Fifty-five years ago when called on for a poem to celebrate the sixth
hundredth anniversary of Dante's birth, Tennyson, feeling his own
littleness before "this central man of all the world," wrote:
"King, that has reigned six hundred years and grown
In power and ever growest
I, wearing but the garland of a day,
Cast at thy feet one flower that fades away."
New tributes to the genius of Dante will be offered by our generation,
for already great preparations are under way in all parts of Italy and
the literary world to commemorate in 1921, the six hundredth anniversary
of the death of the author of the greatest of all Christian poems. The
question naturally suggests itself: Has not the world moved forward many
centuries from Dante's viewpoint and lost interest in many things
regarded as truths or at least as burning issues by Dante? Who is now
concerned with the Ptolomaic system of astronomy, which is so often the
subject of Dante's thought? Who is now interested in the tragic
jealousies and injustices suffered by the people of Florence which led
to the bitter feuds that helped to make Dante the great poet? Who, in
this twentieth century so intent upon making the world safe for
democracy, has sympathy with Dante's advocated scheme of a world-wide
absolute monarchy as the cure for the ills of the society of his day?
Is this generation which sees Italy united as a result of the overthrow
of the Papal states, so universally concerned with Papal claims which
were matters of vital importance to Dante and his generation? Is our
era, which unfortunately looks upon religion as a negligible factor and
not as the animating principle of life, interested in the golden age of
faith of which Dante is the embodiment, and his message in which the
eternal is the object?
Yet, Dante's following is today larger than ever before; his empire over
minds and hearts is more extensive. The moving pictures feature his
Inferno; the press issues, even in languages not his own, such a mass of
books and articles concerning him that a specialist can hardly keep
track of the output. In the universities, especially of Harvard, Cornell
and Columbia, not to speak of those in other lands, the courses on Dante
attract an unusually large number of students. Outside of the academic
atmosphere there are thousands of readers who still find in his
writings, a solace in grief, a strength in temptation, a deep sense of
reality, permanent though unseen, of the love of God and of His justice.
The reasons are not far away.
"Our poet," says Grandgent "was a many sided genius who has a message
for nearly everyone."
Dante's compelling renown among us, is due says Dr. Frank Crane both "to
the intrinsic greatness of the man's personality and to the sheer beauty
of his craftsmanship."
"The secret of Dante's power" writes James Russell Lowell "is not far
to seek. Whoever can express himself with the full force of
unconscious sincerity will be found to have uttered something ideal
and universal."
Whether one or all these reasons are the true explanation of the
twentieth century's great interest in Dante, the fact remains, as
Tennyson said, that far from being a waning classic, Dante "in power
ever grows," and the interest he calls forth constitutes, as James Bryce
observed in his Lowell Institute lectures "the literary phenomenon of
England and America."
Now to Dante as the man let us turn. To know the fibre of his manhood
will help us to appreciate the genius of his art. "It is needful to know
Dante as man" wrote Charles Elliot Norton, "in order fully to
appreciate him as poet." The thought is expressed in another way by
James Russell Lowell: "The man behind the verse is far greater than the
verse itself and Dante is not merely a great poet but an influence, part
of the soul's resources in time of trouble. From him the soul learns
that 'married to the truth she is a mistress but otherwise a slave shut
out of all liberty'" (The Banquet). But that knowledge is dependent upon
our intimacy with the life and spirit of Dante. In many other cases the
knowledge of the life and personality of an author may not be essential
to either our enjoyment or our understanding of his work. In the case of
Dante "he faces his own mirror and so appears in the mid-foreground of
his reflected word." Before looking into that mirror for Dante's
picture, let us first recall some of the established facts in his life
and then see what manner of man he appeared to those who were his
contemporaries or who lived chronologically near him.
Dante was born in Florence in the year 1265. His father was a notary
belonging to an old but decadent Guelph family, his mother, named Bella,
was a daughter of Durante Abati, a Ghibelline noble. Whether his own
family was regarded among the first families of nobility or not, it is
certain that Dante enjoyed the honor of knowing that one of his
forebears, Cacciaguida, had been knighted by Emperor Conrad II on the
Second Crusade. Precocious Dante must have been, as a boy, with
faculties and emotions extraordinarily developed, for in his ninth year,
while attending a festal party, he fell in love with a little girl named
Beatrice Portinari, eight years old. "Although still a child" to quote
Boccaccio his earliest biographer "he received her image into his heart
with such affection that from that day forward never so long as he
lived, did it depart therefrom." She became the wife of Simone dei
Bardi, and died in her twenty-fourth year, the subject of many sonnets
from her mystic lover who, if he had never written anything else, would
have been entitled, by his book of sonnets, his New Life, to rank as a
poet of the first class.
