH

them didst come poor and hungry into the field to
sow that plant of righteousness, which once was
a vine but now is turned to a briar.'

" When this was ended, that holy court on high
reechoed through the circles with Te Deum lauda-
mus, to the tune that is sung up yonder. And that
chief who already, in his examination, had drawn
me from branch to branch [of doctrine] so far
that we were now close to the topmost leaves [of
the tree], began once more: 'The grace that
fondles thy mind hath opened thus far thy lips as
they should be opened, wherefore I approve of
that which hath come forth; but now it behooves
thee to state what thou believest, and whence it
came to thy belief.' ' O holy father,' I began,
' O spirit who now beholdest that which once thou
didst believe so firmly as to outstrip the younger
feet into the sepulcher, thou wouldst have me
declare the essence of my unhesitating belief, and
thou hast asked also for the cause of it. Now this
is my reply : I believe in one God, single and eter-
nal, who, unmoved himself, moveth all the heavens
with love and with longing. And for such belief
I not only have proofs physical and metaphysical,
but I receive it also from the truth that hath
been showered down from Heaven by Moses, by
prophets and psalms, by the Gospels, and by you
[Apostles] who did write, after the glowing spirit
made you holy. And I believe in three eternal
Persons; and these I believe to be an entity so one
and yet so threefold that it admits of a construc-
tion with are or is. The mysterious divine nature

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THE POWER OF DANTE

whereof I now speak is stamped upon my mind
more than once by the teaching of the Evangel.
This is the beginning; this is the spark that pres-
ently swells into a lusty flame, and sparkles in me
like a star in the sky.' '

E'en as a lord, receiving joyous word,
Thanketh the bearer, to his bosom prest,
As soon as he the messenger hath heard,

Thus me the saint melodiously blest,

Three times encircling me, when I was done —
That apostolic light, at whose behest

I told my creed, which such approval won.

This curious passage (the last few lines of
which I have tried to translate into verse) likens
Dante's colloquy with St. Peter in the skies to an
examination for the doctor's degree, the candidate
being catechized by the professor. The subse-
quent tests in hope, administered by St. James,
and in love, conducted by St. John, are less formal
and less severe. Allegorically, Dante conceives
of himself as being at this stage of his experience
qualified for the highest flight of religious con-
templation— for entrance into the realm of pure
spirit, above the stars — by his proficiency in the
three essential virtues of Christianity, which, no
doubt, he now grasps with firmer certainty than
ever before.

In his literal conception of Paradise, Dante
thought of certainty as constituting one of its
eternal joys. Those doctrines which on earth are
received as a matter of faith, beyond our thorough
comprehension, those mysteries which are far out

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FAITH

of the reach of mortal penetration, shall in Heaven
be as clear as any axiom, as the simplest geo-
metrical proposition, as the plainest object our
eyes behold. Those problems which so torment
us by constantly whetting our intellectual curiosity
shall be solved for us; our thirst for knowledge
shall be satisfied.

During the poet's mystic progress through the
heavens he continually receives from Beatrice,
and from the other spirits he encounters, instruc-
tion in the abstruse problems of philosophy, ethics,
and theology. These fictitious discussions, which,
as I have said, often enough seem uninteresting
to the modern reader, were surely a delight to
their author as he invented them. To him they
must have been as a foretaste of the real life after
death. Among other things, he learns why it is
that all the souls in Paradise are perfectly con-
tented, although they do not all enjoy the same
degree of blessedness : it is because each is blest to
its utmost capacity for beatitude, and also because
the greatest happiness for every one is the con-
sciousness of conformity to the maker's intent.
He is taught that injustice in God's decrees is not
only impossible, but a downright contradiction of
terms; for what we call justice is only another
name for the divine will.

Now wilt thou sit upon the bench, O man,
To judge of things a thousand miles away
With eyes that cannot see beyond a span ?

But (we may ask, in our presumption) how can
it be just that a virtuous pagan, who has never

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•heard of Christ, should be damned for not being
a Christian?

A man, thou sayst, is born on Indus' strand
And none there is the tale of Christ to read
Nor write nor preach abroad, in all the land.

Upright is he in every wish and deed
And, in so far as human wit can tell,
A sinless life in act and word doth lead.

He dieth unbaptized, an infidel.

If he believe not, how is he to blame?
What kind of justice sendeth him to Hell?

The answer is this: although Heaven cannot
be won without faith in Christ, such faith may be
miraculously inspired in a worthy pagan by divine
grace. And Dante invents as an example the
salvation of the Trojan prince Ripheus, an ob-
scure character in Virgil's /Eneid, described as
the most just and scrupulous of his countrymen.
That soul, the poet is told, " moved by grace
which flows from so deep a font that no created
sight ever fathomed it to the bottom, bent all its
love, here below, on justice; wherefore, proceed-
ing from grace to grace, God opened its eyes to
our future redemption. And the soul believed
therein, and after that no longer could endure
the stench of paganism, but rebuked his people
for their perversity." The three Christian virtues
were his baptism, more than a thousand years
before men were baptized. " O predestination,"
cry the heavenly spirits that have expounded this
truth to Dante, " O predestination, how distant is
thy root from those minds which see not the
primal cause entire ! Ye mortals, hold your judg-
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FAITH

ments in reserve ; for we, who see God, do not yet
know all the elect."

Predestination is a problem that never can be
completely solved, even in Paradise. The mind
of God, more profound than any created intelli-
gence, can be fully understood only by itself. To
the purest of the blest, even to the highest of the
angels, the divine purpose is only partially ap-
parent. But this ignorance does not disturb their
bliss; for what God wills, they will. One thing,
then, Dante can never hope to comprehend — the
secret of the plan of salvation. Why has the Lord
made one vessel unto honor, another unto dis-
honor? How can God's foresight and omnipo-
tence be reconciled with man's absolute freedom
and responsibility? For the individual human will
is free: it has the choice between good and evil,
it has conscience to guide it, it has opportunity to
achieve salvation. If it fails, the fault is its own.
How this can be, in spite of the foreknowledge of
its maker, is a mystery that quite transcends the
created mind.

By "predestination" Dante means, not the
foredooming of certain souls to Hell, but the en-
dowment of all souls, as they are made by God at
the moment of the birth of the body, with distinct
and different degrees of spiritual vision. All have
sight enough to steer their course, if they make the
best of what they have; but some see better than
others. Now, if the soul, by its own effort, gains
admission to Paradise, the kind of happiness it is
destined to enjoy depends upon the clearness of

[17]

THE POWER OF DANTE

this sight. Heavenly spirits all see God, but they
see him diversely; and their beatitude is accord-
ingly diverse. " In my Father's house are many
mansions." Joy results from intensity of love,
and that results from intensity of vision, a prod-
uct of grace. This doctrine of predestination is
the dominant note of the Paradiso, as free will
is the leading theme of the Purgatorio. Dante
goes so far as to apply it even to babes that die
before exercising their will. In his Heaven their
seats are graded at different elevations — a sym-
bol of different grades of blessedness — according
to the primal sight bestowed on them.

The mysteries that are to become clear as day,
as soon as we shall be released from the flesh, are
of a different nature, in that they do not involve
a sounding of the mind of God. When Dante
declared to St. Peter the substance of his creed,
you observed that it consisted of only two articles :
" I believe in one God, single and eternal, who,
unmoved himself, moveth all the heavens .. . .
And I believe in three eternal Persons; and these
I believe to be an entity so one and yet so three-
fold that it admits of a construction with are or
15." The first doctrine, then, is that of the unity
and the universality of God, the one primal power
of the universe, unchanging and eternal. That
the Creator can remain indivisible and at the same
time contain all things, appears to the mortal
understanding an irreconcilable contradiction; but
to the eye of the spirit there is no inconsistency.
When the poet's heavenly journey culminates in
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FAITH

the direct vision of God, the divine nature is re-
vealed to him, although afterwards he can remem-
ber nothing save that for one instant he under-
stood. " O Grace abounding, which gave me
courage to pierce with my eyes the eternal splendor
until my mortal sight was quenched! Contained
within its depths I saw, bound by love into a single
volume, all that is scattered through the pages of
the universe, substance and accident and their
operation, so fused together, as it were, that the
thing whereof I speak is one simple light. I be-
lieve I did behold the universal principle of this
union, because, as I speak these words, I feel an
ampler sense of satisfaction." Another apparent
contradiction is involved in the second clause, the
doctrine of the Trinity, the three in one, which
Dante pictures as three circles of three different
colors but occupying exactly the same space.

In these two articles is carried implicitly all the
rest of Christian dogma: creation, original sin,
redemption. And the doctrine of redemption im-
plies a third mystery beyond earthly — but not
heavenly — understanding, the union of two na-
tures in the Redeemer. In Dante's Garden of
Eden, Christ is portrayed allegorically as a griffin,
which is one single creature composed of an eagle
and a lion: the eagle, monarch of the air, rep-
resents the divine nature ; the lion, king of beasts,
the human. Each is perfectly distinct, yet the
two form but one. Within the glowing orb of
day many souls, brighter than the sun itself, are
singing together, as the ancients used to sing their

[19]

THE POWER OF DANTE

songs of praise to Bacchus and Apollo. But there,
says Dante, " the chant was not of Bacchus, no
Paean was it, but a song of three Persons in the
divine nature, and of the divine and the human
nature in one Person." Again the same souls lift
up their voices : " That One and Two and Three
which liveth forever and forever reigneth in Three
and Two and One, not circumscribed but circum-
scribing all, was thrice sung by each of those spirits
with a melody that would be a sufficient reward
for any merit." Let us go back to the beginning
of the poet's celestial journey. Accompanied by
Beatrice, he quits the earth, and, darting into the
skies, penetrates the moon. Like St. Paul, he is
not sure whether he has left his flesh behind:
" whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot
tell: God knoweth." "Within itself," declares
Dante, " the eternal pearl [the moon] received
us, as water takes in a ray of sunlight, remaining
unbroken. If I was in the flesh (and in this case
it cannot be conceived how one solid admitted
another, as must occur, if body enters into body)
— if I was in the flesh, our eagerness should be
all the hotter to behold that essence in which is to
be seen the union of our nature with God. In it
we shall see that which we hold by faith; it shall
not be proved, but shall be self-revealed, even as
the primal truth that all men believe."

The Creation was the materialization, the ex-
ternalization, so to speak, of the universe which
had existed from all eternity in the divine con-
sciousness. The conception had always been

[20]

FAITH

there. " In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God."
The act was performed by the three Persons of
the Trinity in unison: Power, moved by Love,
guided by Wisdom, made the wondrous world.
As Dante puts it: "All that revolves in space or
in mind was created, — with a symmetry such
that he who contemplates it cannot be without
some foretaste of its maker, — by the primal and
ineffable Power, gazing upon his Son with that
love which breathes eternally from each." It was
the divine bounty, the desire of God to share his
happiness with other beings, which impelled him
to bring into existence the angels and mankind
(endowed with free will, that they might have a
real life of their own), and to fashion the world
for them to inhabit — earth for man, skies for the
angels. "The divine goodness," says the poet,
" to which all envy is alien, glowing within itself,
sparkles so that it unfolds its eternal beauties."
A lovely image of creation: God's burning love
throwing off sparks, which repeat and multiply
its eternal light. In another passage Beatrice
expounds to Dante the motive of the creative act,
when, as we read in Genesis, " the Spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters." " Not for
the sake of increasing his own welfare," she says,
" for that cannot be, but to the end that his bright-
ness, reflected back, might say ' I live,' the eternal
love, at its own pleasure, in its eternity outside
of time and outside of every other restriction,
opened out into new loves. Nor did it lie, before

[21]

THE POWER OF DANTE

this act, in a state, as it were, of torpor; for there
was no before nor after in the moving of God
upon these waters." God, in his eternity, knows
no distinctions of time, all moments being equally
present to him. He is sometimes likened to the
centre of a circle whose circumference is eternity;
for the centre is simultaneously opposite all points
of the circumference. As to the mode of creation,
the Biblical six days are to be taken figuratively.
The angels, the heavens, and the mass of brute
matter burst into existence in one moment; then
the skies, directed by the angels, operated upon
matter, separating the four elements (earth, water,
air, fire), shaping our globe, and drawing forth
minerals, plants, and beasts ; but man was created
by a special, direct act of God.

Angels and men were created free ; but freedom
implies the possibility of sin. If there be no
opportunity to make a wrongful choice, there can
be no free will, and therefore no independent life.
Beasts and plants can do no evil, for they are
governed in all things by instinct, over which they
have no control. Angels and men, destined to be
participants in God's happiness, must be independ-
ent and must prove themselves worthy of their
freedom. At the very outset of their career they
are put to the test. The angels are offered grace,
which most of them unhesitatingly accept, and
forevermore, in consequence of this gift, behold
God so clearly that it is impossible for them to
deviate from his will. But some ("about a
tenth," as Dante conjectures), expecting in their

[22]

FAITH

arrogance to equal God without his help, reject
the proffered grace — " before one could count
twenty " — and are cast out of Heaven to dwell
everlastingly as devils in Hell, which shapes itself
in the forming earth as they fall. Thereupon, to
fill their vacant place, God created man. Adam
and Eve were set in the Earthly Paradise, the
intended home of humanity; they were surrounded
with all the charms of perpetual springtime, and
all their wants were supplied. Only one restric-
tion was put upon them, and that they presently
broke, exalting themselves, in their pride, above
the divine law. Ere they were seven hours old,
they were driven from Eden, and mankind had
forfeited the gift of grace, had incurred the
penalty of death, and had lost the way to Heaven.
" Unwilling," says Dante, " to suffer any check
upon his will power, — even a check to his own
advantage, — that man who never was born, con-
demning himself, condemned all his progeny."
In the trial of free will, the greater part of the
angels had met their responsibility with success;
humanity, in the person of our first father, po-
tentially the wisest of men, had failed.

Yet divine love found a way for man's possible
redemption. When Dante is in the sky which
bears the fixed stars, he beholds, in the form of
innumerable lights, the whole host of the human
souls redeemed by Christ; and the Saviour himself
shines forth like a fiery sun above them. " There
was but a little while," writes the poet, " between
one instant and the other: I mean, between my

[23]

THE POWER OF DANTE

expecting and my beholding the sky grow brighter
and ever brighter. And Beatrice cried: ' Lo! the
armies of the triumph of Christ, and all the har-
vest gathered by the revolution of these spheres 1 '
It seemed to me that her face was all afire, and
her eyes so full of gladness that I must pass on
without words. As, on clear, calm nights of full
moon, Luna laughs among her eternal nymphs,
who paint the sky on all sides, I saw shining,
above thousands of lights, one sun which kindled
them all, as our sun kindles the things we see on
high; and through its living glow there shone the
gleaming substance so clear that my sight could
not support it." This " substance," which gleams
through the splendor of Christ, is, of course, the
human nature in his Person. In Dante's final
vision of God, the second of the three rings of
light appears to him to be " painted by itself, with
its own color, in our likeness. Therefore was my
attention all bent upon it. Like some geometer
who applies his whole mind to the problem of
squaring the circle, and in his thought cannot dis-
cover the principle he lacks, so was I before this
strange sight. I was eager to see how the image
was related to the circle, and what was its place
therein ; " but my wings could not soar so high —
until in one instant, like a lightning-flash, my
"wish came."

In spite of the divine assumption of man's
nature with man's inherited sin, in spite of
vicarious atonement, the salvation or perdition of
each soul depends upon that soul itself. And it

[24]

FAITH

depends specifically on the real state of the soul
at the very moment of death. This doctrine is
brought home to the reader of the Divine Comedy
by two contrary examples, one in Hell, one in
Purgatory, the two contrasted sinners being father
and son, Guido and Buonconte da Montefeltro.
In each case there is at death a contest, between
the powers of good and of evil, for the possession
of the soul, the demon winning in the first instance,
the angel in the second. The father, Guido, hav-
ing made his peace with Heaven, commits one last
fault at the instigation of the Pope, Boniface VIII,
who promises to remit his guilt; he is lost. Buon-
conte, the son, at the close of an irreligious life,
being mortally wounded on the battle-field, calls
on Mary with his last gasp, and is saved. The
first has died unrepentant, though absolved by the
Pope; the second has died genuinely repentant,
though too late for earthly shriving.

Guido da Montefeltro was a great Ghibelline
general, renowned for his astuteness. His spirit
is found by Dante in Hell, among the fraudulent
counselors, enveloped and hidden by a huge tongue
of flame, which, moving its point, speaks the words
uttered by the soul within it. " When the fire,"
says the poet, " had roared a bit after its fashion,
it waved its sharp tip to and fro, and then gave the
following blast: ' If I believed that my reply were
made to one who was ever to return to the world,
this flame would shake no more. But since, if
what I hear is true, no one has ever gone back
alive from this depth, I answer thee without fear

[25]

THE POWER OF DANTE

of infamy. I was a man of arms, and then a
Franciscan, thinking to make amends by wearing
the rope girdle. And my thought would have
turned out true, had it not been for the high priest
(a curse upon him!), who led me back into my
former sins. And I would have thee hear how
and why. While I was a shape of bones and flesh,
which my mother gave me, my deeds were not
those of a lion but of a fox. Wiles and secret
ways, I knew them all, and so plied their art that
the fame of it went forth to the ends of the earth.
When I saw that I had reached that part of my
age when every man should furl his sails and coil
his ropes, I was grieved at the things that had
pleased me before. Penitent and confessed, I
took vows (poor me!) ; and it might have saved
me. The prince of the modern Pharisees, having
war close to the Lateran [with the Colonna
family] . . . , considered not his supreme office
and holy orders nor my rope belt . . . ; but, even
as Constantine sought Sylvester in Soracte to cure
his leprosy, so he sought me as a master-physician
to cure his haughty fever. He asked my advice,
and I was silent, because his words seemed to me
drunken. Then he spake : ' Let thy heart have no
misgiving. I absolve thee even now. And do
thou show me how I may bring to earth [the for-
tress of] Palestrina. I can lock and unlock
Heaven, as thou knowest, for I have the two
keys. . . .' At last his weighty arguments pushed
me to a point where silence appeared to me the
worse course, and I replied : ' Father, since thou
[26]

FAITH

washest me clean of that sin into which I am about
to fall, a long promise and a short fulfilment shall
make thee triumph on thy high throne.' Then,
when I was dead, St. Francis came for me. But
one of the black Cherubim said to him: 'Take
him not, do not wrong me ! He must come down
below among my servitors, because he gave that
counsel of fraud, ever since which I have been
lurking about his hair. For he who repents not
cannot be absolved, nor can anyone at the same
time repent and will [evil], because of the con-
tradiction that will not admit of it.' Ah! woe is
me! How I shuddered when he seized me, say-
ing : * Perhaps thou didst not think that I had
studied logic ! '

Guide's son, Buonconte da Montefeltro, was,
like his father, an able captain. He was of our
poet's own time, and, in fact, was killed in 1289
at the battle of Campaldino in which Dante
fought, on the other side. Somehow his body
vanished from the field, and no one ever knew
what became of it. This mysterious disappear-
ance affords an opening for a story, which our
author puts into the mouth of Buonconte himself.
His shade is waiting on the mountain slope, outside
the gate of Purgatory, among those who, having
postponed repentance until the last moment, are
obliged to postpone correspondingly the entrance
upon their preparation for Heaven. Their delay
may, however, be shortened by the prayers of the
living. " ' Prithee,' " he exclaimed to Dante, " * so
may thy longing be fulfilled which leads thee up

[27]

THE POWER OF DANTE

the high mountain, assist my longing with kindly
piety. I was of Montefeltro; I am Buonconte.
Neither Joan [my wife] nor anyone else takes
thought of me; wherefore I walk among these
[souls] with bended brow.' And I responded:
' What power or what chance so removed thee
from Campaldino that thy burial place hath never
been found?' 'Ol' he replied, 'at the foot of
the Casentino pours a stream named Archiano,
which is born in the Apennines above the Her-
mitage. To the spot where its appellation becomes
useless [because the river there merges with the
Arno] I came, with my throat cut, fleeing on foot
and wetting the plain with blood. There my sight
failed, and my speech fled, ending with the name
of Mary; and there I fell, and my flesh was left
alone. I shall tell thee the truth, and do thou
repeat it among the living. God's angel took
me ; and one from Hell shouted : " O thou from
Heaven, why dost thou rob me ? Thou shalt carry
away this man's eternal part, all on account of
one little tear, which snatches him from me. But
of the rest I shall make a different disposal." Well
thou knowest how the air collects that moist vapor
which turns back to water as soon as it rises high
enough to be caught by the cold. That spirit,
combining intelligence with ill-will which seeks
naught but harm, moved mist and wind with the
power its nature gave it. Then, when the day
was spent, it covered with clouds the valley be-
tween Pratomagno and the great chain, and made
the sky above it so tense that the teeming air
[28]

FAITH

turned to water. The rain descended; and as
much of it as earth could not support ran into
gullies; and, coming together in great torrents, it
plunged toward the royal river so swift that
naught could check it. The raging Archiano
found my frozen body at its mouth, and pushed it
into the Arno, and undid upon my breast the cross
that I had made of myself, when pain conquered
me; it whirled me along banks and bottom, then
swathed and begirt me with its booty.' '

Captain of his soul is every living Christian:
his eternal fate depends eventually on himself.
But man can find his Paradise only through Christ.
" Neither is there salvation in any other: for there
is none other name under heaven given among
men, whereby we must be saved." The doctrines
of his faith Dante accepted unreservedly, dwelt
with them night and day, and, as we have seen,
invested them in his mind with fresh substance
and color. Unflinching belief in the power and
goodness of God and the final triumph of justice,
reverence for the external Church as the divinely
established representative of the Church spiritual,
close obedience to the rightful authority in matters
of religion — all this was for him beyond ques-
tion. Dante furiously resented the outrage done
at Anagni to Pope Boniface VIII, whom he re-
garded, nevertheless, as an unscrupulous villain,
doomed to Hell, the arch-enemy of his cause.
Even the Emperor, whose independence Dante
so passionately championed, must, according to
him, respect the Pope as an elder son respects a

[29]

THE POWER OF DANTE

father. The office, the religious function, was
never confused by our poet with the man who
exercised it. Unsparing he always was in criticism
of the unworthy incumbent, untiring in his de-
nunciation of wicked prelates ; strict, too, in draw-
ing the line between ecclesiastical dominion and
individual right. A fraudulent absolution, as we
have seen, is of no avail; equally impotent is an
unjust excommunication. At the foot of the moun-
tain of Purgatory Dante meets the shade of the
beloved Manfred, chief of the Ghibellines, son of
Emperor Frederick II. He, like his father, died
under the ban of the Church. It was in 1266, at
the great battle of Benevento, that he fell. His
body was covered by his soldiers with a pile of
stones, near the end of a bridge; but Pope Clem-
ent IV, unwilling to let his bones rest in peace,
dispatched to the battle-field the Cardinal Arch-
bishop of Cosenza, who had the remains disin-
terred and cast out of the papal realm, beside the
river Verde. Yet Manfred, genuinely repentant
at the end, — as Dante thought, — and a good
Christian at heart, found forgiveness; whereas his
father, the great Emperor, an impenitent heretic,
was damned. I shall conclude with Manfred's
story. Dante has been looking at a group of
shades.

And one began : " Whoe'er thou art, abide,

O thou that walkest on, look back again!

Hast ever seen me on the other side?
I turned to him, and gazed with might and main.

Handsome and blond was he, a princely guest ;

An ugly wound had cleft his brow in twain.

[30]

FAITH

When I with proper meekness had confest

I ne'er had seen him, he exclaimed : " Now see ! "
And showed a scar high up upon his breast.

" Manfred am I," he then said smilingly,

" Grandson of Empress Constance, Henry's wife.
And when thou shalt return, I beg of thee,

Seek out my beauteous daughter, who gave life
To Aragon's and Sicily's great lords ;
Tell her the truth, if false report is rife.

When I was split by two death-dealing swords,
My rueful soul I weeping did resign
To him who gladly pardons and rewards.

My sins were horrible ; but grace divine,
With loving, all-embracing arms outspread,
Takes every soul that doth to it incline.

And if Cosenza's shepherd, who was sped
By Clement on my track, revenge to reap,
That page of holy writ had rightly read,

My body's bones still peacefully would sleep
Near Benevento, where the bridge is past,
Protected by the ponderous stony heap.

Rain wets them now, and rattles them the blast,
Outside the realm, not far from Verde's cleft,
Where he, with lightless candles, had them cast.

No curse of theirs can leave us so bereft

That God's eternal love may not come back,
As long as hope hath any greenness left."

[From Dante, p. 41.]

[31]

LECTURE II
MORALITY

THE doctrine of free will, which I discussed in
my first lecture, implies individual moral responsi-
bility— a salutary principle, even though it be
not in accord with the theories of sociology or the
inclinations of sentiment. Nowadays we are all
too disposed to put the blame for wrongdoing on
heredity, environment, organization — anywhere
but on the wrongdoer. However beautiful the
impulse that prompts to such extenuation of crime,
it certainly does not tend to check criminality.
Dante's age knew no such amiable weakness. The
criminal was not yet encouraged to look upon him-
self as a victim, rather than an offender, and con-
sequently knew what to expect, here and hereafter.
And Dante himself admitted no compromise with
sin : a stern judge both of other men's deeds and
of his own, he held all to the strictest account, f

Sin is a wicked act of the will; and it consists
in an erroneous choice between good and evil, the
latter seeming under the circumstances preferable
to the former. If we are attracted by unworthy
things, it is not our fault : sin begins when we give
way to the attraction, against the advice of con-
science. Temptation is man's lot. Without it}

[32]

MORALITY

indeed, he would have no active free will, because
there would be no choice to make. Temptation
and heavenly protection are prettily figured in a
scene in the Purgatorio. A company of spirits in
a valley on the mountainside, below the gate of
Purgatory, as night draws near, sing the Am-
brosian hymn Te lucis ante terminum:

Ere daylight wholly vanisheth,
Creator, thee we supplicate
That in thine endless clemency
Thou guard us and watch over us.

Let dreams be far away from us,
Nocturnal phantoms flee from us;
And hold in check our enemy,
Lest he defile our purity.

[From Dante, p. 93.]

Here is the incident, as Dante tells it. " It
was already the hour which inclines the longing
of sailors and melts their hearts on the day they
have said farewell to their dear friends, and
which pricks with love the unaccustomed traveler
if he hears from afar a bell that seems to mourn
the dying day, when I began to gaze [with all the
power of my senses] on one of the souls which had
arisen and with its hand was asking for attention.
It clasped and lifted up both palms, fixing its eyes
on the east, as if saying to God, ' I care for naught
else.' Te lucis ante issued so devoutly from its
lips, and with such sweet notes, that it made me
forget myself. And the other souls then sweetly
and devoutly accompanied it through the whole

[33]

THE POWER OF DANTE

hymn, their eyes bent on the heavenly wheels.
Sharpen thine eyes here, reader, for the truth; for
now is the veil indeed so thin that surely it is easy
to see through. I beheld that gentle host then
silently look upward, as if waiting, pale and meek;
and I saw, issuing from on high and descending,
two angels with two fiery swords, blunted and
pointless. Green as little new-born leaves were
their garments, which trailed after them flapped
and fanned by green wings. The one took its
station a little above us, and the other alighted
on the opposite bank, so that the company within
[the valley] was between them. Well I saw their
blond heads, but their faces dazzled my eye, as
any excess benumbs a faculty. ' They both come
from the lap of Mary,' said Sordello, ' to watch
over the dell, because of the serpent that is coming
presently.' At that, I, not knowing in which direc-
tion, turned around, and, all chilly, drew close to
the trusty shoulders [of my leader]."

The two green angels of hope, with their
swords of defense, have come to guard these wait-
ing souls against the serpent of temptation. After
some converse in the valley, the episode continues :
"While Virgil was speaking, Sordello drew the
speaker to himself, saying: ' Behold yonder our
enemy ! ' and pointed his finger to make Virgil
look that way. On the side where the little dale
has no bank, there was a snake, perhaps the one
that gave Eve the bitter food. Amid grass and
flowers I could see its evil trail advancing; and
from time to time it turned its head to its back,

[34]

MORALITY

licking like a creature that is sleeking itself. How
the heavenly hawks started I did not see and there-
fore cannot tell, but I clearly saw them both in
motion. Hearing the air cleft by the green
wings, the serpent fled, and the angels faced
about, flying evenly back to their posts."

The Purgatorio offers us another picture of
temptation — the dream of the Siren, who rep-
resents the sins of the flesh. Just before dawn
there appears to Dante in his sleep a hideous
female, misshapen, pallid, squint-eyed, stammer-
ing. " I gazed at her; and as the sun restores the
cold limbs made heavy by night, thus my look
loosened her tongue, then straightened her all out
in a little while, and colored her wan face as love
demands. When her speech was thus unbound,
she began to sing so that I could hardly have
turned my attention from her. ' I am,' she sang,
4 1 am sweet Siren who bewitch sailors in mid sea,
so full am I of charm to hear. By my song I
turned Ulysses from his wandering way. And
whosoever abides with me seldom departs, so
wholly do I satisfy him.' Her lips were not yet
closed when a lady, swift and holy, appeared at
my side, to confound the other. ' O Virgil, Virgil,
who is this?' she said proudly; and he advanced
with his eyes fixed only on this modest woman."
Virgil, or Reason, thus invoked by conscience
("the power that counsels") seizes the Siren,
which has come to look beautiful under Dante's
too attentive gaze, and reveals its true ugliness;
and Dante wakes from his dream in disgust.

[35]

THE POWER OF DANTE

Still another allegory of sin presents itself at
the very beginning of the Divine Comedy. The
poet, as you remember, suddenly comes to his
senses in the early morning of good Friday, and
finds himself in a dark wood, in which he has been
wandering by the light of the full moon. Terrified
and eager to escape, he makes his way to the foot
of a mountain, whose summit is lit by the rays of
the rising sun. But as he is attempting to climb
this peak of righteousness, his evil habits, in the
form of three beasts, bar his way and are on the
point of driving him back into the wood of world-
liness. Then it is that Reason, embodied in Virgil,
appears on the scene, having been sent by Revela-
tion, or Beatrice, at the instance of Grace and
Mercy.

" A very different way thy steps must trace,"
Virgil replied, when he beheld me weep,
" If thou wouldst leave this wild and woody place."

It is impossible to hurry thus from wickedness to
rectitude, prompted only by fear. To escape from
sin, one must know what sin really is, by contem-
plating it in its true light, by tracking it to its
lair and seeing it in all its ugliness and folly; then,
when evil has become abhorrent, — hateful in
itself, not merely in its consequences, — one must
submit to long, hard discipline, making amends
for past wrong and fortifying the soul against
future temptation. In a word, one must pass
through Hell and Purgatory. " Wherefore," says
Virgil, " for thine own good I judge and choose

[36]

MORALITY

that thou follow me, and I shall be thy guide; and
I shall lead thee where thou shalt hear the shrieks
of despair and shalt see the ancient spirits in their
pain, each one of them proclaiming the second
death. Then thou shalt see those who are con-
tented in the fire, because they expect, whenever
the time may be, to come among the blest." In
Dante's Hell, every punishment is the symbolic
presentment of a sin ; and the whole Inferno is an
image of the wicked life of the depraved. In his
Purgatory, the penalties represent the kinds of
discipline required to cleanse the soul of its tend-
ency to do wrong ; and the Purgatorio is a picture
of the penitent. One must learn the true nature
of sin, and how to cure its effects. " ' O poet,' '
Dante answers, " ' I implore thee by that God
whom thou knewest not — that I may escape this
ill and worse — to lead me whither thou hast just
said, so that I may see St. Peter's gate and also
those whom thou dost picture in such agony.'
Then he set forth, and I followed after him."

Frank recognition of evil is Dante's course, not
cowardly hiding or prevarication; resolute self-
discipline, not shifting of responsibility or reliance
on mercy. And when the path of reformation has
once been chosen, there must be no delay, no diver-
sion, no waste of time or strength. Virgil, himself
devoid of hope of salvation, thus addresses a band
of spirits who have started on the way to Heaven :

" O happily departed souls elect,

I beg you, by the peace," said Virgil's ghost,
" Which I believe that all of you expect,

[37]

THE POWER OF DANTE

To tell us where to find a sloping coast,

Inclined enough for man to climb the mount.
Wisest is he who values time the most."

The Ready-to-halt of the Divine Comedy is a
certain Belacqua, who in life had been a maker of
musical instruments and a friend of our poet in
Florence. The two travelers come across him on
the slant of the mountain, outside of Purgatory.
Virgil has been explaining the astronomy of the
southern hemisphere to Dante, who has observed
with amazement the sun taking its course across
the sky to the northward of the zenith instead of
to the southward. " ' If it is thy pleasure,' " says
the pupil, " ' I should like to know how far we
have to go; for the hillside rises higher than my
eyes can follow.' And the master replied: * This
mountain is of such kind that it is always hard at
the base, when one begins ; and the further up one
goes, the less it tires. Therefore, when it shall
seem to thee so gentle that the climb shall be as
easy for thee as going downstream in a boat, then
shalt thou be at the end of this path. There shalt
thou stop to rest thy heaving chest. I can give no
further answer, but this much I verily do know.'
Hardly had he finished his speech, when a voice
was heard close by : * Perhaps, ere that, thou shalt
feel the need of sitting down.' At the sound,
each of us turned about, and we saw on our left
a great boulder, which neither he nor I had noticed
before. Thither we betook ourselves, and beheld
persons loitering in the shade, behind the rock,
like people who have thrown themselves down

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MORALITY

in idleness. One of them, who had a weary look,
sat clasping his knees, his face sunk low between
them. ' O sweet my lord,' said I, ' look at that
one, who appears lazier than if indolence had been
his sister ! ' Then the spirit turned to us, and gave
heed, lifting its face up only along the thigh, and
said : ' Climb away, thou who art so speedy ! ' At
that I recognized him ; and the panting which still
quickened my breath a little, did not prevent me
from going to him. When I had reached him,
he scarcely raised his head, saying: 'Hast thou
really observed how the sun drives his chariot
over thy left shoulder? ' His sluggish ways and
scanty words moved my lips to smile a little at
first; then I began : ' Belacqua, now I am no longer
anxious about thee. But tell me, why art thou
ssitting right here? Art thou waiting for an
escort, or has thine old habit got thee again?'
' Brother,' he replied, ' what is the use of going
up ? The bird of God, who sits at the gate, would
not admit me to the punishments.' '

An amused indulgence is Dante's feeling toward
this good but drowsy soul. Even more sympa-
thetic is his attitude toward those whom worldly
but useful pursuits have for a while retarded on
the road to self-perfection. Yet all of these, he
warns us, have a score to pay: voluntary delay
on earth shall be punished by involuntary delay
on the ascent to blessedness. No dallying is safe.
The sweetest, noblest of pleasures must not be
allowed to interfere with our stern purpose. Such
is the significance of the episode of Casella. This

[39]

THE POWER OF DANTE

Casella, another Florentine friend of Dante's, was
a composer, a little of whose music is preserved in
two Vatican manuscripts. We are perhaps not
over-bold in conjecturing that he wrote the melody
for some of our poet's songs. His soul is seen
on the shore of the island of Purgatory — an
island consisting mainly of a huge mountain, and
situated in the middle of the great ocean, opposite
Jerusalem. Thither, from the Tiber's mouth, an
angel ferries the departed souls that are on their
way to Paradise. A boat-load of these spirits has
just been landed, shortly after Dante and Virgil,
climbing out of Hell, have emerged on the same
strand.

" The newly arrived people raised their brows
toward us, and said: ' If ye know, show us the
way to go to the mountain.' And Virgil answered :
' Ye think, perhaps, that we are accustomed to
this place, but we are strangers, like you. We
came but a short while ago, a little before you, by
a different path, which was so rough and hard that
climbing will now seem to us like sport.' The
shades, which had now observed, from my breath-
ing, that I was still alive, turned pale with wonder.
And, as a crowd hies to an olive-bearing messenger
to hear the news, and no one is afraid to tread
upon his neighbor's heels, so all those happy
souls fastened their eyes on my face, almost for-
getting to go and make themselves beautiful.
One of them I saw coming forward to embrace
me, with such great affection that I was moved to
do the same. O shades empty, save to the eye!

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MORALITY

Three times I clasped my hands behind it, and
three times I brought them back to my breast.
I think I must have taken on the color of amaze-
ment; for the shade smiled and drew back, and
I, pursuing it, pushed forward. Gently it bade me
desist. Then I recognized it, and besought it to
stay a little while to speak with me. It answered :
' Even as I loved thee when I was in the mortal
body, so I love thee now that I am set free ; there-
fore I stop. But why journeyest thou ? ' ' Casella
mine,' said I, 'this way I am taking that I may
some time return to the place where I am now.
But why art thou robbed of so much time?' [Ca-
sella died some months ago, but his soul has just
arrived.] ' No wrong is done me,' he replied,
4 if he who takes when and whom he chooseth,
hath more than once denied me this passage. For
his will is derived from a will that is just' . . .
Then I said: ' If no new law deprives thee of the
memory or the habit of lovely song, which used to
soothe all my desires, prithee, comfort a little my
soul therewith, which, bringing its body here, is
so weary.' Then he began Amor che nella mente
mi ragiona [one of Dante's own songs] so sweetly
that the sweetness still resounds within me. My
master and I and those who were with him seemed
as content as if not one of them had another
thought. We were all absorbed and intent on his
notes, when lo ! the venerable elder [Cato, guard-
ian of the island, symbol of Free Will] appeared,
shouting: 'What is this, dilatory spirits? What
neglect, what dallying is this? Run to the moun-

THE POWER OF DANTE

tain to strip off the scales which prevent your eyes
from seeing God ! ' Like frightened doves
startled at their repast, the new-come spirits flee
toward the mountainside, " as a man who goes,
not knowing whither." " Nor was our departure
less sudden." In this abrupt scattering, Dante
clings close to his trusty companion; " for how
could I have run without him? who would have
led me up the mountain?"