Two years after the death of Beatrice, Dante married Gemma Donati, a
member of an old aristocratic family of Florence and by her had four
children. In the period between the death of Beatrice and his marriage
he had seen military service, having borne arms as a Guelph at the
battle of Campaldino (Purg. V, 91-129) in which the Florentines defeated
the Ghibelline league of Arezzo and he took part at the siege of Caprona
and was present at its surrender by the Pisans (Inf., XXI, 95.) When he
was thirty years old he became a member of the Special Council of the
Republic, consisting of eight of the best and most influential citizens
and in 1300, at the age of thirty-five, midway in the journey of his
life, he was elected one of the six Priors (chief magistrates of his
city) for the months of June and July. Shortly after this Dante with
three others went to Rome on an embassy to Pope Boniface VIII to get
that pontiff's veto to the intervention of Charles de Valois, brother
of Philip IV of France, in the affairs of Florence. But there was delay
in the transaction of the business and that gave the stranger time to
win the city by treachery. When the news reached Dante, he hurried
homeward. At Sienna he learned that his house had been pillaged and
burned and he himself had been accused of malfeasance in office. Without
a trial he was condemned to a heavy fine and to perpetual banishment
under penalty that if he returned he would be burned alive. Then began
his twenty years' exile—years in which he went sometimes almost begging
and at all times even when he was an honored guest in the home of
nobility—knowing as only an exile can know "how bitter is the bread of
dependence and how steep the stranger's stairs." It was during his exile
that Dante completed his immortal Divina Commedia, the child of his
thought "cradled into poetry by wrong." Dante never again saw Florence
for which he yearned with all the intensity of the Hebrew captives weeping
on the rivers of Babylon for a sight of Jerusalem. Death came to free his
undaunted soul in the year 1321 while he was a guest at Ravenna of Guido
Novello da Polenta, a nephew of Francesca da Rimini. At Ravenna the last
seat of Roman arts and letters, in a sepulchre attached to the convent
of the Franciscan monks, he was buried with the honors due to a saint
and a sage. The inscription on his epitaph said to have been composed by
him on his deathbed, is paraphrased by Lowell in the following words:
"The rights of Monarchy, the Heavens, the stream of Fire, the Pit
In vision seen, I sang as far as to the Fates seemed fit.
But since my soul, an alien here, hath flown to nobler wars,
And happier now, hath gone to seek its Maker with the stars,
Here am I, Dante, shut, exiled from the ancestral shore
Whom Florence, the fairest of all-least-loving mothers, bore."
Such is the brief outline of the outward life of him of whom
Michelangelo declared:
"Ne'er walked the earth a greater man than he."
It will help us to a better understanding of that man if his likeness is
impressed upon our memory. The portrait made by his friend Giotto, shows
him as a young man perhaps of twenty to twenty-five years, with a face
noble, beardless, strong, intelligent and pensive—a face which would
not lead one to suspect an appreciation of humor. Yet writers find two
distinct forms of that quality—a playfulness in his eclogues and a
grotesqueness in certain of his assignments to punishments in Hell.
Contrasting with this picture of his early life is the face of his death
mask and of the Naples bust, suggesting the lines
"How stern of lineament, how grim
The father was of Tuscan song."
Here we see him mature with strength of character in every feature and a
seriousness of mien which shows a man with whom one might not take
liberties. It was of Dante in mature life that Boccaccio wrote: "Our
poet was of moderate height and after reaching maturity was accustomed
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 large than small. His jaws were large and
his lower lip protruded beyond the upper. His complexion was dark and
his expression very melancholy and thoughtful. His manners, whether in
public or at home, were wonderful, composed and restrained, and in all
ways he was more courteous and civil than any one else."
Bruni, on the other hand, who wrote a century later describes Dante as
if he had in mind Giotto's fresco of the poet. This is Bruni's
word-picture: "He was a man of great refinement, of medium height and
a pleasant but deeply serious face. It was remarkable that although he
studied incessantly, none would have supposed from his happy manner and
youthful way of speaking that he had studied at all." However well these
pictures may visualize the poet for us, I cannot help thinking that
Dante himself, after the manner of great artists who paint their own
pictures, gives us a far better portrait of himself. What we know of him
from others is as nothing compared to the revelation he has made of
himself in his writings. For, as Dr. Zahm, in his Great Inspirers, has
said: "Dante, although the most concealing of men was, paradoxical as it
may seem, the most self-revealing." The indirect recorder of his own
life, he discloses to us an intimate view of his spiritual struggles, of
the motives which actuated him, of the passions he experienced, not to
speak of the judgments he formed upon all great questions. "So true is
this that if it were possible to > meet him, we should feel that he was
an intimate friend who had never concealed anything from us—who had
discoursed with us on all subjects; science, literature, philosophy,
theology, love, poetry, happiness, the world to come and all that of
which it most imports us to have accurate knowledge." Let us then see
the man as reflected in his writings.
First of all he reveals himself as a man profoundly animated by
religion. He is not a Huysmanns or a François Coppée, a Brunetiere,
a Paul Bourget, forsaking the religious teachings of his youth only to
embrace them in mature life. Never for a moment did he deflect from the
Catholic doctrine, though his studies led him to the consideration of
the most subtle arguments raised against it. He was indeed the defender
and champion of faith, having no sympathy for a mind which would lose
itself in seeking the solution of the incomprehensible mysteries of
religion. So he has Virgil say:
"Insensate he who thinks with mortal ken
To pierce Infinitude which doth enfold
Three persons in one substance. Seek not, then,
O Mortal race, for reasons, but believe
And be content, for had all been seen
No need there was for Mary to conceive.
Men have ye known who thus desired in vain
And whose desires, that might at rest have been,
Now constitute a source of endless pain.
Plato, the Stagerite, and many more
I here allude to. Then his head he bent,
Was silent and a troubled aspect wore."
(Purg., III, 34.)
Guided by the wisdom he thus enunciated Dante from youth to death
maintained a child-like faith that satisfied his intellect and animated
his sentiments. His faith really grew into a passion. His fidelity to
the truth of the doctrines of the Church or to the sacred offices of the
papacy was never shaken either by the scandals of clerical life or the
opposition of different popes to his political ideals. Frequently he
raised his voice in protest yet, notwithstanding his censures against
what he considered abuses in the external administration of the Church
and the policy of her popes, on his part there was not the least
suspicion of unsettled faith or revolutionary design. Strongly convinced
of the divinity of the Church, his passionate nature could not help
execrating the human element that would weaken her influence. "He
teaches that the mystical Vine of the Church still grows and Peter and
Paul who died for it, still live. He holds by that Church. He begs
Christians not to be moved feather-like by every wind of doctrine. 'You
have' he tells them 'the Old Testament and the New. The Pastor of the
Church guides you, let this suffice for your salvation'" (Brother
Azarias). In his devotional life Dante is just as ardent as he is firm
in his adherence to dogma. While all Catholics are held to profess a
common creed, each may follow the bent of his disposition and sympathy
in pious practices, theologically called devotions. It seems to me that
Dante had three such devotions which he practised intensely in his inner
life.
First, devotion to the sacred Humanity of Christ. In eleven places does
he speak at length of Christ's two-fold nature as God and Man; in ten
places does he refer to Christ as the Second Person of the Blessed
Trinity, and wherever Cristo occurs at the end of a line, Dante out of
reverence for the Sacred Person does not rime with it, but repeats the
name itself. The climax of the Purgatorio is the apparition of the
Griffin, the symbol of Christ. Further, on the stellar white cross of
red-glowing Mars the poet shows the figure of the Redeemer. In the
Empyrean Christ is represented in the unveiled glory of His human and
divine natures. So teaching the doctrine of the Incarnation most clearly
and most ardently Dante seeks to promote this cultus as the soul of the
Catholic religion.
Dante's second special devotion is to the Blessed Virgin. His Paradiso
contains the best treatise on Mariology. The whole Divine Comedy indeed
is the poet's loving testimonial of gratitude to the Madonna. It was
through Mary that his visionary voyage to the other world was made
possible. She rescued him when he was enslaved by sin and sent as his
successive guides Virgil, Beatrice and St. Bernard. She of all creatures
is proclaimed on every terrace of Purgatory first in virtue and highest
in dignity and her example is exhibited as an unfailing source of
inspiration to the Souls, to endure suffering cheerfully and to make
themselves, like her, the exemplars of goodness in the highest degree.