Remorseful Virgil lookt, and pondering.
O conscience clean and sure of good intent,
How sharply thee a petty fault doth sting •

Weakness and irresolution were hateful to
Dante's positive, energetic nature. Theoretically,
to be sure, when no question of right or wrong is
involved, and two courses of the same attractive-
ness lie before us, hesitation is not only innocent
but inevitable. It is the old case of the donkey
between two bales of hay, or of " how happy could
I be with either." That was once the plight
of our poet, who, having two equally pressing
questions to ask, could not make up his mind which
to put: " Between two foods, one just as alluring
and just as distant as the other, a man with free
choice would die of hunger before he would set
his teeth in either. Thus a lamb would stand still
between two fierce, ravening wolves [afraid to
turn either way]. Thus a hound would stand
motionless between two deer. Wherefore, if
I was silent, pushed equally by my queries, I do
not blame nor praise myself, since it could not be
helped."

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MORALITY

A different problem confronts a person who,
having made a vow, finds the fulfilment of it
disastrous. Here there is a question of right and
wrong, however immediately harmful the right
may appear. Of course, the only kind of a vow
that enters into consideration is a proper one, a
promise of such sort that God has received it —
not a foolish pledge, like Jephthah's. To argue
that one could, by breaking an accepted bond, ac-
complish something better than what has been
plighted, is like purposing to dispense charity with
stolen money. Nevertheless, the temptation may
be very severe, and the wrong choice may look
very justifiable. In Dante's Heaven, the lowest
degree of beatitude is enjoyed by the souls of
those who have been guilty of this weakness, but
have won salvation by repentance. The figures
he represents are those of nuns who, under com-
pulsion from their families, have returned to
secular life and married. They are seen as pale,
faint images against the white moon — so dim that
Dante at first takes them for reflections, making
a mistake contrary to that of Narcissus, who fell
in love with his own likeness in a fountain. " As
the outlines of our features, in clean, transparent
window panes, or in waters clear and still and not
so deep that the bottom is invisible, return to us
so feeble that a pearl against a white forehead is
no slower in reaching our pupils, so I beheld sev-
eral faces eager to speak. Wherefore I fell into
an error opposite to that which kindled love be-
tween man and spring. No sooner had I taken

[43]

THE POWER OF DANTE

note of them than I turned my eyes around, think-
ing these images to be mirrored forms, to see
whose they might be. And, seeing nothing, I
turned to the front again, looking toward the light
of my dear guide, whose holy eyes were aglow
with smiles."

These figures, feeble and indeterminate though
they be, are not scornfully depicted. They are
gentle, well-meaning creatures, who lack the clean-
cut vigor of those men and women whose spiritual
sight is clearest. On earth they suffered sorely
and patiently from their mistaken course, and in
Paradise their happiness is of the mildest variety.
How different is Dante's portrayal of the selfish
Laodiceans, the time-serving neutrals, who, when
the battle of righteousness was being fought, would
take neither side, preferring the life and ease of the
body to the life of the spirit! For such souls as
these he provides a dwelling apart, within the gate
of Hell, but outside the encircling river Acheron, a
sort of vestibule of the lower world. Tormented
beyond endurance by trifles (as are always those
who put their own comfort above everything
else), forever dodging purposelessly to and fro
after a flag that leads to nothing, they suffer a
punishment that is invested with no dignity and
arouses no sympathy. Here is Dante's descrip-
tion.

" Now sighs, cries, and shrill shrieks rang
through the starless air; whereat at first I began
to weep. Strange tongues, horrid speech, words
of pain, accents of wrath, voices loud and weak,

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MORALITY

and the sound of hands accompanying them, made
a tumult which revolves forever in that air end-
lessly dark, like sand blowing before a whirlwind.
And I, whose head was hooded with horror, ex-
claimed: ' Master, what is it I hear? What kind
of people is it that seems so vanquished by grief? '
And he replied: 'This is the miserable way fol-
lowed by the sorry souls of those who lived with-
out infamy and without glory. They are mingled
with the mean choir of those angels who were not
rebels and were not faithful to God, but were for
themselves. Heaven cast them out, lest its beauty
should be spoiled; and deep Hell will not receive
them, because the damned might derive some satis-
faction from them.' ' Master,' said I, ' what is
so grievous to them, which makes them complain
so loud?' 'I shall tell thee right briefly,' he
answered. ' These people have no hope of death,
and their blind life is so vile that they are envious
of any other lot. The world allows no report of
them to last; mercy and justice disdain them. Let
us not speak of them, but look and pass by I ' And
I, looking, saw a banner, which ran circling so swift
that it seemed scornful of all rest; and after it
there came trailing such a long train of people that
I should never have thought death had undone so
many. When I had made out one or two of them,
I saw and recognized the shade of him who, for
cowardice, made the great refusal. Forthwith
I understood and was convinced that this was the
sect of poltroons, obnoxious both to God and to
God's enemies. These luckless creatures, who

[45]

THE POWER OF DANTE

never had been really alive, were naked and badly
stung by flies and wasps which were there. These
insects streaked their faces with blood, which,
mixed with tears, was caught by disgusting worms
at their feet."

Not one of these souls is named by the poet.
One, and only one, is so described as to admit of
possible identification — he " who, for cowardice,
made the great refusal." This is in all prob-
ability Celestine V, Pope in 1294, a simple, pious
man, inadequate to his great trust, who quickly
abdicated, leaving the office to the hated Boniface
VIII. An old legend relates that after his re-
nunciation he fled from place to place, seeking to
hide his shame: but wherever he went, he was
recognized, pointed out, and called by name, even
by those who had never seen him before.

So much for those who, instead of confronting
evil manfully, try to avoid it. Dante, as we have
just seen, has little mercy on them, although he
apprehended, as clearly as anyone who ever lived,
what a terrifying thing evil is. More and more
its horror swells, as we follow the poet through
the ranks of the damned, until the awfulness
reaches its culmination in the gigantic figure of
Satan, — monarch of Hell, embodiment of all
wickedness, — planted for eternity in the centre
of the earth, fixed in the middle of the round plain
of ice, at the bottom of the pit, over which Virgil
and Dante are traveling.

" ' The standards of the King approach — the
king of Hell — drawing near to us. Therefore

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look ahead,' said my master, ' and see whether
thou canst discern him.' As, when a thick fog is
blowing, or when our hemisphere is wrapped in
night, a mill looks from afar, if turned by the
wind, such an engine I thought I saw then. But
the wind made me cower behind my leader, for
there was no other shelter. Already, and with
fear I set it to metre, I was where the shades were
wholly covered [by the ice], and showed through
like a bit of straw in glass. Some are prostrate,
others erect, others, like a bow, curve face to feet.
When we had gone so far ahead that it was my
master's pleasure to disclose to me the creature
which once had the form of beauty, he stepped out
from before me, saying: 'Lo! Dis, and lo! the
place where thou must arm thyself with strength.'
How cold and limp I then became, ask not, reader,
for I write it not, because any speech would fall
short. I did not die, nor did I remain alive : now
consider for thyself, if thou hast a grain of wit,
what I became, bereft of both. The emperor of
the realm of grief projected from the ice from
half-way up his chest; and I am more comparable
to a giant than giants are to his arms. Now see
how big the whole must be which is proportionate
to such a part. If he was once as fair as he is
ugly now, and [nevertheless] lifted his brows
against his Maker, it is right indeed that all
mourning should proceed from him. Oh ! what
a mighty marvel it seemed to me when I beheld
three faces on his head! One was in front, and
that was red; the other two joined this just above

[47]

THE POWER OF DANTE

the middle of either shoulder, and met where the
crest is. The right hand one looked between white
and yellow ; the left was such to see as come from
the country where the Nile descends. Under each
one jutted two huge wings, big as befitted such a
great bird: I never saw ship's sails to match them.
They had no feathers, but batlike was their style.
These he flapped, so that three winds issued from
him, by which all Cocytus was frozen. With six
eyes he was weeping, and over three chins drooled
tears and bloody slaver. With each mouth he
was crushing a sinner between his teeth, like a
heckle, so that three of them were tortured thus.
For the one in fronjt the biting was nothing, com-
pared to the scratching, for now and again his
spine would be all stripped of skin. ' That soul
up yonder, which has the worst punishment,' said
my master, ' is Judas Iscariot, who has his head
within and brandishes his legs outside. Of the
other two, whose heads are below, the one dang-
ling from the black snout is Brutus — see how he
writhes, without a word; and the other is Cassius,
who looks so stout of limb. But night is rising up
again, and now we must go; for we have seen
all.' "

Such is sin, degenerate, hideous, fearful —
three-faced, in opposition to the three Persons of
the Holy Trinity. The three faces correspond,
it would seem, to the three kinds of wickedness;
so do the three winds, which symbolize diabolical
suggestion. Dante's classification of wrongdoing
is based on Aristotle, although his phraseology is

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MORALITY

somewhat colored by Cicero. His Hell falls into
three parts, containing respectively faults of weak-
ness, violence, and fraud. Aristotle's weakness
the poet calls " incontinence," or lack of self-
control; this category comprises luxury, gluttony,
avarice, prodigality, anger, which are placed in
the Upper Hell. In the Lower Hell, or City of
Dis, are the other two classes. Violence, which
is Cicero's term, corresponds in Dante's scheme
to Aristotle's "bestiality:" murder, robbery, sui-
cide, blasphemy of word or deed are sins of
violence, directed against one's fellow creatures,
one's self, or God. Cicero's fraud is equivalent to
Aristotle's " malice " ; and Dante puts it at the
bottom of the list. It is subdivided, according as
the deception is practised on persons who have no
special reason for confidence, or on those who are
bound to the deceiver by a particular tie of kin-
ship, patriotism, hospitality, or benefaction : on the
one hand we have cheats; on the other, traitors.
These last are the worst sinners of all — men with
hearts of ice and souls of fiends, who have per-
verted the gift of intelligence to an instrument of
pure evil. And worst among them are the three
we have just seen in the jaws of Lucifer: Judas,
who betrayed the founder of the Church; Brutus
and Cassius, who betrayed the founder of the
Empire. In this philosophical plan there is no
place for the specifically Christian sins of unbelief.
For virtuous pagans and unbaptized children the
Church had provided a limbus, or " fringe " of
the lower world : this limbus Dante locates at the

[49]

THE POWER OF DANTE

top of his Upper Hell; for heretics he invents a
somewhat similar edge, or brink, at the top of
his Lower Hell. Outside the frontier, but within
the gate, as we have noted, is his vestibule for
neutrals.

Dante's Hell is a vast cavern under the crust
of our globe. Its general shape is conical, with
the apex at the earth's centre. The lost souls
and the demons inhabit terraces that encircle its
declivity. Of course he had no idea that his elab-
oration of detail corresponded to the real facts:
his topography is symbolic, illustrative of his
classification of sins. But Hell as a whole, a place
of eternal, horrible, merciless punishment, prob-
ably underground, was to him an absolute reality.
In all probability, he believed also that this
punishment is physical, that Hell-fire is to be
taken literally, not metaphorically: at least, that
is the conclusion reached by his master, St. Thomas
Aquinas, who points out, however, that the para-
dox of disembodied spirits tortured by material
means is beyond human comprehension. Endless
and hopeless agony is the lot of those mortals,
who, of their own free choice, in spite of God's
sacrifice of himself, in spite of the offer of for-
giveness up to the very moment of death, persist
in their ungrateful rebellion against their Maker,
and prove themselves unworthy to dwell with the
blest. If the Lord's justice is as unrelenting as his
mercy is untiring, if he can damn forever the un-
changeably wicked, surely the just man, merciful
though he be by nature, has reason to assume

[50]

MORALITY

toward wickedness an attitude of uncompromising
hate. The more we love God, the more we abhor
his enemies.

Purgatory, likewise, was entirely real to our
poet, more definitely fixed by tradition in its de-
tailed arrangement, but more vaguely located as
a whole. Dante, in his symbolic invention, happily
places it, not in the gloomy inside of the earth,
but, as we have seen, on the surface, around the
upper slopes of a huge mountain that rises from
an island in the middle of the sea. Running about
the peak are seven narrow shelves, on which the
souls of repentant sinners are doing penance for
the sins for which atonement was not made before
death. The terraces are seven because seven are
the capital vices, the evil tendencies acquired by
humanity, the sources of all varieties of sin. By
making amends in Purgatory for their past mis-
deeds, the spirits are eradicating the inclination to
wickedness, purifying themselves and preparing
themselves for Heaven. This reformatory func-
tion of Purgatory is so stressed by Dante as almost
to obscure its merely retributive purpose. The
torments are, to be sure, terrible, and may last
for centuries, but their duration is as nothing com-
pared to an eternity of blessedness which is sure
to ensue, and they are undertaken willingly, cheer-
fully by the penitents, even as we gladly accept a
bitter medicine, knowing that it will restore our
health. The burden of Dante's Purgatorio is the
joy and hopefulness of self-discipline.

The seven fundamental vices, or evil human

THE POWER OF DANTE

habits, are, beginning with the worst: pride, envy,
anger, sloth, avarice and prodigality, gluttony,
luxury. Four of these have corresponding places
in Dante's Hell. The other three — pride, envy,
sloth — manifest themselves in various kinds of
wrongdoing, which wicked acts form the basis of
classification in the world of the damned. Pride,
indeed, is at the bottom of all sin, and envy is
responsible for many of the worst crimes. The
penance of the proud is self-humiliation: crushed
and crouching under heavy weights, which they
carry on their backs, they crawl slowly and pain-
fully around their terrace. The envious must
practise self-denial: in the garb and posture of
beggars, they sit on the ground, along the wall,
their eyes closed by an iron wire which sews them
up.

I do not think there walks the earth to-day
A man so hard as not to feel the stab
Of sympathy for what before me lay.

Among the repentant proud is Provenzano
Salvani, " who takes up so little of the way; once
all Tuscany reechoed with his name, and now it
is barely whispered in Siena, which he ruled."
His pride was the pride of power. His entrance
to Purgatory was hastened by an act of humility
performed on earth. One of his friends having
been captured by Charles of Anjou and held for
a high ransom, Provenzano, curbing his haughti-
ness, took his stand in the public square of Siena
and begged of the passers-by until he had col-
lected the amount. This self-mortification, which,

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MORALITY

the poet says, " made him to quiver in every vein,"
won him an advance in the other world. A second
of the penitents represents pride of birth. Om-
berto Aldobrandesco, count of Santafiore, whom
" his ancient blood and the fair deeds of his
ancestors made so arrogant that, forgetting our
common mother, he held every man in contempt."
A third spirit is doing penance for the pride of
art. " As I walked," says Dante, " I bent my face
down, and one of them — not the one who had
been speaking — twisted himself under the weight
that bowed him, and saw and recognized me, and
called to me, with difficulty keeping his eyes fixed
on me, who walked all stooping like the rest.
'Oh! ' said I to him, ' art thou not Oderisi, the
glory of Gubbio, and the glory of that art which
in Paris is termed illuminating?1 'Brother,' he
answered, ' the pages that Franco Bolognese paints
are more smiling than mine. The glory is now all
his — and mine in part. Never should I have
been so courteous while I was alive, because of my
great craving to excel, on which my heart was set.
Here I am paying the forfeit for that pride. And
I should not yet be here, if it were not that, while
I still had strength to sin, I turned to God. O
vain glory of human power ! What a little while
the green lasts at the tip of the tree, unless ignorant
generations follow! Cimabue once thought to
hold the field in painting, and now Giotto has the
cry, so that his fame is darkened. Thus one Guido
hath robbed the other of the glory of the pen;
and haply someone is already born who shall

[53]

THE POWER OF DANTE

drive them both from the nest. Earthly reputa-
tion is naught but a blast of wind, which blows
now from this side, now from that, and changes
its name when it changes its quarter.' ' The two
Guides are Guido Guinizelli, Dante's predecessor
and model, and Guido Cavalcanti, Dante's " first
friend." Something of the pride of art — a most
legitimate pride if any be lawful — our author
had himself; for he knew of course that the
"someone already born" would suggest to the
reader the poet's own name and no other. Pride
of birth he had also, as we shall see later. In
fact, he seems to have regarded pride as his be-
setting sin. That is what he means, when he
speaks of bending and stooping like the burdened
spirits who are being punished for that sin, and
when he continues : " side by side, like oxen under
the yoke, I walked beside that laden soul."

Envy, on the other hand, is a sin to which Dante
thought himself but little addicted. As he is pass-
ing by the row of blinded penitents on the terrace
of the envious, he feels embarrassed at his own
freedom from their torment. " It seemed to me
that I was insulting them as I walked along, seeing
others, but not seen by them ; and I turned to my
wise counselor. He well knew what my dumb
show meant, and therefore did not await my ques-
tion, but said: 'Speak, and be brief and to the
point! ' Virgil was beside me on that side of the
shelf from which one might have fallen off, be-
cause it is encircled by no parapet. On the other
side of me were the devout shades, whose tears

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MORALITY

so pressed through their horrible stitches that they
wet their cheeks. I turned to them and spake:
* O company sure of beholding that heavenly light
upon which alone your desire is bent, tell me —
so may grace quickly melt the scum of your con-
science and let the stream of memory run through
it undefiled! — tell me (and it shall be dear and
precious to me) whether any soul here among you
is Italian; and perhaps it will be well for that
spirit, if I am told.' ' O brother mine, each one
of us is a citizen of a true city. But thou meanest
one who lived in Italy during his pilgrimage.'
This I seemed to hear as a reply a little further
on than the place where I was standing; and so
I made myself heard a bit ahead. Among the
others I saw a shade that looked as if it were
waiting; and if anyone should ask 'How [did it
show it]? ' [I should answer], it was lifting up
its chin like a blind man. ' Spirit,' said I, ' that
dost discipline thyself in order to ascend, if thou
art the one that replied to me, reveal thyself by
town or name.' ' I was from Siena,' it responded,
' and with these others I am here cleansing my
guilty life, weeping to God, that he may lend him-
self to us. Prudent was I not, although my name
was Prudence, and I took more pleasure in other
people's disasters than in my own good luck. And
to show thee that I am not deceiving thee, hear
whether I was mad as I say, when I was already
on the downward slant of my years. My fellow-
citizens had come to battle with their enemies near
Colle ; and I was praying God for something that

[55]

THE POWER OF DANTE

he had already decreed. There they were broken
and turned to bitter flight; and seeing the rout
I felt joy beyond any other — such joy that I
lifted my bold face to Heaven, crying to the Lord:
"Now I fear thee no more!" as the blackbird
does when there is a little fair weather. Peace
I sought with God at the end of my life ; but my
debt would not yet be lessened by penance, were it
not that Peter the Comb-seller, who in his charity
was sorry for me, remembered me in his holy
prayers.' '

While the punishments in Purgatory are ter-
rible, none of them are disgusting or grotesque,
as are many of those in Hell. The penitents are
on their way to Heaven, and therefore worthy of
respect and sympathy, however hard their way
may be. The damned, all of them, merit only
hatred and contempt. However, the Dante who
journeys through Hell is still a sinner, moved by
human impulses; and this imperfection of the
protagonist allows the poet freedom to manifest
his own reaction to various kinds of wickedness.
The sight of ferocious wrath excites him to such
a pitch of indignation that he is eager to see the
worst retribution wreaked on it. In the presence
of treachery, he is impelled to do violence to the
sinners himself, and even to cheat one of them
cruelly by a false promise. Amorousness, on the
contrary, makes him swoon with pity. By wrang-
ling and strife he is fascinated, against his better
judgment. The fate of soothsayers and sorcerers
moves him to tears, for which he is sharply re-

[56]

MORALITY

buked by Virgil. Dante's own feeling toward the
different types of wrongdoing is shown not only
in the varying attitude he ascribes to himself in
the narrative (this is doubtless due in large meas-
ure to theoretical reasons) but also, and on the
whole more surely, in the nature of the penalties
he metes out to them. In the plan of his Hell
and his classification of sins there is nothing emo-
tional, his arrangement being objectively philo-
sophical. But in his assignment of punishments
we can see something of the author's individual
preferences and repugnances.

Some sins evidently aroused in Dante only
loathing. Most loathsome of all is flattery, which
is very briefly disposed of, in terms of untrans-
latable nastiness. Flattery the poor exile must
have learned to know and to hate, when he was
dependent on the hospitality of the rich, a com-
petitor— and doubtless a frequently unsuccessful
one — for their favor. Gluttony excited in him
nothing but disgust, although he might feel sym-
pathy and affection for a glutton who had re-
deeming qualities. Forese Donati was his close
friend. To Ciacco, in Hell, the poet says: "Thy
anguish grieves me so that it bids me weep." The
torment itself, however, has in it nothing sug-
gestive of tenderness. Gluttony is punished in
the Upper Hell in the third circle :

Into the third, the ring of rain I came —
Unending rain, accursed, heavy, cold,
In kind and fall eternally the same.

Thick hail and snow and water dark and old

[57]

THE POWER OF DANTE

Pour ever down and down the murky air ;
And stinks the ground which all the stuff doth hold.
Here fierce uncanny Cerberus hath his lair,
Three-throated barketh, even as a dog,
O'er all the people who are sunken there.

At the approach of the travelers, Cerberus, the
embodiment of greediness, opens his maws and
shows his fangs, quivering in every limb ; but Vir-
gil pacifies him by casting into his mouths a
handful of mud.

As barks a hungry dog, on eating bent,
And then is silent when he bites his meat,
On bolting it combatively intent,

E'en so those filthy muzzles were replete.

Avarice was abhorrent to Dante, and he re-
peatedly inveighs against it as the vice most fatal
to mankind. Yet his conscience told him that it
was intrinsically no worse than prodigality, to
which the poet himself — as we have reason to
believe — was somewhat prone. Both are sins of
excess, departures from moderation, in the use of
money. Therefore, in Purgatory as in Hell,
avarice and prodigality are classed together and
subjected to the same retribution. In fact, in the
lower world, Dante sets aside those mad spend-
thrifts who run to destruction, and places them far
below the misers, on a level with the suicides. The
essential feature of both ordinary stinginess and
ordinary lavishness is, to Dante's mind, its la-
borious futility. Human beings, capable of the
highest flights, are bending all their energies on
the acquisition or the dispersal of things without

[58]

MORALITY

value, forever shifting worthless matter to and
fro. So the two classes, misers and spendthrifts,
are pictured in the fourth circle of Hell, incessantly
rolling huge weights in this direction and in that,
halfway around their ring, bumping into each
other at their two meeting-points, and then start-
ing back again to begin afresh.

Descending to the fourth, from worse to worse,
Further adown the doleful pit we go,
Which bags the evil of the universe.

Justice divine ! now who hath packt below
The curious torments I am witnessing?
Why doth our foolish sin despoil us so?

E'en as the swells above Chary bdis swing,
Breaking against the waves they go to meet,
So dance the spirits in their endless ring.

One would have expected hypocrisy to arouse
in Dante much the same disgust as flattery; but
his reaction to it — judging from the penalty he
decrees — was quite diverse. Perhaps he had
encountered less of this vice in his own dealings
with men, and therefore looked at it more ab-
stractly. At any rate, what most impressed him
in hypocrisy was the irony of it: the hypocrite,
cloaking his evil designs in a show of righteous-
ness, trying to impose upon his fellowmen, is
constantly imposing on himself a burden greater
than any that his intended victims bear — a
mantle of solid lead, gilded on the outside.
" Down below," says Dante, " we found a painted
troop, which was marching around with steps ex-
ceeding slow, weeping, with a tired, exhausted

[59]

THE POWER OF DANTE

look. They had capes with cowls lowered over
their eyes, cut on the pattern that is made for the
monks in Cologne. Without, they are gilded,
dazzling to the eye; but inside, all of lead. . . .
O endlessly wearisome mantle ! We turned once
more to the left, in their direction, interested in
their sad tears; but those tired people, hampered
by their load, came so slowly that we changed our
company at every movement of the hips. Where-
fore I besought my leader: ' Pray, find out some-
one known by deed or name ; turn thine eyes about,
as we walk thus ! ' And one of them, who caught
my Tuscan speech, shouted after us: 'Stay your
feet, ye who run so fast through the dark air!
Haply mayst thou get from me what thou seekest.'
Whereupon my guide turned and said : ' Wait,
and then proceed at his pace.' I stopped, and two
of them I saw showing in their faces great mental
haste to be with me; but their burden and the
narrowness of the way retarded them. When they
were come, they looked at me askance, in silence,
for a long while ; then turned to each other, say-
ing: ' This man, from the movement of his throat,
seemeth alive! If they are dead, by what privi-
lege do they walk without the covering of the
heavy robe?'

Some sins appeared to our author not only
hateful, but absurd, grotesque in their perversity.
Such crimes were malfeasance in public office and
the misuse of churchly authority for personal
profit. Grafters are immersed in a cleft full of
boiling pitch, and demons, armed with forks and
[60]

MORALITY

prongs, fish for them from the banks. How
simonists are punished, Dante tells thus: "I saw
all over the sides and bottom [of the valley] the
livid rock full of holes, all of one size, and every
one was round. . . . Out of the mouth of each
projected the feet of a sinner, and his legs as far
as the thick part, the rest being inside. The soles
of all the feet were blazing ; and that made them
wriggle their joints so hard that they would have
broken bands and ropes. As flame burns greasy
things, flitting only over the outermost rind, so it
was there from heels to toes."

The same idea of perversion we find, but with-
out the note of mockery, in the treatment of for-
tune-tellers and magicians, persons who, endowed
with superior intelligence, devoted it to a for-
bidden purpose. Having tried to look too far
into the future, they are condemned to look back-
ward forevermore: their perverse heads are
twisted to the rear, as the perverse clerics are
planted upside down. " Already I was all intent
on gazing into the chasm which lay open, wet
with tears of agony. And I saw people coming
through the round valley, silent and weeping, at
the pace of religious processions in our world.
As my sight penetrated lower among them, each
one appeared incredibly contorted between the
chin and the beginning of the chest; for the face
was turned toward the kidneys, and they were
constrained to march backwards, since they were
bereft of the power of looking to the front. It
may have sometimes happened that violent paraly-
[61]

THE POWER OF DANTE

sis hath so misshapen a man ; but I have never seen
it, and do not believe it occurs. Reader, as thou
hopest that God may permit thee to profit by thy
reading, now consider for thyself how I could
keep a dry face when I beheld our form, close at
hand, so distorted that the tears fell from the eyes
adown the back! "

There is another kind of perversion, — that of
the common cheat, such as the counterfeiter or the
transmuter of metals, — which provokes nothing
but unmitigated contempt and ridicule. Here are
the swindlers, disfigured by horrid disease: "The
suffering was as great as if all the sick people from
the hospitals of [malarial] Valdichiana between
July and September, and from Maremma and
Sardinia, were all. gathered in one ditch; and a
stench came from them, such as comes from putrid
limbs. . . . Thus were spirits languishing, piled
up in stacks. One was heaped upon another, on
belly or on back; another, on its face, was crawling
over the doleful way. Step by step we walked,
watching and listening to the invalids, who could
not lift themselves. Two I beheld leaning against
each other, as pan is propped up against pan to
dry. From head to foot they were spotted with
scabs; and never have I seen currycomb plied by
a stableboy whose master is waiting for him, or
who is eager to go to bed, so briskly as each of
these continually plied upon himself the sharp
edge of his nails (because of the raging itch, which
has no other relief), pulling down the scurf with
his nails, as a knife doth the scales of a bream —

[62]

MORALITY

or of any other fish that hath still bigger ones.
' O thou that with thy fingers dost strip off thy
mail,' began my leader to one of them, ' and that
from time to time dost turn them into pincers, tell
us whether any Italian is among those who are
in here, so may thy nail suffice thee eternally for
this business.' ' Italians are we both, whom thou
seest here so wasted,' answered one of them weep-
ing; 'but who art thou, who dost question us?'
And my leader answered : ' I am descending with
this live man down from ledge to ledge, engaged
in showing Hell to him.' At that the common sup-
port [of the two] was broken, and each one turned
to me all quivering; and so did others who caught
the word on the rebound."

No superior intelligence is here, to awaken
sympathy for these wretches ; no pride of intellect
led them astray. The author shows them no such
pity as he bestows on the soothsayers.

Dante, proudly conscious of mental powers be-
yond the ordinary, felt himself akin to the men of
genius who were similarly endowed; and respected
them even in their downfall. The intellectual gift
which, perverted, brought the sorcerers to ruin,
was wrongfully used also by the heretics, whose
punishment is burial in a fiery tomb, and by the
evil counselors, who walk enveloped in tongues
of flame, looking, when viewed from above, like
fireflies in a valley at dusk. In these punishments
there is something that approaches dignity and
even beauty.

Upon another class of sinners, the amorous,

[63]

THE POWER OF DANTE

Dante, the great lover, could not bear to inflict a
debasing penalty. After death, as in life, they arc
wafted helplessly before a blast that never dies.

All dumb of light the place which now I find.
It bellows like the sea on stormy days,
When swept by striving squalls and angry wind.

The blast of Hell, which never stops nor stays,
The spirits on its giddy current flings,
With whirl and clash tormenting them always.

As starlings oft are carried by their wings
In winter time, a broad and serried train,
E'en so the gust the guilty spirits swings.

Here, there, it drives them, up and down again.
No hope of rest consoles the wraiths below,
Not even hope of mitigated pain.

As cranes their doleful ditty singing go

And make across the sky a lengthening streak,
Thus souls I saw approach, with voice of woe,

Transported by the storm whereof I speak.

[64]

LECTURE III
TEMPERAMENT

How greatly our enjoyment of an author is
enhanced by the possession of his likeness and by
some knowledge of his personality! We crave
something concrete upon which to centre our ad-
miration, our gratitude, our affection. When we
read Homer, of whose individuality we have no
knowledge whatever, we like to keep in our mind's
eye some fanciful portrait-bust that has come down
from antiquity. Shakspere is dearer to us for
what we know of his life and looks, vague though
that acquaintance be. { In the case of a writer as
autobiographical as Dante, the need of a tangible
focus is even more pronounced than it is with an
impersonal genius like Homer or Shakspere.
Fortunately we have for our poet something to
satisfy our want, a face that presides over our
reading, an image that we may call up at will : the
presentment of the youthful Florentine, left us by
Giotto in the Bargello, is sufficiently authentic to
fill our demand, and, at the same time, is adequate
to our conception of what the author of the Vita
Nuova should be. It is a strong and noble figure,
refined, intelligent, self-contained, thoughtful but
not sad. Such an Alighieri it was that Lionardo

[65]

THE POWER OF DANTE

Bruni described: " He was courteous, spirited, and
full of courage; he took part in every youthful
exercise; and in the great and memorable battle
of Campaldino, Dante, young but well esteemed,
fought vigorously, mounted and in the front
rank." While he devoted himself eagerly to
study, Bruni continues, he " omitted naught of
polite and social intercourse. It was remarkable
that, although he studied incessantly, none would
have supposed from his happy manner and youth-
ful way of speaking that he studied at all.'V"

Another Dante face is familiar to us, the face
of the death mask and of the Naples bust — a face,
which, though we cannot trace it back to the man
himself, is so wonderful in its power and its
infinite sadness that we like to think of it as his.
It tallies well with Boccaccio's account, except
that, like the Giotto portrait, it is beardless.
" Our poet was of moderate height," says Boc-
caccio, " and, after reaching maturity, was accus-
tomed to walk somewhat bowed, with a slow and
gentle pace, clad always in such sober dress as
befitted his ripe years. His face was long, his
nose aquiline, and his eyes rather big than small.
His jaws were large, and the lower lip protruded
beyond the upper. His complexion was dark, his
hair and beard thick, black, and curled, and
his expression ever melancholy and thoughtful."
With this description Bruni substantially agrees:
" He was a man of great refinement, of medium
height, and a pleasant but deeply serious face.
[66]

TEMPERAMENT

He spoke only seldom, and then slowly, but was
very subtle in his replies."

Something of Dante's life we learn from these
same biographers, Bruni and Boccaccio, a little
from the poet himself and from his neighbor,
Giovanni Villani, the Florentine chronicler. But
what we know of his external career is as nothing
compared to the revelation of his inner self in his
writings. It is the disclosure of the author's soul
in the Vita Nuova and the Divina Commedia that
makes these works so deeply significant and so
exceptional. In all the nine centuries between
St. Augustine and Petrarch — between the end of
ancient civilization and the beginning of the Re-
naissance— we find in literature no other truly
distinguished personality laid bare. Indeed, the
writings of all time afford few such opportunities
to look into the mind and heart of a really great
man. Dante's work offers, then, this profound
psychological interest, in addition to the comfort
of faith and the charm of art.

If we had to select from the complex of Dante's
nature some one dominant trait, — something that
shaped his life and showed itself in all his mental
and emotional habits, — we should probably call
that characteristic, " intensity." He applied him-
self more unreservedly than other men to all he
did, thought harder, felt more keenly; and that is
why, after all these years, his thoughts and feel-
ings affect us so sharply. In his make-up there
was no place for laxness or lukewarmness. We
have seen how he regarded those who were

[67]

THE POWER OF DANTE

neither hot nor cold. Compromise he never
could abide. Of his sturdy religious faith and his
energetic championship of morality, I have al-
ready spoken. Let us consider some of his other
qualities.

On the intellectual side, we cannot fail to note
the distinctness of his concepts, his clean-cut reason-
ing, his strict logic. But what impresses us most,
perhaps, is his curiosity. "All men naturally
desire to know," says Aristotle; and with these
words Dante begins his great didactic work, the
Convivio, or Banquet. In a series of allegorical
love-poems in honor of Lady Philosophy, the god
of Love (so the author tells us) stands for study,
" the application of a mind, enamored of some-
thing, to that thing." Near the close of the Para-
diso we find the beautiful simile of the pilgrim
from far Croatia who comes to Rome to see the
handkerchief on which is imprinted the true image
of the Saviour, and, having heard of it and thought
of it for so many years, cannot look enough, but
stares and stares, trying to satisfy his yearning, as
long as the Veronica is exhibited. " La concreata
e perpetua sete," " the inborn and everlasting
thirst," was never slaked in Dante —

The native thirst which naught can satisfy,
Except the draught for whose refreshing gift
The woman of Samaria did apply.

La sete natural che mai non sazia,

Se non con 1'acqua onde la femminetta
Sammaritana domando la grazia.

[68]

TEMPERAMENT

" My eyes," he says elsewhere, " were staring
fixedly to see new things, for which they are
greedy." His accumulation of book-knowledge
and of observation bears witness to his thirst for
learning and the eagerness of his eyes. As he was
one of the most inquiring of men, he was one of
the most positive; and an unanswerable question
was an affliction that would have been wellnigh
intolerable, without the expectation of enlighten-
ment after death. On one occasion he declares:

No ignorance e'er battled so with me

With craving for a thing beyond our ken
(Unless I am deceived by memory),

As in my thought I seemed to suffer then.

Again he speaks of his agony of curiosity being
assuaged by the near prospect of an explanation.
The perfect and endless soothing of that impatient
" desire to know " was essential to the complete-
ness of the joy of such a Paradise as he imagined.
To Dante's ardent study we have, besides the
evidence of its results, the testimony of Lionardo
Bruni, quoted a moment since; we have also that
of Dante himself, at the end of the New Life and
in the Banquet. He won a great reputation as a
scholar. Villani, his fellowtownsman, who for
political reasons may have had a certain grudge
against him, says, after describing briefly his life
and works : " This Dante, from his knowledge,
was somewhat presumptuous, harsh, and disdain-
ful, like an ungracious philosopher; he scarcely
deigned to converse with laymen. But for his
other virtues, science, and worth as a citizen, it

[69]

THE POWER OF DANTE

seems but reasonable to give him perpetual re-
membrance in this our chronicle." Boccaccio tells
us, you remember, that he " was accustomed to
walk somewhat bowed," with a thoughtful ex-
pression. Dante himself says: "As I followed
Virgil, I carried my forehead as one who hath it
laden with thought and maketh himself like unto
half the arch of a bridge." So we may picture
him, as he wrestled with the knotty problem of
imperfection in the world of matter; or as he
meditated on the influence of the stars, and came
to understand how it acts as a corrective to hered-
ity; or as he argued with himself the question of
the sanctity of vows, which, involving a covenant
between a human being and the Lord, can never
be altered by one party to the bargain without the
consent of the other.

When reflection caused Dante to reverse an
earlier judgment, his intellectual honesty prompted
him to publish his new opinion. In the New Life
he held that poetry in the vulgar tongue should
be used for amatory themes alone, because this
kind of verse was invented to address ladies, who
cannot read Latin ; but when he wrote his treatise
On Vernacular Composition (De Vulgari Elo-
quentia], he had reached the conclusion that there
was good precedent for rimes on three subjects,
Love, Righteousness, and War, although for the
last he could cite no example in Italian. More
than once, in his journey through Heaven, he puts
into the mouth of his disembodied teachers a con-
tradiction of views formerly advanced by himself.