In Paradiso she is seen by the poet in all her unspeakable loveliness
and beatitude and as Queen of Angels and of Saints her intercession is
favorably invoked that Dante might enjoy the Vision of God himself. In
the last canto of the poem her super-eminence and incomparable
excellence are sung "with a sweetness of expression, a depth of
philosophy and a tenderness of feeling that have never been surpassed
in human language."
"Thou Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son,
Humble and high beyond all other creatures,
The limit fixed of the eternal counsel;
Thou art the one who such nobility
To human nature gave that its Creator
Did not disdain to make Himself its creature.
Within thy womb rekindled was the love
By heat of which in the eternal peace,
After such wise, this flower was germinated.
Here unto us thou art a noonday torch
Of charity, and below there among mortals
Thou art the living fountainhead of hope.
Lady, thou art so great and so prevailing,
That he who wishes grace nor runs to thee,
His aspirations without wings would fly.
Not only thy benignity gives succor
To him who asketh it, but oftentimes
Forerunneth of its own accord the asking.
In thee compassion is, in thee is pity,
In thee magnificence; in thee unites
Whatever of goodness is in any creature."
The third private devotion of Dante is devotion to the Souls in
Purgatory—a pious practice founded upon the scriptural words: "It is a
holy and a wholesome thought to pray for the dead that they may be
loosed from their sins." Not only does Dante answer the objection raised
as to the efficacy of prayer offered for the souls in Purgatory (VI, 28)
but in many passages he promises his own prayers and works and seeks to
arouse in others on earth a helpful sympathy for those souls. "Truly" he
says, "we ought to help them to wash away their stains which they have
borne hence, so that, pure and light, they may go forth to the starry
spheres," (Purg. VI, 34.)
To sum up Dante's attachment to his religion we can truly say not only
his life but his great poem radiates the spirit and doctrine of the
Church. Hettinger says of Dante: "In truth he anticipated the most
pregnant developments of Catholic doctrine, mastered its subtlest
distinctions and treated its hardest problems with almost faultless
accuracy. Were all the libraries in the world destroyed and the Sacred
Scripture with them, the whole Catholic system of doctrine and morals
might be almost reconstructed out of the Divina Commedia."
Intensity, indeed, is the characteristic of Dante's spiritual life. In
bringing that quality to his faith and religious practice he was only
manifesting the operation of the dominating quality which regulated his
whole life and shaped all his mental and emotional habits. The realm of
his thought and feeling was truly the land of the strenuous life. Having
once set out to say of Beatrice what had never been said of any woman,
Dante applied himself to his prodigious task with a consistency of
purpose that was unmoved by persecution and unshaken by time. In all
the years that he spent in the composition of the Divina Commedia there
was no flagging of interest, no indication of weakness. No one ever
applied himself with more complete absorption or with greater power
of unfaltering concentration, just as no one ever felt more deeply
the outrageous arrows of fortune or the transcendent supremacy of love.
It is precisely because of this intensity that his thoughts and feelings
affect us so profoundly six centuries later.
Intense in his own life Dante had no sympathy with slackers or the
lukewarm whom he characterizes as never having been alive, i.e. of never
having awakened to responsibility to take part in good or evil. As a
consequence they never contributed anything to society. Because in this
life they shifted from one side to another, they are now depicted
running perpetually after an aimlessly dodging banner. Here is the
description of the punishment of the lukewarm:
"Now sighs, cries, and shrill shrieks rang through the starless air:
Whereat at first I began to weep, strange tongues, hurried speech, words
of pain, accents of wrath, voices loud and weak, and the sound of hands
accompanying them, made a tumult which revolves forever in that air
endlessly dark, like sands blowing before a whirlwind. And I, whose head
was hooded with horror, exclaimed: '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 followed by the sorry souls of those who
lived without 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 satisfaction from them.'
"'Master,' I said, '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's 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!' 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 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—" (Inferno III, 33. Grandgent's translation.) In reading
that description of the punishment of the lukewarm, one cannot fail to
observe that not one is called by name. Because they "lived without
infamy and without glory" their name deserves to be lost forever to
the world.