TEMPERAMENT

Beatrice elaborately disproves the theory of the
moonspots offered by Dante in his Banquet, and
substitutes an explanation more in harmony with
his maturer conception of the relation between
matter and spirit. She it is, also, who corrects
his previous error (contained in the same work)
concerning the respective rank of the nine orders
of angels — an error into which St. Gregory, too,
had fallen, and, after him, Brunetto Latini. In
the Vernacular Composition Dante had stated
with some confidence the hypothesis that the first
language spoken by man was Hebrew; but in
Heaven he learns better, from no less an author-
ity than Adam, who assures him that his original
idiom had vanished from earth before the build-
ing of the Tower of Babel. These imaginary
communications are, of course, in actual fact, re-
tractations on the author's part. You wonder,
perhaps, why he changed his mind with regard to
Adam and Eve : I think his reason is to be sought
in a general principle which he had adopted, either
on the strength of his own observation or at the
suggestion of Horace — the principle that spoken
languages are always varying from age to age.
Not only does Dante correct his own errors; in
one canto he ventures to correct his great master,
Virgil, putting the correction, however, into Vir-
gil's mouth: having for some reason convinced
himself that the founding of Mantua is unsatis-
factorily told in the JEneid, he has Virgil relate
to him circumstantially another story of the event,
attributing the origin of the city to the Theban

THE POWER OF DANTE

prophetess Manto, whose soul they have just met
in Hell.

Dante was naturally a sincere, outspoken man.
But certain episodes in his career put his sincerity
to a severe test. A poetic love affair, probably
two different affairs, after the death of Beatrice,
appeared to him, in afterthought, unbecoming in
a man who set himself up as a moral teacher, and
he was anxious to explain away the amatory verse
in question, by calling it allegorical. This desire
was one of his motives in writing the Banquet,
which is in the form of a commentary on some of
his canzoni. The Banquet was never completed;
and in the Divine Comedy the poet sternly chas-
tises himself for his aberration. Beatrice it is
who administers the rebuke, after the sudden de-
parture of Virgil: standing in a chariot in the
Garden of Eden, " * Dante,' " she says, " * though
Virgil leave thee, weep not, weep not yet, for thou
must weep for a worse wound.' Like an admiral,
who comes to stem and stern to see the crews
serving in the other boats, and heartens them to
do their best, thus, when I turned at the sound of
my name, which of necessity is registered here,
I beheld, on the left side of the chariot, that lady
who had erst appeared to me under a cloud of
flowers cast by angels' hands; and she was gazing
at me across the stream. Although the veil that
descended from her olive-crowned head did not
permit me to see her clearly, she continued in regal
fashion, with a mien still severe, as one who
speaks but holds in reserve her most stinging

TEMPERAMENT

words : ' Look at us well ! We are indeed, indeed,
Beatrice ! Hast thou then condescended to come
to the mountain ? Didst thou not know that this
is the place where man is happy?' My eyes were
lowered to the clear water; but, when I saw myself
therein, I withdrew them to the grassy bank, such
shame weighed down my brow! Thus doth the
mother seem haughty to the child, as she appeared
to me; for bitter is the taste of pity that is still
unripe." Dante's name is " of necessity registered
here" to mark his confession as his very own.
The mountain of which Beatrice speaks is the
mountain of discipline. At her harsh words, the
angels show pity for the culprit; and with that his
heart melts : " The ice that had collected about
my heart turned to breath and water, and with
agony issued from my breast through lips and
eyes." To the angels Beatrice explains that by
nature and by special grace " ' this man, in his new
life, was potentially such that every happy talent
would have reached marvelous fulfilment in him.
But the more good earthy vigor a piece of land
has, the wilder and worse it grows, if ill planted
or uncultivated. For some time I sustained him
with the sight of my face. Showing to him my
youthful eyes, I led him toward the right quarter.
As soon as I reached the threshold of the second
age of man, and passed from mortal to eternal
life, he took himself from me and gave himself to
another. When I had risen from flesh to spirit,
and my beauty and virtue had increased, I was less
dear and less welcome to him; and he turned his

[73]

steps over a road untrue, following false like-
nesses of good, which carry out no promise to the
end." Then she turns to Dante himself: " 'In
order the more to shame thee for thine error, and
to make thee stronger, shouldst thou hear the
sirens again . . ., thou shalt hear how the burial
of my body ought to have moved thee in the op-
posite way. Never did nature or art present to thee
a charm equal to that fair form (now scattered in
earth) within which I was enclosed. And if this
greatest of charms so forsook thee at my death,
what mortal thing should thereafter have led thee
to desire it? Verily, at the first arrow of disap-
pointment over elusive things, thou shouldst have
flown up after me, who was no longer of them.
Thou shouldst not have allowed thy wings to be
weighed down, to get more wounds, either by a
little rnaid or by any other so short-lived vanity.
The newborn birdlet waits for two or three shots,
but, surely, in vain the net is spread, and in vain
the shaft is shot, in the sight of any full-fledged
bird.' ' Presently Dante, having drunk of the
water of Lethe, which effaces the memory of sin,
and of sin only, asks Beatrice: " ' Why does your
cherished word fly so far above my sight that the
more I strive, the more I lose it? ' 'In order/ she
said, ' that thou recognize the kind of doctrine
thou hast followed, and see, too, that the human
way is as far from the divine as earth is distant
from the highest whirling heaven.' And I replied
to her : ' I do not recall that ever I strayed from
you, nor have I any sting of conscience therefor.'

[74]

TEMPERAMENT

' If thou canst not remember it,' she answered,
smiling, ' now bethink thyself how thou hast just
drunk of Lethe; and if fire is argued from smoke,
this forgetfulness clearly proves that there was
guilt in the turning of thy desires elsewhere.' '

Thus does Dante humiliate himself and confess
the temporary faithlessness which he had tried to
conceal. To be sure, his avowal, though contrite
enough, is not so explicit as one could wish, and
still leaves room for uncertainty as to his meaning.
It is doubtless as clear as he could bear to make it;
to pronounce it at all, after his protests in the
Banquet, must have cruelly tortured his pride.
For Dante was very proud. I have quoted to
you Villani's statement that his learning had made
him somewhat scornful and that " he scarcely
deigned to converse with laymen." The poet
himself recognized his failing. We have already
noted that, as he marches along, in the lowest
circle of Purgatory, talking with the souls which,
by way of penance for pride, are carrying heavy
weights on their backs, he stoops as they do. " I
was walking," he says, " all bent with them; " and
" side by side, like oxen under the yoke, I trudged
beside that laden soul." That is, he shares in
their punishment. When conversing with the
envious, who have their eyes sewed up, in the
terrace above, he tells what he expects to suffer
when he shall come to do real penance in Pur-
gatory after death: " ' My eyes,' said I, ' shall yet
be taken from me here, but only for a little while ;
for little have they offended by turning in envy.

[75]

THE POWER OF DANTE

Far greater is the fear that grips my soul, of the
torment below; already weighs upon me the
burden that is carried down there.' ' Dante seems
to have regarded this sin as a family trait, since
he represents his great-grandfather as having
done penance for it, in Purgatory, for over a
hundred years. The poet believed himself to be
descended from a Roman family anciently settled
in Florence. The earliest ancestor he knew, his
great-great-grandfather, Cacciaguida, had been a
crusader and had been knighted by the Emperor.
The thought of this noble forbear must have been
a comfort to him in the days of exile and poverty.
For he was by nature an aristocrat, contemptuous
of the ignoble crowd. When Cacciaguida's soul
appears to him in Heaven, he addresses it with
the respectful pronoun voi instead of the familiar
tu; and Beatrice, observing the harmless fatuity of
her disciple, smiles indulgently. Here is the poet's
comment :

0 petty human eminence of birth !

If thou dost gratify poor mortals' pride
Where human love is feeble, down on earth,

1 ne'er shall marvel more, at any tide ;

For in that place where hunger cannot stray,
I mean in Heaven, I was gratified.
Thou art a cloak that quickly shrinks away,
And Time goes clipping round it with his shears,
Unless it be patcht out from day to day.

[From Dante, p. 35.]

"The magnanimous man," says Dante in the
Banquet, " always magnifies himself in his heart;

TEMPERAMENT

and the pusillanimous man, on the contrary, al-
ways thinks himself less than he is. ... And
inasmuch as a man measureth his possessions,
which are so to speak a part of him, with the
measure by which he measureth himself, it follows
that to the magnanimous man his own possessions
seem better than they are and those of others less
good; while the pusillanimous man always be-
lie veth that his own things are worth little, and
other people's, much." In believing that his own
mental gifts were better than other men's, Dante
was amply justified. It is inconceivable that such
a genius should have been unaware of his supe-
riority. We have seen how he expected — al-
though he refrains from saying so outright — to
" drive the one and the other Guido from the
nest." After all, his own rating of himself was
modest enough, compared with the judgment of
posterity. Who nowadays would ever have heard
of Guido Guinizelli or Guido Cavalcanti, charm-
ing rimesters though they were, had it not been
for Dante's mention of them? Immortal reputa-
tion Dante craved and confidently expected. Of
the Provengal poet Folquet de Marselha, encoun-
tered in Heaven, he makes another blessed spirit
speak thus :

This bright and precious jewel of our sky,
Which gleameth here beside me, left behind
Enduring fame, so great that ere it die

This present year shall five centennials find.
Strive to excel ! For so thy mortal life
A second life shall leave to humankind.

[77]

THE POWER OF DANTE

Dante himself, debating whether he shall incur
the enmity of the mighty by telling the truth in his
poem, declares:

If timidly I love the truth, I fear

I may not live among the men for whom
Antiquity shall be the present year.

To him Cacciaguida replies, urging him to be
frank, regardless of the consequences :

No envy on thy neighbors need be spent ;
Because thy life shall flourish, stretching on
Far, far beyond their treason's punishment.

The natural endowments of our poet, as de-
scribed by Beatrice, I have read to you. His
native constellation of Gemini, bestower of the
gift of literary art, Dante apostrophizes thus:

O glorious stars, O light that ever teems

With wondrous power, to which alone I owe
My genius (or the thing that genius seems),

The sun, begetter of the life below,
Did daily set with you and daily rise
When first I felt the Tuscan breezes blow.

When Virgil returns to the Limbus, bringing with
him Dante, whom he is to conduct through Hell
and Purgatory, a little company of his fellow-
ghosts comes to meet him.

A sudden voice I heard exclaiming then :
" Honor the noble poet, now be glad !
His shade, which left us, cometh back again."

When silent was the voice that welcome bade,
I four majestic souls advancing see,
Whose faces neither joyous were nor sad.

TEMPERAMENT

And thus my kindly master spake to me :

" Look well on him who cometh sword in hand,
And kinglike walks before the other three ;

Homer is this, who poets doth command.
Horace the satirist is second there.
The third is Ovid. Lucan ends the band.

Since every one of these with me doth share
The title which the single voice did call,
They do me honor, as is right and fair."

Thus I beheld united, grand and tall,
Those princes of the most exalted song
Which like an eagle flieth over all.

Before their greetings had extended long,
They turned to me with hospitable sign ;
And Virgil smiled, assured they did no wrong.

But, thanks to them, more glory still was mine ;
For they received me in their company,
And I was sixth in that enlightened line.

This, then, was the place that Dante assigned
himself in the hierarchy of poets : he was sixth,
following Virgil, Homer, Horace, Ovid, and
Lucan; perhaps ahead of Statius, the only other
ancient poet whom he knew. Few critics there be,
in our time, who would not put Dante at the top
of the list.

That he was guilty of pride, Dante plainly tells
us; and he seems to suggest that he was also some-
what prone to anger and strife, although he
strongly reprobated this tendency. At any rate,
in Purgatory, he is blinded and stung by the thick,
biting smoke which is the punishment of the wrath-
ful; and in Hell, not only does he gloat over a
vulgar quarrel, until he draws a sharp rebuke from
Virgil, but he likewise contemplates with a sort of
drunken fascination the souls of mischief-makers.

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THE POWER OF DANTE

These are frightfully mangled by a demon with a
sword. Among them the most notable figure is
that of Bertran de Born, the Provencal warrior-
poet, who made his profit out of the discord be-
tween Henry the Second of England and young
Henry, his eldest son, known as the Young Eng-
lish King. " I lingered to stare at the crowd, and
saw something which, without further proof, I
should be afraid to tell unaccompanied, were it
not that conscience reassures me, that good com-
panion which emboldens a man under the hauberk
of conscious honesty. I surely saw, and seem to
see again, a bust walking headless, just as walked
the others of the sorry flock. And its severed
head it held by the locks, dangling from its hand,
like a lantern. He was looking at us and saying :
4 Ah me! ' Of himself he made a lamp for him-
self; and they were two in one and one in two.
How this can be, He knoweth who so decrees it.
When he was just at the foot of the bridge [on
which we stood], he lifted up his arm, head and
all, to bring nearer to us his words, which were :
' Now dost thou behold the cruel punishment, thou
who, still breathing, goest visiting the dead! See
whether any is as great as this ! '

Neither love of strife nor guilty anger must be
confounded with righteous indignation, which the
sight of sin should and does inspire in the godly.
The good and the bad kind of wrath are con-
trasted in the fifth circle of Dante's Hell, where
sinners are fighting in the Stygian pool. " I, who
was absorbed in gazing, saw muddy people in that
[80]

TEMPERAMENT

bog, all naked and with a damaged look. They
were smiting one another, not only with hands,
but with heads, chests, and feet, and rending bit
by bit with their teeth." As Dante and Virgil are
crossing the swamp in Phlegias's little boat, a
dramatic incident occurs. " While we were speed-
ing over the dead millpond, someone leaped up
before me full of mud, saying: 'Who art thou,
that comest before thy time? ' And I to him : ' If
I come, I stay not. But who art thou who art
grown so ugly?' He replied: 'Thou seest, I am
one who weep.' And I : ' Thy weeping and thy
mourning, accursed spirit, now keep to thyself, for
I know thee, filthy as thou art.' Then he stretched
out both hands toward the craft. But my ready
master pushed him away, and cried: 'Off, off,
with the other dogs ! ' Then Virgil clasped my
neck with his arms, kissed my face, and said:
' Indignant soul, blessed be she who bore thee !
This creature was in the world a man of arro-
gance. There is no goodness to adorn his mem-
ory; and therefore is his shade so frenzied here.
How many up yonder now think themselves great
kings, who shall dwell here like pigs in dung, leav-
ing horrible scorn behind ! ' * Master,' said I,
' greatly should I enjoy seeing him ducked in this
mess, ere we leave the lake.' ' Before the shore
be seen,' he answered, ' thou shalt be satisfied.
It is right for thee to have enjoyment of such a
desire as that.' A little later I saw the soul so
torn by the muddy mob that I still praise and
thank God for it. ' At Filippo Argenti ! ' they all
[81]

THE POWER OF DANTE

shouted; and the frantic Florentine ghost turned
its own teeth upon itself."

Burning indignation against sin, even violent
hatred of the sinner, is a frequently recurrent note
in Dante's Hell, and is by no means absent from
his Purgatory and his Paradise. Amidst the peace
and perfect joy of Heaven, St. Peter breaks out
into angry invective against his unworthy suc-
cessor on the papal throne : " He who on earth
usurps my place, — my place, my place, which is
vacant in the sight of the Son of God, — hath
made of my burial-ground a sewer full of stench
and blood; whereat the Evil One, who fell from
here, is satisfied down below." So, among the
penitents on the mountain, the wicked House of
France is denounced by its founder, Hugh Capet :
" I was the root of that direful plant which so
overshadows all the Christian earth that righteous
fruit is very seldom plucked. . . . Before the
great dowry of Provence robbed my race of
shame, it was of little worth, but still it did no
harm. Then, with violence and falsehood, it
began its ravening course. Next, to make amends,
it stole Ponthieu and Normandy and Gascony.
Charles came into Italy, and, to make amends,
sacrificed Conradin, and shoved St. Thomas back
into Heaven, to make amends. . . . O my Lord,
when shall I be gladdened by the sight of the
vengeance, which [still] concealed, sweetens thy
wrath in thy secret [heart] ? "

Dante's own wrath was no doubt eased, if not
sweetened, by the thought of the just punishment
[82]

TEMPERAMENT

that awaited the enemies of God and man. Down
at the very bottom of the pit, in a sheet of ice, the
cold-blooded traitors freeze forever. " I saw be-
fore me and under my feet a lake which the cold
made to look like glass instead of water. Never
did the Danube in Austria in wintertime, nor the
Don under its chilly sky, draw such a thick veil
over its current as there was here; for if [the
mountain of] Tambernich had fallen on it, or
Pietrapana, it would not have cracked even at the
edge. And as the frog sits croaking with its nose
out of the water, at the time of year when peasant
women are apt to dream of gleaning, so were the
doleful souls in the ice, livid as far as the place
where blushes come, setting their teeth to the tune
of the stork. Every one held its face downward.
Their [chattering] mouths bore witness to the
frost; their eyes, to their sad hearts. When I
had gazed about a little, I looked at my feet, and
saw two [spirits] so close together that the hair
of their two heads was mixed. ' Tell me,' said I,
4 ye who so squeeze your breasts, who are ye ? '
They bent their necks; and when they had lifted
their faces toward me, their eyes, which up to
then had been wet only within, gushed up over the
lids, and the cold congealed the tears inside them
and locked them up again. Never did clamp
fasten wood to wood so hard. Whereupon they,
like two bucks, butted at each other, such rage
came over them. And one, who had lost both his
ears from freezing, said, without raising his face:
* Why dost thou stare so at us ? ' The vileness

[83]

THE POWER OF DANTE

of these souls makes Dante hard-hearted against
them, callous and spiteful. " While we were walk-
ing toward the centre which attracts all weights,
— I know not whether it was intent or fate or
chance, — but, as I stepped among the heads, I
kicked the face of one of them hard with my foot."
Enough of hate: let us turn to the opposite
passion. Love is the source of all good and all
evil; it is the motive power of the universe. In
the most literal sense of the word, it makes the
world go round, for it is love that causes the
heavens to revolve. The noblest of emotions, the
one which, at its best, lifts us up to God, may be
utterly perverted, or it may be inordinately be-
stowed on an unworthy object. Perverted love,
love of injury, is malice, the fruit of pride, envy,
or anger. Inordinate love of food is gluttony; of
wealth, avarice. Excessive love between men and
women is amorousness. Of this fault Dante
seems to confess himself guilty, not only in sundry
lyrics and in various episodes of the New Life, —
as well as in the passage I have quoted from the
Purgatorio (the lines containing the rebukes of
Beatrice), — but also in another thrilling scene
in this latter book. To the poet's earliest amatory
verse, addressed to various young ladies, I should
not attach much importance : it may express noth-
ing more serious than transient youthful fancies
or sentimental reveries. Some intensely passionate
poems apparently belonging to his mature years
are very mysterious, and possibly (though not
probably) written with an allegorical intention.

[84]

TEMPERAMENT

Beatrice's reproof, as we have seen, is a bit am-
biguous. Clearer evidence of experience in for-
bidden love is Dante's treatment of Francesca
da Rimini, whose culpable passion is handled
with such sweet and delicate sympathy, and with
such perfect insight, that the author cannot es-
cape suspicion of knowing more than one should
know. But in the scene of the Purgatory of
which I spoke, there appears to be a distinct
avowal.

On the uppermost terrace of the mountain,
which Dante is traversing with Virgil and Statius,
the souls of the amorous are cleansing themselves
by marching through fire, which bursts out from
the cliff all around the peak. Among them are the
love-poets whom the author most esteemed, Guido
Guinizelli and Arnaut Daniel. To leave this
shelf, where Dante has been walking on the outer
edge in order to avoid being scorched, he must
penetrate the wall of flame — that is, he must sub-
mit to the burning, and clean his soul, even as the
penitential ghosts are attaining cleanness. And
now we encounter a trait that we have not previ-
ously met in Dante : rebellion against the purifying
discipline, reluctance to abandon his vice. In the
circle of pride, he spontaneously joined in the
penance; but here, far from diving voluntarily
into the fire, he stubbornly resists the exhortations
of Virgil, who represents Reason. ' The day was
departing when God's glad angel appeared to us.
Outside the flame it was standing, on the brink,
singing ' Blessed are the pure in heart ' with a

[85]

THE POWER OF DANTE

voice far more alive than ours. When we had
come near, it spake : ' Ye may go no further,
blessed souls, until ye suffer the bite of the flame.
Enter into it; and be not deaf to the song on the
other side.' At these words, I felt like one who
is put into the grave [to be buried alive]. Strain-
ing forward over my clasped hands, I stared into
the fire, distinctly picturing human bodies that I
had formerly seen burnt. My kindly escorts
turned towards me, and Virgil said : ' My son,
here may be torment, but not death. Remember,
remember! If I guided thee in safety even on
[the back of the monster] Geryon, what mayst
thou not expect of me now, nearer to God? Be-
lieve for certain that, though thou shouldst abide
a thousand years and more in the heart of this
flame, it could not strip thy head of one hair. And
if thou thinkest perhaps that I am deceiving thee,
approach it, and with thine own hands convince
thyself, with the hem of thy garment. Now put
aside, Oh! put aside all fear! Turn hither, and
step fearlessly ahead! ' But I [stood] stubborn,
disobedient to conscience. When he saw me stand-
ing hard and obstinate, he cried, a little troubled:
' Now see, my son, this wall is between thee and
Beatrice ! ' As Pyramus, at the point of death,
opened his eyes on hearing Thisbe's name, and
looked at her, — on the day when the mulberry
turned red, — thus, with my hardness all softened,
I turned to my wise leader, hearing that name
which is ever green in my memory. Whereupon
he shook his brow, saying : ' How now ! shall we
[86]

TEMPERAMENT

linger here? ' as one does to a child won over by
an apple. Then he plunged into the fire ahead of
me, begging Statius to bring up the rear. . . .
When I was within, I could have thrown myself
into molten glass to cool me, so boundless was the
heat. My dear father, to encourage me, con-
tinually spake of Beatrice alone, as he advanced,
saying : ' Already I think I see her eyes.' We were
guided by a voice that was singing on the other
side; and, fixing all our attention on it, we came
forth to the upward way."

In this incident we may see, I think, allegorically
related, the rescue of Dante from an unworthy
passion by the memory of his pure affection for
Beatrice. What was this guilty love? Perhaps
his entanglement with the girl at the window ; per-
haps his mad infatuation with the woman he calls
Pietra, for whom he wrote those wildly beautiful
amatory poems of which I spoke. To two ladies,
it would seem, his heart was temporarily given,
after the death of the most gentle one. One is
this mysterious Pietra. The other is a young girl
whom we may perhaps name Lisetta: the lady
who, in the latter part of the New Life, so moved
the poet by looking at him compassionately from a
window — the same one whom he afterwards
made a symbol of Philosophy. Some critics be-
lieve that these ladies are one; others think that
there is yet a third, the woman of the Casentino,
celebrated in Dante's "mountain song"; others
still would add a fourth, a certain Gentucca, but
there is really no reason whatever for thinking

[87]

THE POWER OF DANTE

that she was an object of Dante's affection. Let
us assume that there are but two, the sympathetic
Lisetta and the stony Pietra. From his undue
interest in the former he was saved, according to
the account in the New Life, as follows : " Against
this adversary of reason there arose one day, al-
most at the ninth hour, a powerful fancy within
me; for I thought I saw this glorious Beatrice
with those vermilion garments in which she had
first appeared to my eyes, and she seemed to me
a child of like age to that in which I first beheld
her. Then I began to think of her; and, as I
meditated on her, following the order of past
events, my heart began painfully to repent of the
desire by which it had weakly allowed itself to be
possessed for some days, contrary to the stead-
fastness of reason; and, casting out this evil desire,
all my thoughts turned back to their most gentle
Beatrice."

Now, the episode of the barrier of fire and the
magic effect of the name of Beatrice would seem
to be a symbolical presentation either of this same
experience with the so-called Lisetta or of another
passage of similar kind, perhaps with the danger-
ous Pietra. That Dante regarded Beatrice as in
very sooth his saviour there can be no doubt. At
first, perhaps, — in Dante's adolescent stage, of
which we catch faint glimpses through the mist
of idealization which veils the New Life, — he
looked upon her with eyes of youthful admiration
and longing, though from a respectful distance;
but ere the narrative is half over, we find the poet
[88]

TEMPERAMENT

banishing from his devotion to her every element
of desire and confining his song to the note of
praise. This platonic, spiritual service developed
into a veritable cult, which after the lady's death
was only intensified, and always remained as an
uplifting influence, comparable to that of the
Blessed Virgin. Beatrice it was who, watching
over him from Heaven, saved him again and again
from his lower self; and it is not strange that his
feeling toward her should have come to be one of
overwhelming gratitude, and that he should in
his allegorical thought have made her the symbol
of divine guidance.

\ Of all Dante's emotions, I am inclined to think
that gratitude was the strongest. Grateful he was,
first of all, to God — to the Creator who made this
wonderful universe and so lovingly watches over
it — to the Redeemer who, in preference to any
other method of restoring lost humankind, chose
to make reparation by sacrificing himself. God's
grace it is that floods the heavens with light and
happiness and beauty. Of Satan's ugliness the
outstanding cause is ungratefulness to his Maker.
Among all the human sinners in Hell, the three
worst — Judas, Brutus, and Cassius — are guilty
primarily of ingratitude. It was Dante's thankful-
ness to God that made him so unsparingly vehe-
ment in his denunciation of the wicked. Grati-
tude to his earthly teachers, living or dead, finds
eloquent expression in his verse : to Virgil, his
great master, whom he chooses as his director and
companion for the journey through Hell and Pur-

[89]

THE POWER OF DANTE

gatoryi to Brunette Latini, his sage counselor, to
whom ne pays such touching tribute ; to the ancient
author of his Latin grammar, Donatus, whom he
places in Heaven among the great lights of re-
ligion; to the literary models whom he followed,
Arnaut Daniel and Guido Guinizelli. Passage
after passage of the Divine Comedy testifies
courteously, discreetly, but with transparent sin-
cerity, to his thankfulness toward those who had
befriended him during his exile.
V Courtesy, good breeding marked his dealings
with his fellowmen. " His manners," says Boc-
caccio, " whether in public or at home, were won-
derfully composed and restrained, and in all his
ways he was more polite and civil than anyone
else." Nothing could be more delicate than
Dante's compliments to benefactors, unless it were
his words of comfort to suffering penitents. We
have observed how loath he is, in Purgatory, to
walk, staring and silent, past a row of repentant
spirits who, temporarily blinded, cannot look at
him. A very pattern of refinement, with a tincture
of sedate playfulness, is the colloquy between Vir-
gil, Statius, and, as an unwilling participant, the
poet himself. In his relations with his friends
we note the same sweet delicacy. He does not in
any of his works say much about friendship; the
theme was perhaps too intimate to come within
the bounds prescribed by his code of behavior.
Yet in his occasional mention of Guido Cavalcanti,
his " first friend," of that unnamed relative of
Beatrice who was next in the order of friendship,

[90]

TEMPERAMENT

of Cino da Pistoia, his fellow-poet, — in his meet-
ing with Guide's father in Hell, with the musician
Casella on the shore of the mountain, with Forese
Donati in Purgatory itself, with Charles Martel
in Heaven, — we have evidence of that consid-
erate tenderness which makes friendship beautiful.
This same tender, deferential feeling exists be-
tween two of Dante's shades, who have just met
for the first time, but have long loved each other
from afar. Virgil, who has come from the Lim-
bus, to be the poet's guide, meets Statius in Pur-
gatory, in the circle from which the latter has just
been released — the circle which contains both the
avaricious and the prodigal. " ' Love,' began
Virgil, ' love, kindled by virtue, hath always kin-
dled love in return, whenever its flame could show
itself. And that is why, ever since Juvenal came
down among us, in the Limbus of Hell, and told
me of thy affection for me, my liking for thee
hath been the greatest that ever bound one to a
person unseen — so great that these stairways
[which we are to climb together] will now seem
to me all too short. But tell me (and forgive
me as a friend, if over-assurance gives me too
loose a rein, and as a friend now explain to me),
how could avarice find a place in thy breast beside
all the wisdom with which thy zeal had filled
thee?' These words made Statius smile a little
at first; then he answered: 'Every utterance 'of
thine is a precious token of love to me. Verily
ofttimes things do occur which offer undue occasion
for misgiving, because the true reasons are hidden.

THE POWER OF DANTE

Thy question discloses to me thy belief that I was
avaricious in the other life, perhaps on account
of the circle where I was. Now learn that avarice
was too remote from me, and this immoderate-
ness hath been punished during thousands of
moons. . . . Therefore, if I have been among
those people who weep for avarice, it hath be-
fallen me for the opposite cause.' ' And Statius
goes on to relate that his salutary repentance for
this sin was aroused by meditation on the hidden
meaning of a passage in Virgil's ALneid.

If friendship is too personal a sentiment to dis-
cuss, we must not expect to meet in Dante much
exhibition of the still more sacred affections of
family life. Never, in all his works, does he
mention his wife or his children; yet no one ever
wrote more sympathetically of the mother sur-
rounded by her little ones, or of the emotions of
the young child. Look for no lengthy descriptions
of household scenes : you will find only the rapidest
of sketches, thrown in from time to time by way of
simile; but these sketches bear witness to a close
and loving observation. Let me prove it by a few
examples :

Awaking late, no little innocent

So sudden plunges toward its mother's breast,
With face intent upon its nourishment,

As I did bend.

And as a babe, which stretches either arm
To reach its mother, after it is fed,
Showing a heart with sweet affection warm,

Thus every flaming brightness reared its head.

[92]

TEMPERAMENT

With that expectancy I turned aside

With which a little child to mother runs,
Whene'er he is distrest or terrified.

I turned, all dumb with wonder, to my guide,
Just as a child, who runs his woes to tell
Always to her in whom he doth confide;

And, as the mother comforteth full well
And quickly, too, her pale and panting boy
(That voice of hers doth all his fears dispel) . . .
[From Dante, pp. 314-315.]

Dante is rather fond of noting maternal affection
in birds:

As mother stork above the nest doth stir
In loving circles, when her young are fed,
And they, all satisfied, look up at her . . .

Let us end with the famous picture of the Floren-
tine wives of the good old times :

One watcht beside the cradle in the night
And, soothing, spake that language infantile
Which first doth fond parental ears delight.

Another, swiftly spinning all the while,
With tales of Trojans, Fiesole, and Rome
Her troop of tiny listeners doth beguile.

[From Dante, p. 314.]

L'una vegghiava a studio della culla ;
E, consolando, usava 1'idToma
Che pria li padri e le madri trastulla:

L'altra, traendo alia rocca la chioma,
Favoleggiava con la sua famiglia
De' Troiani, di Fiesole e di Roma.

[93]

LECTURE IV
EXPERIENCE

IN the preceding lecture I spoke of Dante's
temperament, his traits of character. These char-
acteristics were vigorously reinforced by the vi-
cissitudes of his career, which also afforded various
opportunity for his gift of quick and precise
observation. Whatever life Dante might have
led, he would have always been an interesting
personality; but without the emotions, the trials,
the hardships, the changes through which he
passed, his genius could never have realized to the
full its potential development. He learned to
know the extremes of love and hatred, of happi-
ness and misery, of joyous expectation and sad
retrospect. To Dante himself, even more than to
Virgil, his teacher, apply the immortal words of
Francesca.

Ed ella a me : " Nessun maggior dolore
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria ; e cio sa il tuo dottore."

The Florence of the latter thirteenth century
was a good city to live in. Virtually independent,
busy, eagerly ambitious, she was attaining, in her
manufactures, her trade, and her political in-
fluence, a foremost place among the little munic-

[94]

EXPERIENCE

ipal republics of Italy. Newly acquired wealth
enabled her ancient civilization to break into
fresh flower: the refinements of courtly society
were easily adopted by her sturdy commercial
population: the arts — architecture, painting,
music, poetry — were cultivated with all the zest
of novel interest, with all the delight of hitherto
unknown achievement. Florence was sufficiently
big to lend distinction to any sort of local suprem-
acy among her citizens, and occupations were so
diversified as to afford opportunity to competence
of any kind; on the other hand, the closely packed
town was small enough, and gossipy enough, for
everyone of any account to be known to everyone
else. The conditions, as you see, were favorable
to the unfolding of talent. And talent did unfold,
during those decades, to an extraordinary extent.
Internal politics, to be sure, occupied much of the
burghers' attention, changes of government were
frequent, and party strife sometimes led to blood-
shed. There was a strong reactionary group of
old-time aristocrats, discontented with the modern
democratic tendency, willing to resort to any
means to maintain their ascendency over the de-
spised commoners; there was an energetic middle
class, well organized in guilds, which, having
gained control of most of the property and power,
was bent on reducing the old nobility to impotence
and substituting for it a new aristocracy of wealth;
there were the laborers, important on account of
their numbers, who sided now with one party, now
with another, having no consistent policy. Family

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rivalry, too, ran high. Indeed, the factional
violence which finally threw Florence into the wait-
ing hands of the Pope, and brought about Dante's
exile, appears to have had its origin in the social
competition of the Donati and the Cerchi, the
former being leaders among the blue-bloods, the
latter preeminent among the new-rich.

Until he was about thirty years old, Dante, it
would seem, did not concern himself with politics.
Belonging to a family of modest possessions but
with some claim to gentle extraction, he was well
educated, well bred, and apparently mingled with
the socially elect; at any rate, he appears to have
been affianced in childhood to one of the Donati
clan, whom he married in due time; and he had
as an intimate associate another offshoot of this
stock, Forese Donati. His closest friend was
Guido, a distinguished member of the very rich
Cavalcanti family, who had great influence in the
progressive party. Guido, a man of independent
views, was a poet of real merit, and also some-
thing of a philosopher and scholar. Other friends
of young Alighieri were the notary Lapo Gianni
and the jurist Cino da Pistoia (both of them ex-
cellent rimesters), the musician Casella, and, ac-
cording to report, the architect and painter Giotto.
It was, you see, an artistic milieu. Even Forese
Donati wrote verses; and that unnamed brother
of Beatrice, whom Dante calls second among his
friends, was evidently fond of them. Dante him-
self early conceived a passion for poetry, and de-
voured the songs of southern France and the

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imitations of them made in Italy. Thus he
" found out for himself " — so he tells us — " the
art of composing things in rime." Among the
Provencal troubadours, the one whom he most
admired was Arnaut Daniel, a brilliant master of
technique; among the Italians, his favorite was
Guido Guinizelli of Bologna, who introduced the
spiritual, symbolistic treatment of love. By the
time he was eighteen, Dante had won some local
reputation as a poet; and before he was thirty, his
fame had gone abroad to other cities. His youth-
ful verse did service to various damsels of his
Florence, but especially to one whom he calls
Beatrice, probably Beatrice Portinari, the daugh-
ter of a well-to-do neighbor. Very sweet and
dainty are these early poems. As an example,
let me cite this ballad:

Chorus

The memory of a garland
Shall always make me sigh
Whene'er I see a flower.

One day I saw thee, Lady, wearing

A tiny garland, fresh from Maying;
And over it a fay was faring,

A modest little love-sprite, swaying,
With cunning music saying:
" Whoso shall me espy
Shall praise my master's power."

The memory of a garland
Shall always make me sigh,
Whene'er I see a flower.

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II

If I, O floweret sweet and fairest,

Come close enough to see thee twining,
" My Lady," I shall say, " thou wearest
My sighs upon thy head reclining."
But then, to prick my pining,
My Lady shall come nigh
New-crowned from Cupid's bower.

The memory of a garland
Shall always make me sigh
Whene'er I see a flower.

Ill

My curious little words to fashion

A ballad out of flowers have striven,
Stealing, to decorate their passion,
A garment once to others given.
I beg thee, then, by Heaven :
What man the song shall try,
Give him thy richest dower.

The memory of a garland
Shall always make me sigh
Whene'er I see a flower.

[From The Ladies of Dante's Lyrics, pp. 38-39.]

I have already discussed Dante's feeling toward
Beatrice. It is not easy to define; but, whatever
it was, it was profound and sincere, and her death,
which occurred when he was just twenty-five,
affected him as a grievous loss. Yet during her
lifetime he had shown a good deal of interest —
at least in a poetic way — in several other young
ladies; and at different periods after her departure
he seems, as we have noted, to have been in love

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with two other women. One of these he turned
into an allegorical figure of Philosophy, as he had
made Beatrice a symbol of divine revelation. We
cannot be sure that he ever allegorized the other,
the irresponsive Pietra. Here is a characteristic
stanza from one of the later love-poems :

I cannot flee from her, nor yet prevent
Her coming to my mind ;

Nor yet from thought, which brings her there, refrain.
My crazy soul, on self-destruction bent,
Still pictures her, unkind

And beauteous as she is, and thus repeats its pain;

Then looks on her once more, and full again
Of boundless longing, drawn from witching eyes,
Against itself it cries,

Which lit the fire that burneth it to death.

All reason's checks and arguments are vain
When raging whirlwinds in my bosom rise!
My anguish, loath to bide within me, flies

Forth from my lips so plain, men hear its breath,

And eyes to pay their tribute summoneth.

[From The Ladies of Dante's Lyrics, p. 100.]

Even if Lionardo Bruni and Dante himself had
not spoken of the poet's pursuit of knowledge, we
should have guessed from his works that he was
an insatiable student. His great passion for learn-
ing came after the death of his lady, and lasted
throughout the rest of his life. He mastered the
philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages
and all the classic Latin literature that was acces-
sible; grammar, logic, rhetoric he acquired, as-
tronomy and mathematics, such history and geog-
raphy as he could get; and we may infer from a

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curious passage in the Paradiso, describing an
experiment with a light and three mirrors, that he
even attempted some investigation of his own in
physics. He certainly learned much of music and
painting; and he read pretty extensively in the
vernacular literature of France and Italy. It is
very odd that he nowhere mentions a noted con-
temporary scholar in a neighboring city, Albertino
Mussato of Padua, author of a Latin play on the
tyrant Ezzelino da Romano, the first tragedy in
modern letters. Nowhere does he speak of the
most famous French work of the Middle Ages,
a poem written in his own century, known in part
to his master, Brunette Latini, and very cleverly
paraphrased in Italian at about the time of Dante's
marriage — the Romance of the Rose. This
paraphrase, by the way, is so admirable that some
have actually ascribed it to Dante himself. For
these omissions we cannot account.