Of the renown of Dante's own name our poet has no misgivings. He reveals
himself as a man having supreme confidence in his own powers. Boccaccio
represents him as saying when he was with his party at the head of the
government of the republic of Florence, and when there was question of
sending him on an embassy to Rome, "If I go, who stays? And if I stay,
who goes?" "As if he alone," is the comment of Boccaccio, "was worth
among them all, and as if the others were nothing worth except through
him." It is certain that Dante put a high valuation upon his genius, an
estimate due, perhaps, to the belief he held, like Napoleon, in the
potency of his star. He was born under the constellation of the Gemini
and to them in gratitude for his self-recognized talent he gives praise:
"O glorious stars, O light impregnated
With mighty virtue, from which I acknowledge
All of my genius whatso'er it be,
With you was born, and hid himself with you,
He who is father of all mortal life,
When first I tasted of the Tuscan air."
(Par. XXII, 112)
Certain it is that Dante acted on the counsel which, addressed to
himself, he puts into the mouth of his beloved teacher, Brunetto Latini,
"Follow thy star and thou cans't not miss the glorious port." (Inf., XV,
55.) In Purgatorio Dante says: "My name as yet marks no great sound,"
but he boasts that he will surpass in fame the Guidos, writers of verse:
"Perchance some one is already born who will drive both from out the
nest." He is so sure that posterity will confer immortality upon his
work that he does not hesitate to make himself sixth among the greatest
writers of the world. This passage occurs when he enters Limbus
accompanied by Virgil to whom a group of spirits, Homer, Horace, Ovid,
and Lucan, make salutation. (Inf., IV, 76.) Posterity has bestowed
greater renown on Dante's name than even he presumed to hope, for it
has placed him in the Court of Letters with only one of the writers
of antiquity, Homer, and with two subsequent writers, Cervantes
and Shakespeare.
Naturally we think that a writer who was so positively confident and
boastful of his powers must have been given to pride and Dante indeed
plainly indicates to us that he was guilty of this. But it was pride,
we think, that was honorable and not a vice, a pride of which a lesser
light, Lacordaire says, "By the grace of God, I abhor mediocrity." In
the dark wood Dante represents the Lion (Pride) as preventing him from
ascending the mountain—"He seemed to be coming to me with head upreared
and with such raging hunger, that the air appeared to be in fear of
him." (Inf., I, 43.)
And that the poet's trepidation was justified he later makes known
(Purg. XI, 136) when he expresses the fear that for pride he may be
eternally punished. Perhaps it was because Dante recognized the pride of
his learning, of his ancestry, of his associations with distinguished
personages as his besetting sin that he exercised his skill as a master
in showing us profound imagery representing the characteristics of
pride. Carved out of the mountain in the first circle of a terrace of
Purgatory are scenes illustrative of humility. While looking on these
scenes, which seem to live and speak in their beautiful and compelling
reality, the poet turns and sees approaching the forms of the proud. On
earth they had exalted themselves as if they had the weight of the world
on their shoulders, so now they are seen bent under huge burdens of
stone, crumpled up in postures of agonizing discomfort. The poet, to let
us know that he shares in their punishment, says:
"With equal pace as oxen in the yoke,
I, with that laden spirit, journey'd on
Long as the mild instructor suffer'd me."
(Purg. XII-I)
He apostrophizes them, but the words are really an upbraiding of himself
for pride.
"O ye proud Christians, wretched weary ones,
Who in the vision of the mind infirm,
Confidence have in your backsliding steps,
Do ye not comprehend that we are worms
Born to bring forth the angelic butterfly
That flieth unto judgment without screen?
Who floats aloft your spirit high in air?
Like are ye unto insects undeveloped
Even as the worm in whom formation fails!
As to sustain a ceiling or a roof
In place of corbel, sometimes a figure
Is seen to join unto its knees its breast
Which makes of the unreal, real anguish
Arise in him who sees it: fashioned thus
Beheld I these, when I had ta'en good heed
True is it, they were more or less bent down
According as they were more or less laden
And he who had most patience on his looks
Weeping did seem to say I can no more."
(Purg. X, 121)
Like all great men of undoubted sincerity Dante was intellectually big
enough to change his mind when a new view presented itself in
condemnation of an earlier judgment. So his "Vernacular Composition"
retracts a statement he had made in the New Life where he had held that
as amatory poems were addressed to ladies ignorant of Latin, Love should
be the only subject the poet ought to present in the vernacular. He
learned later and published his new view that there is good precedent
for treating in the vulgar tongue not only Love but also Righteousness
and War.