How Dante supported himself, either before
or after his exile, is a question for which the
answer is lacking. His father, apparently, had
been a notary; but we do not know that the son
had any profession. In early childhood he lost
his mother; and his father, after marrying again,
died while Dante was still a boy, leaving him
with the charge of a half-sister and a half-brother,
in addition, it would seem, to an own sister.
When a little over thirty, Dante wedded Gemma
Donati, by whom he had four children, two boys
and two girls. We know nothing whatever of his
domestic life, except that when he went into
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banishment, his family did not accompany him,
although at the close of his pilgrimage three of
his children were living near him in Ravenna.
We do know, also, that he somehow got into
financial difficulties in Florence, accumulating a
debt that was not paid until after his death. It
is hard to resist the temptation to associate this
experience with Dante's repeated insistence on
the wickedness of prodigality. Both in Hell and
in Purgatory, you remember, this fault is put on
a par with avarice. The Latin poet Statius, who
seems in some respects to be a copy of the author,
is represented as having been a spendthrift; he
it is that laments the ignorance which prevents
men from recognizing that prodigality is a sin
and from correcting themselves in time to escape
damnation.

At about the date of his marriage, Dante went
into politics. He had previously done his duty as
a soldier, in a campaign against the Aretines.
Inasmuch as the new constitution restricted im-
portant office to members of guilds, Dante entered
the corporation of doctors and apothecaries, which
included also booksellers and painters. It was a
rich, powerful guild, and it probably contained
some of Dante's good friends. He was elected
to two popular city councils, was a member of a
special committee, and was sent on a mission to
San Gemignano; but although we find an occa-
sional record of a vote or a speech by him, we
know next to nothing of his share in public affairs
until he became a Prior in 1300. There were six

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Priors, who formed the principal executive branch
of the government; they held office for only two
months, and could not be immediately reflected.
In political matters, Dante's sympathies were
divided. As an enthusiastic champion of munic-
ipal independence, he naturally sided with the
bourgeois party, called the Whites, who were
opposed to papal control of the city. As a gentle-
man and an associate of the Donati, — who were
leaders of the Blacks, — he must have disliked
the crudeness of the dominant middle class and
deplored their attempt to suppress the aristocracy.
He had friends on both sides of the house —
Guido Cavalcanti with the Whites, Forese Donati
with the Blacks. The latter died, however, in
1296.

For the opinion of the ordinary run of men,
Dante had little respect. He was no democrat.
" The common people," he says in the Banquet,
" are for the most part bereft of the light of dis-
cretion, because, being engaged from the beginning
of their lives in some business, they necessarily
so turn their minds to it as to think of naught
else. And since the use of any moral or intel-
lectual virtue cannot be acquired suddenly, but
must be won by practice, and they put their prac-
tice in some trade, without concern for other
things, it is impossible for them to have judgment.
They are to be called sheep, not men. For if one
sheep should throw itself from a cliff a thousand
paces high, all the others would go after it; and
if one sheep for any reason gives a jump while

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crossing a road, all the others jump, though they
see nothing to jump over.'^-" In the New Life,
after having explained one of his poems, he adds :
" I admit that for the further disclosure of the
meaning of this ode, a more minute analysis would
be required. But, nevertheless, if there be any
persons of insufficient wit to understand it with the
analysis already given, I should not be sorry to
have them let it alone; for really I fear I have
conveyed its meaning to all too many people by
analysing it as I have — provided it should come
to pass that many should have an opportunity to
hear it." Literature is for choice spirits alone —
not for Master Martin or Mistress Bertha. So
it is with science, morals, government: only the
enlightened, the competent should presume to
guide. Of his own competence Dante had no
doubt. You know the old anecdote which rep-
resents him as saying, when Florence was to select
someone for a difficult mission: " If I go, who
remains? and if I remain, who goes? " I do not
• believe this story: in the first place, because
anecdotes hardly ever are true; in the second
place, because I think Dante was too well-bred to
make such a remark. But he may very well have
thought it.

Determined our poet was to rise above the
vulgar herd, to attain a high place even among
the exalted. Ambition was unmistakably a direct-
ing force in his life. It is interesting to note how
he portrays the souls of ambitious men in Heaven.
You recall how pale and feeble are the images of

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weak-willed spirits in the moon — the class of the
blest that is content with the lowest degree of
happiness. Now, the ambitious are, in the scale
of beatitude, the next-to-lowest; but how different
they look to Dante's eye, as he comes among them
in the midst of the planet Mercury ! Like a school
of fishes approaching the surface of a still pond,
he sees more than a thousand bright forms ad-
vancing through the light, all of them crying:
" Lo ! here is one who shall add to the sum of our
love ! " And, as each one draws near, the poet
can discern the glad soul within the clear effulgence
that issues from it. " Think, reader," he con-
tinues, " if that which is now beginning should not
go on, what an agonizing hunger thou wouldst
have, to learn more, and thou shalt see for thyself
how eager I was to hear from these spirits what
was their state, as soon as they became visible to
my eyes." One of the pious throng bids him put
his question, and Beatrice cries : " Speak, speak !
and believe them as thou wouldst believe creatures
divine!" "I see clearly," responds the poet,
" how thou dost nestle in thine own gleam, and
how thou dost shoot it from thine eyes; because
they sparkle so when thou smilest. But who thou
art I know not, nor why, worthy soul, thou hast
the degree of that planet which is veiled from
mortals by the sun's rays." "Thus I spake, look-
ing at the light that had first addressed me.
Whereupon it grew far brighter than before. As
the sun, which, after its heat hath consumed the
thick, tempering mists, hideth itself with its own

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excessive blaze, even so, as its joy increased, this
holy figure concealed itself within its own rays,
and thus, all enveloped, it answered me." The
spirit is Justinian, who proceeds to narrate the
glorious history of Rome.

Distinction came to Dante with his elevation
to the Council of Priors; but it was an honor full
of peril. The early summer of 1300 was a critical
moment. A papal plot had been unearthed in
the city, three Florentine conspirators had been
caught, and the new Council inherited the danger-
ous task of executing the severe sentence passed
on the culprits. The Pope, who had been breath-
ing fearful threats against Florence, sent thither
as an ostensible peacemaker Cardinal Matteo
d'Acquasparta. Bloody street-riots ensued. There-
upon the Priors ordered out of the city the chiefs,
of both factions, among them Guido Cavalcanti,
Dante's first friend. The government's decree
was obeyed by the Whites, and Cavalcanti died of
a fever contracted during his short banishment;
but the Blacks, trusting to the cardinal, remained.
At this point Dante's term of office expired, and
we have every reason to believe that he went to
Rome with the vast army of pilgrims who were
drawn there by the great papal jubilee. Religious
excitement thus followed close upon an exhausting
political strain. It is in this jubilee year of 1300
that Dante puts the action of his Divine Comedy.
The next spring found Dante a member of an
electoral commission; presently he is charged with
the supervision of alterations in a street. We

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learn that he spoke several times, once in opposi-
tion to the cardinal, who had demanded a hun-
dred horsemen. Pope Boniface, meanwhile, had
worked out a plan to gain possession of Florence :
Charles of Valois, brother of the French king,
was invited by him to occupy the city and reconcile
the contestants. Quick to see the significance of
this move, the Florentines sent a delegation, —
of which forlorn hope Dante was probably a
member, — on a fruitless mission to plead with
the Pope. During their absence, Charles entered
Florence and gave it over to the Blacks, who
sacked the houses of their adversaries. Boniface
appointed a mayor of his own, and the city be-
came for a time a part of the papal domain. The
cardinal, on his return to Florence, set about
.devising, in conjunction with the new mayor, the
total destruction of the independent party which
had opposed him.

In January, 1302, a number of recent officials,
among them Dante, were accused of various crimes
and condemned to fine, two years' exile, and con-
fiscation of their goods. They were summoned
also to appear before the court within three days;
and, as none of them were foolish enough to com-
ply with this command, they were in March
sentenced to death by fire. A persecution of the
other Whites ensued; and at last Charles of Valois,
having completed his work, took his leave. He is
treated in the Divine Comedy with a scorn almost
beyond words. "Without weapons he issues
forth alone, with the lance with which Judas tilted ;
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and with that he pricks so well that he bursts the
belly of Florence. Thereby shall he win not land,
but sin and shame, which shall weigh on him the
heavier, the more lightly he esteems such mishap."
The plotter who was at the bottom of the mis-
chief, Pope Boniface VIII, the poet represents
not only as a dishonest prelate but as a shameless
usurper, for whom a place in Hell was waiting
when Dante journeyed below. " Art thou already
standing there," cries a lost soul, planted upside
down in a hole in the rock, on hearing Dante
speak, " art thou already standing there, Boni-
face? The writing [of destiny] hath lied to me
by several years. Art thou already cloyed with
that pelf, for the sake of which thou didst not fear
to wed by trickery our fair lady [the Church]
and then to despoil her?"

It is now possible to understand Dante's hatred
of treachery — a hatred which at first shocks the
modern reader. Traitors are at the very bottom
of his Hell, embedded in ice; and, far from show-
ing them any mercy, he has a right good will to
pay them in their own coin. So he does with a
certain Friar Alberic; this villain had caused his
guests to be murdered, at his own table, by assas-
sins who, concealed behind the tapestries, sprang
out at the signal: "Serve the fruit." Listen to
the poet's story: "One of the sufferers in the
frigid crust cried out to us : ' O souls, so cruel that
ye are sent to the last station, remove from my
face the stiff veil [of ice] so that I may vent the
grief which steeps my heart, for a little while,

THE POWER OF DANTE

until the tears freeze up again ! ' And I replied :
' If thou wouldst have me help thee, tell me who
thou art; and then if I relieve thee not, may I
have to go to the bottom of the ice ! ' At that
he answered : ' I am Brother Alberic, he of the
fruit of the evil orchard, who here am getting
date for fig.' ' Oh ! ' said I to him, ' art thou then
dead already?' 'How it may be with my body
in the world above,' said he, ' I have no knowl-
edge. This [region of Hell called] Tolomea
hath the privilege that ofttimes the soul falls here
before Atropos gives it the push. And, to make
thee readier to scrape from my face the glassy
tears, I tell thee that, as soon as a soul betrays
as I did, its body is taken from it by a demon
which afterwards directs it until its [allotted]
time shall have revolved, while the soul plunges
down into the tank. Perhaps there is still to be
seen above the body of that shade which is winter-
ing here behind me. Thou must know, if thou hast
just arrived down here. He is Master Branca
d' Oria, and several years have gone by since he
was thus confined.' ' I believe,' said I, ' that thou
deceivest me, for Branca d' Oria hath never died;
he eats and drinks and puts on clothes.' ' Not
yet,' was the reply, ' had [his victim] Michel
Zanche reached the ditch of Badpaws, higher up
[in Hell], where the sticky pitch is boiling, when
this man left in his body a devil in his stead; and
so did one of his kinsmen, who committed the act
of treachery with him. But now stretch out thy
hand hither, open mine eyes ! ' But I did not
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open them for him. And it was kindness to be
harsh to him."

After the condemnation of March, 1302,
Dante was a wanderer on the face of the earth.
" Ever since it was the pleasure of the citizens
of Florence, that most beautiful and famous
daughter of Rome, to cast me out of her sweetest
bosom, in which I was born and bred up to the
middle point of life, and in which, with their good
will, I yearn with all my heart to rest my tired
mind and end the time allotted me," says Dante
in the Banquet, "[ever since then] I have traveled
through nearly all the regions over which our
language extends, a stranger, almost a beggar,
displaying against my wish the wound of Fortune,
for which the blame is ofttimes unjustly put upon
the wounded one. In truth I have been a ship
without sail or helm, carried to various harbors
and inlets and shores by the dry wind which blows
from grievous poverty." "As Hippolytus went
forth from Athens," declares the prophetic speech
of Dante's ancestor, Cacciaguida, " so must thou
go forth from Florence. This is willed, this is
already devised, and soon shall be accomplished
by him who contriveth it in the city where Christ
is daily bought and sold. The blame shall follow
the injured party, in report, as it always does;
but the punishment shall bear witness to the truth,
which dispenses it. Thou shalt leave behind all
things most dearly loved; and this is the arrow
which exile's bow first shoots." In the envoy of
one of his odes, the poet cries: " O my mountain

THE POWER OF DANTE

song, thou goest forth. Haply shalt thou see
Florence, my city, which, void of love and bare
of pity, locks me outside."

In 1311 Dante was expressly excluded from a
proclamation of amnesty, and in 1315 his sentence
was renewed. A letter attributed to him explains
why he had rejected a pardon offered on condition
that he pay a fine and do public penance. Still,
from beginning to end, he probably never aban-
doned altogether the hope of restoration. In the
first years of their misfortune the banished Whites
banded together, concentrating principally in Bo-
logna, and left nothing undone to regain their
homes : they sought help from earlier exiles, they
appealed to cities hostile to Florence. In 1303
and 1304 there were unsuccessful military attacks.
Failure begat recrimination and dissension; and
Dante, turning his back on his fellow-outcasts,
formed, as he said, a party by himself. Five or
six years later, a dazzling new hope arose, to be
followed by bitter disappointment. In 1309
Henry of Luxemburg was crowned Emperor with
the title of Henry VII, and, soon after, came
down into Italy to restore peace, order, and
justice. Henry was an idealist, a firm believer,
like the poet himself, in the divinely ordained
function of the Empire. Sundry Latin letters,
written at this time, show Dante almost mad with
enthusiasm and impatience. What he suffered we
can imagine, when in 1313 his hero died, without
having fulfilled his mission. A throne is reserved
for the Emperor in Heaven. " On that high seat
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upon which thou bendest thine eyes because of the
crown above it, shall sit," says Beatrice, " ere thou
sup at this marriage banquet, the soul of mighty
Henry, imperial on earth, who shall come to
straighten Italy before she is ready. The blind
greed that bewitches mortals hath made them like
unto the babe, which, though dying of hunger,
driveth away its nurse." One hope remained:
perhaps his poetic fame would move his fellow-
citizens to open their gates to him. " If it ever
come to pass," writes Dante in his Paradiso,
"that my sacred poem, on which Heaven and
earth have set their hand, so that it hath made me
lean this many a year, overcome the cruelty which
locks me outside the pretty fold, — where I slept
as a lamb, hated by the wolves that attack it, —
with a changed voice at last, with a changed fleece,
I shall return a poet, and over my baptismal font
shall receive the crown." An invitation to Bo-
logna, with expectation of a laurel wreath, the poet
courteously rejected, still putting his faith in
Florence, which was stubborn to the end.

During his twenty years of exile, Dante, as far
as we know, was a dependent, living for the most
part on the bounty of the great, to whom he
rendered such service as he could. " Thou shalt
learn," prophesies Cacciaguida, " how salty is the
taste of other men's bread, and what a hard road
it is to climb up and down other men's stairs."
No doubt he met with many humiliations during
those weary years when, in his own words, " he
brought himself to quiver in every vein." Rivalry
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he surely had to encounter, unworthy self-seeking,
envy, " that bawd which never hath turned her
lusting eyes away from Caesar's house," envy,
"death of all mankind, and vice of courts." No
wonder indignation became with him an habitual
mood and condemnation his wonted solace. I
have spoken of the loathsome fate of flatterers in
his Hell. Money-lenders fare but little better.
Sitting under a rain of fire, disfigured beyond
recognition, they are distinguishable only by the
coats of arms on the money-bags dangling from
their necks; for they are gentlemen of good birth,
all Florentines but one. " Out of their eyes gushed
their grief. First here, then there, they kept up
the defense with their hands, now from the flames,
now from the hot ground. Even so do dogs be-
have in summertime, with snout and foot, when
they are bitten by fleas or gnats or flies. On the
faces of some of them, on whom the painful fire
descends, I set eyes, but recognized not one. I
observed, however, that from the neck of each
hung a pouch with a certain color and a certain
design; and their eyes seemed to feed on these."
One of them speaks to the traveler; and " at that
he twisted his mouth and stuck out his tongue, like
an ox licking its nose."

Still lower in the human scale is the snake-like
thief. Even thieves are sometimes of genteel
stock. Listen to the horrible doom of two of
them, who appear to Dante, — the first shaped
as a man standing beside a companion, the second
as a four-legged serpent, — and slowly exchange

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their forms. " As, under the heavy scourge of
dog-days, the lizard, changing its hedge, looks
like a flash of lightning when it crosses the road,
thus, darting toward the bellies of the other two
[shades], there came a fiery little snake, livid and
black as a peppercorn. First it pierced, in one
of them, that spot where the human babe first
receives nourishment; then it dropped down out-
stretched before him. The pricked one stared
at it, saying nothing, but yawning, with feet mo-
tionless, as if sleep or fever were upon him. He
glared at the snake, and the snake at him, both of
them sending out a thick smoke, the one through
his wound, the other through its mouth; and the
smokes met. . . . Keeping time together, this
is what they did. The serpent split his tail into a
fork. The wounded man pressed his legs tight,
one against the other; and shins and thighs so
grew together that in a little while the line of
joining could no longer be seen. The cleft tail
took the shape that was disappearing in the other
body. Its skin softened, and the skin of the other
hardened. I saw the arms shooting in through the
armpits, and the reptile's two little front feet
lengthening just as the man's arms shortened.
While the smoke shrouded both of them in a
strange color, generating hair on one head and
stripping it from the other, the first stood up, the
second dropped down, neither for a moment
averting his evil gleaming eyes, under which the
snouts were changing. The upright one slid his
muzzle back toward the temples, and, out of the

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superabundant matter which was drawn thither,
ears emerged from the smooth cheeks; as much of
that superfluity as remained, instead of running
back, made a nose on the face, and thickened the
lips to the proper extent. The prostrate one
projects his snout, and slips his ears into his head,
as a snail pulls in its horns ; and the tongue, which
was whole and fit for speech, is cleft, while the
other's forked tongue is closed up. And the smoke
stops. The soul transformed into a beast flees
hissing through the valley; the other is left be-
hind to speak and spit."

Such was the impression made on Dante by
many of the types of humanity that he encountered
on his wanderings. All sorts and conditions of
men he must have met, from " the mountaineer,
who comes to town all rough and wild, and silently
stares in open-mouthed confusion," to the haughty
lordlings who " think themselves great kings, but
after death shall be as pigs in dung, leaving behind
them on earth horrible contempt." The hunter
he knew, who "wastes his life watching for little
birds; " the " modern prelate, who has grown so
great that he needs some one to prop him on either
side, and some one to lead, and some one to hold
him up behind, while he covers his palfrey with his
mantle, so that two beasts go marching under one
hide ; " the gambler, who in failure and in success
is thus depicted: " When the game of dice breaks
up, the loser is left behind to repine, going over
the throws again, a sadder and wiser man. But
all the gang goes off with the other, one walking

[H4]

EXPERIENCE

in front of him, one plucking at him from behind,
one beside him claiming his attention. He forges
ahead, hearing this one and that, [from time to
time] stretching out his hand to some one of them,
who then drops out of the press; and thus he
escapes from their crowding." " O witless striv-
ing of mortals," exclaims the poet in his Paradiso,
" how faulty are the arguments that make thy
wings flutter downwards! One man was chasing
after law, another after the Aphorisms [of Hip-
pocrates] ; one was pursuing priesthood; another,
power, by means of violence or sophistry; one,
robbery; another, municipal business; one was
wearing himself out, entangled in the pleasures
of the flesh; another was devoting himself to
idleness — while I, liberated from all these things,
in company with Beatrice, was so gloriously wel-
comed in Heaven above ! "

It would have been sad indeed if Dante, in his
long banishment, had seen nothing but wickedness
and folly, if the only note awakened by his ex-
perience had been one of reprobation. Happily
he found also courtesy and kindness, recognition
of his talent, fame and respect, generous hos-
pitality, to which his grateful nature was quick to
respond. Contentment was never his, for he
could be satisfied with nothing short of rehabilita-
tion in his native city; but his last years seem to
have been in the main placid, if not cheerful.
Sweet to him was the thought of benefits received,
and a delight it was to record the names of bene-
factors. Some of these names would have per-

THE POWER OF DANTE

ished utterly, had he not saved them from oblivion.
What do we know of the young hostess Gentucca,
save that she made the Tuscan city of Lucca dear
to Dante, in spite of its evil repute? Who would
remember the name of Alagia dei Fieschi, married
to Moroello Malaspina, had she not entertained
our wanderer in the Lunigiana, in northwestern
Italy? Of her the shade of her uncle, Pope
Adrian V, speaks thus in Purgatory: " I have a
niece yonder, called Alagia, good by nature, if
only my house make her not wicked by its [bad]
example; and she is the only one I have left [to
pray for me] on the other side." Little report
has come to us of " good Gherardo," who was in
fact Captain General of Trevigi, in the northeast,
a member of the powerful family of Camino, but
of whom the poet implies that he is sufficiently
identified by adding the epithet " courtly " to the
adjective " good," habitually applied to him. He
is one of the three old men who still represent, in
upper Italy, the gentle breeding of past genera-
tions. " In the country watered by the Adige and
the Po," says Mark the Lombard, " goodness
and courtesy used to dwell, before [Emperor]
Frederick had his quarrel [with the papacy] ; but
now that land may be fearlessly crossed by anyone
who shall have forsworn, through shame, all com-
pany and converse with the righteous. Neverthe-
less, there still remain three old men, a rebuke
of the former age to the present; and the time
seems long to them ere God restore them to a
better life [above] : Corrado da Palazzo and
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good Gherardo and Guido da Castello, of whom
it is better to speak, in French fashion, as ' the
honest Lombard.' '

To and fro Dante must have journeyed, in
central and northern Italy. His presence is at-
tested in Padua and in Venice. At some time he
surely studied in Bologna. It is barely possible
even that he went to Paris, as Villani and Boc-
caccio affirm. But for the most part his routes
and his stations are unknown. We are sure of
this much, that he was hospitably received in
Verona by Bartolomeo (or perhaps Alboino)
della Scala in 1303 or 1304; by Moroello Mala-
spina in the Lunigiana in 1306; in Verona again
by Can Grande della Scala; and in his last years
by Guido Novello da Polenta, nephew of Fran-
cesca da Rimini, in Ravenna, " where the Po
descends to find peace from its pursuers." To the
families of Malaspina and la Scala — and espe-
cially to Can Grande — he pays fine tribute.
Why, in his extant works, he has no praise for
Ravenna, the Polenta clan, or Guido Novello, his
last host, I cannot guess. It was in Ravenna that
Dante died in 1321.

A Latin letter, ostensibly by Dante and prob-
ably authentic, dedicates the Paradiso to Can
Grande, to whom the first canto is sent with this
document. The epistle is thus addressed : " To
the magnificent and victorious lord, Lord Can
Grande della Scala, Vicar General of the most
holy Roman Empire in the city of Verona and the
town of Vicenza, his most devoted Dante Ali-

[II?]

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ghieri, a Florentine by birth but not in character,
wishes a life happy through time everlasting and
a perpetual increase of his glorious name." The
letter begins by declaring that the author was
attracted to Can Grande's court by its far-spread
and almost unbelievable fame. " There did I
behold your greatness, there did I both see and
feel your kindness ; and whereas I had previously
suspected exaggeration on the part of those who
had told thereof, I now learned that the exaggera-
tion was on the part of the facts themselves. And
so it came to pass that having already been, from
report alone, a respectful well-wisher, I became
at first sight a liegeman and a friend." Dante's
earlier sojourn in Verona is thus prophesied by
Cacciaguida : " Thy first refuge and thy first inn
shall be the courtesy of that great Lombard who
bears [on his coat of arms] the sacred bird [of
Empire] at the top of the ladder. He shall have
for thee such considerate regard that — between
you two — of doing and asking, that one shall
come first which, among others, lags behind."
In Verona Dante is to see Can Grande, at that
time a boy of nine, of whom Cacciaguida foretells
momentous things, " things incredible even to
those who shall behold them."

Another Latin epistle, generally accepted as
really Dante's, is addressed "to Lord Moroello,
Marquis of Malaspina." To prove what ties of
gratitude bind the servant to the master, and to
counteract any false accusations of neglect, the
author has decided to bring this communication
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before His Magnificence, now that he has parted
from that court for which he has yearned ever
since. The letter serves as a preface to one of
Dante's odes, a love-song written in the Casentino.
On the mountain of Purgatory, among the princely
shades waiting in a dell, there is a member of this
same hospitable and valiant family. " * I was
called Conrad Malaspina,' " it says. " ' I am not
the elder, but am descended from him. On my
own people I bestowed that love which here is
being purified.' ' Oh ! ' said I to him, ' never have
I been in your lands. [This was in 1300.] But
where in all Europe do men dwell who know them
not? The fame that glorifies your house pro-
claims the masters and proclaims the county, so
that he who never yet was there hath heard
thereof. And I swear to you, as I hope to go on
high, that your honored clan is still beautiful with
the glory of purse and sword. From habit and
nature it hath such advantage that, however the
wicked chief may twist the world awry, it alone
walketh straight, despising the wrongful way.' '
Thereupon the spirit prophesies that ere seven
years be gone, Dante's friendly opinion shall be
confirmed by experience.

The admiration that Dante professes for such
distant courts he is far from bestowing on Flor-
ence or the neighboring cities. These get little
but the hottest invective. His burning indigna-
tion against them would seem, however, to be
oftener objective than personal, kindled by hideous
crimes or notorious sins of their inhabitants, rather

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than by injury to himself. After listening to the
piteous story of Count Ugolino, who with his sons
and grandsons was left by the Pisans to starve
in the Hunger Tower, he exclaims: "Ah! Pisa,
accursed of the peoples of that fair land where
si resounds, since thy neighbors are slow to punish
thee, let [the islands] Capara and Gorgona bestir
themselves and make a dam across the Arno's
mouth, that it may drown every human being
within thee ! " The godless thief, Vanni Fucci,
declares in Hell: "A beast am I, and Pistoia
was the right lair for me." "Ah! Pistoia,
Pistoia," cries Dante, " why dost thou not decree
to burn thyself to ashes, since thou dost outstrip
thine own seed in evil?" The sight of Branca
d' Oria, the traitor and murderer from Genoa,
moves the poet to a similar apostrophe : " Ah !
Genoese, strangers to all morality, full of all cor-
ruption, why are ye not scattered from earth?"
Bologna is a nest of panders, Lucca a hotbed of
bribery. A devil in Hell comes rushing down to
the stream of boiling pitch, bearing on his shoul-
der an official from the latter city. " From our
bridge he shouted: *O Badpaws, here is one of
the aldermen of Santa Zita ! Shove him below !
I am going back for more, to that town which I
have abundantly supplied with them. Everyone
there is a grafter, except Bonturo. There you can
turn no into yes for money.' He flung the sinner
down, and, turning back over the rugged ridge,
was swifter than a mastiff let loose on a thief.
The soul plunged under [the pitch], and came up
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EXPERIENCE

with arched back. Whereat the demons, beneath
the bridge, shouted: 'Here is no place to pray to
the Holy Face! The swimming is not like the
river Serchio! Therefore, if thou likest not our
hooks, do not show thyself above the pitch ! '
Then they snapped him up with more than a hun-
dred prongs, saying : ' Here all the dancing is
under cover. Do thy grabbing unseen, if thou
canst ! ' Even so do cooks bid their scullions push
the meat under, with their forks, in the middle
of the pot, to keep it from floating." In the por-
trayal of these mischievous guardians, wickeder
than the criminals they torment, and, as Dante and
Virgil nearly learn to their cost, quite as ready to
punish the innocent as the guilty, there seems to be
a bit of personal reminiscence; for in them the
poet probably intended to picture with grim
humor the unscrupulous officials of Florence who
accused him of dishonesty and condemned him to
death by fire.

Toward Florence, the beautiful ingrate, Dante's
feelings were mixed. Florence was his city, his
"pretty fold," for which he always yearned; yet
Florence was foolish, presumptuous, fickle, cruel,
the home of glib and shallow politics. Terrible
are his repeated denunciations and his prophecies
of coming retribution. " But a little while hence,"
he cries, " thou shalt suffer what [thy neighbor]
Prato wishes thee — not to speak of others. If
it had already happened, it would be none too
early. Would it might be thus, since it must be !
For it will be the harder for me to bear, the older

[121]

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I grow." All along the Arno, declares a soul in
Purgatory, from its mountain source to its mouth,
" virtue is shunned as a foe by all as if it were a
snake, either because of some ill fortune of the
place, or because evil custom incites them; there-
fore have the dwellers in that wretched valley so
changed their nature that one would think Circe
had put them to pasture." The people of the
Casentino are ugly swine, fit only for acorns; the
Aretines are curs, who snarl louder than their
strength justifies; the Florentines are wolves; the
Pisans foxes, so full of deceit that they fear no
trap.

From the wickedness and stupidity of men
Dante turned for comfort to the perfect goodness
and wisdom of God. Always of a genuinely re-
ligious bent, he became, in the days of adversity,
more deeply devout, more ardent and mystical
in his aspiration. With intense meditation on
things divine, came unexpected divine illumination.

Then suddenly did day redouble day,
Or so it seemed, as if the One who can
Had bid the sky a second sun display.

In very truth Beatrice might have said to him, as
she cries in the poem:

Thou art not, as thou thinkest, down on earth;
For lightning never left its native sky
So swift as thou dost seek thy land of birth.

Faithful as Dante was, and eager to conform
his will to the will of the Almighty, his intellectual
curiosity and his positive, logical mind made it

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EXPERIENCE

difficult for him to leave a mystery unexplained.
Theological study fascinated him, and he evi-
dently found in it satisfaction for most of his
speculative difficulties. One problem, however,
always baffled him : the origin of imperfection. At
least, although he returns to it again and again,
he never reaches a consistent solution. The ma-
terial world, he says, is defective because, being
made of matter, which is by nature imperfect, it
cannot fully realize God's perfect idea. This
explanation suffices for a Platonist, who holds that
God and matter are coeternal, but not for a Chris-
tian, who believes — and, if orthodox, must be-
lieve — that matter was created by the Lord.
Indeed, this doctrine of the creation of matter is
explicitly stated by Dante, who affirms also that
whatsoever God himself has made is perfect. So
we are left where we were in the first place. If it
were possible to assume that matter has always
existed, we might argue further that, not being
the work of the Creator, it is inferior, and that
whatsoever is fashioned of it must fall short of
perfection. But this assumption is heretical.
Here is a sore temptation for a philosopher,
divided between his faith and his logic. Dante
himself, as he tells us in the Banquet, was dis-
turbed by the question " whether the primal mat-
ter of the elements was conceived by God." He
decided aright; but his experience enabled him to
sympathize with those minds whose acumen and
self-confidence led them into heresy. The heretics
in his lower world are tormented but not despic-
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able. One of the poet's most impressive figures is
Farinata degli Uberti, who amid the flames
" stands with brow and chest erect, as if he held
Hell in great contempt." In his Heaven Dante
places, among the lights of theology, two men of
dubious, or more than dubious, orthodoxy: Joa-
chim of Calabria, the mystic prophet; and the
daringly brilliant philosopher Sigier of Brabant,
who in the University of Paris " syllogized in-
vidious truths."

Against unbelief he was fortified, as he was
saved from the consequences of his besetting sins,
by divine watchfulness, for which he never could
be sufficiently thankful. A special debt of grati-
tude he bore to the Blessed Virgin, the embodi-
ment of heavenly mercy, to whom he so often and
so happily appealed. His devotion to her cer-
tainly influenced his whole conception of Beatrice,
as it is developed in the Divina Commedia.
When this " most gentle lady," — about to answer
a really simple question which to Dante seems
hopelessly difficult, — when Beatrice

First breathed a pitying sigh, then sweet and mild
Inclined her eyes upon me with the look
A mother gives to her delirious child,

we see the very image of the compassionate Lady
of Heaven, " the Rose in which the divine Word
became flesh" — "that beauteous flower," says
the poet, " on which I always call at morn and
eve."

" ' Now look,' " cries St. Bernard, whom Dante

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EXPERIENCE

finds at his side when he reaches the real Paradise,
' now look into the face that is most like Christ,
for its brightness alone can prepare thee to see
Christ.' Over her I saw descending such a shower
of gladness, borne by the holy minds [of angels],
created to flit through those heights, that whatso-
ever I had seen before did not hold me rapt in
such amazement, nor reveal to me such likeness of
God." To her the saint addresses that beautiful
prayer beginning

Vergine madre, figlia del tuo Figlio,
Umile ed alta piu che creatura,
Termine fisso d' eterno consiglio,

which continues thus : " Thy kindness not only
succors him who asks, but ofttimes freely forestalls
the asking. In thee is mercy, in thee piety, in thee
magnificence, in thee is united whatsoever good-
ness there is in aught created. Now this man,
who from the lowest pool of the universe as far
as here hath beheld the spiritual states one by
one, beseeches thee, in thy grace, for such power
that his eyes may lift him still higher toward the
Last Weal. And I, who never yearned more
hotly for my own sight than I now long for his,
offer thee all my prayers — and I pray they be
not scant — that thou, with thine own supplica-
tions, melt from him every mist of his mortality,
until the Joy Supreme shall be revealed to him.
Further I pray thee, O Queen, who canst do thy
will, to keep his desires whole, after this great
vision. Let thy watchfulness overcome his human

THE POWER OF DANTE

impulses. Lo! Beatrice and all the blest are
clasping their hands to thee, joining in my
prayer! "

Those eyes which God doth love and venerate,
Upon the suppliant bent, revealed to us
How dear to her are those who supplicate.

[126]

LECTURE V
VISION

"O IMAGINATION," cries Dante, "which at
times dost so abstract us from the outer world
that a man heeds it not though a thousand trum-
pets blare about him, who kindles thee, when the
sense offers thee naught? Art thou kindled by
a light that takes shape in Heaven, either by itself
or by a will which directs it downward? " Is it
a chance ray from the stars, or is it the mysterious
purpose of the Lord, operating through their
beams, that suddenly flashes a picture before the
mind's eye ? Whether the gift come from nature
or from God, it is in some measure transmissible
from man to man. The poet not only sees visions
but has the power of clothing them in words and
thus communicating them to others. This gift
was possessed in the highest degree by Dante.
The reading of his poem is like a dream of magic
pictures — pictures clear and beautiful, but mo-
mentary, crowding one another in their swift,
ceaseless eddies, while the deep current of thought
rolls on below. For most readers of Dante nowa-
days, this lightning play of description constitutes
his principal charm.

Not a few of his sketches are evidently sug-
[127]

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gested by his reading, many more by his experience
of men and things ; some would indeed seem to have
been flashed into his brain by the stars. Now and
again we find a scene, drawn by him in his own
way, but born of a general impression derived
from some book ancient or modern. Virgil's
Elysian Fields are probably the prototype both
of the Noble Castle, — which shelters the great
spirits of pagan antiquity in Dante's Limbus,
shining bright and peaceful in the midst of the
dark air a-quiver with sighs, — and of the Valley
of the Princes, flowery and sweet in the lap of the
mountainside of Purgatory, peopled by shades of
recent rulers. Dante's Garden of Eden is made
up of features common in legend — trees, flowers,
birds, streams — but invested with new loveliness
by Dante's phrasing and with new interest by his
introduction of the sweet maiden, Matilda, the
embodiment of eternal springtime. It is one
thing to say, as the old stories do: "There did
they behold wonderful trees, which never lost
their leaves; and marvelous birds, singing songs
not heard on earth ; and miraculous flowers cover-
ing all the ground; and four beautiful rivers," and
quite another thing to write such a passage as
Dante's

Vago gia di cercar dentro e dintorno
La divina foresta spessa e viva,
Ch' agli occhi temperava il nuovo giorno,

Senza piu aspettar, lasciai la riva,
Prendendo la campagna lento lento
Su per lo suol che d' ogni parte oliva.

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VISION

Impatient now the mysteries to spy
Within the thick and lusty forestland
Which screened the rising sunshine from the eye,

Awaiting naught beside, I left the strand,
Advancing slowly, slowly 'mid the trees
O'er turf that fragrance breathed on every hand.

A gentle wind, which, never changing, flees
Eternally, was blowing on my brow,
But blowing softly as the softest breeze ;

And, quick to quake, the leaves on every bough
In that direction all inclining went
Where casts its shade the holy mountain now ;

But not enough from their uprightness bent
To still the birds that in the tree-tops stay
All fearless, on their highest art intent.

With glad, full-throated song, the coming day
They greeted 'mid the twigs in music clear,
While rustling leaves accompanied their lay.

Such burden we from branch to branch may hear
Throughout the grove of pines on Chiassi's shore,
When ^Eolus Scirocco sends anear.

So far within the ancient woodland's core
My lingering steps had carried me that I
The spot from whence I came could see no more,

When lo ! a brook forbade my going by,

Which toward the left, with tiny ripples, pried
The grass which all along its bank did lie.

The purest rill that runs on mountainside

With us, would some uncleanness seem to show
Compared to that, which naught doth ever hide,

Tho' shady, O ! so shady it doth flow
Beneath undying green, which not a ray
Of sun or moon will e'er admit below.

My feet did halt, and yet mine eyes did stray
Beyond the streamlet, gazing, wondering
At all the fresh and varied gifts of May;

And then appeared to me, — as doth a thing
Which unexpectedly its face hath shown

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Make for amazement every thought take wing, —
A lady walking through the field alone,

Singing and plucking, choosing flower from flower
Amid the tints wherewith her path was strewn.

Hell, as well as Eden, has its traditions. In
other visions of the lower world, as in Dante's,
there is a graded immersion in ice; but there are
no " faces grinning doglike," and the author does
not " forever afterwards shudder at the sight of
frozen pools." In the apocryphal Vision of St.
Paul there are murderers plunged to different
depths in a fiery river; but we miss the "shrill
shrieks of the boiled " as we walk " along the
edge of the boiling red." Brother Alberico speaks
of a fiery breath blowing spirits before it; but it
is an unpoetic breath, with no suggestion of " star-
lings borne along by their wings, in cold weather,
in a broad, close array " nor of " dirge-singing
cranes making a long streak of themselves in the
air," and it does not blow in a place " dumb of all
light."

Now I begin the doleful notes to hear
Not far away from me, for I am come
Where cries of grief abounding smite mine ear.

The place I reach, of every light is dumb,
And bellows like the storm-tormented main
When warring winds on ocean's surface drum.

The never-ceasing hellish hurricane

Sweeps on the spirits in its circling swirl,
Turning and clashing them in endless pain.

Oftener than a whole scene, it is some rapid
little sketch that stirs Dante's fancy and moves
him to free imitation. Such is the landslip de-
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VISION

scribed by Albertus Magnus and added by our
poet to the topography of Hell: "That slide
which smote the flank of Adige, slipping down
from the mountaintop in such fashion as to afford
a sort of path to anyone who might be above."
Such the little boat, which, both in Virgil's lower
world and in Dante's, feels the unaccustomed
weight of a human body, and " cuts deeper into
the water than is its habit." Such is the figure
of David, dancing "with all his might" before
the Ark of the Covenant, and his wife " Michal
Saul's daughter," who " looked through a window,
and saw king David leaping and dancing before
the Lord, and . . . despised him in her heart."
Such is Satan, falling " as lightning from heaven."
Frequently, as in this last case, it is one word or
brief phrase that has stamped itself on the poet's
imagination. If, in Statius's Thebaid, the " fat
clouds" had not obstructed Mercury's progress,
Dante's angel, who comes to his rescue before the
City of Dis, walking dryshod over the Styx, would
not be " fanning from his face the fat air, busily
swinging his left hand before him." If the book
of Great Derivations, the nearest approach to a
dictionary that our poet knew, had not given to
the word hypocrite the fantastic etymology super-
auratus, " gilded outside," the " whited sepul-
chers " in Dante's Hell might have escaped the
punishment of crushing leaden cloaks, covered
with gold externally. We wonder why Dante's
giants are placed, not with those who did violence
to God, but far below, around the mouth of the

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last pit of Hell — until we recall Virgil's words
in the jEneid: " Here that ancient race of earth,
the Titan brood, struck down by the thunderbolt,
roll in the lowest depth" The Griffin in Dante's
Garden of Eden, the creature of two natures,
which symbolizes Christ, has " limbs of gold, in
so far as it is bird, and the rest of white mixed
with red," even as the " beloved " in Solomon's
Song, who is also a symbol of Christ, " is white
and ruddy," and " his head is as the most fine
gold." Lucan tells of flocks of cranes, which,
" as chance directs, shape various patterns," but
" when the wings are dispersed, the broken letter
fades; " and so the bright souls in Dante's Heaven
of Jupiter, — "like birds which rise from a river-
bank and, as if rejoicing together in their feast,
make themselves now into a ring, now into some
other figure, — flitted singing, and took the form
now of D, now of I, now of L, first tuneful and
moving to their own music, then, having turned
into one of these letters, lingering a little while
in silence: " thus they spell the sentence from the
Book of Wisdom, " Diligite justitiam, qui judi-
catis terram," " Love justice, ye that be judges of
the earth." On the shore of Dante's lonely island,
it is just before sunrise, on Easter Sunday, that

The dawn was driving out the early breeze,
Which ran so quick ahead that far from shore
I recognized the rippling of the seas ;

but Virgil's " sea that gleams beneath a quiver-
ing light " is a nocturne. A troubadour, Bernart
de Ventadorn, once sang thus of the lark:

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VISION

The little lark that full of mirth
Up, up the sunbeam winged her way

Forgets herself and drops to earth,
With heart enraptured by her lay.

The same bird, in the Divine Comedy, is tuneful,
then silent, like her Provencal prototype:

The little lark that singing, soaring went
Is silent now, and craveth naught beside
The last sweet note which made her heart content.

Our poet's elderly counselor, Brunette Latini,
following a line of naturalists modern and ancient,
describes in his Tresor an Indian monster called
Manticore, which has a man's face, a lion's body,
a scorpion's tail, and eats human flesh. This
animal, with a suggestion from the man-faced and
scorpion-tailed locusts of the Apocalypse, became,
in Dante's hands, the dragon Geryon, genius of
fraud, which comes floating up through the air
at the edge of the abyss.

" Behold the creature with the pointed tail,

Which crosses mountains, shatters plate and wall —
The one whose stench makes all the world to ail."

These words to me my guide begins to call ;

Then bids the beast ashore, with beckoning hand,
Hard by the dike whereon our footsteps fall.

That image foul of Fraud then came to land,
And beacht upon the brink its head and breast,
But never drew its tail upon the strand.

Its face was like a man's, and of the best
(Benevolence its skin did never quit),
But serpentlike its trunk and all the rest ;

Two paws and arms, all hairy to the pit.

With shapes of knots and little rings were lined
Its back and sides and belly, every bit.

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More colors ne'er did Turk or Tartar wind,
Nor paint the warp and woof of carpet more;
Arachne such a pattern ne'er designed.

As skiffs at times are left projecting o'er,
Partly in water, partly in their place, —
As yonder, on the greedy Teutons' shore,

The beaver takes his seat, the fish to chase, —
E'en thus did that disgusting beast depend
From off the rock that doth the sand encase.

In empty space its wriggling tail did bend,
Twisting on high the poison-laden fork
Which, scorpion-fashion, armed its very end.

On the back of this monster Dante and Virgil
descend into the pit.

Upon those ugly shoulders I alight,

And try to say — but utterance never came
As I expected: " See thou hold me tight! "

When I was mounted, he (the very same
Who oft in danger held me safe and fast)
With clasping arms sustained my frightened frame.

" Now, Geryon," he cried, " set forth at last!
Retard thy fall, thy spiral course expand.
Remember what a novel load thou hast ! "

Just as a parting skiff is pusht from land

And backs and backs, thus Geryon withdraws;
Then, finding empty space on every hand,

He turns his tail where erst his bosom was,
Stretches it out, and wriggles like an eel,
And paddling pulls the air with both his paws.

No greater fear did Phaethon once feel

When, losing Phoebus' reins, he baked the sky,
As all the Milky Way doth still reveal, —

Nor Icarus, when heat did liquefy
The wax, and pluckt the pinions from his back,
His father shrieking: " Badly dost thou fly," —

Than mine is now, perceiving that our track
Lies only thro' the air, where nothing shows,

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VISION

Beside the beast, but one unbroken black.
Slowly the creature smoothly swimming goes ;

And naught betrays his round descending crawl,

Except a gentle wind which upward blows.
Now on my right I hear the waterfall

Make under us a terrifying din ;

So I project my eyes with head and all.
But seeing fires and hearing wails begin,

More timidly the monster I bestride

And, all a-quiver, draw my body in.
And now I mark our circling downward ride,

Unseen before, at last revealed to sight

By torments pressing near on every side.
As falcon, after long and fruitless flight,

Uncalled by lure or bird, doth downward start,

The while his owner sighs : " Thou wilt alight,"
Wearily stoops, whose going was so smart,

Wheeling a hundred times, and, cross and fell,

Far from his master perches all apart,
So Geryon alighted there in Hell,

Beneath the ragged rock's enfolding ring.

His passengers unloaded in the well,
He sped away like arrow-notch from string.

[From Dante, pp. 356-357.]

And all this mixture of stupendous fancy and vivid
realism owes its inception to a terse, prosaic de-
scription of a preposterous animal by a parcel of
" nature-fakers."

One of these, Brunette Latini, at the beginning
of his allegorical Tesoretto, relates that he
" strayed in a strange wood." You all know what
grew out of that haunting phrase :

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
Che la diritta via era smarrita.

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THE POWER OF DANTE

Midway along the road that mortals go
I found myself within a forest drear,
From off the pathway I had wandered so.

Ah ! what a tearful thing to tell is here —
This rough and wild and woody wilderness,
Which, even at the thought, renews my fear!

So bitter 't is that death is nearly less !

But I the good which there I found would say,
And so the other sights I must confess.

I cannot rightly tell what made me stray,
So full was I of sleep precisely then
When I forsook the veritable way.

For his description of the earth and other
bodies, as viewed from the constellation of
Gemini, Dante had a more extensive model in
the " Dream of Scipio " in Cicero's Republic.
Like Dante, the young Scipio finds in heaven a
great ancestor, a warrior; and both dreamers
look back through space. Yet really, aside from
the general situation, the two accounts have little
in common. Cicero was a moralist, Dante a
poet. " Gaze down," says Beatrice, " and see
how much world I have already brought under
thy feet."

With that I turned and downward peered a while
Through all the seven spheres, and saw the earth
So small, its cheap appearance made me smile.

He sees the upper surface of the moon, which
has ,no spots; he sees the sun and, close to it,
Mercury and Venus; he sees Jupiter between
Mars and Saturn ; and comprehends their varying
orbits.

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VISION

Then showed to me the seven, star by star,
How big they be, how rapid is their flight,
And how unthinkably remote they are.

The little plot for which we fiercely fight,
As I was turning with the deathless Twins,
All met, from hills to river-mouths, my sight.

" Lower thine eyes again," says Beatrice, after
an interval, " and see how thou hast revolved."
His revolution with Gemini has described an arc
of 90° : on one side, beyond Cadiz, is the " mad
course of Ulysses " over the Atlantic; on the other,
the Phoenician shore, whence Europa departed on
the bull's back. More of the earth's surface he
could have seen, had the part lighted by the sun
exactly coincided with his field of vision; but that
was not the case, the poet being in Gemini and
the sun in Aries — or, as he puts it, " the sun,
beneath my feet, was ahead, more than a con-
stellation away." Now of all this clearly con-
ceived and fascinating detail there is virtually
nothing in Cicero: at most, a phrase of his may
have suggested Dante's " hills and river mouths."
It was Dante's habit, when he borrowed, to
contribute much more than he took. His famous
simile of the " mother-doves, at affection's call,
returning through the air to the dear nest, with
wings outspread and still, carried by their desire,"
was suggested, to be sure, by some lines in the
JEneid; but Virgil's dove has in common with
Dante's only the motionless wings: she is flying
away from her nest, not towards it, nor is she
"carried by desire" — which, of course, is the

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feature that lends the little picture its supreme
distinction. Similarly, our poet's " autumn leaves
which drop one by one until the branch beholds
all its garments on the ground " owes to Virgil
only the dropping leaves, the pathetic fancy of
the stripped branch being Dante's invention.
Boethius once wrote of the " rivers Tigris and
Euphrates breaking from a single spring, and
then, with severed waters, parting company."
And in Dante's Garden of Eden there are two
streams issuing from one source, which remind
the author of the classic rivers:

Euphrates I, and Tigris, seemed to see
From out a single fountain gushing there
And parting, like two friends, unwillingly.

Here again the human touch is the work of the
later poet.

In the transformations which go on in Dante's
snake-pit, — where Ovid is his model, — the ele-
ment that is added is not sympathy but horror.
The Metamorphoses tells of two bodies growing
together into one, but the way of telling is curious,
even pretty, rather than awful, with its " ivies
entwining the tall tree-trunks " and its " mixture
of two bodies fusing, and a single face spreading
over them both." Look at the other picture.
Dante and Virgil are gazing down into a ditch
where thieves are punished; a group of three
human figures gathers at the bottom of the bank;
and Dante, hearing the name of one of the sinners
pronounced by chance, lays his finger across his

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VISION

lips, " from nose to chin," to solicit Virgil's at-
tentive silence.

If, reader, thou be tardy to admit

What I shall tell, 't will be no great surprise,
For I, who saw it, scarce believe in it.

As I was staring down with all my eyes,
A snake six-footed grabs a man and flings
Itself all over him and firmly ties;

Its middle feet around the belly brings,

And with its forward ones the arms doth seize,
And both the cheeks with fangs extended stings.

Its hinder feet embrace the thighs and knees.
Goes crawling up, along the back, its tail,
Thrust in between the legs with piercing squeeze.

Never so tight on tree did ivy trail

As twines the hideous beast, whose clutches pin
Monster to man, and limb to member nail.

Like melting wax, they mingle, skin to skin ;
The face of one the other's color learns.
Now neither looks like what it once has been :

As up a piece of paper, when it burns,

A sort of brownish tint precedes the flame,
And neither white nor black the color turns.

The other spirits watch, and both exclaim:
" Agnello, thou 'st become a thing unknown,
Nor one nor two, nor other nor the same! "

Two heads already into one had grown ;
Two faces, dual now no more, combined,
Fusing their features, into one alone.

Four strips into a pair of arms entwined,

Belly and chest and thighs and shins and face
Became such parts as nature ne'er designed.

Remained of former likeness not a trace:

Both two and none the gruesome figure seemed.
And then the thing moved on, with sluggish pace.

Carved in marble, in Dante's Purgatory, is the
story of the humility and the justice of the Em-

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peror Trajan, an incident which the poet found,
much as he relates it, in medieval legend.

'T is Emperor Trajan's form that next appears,
And, near his rein, a widow in distress,
Whose attitude betokens grief and tears.

And all around him horsemen crowd and press
And eagles wrought in gold, on banners tall,
Are flapping in the wind (the eye would guess).

The mourner seems to say, among them all :
" My heart is broken, for my son is slain.
For punishment, my Lord, on you I call ! "

" Now wait a bit till I return again,"
He answers. " O my Lord," she seems to moan,
As one impatient from insistent pain,

" If you return not? " " He who holds the throne
Shall do thee justice." " What shall profit you
Another's justice, who forget your own ? "

" Be comforted," he cries, " for I must do
My duty ere I take another step.
Not only justice calls, but pity, too."

In this instance, Dante's source was religious
and popular. More frequently, however, the
spark that fires his imagination comes from the
classics — oftenest from Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, or
Statius. These suggestions from the Latin poets
are most apparent in the Hell, least in the Para-
dise.

Now let us drop all the cases in which there
seems to be, however remote, a literary model.
We have seen, even in the partially imitative ex-
amples hitherto considered, how abundant are
Dante's own resources. He was a dreamer, to
be sure; but he was also, like Theophile Gautier,
a man for whom the outer world exists. And it
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existed, for him, in no vague, indeterminate shape,
" without form and void," but clear in construc-
tion, precise in outline, vivid in color, quick in
meaning. When he looked at nature or at man,
his eye, like that of a Japanese artist, caught the
salient, peculiar traits, and stored them in a mem-
ory which let nothing fade. A touch or two, and
the whole likeness is revived in his mind and con-
veyed to ours. Keen observation of. reality is
characteristic of the Italians, and still more so is
the habit of stating experience, physical or mental,
in terms of things seen — of attaching a visual
image to the idea or the phrase. At times, Dante
names the places whence his mental pictures came.
The conduit running across the fiery desert in
Hell is compared to the dikes built by the Paduans
along the Brenta, to protect them against flood
when the snows melt on the mountains. The
uncanny wood of the suicides is a development of
the image of the wild Maremma, in Tuscany, be-
tween Cecina and Corneto.

" We came meanwhile," he says, in the Pur-
gatorio, "to the foot of a mountain; here we found
the cliff so steep that legs would have there been
agile to no purpose. Between Lerici and Turbia
[along the Italian Riviera, Turbia being just
above Monte Carlo] the loneliest, most deserted
path is a plain and easy stairway, compared to
this."

Here we have a scene from home: " The angel
led us to a spot where the precipice was cut; then
waved his wing over my brow, and promised me a

THE POWER OF DANTE

safe journey. The bank, which comes down
abruptly from the terrace above, is eased here —
just as, on the right, to climb the hill where sits
the church [of S. Miniato] (overlooking the well-
governed city [Florence] beyond the Rubaconte
bridge), the bold sweep of the ascent is broken
by stairs," made in the good old days when men
were honest.

It is altogether likely that the poet was in Rome,
with countless hosts of other strangers, in 1300,
the year of the great papal jubilee. At any rate
he tells us how, in this emergency, the Romans, to
prevent a block on the crowded bridge of Sant'An-
gelo, hit upon the plan of making people turn
to the right. Two files of sinners, in Hell, are
moving in opposite directions, " as the Romans,
on account of the enormous throng, in the jubilee
year, found an expedient to get people over the
bridge; for on one side they all have their faces
toward the Castle [of Sant' Angelo] and are
going to St. Peter's, while on the other edge they
are going toward the hill."

Portraying a cleft full of boiling pitch, in which
grafters get their due, Dante recalls the Arsenal
of Venice, famous throughout Europe for many
centuries. " As in the Arsenal of the Venetians,
in wintertime, the tenacious pitch is boiling, to
coat their unsound craft, — for they cannot navi-
gate, and, instead, one is building a new boat, one
is calking the sides of a vessel that has made many
a trip, one is hammering at stem, one at stern, one
is making oars, one twisting ropes, another patch-

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ing foresail or mainsail, — thus, not with fire but
by divine contrivance, thick pitch was boiling down
below, and making either bank all sticky."

The poets have to climb up a great cliff through
a narrow crevice in the rock: " Gfttimes, in the
season when his grapes are ripening, the farmer
hedges up with a single pitchforkful of his briars
a wider breach in his fence than was the passage
through which my leader, and I after him,
mounted alone, when the company had left us.
Men scramble up to San Leo, men get down to
Noli, men scale the summit of Bismantova, with
their own feet; but here a man has to fly — I
mean, fly with the feathers and swift wings of
great eagerness, following that guide who gave
me hope and light. Up we climbed through the
split rock, squeezed by the wall on either side ; and
the footing below called for both hands and legs.
When we had emerged on the upper rim of the
tall precipice, on the open ledge, ' Master,' said
I, ' which way shall we go ? '

Another ascent through another crack — this
time at the entrance to Purgatory — evokes no
explicit local reminiscence : " We were going up
through a rifted rock, in a cleft that turned to this
side and to that, like a wave advancing and re-
treating. ' Here we must use some skill,' began
my leader, ' in clinging, now here, now there, to
the wall that recedes.' And this made our steps
so slow that the waning moon reached her bed,
to lie down again, before we were out of that
needle's eye. But when at last we were free in

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the open, above, where the mountainside draws
back, — I weary, and both of us doubtful about
our way, — we stopped on a flat place, more soli-
tary than roads through deserts. From the edge
that borders the void to the foot of the high bank,
which goes straight up, is perhaps three times the
length of a human body; and as far as my sight
could fly, first to the left side, then to the right,
this shelf looked to me just the same."

Higher up on the mountain the travelers are
enveloped in a thick cloud of smoke, which calls
up the picture of Alpine mists : " Remember,
reader, — if ever in the Alps a fog has caught
thee, through which thou couldst see no better
than a mole sees through its filmy eye, — remem-
ber how, when the thick, wet vapors begin to grow
thinner, the djsk of the sun feebly shows through
them, and thy fancy will quickly come to see how
I first beheld the sun again, just as it was on the
point of setting."

Down on the damp, breezy shore, the rushes
grow, close to the sea : " This little isle, round
about its lowest edge, down yonder where the
waves plash, bears rushes on the soft ooze. No
other plant, that puts forth leaves or hardens, can
live there, because it yields not to the gusts."
There it is that the dew is slowest to evaporate :
" We were walking over the lonely flatland, like
one who is going back to his lost path, and, until
he reaches it, thinks he is moving to no purpose.
When we had come to a spot where the dew con-
tends with the sunshine, and, being in a cool place,

VISION

is little rarified, my master gently laid both his
hands, wide open, on the grass."

In the following description of a waterfall, we
find once more a specific locality: " I was follow-
ing him; and we had gone but a little way when
the noise of the water was so close that, had we
spoken, we could scarcely have heard each other.
Even as the first river that has a course of its own
to the east from Monviso, on the left slope of the
Apennines (called Acquacheta above, before com-
ing down into its low bed, but bereft of that name
at Forli), even as this river reverberates there
above St. Benedict's in the Alps, — because it
shoots down a single fall instead of being divided
into a thousand, — thus, falling over a precipi-
tous bank, we found that dark water reechoing so
loud that in a little while it would have hurt the
ear."

Effective use is made by Dante, in Purgatory,
of his shadow, which differentiates him from the
disembodied inhabitants and also from Virgil,
his companion. In Hell it was too dark for the
souls to see whether he cast a shadow or not; but
in Purgatory, in the daytime, his opaqueness can-
not escape notice. First of all, Dante himself is
startled, — at sunrise, as he and his master are
standing side by side, with their backs to the east,
— to see only one shadow cast before them : " The
light of the sun, which was flaming ruddy behind
us, was broken, in front of me, in the shape which
the stoppage of its rays found in me. I turned to
one side, fearing I was forsaken, when I saw the

THE POWER OF DANTE

earth darkened in front of me alone. And my
comforter said: 'Why art thou distrustful?'
Here he turned quite around towards me : ' Dost
thou not believe that I am with thee, guiding
thee?'"

Presently the souls on the mountainside take
notice of Dante's shade : " I had already left these
ghosts, and was following my leader's footprints,
when one of them shouted behind me, lifting up
his finger: ' Look! the sunbeam does not seem to
shine on the left of that lower figure, and he seems
to act like a living man ! ' I turned my eyes, at
the sound of this speech, and saw them staring in
amazement at me, at me alone, and at the broken
light. ' Why,' said my master, ' is thy mind so
caught that thou slackenest thy gait? What mat-
ters it to thee what they whisper here?' . . .
Meanwhile across the slope, a little ahead of us,
a crowd was singing Miserere in alternation.
When they saw that I, with my body, did not give
way to the passage of the rays, they changed their
song into a long, hoarse ' Oh ! ' And two of
them, after the fashion of messengers, ran to meet
us, and questioned us. ' Let us know what ye
are!'

As Dante walks along the outer edge of the
path, on the brink of the cliff, to keep clear of a
mass of fire that juts out over most of the way,
his shadow, falling on the yellow flame, turns it
red; and a crowd of souls, marching in the blaze,
observe his presence by this change of color:
" While we were proceeding thus along the rim,
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VISION

one by one, and my kind master kept saying,
' Take heed, mind my warning,' the sun was shin-
ing on my right shoulder, for already its radiance
was turning all the west from azure to white ; and
I was making the flame look ruddier with my
shadow, and even at that slight hint I saw many
spirits take notice, as they went by. Thus it was
that they began to speak of me; for they went on
to say to one another : ' This one does not look
like an unsubstantial body.' Then some came
towards me, as far as they could, always careful
not to come out where they should not burn."

Once again the living Dante is an object of
amazement — this time, in the circle of gluttony:
" Our speech did not delay our going, nor our
going our speech; but, conversing, we went briskly
on, like a ship pushed by a fair wind. And the
souls, which looked like things twice dead, ob-
serving that I was alive, sucked in wonder of me
through their hollow eyes."

These scattered passages show how skilfully
the poet could ring changes on one theme. Let
us turn to another. In the following lines, it is
three in the afternoon, and Dante, as he walks,
is just facing the sunset; "and the sunbeams
struck the middle of our noses (because we had
so encircled the mountain that we were walk-
ing straight toward the setting sun), when, all
at once, I felt my brow much more weighed down
with brightness than it had been before, and, not
knowing why, I was amazed." First he tries,
with his hands, to shade his eyes from this in-

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THE POWER OF DANTE

creased light, but in vain; then he conjectures that
it may be refracted upward by some pool in his
path; finally he asks Virgil: " ' What is it, sweet
father, from which I cannot screen my eyes enough
to help me, and which seems to be moving to-
wards us? ' ' Marvel not,' he answered, ' if the
family of Heaven still dazzles thee. It is a mes-
senger arrived to bid us mount. Soon it shall
come to pass that the sight of such things shall not
be a pain, but a gladness as great as nature has
prepared thee to enjoy.' '

With angels, we pass beyond the field of ex-
perience into the realm of creative imagination.

Came forth the lovely creature from afar,
Its raiment white, as beautiful its head
As looks to us the twinkling morning star.

It spread its arms, and then its wings it spread.
" O come, draw near, the stairs are close at hand,
And all the climb is easy now," it said.

Of course, angels had in art already assumed a
certain conventional exterior; but of that Dante
really keeps only the sublimated human form and
the wings. His angelic figures are made up almost
wholly of sweetness and light. One of them
speaks " in a voice far more living than ours."
It is the function of another of these heavenly
messengers to transport souls in a boat from the
Tiber's mouth to the island of Purgatory. The
souls in question belong to Christians who have
just died penitent; and the Tiber's mouth rep-
resents the bosom of the Church. Dante and
Virgil are on the shore of the island, newly ar-

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VISION

rived, when they see, in the distance, first the
angel's shining face, then its white wings and gar-
ment, finally the craft. " We were still close to
the sea, like people wondering about their way,
heart pressing forward, body standing motionless,
when lo ! — even as Mars, at the approach of
morn, shines red through the thick mist, down in
the west, just above the ocean level, — so there
appeared to me (as I hope to see it again!) a
light coming over the water so swift that no flight
can compare with its speed. And when I had for
a moment withdrawn my eye from it, to question
my leader, I saw it again, bigger and brighter.
Next, on either side of it, something white ap-
peared, and beneath, little by little, another white-
ness. My master as yet spake not a word, until
the first white spots revealed themselves as wings.
As soon as he was sure who the boatman was, he
shouted : ' Down, down on thy knees ! Here is
God's angel ! Clasp thy hands ! Henceforth thou
shalt meet such ministers as these. See how he
scorns all human instruments, plying no oar, nor
other sail than his own wings, between such dis-
tant shores. See how he holds his pinions uplifted
toward heaven, fanning the air with those eternal
plumes, which change not like the hair of mortals.'
Then, as the bird of God came nearer and nearer,
it shone brighter still, so bright that my eye could
not endure it close at hand; and I looked down.
The angel came ashore with a little boat so light
that the water swallowed none of it. At the stern
stood the heavenly helmsman, — such a shape

THE POWER OF DANTE

that the mere description of it would be a bene-
diction, — and within sat more than a hundred
spirits, all of them singing together, with one
voice, ' When Israel went out of Egypt,' and the
rest of the psalm that follows in the writ. Then
he made over them the sign of the holy cross,
whereat they all threw themselves on the shore;
and he departed, fleet as he had come."

Here is a scene, just as original in its conception,
but as different in character as picture can be from
picture. We are in the very core of the earth,
beside Satan — a vast monstrous form, wedged
into a mass of rock and ice, his upper part project-
ing into Hell, his legs into a cave on the other
side. Now, near his middle is the centre of our
globe, the centre of gravity of all matter: Satan's
head, therefore, is above the middle on one side
of that centre; but his feet are above it on the
other. For a straight downward motion, if it be
continued in the same direction beyond the earth's
centre, becomes an upward motion as soon as it
crosses that point. Dante and Virgil have pursued
such a course : they have crawled through a crack,
passed the middle point of the globe, and emerged
into a cavern still very close to the centre, but be-
longing to the other hemisphere. Dante as yet
does not realize what they have done, having been
carried on Virgil's back.

From out the crevice of a stone he crept,
And on the nearest edge he seated me,
Then cautiously across to me he stept.

I lifted up my eyes, and thought to see

VISION

The shape of Satan we had left behind,
But saw, projecting upward, shank and knee.
Now let the reader ignorant and blind,
Who doth not understand what we had past,
Imagine how distracted was my mind.

Solid realism is the tone of Dante's Hell; his
Purgatory is still of earth, but surrounded by a
celestial atmosphere; his Heaven is compounded
almost exclusively of light and music. Think,
then, what almost superhuman resourcefulness is
required to diversify the stages of his journey
through the skies ! In one place, dancing rings of
bright spirits; in another, a ladder of light, ex-
tending beyond the range of vision, with souls
flitting over it; in still another, a vast army of
militant ghosts collected in the form of a gigantic
fiery cross, like two Milky Ways intersecting at
right angles, and all alive with song. Elsewhere
a host of shining souls takes the form of an Eagle,
symbol of the Holy Roman Empire, which flaps
its wings like a real bird, and speaks with a single
voice.

Methought I heard a river murmuring

Adown its clear descent from stone to stone,
A witness to its bounteous mountain spring.

As music in the zither takes its tone
Along the neck, and in the tuneful reed
Along the holes wherein the breath is blown,

Thus, rising up with never-changing speed,
Within the eagle flowed a murmuring thrill
Along the neck, as 't were a hollow weed ;

There turned to voice, and issued thro' the bill,
Pronouncing words, which my expectant heart,
That wrote them down, with exstasy did fill.

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Dante's first experience of heaven is his rapid
ascent, with Beatrice, from the Garden of Eden to
the moon, into whose substance they penetrate.

The inborn thirst for Heaven, which never dies,
Was sweeping us along from where we were,
Wellnigh as swift as turn the wheeling skies.

My lady lookt aloft, and I at her ;

And quicker than a bolt can fly and light
And quit the notch, with nothing to deter,

I saw myself transported to a site

Where something wonderful mine eyes did meet.
And she who readeth all my thoughts aright

Now turned to me as glad as she was sweet :

" Thank God within thy heart," she said, " who thus
Hath carried us his lowest star to greet."

Methought a heavy cloud envelopt us,
Solid but gleaming, limpid yet opaque,
Like diamond made by sunshine luminous.

Inside itself th' eternal pearl did take
Both her and me, as water takes a ray
Of sunlight piercing thro' without a break.

Now Beatrice, with her disciple, is about to
flash from the moon to the planet Mercury, and
stands gazing up toward the Empyrean:

My lady spake as I to write contrive;

Then turned, all full of yearning wistfulness,

Toward the quarter that is most alive.
Her changing form and silence motionless

Restrain my eager mind, which speaketh not,

Tho' questions new and strange begin to press.
Like arrowhead that hits the target's dot

Before the quivering string hath come to rest,

So we into the second kingdom shot.
Such happiness my lady there possest

VISION

That, when she stopt within the planet bright,
That orb with greater brilliancy was blest.

And if the smiling star increast its light,

Then what became of me, whose natural mood
Is sensitive to every sound and sight?

As in a limpid pond the finny brood

Come swimming up, when falleth from above
A thing that hath to them the look of food,

So I beheld a thousand splendors move,
Approaching us, and each appeared to cry:
" Lo ! here is one who shall increase our love ! "

In this conception of things never seen by mor-
tal eye, Dante goes beyond the usual domain of
poets; but he passes even further. The pictures
thus far drawn, though novel in their totality, are
made of materials known to the senses. But in
his figures of celestial joy, his " smile of the uni-
verse," in his symbols of Grace and of God, he
transcends the bounds of description, conveying,
through means necessarily finite and material, the
impression of immaterial infinity. This is sug-
gestion, not painting. It is " such stuff as dreams
are made on " — dreams, which faintly linger
when we first awake, and which we afterwards
vainly struggle to recall.

So slumber breaks, when smites the covered eye
A new and suddenly appearing light;
And, breaking, quivers ere it wholly die.

A man was I who dimly catches sight

Of some forgotten dream, and tries and tries
To bring it back to mind, but cannot quite.

One more dream-passage I shall cite in conclusion.
It tells what Dante experienced in endeavoring to

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reduce to words his ineffable concept; it tells what
we, on closing the Paradise, think we have felt.

E'en as a man who seeth in his sleep,

Whose mood still lingers, when the dream is done,
Tho' nothing else the memory can keep,

E'en so am I ; for what my sleep hath spun
Is almost wholly gone, yet still doth ease
My heart a sweetness from the vision won.

Thus snow, unlockt by sunshine, swiftly flees ;
Thus Sybil's wisdom, writ on fluttering leaves,
Was wafted off forever by the breeze.

[154]

LECTURE VI
CONCEPTION

AT the close of the Vita Nuova — that wonder-
fully discreet record of Dante's emotional life
under the influence of Beatrice — a strange, fas-
cinating, baffling combination of self-revelation
and reticence — we find a sonnet which tells how
the poet's thought, in the form of a sigh, soars
through all the revolving skies, and, piercing the
outermost and greatest, leaving the world of mat-
ter behind, enters Paradise, where it beholds the
soul of Beatrice in glory.

Beyond the sphere that all-encircling sways

A sigh, escaping from my heart, doth fare.

An insight new, which Love, so full of care,
Inspireth now, impels it up always.
When it has reacht the goal for which it prays,

It sees a lady full of honor there ;

And on her light, which shines beyond compare,
The pilgrim spirit wondering doth gaze.
'T is all so strange that, when it tells me this,

I cannot comprehend, it puzzles so

The mournful heart which ever bids it tell.

It speaketh of that gentle one, I know,
Because it often nameth Beatrice;

And that, dear ladies mine, I hear full well.

" After this sonnet," continues Dante, " there
appeared to me a marvelous vision, wherein I saw

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things that made me determine to say no more of
this blessed one until I should be able to speak of
her more fitly. And to that end am I studying
with all my strength, as she verily knoweth.
Wherefore, if it shall be the pleasure of Him
through whom all things live that my life be pro-
longed some years, I hope to say of her what never
yet was said of woman. And then may He, who
is the Lord of kindness, grant that my soul go
forth to behold the glory of its lady, of that
blessed Beatrice, who doth gloriously behold the
face of Him who is blessed forever." /

A hope and a prayer that were surely both ful-
filled ! A monument such as never before — nor
since — was erected to any woman, he verily
builded; and, if we may believe the testimony of
those nearest him, his soul went forth just after
the completion of his great task. When he wrote
the lines I have quoted, he was some twenty-eight
or twenty-nine years old, midway in his earthly
career, for he died at the age of fifty-six. Many
cares, labors, and trials intervened; but during a
great part of this second half of his life he must
have carried his mighty project in mind. Vast
preparatory studies are foreshadowed in the pas-
sage cited; and much of the knowledge he thereby
acquired was eventually set forth in other works
— principally in the Banquet and in the treatise
On Vernacular Composition. Both of these, how-
ever, he left unfinished, and returned to his first
design.

Now, what was the monument to Beatrice, as

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CONCEPTION

he conceived it? What was the "marvelous
vision " that flashed upon him, " after this son-
net? " What conception should we expect of a
man of his faith, his ethical standards, his char-
acter, his experience, his poetic genius — and, let
us not forget to add, his time? The sonnet itself
and the following prose reveal something of his
idea : his tribute was to be a vision of Heaven,
with Beatrice there enthroned, whatever else it
might come to convey. We may infer also that it
was to picture her as the guiding spirit of his own
progress heavenward, as, indeed, she is already
sketched in the Vita Nnova. If so, there must
have been the purpose of a mystic journey, like
that of Bunyan's Christian. We have, then, thus
far, the conception of an ascent of Dante's soul,
led by his lady, from the sin and sorrow of earth
to the pure joy of Paradise, where Beatrice dwells
in glory. But such a narrative is really a spiritual
autobiography, a sequel to the tale told in the
New Life, though related on a grander scale. As
it grows, as it deepens, the poet's experience be-
comes typical of the history of all mankind.

Such an undertaking indeed demands faith,
moral insight, character, acquaintance with the
world, poetic imagination. The need of these
attributes is self-evident; but why should it call
for extensive preliminary study on the part of the
writer? Perhaps to round out his theology and
ethics, to increase through books his knowledge
of man, and to improve his literary form by copy
of the best examples. Without doubt these objects

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THE POWER OF DANTE

were in the author's mind; but I think there was
something more. Dante was eager to help his
fellowmen, and to help them in more ways than
one. Utility his book would not lack, if it pointed
the way to Heaven; but man wants guidance like-
wise for his earthly walks, and good teaching was
scarce. The monumental poem was to be also a
storehouse of information, a banquet of philos-
ophy. " The great unspeakable Providence," says
Dante in his Monarchy, "hath set two ends for
the pursuit of man: to wit, the happiness of this
life . . . and the happiness of life eternal. . . .
And to these happinesses, as to different goals, we
must come by different means. For to the first
we come by philosophical teachings, if we follow
them, acting in accordance with the moral and
intellectual virtues. But to the second, by spiritual
teachings, which transcend human reason, if we
follow them, acting in accordance with the theo-
logical virtues, Faith, Hope, and Love."

The great poem over which the spirit of Bea-
trice was to preside, was destined, then, to be a
guide to both heavenly and earthly happiness. In
form, it was to be the story of Dante's own sal-
vation; his passage from sin to repentance, and
through reason and discipline to purity; from
worldly cares to contemplation of the divine. The
tale is told in the first person : it is unmistakably
Dante's own; to stamp its authenticity beyond
mistake, he introduces, at the middle stage of his
progress, his name — which, he declares, " is
bound to be registered here." Now, in general,*

CONCEPTION

the author believed that it is unbecoming to speak
of one's self, because one cannot do so without
praising or blaming, both of which are undigni-
fied. There are, however, certain circumstances
under which such speech is legitimate. After an
unjust accusation, it is lawful to discuss one's self
to prove one's innocence. Also it is right to do
so, " when," as Dante says in his Banquet, " by
speaking of one's self very great help is given to
others, in the way of teaching; and this considera-
tion moved St. Augustine, in his Confessions, to
talk about himself; for by the course of his life,
which was from evil to good, from good to better,
and from better to best, he offered an example and
a lesson such as could be received from no other
witness so trustworthy as he."