Other examples of his honesty of mind are furnished in the Paradise
where he expresses through the mouths of his disembodied teachers views
opposed to those he had already advanced in his other works. Thus his
theory of the spots on the moon, his statement as to the respective rank
of the angelic orders, his assumption that Hebrew was the language of
Adam and Eve—all yield to a maturer conception in contradiction to his
original views. He is, it is true, sometimes blinded by partisanship or
lacking in the historical perspective necessary for a true judgment of
his contemporaries—but Dante is naturally so sincere a man that he is
eager to be just to every one. Perhaps there is no better instance of
the exercise of this quality than in his assigning to the heaven of
Jupiter, Constantine, to whose supposed donation of vast territories,
then regarded as genuine, Dante ascribes the corruption of the Church.
Many readers, whose acquaintance with our poet does not extend beyond
the Inferno, see in him only the incarnation of savagery and scorn. They
fail to pay tribute to the wonderful power of his friendship or to
recognize that his sufferings of adversity and injustice gave birth to
deep passion. To them he seems only to place his few friends in Heaven
and in Hell to roast all his enemies. It must be at once confessed that
there are instances in the Divina Commedia which, taken by themselves,
would lead one to so superficial an estimate of the man. In Canto VIII
of the Inferno Dante with his guide, Virgil, enters a bark on the Styx
and sails across the broad marsh. During the passage a spirit all
covered with mud addresses Dante, who recognizes him as Filippo Argenti,
a Florentine notorious for his arrogance and brutal violence. "Master,"
says Dante to Virgil, "I should be glad to see him dipped in this swill
ere we quit the lake." And he to me, 'Before the shore comes to thy view
thou shalt be satisfied.' A little while after this I saw the muddy
people make such a rending of him that even now I praise and thank God
for it. Such gloating over suffering surely seems to say to you: Here
we have a man of a cruel vindictive nature.
Again, in the ice of Caina, the region where traitors are immersed up to
their heads, Dante hits his foot violently against the face of Bocca
degli Abati who betrayed the Florentines at the crucial battle of
Montaperti. "Weeping it cried out to me: 'Why tramplest thou on me? If
thou comest not to increase the vengeance for Montaperti, why dost thou
molest me?' I said: 'What art thou who thus reproachest others?' 'Nay
who art thou' he answered 'that through the Antenora goest, smiting the
cheeks of others, so that if thou wert alive, it were too much.' 'I am
alive' was my reply 'and if thou seekest fame, it may be precious to
thee, that I put thy name among the other notes.' And he to me. 'The
contrary is what I long for, take thyself away!' Then I seized him by
the afterscalp and said: 'It will be necessary that thou name thyself or
that not a hair remain upon thee here.' Whence he to me: 'Even if thou
unhair me I will not tell thee who I am.' I already had his hair coiled
on my hand and had plucked off more than one tuft of it, he barking and
keeping down his eyes, when another cried, 'What ails thee Bocca?'
Having thus learned the sinner's name, the poet releases him, saying:
'accursed traitor I do not want thee to speak, for to thy shame I will
bear true tidings'" (Inf., XXXII, 97.) Some may say that it is to Dante's
shame that he shows himself so devoid of pity.
Another example would seem to confirm this startling view of Dante's
character. At the bottom of Hell, eager to learn the identity of a
reprobate, a certain Friar Albergo, the poet promises him in return for
the desired information to remove the ice from his eyes so that he may
have "the poor consolation of grief unchecked."
"Remove the hard veils from my face that I may vent the grief which
stuffs my heart, a little ere the weeping freeze again! Wherefore I said
to him. 'If thou woulds't have me aid thee, tell me who thou art, and if
I do not extricate thee, may I have to go to the bottom of the ice.'"
The poet of course knows that he must go thither to continue his journey
to Purgatory, but the reprobate soul is unaware of such a course, and
believes that the visitor has fortified his promise with a true oath.
Both his name and the damning story of his life are soon told by the
poor wretch, who then asks Dante for the fulfillment of the
promise—the removal of the ice so that sight may be restored even for a
minute. "'Open my eyes' he said—but I opened them not, to be rude to
him was courtesy" (Inf., XXXIII, 148.) Does not Dante by his own words
show himself deep-dyed in hatred and cruelty?