For the autobiographical side of his poem,
Dante found, therefore, a precedent, and, in a
very general sense, a model, in the Confessions
of St. Augustine. For the fiction of a vision of
the other world, he had as inspiration, on the one
hand, the sixth book of the ^Eneid, which relates
the descent of ^Eneas into the world of the dead,
and, on the other, a mass of medieval legend —
the Irish stories of Tundal and of St. Patrick's
Purgatory, the vision of the Italian Friar Alberic,
and, oldest of the lot, the so-called Apocalypse of
St. Paul. This last was a Greek document of the
end of the fourth century, narrating the journey
of St. Paul, guided by an angel, through Hell,
Purgatory, and Heaven; though never accepted
by the Church, it became, in Latin and vernacular

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THE POWER OF DANTE

translations, immensely popular. Now, while
Dante adopted none of these works as a pattern,
he knew them ; they were in his consciousness when
he planned his monument, the character of which
they helped to determine. There must have been
also in his store of recollections some stories of
marvelous journeys, such as that of the Irish
monk, St. Brendan, who sailed afar out into the
Atlantic and discovered the Isle of the Blest; or
that of three Eastern monks, who, following up a
stream, climbed a mountain a hundred miles high,
on whose summit they found the Garden of Eden ;
or, hardly less wonderful, the real travels of
Marco Polo in Asia. Here, too, there is no ques-
tion of imitation (save perhaps a stray detail here
and there) ; there is nothing more than a general
coloring of Dante's imagination. For the idea
of a great granary of wisdom, suggestion was
ready at hand in the ancient and the medieval
encyclopedias, whose compilers strove to collect
and transmit in convenient form the accumulated
knowledge of foregoing generations of scholars.
Such a compendium was the Treasure of Dante's
elderly friend and counselor, Brunetto Latini.

This same Florentine, Master Brunetto, wrote,
however, something vastly more important for
the genesis of the conception of the Divine
Comedy — the Tesoretto, or Little Treasure,
which really combines in itself nearly all the ele-
ments I have enumerated: it is a confession, a
fantastic journey, a compilation of learning, and
it may perhaps be called a vision. Furthermore,
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CONCEPTION

it is cast in allegorical form, and in verse — poor
enough verse, to be sure, mere doggerel couplets:
still, a poem, an allegorical poem, relating a quest
for happiness, told in the first person. Here we
have, no doubt, the most important single sug-
gestion among those which contributed to the plan
of the Divine Comedy. The two works are as
far apart as two poems well can be, and Dante's
reminiscences of the Little Treasure are so petty
that scarcely anyone has thought it worth while
to mention them; yet to Brunette Latini he owed
a debt in which all lovers of the Divina Corn-
media have a share — a debt which Dante himself
fully appreciated. The soul of Master Brunette,
encountered in the world below, speaks to him
these words:

If but thy star shall guide thee with its light,

A glorious haven shalt thou surely see,

If in the happy life I judged aright.
If death had not so promptly taken me,

Knowing that Heaven to thee had been so kind,

In thine emprise I should have heartened thee.

And the poet replies :

If favoring Heaven upon my wishes smiled,
If God my whole entreaty would allow,
You were not yet from human life exiled.

For stampt upon my mind (a sadness now)
Your friendly, dear, paternal face I see,
As in the world you ever taught me how

A mortal man may win eternity.

How deep my gratitude, in all my speech,
As long as I shall live, revealed must be.

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I have said that Brunette's Little Treasure is
an allegory; it begins, however, with a bit of his-
torical fact. Here is its story, in a few words.
Returning in 1260 from Spain, whither he had
(in reality) been sent by Florence on a mission to
Alfonso X of Castile, he hears on the way the
news of the battle of Montaperti and the bloody
defeat of the Guelfs. In sad meditation over this
disaster to his party, he loses his way in a strange
wood. Suddenly he comes to his senses, and sees
near by the beautiful and majestic figure of a
lady, Dame Nature, who imparts to him a great
deal of erudition. Then he travels through a
wilderness, until he reaches a lovely plain, the
land of Virtue, inhabited by emperors, kings, and
scholars, governed by the four Cardinal Virtues
(whose palaces he inspects), with Virtue — un-
qualified — as Empress over all. Yet this does
not satisfy him, for he craves love and joy. Re-
suming his journey, he finds at last the country he
has sought, the land of Love — a fascinating and
mysterious region. In a flowery meadow, which
is forever changing, are throngs of people, some
gay, some sad; and in their midst sits enthroned a
winged youth named Pleasure, who is constantly
shooting arrows into the crowd. Here, as in the
land of Virtue, there are four queens : Fear, Long-
ing, Love, Hope. The poet, after having been
instructed in the theory of love, falls under the
dominion of that passion. From this dangerous
predicament he is saved by Ovid — who, in the
Middle Ages, was regarded as a moralist, his
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CONCEPTION

work being interpreted allegorically. Through
suitable penance, Brunetto attains purity. Re-
nouncing the quest of worldly happiness, he re-
turns to the wood, hoping to find the way to the
land of the Seven Liberal Arts, the land of Learn-
ing. Many countries are traversed. Persistently
he rides on until he scales Olympus, on whose
summit he encounters a venerable white-bearded
figure. This is Ptolemy, master of astronomy and
philosophy, whom the traveler eagerly questions.
We are now prepared for a feast of reason; but
at this point the poem breaks off. This symbolic
moral narrative — with its strange wood, its
search for true happiness, its introduction of a
Latin poet as a rescuer, its didactic female figure
of Dame Nature, its ascent of a lofty mountain,
its reverend sage at the close — contains the sug-
gestion for much of the framework of the Corn-
media.

The main scenery of Dante's poem may be
found, in germ, in the Vision of St. Paul and
the legends that followed it, telling of visits to the
other world; in the jEneid; and in stories of the
Earthly Paradise. Its real theme, the experience
of a human soul snatched from perdition to the
way of salvation, was probably inspired, if it
had any external source, by St. Augustine's Con-
fessions. There remains the role of Beatrice, in
whose honor the Divine Comedy was first de-
signed. Her figure in the great poem has, to be
sure, something in common with Brunette's Dame
Nature; but it has much closer kinship with the

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Lady Philosophy who comes to comfort Boethius
in his prison and expounds to him the teachings
of the Greek thinkers. The Consolation of
Philosophy, by Boethius (a late Latin statesman,
scholar, philosopher, and literary artist) , was the
first book of secular philosophy studied by Dante,
who had recourse to it in his desolation after the
death of Beatrice.

We have collected the materials — very good
materials, too, although only one man has ever
lived who could have built of them the greatest of
all poems. The truth is, of course, that Dante
did not really construct with the materials fur-
nished him: what he derived from his sources
shrinks into insignificance when compared to what
he drew from his own experience and his own
imagination. Even in outward shaping he is
amazingly original. His work displays in the
highest degree a fundamental structural quality
that is quite lacking in his predecessors, and is,
indeed, but little exemplified by the other world-
masterpieces of all ages. I mean symmetry. The
Iliad perhaps comes nearest to the Divine Comedy
in this respect; but still how far removed! Next
one might name Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
The Odyssey, the ^Eneid, Paradise Lost show but
vague outlines. Goethe's Faust, virtually none
at all.

One cannot read very far in Dante without ob-
serving how dear to him is this quality of sym-
metry; how clear is the evidence, in his works, of
a distinct architectural bent. Our poet was at one

[164]

CONCEPTION

time appointed in Florence a commissioner to
superintend the alteration of a street; but whether
or not this charge implies a recognition of archi-
tectural study or talent, it would be rash to guess.
We know that he could draw; for in the Vita
Nuova he speaks of designing figures of angels on
the anniversary of his lady's death; and in the
Dhina Commedia there is at least one simile that
could scarcely have occurred to a man unfamiliar
with the technical difficulties of painting. " Men
call a thing beautiful," says Dante in the Banquet,
" when its parts properly correspond in such a
way that their harmony gives pleasure. Hence
a man appears handsome when his limbs are in
proper proportion; and we call a song beautiful
when the words that compose it are in harmony
with one another, according to the demands of the
art. Therefore is that discourse most beautiful
whose parts most suitably harmonize." In his
treatise on vernacular poetry he defines the can-
zone, or ode, as the elegant combination of equal
stanzas, without a refrain, into a single theme;
and he announces his intention of proving in the
third part of this work (which unfortunately
was never written) that the ode is " something
sublime."

Several of Dante's lyrics show a predilection
for groupings based on the number three. He
was, in general, much addicted to arranging things
in threes or multiples of three. One canzone is
written in three languages : Provencal, Latin, and
Italian. His Latin treatise on Monarchy is in

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THE POWER OF DANTE

three books : the first arguing that mankind needs
one general government, superior to all local
rule ; the second, that the Roman Empire was pre-
destined to fill this need; the third, that the Em-
peror derives his authority from God directly, and
is not subordinate to the Pope. Dante's principal
Italian works form a great trilogy, the New Life,
the Banquet, the Divine Comedy. The New Life
itself has as its nucleus a group of three odes.

If we look more closely at the architecture of
this " little book," we shall discern a curiously
patterned framework. As you know, the Vita
Nuova consists of a series of poems, selected by
Dante in 1293 or '94 from his previous work, and
arranged presumably in chronological order; with
a prose explanation that forms a more or less
consecutive story, the poems being embedded, at
intervals, in the prose. Now, these poems are in
number thirty-one, three of them being long
canzoni, while twenty-eight are shorter composi-
tions. The twenty-eight lesser ones are all son-
nets, except three: one of these is a ballad; one is
a stanza of an interrupted canzone; the third is
called by the author a canzone, but, having only
two stanzas, is rather of the type known in Prov-
ence as a \w\t-canzone. It seems, then, legitimate
to group all these twenty-eight briefer poems
together, as contrasted with the three long odes,
or full canzoni. If we do so, we find that the
poems of the Vita Nuova are arranged in a regu-
lar scheme: in the centre, three odes, the middle
one being separated from each of the others by
[166]

four short pieces ; before the three odes, ten short
pieces ; after the three, ten short pieces. In other
words, the order of little and big is this : ten, one,
four, one, four, one, ten. But there is another
division, according to the subject-matter — a
division into three parts, almost exactly equal in
length, but not marked in any obvious way by the
author. Part One comprises the period between
Dante's first sight of Beatrice and his conversion
to platonic love; Part Two, the period between
this conversion and the death of his lady; Part
Three, the period between her passing and his
vision of her in Paradise. The work begins,
therefore, with her first appearance to him on
earth, and ends with her first appearance to him
in Heaven. The two symmetries, of form and of
substance, are quite independent of each other.
Both are so unobtrusive that a reader may study
the book attentively, many times, without observ-
ing either. The New Life would seem to be thus
conceived rather for the satisfaction of an inner
craving than for the sake of producing an effect
on its audience.

Very conspicuous, on the contrary, in the same
work, is a multiple of three, the number nine,
which accompanies Beatrice in her relations with
Dante. The ninth hour is especially persistent.
After his lady's death, the author offers an ex-
planation of the mysterious affinity between her
and the recurrent nine. She died, as we make out
from the somewhat cryptic text, early in the eve-
ning of June 8, 1290. This date containing but

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THE POWER OF DANTE

one nine, Dante, in order to bring in the mystic
number three times, has recourse to the calendars
of Araby and Syria, about which his textbook of
astronomy offered him some information. The
Syrians begin their year with October, so that
June is their ninth month. The Arabs, beginning
their day with sunset, regard the close of our
June 8 as the first part of their June 9. Thus we
get three nines, in the day, the month, and the
year. Now let us hear what Dante himself says : —
" I declare that according to the usage of Araby
her most noble soul departed in the first hour of
the ninth day of the month; and according to the
usage of Syria she departed in the ninth month of
the year, for the first month there is Tisrin First,
which is our October. And according to our usage
she departed in that year of our indiction (that is,
of the years of our Lord) in which the perfect
number [ten] was nine times completed in that
century in which she was placed in this world ; and
she was one of the Christians of the thirteenth
century [she died in the year 90 of the thirteenth
century of the Christian era]. Why this number
was so friendly to her, the following might be a
reason: forasmuch as, according to Ptolemy and
according to Christian truth, nine are the heavens
that move, and, according to common astrological
opinion, the aforesaid heavens operate here below
in accordance with their relation to one another,
this number was friendly to her to show that in
her generation all nine moving heavens were in
perfect harmony together. This is one reason
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CONCEPTION

for it; but, considering more subtly and in accord-
ance with infallible truth, this number was she
herself — I mean figuratively, and I understand
it thus: the number three is the root of nine, be-
cause, without any other number, by itself it makes
nine; as we plainly see that three times three is
nine. Therefore if three is by itself the maker
of nine, and the Maker of miracles by himself is
three (to wit, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, which
are three and one) this lady was accompanied by
the number nine to show that she was a nine, that
is, a miracle, whose root is the wondrous Trinity
alone. Perhaps by a subtler person could be found
in this a still subtler reason; but this is the one
that I see and like best."

Three is the symbol of the Godhead; and nine,
or what three makes of itself, is the symbol of a
miracle, which God makes of himself: therefore
nine is the number that befits the miraculous
Beatrice. Such is Dante's complicated argument.
It must be remembered that in the Middle Ages
the symbolism of numbers formed a recognized
branch of philosophical inquiry. The subject is
discussed at length by such masters as St. Augus-
tine, Rabanus Maurus, Hugh of St. Victor. An
inevitable significance is imposed on certain num-
bers by association with Christian theology. The
most important of these is three, — the favorite
number, also, in folk-lore and in general popular
use.

On three is based the whole plan of the Divine
Comedy. In the first place, the entire poem is
composed in terza rima, a sequence of groups of
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THE POWER OF DANTE

three lines, the second line of each group riming
with the first and third of the next. In the second
place, the Commedia consists of three parts, In-
ferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso. These are divided
into cantos (that is, in Italian, canti, or " songs ") ,
of unequal length, but on the average, of about
one hundred and forty lines each. The whole
work contains just a hundred cantos — the "per-
fect number " multiplied by itself. The first canto
being, however, a sort of introduction to all the
poem, there remain ninety-nine cantos, which are
evenly distributed among the three parts, each
receiving thirty-three.

So much for the external form. In the matter of
the Commedia we observe the same prominence
of the " mystic number." There are three realms
of the dead. Hell is composed of three parts,
where are punished respectively sins of weakness,
violence, and fraud. The mountain on the soli-
tary island is also tripartite, consisting of Purga-
tory itself, of the slopes below it, and of the
Garden of Eden above it. Heaven likewise may
be separated into three regions: first the spheres
within the reach of the earth's shadow (those of
the moon, Mercury, and Venus) ; second, those
beyond the shadow but below the fixed stars (the
spheres of the sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) ;
third, the sky of the fixed stars, the invisible
outermost crystalline heaven, and the Empyrean
or true Paradise of spirit.

Coming to the narrative itself, we encounter
the same number. Three beasts — a leopard, a

CONCEPTION

lion, and a wolf — block Dante's passage up the
Delectable Mountain; but he is rescued by three
ladies who care for him in Heaven: the Virgin
Mary, St. Lucia, and Beatrice. Dante spends
three nights, and has three allegorical dreams, on
the mountain of Purgatory. Even in little details
the same predilection is evident. The bank which
the poet descends to reach the Valley of the
Princes, on the slope of the mountain, is three
steps deep; the stream that separates him from
Matilda, in the Garden of Eden, is three steps
broad. Three stairs — perhaps representing orig-
inal innocence, sin, and atonement — lead to the
gate of Purgatory. Satan has three faces. St.
Peter encircles Dante three times, in token of his
satisfaction over the poet's successful examination
in Faith. Three times Virgil calls Dante, to
arouse him from his stupor, after one of his
visions. Three times does Dante try to embrace
the intangible shade of the musician, Casella,
which he meets on the island of Purgatory.

One of the souls, I saw, advancing came

To clasp me in its arms, so lovingly

I felt a keen desire to do the same.
O shadows vain to touch, tho' plain to see !

Three times behind it I my hands did hook ;

Three times I brought them empty back to me.
My face, I think, assumed a wondering look ;

Whereat the shadow smiled and drew away.

Pursuing it, a forward step I took.
Right gently, then, it counseled me to stay.

At that I recognized it, and besought

The shade to stop, a word with me to say.

THE POWER OF DANTE

One is surprised that Dante, with his love of
symmetry and his fondness for three, should not
have provided himself with a separate guide for
each of the three kingdoms he has to traverse.
As it is, Virgil conducts him through Hell and
Purgatory, Beatrice through Heaven. In the
latter part of the second realm, to be sure, Statius
is added to the two companions, and explains some
things which are perhaps a little beyond the reach
of the pagan Virgil; for Dante chose to regard
Statius as having been on earth a Christian,
secretly converted. Now, it may be, of course,
that in his first conception, the poet planned to
make Statius the guide throughout Purgatory, in
which case there would have been an exact har-
mony in the three parts of the poem. But if he
ever had such a design, he abandoned it; perhaps
because he could not make it fit his allegory, per-
haps because he had become so fond of Virgil that
he was loath to give him up. For Virgil, symbolic
though he was, had become very real to Dante.
The directing personages of the Divine Comedy
are both real and allegorical: Virgil is Reason,
Cato of Utica is Free Will, Beatrice is Revelation,
St. Bernard is Intuition; but they are still Virgil,
Cato, Beatrice, and St. Bernard.

That Dante's monumental poem should be alle-
gorically conceived was inevitable. His whole
philosophy was steeped in symbolism, and allegory
was in his day regarded as the highest type of
literary composition. From the early centuries of
Christianity the Bible had been expounded allegor-
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CONCEPTION

ically; symbolism pervaded religious service and
religious architecture. Moreover, the same
method of interpretation had been applied to the
myths of Homer; Virgil and Ovid were looked
upon as master allegorists ; and we have reason to
believe that Dante found Christian allegory in
Statius. In French, the most fashionable poem was
the allegorical Romance of the Rose; in Italian,
Dante had before him the Little Treasure of his
friendly adviser. Even in his own New Life, the
God of Love may be called an allegorical figure.
Between the Vita Nuova and the Divina Corn-
media, we find in his work two allegories, one of
them continued through several poems, the other
confined to a single ode. As the latter is the
shorter and the less known, let us consider it first.
The canzone in question, Tre donne intorno al
cor ml son venute, is a poem of exile. Carducci
thought it the noblest of Dante's allegorical lyrics.
It begins thus :

Three ladies round my heart are clustering,
And seat themselves outside.
Within doth Love reside,
Who hath my whole existence in his care.
So fair and good are they, the mighty king
(I mean the trusty guide
Who in my heart doth bide)
To speak of their distress can hardly bear.
Mournful appears each one, and in despair,
A weary creature, into exile hurled,
Forsaken by the world,
Whose virtue and estate are no defence.
In times not distant hence

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THE POWER OF DANTE

Men showed them love, they say ; now they are shown
Nothing but hate and cold indifference.

These ladies all alone

Have come to seek a home, knowing full well
My heart contains the friend of whom I tell.

One lady, — who leans her head on her hand like
a plucked rose, and whose tears drip on her bare
arm, while the other hand hides her weeping face,
— is questioned by Love, indignant at her poverty
and her shameful rags. And she replies, sighing :
" O food of few, it is our divine kinship that sends
us to thee. I, the saddest, am thy mother's sister.
I am Justice, tattered as thou seest." [Love, or
Cupid, was the son of Venus; and Venus and
Astraea, the goddess of Justice, were both daugh-
ters of Jupiter.] When she had thus made her-
self known, grief and shame seized my lord, and
he asked who were the other two that were with
her. And she that was so prone to tears, fired with
fresh grief at his words, replied: "As thou must
know, the Nile rises as a tiny stream from a spring
[in the Garden of Eden]. There, where the foli-
age of the osier shades the earth from the great
sunshine, above the virgin waters, I bore her who
is at my side, wiping her eyes with her blond
tresses. This beauteous offspring of mine, gazing
at herself in the clear spring, conceived the third,
who is furthest from me." [Who are these mys-
terious ladies — mother, daughter, and grand-
daughter, the first a goddess, the other two
immaculately born in the Earthly Paradise?
Dante's son Pietro, in his commentary on the

[174]

CONCEPTION

Divine Comedy, refers to them, and states that
his father intended them to signify Divine Right,
Human Right (born of Divine Right in the first
abode of man), and Law (the reflection of Human
Right, assuming a form as soon as mankind came
into existence). This interpretation, which meets
all the requirements of the text, is probably cor-
rect. Divine Right, Human Right, and Law ap-
pear as exiles to Dante, an outcast himself, just
as to St. Francis there once appeared (according
to St. Bonaventure) the three ladies, Poverty,
Chastity, and Obedience. There exists, unpub-
lished, a long commentary on this poem, written
about 1400, which is said to be worthless in most
respects, but which affords one bit of information
that may be true — namely, that the ode was
written in 1311, when Florence granted amnesty
to many of her banished citizens, but not to Dante.
That the author was an exile at the time of writ-
ing, is made evident by the poem itself. Let us
see how it continues.] Sighs at first prevent Love
from speaking. After a little, his once wayward
eyes wet with tears, he greets his disconsolate
kinswomen. Then, picking up his arrows [one of
gold, one of lead, as Ovid describes them], he
says : " Lift up your heads ! Here are the weap-
ons I once chose; they are tarnished from disuse.
Bounty and Temperance and the other ladies
born of our blood now go a-begging. Yet if this
be grievous, it is for the eyes and lips of men to
bewail it, unhappy men, whose star has consigned
them to this age; not for us, who belong to the

[175]

THE POWER OF DANTE

eternal citadel. If we are now wounded, we shall
not always be; for a race shall return which shall
make this arrow bright again." [The last full
stanza I shall attempt to render metrically, as I
did the first:]

And I, who hear exiles as grand as these
Take comfort, then repine,
With eloquence divine,
Am prone to glory in my banishment.
For if the power of destiny decrees
That in this world malign
White flowers to black decline,
To fall among the good is heaven-sent.
And 'neath my burden I could be content,
If only I were not so far removed
From what my eyes have loved,

Whose loss hath lit a burning fire in me,
Which hath so utterly

Consumed the flesh and bones I dwelt within
That Death against my breast hath set his key.

Wherefore, if I did sin,
My fault is dead and gone, this many a day,
If man's repentance washes guilt away.

In the envoy, Dante bids his song conceal its
inner self until questioned by a friend of virtue,
worthy of receiving its message. This is an ex-
cellent specimen of allegory in brief compass.

The other allegory is that of Lady Philosophy.
We have met in the later chapters of the New
Life a young girl who, from a window, looks
sympathetically at the afflicted poet, and gradually
awakens in his heart a feeling that he judges to
be disloyal to the departed Beatrice. For this
compassionate lady he wrote several poems —
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CONCEPTION

four sonnets incorporated in the " little book,"
and probably a few that are not there included.
The episode closes, in the Vita Nuova, with the
triumph of the old love; but the struggle in his
heart between two rival interests was presently
utilized by him as a symbol of a contest between
his placid and religious devotion to the glorified
Beatrice and his ardent, impatient, frenzied pur-
suit of philosophy; and in this second competition
it is the new love that for a long time is victorious.
We cannot be sure, in every case, whether a poem
was intended for the real lady or the allegorical
one; and it is evident that when Dante wrote the
Banquet, he wished his readers to believe that all
the verses were symbolical, that there never was a
sympathetic lady of flesh and blood. The girl of
the New Life, however, is an uncompromisingly
real person; on the other hand, the lady of the
odes in the Banquet, and of some other poems,
has a sufficiently immaterial look to make one
suspect her of symbolic intent, even if one had not
the author's word for it. At first sight, it seems
odd that a very youthful female should have been
chosen to represent the majestic science, the
" daughter of God; " especially since Dante works
out the figure in whimsical detail, making the lady
now grand, now sweetly indulgent, now skittish
and contrary, now persistently cruel and self-
absorbed. We must remember that, in the de-
jection which followed the death of Beatrice, the
poet was comforted at the same time by the pity-
ing face at the window and by the study of philos-

[

THE POWER OF DANTE

ophy, so that the two were closely associated in
his mind; in the Consolation of Philosophy, more-
over, which Dante was reading just at this time,
Boethius offered a model for a personification of
the celestial science as a woman.

Now let us look at three poems which unmis-
takably belong to the philosophical end of the
series, and which are explicitly described by their
author as allegories. In the introductory book
of the Banquet we read, after the definition of the
two conditions under which it is proper to speak of
one's self: " I am impelled by fear of infamy and
I am impelled by the desire of giving instruction
which verily no one else can give. I fear the in-
famy of having followed such a passion as the
reader of the aforesaid odes conceives to have
ruled over me; which infamy is removed by my
present complete account of myself, which shows
that not passion but virtue was the moving cause.
I intend also to show the real meaning of these
poems, which by some cannot be seen unless I tell
it, for it is hidden under the figure of allegory.
And this will give not only good pleasure to hear,
but also subtle teaching, both in that kind of
speech and in that kind of interpretation of the
writings of others." An allegorical sense, Dante
explains further on, " is one that is hid under the
cloak of inventions; it is a truth hidden under
a pretty fiction : as when Ovid saith that Orpheus
with his lyre tamed the wild beasts and made trees
and stones come unto him; which meaneth that
the wise man with the instrument of his voice doth

CONCEPTION

tame and humble cruel hearts and move unto his
will those who have no life of science and art, for
those who have no rational life are as stones."

Now, the first canzone of the Banquet, Voi che
intendendo il terzo del movete, " Ye who by
thought the sphere of Venus turn," is an appeal to
the angels of the third heaven to listen to the
strange conflict that is in the poet's heart, a con-
flict between his soul, whose comfort hitherto has
been the thought of a blessed lady in Paradise,
and a new thought, which banishes the old one
and assumes dominion over the heart on behalf
of a new lady. The frightened soul, weeping and
expecting death, is comforted by " a gentle little
sprite of love," who tells how wise and kindly is
this new queen, and how worthy of reverence.
" Song," says Dante, in the envoy, " I believe
they will be few who shall understand thy dis-
course aright, thou speakest it so hard and weari-
some " — words which seem to point to a hidden
meaning, " a truth hidden under a pretty fiction."
In the second of the three poems — a ballad, not
included in the Banquet — the fiction is still more
obvious. It tells of a scornful lady, who, having
stolen the poet's heart, will not let him look into
her eyes, because she knows that Love is in them,
and therefore wishes to keep them for her own
enjoyment in her mirror. The third poem (Amor
che nella mente mi raaiona, the second ode of the
Banquet] repudiates the sentiments of this ballad,
declaring that the cruelty was not in the lady her-
self, but in Dante's fear of her. Now she reigns

[179]

THE POWER OF DANTE

supreme over him, as, by God's command, she
rules the world. Divine, beautiful beyond words,
she reveals the joys of Heaven; and all good
thoughts come from her.

In his prose exposition, in the Banquet, Dante
sets forth as follows the " allegorical and true "
meaning of the first of these canzoni: " I declare
that when the first joy of my soul was lost, whereof
mention hath been made above, I was left wounded
with such woe that no consolation did help me.
Nevertheless, after some time, my mind, which
was striving to be well, bethought itself, since
neither my own comforting nor another's availed,
of returning to the method of self-consolation fol-
lowed by some disconsolate ones in the past; and
I began to read that book of Boethius, unknown to
many, in which, outcast and imprisoned, he had
comforted himself; and learning, furthermore,
that Tully had written another book in which,
treating of Friendship, he had uttered words
for the consolation of Laelius, a most excellent
man, for the death of his friend Scipio, I began
to read that. And although it was hard for me
at first to enter into their meaning, I finally pene-
trated it as far as the art of grammar which I
possessed, and a little understanding of my own,
could go; by means of which understanding I
already had discerned, as it were in a dream,
many things, as may be seen in the New Life.
And, as it often happens that a man goeth in
search of silver and beyond his expectation findeth
gold, presented by some hidden cause, perhaps not
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CONCEPTION

without divine command, so I, seeking to console
myself, found not only remedy for my tears, but
words of authorities and sciences and books;
pondering on which, I was assured that philos-
ophy, mistress of these authorities, sciences, and
books, was a thing supreme. And I imagined her
fashioned as a gentle lady; nor could I picture her
in any act save one of mercy. Wherefore did my
sense contemplate her verily with such satisfaction
that I scarcely could turn it from her. And from
this imagining I began to go where she did show
herself in very truth, namely, to the schools of
the churchmen and the disputations of philos-
ophers; so that in a short time, perhaps in thirty
months, I began so to feel her sweetness that love
of her drove forth and destroyed every other
thought. Wherefore I, feeling myself taken from
the thought of the first love to the power of this,
opened, as in wonder, my lips to the discourse of
the foregoing song, revealing my state under the
figure of other things. For of the lady with whom
I was falling in love no rime of any vernacular
was worthy to speak openly, nor were my hearers
sufficiently well prepared to have so easily under-
stood my undisguised speech, nor would their
credence have been given to the true meaning
as to the fictitious; for it was truly and fully be-
lieved that I was inclined to the one love, which
was not believed of the other. I began, therefore,
to sing: ' Ye who by thought the sphere of Venus

turn.'

Passing on to Dante's greatest and last allegory,
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THE POWER OF DANTE

the Divine Comedy, we ask: what is the "truth
hidden under its fiction; " what, as the author con-
ceived the work, was the " allegorical and true "
message he intended to convey? The answer is
now not difficult. Evidently, in its fundamental
conception, the poem is an authentic confession —
in an intricately and symmetrically artistic form —
of Dante's recognition of sin, his penitence, and
the uplifting of his soul. This is the " truth "
concealed under the " fiction " of a journey
through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise — a truth
threefold and one, like the Holy Trinity itself.
Stripped of its mantle of invention, the real story,
the spiritual story, runs thus.

The poet suddenly becomes conscious that he
is leading an unworthy life, lost in worldliness.
Terrified, he tries to save himself, to change his
conduct; but in vain: his vicious habits are in the
way. Yet at this very moment the Divine Care
which ever watches over men is contriving his
salvation; and reason, restored to him by heavenly
intervention, comes to his rescue — reason, " faint
from long silence." Reason it is that reveals to
him in their hideous reality all the vices of hu-
manity, so convincing him of the ugliness, the
meanness, the utter folly of sin that he turns his
back on it in horror, and by silent, resolute plod-
ding on the upward path leaves it far behind him.
But there is more to do. The danger of new
temptation is still there; because mankind has by
wrongdoing acquired certain perverse tendencies
which continually incline it to evil. These tend-

CONCEPTION

encies are seven in number — the seven cardinal
vices : pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony,
luxury. To some of these Dante is more addicted
than to others : pride, anger, luxury are his beset-
ting sins ; but his soul must be absolutely cleansed
of all. There must be no delay; procrastination
is full of peril. The penitent must allow no
occupation — however innocent, however noble
— to impede his reconciliation with God. On the
other hand, the pilgrim who is striving with all his
might suddenly finds himself drawn upward by a
mysterious power not his own. Purity is to be
won only by discipline, submissively accepted from
God's earthly vicar. Hard penance, appropriate
to the fault, cheerfully borne under heavenly
direction, will wash the stain away.

I would not have thee, reader, be afraid
To carry out a good resolve, altho'
I tell how God demands the debt be paid.

Consider not the penitential woe,

Only the consequence ! For at the worst
Thy pain beyond the Judgment cannot go.

The penance all completed, innocence is re-
stored, and absolute free will : the soul becomes as
guiltless, as joyous, as independent as were Adam
and Eve before the fall. Then it can appreciate,
as never before, God's revelation to humanity, the
redemption of man by Christ, the glory of the
Church, which 'has triumphantly withstood so
many trials, such deadly assaults from without
and from within. Life is all gladness and beauty.
But the enjoyment of this life is not the highest

[183]

reward of moral cleanness. " Blessed are the
pure in heart, for they shall see God." Step by
step the pure soul is led upward by divine revela-
tion. It converses with the blest in Heaven, the
dwellers in the "many mansions" of the "Father's
house." Little by little, as its vision continually
gains in clearness, it comes to grasp the mysteries
of Faith, the wonders of Paradise, the adjustment
of happiness to the capacity of each spirit, the
fulfillment of God's eternal plan. Upward, still
upward soars the pure soul, — now blinded, now
illumined by a brighter light, ever more and more
conscious of the infinite outpouring of divine
Grace, — until it attains its ultimate goal, the pre-
destined end of man, immediate communion with
the Maker. Not through the sense is it conscious
of his presence, not through the understanding,
no longer by means of revelation, but through
direct intuition. No longer does it see " through
a glass, darkly," but " face to face." Such is the
experience that Dante tries, as far as human
speech will permit, to convey to his fellows.

0 Fire Supreme, which human minds ignore,
Inept to scale thy height, I pray thee, some
Fragment of thy revealing now restore,

And lend such power unto mine organs dumb
That I one single spark of all thy light
May leave to generations yet to come.

For if it glimmer on mine aftersight
And faintly echo in the verse I pen,
Better conceived by man shall be thy might.

1 think, so keenly did I suffer when

I faced the living beam, my sight were spent,

[184]

CONCEPTION

Had I mine eyes from it averted then.

This thought new courage to my spirit lent,
As I remember, till my struggling gaze
On God's immeasurable self was bent.

O grace abounding! thro' the endless rays
Thou gavest me full confidence to look,
Till mortal sight was quencht within the blaze.
[From Dante, 372-373.]

[185]

LECTURE VII
WORKMANSHIP

IN the Garden of Eden, led by the gentle
Matilda, Dante tastes the waters of the river
Eunoe, whose sweetness he would fain try to
describe, if he had time to linger a little at the
close of his Purgatorio, the second cantica of his
poem.

But since the pages of my second part
Are filled already, rounding out my plan,
I am arrested by the check of art.

' The check of art " — a significant phrase. In
Dante are united two qualities very seldom mated
in one person: spontaneity and discipline. Surely
no poet was ever more exuberantly original; yet
no other great poet on a large scale has equaled
him in severity of restraint, in strict adherence to
a preconceived artistic plan. Dante built his
Divine Comedy, a work of some fourteen thousand
verses, with the same system, the same elaborate
plotting out, the same subordination of detail to
total effect that we find in the formal short lyrics
of his predecessors and contemporaries.

Even in the short poem, his patterning, though
no more intricate than that of some of his fellow-
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WORKMANSHIP

craftsmen, is carried out with a success, an ap-
parent ease and naturalness, which none of them
achieved. As examples let me cite three of his
most formal pieces. Here is the opening strophe
of one in which the effect depends on the repetition
of certain words at fixed points, this repetition
taking the place of rime :

O Love, thou plainly canst perceive, this queen
Cares nothing for thy power at any time —

Thy power, which other fair ones call their queen !
And when this lady saw she was my queen,
Beholding in my face thine amorous light,
She made herself of cruelty the queen.
No longer doth her heart befit a queen,

But some wild beast, whose heart to love is cold ;

For always, be the season hot or cold,
She governs me as if she were a queen

Not flesh and blood, but carved in beauteous stone

By one whose hand is best at carving stone.

And so it runs on through four more stanzas, the
same words being used in all, but in an order that
changes, according to a set formula, from stanza
to stanza. Here is the envoy:

O Song, I carry in my mind a queen
So beautiful, for all she be of stone,

She gives me courage, tho' mankind be cold,
To dare to write, despite the season's cold,

A thing so strange that (by thy constant light!)
It never was conceived at any time.
[From The Ladies of Dante's Lyrics, pp. 78-79.]

The Provencal poet, Arnaut Daniel, whom
Dante placed at the head of all writers in the

[187]

THE POWER OF DANTE

vulgar tongue, had invented a special type of
poem in which rime is replaced by repetition.
This is the sestina, a piece of six stanzas, each of
six lines, and, at the end, an envoy of three lines.
Throughout the poem, the six lines of all the
stanzas end with the same six words; and all six
are repeated in the three lines of the envoy. From
stanza to stanza their order changes, according
to a regular scheme. If the arrangement in one
stanza is 123456, the sequence in the next will be
615243: that is, last, first, next-to-last, next-to-
first, third-f rom-last, third-f rom-first. Dante wrote
one poem of this kind, Al poco giorno ed al gran
cerchio cTombra, I think the most successful ses-
tina ever composed. It belongs, like the one
just cited, to the group of poems inspired by that
young person whom, for her hard heart, the poet
called Pietra, or " Stone." Here are the first two
strophes :

Al poco giorno ed al gran cerchio d'ombra
Son giunto, lasso ! ed al bianchir de' colli,
Quando si perde lo color nell' erba.
E'l mio disio pero non cangia il verde,
Si e barbato nella dura pietra
Che parla e sente come fosse donna.

Similemente questa nuova donna
Si sta gelata come neve all' ombra;
Che non la muove, se non come pietra,
II dolce tempo che riscalda i colli
E che gli fa tornar di bianco in verde,
Perche gli cop re di fioretti e d'erba.

And here is an attempt at a translation of the
whole poem:

[188]

WORKMANSHIP

To dwindling day and vast encircling shade
I now have come, alas ! and whitening hills,
When color hath forsook the meadow leaves ;
And yet my longing loseth not its green,
So rooted is it in the stubborn stone
Which sentient is and speechful as a lass.

Forever chilly stands this curious lass,
As snow unchanging bideth in the shade ;
She stirs no more than everlasting stone,
When balmy spring returns and heats the hills
And makes them change their hue from white to

green,
Decking them o'er with little flowers and leaves.

When that her head is garlanded with leaves,
One cannot think of any other lass ;
For golden curls so mingle with the green
That Love is lured to nestle in the shade.
'T is Love that locks me here 'mid little hills
Firmer by far than mortar locketh stone.

Her charms more potent are than magic stone ;
She deals a wound incurable by leaves.
Lo ! I have fled thro' plains and over hills,
Attempting to escape from such a lass ;
But still her light is never screened with shade
By hillock cast, or wall, or foliage green.

I once beheld this damsel garbed in green,
So fair, she would have kindled in a stone
The love I bear unto her very shade.
Ah ! were I with her now 'mid grassy leaves,
And would that she were fond as any lass,
Within a field enclosed by lofty hills.

But sooner shall the brooks run up the hills
Than ever vernal wood so moist and green
Shall burn (as oft befalls a pretty lass)
For me, who willingly would sleep in stone
For all my days, and feed upon the leaves,
Merely to see the ground her garments shade.

[189]

THE POWER OF DANTE

Whene'er the hills project their blackest shade,
Beneath a hopeful green the little lass
Covers it o'er, as stone is hid by leaves.
[From The Ladies of Dante's Lyrics, pp. 83-84.]

Another poem belonging to the same group,
one of the most beautifully artistic of Dante's
lyric creations, is the ode lo son venuto al punto
della rota, which in its structure exemplifies, as
we shall see, both harmony and contrast. It has
five full stanzas and an envoy. In every stanza
the first nine lines are devoted to a vivid little
picture of some aspect of winter, — the stars, the
atmosphere, the birds and beasts, the trees, the
soil, — while the last four lines affirm and re-
iterate the immutability of the poet's love, insen-
sible to the cold and to the change of seasons.
Antithesis is the basic principle of each strophe;
harmonic symmetry, of the poem as a whole.
Furthermore, the same two opposing principles
are manifested in a recurrent detail, at the end of
every strophe : the last two lines end with the same
word, — pietra in the first stanza, donna in the
second, tempo in the third, sempre in the fourth,
dolce in the fifth, marmo in the envoy, — but the
sense of the word is always slightly differentiated
in the two lines. Here are two stanzas and the
envoy, as well as I can render them :

The leaves have past their time and had their day,
Which first to life the breath of spring did stir,
To deck the world ; no living grass is seen,

And every verdant twig is hid away,
Except on pine, on bay, or else on fir,

[I90]

WORKMANSHIP

Or on some other tree that keeps its green.
The season is so savage and so keen,
The little flowers on the bank it dulls,

Which frost will not endure the earth above. —
And yet unfeeling Love
His thorn from out my bosom never pulls:

Wherefore am I condemned to wear it ever
While I shall live, tho' I should live forever.

The springs pour out their waters mistily,
Pusht forth by vapors hidden down below,

Which mother earth's abysses upward thrust.
The path, on pleasant days so sweet to me,
Is now a running stream, and long shall flow ;
For while the winter warreth, flow it must.
Enamel-like the ground puts on a crust ;
And stagnant water quickly turns to glass,
Lockt out of doors by petrifying frost. —
Yet I, so battle-tost,
Have not gone back a single step, alas !
Nor will I go! If martyrdom is joy,
Then death must be the best that men enjoy.

Envoy

O Song, what shall become of me when spring

Shall come renewed and sweet, when Love shall fall
Like rain from all the skies to hearts untold,
If now, despite the cold,
Love dwells in me, and nowhere else at all?
I know my fate: to be a man of rock,
If Little Maid shall have for heart a rock.
[From The Ladies of Dante's Lyrics, pp. 87-88.]

A subtle example of latent but effective antith-
esis is offered by the first two stanzas of the first
ode of the New Life, Ladies who have intelligence
of love.

THE POWER OF DANTE

Ladies who have intelligence of love,
About my lady I would speak to you.
Her praises I can never carry thro' ;

And yet discourse of her will ease my mind.
When pondering on her worth, all else above,
Love steals on me so sweet, I tell you true,
That, by my speech, to love I then could woo,
If I had courage, all of humankind.
But 't is not well so loud a horn to wind
That, terrified, my theme I should forsake:
The verses which I now shall dare to make
Shall fall her noble merit far behind.
To you, Love's maids and ladies, I shall sing;
For no one else is fit for such a thing.

Having thus prepared his readers for a pitiful
understatement of the case, our poet forthwith
proceeds to launch into the boldest hyperbole ever
conceived by mortal mind: Heaven, he declares,
is incomplete without Beatrice ; the angels feel the
lack of her, and beseech God to call her to their
company. Here is the next strophe :

An angel in the mind of God doth call

Saying: " O Lord, on earth there meets our eyes
A wondrous virtue which doth hither rise

Forth from a soul whose light doth climb anear."
And Paradise, which lacketh naught at all
Save only her, unto its Maker cries —
And every saint — to bring her to the skies.
Pity alone our earthly plea doth hear;
For God declareth of my Lady dear :
" In peace, beloved spirits, suffer still
That she for whom ye hope await my will

Below, where some one her release doth fear,
One who shall say in Hell : ' O souls distrest,
Mine eyes have seen the hope of all the blest.' "

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In the same book there is another antithesis,
which may be called structural, because the ar-
rangement of a considerable part of the New
Life is based upon it: the contrast between Dante's
dream of Beatrice's death and the event itself.
The first is told in a long and almost frenzied
ode; the second is veiled in silence. The former
(the premonition) occurs just in the middle of
the story; the latter (the fulfillment), two-thirds
of the way along, exactly balancing Dante's con-
version to platonic love, which comes after one-
third of the narrative.

A much more obvious and violent contrast is
furnished by the announcement of the lady's
death. After the delirious prophetic canzone in
the middle of the " little book," we seem to enter
on a new phase, a mood of serene, perfect con-
tentment and quiet gladness. First ensues the
dainty, playful sonnet of Monna Vanna and
Monna Bice, accompanied by the poet's whimsical
exposition of the mystic significance of names, and
his justification of the figure of prosopopoeia —
all in a calm and leisurely vein. Next follow two
sonnets, Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare and
Vede perfettamente ogni salute, whose spirit is the
very quintessence of peaceful happiness. Then
comes a strophe in the same mood, but, if pos-
sible, sweeter and more joyous yet, SI lungamente
m' ha tenuto A more:

So long hath Love possessed me as his own
And shaped my will unto his mastery
That, cruel tho' he seemed at first to me,

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His presence dear unto my heart hath grown.
And that is why, when all the strength hath flown

From out my breast, and sprites appear to flee,

My fragile soul such sweetness then doth see,
All color leaves my face, save white alone.
Then Love enfolds me with such mighty stress,

He sends my sighs all speechful on their way ;

And they my lady pray,
On passing forth, for greater blessedness.

'T is always thus, if she my face behold :

A joy too full of meekness to be told.

And then, immediately after the quiet exaltation
of this last line, strikes in the dull prose, beginning
with a citation from the Lamentations of Jere-
miah: " ' How doth the city sit solitary, she that
was full of people ! how is she become as a widow,
she that was great among the nations ! ' I was
still engaged upon this ode, and had finished
thereof the foregoing stanza, when the Lord of
Justice summoned this most gentle lady to glory
beneath the banner of that blessed queen Mary,
whose name was in very great reverence in the
speech of this beatified Beatrice." A low, deep
note, at the very bottom of the emotional scale,
suddenly interrupts the clear, sweet melody, which
was gently soaring to a still higher pitch.

Here we have not only a contrast, but a sur-
prise, as startling as the author's art could make
it. Startling, too, is the climax in the foreboding
vision. In a sick room, where ladies are watching
over him, Dante cries out in his delirium, and,
questioned by the frightened watchers, he consents
to tell his feverish dream. He was brooding, he

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says, on his feeble condition and on the instability
of human life, when the thought came to him that
even his lady, being mortal, must perish. At that
he closed his eyes in fear, and, losing conscious-
ness of reality, seemed to see angry women's faces,
which cried: " Thou shalt die! " His story con-
tinues thus :

Then I beheld full many a fearful thing
In that delirious, phantom-haunted sleep ;

And where I seemed to be, I cannot guess.
I saw disheveled women wandering:

Some seemed to shriek, some piteously to weep ;
Their cries were fiery shafts of mournfulness.
Then, bit by bit, the sun, in dire distress,
Concealed itself, and stars were overhead,
Appearing tears to shed.

Each flying bird came dropping like a flake.
The earth appeared to quake.

Then came a man all weak and colorless.
" Have ye not known ? have ye not heard ? " he said ;
" Your lady, she that was so fair, is dead! "

Surprise is an effect contrived by Dante again
and again, always with great potency, in the
Divine Comedy. Here is an instance. On his
journey through Hell, the author is conversing,
in the circle of the heretics, with the soul of the
great Ghibelline leader, Farinata degli Uberti,
who is standing erect, visible from the waist up,
in a great tomb full of flames. Farinata has just
declared that Dante's ancestors, hostile to him and
to his party, have twice been scattered by him;
and the poet, awestruck at first, has plucked up
courage to retort: "If they were banished, they

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THE POWER OF DANTE

returned from every side, both times — an art
which your people never learned." At this mo-
ment, before Farinata can reply, suddenly ap-
pears in the same sepulcher the shade of old
Cavalcanti, father of Guido, Dante's first friend.

Then rose a wraith, uncovered to the chin,
Beside the one who first mine eye had caught ;
I think that he was kneeling there within.

He stared about my form, as if he sought
Some other person who might be with me ;
But when his doubtful hope had come to naught,

"If high intelligence thy guide can be

Adown this dungeon dark," he weeping cried,

" Where is my son? Why comes he not with thee? "

Startling, too, is the incursion of Brunetto
Latini. Virgil and Dante are walking along a
dike through a desert, amidst a rain of fire. Un-
expectedly they meet a band of spirits, disfigured
by the burning flakes, hastening in the opposite
direction, at the foot of the embankment; and, in
passing, each one stares at Dante " as people are
wont to stare at one another in the evening under
a new moon," knitting their brows, like an aged
tailor trying to thread a needle.

While such a crowd was gazing at me thus,
One, recognizing me, let out a cry,
Seizing my garment's hem: " How marvelous! "

And when he lifted up his arm, mine eye

His parched face went searching thro' and thro',
Until the burns no longer could deny

My eager mind a recognition true.
Then, seeking with my face his visage scarred,
"You here! " I cried, " Master Brunetto, you! "

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WORKMANSHIP

A surprise of a different nature awaits the
reader in the meeting of the two travelers with
the shade of the poet Sordello, on the slope of
the mountain of Purgatory. Virgil, who is
puzzled about the path, espies him. " ' But see
yonder,' he says, ' a soul all alone, looking towards
us. It will show us the quickest way.' We came
to it. O Lombard soul, how haughty and dis-
dainful was thy mien, how dignified and slow the
turning of thine eyes ! It spake not a word to us,
but let us go our way, simply gazing, like a lion
at rest. Yet Virgil approached it, requesting it
to show us the best ascent. The wraith, making
no reply to his question, inquired about our coun-
try and our life; and my gentle leader was be-
ginning ' Mantua ' . . . , when the shade, which
had been all self-absorbed, sprang from the place
where it sat, exclaiming: ' O Mantuan, I am Sor-
dello, from thy city ! ' And each clasped the
other in his arms." The episode is invented and
thus thrillingly developed by Dante for the pur-
pose of emphasizing the contrast between the love
of two departed fellow-townsmen — strangers to
each other, and separated by twelve hundred
years — and the mutual hatred of fellow-citizens
in the Italy of his own day.

There are not a few of these abrupt turns,
which affect us like the flash of a meteor. Indeed,
Dante himself, in one instance, uses this simile :

As in nocturnal skies serene and pure

From time to time a spark goes speeding fast,
Startling the eyes which rested all secure,

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And seems a star from heaven to heaven cast,
Except that in the quarter where 't is lit
Nothing is lost, and it is quickly past.

Antithesis and surprise are good devices for
keeping the reader's interest alert; but our poet
had another : suspense. You all know the quiver
of excitement, half pleasurable, half painful, that
holds you spellbound while a thrilling situation is
prolonged on the stage, and the eager expectation
that ensues if the outcome is postponed until
another act. Some of you have experienced the
same sensation in the intervals of a serial story
which, in the good, old-fashioned way, breaks off
its chapters at tense moments. This emotion
Dante knew right well — Dante, who, as he him-
self more than once declares, was always so keenly
inquisitive.

The principle of suspense he uses again and
again in his Divine Comedy, especially at the close
of his cantos. Sometimes it assumes the form of
a mere announcement, as when in Heaven the soul
of Justinian, wrapped in the effulgence that ema-
nates from its own happiness, is about to answer
Dante's questions, " in the fashion that my next
song sings."

E cosi chiusa chiusa mi rispose
Nel modo che il seguente canto canta.

In the ice at the bottom of Hell, two souls are
frozen together in one hole, and one of the two
is gnawing the back of the other's head. They
are Count Ugolino, once ruler of Pisa, and the
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WORKMANSHIP

enemy who betrayed him, Archbishop Ruggieri.
Dante asks him to explain his brutal rage :

" O thou who showest by such beastly act
Hatred for him thy teeth forever bite,
Now tell me why," I said, " upon this pact,

That if against him thy complaint be right,

Knowing the names of both, knowing the wrong,
I yet shall pay thee in the world of light,

Unless discourse forsake my withered tongue."

Then the next canto takes up the theme as follows :

The sinner lifted from its savage grind

His crunching mouth, and wiped it on the hair
Of t' other's head, which he had spoiled behind.

Then he began: " Thou wouldst not have me spare
My hopeless heart a tale that wakes its woe
In very thought, ere language lay it bare.

But if my words the vengeful seed shall sow
Of infamy for this betrayer whom I gnaw,
My speech and tears in company shall flow."

Sometimes — once in Purgatory, five times in
Hell — the closing lines of one canto actually
begin the matter that is to form the subject of the
next.

Meanwhile around the road we circling went,
Speaking of things which I must leave behind,
Until we reacht the pathway's next descent ;

And there was Plutus, foe to humankind.

Thus ends Canto VI ; Canto VII treats of Plutus,
god of wealth, and of the unhappy souls of those
who misused riches.

However, the kind of suspense that I par-
ticularly had in mind is something more emotional

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THE POWER OF DANTE

than this. An anxious moment is that in which
the huge Antaeus, at the edge of the pit, lifts up
the travelers in his hands and sets them down at
the bottom of the well. The terrified poet recalls
only the look of the giant as he stooped to pick
them up and as he arose after depositing them
below. This second posture he likens to the hoist-
ing of a mast into its step, on a ship. The first
attitude is compared to the appearance of the
Garisenda, one of the leaning towers in Bologna,
when the observer is standing right under the
slant, and a cloud passes in a direction opposite
to the tilt of the tower, making the whole structure
appear to be descending on the spectator. " As
is Garisenda when you gaze at it from under its
slope, while a cloud passes over it in such fashion
that it hangs contrarywise, so Antaeus looked to
me, who was watching to see him bend; and it
was an instant when I should have chosen to go
by some other road. But lightly he set us down in
that deep which engulfs Lucifer and Judas. Nor
did he linger thus bent, but rose up like a mast
in a ship."

The cold terror that is concentrated in this
moment, is in another episode prolonged —
namely, in the episode of the opposition of the
demons at the gate of the City of Dis, perhaps
the most chilling experience of the whole journey.
" Above the gates I beheld more than a thousand
of the outcasts of Heaven, who cried wrathfully:
' Who is this man who, without death, goes
through the kingdom of the dead?' And my
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wise teacher made a signal that he would parley
with them privately. Then they suppressed a bit
their great anger, saying : ' Do thou come alone,
and let him go away, who so presumptuously hath
entered this realm. Let him return alone over
his mad path! Let him see whether he can!
For thou shalt stay here, who hast directed him
to this land of darkness.' Imagine, reader, how
hopeless I became at the sound of their accursed
words; for I thought never to return here again.
' O my dear leader,' I cried, ' who more than seven
times hast restored my safety and snatched me
from deep peril that threatened me, leave me not
thus helpless! And if we are not permitted to
pass beyond, let us swiftly retrace our steps to-
gether I ' And the master who had led me thither
replied to me: ' Fear not; for no one can deprive
us of our passage — it is granted us by such a
Power ! But await me here, and feed and fortify
with good hope thy downcast spirit; for I shall
not leave thee in the nether world.' With that,
he departs, my sweet father, and quits me here;
and I am left in doubt, with ' yes ' and ' no ' con-
tending in my brain. I could not hear what was
proposed to them, but it was not long before they
all scuttled back within, at full speed. They
slammed their gates in my master's face, those
foes of ours; and he, left without, turned back
to me with slow steps. With eyes downcast and
brows shorn of all boldness, he said, sighing:
'Who has denied me the houses of sorrow?'
And to me he spake : ' Be thou not terrified, tho'
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THE POWER OF DANTE

I be incensed; for I shall win the fight, whatever
be the round of their defense within. This arro-
gance of theirs is not new. Once they displayed
it at a less hidden door, which still remains with-
out lock. Above it thou didst see the words of
death. Down from it, traversing the rings un-
escorted, is already descending one who shall
open the city for us.' . . . He stood still like
one listening, for his eye could not take him far
through the black air and the thick fog. ' Yet
we must win the struggle/ he began. ' If not —
but think who came ! O how I long for some one
to join us! ' . . . And he said more, but I recall
it not; because my eye had drawn all my being
to the high tower with the glowing top, where,
in one swift instant, three hellish, blood-stained
furies had arisen. . . . Each one of them rent
her breast with her claws, and beat herself with
her palms, and shrieked so loud that I clung in
fright to the poet. ' Let Medusa come ! ' cried
all three, staring down. ' Then we shall trans-
form him to stone.' . . . ' Turn back, and keep
thy face covered; for, if the Gorgon shows herself
and thou shouldst see her, there would be no
more returning to the life above.' Thus spake
my teacher; and he himself turned me around,
and, not trusting to my hands, covered my eyes
with his own." At this critical moment a roar is
heard over the waters, like a storm-wind that
sweeps everything before it. " Virgil uncovered
my eyes, crying : ' Now direct thy nerve of sight
over this ancient scum, in that quarter where the
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reek is sharpest.' As frogs, at the approach of
their enemy, the snake, all vanish in the water
and crouch upon the bottom, so I saw more than
a thousand dead souls fleeing before one who was
walking over Styx with dry feet. . . . Well I
knew that he was a messenger from Heaven, and
I turned to my master, who made a sign that I
should bow to the visitor in silence. Ah! how
scornful he looked! He reached the gate, and
opened it with a little wand; for there was no
resistance."

On two other occasions Dante is in terror from
demons, and apparently with some reason, al-
though his guide proves to be an adequate pro-
tector. Once, when some devils have actually
succeeded in deceiving Virgil, the poet is dis-
quieted by the indignant look on his leader's face.
4 Then my teacher departed with long strides,
his countenance somewhat clouded with wrath.
So I started after . . . , following the prints of
his beloved feet." Thus ends one canto; but
early in the next, " the poultice comes to the
wound: " for " my leader turned to me with that
sweet expression which I first had seen at the foot
of the mountain."

Even in Paradise, Dante is not always free from
apprehension. Peering into the light that en-
velops the soul of St. John, to see whether, in
accordance with the old legend, the beloved dis-
ciple has really been taken up to Heaven in the
flesh (like Christ and Mary), he is stricken with
blindness. " As is a man who stares and strives

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THE POWER OF DANTE

to see the sun partially eclipsed, and by seeing
becomes sightless, such I became in the presence
of that last fire; and meanwhile I heard: 'Why
dost thou dazzle thyself to see a thing which hath
no place here? Earth in earth is my body, and
there shall stay until our number shall be equal
to the tale foreordained.' '

Ah ! what a fearful, wonderful surprise !
For when I turned to look on Beatrice,
I could not see her form in any wise,

Tho' near to her, and in the world of bliss !

The following canto, however, once more brings
relief; for Dante is soon assured that his blinding
is only for a little while : " Depend upon it, thy
sight is dazed, not dead."

At the close of Canto XXI of the Paradiso,
the poet is alarmed at the outcry of a company of
shining souls on Jacob's Ladder, voicing their
indignation at the degeneracy of modern prelates,
as described by one of their number, Peter
Damian.

And thereupon I saw, from stair to stair,

A throng of flamelets, turning, downward flow ;
At every turn their light appeared more fair.

They joined their mate, and halted there below;
Then, shouting, lifted up a mighty roar
Which cannot be compared to aught we know.

Its thunder stunned me ; I could hear no more.

Thus the situation is left until Canto XXII re-
sumes the story. " Crushed with amazement,
I turned to my guide, like a little child who always
runs to her in whom he puts most trust. And
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she, — like a mother, who instantly rescues her
pale and panting boy with her voice which never
fails to soothe him, — spake thus to me : ' Knowest
thou not that thou art in Heaven? And knowest
thou not that Heaven is all holy, and that what-
soever is done there comes from righteous zeal?
. . . From this shout, hadst thou understood its
supplication, thou wouldst have learned of the
retribution which thou shalt see before thy
death.' '

In Purgatory, too, there is a like suspense, and
a similar outcry — this time, however, a shout,
not of reprobation, but of joyful thanksgiving:
a soul (the soul of the poet Statius), having com-
pleted its penance, is free to climb to Heaven;
and, to celebrate its release, the mountain shakes
and all the spirits raise their voices in praise.
' We were straining to cover as much of the road
as was permitted our strength, when, like some-
thing falling, I felt the mountain tremble. A
chill came over me, such as seizes a man who is
walking to his death. Surely the isle of Delos
never quaked so hard, before Latona made her
nest in it, to bring forth the twin eyes of the sky.
Next began on all sides a shout, so loud that my
master stepped close to me, saying: ' Fear noth-
ing, while I keep thee.' All were calling ' Gloria
Deo in excelsis,' judging from what I could catch
from the souls nearest me, whose cry I could
understand. We stood motionless and rapt, like
the shepherds who first heard that song, until the
trembling ceased and the song was finished. Then
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THE POWER OF DANTE

we resumed our sacred way, gazing at the souls
extended on the ground, who had already returned
to their wonted plaint. Never with such sharp
attack did any ignorance ever make me crave to
know (if my memory in this be not at fault) as
that which, while I reflected, now assailed me.
But I dared not ask a question, because of our
haste; nor could I detect anything by myself.
And so I went on, timid and thoughtful." The
sequel follows in the next Canto. " That inborn
thirst which is never slaked, save with the water
for which the woman of Samaria prayed, was
tormenting me; and haste was goading me after
my leader, over the obstructed way ; and pity was
pricking me for the punishment, merited though
it was. And lo ! even as Luke writeth that Christ,
already risen from his burial cave, appeared to
the two who were on the road, a shade appeared
to us, approaching from behind, as we were
staring at the prostrate company [of penitent
souls]. But we saw it not until it spake first,
saying: 'Brothers, God give you peace!' We
turned at once; and Virgil replied with a sign that
befits such words, and then began : ' May thou
be brought in peace into the blessed council by
that righteous judgment which sentences me to
eternal banishment! ' * What! ' cried the stranger,
as we walked briskly on, ' if ye be shades that God
brooketh not above, who hath led you so far up
his stairway?' And my teacher answered: 'If
thou look at the marks which the " [guardian]
angel traces, and which this man beareth [on his
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brow], thou shalt plainly see that it is fitting for
him to abide with the good. ... I was drawn
forth from the broad gullet of Hell to show him
the way; and I shall guide him as much further as
my teaching can lead. But tell us, if thou knowest,
why the mountain gave such shakes, a moment
since, and why, even down to its moist feet, all the
souls appeared to cry out together.' ' Thus Vir-
gil puts to Statius (for the stranger is none other
than the spirit just set free) the very inquiry that
Dante has been aching but fearing to utter.

This question thro' the needle's eye did aim
Of my desire ; and so with very hope
My raging thirst less ravenous became.

Curiosity it is, more than apprehension, that
torments the poet, when, on the brink of a well-
nigh bottomless cliff in Hell, he is waiting to see
what will emerge from the darkness below, in
response to a strange signal which Virgil has
thrown down into the void. The signal is Dante's
belt. " I had a rope girt about me, with which
I had once thought to catch the leopard with the
painted hide. When, at my leader's command,
I had taken it quite off, I handed it to him knotted
and coiled. Whereupon he, swinging to the right,
threw it down into the deep hole, some distance
out from the edge. * Something curious must
surely respond,' I said to myself, ' to the curious
sign which my master is so following with his
eye.' Ah me! how cautious men should be in
the presence of those who not only see the deed
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THE POWER OF DANTE

but with their wisdom look into the thoughts!
He said to me : ' Soon shall come up that which
I expect ; that which thy thought is imagining must
soon be disclosed to thy sight.' To a truth that
hath the semblance of a lie, a man should always
close his lips as long as he can, because without
his fault it gets him shame. But here I cannot be
silent. By the notes of this Comedy, as I hope
they be not without long-enduring favor, I swear
to thee, reader, that I saw swimming up through
the thick, dark air a shape marvelous to the
stoutest heart, as one returns to the surface who
dives below sometimes to loose an anchor that is
caught on a reef or something else hidden in the
sea — spreading out at the top and contracted at
the feet." What finally does emerge (in the next
Canto), after all these preliminaries, is the mon-
ster Geryon, embodiment of Fraud and keeper
of the eighth circle.

Attentive study of this long preparatory pas-
sage reveals a carefully constructed climax, the
details being so arranged as progressively to whet
the reader's interest: first, Dante's wonder; then
Virgil's mysterious hint; next, the suggestion of
a thing beyond belief; finally, the impression of
impending horror and the vague image of an
awful unknown something gradually taking form.
Many artistic climaxes could be pointed out in
Dante's work, but the unfolding of them would
require too lengthy quotation. I shall limit myself
to a few obvious cases.

Near the close of each of the three great
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divisions of the Divine Comedy, there is a cun-
ningly elaborated scale, leading up to the appear-
ance of Satan, of Beatrice, and of God. As we
approach the bottom of Hell, we reach a ring of
giants — Nimrod and the Titans — surrounding
the mouth of the central well. At the foot of this
pit, a lake of ice, imprisoning the souls of hideous
traitors. Drawing close to the middle of the
round pool, we see looming up in the darkness a
form too big and too awful for belief; and a
bitterly cold blast sweeps upon us. Our poet takes
refuge behind his master, and becomes aware that
under his feet, in the ice, are souls in various
twisted postures. Suddenly Virgil steps aside,
and Dante, full in sight of the monstrous Lucifer,
stands shivering, neither dead nor alive. Then
follows the description of the three-faced crea-
ture.

In the latter cantos of the Purgatorio is the
lovely picture of the Garden of Eden, fresh with
the shade of endlessly varied trees, musical with
birds and the rustle of leaves, fragrant with eter-
nal flowers. There, beside the clear, rippling rill,
appears, singing and picking blossoms, the figure
of Matilda, personification of the charm of youth
and innocence. Next comes into sight the majestic
pageant of the Church, and in its midst a chariot
from which rise a hundred angels, scattering lilies
in the air. Through this rain of flowers Beatrice
little by little becomes visible. " Ere this I have
seen, at the beginning of day, the eastern quarter
all rosy and the rest of the sky beautifully clear;
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and the sun's face rising so shadowed that,
screened by mists, the eye could bear it a long
time. Thus, enveloped in a cloud of flowers
which rose from angel hands and fell again within
and without [the chariot], a lady appeared to
me . . . clad in the color of living flame." And
Dante, before he sees her face, recognizes her by
the love that floods his heart.

No further witness was required of sight :

By some mysterious power that flowed from her,
Once more of bygone love I felt the might.

When Dante, near the consummation of his
journey, emerges from the universe of matter
into the world of spirit, his first impression is of
the boundless, everlasting outpour of divine grace,
which seems like a vast river of light. But this
river presently transforms itself into a round
ocean of golden brightness, about which are
gathered all the blest and the innumerable flutter-
ing host of angels, all illumined by a beam from
above. Accustoming his sight, by degrees, to
all this brilliancy, the poet gradually follows up
this ray with his eyes, until God, the source of
light, is revealed to him.

O grace abounding! thro' the endless light
Thou gavest me full confidence to look,
Till quencht within the fire was mortal sight.

[From Dante, p. 373.]

In the vision of Satan at the end of the Inferno,
of Beatrice near the close of the Purgatorio, of
God at the very conclusion of the Paradiso, we
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find illustrated another structural principle char-
acteristic of Dante's genius, the principle of
balance. Furthermore, the figure of Satan, the
last thing seen in Hell, is so designed as to balance
the conception of God, who is the end and goal
of the poet's vision of Heaven. The three Persons
of the Holy Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost, or Power, Wisdom, and Love — have
their counterpart in the three faces of the Evil
One. The sallow visage on the right, which holds
Cassius in its mouth, expresses weakness, the
opposite of Power; on the left, the black one,
chewing Brutus, signifies ignorance, opposed to
Wisdom; the red one in the middle, from whose
maw dangles Judas Iscariot, stands for hate,
which is contrary to Love. The Devil, looming
up in enormous bulk, embedded in ice and rock
at the centre of the earth, weighed down by all
the pressure of the universe, is inert, save for the
flapping of his wings and the crunching of his
jaws. The Lord, free from all encumbrance of
matter, outside of space and time, is ceaselessly
and eternally active, imparting life and motion to
the world, sustaining the universe which he has
created.

Another balanced pair — though here the re-
lation is less evident — is that of Matilda and
St. Bernard, the former symbolizing the highest
stage of the active life, a state of innocence and
joy, the latter typifying the highest stage of the
contemplative life, direct intuition of God. Ma-
tilda, a lovely maiden, appears in the Earthly
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THE POWER OF DANTE

Paradise; St. Bernard, a venerable elder, in the
Heavenly Paradise. Both present themselves to
initiate Dante into the mysteries of their respective
abodes. Let us look at the two pictures.

Dante, with Virgil and Statius, has been wander-
ing, full of wonder, through the fragrant forest
of Eden, and now gazes across the clear, cool
stream that bars his progress. " And yonder ap-
peared before me, as sometimes a thing suddenly
does appear, which for amazement turns away
every other thought, a lady all alone, who walked
singing and selecting flower from flower, with
which her path was all painted over. ' Pray, fair
lady, who dost bask in the beams of love, — if I
am to trust to looks, which are usually witnesses
of the heart, — be disposed to come forward,'
said I to her, ' toward this current, far enough for
me to understand what thou singest. Thou dost
recall to me what Proserpina was like, and where
she was, at the moment when her mother lost her
and she lost the springtime.' As a lady, dancing,
turns, with feet close to the ground and to each
other, scarcely putting one before its mate, so
she turned towards me, on the scarlet and yellow
flowerets, even as a maid who casts down her
modest eyes; and she satisfied my prayer, drawing
so near that the sweet music came to me with all
its meaning. As soon as she had reached the spot
where the grasses were already wet by the ripples
of the pretty rill, she granted me the boon of lift-
ing her eyes. I do not believe such light shone
beneath the lids of Venus, when she was wounded
[212]

WORKMANSHIP

by her son — quite differently from his habit.
She was laughing, erect on the other bank, trail-
ing from her hands variously colored flowers
which that high country produces without seed.
Three steps apart the stream held us; but the
Hellespont, in the place where Xerxes crossed
(even now a warning to all human arrogance),
did not suffer more hatred from Leander, for
swelling between Sestos and Abydos, than this
brooklet suffered from me, because its waters did
not open then."

For a sight of St. Bernard, we must mount from
the Garden of Eden to the mystic white Rose of
Paradise. Beatrice, who has been at Dante's side,
suddenly vanishes, as Virgil had disappeared in
Eden when his mission was fulfilled. The poet
turns to question his guide, and sees in her place
an unknown figure. " One thing I expected, and
another came : I thought to see Beatrice ; but what
I beheld was an elder, clad like the children of
glory. A smiling light of kindness overspread his
eyes and cheeks, with a paternal look, such as
befits a tender father. And 'Where is she?' I
exclaimed. To which he replied : 'To fulfill all thy
desire, Beatrice took me from my place. If thou
shalt look up at the third tier from the highest
row, thou shalt see her again, on the throne which
her merits have won for her.' Without answer-
ing, I lifted up my eyes, and saw her crowned with
a crown of her own making, as she reflected from
herself the eternal rays. . . . And the sacred
elder spake : ' In order that thou perfectly com-

[213]

THE POWER OF DANTE

plete thy journey, to which prayer and holy love
have sent me, fly with thine eyes over this garden;
for the sight of it will prepare thy vision to mount
higher up the beam of light divine. And the
Queen of Heaven, for whom I am all afire with
love, will grant us every grace ; for I am her faith-
ful Bernard.' As one who cometh, perhaps from
Croatia, to see our Veronica [the true likeness of
the Saviour] ; and, having heard of it so many
years, cannot look enough, but says in his thought,
as long as the image is shown, ' My Lord Jesus
Christ, true God, now was thy face indeed like
this?' so was I, as I gazed on the living love of
him who, in this world, by contemplation tasted
that peace."

Symmetry, balance, antithesis, climax — these
great architectural contrivances, as we have seen,
are abundantly exemplified in Dante's planning,
as well as the lesser devices of surprise and sus-
pense. In some cases the suspense is never broken :
strange things are purposely left unexplained, and
the reader is left to form his own conjectures.
This effect of mystery we find most frequently in
Hell. On the shore of Acheron, Charon has re-
fused to ferry the poet across, because he is a
living man.

Then suddenly the country dark and drear
Did quake so hard that memory moisteneth
My body still with sweat, for very fear.

The tearful ground sent forth a gusty breath,
From which a flashing scarlet light did leap,
Which stunned my senses, even unto death.

I fell to earth like one who drops asleep.

[2I4]

WORKMANSHIP

When he recovers consciousness, he finds himself
on the other side, transported we know not how.
A little later, as the travelers are circling along
the bank of Styx, they come at last to the foot of
a lofty tower. " I say, going on with my story,
that long before we reached the foot of the high
tower, our eyes turned up to its top, because of
two little flames which we saw put there; and we
saw another returning the signal from so far away
that the eye could scarce take it in. Then, turning
to the font of all wisdom, I said: * What does this
mean? and what does that other fire reply? and
who are the people who have set them ? ' These
questions remained unanswered.

Mysterious reticence is traditional in oracular
utterances. We find it in Dante's rather numerous
prophecies. In the real ones — that is, in those
which foretell things still in the future when the
author wrote — mystery was of course impera-
tive, unless the poet were willing to incur the risk
of turning out to be a false fortune-teller. For
instance, Dante expected great things of Can
Grande della Scala, younger brother of one of
the poet's patrons early in his exile, himself a
patron toward the end of Dante's life ; but as the
would-be prophet could not truly know what fate
had in store, he had to express his hopes obscurely.
In the heaven of Mars, the soul of Dante's ances-
tor Cacciaguida forecasts the poet's exile, his so-
journ with the Lombard family of la Scala, his
first acquaintance with Can Grande, then only nine
years old, and the mighty deeds which this future

THE POWER OF DANTE

hero is destined to do. " * Wait for him and his
kindnesses. By him many people shall be shifted,
rich and beggars exchanging conditions. And
thou shalt bear away written of him in thy mem-
ory, but thou shalt not tell — * And he told me
things unbelievable even to those who shall see
them."

Skilful restraint often suggests more than any
explicit discourse could impart. Suggestion, con-
veying the impression of something far beyond
the power of words, is one of the finest tools of
our poetic craftsman; and with an example of its
use I shall conclude this account. He employs it
especially in the Paradiso, where he has to do with
things outside the world of the senses. " Hence-
forth," he declares, " my language, even in that
which I remember, shall be briefer than that of a
babe that still wets its tongue at the breast."
" Oh ! how short and weak is speech," he cries,
"compared to my idea I And even that, com-
pared to what I saw, is such that ' little ' is all too
insignificant a word." Gazing on the beauty of
Beatrice, enhanced as it is by her approach to her
heavenly home, he exclaims :

If what hath e'er been said of her could all
Combine into a single praise and blend,
For this occasion it would be too small.

The beauty now before me doth transcend
Not only human thirst : the Infinite
Alone can drink it to the very end.

This test hath found me wanting, I admit,
Far worse than any one of poet kind
Was ever vanquished by his hardest bit.

[216]

WORKMANSHIP

E'en as the sun the feeblest eye doth blind,
E'en so the sweetness of her smile doth chase
Itself from memory, leaving naught behind.

Since first in mortal life I saw her face
Until I saw it thus supremely blest,
My song hath constantly pursued her trace ;

But now my fond pursuit must come to rest —
Pursuit of loveliness in poesy —
Like every artist who hath done his best.

[217]

LECTURE VIII
DICTION

Apollo, pray, for my remaining task,
O ! make me such a vessel of thy might
As they must be, for laurels dear who ask.

Till now, enough has been a single height
Of old Parnassus ; now I need the two
To succor me in this, my final flight.

Enter my bosom now, and breathe anew,
As when from out the scabbard of the skin
Thy conquest Marsyas' bleeding body drew.

O power divine, let me thy favor win
Until to tell the blessedness I see
Fading from memory's chambers, I begin.

Then shalt thou see me seek thy favorite tree
And crown myself with thy beloved bay,
Made worthy by my subject and by thee.

So seldom, Father, is it pluckt to-day

(O shame upon the base desires of men!)
To decorate or victory or lay,

That joy should swell in joyous Delphi when
The leaf that keeps immortal Daphne's name
Awakes the hankering of poet's pen.

A tiny spark may light a glowing flame ;
And after me a louder prayer may rise,
And Cyrrha's echo may repeat the same.

With this impassioned supplication to Apollo,
or heavenly inspiration, Dante launches upon his
tale of Paradise. At the beginning of his Pur-

DICTION

gatory, too, he prays for help, this time from
Calliope, genius of poetic art:

The second realm of spirits I shall sing,
Where penitent the soul itself doth shrive
And thus prepares its heavenward way to wing.

But now be Poetry, sunk in death, alive,
O holy Muses ! I am in your care.
And let Calliope a bit revive,

And play, in harmony with me, that air

Which Pieros' wretched daughters once did hear
So grandly swell, it drove them to despair.