"The case against him" says Dinsmore, "is not so bad as the first
reading would indicate. Part of the explanation of his apparent cruelty
undoubtedly lies in the fact that the poet would teach us that character
is influenced by environment. In the circle of wrath, he is wrathful, in
the pit of traitors he is false. Then we are to recall that Dante
undoubtedly laid to heart Virgil's reproof, when he wept at the sad
punishment of the soothsayers: 'Who is more wicked than he who feels
compassion at the Divine Judgment.' Passionate love of God, Dante holds,
implies passionate hatred of God's enemies. That is a thought expressed
by the Psalmist. 'Lord, have I not hated them that hate thee and pined
away because of thy enemies? I have hated them with a perfect hatred and
they are become enemies to me' (CXXXVIII, 21). So it may be said that
Dante has the spirit of the psalmist and seeks to love, as God loves,
and to hate as God hates."
Whether that explanation satisfy my readers or not, there is another
side to Dante's character that is most attractive. "Dowered with the
hate of hate, the scorn of scorn," he was a paradox,—gentle and tender.
Failure to see this phase of Dante's nature led Frederick Schlegel to
declare that Dante's "chief defect is the want of gentle feelings"—a
statement that called forth this exclamation from Lord Byron: "Of gentle
feelings. And Francesca of Rimini and the father's feelings in Ugolino
and Beatrice and the Pia! Why there is a gentleness in Dante above all
gentleness when he is tender!"
Let us see some examples of this tender quality in our poet. Only one
endowed with gentleness and beauty of soul, could have conceived a
Purgatory "not hot with sulphurous flames" remarks Dinsmore, "but
healing the wounded spirit with the light of shimmering sea, the glories
of morning, the perfume of flowers, the touch of angels, the living
forms of art and the sweet strains of music."
Only a man of warm-heartedness and delicate susceptibility at the sight
of a row of souls, temporarily blinded, would have been touched to such
an extent that he would be filled with anxiety lest in looking upon them
and silently passing them by who could not return his gaze, he would
show them some discourtesy.
"It were a wrong, methought, to pass and look
On others, yet myself, the while unseen,
To my sage counsel therefore did I turn."
(Purg. XIII,73)
Gentleness also reveals itself in lovely lines wherein the poet speaks
of the relations of parent and child. He tells us, for instance, how
"An infant seeks his mother's breast
When fear and anguish vex his troubled heart."
(Purg. XXX.)
He recalls how he himself with child-like sorrow stood confessing his
sins:
"As little children, dumb with shame's keen smart,
Will listening stand with eyes upon the ground
Owning their faults with penitential heart
So then stood I."
(Purg. XXXI, 66)
When overcome by the splendor of the heaven Saturn it is as a child he
turns to Beatrice for assurance:
"Oppressed with stupor, I unto my guide
Turned like a little child who always runs
For refuge there where he confideth most,
And she, even as a mother who straightway
Gives comfort to her pale and breathless boy
With voice whose wont is to reassure him,
Said to me: 'Knowest thou not thou art in heaven?'"
(Par. XXII, 1)
Again, it is the gentle heart of a fond father who speaks in the
following lines:
"Awaking late, no little innocent
So sudden plunges towards its mother's breast
With face intent upon its nourishment
As I did bend."
(Par. XXX, 85, Grandgent's trans.)
Another figure of beautiful imagery makes us appreciate Dante's
understanding of infantile emotion. He is eager to tell us how bright
souls flame upward towards the Virgin Mother and here is the simile:
"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
And higher, higher straining, by its act
The love it bore to Mary plainly said."
(Par. XXIII, 121 Grandgent's trans.)
Perhaps the most appealing example of Dante's kindly love for children
springs from the fact that instead of following the teaching of St.
Thomas Aquinas, who holds that in heaven the risen bodies of baby
children will appear in the aspect of the prime of life, our poet
discloses them with the charm of babyhood carrolling, as it were, the
nursery songs of Heaven. Of those blessed infants he speaks:
"Their youth, those little faces plainly tell,
Their childish treble voices tell it, too,
If thou but use thine eyes and listen well."
(Par. XXXII, 46. Grandgent's trans.)
Seeing so many examples of Dante's love for motherhood and children, one
naturally wonders why he makes no mention of his own wife and children.