As we read the divine poem, we seem, from
time to time, to hear the strumming of the Muse,

As skilfully guitar accompanies

A skilful singer, with its quivering string,
And thus the song hath double power to please.

E come a buon cantor buon citarista
Fa seguitar lo guizzo della corda
In che piu di piacer lo canto acquista.

With the tinkle of the harp and the guitar, we
hear the tinkle of the morning bell which the clock
rings :

And as the clock, which early summons all

And wakes the Church, the Bride of God above,
To woo the Bridegroom with her matin call —

The clock, where push and pull the wheels that move,
And ting-a-ling so musically sing,
The quick responsive spirit swells with love :

Thus I beheld revolve the glorious ring,
Voice answering unto voice, in perfect peace
And sweetest concord, past imagining,

Save yonder, where delight can never cease.

[219]

THE POWER OF DANTE

Indi come orologio che ne chiami
Nell' ora che la sposa di Dio surge
A mattinar lo sposo perche 1'ami,

Che 1'una parte 1'altra tira ed urge,
Tin tin sonando con si dolce nota
Che il ben disposto spirto d'amor turge:

Cos! vid'io la gloriosa rota

Muoversi, e render voce a voce in tempra
Ed in dolcezza ch'esser non puo nota,

Se non cola, dove gioir s' insempra.

The clock was still a thing new and strange enough
to be a source of pleasurable wonder. Rings of
souls, dancing around at greater and less speed,
are compared to wheels in clockwork:

Just as the wheels that regulate a clock
Revolve so different, to the watchful eye,
One flying seems, one still as any stock.

I have quoted all these passages, not so much
because they speak of harmony as because by their
sound and suggestion they create it. Artistic
balance, harmony of sound, of phrasing, of senti-
ment: that is the secret of the pervasive, soothing
charm of Dante in his gentler moments.

What then I heard imprest me like the thing,
The very thing that always strikes the ear
WTien organs play and people stand and sing,

And now we lose the words and now we hear.

Tale imagine appunto mi rendea

Cio ch' io udiva qual prender si suole
Quando a cantar con organi si stea,

Ch' or si or no s'intendon le parole.

[ 22O ]

DICTION

Thus it is when we read Dante for the first
time — indeed, even for the twentieth time : the
meaning of the words now is plain, now elusive,
but the majestic music of the verse sounds on like
a mighty organ, suggesting things beyond our
present ken.

And thence, as cometh to the listening ear

Sweet harmony from organ pipes, there comes
Before mine eyes the time that draweth near.

Da indi si come viene ad orecchia
Dolce armonia da organo, mi viene
A vista il tempo che ti s'apparecchia.

These are the words of Dante's ancestor, Caccia-
guida, in the sphere of Mars. In this same
Heaven of Mars, the shining souls of innumer-
able Crusaders, grouped in a gigantic Cross, all
join in one sweet, distant song, a song whose
loveliness transcends human understanding :

As harp or viol, tuned to harmony

Of many strings, doth tinkle sweet and shy
To one who catches not the melody,

Thus from the lights appearing in the sky
There swept along the Cross a strain of song
That baffled sense, but lifted me on high.

E come giga ed arpa, in tempra tesa
Di molte corde, fa dolce tintinno
A tal da cui la nota non e intesa,

Cos! dai lumi che li m'apparinno
S'accogliea per la croce una melode
Che mi rapiva senza intender 1'inno.
[221 ]

THE POWER OF DANTE

Kindliness it is which bids these spirits interrupt
their hymn, that Dante and Cacciaguida may meet
and hold converse together.

It bade that dulcet lyre its music cease,
And stilled those holy strings, which Heaven's hand
So dextrously doth tighten and release.

Silenzio pose a quella dolce lira,
E fece quietar le sante corde
Che la destra del cielo allenta e tira.

Silence just as sudden falls upon St. Peter,
St. James, and St. John, whose dazzlingly bright
spirits have been singing and circling about the
poet:

Stopt sudden at the word the fiery round,

And stopt the concert sweet they made together
(Three spirits breathing forth harmonious sound),

As, at the threat of weariness or weather,
The oars that rhythmic cut the sea before,
When boatswain pipes, all hold themselves in tether.

A questa voce I'infiammato giro
Si qu'ieto con esso il dolce mischio
Che si facea del suon del trino spiro,

Si come, per cessar fatica e rischio,
Li remi, pria nell'acqua ripercossi,
Tutti si posan al sonar d'un fischio.

A mighty choir singing in unison we have heard
in Mars, a harmony of three voices in the starry
firmament; now let us listen to a soloist with a
choral accompaniment, compared to a soul that
shines bright against the gleaming orb of Venus :

[ 222 ]

DICTION

As spark within a flame is plain to see,
As voice within a voice is plain to hear,
When one is still and one doth flit and flee,

Thus lights within the brightness did appear,
With different swiftness circling — I believe,
According as their heavenly sight is clear.

E come in fiamma favilla si vede,
E come in voce voce si discerne,
Quando una e ferma e 1'altra va e riede,

Vid' io in essa luce altre lucerne
Movers! in giro piu e men correnti
Al modo, credo, di lor viste eterne.

The harmony that continually resounds in
Dante's Heaven is, of course, a symbol of the
spiritual harmony of the blest. Every soul sees
God in its own way, each enjoys its own degree
of beatitude — some higher, some lower, but all
content, and all together forming one vast celestial
symphony of happiness. " Now I see," exclaims
the poet, " how everywhere in Heaven is Para-
dise, although God's grace doth not descend
equally on all." The heavenly concord and the
heavenly joy — joy complete to the utmost ca-
pacity of each soul — naturally express themselves
in music:

Within the ones that first to meet me came,
Hosanna rang so sweet that since that hour
I ceaselessly have longed to hear the same.

E dentro a quei che piu innanzi appariro
Sonava Osanna si che unque poi
Di riudir non fui senza disiro.

[223]

THE POWER OF DANTE

The angel Gabriel sings, flying like a ring of light
about the Blessed Virgin :

The sweetest tune we hear on earthly shore,
Which closest draws the soul it doth inspire,
Would seem a rifted cloud's tempestuous roar,

If likened to the music of that lyre.

Qualunque melodia piu dolce suona
Quaggiu, e piu a se 1'anima tira,
Parrebbe nube che squarciata tuona,

Comparata al sonar di quella lira.

The vowel coloring in many of Dante's lyrics,
and in some of the episodes of the Commedia
(notably that of Francesca da Rimini), beautiful
as it is, is too subtle to be analyzed. It does its
work, but the reader knows not how nor why.
The effect can be consciously appreciated only
after frequent reading aloud. It can be more
easily caught in short snatches, such as those
which I have quoted, or such as the following:

lo venni in loco d'ogni luce muto,

Che mugghia come fa mar per tempesta,
Se da contrari venti e combattuto.

I reacht a spot where every light is dumb ;
It bellows like the sea tempestuous,
When blown by blasts which there to battle come.

[From Dante, p. 299.]

The key-note is given by the u in luce, muto,
mugghia, combattuto, suggestive of the low roar
of the storm-wind, and reinforced by the m of
muto, mugghia, mar, tempesta, combattuto.
[224]

DICTION

To venni in loco d'ogni luce muto,

Che mugghia come fa mar per tempesta,
Se da contrari venti e combattuto.

In another passage, the echoing rumble of a dis-
tant waterfall sounds like the hum of a beehive :

Gia era in loco ove s' udia il rimbombo
Dell' acqua che cadea nell' altro giro,
Simile a quel che 1'arnie fanno rombo.

In the following translation, having at my dis-
posal no such effective words as rimbombo and
rombo, I have distributed the reverberative sug-
gestion :

Now we had come where we could hear the drum
Of echoing waters tumbling down below,
Which rumbled like the busy beehive's hum.

More subtle is the impression of the following
lines, telling of the swift departure of some shin-
ing souls, which, like rapid sparks, " veiled them-
selves with sudden distance " — a wonderful
figure, which I shall not attempt to reproduce in
verse :

E quasi velocissime faville

Mi si velar di subita distanza.

The sparkle of the i in " velodssime faville mi
si "... fades into the deep a and u of " velar
di sz/bita distanza."

Another factor in Dante's suggestiveness is the
repetition of words fraught with associations of
the mood which the author wishes to induce:
[225]

THE POWER OF DANTE

for instance, in the Francesca passage, the abund-
ance of such tender and sad terms as amor, amar,
amante, dolce, piacer, pace, dolore, doloroso,
lagrimar wonderfully enhances the emotional im-
pressiveness of the story itself.

Amor, che a nullo amato amar perdona,
Mi prese del costui piacer si forte
Che, come vedi, ancor non m' abbandona.

Amor condusse noi ad una morte.

In a very different strain is the sonnet in which
the poet regrets having wasted his rhetorical efforts
on an impervious female — perhaps Lady Philos-
ophy, perhaps a woman of flesh and blood — and
emphasizes his impatience by repetition of the
angry word maledico, " I curse." " I curse the
day when first I saw the light of your treach-
erous eyes, and the moment when you came to
the crest of my heart to pluck the soul from it.
And I curse the loving file, the polisher of words
and pretty metaphors, which I have invented and
set to rime for you, to make the world honor you
forever more. And I curse my stubborn memory,
which is sure to keep that which is destroying me
— your beauteous and cruel face, for whose sake
Love is often condemned. Wherefore doth every-
one laugh at him and me, who hope to rob Fortune
of her wheel."

Io maledico il di ch* io vidi im prima
La luce de' vostri occhi traditori

E '1 punto che veniste in cima

Del core a trarne 1'anima di fuori.

[226]

DICTION

E maledico 1'amorosa lima

C'ha pulito i miei detti e i bei colon
Ch' io ho per voi trovati e messi in rima,

Per far che il mondo mai sempre v'onori.
E maledico la mia mente dura,

Ch' e ferma di tener quel che m'uccide:
Cioe la bella e rea vostra figura,
Per cui Amor sovente si spergiura;

Sicche ciascun di lui e di me ride,
Che credo tor la rota alia Ventura.

Whatever regrets Dante may have felt about
his " loving file, the polisher of words and pretty
metaphors," we surely need feel none. The meta-
phors and similes that his file has polished to per-
fection constitute perhaps the most obvious attrac-
tion, not only of his lyrics, but still more of his
Divine Comedy. One could dwell long on this
branch of his art; but, as it does not strictly belong
to the present subject, I must content myself with
a few specimens. There is a graceful comparison
(used later by Boccaccio) in Dante's ode Tre
donne intorno al cor mi son venute. One of the
three allegorical ladies rests her face in her hand,
drooping " like a plucked rose."

Dolesi 1'una con parole molto

E 'n sulla man si posa

Come succisa rosa;
II nudo braccio, di dolor colonna,
Sente 1'oraggio che cade dal volto.

One lady, answering in tearful wise,

Doth face on hand repose,

E'en as a severed rose;
Her bare supporting arm, pillar of grief,
Doth feel the shower that falleth from her eyes.

[227]

THE POWER OF DANTE

Just now we were speaking of bees. They were
not the only insects that the poet recognized: in
one passage he refers to the hour of dusk as " the
time when the fly gives way to the mosquito."
The busy ant claimed his attention; and the
curious trait he records is one that he evidently
had observed for himself: two companies of
spirits, passing each other in opposite directions,
and kissing as they go by, seem to him

Like ants within their dusky regiment,

Each member touching noses with his mate,
Perhaps to ask his luck, or whither bent.

The frog finds a place in Dante's collection.
Some of the damned, nearly covered by ice at the
bottom of Hell, suggest the frog, who, " in the
season when the peasant woman often dreams of
gleaning, seats himself, with his muzzle out of
the water, to croak." These we have already
met, and likewise the frogs who " scatter at the
hostile snake's approach," and all " crouch on the
bottom."

Of bird life the Divine Comedy is full, the
poet's favorites, among feathered creatures, being
falcons, cranes, and doves. Here is a procession
of lost souls, borne through the air by the blast
of Hell, like a long flight of cranes:

And as the cranes, with doleful ditty, surge
Along the air, in lengthened streamer lined
Thus coming saw I, uttering their dirge,

Souls ever carried by the self-same wind.

[228]

DICTION

We see the hawk released from its hood, shak-
ing its head and flapping its wings as it prunes
itself, revealing its eagerness to be off; the young
stork, which, impatient to fly, lifts its wing, but
lowers it again, not daring to leave the nest; the
daws, which, at daybreak, begin to flutter all to-
gether, to warm their chilly plumes, as is their
habit, some flying away for good, some returning
to their starting-point, others wheeling constantly
about.

As Dante was ever disposed to look upward,
he watched the stars quite as lovingly as the birds.
Now he gives us a picture of the sky after sunset,
when the stellar lights begin faintly to appear.

When evening first begins to climb the blue,
New objects slowly show themselves on high,
And what we see seems true and yet untrue.

Now a host of souls first speaking in chorus with
one mighty voice, then singing individually, is
compared to the sun, shining by day with a single
light, and after nightfall reflected in a host of
stars.

When he who, turning, all the world doth light
Descends below and quits our hemisphere,
And sunshine everywhere gives way to night,

The sky, erstwhile with his effulgence clear,
Is suddenly restored to view again
By many lamps which, lit by him, appear.

Now a bright angel, approaching over the sea,
looks, to the observer on the shore, like Mars
shining close to the horizon :
[229]

THE POWER OF DANTE

We still were motionless upon the shore,
Like people wondering about their way, —
When body stops, but heart goes on before, —

And lo ! as often ere the break of day

Mars through a mist sends forth a ruddy light
Down in the west, above the level bay,

Thus (as I hope again to see that sight!)
A gleam came speeding o'er the sea so fast,
Its swiftness went beyond the quickest flight.

The ocean furnishes many beautiful effects.
" The mortal sight of your world," says Dante,
" can penetrate eternal justice no more than your
eye can fathom the ocean; for although the eye
discern the bottom from the shore, it sees it not
on the main; yet the bottom is there, hidden by its
depth." Embarking on the tale of his journey
through Purgatory, he begins :

At last the little vessel of my mind
Doth hoist its sails to cross a better sea,
Leaving that cruel ocean far behind.

At the outset of Dante's description of Heaven,
we find a majestic figure:

O ye who, following in little boats,
Eager to hear, have come so long a way
Behind my ship, which singeth as it floats,

Go back and seek your shores while yet ye may !
Tempt not the ocean ! Haply were ye lost,
If, losing trace of me,* your craft should stray.

The sea I enter never yet was crost.
Minerva sends the wind, Apollo steers,
Nine Muses chart the stars of polar frost.

Ye others, few, who turned in early years
To eat the holy bread that angels keep,

[230]

DICTION

Which feedeth men, but always scant appears,
Well may ye venture on the salty deep,
If but your skiff run close upon my wake
Before the sea resumes its level sleep.

[From Dante, pp. 231-232.]

We may conclude our brief survey of meta-
phors, or rhetorical colors, with this picture of a
storm:

Already swept the turbid waters o'er
The turmoil of an uproar full of fright,
Which made a shiver run thro' either shore.

Its course was like a furious storm-wind's flight,
By heat and cold at odds made over-strong,
Which unobstructed doth the forest smite ;

The boughs it strips and breaks and spins along.
Forward it fares in all its dusty pride,
And beasts and shepherds run, a fearful throng.

You may have been surprised, in the first of
my quotations to-day, to hear an invocation of
Apollo and the Muses by the foremost of Chris-
tian poets. Theologians were apt to regard the
pagan deities as devils, fallen angels, who had
beguiled men to worship them. Dante himself
seems to have interpreted in this fashion some of
the figures of ancient mythology, especially those
associated with the lower world. Others, like
Apollo and the Muses, were for him mere poetic
abstractions. Jupiter represented the heathen's
vague conception of the Godhead. Some of the
ancient divinities, such as Venus, were invented,
he thought, to explain the influence of the stars.
" The world," he says, in the Paradiso, " used to
believe, to its peril, that the fair goddess of

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Cyprus radiated mad passion, as she revolved in
the third epicycle. Wherefore the people of old,
in their old error, not only did honor to her, with
sacrifice and votive shout, but they honored Dione
[her mother] and Cupid [her son] ; and they
went so far as to say that he sat in Dido's lap.
And from her, with whom I begin this canto, they
took the name of the star which is wooed by the
sun, now before, now behind." The story of
Cupid, disguised as Ascanius, sitting in the lap of
Dido, is told by the wise Virgil himself.

We do not know just how far Dante thought
that Virgil and Ovid actually believed in the
supernatural tales they told, how far they con-
sidered their divinities and their narratives to be
mere allegorical and rhetorical inventions. At
any rate, he felt himself quite free to use the
mythological apparatus without compunction, with
no more fear than had Boileau, in the seventeenth
century, of being called a pagan. When occasion
required, he altered the semblance or the character
of the traditional figures, giving Charon, for in-
stance, rings of fire around his eyes, and making
Cerberus, with his three mouths, the embodiment
of vile gluttony. Plutus, god of riches, is turned
into an inflated, clucking hobgoblin, which, at
Virgil's speech, collapses into a helpless heap.
"As wind-puffed sails, when the mast snaps,
tumble in a tangled pile, so dropt to earth that
cruel beast." The kingly Minos, who after death
became a judge of departed souls, is transformed
by Dante into a demon with a long tail, which he

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winds around and around himself in such a way
as to indicate the stage of Hell to which each soul
is condemned. " There sits Minos horrid and
snarling; he examines the sins at the entrance,
judges and sentences according as he coils. I
mean that when the ill-born soul comes before
him, it confesses everything; and that expert in
evil, determining what part of Hell befits it,
girdles himself with his tail as many times as the
steps down which the spirit is to go."

Not very literally, then, did Dante take the
mythology of the ancients. To the poets, whom
he regarded as enlightened beyond other men,
he was inclined to attribute some inkling of re-
ligious truth, which, from time to time, shows
dimly through their fables. Thus, when the
Latin sages wrote of the Golden Age and the
original innocence of mankind, they may have had
a vague concept of the Garden of Eden and the
state of Adam and Eve before the fall. So says
Matilda, the beauteous keeper of the Earthly
Paradise, through which she is leading Dante with
Virgil and Statius. " ' Those poets who of old
sang of the Golden Age and its happy state, per-
haps on their Parnassus were dreaming of this
spot. Here it was that the human stock was
innocent; here is the eternal springtime, here is
every fruit. This is the nectar, whereof they all
tell.' At that, I turned all the way around and
faced my poets ; and I saw that they had received
her last sentence with a smile."

Not content with the traditional poetic my-

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thology, the allegorizing Middle Ages cherished
a sort of intellectual, prosaic mythology of their
own. For example, the seven planetary heavens,
which by the ancients had been turned into gods
and goddesses, we find expounded by Dante, in
the Banquet, as symbols of the seven liberal
arts, Grammar, Dialectics, Rhetoric, Arithmetic,
Music, Geometry, and Astrology. The sky of the
fixed stars stands for Physics and Metaphysics.
The ninth and last revolving heaven, the Crystal-
line, which envelops all the rest of the material
universe, signifies Ethics. The Empyrean, or
heaven of spirit, the real Paradise, represents
Theology. Now the third among the planetary
spheres is that of Venus, the fair Goddess of
Cyprus, of whom we were speaking but a moment
ago; and her heaven is the symbol of the third
liberal art, which is Rhetoric. " The heaven of
Venus," explains Dante, " may be compared to
Rhetoric, on account of two properties : one is the
clearness of its face, which is pleasanter to see
than any other star; the other is its appearance
now in the morning, now in the evening. And
these two properties are to be found in Rhetoric.
For Rhetoric is more pleasing than any other
science, because that is its principal purpose. It
appears in the morning, when the rhetorician
speaks before the eyes of his hearer; it appears
in the evening, when the speech is made by the
rhetorician at a distance, in writing."

The rhetorical authorities most respected in the
Middle Ages were Aristotle and Cicero, both of

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whom are cited by Dante. In the thirteenth cen-
tury not only Rhetoric but also Dialectics and
Logic had come to the fore in the universities.
Possibly the study of Rhetoric strengthened the
natural leaning of the Middle Ages toward im-
personality in writing, and maintained that tend-
ency even in an author of such powerful individu-
ality as Dante. Perhaps, if he had never studied
Rhetoric, he would have left us, in his two spiritual
autobiographies (the New Life and the Divine
Comedy], some account of his material life. As
it is, he never mentions his children, his wife, his
brother; of his parents he says only that they
spoke Italian; there seems to be in one passage
of the Vita Nuova an indefinite reference to one
of his two sisters. That is all he has to say of his
immediate family. Of the events of his career
there is scarcely more. " It is not admitted by the
rhetoricians," he states, " that anyone may without
necessity speak of himself." The reason, as he
goes on to explain, is that we cannot speak of
ourselves without either praising, which is un-
becoming, or blaming, which is still more shame-
ful. Petrarch, in theory, had the same views; for
in one of his letters he declares: "I leave aside
domestic matters, about which you wrote me at
some length, inasmuch as they are not worthy of
being treated in a noble style." On the whole, it
is likely that Dante got from his poring over
rhetorical problems more benefit than detriment,
although it is hard to believe that the conscious,
studied workmanship is in the Divina Commedia

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a more effective factor than the spontaneous, sub-
conscious artistry. Still, it is quite impossible to
separate these two, in Dante or in anyone else.
Whether he would, without the pursuit of Rheto-
ric, have written a better or a worse poem, we
cannot say. At any rate, no one would wish it
different.

" I declare," says the author of the Banquet,
" that the goodness and the beauty of any dis-
course are distinct and different from each other.
For the goodness is in the meaning, and the beauty
in the ornateness of the words, both being de-
lightful, although the delight of goodness is
greatest." " The ornateness of the words "
seems to be Dante's definition of what was gener-
ally called " eloquence," an art frequently dis-
cussed by the scholars of his time. In the four-
teenth century a favorite subject of debate was the
question whether Cicero or Virgil was the more
eloquent writer. Petrarch, in one place and an-
other, has much to say about poetry; and nearly
all the things he says could just as well be said
about prose. What he and his contemporaries
most appreciated in prose and verse, from an
aesthetic point of view, was this same eloquence.
Dante's treatise on versification in the vulgar
tongue is named De Vulgan Eloquentia, " On
Vernacular Eloquence." Eloquence is the idiom
of poetry ; but it is also the idiom of prose. What
it means essentially is style. " Our beloved
Cicero," wrote Petrarch, " is beyond doubt the
father of Latin eloquence. Next to him comes

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Virgil ; or, perhaps, since there are some who dis-
like the order in which I place them, I had better
say that Tully and Maro are the two parents of
Roman literature." The failure to make any
clear distinction between prose and verse style we
find again, centuries later, in some of the Neo-
Classicists.

The illustrious vernacular, declares Dante, is
to be used in prose as well as in verse ; but in verse
it has to be employed with more originality, be-
cause prose writers naturally copy their prede-
cessors. We may perhaps assume that poetry
demands a higher degree of eloquence. But even
in verse there are several grades: in the subjects
that suggest themselves we must use judgment in
deciding whether they are to be sung tragically,
comically, or elegiacally. " By tragedy," he says,
"we mean the higher style, by comedy the
lower, by elegy we understand the style of the
wretched. If things seem worthy of being sung
tragically, we must take up the illustrious verna-
cular, and consequently construct an ode. But if
they are to be sung comically, the middling, some-
times the lowly vernacular is to be assumed. . . .
But if they are suited to elegiac song, only the
lowly vernacular must be used. However, let us
pass over the others ; and now, as is fitting, let us
deal with the tragic style. We may be said to use
the tragic style when the majesty of the lines, the
high quality of the construction, and the excellence
of the words harmonize with the gravity of the
subject."

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THE POWER OF DANTE .

This, then, is the highest degree of poetic elo-
quence : a combination of elegant versification with
choice vocabulary. This is the " tragic style." It
is to be noted that, to Dante's generation, the
words tragedy and comedy generally conveyed no
idea of drama : they signified respectively noble
and familiar composition and, at the same time,
tales with unhappy and with happy endings.
Tragedy was used especially to designate a story
of the downfall of a great personage. Comedy,
therefore, may naturally indicate an account of a
rise from low to high estate. Dante's great poem
was called by him a Commedia; the epithet
" Divine " was added by admiring posterity. And
he called it a Comedy by reason both of its style
and of its subject. At least, so we are told in the
Epistle to Can Grande, which is probably what
it purports to be, an authentic letter of Dante to
his patron.

It is likely that Dante seized with alacrity upon
the distinction between tragedy and comedy, in
order to fortify himself with a reason for using
in the Divina Commedia whatsoever style suited
the moment, instead of maintaining the language
at a constant pitch of monotonous eloquence. This
elevation he had to sustain, as a matter of course,
in his regular odes; but what can advantageously
be done in a poem of a few stanzas may well be
quite impracticable in a lengthy composition. Vir-
gil, to be sure, kept up the noble tone throughout
the /Eneid; that work, however, was written in
grammatica, or Latin, in which eloquence is easier.

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DICTION

Nevertheless Virgil was, in fact as well as
in the fictitious journey, Dante's guide and master.
At the beginning of the Hell, when, after vainly
attempting to pass the three beasts which bar his
way up the mountain, Dante is falling back into
the depths, there appears before him a shape that
looks " faint from long silence." Seeing this form
in the midst of the great waste, he calls out:
" Have pity on me, whatever thou be, shadow or
real man."

Quand' io vidi costui nel gran diserto,
" Miserere di me," gridai a lui,
" Qual che tu sii, od ombra od uomo certo! "

Virgil replies: "Not a man; I was a man once,
and my parents were Lombards, Mantuans both
by birth. I was born under Julius Cassar, though
late in his rule; and I lived in Rome under good
Augustus, in the time of false and lying gods. I
was a poet, and sang of that just son of Anchises
who came from Troy, after proud Ilium was
burned. But thou, why art thou returning to such
distress? Why dost thou not climb the delectable
mountain which is the source and cause of all
joy? " Overwhelmed at finding himself face to
face with the great master, " ' Now art thou that
Virgil, that spring which spreads abroad such a
wide river of eloquence? ' I replied to him with
brow abashed. ' O honor and light of other poets,
let me reap the reward of my long study and of the
great love that hath made me seek out thy book.
Thou art my master, my model. From thee alone

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did I derive that beauteous style which hath won
me honor.' '

" Or se' tu quel Virgilio, e quella fonte
Che spande di parlar si largo fiume ? "
Risposi lui con vergognosa fronte.

" O degli altri poeti onore e lume,

Vagliami il lungo studio e il grande amore
Che m' ha fatto cercar lo tuo volume.

Tu se' lo mio maestro e il mio autore;
Tu se' solo colui da cui io tolsi
Lo bello stile che m' ha fatto onore."

' That beauteous style which hath won me
honor: " just what did Dante mean by " beauteous
style"? Some critics have thought he meant the
proper choice of words, some have suggested that
what he had in mind was allegory. It is to be
observed that Dante is referring to a benefit al-
ready enjoyed, for he says, " Lo bello stile che
m' ha fatto onore," " the beauteous style which
hath won me honor; " therefore he must be speak-
ing, not of the Divine Comedy, which he is just
beginning, but of works previously published and
applauded, particularly, no doubt, his odes, writ-
ten in the tragic or higher style. Let me repeat
Dante's definition of that style : " We may be said
to use the tragic style," he says, " when the majesty
of the lines, the high quality of the construction,
and the excellence of the words harmonize with
the gravity of the subject."

The phrase " majesty of the lines," superbia
carminum, undoubtedly signifies a preponderance
of eleven-syllable verses; for the author himself
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DICTION

says, a little further on: "Of all these lines, the
eleven-syllable is manifestly the most majestic,
both in the time it consumes and in its capacity
for meaning, construction, and vocabulary." By
" the high quality of the construction," construe-
tionis elatio, he seems to mean periodic sentence-
structure, which, he declares, is favored by the use
of the long eleven-syllable line. The third factor,
" excellence of the words," excellentia vocabu-
lorum, or choice diction, is also, in his opinion, best
cultivated in the long line. Now, of these three
elements, it was presumably the third, " excellence
of the words," that gained most from Virgil's
example. His influence may have been consider-
able, also, in the second, " high quality of con-
struction;" and even in the first, "majesty of the
lines," his use of the hexameter may have been one
cause of Dante's preference for the longest Italian
verse that he knew. In this definition there is no
place for allegory. Of course Dante attached the
highest value to allegory, and regarded Virgil as
a great allegorist; but, although he employed
allegory in some of his odes, he probably did not
include it in the phrase bello stile. In his discourse
on allegory, in the Banquet, Dante cites as a
secular example, not Virgil, but Ovid. Neverthe-
less, when he came to construct the symbolic frame-
work of the Divine Comedy, it was Virgil rather
than Ovid that he followed.

I said that the words " the beauteous style
which hath won me honor " must refer to Dante's
past writings, not to the crowning one which is

THE POWER OF DANTE

just at its inception. This does not mean that Vir-
gil's influence ceased, or that it is less conspicuous
in the great poem than in the smaller ones. Quite
the contrary is true. Having found the master's
teaching so profitable in his lyrics, Dante follows
it still more clearly in his grand Commedia. Over
this the genius of the ^Eneid most unmistakably
presides. If we consider the " majesty of the
lines," we find that in the Comedy, not only most
of the verses, but virtually all, are of eleven
syllables. As for " high quality of construction,"
the periods in the Comedy are, on the average,
more fully rounded, ampler, and more supple than
those of the odes. With regard to " excellence
of words " the superiority of the long poem in
Virgilian quality is most striking : whereas the odes
reveal in their choice of words only the general
Virgilian principle of fitness and elegance, the
Comedy displays in countless passages a direct
borrowing of vocabulary, as well as of metaphor
and incident, from the jEneid. Dante had, then,
good reason to love and revere Virgil as a friend
and teacher.

" Poet that guidest me," I then did say,

" Consider well my strength (can it suffice?)
Ere thou consign me to the mighty way."

After Virgil has stilled his disciple's doubts, we
hear the cry of readiness and trust:

" Thy words so potently my heart have bent
With eagerness my journey to pursue
That I return to this, my first intent.
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DICTION

Now go! a single will is in us two.

Thou guide, thou lord and master ! " Thus I pray.

And when he forward stept, my leader true,
I entered on the deep and woody way.

' Tu m'hai con desiderio il cor disposto
Si al venir con le parole tue
Ch' io son tomato nel primo proposto.

Or va', che un sol volere e d'ambedue:
Tu duca, tu signore e tu maestro."
Cosi gli dissi ; e poi che mosso fue,

Entrai per lo cammino alto e silvestro.

Dante's feeling toward Virgil is reflected in the
attitude of the Latin poet Statius, whose shade,
just released from penance, is met during the pas-
sage upward through Purgatory. His art and
inspiration, he avers, even his reform and con-
version and consequently his salvation, he owes to
the ALneid and the Eclogues. The Mneid, " that
divine flame which hath illumined more than a
thousand," was his " mother and nurse in poesy."
It was a sentence in this poem that first made him
aware that prodigality, to which he was addicted,
is a sin, and thus led him to correct himself. It
was a prophecy in the fourth Eclogue that first
opened his eyes to Christianity. All this he tells to
Virgil himself, whose identity he does not suspect.
Then he exclaims:

" Could I have lived when Virgil was alive,
My just completed term of banishment
For one full year I gladly would revive."

Virgil, at this, his gaze upon me bent

With lips that in their silence said : " Be still ! "
But human will is not omnipotent ;

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THE POWER OF DANTE

For smiles and tears so instantly fulfill

The hest of every feeling whence they flow,
In truthful men they least obey the will.

I smiled, like those who secret knowledge show.
The shade stopt short and lookt me in the eyes,
The eyes, which best reveal the heart below.

" Now, by the outcome of thy great emprise,
Say why, erstwhile, as I thy visage scanned,
My glance a flash of laughter did surprise."

Now am I caught on one and t' other hand :
One calls for silence, t' other calls for speech !
I heave a sigh ; my Sage doth understand :

" Fear not," he saith to me, " the truth to teach.
Speak boldly and divulge, at my behest,
What Statius doth so earnestly beseech."

Wherefore I said : " Perhaps thou wonderest,
O ancient spirit, at my laughing face.
With greater wonder thou shalt be imprest !

This shade, which upward guides my mortal pace,
Is Virgil, in whose verses thou hast found
The power to sing of gods and human race.

If thou my laugh didst otherwise expound,
Give up thine explanation as unmeet.
The speech of Virgil was the real ground."

Swiftly he bowed to clasp my leader's feet ;
But Virgil cried: "O brother, do not bend!
For thou art shadow; shadow thou dost greet."

He rose and said: " Now canst thou comprehend
The greatness of mine ardent love for thee,
When I to shadows fleshly substance lend,

Forgetting our unbodied vanity."

[From Dante, pp. 344-345-1

To the personage of Statius our poet probably
ascribed some of his own traits, and much that he
here puts into the mouth of the ancient Latin
surely represents Dante's own sentiment and ex-

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DICTION

perience. His regret at not having been a con-
temporary of Virgil is spoken in this instance by
Statius; but he himself indirectly expresses the
same thought when he cries out in sorrow, on find-
ing that his guide has left him. It is in the Garden
of Eden, and Dante, absorbed in the contempla-
tion of Beatrice, whom he has just recognized,
turns impulsively to communicate his great joy
to his master; but discovers that he is gone. The
poet's face, which has been washed clean with dew,
is again stained with tears, despite all the charms
of Eden — Eden, once sacrificed by mother Eve.
" I turned to the left, with that expectation with
which the little boy runs to his mother, when he
is frightened or in trouble, meaning to say to Vir-
gil : ' Not a drachm of blood is left in me which is
not a-quiver. I recognize the tokens of the old
fire.' But Virgil had left me bereft of him —
Virgil, sweetest father — Virgil, to whom I gave
myself for my salvation. And all that our ancient
mother threw away could not prevent my dew-
cleansed cheeks from turning dark again with
tears."

Only in imagination can Dante consort with
Virgil. What a comfort, what a delight would
have been his companionship in the flesh! But
Virgil's place is among the dead, Dante's among
the living. And not even after death can the
disciple meet the master; for the one is destined
to dwell in Heaven, while the other, a pagan, must
forever dwell below. All this, I think, is implied
in the brief parting. If Dante, like Petrarch,

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had hit upon the idea of writing letters to the
dead, he surely would have addressed an epistle
to the poet whom he so cherished; but he had not
that solace.

Before Virgil departs, however, he bestows
upon Dante an assurance of proficiency, a solemn
declaration that the 'prentice, now become a
master, needs no other direction than his own will.
Of course the reference is to the conduct of
Dante's spiritual life; but the words may be ap-
plied in all truth to his stylistic training and gradu-
ation. " The temporal and the eternal fire hast
thou seen, my son," says Virgil, — that is, the fire
of Purgatory, which is but for a season, and the
fire of Hell, which lasts forever; " and thou art
come to a place where I, by my own effort, can
see no further. I have led thee hither by wit
and art. Now take thine own pleasure as guide.
Thou hast emerged from the steep paths and
from the narrow ones. Behold yonder the sun,
which shines upon thy brow; see the new grass,
the flowers, the shrubs, which the soil here pro-
duces of itself. Until those beauteous eyes, —
which, weeping, moved me to come to thee, —
shall come in gladness [until Beatrice shall come
to seek thee], thou mayest sit and walk amidst
them. No longer await my word or my sign.
Free, upright, and whole is thy will, and it would
be wrong not to follow its judgment. Wherefore
I crown and mitre thee over thyself [I make thee
thine own emperor and pope, arbiter of thy
worldly and religious life]."
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DICTION

E disse: " II temporal fuoco e 1' eterno
Veduto hai, figlio, e sei venuto in parte
Dov' io per me piu oltre non discerno.

Tratto t' ho qui con ingegno e con arte ;
Lo tuo piacere omai prendi per duce.
Fuor sei dell' erte vie, fuor sei dell' arte.

Vedi la il sol che in f ronte ti riluce ;
Vedi 1' erbetta, i fieri e gli arbuscelli,
Che qui la terra sol da se produce.

Mentre che vegnan lieti gli occhi belli
Che, lagrimando, a te venir mi fenno,
Seder ti puoi e puoi andar tra elli.

Non aspettar mio dir piu, ne mio cenno:
Libero, dritto e sano e tuo arbitrio,
E fallo fora non fare a suo senno ;

Per ch' io te sopra te corono e mitrio."

Here we have indeed an admirable specimen of
the " bello stile." The lines are not only " ma-
jestic," but grandly rhythmical and full of subtly
charming assonances (such as " E fallo fora non
fare a suo senno"). The "quality of construc-
tion" is as high as Dante can make it: the sen-
tences are built with exquisite balance, fluent and
perfectly clear, each complete in its own tiercet;
of the sixteen clauses, half show the typical prose
order, half show a normal rhetorical inversion;
nowhere is there anything like unnatural dis-
tortion, nowhere any evidence of the constraint of
verse. The words are excellently sweet, both in
their sound and in their connotation; the line
" Fuor sei dell' erte vie, fuor sei dell' arte,"
" Thou hast emerged from the steep paths and the
narrow ones," shows an ingenious play on the
words erte, " steep," and arte, " narrow," this

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THE POWER OF DANTE

latter being a pure Latinism. At the close we
have in rime the dignified and impressive arbitrio
and mitrio. Let this example of our poet's
" beauteous style " be our parting word. After
this speech, the best I can do is to leave you alone
with Dante.

Await my word no more, for here I halt.

Free-willed your judgment is, and just and true;

To follow not its faith would be a fault.
Your crown and mitre shall be worn by you.

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Gr7

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