But we have only to remember that a nice sense of delicacy may have
restrained him from speaking of the sacredness of his family life. In
this matter he exhibited the wisdom of the gentleman-Saint, Francis de
Sales, who used to say, "Without necessity never speak of yourself well
or ill." It was indeed a principle of propriety with our poet that
talking about one's self in public is to be avoided as unbecoming unless
there is need of self vindication or edification of others. Only once in
the Divine Comedy does he mention his own name and at once he apologizes
for the intrusion. It is true that the poem is autobiographical but it
is that in so far as it concerns matters of universal interest from
which the poet may draw the moral that what God has done for him He will
do for all men if they will but let Him. That being so it was not
necessary for him to exploit his family affairs.
Out of the kindly heart of Dante sprang gratitude, one of the strongest
virtues of his being. He never wearies in pouring forth thanks to his
Maker for the gift of creation and His fatherly care of all beings in
the universe. He is filled with unbounded gratitude to the Saviour for
having become man and for having suffered and died for our salvation
instead of taking an easier way of satisfying divine justice. In his
works he mentions the name or the offices of the Holy Ghost eight times.
To the Blessed Virgin, the saints and especially to Beatrice for their
virtuous example and loving protection he is heartily grateful. His
thankful affection is extended to those who showed him kindness
particularly during the years of his homeless poverty. To them he offers
the only thing he has to give—an undying tribute of praise. Tenderly he
makes known his obligations to all those who taught him, both the
teachers of his own day and the masters of past ages. But it is to
Virgil, his ideal author, the guide whom he has chosen for his journey
through Hell and Purgatory, that he offers his most touching tribute of
gratitude. The occasion arises when he discovers his beloved Beatrice in
the Garden of Eden and turns to Virgil to tell him of his overwhelming
joy. But behold! his guide has vanished, his mission fulfilled. And all
the joys of the earthly Paradise, originally forfeited by the sin of
Eve, cannot compensate the disciple for the loss of his great master. In
loneliness he weeps, staining again his face that had been washed clean
with dew by Virgil when they emerged from Hell. Is there not genuine
pathos in these lines?
"Virgil was gone! and we were all bereft!
Virgil my sweetest sire! Virgil who led
My soul to safety, when no hope was left.
Not all our ancient mother forfeited,
All Eden, could prevent my dew cleansed cheek
From changing whiteness to a tearful red."
(Purg. XXX, 45, Grandgent's trans.)
One quality is still necessary to complete the picture which our poet
gives of himself. So far we see him as a man of strong faith, of abiding
intensity—a man having supreme confidence in himself with resulting
pride of life, a man big with splendid sincerity and dowered with deep
passion, yet manifesting a gentle, gracious and grateful spirit. So
composed, he is a combination of virtues that may inspire and traits
that may attract many readers. But this is not the finished picture of
the strangely fascinating man who has for six hundred years exercised an
irresistible sway over hearts and minds. What feature is lacking? The
one which has made him master over willing subjects who love and admire
him whether they live in a monarchy or republic, a hovel or a palace,
whether they are of his faith or alien to it. Because the world ever
loves a lover, and because Dante is The Lover par excellence whose
love-story is one "to which heaven and earth have put their hand," he
stands forth with a hold on humanity that is both enduring and supreme.
Love as a passion and a principle of action never left him to his dying
day, from the time when he, a boy of nine years of age, became attracted
by the sweet little girl Beatrice. "She appeared to me" he says,
"clothed in a most noble color, a modest and becoming crimson, and she
was girt and adorned in such wise as befitted her very youthful age." If
we add to those few lines the brief statements made later in the New
Life that her hair was light and her complexion a pearl-pink and that
when he saw her as a maiden she was dressed in white, we have the only
description that Dante ever gave of her personal appearance. It was
love at sight. "I truly say that at that instant the spirit of life
which dwells in the most secret chamber of the heart, said these words:
'Behold a god stronger than I, who coming shall rule over me.' From that
time forward Love lorded it over my soul which had been so speedily
wedded to him and he began to exercise over me such control and such
lordship, through the power which my imagination gave him, that it
behooved me to do completely all his pleasure."
If we are disposed to doubt Dante's capability of deep emotion at so
tender an age we have only to remember that Cupid's darts pierced at an
early age the hearts of others of precocious sensibilities. The love
experience of Lord Byron, Victor Hugo, and Canova the sculptor, when
they too were only children is a matter of history. This statement we
shall the more readily accept if we recall the dictum of Pascal: "The
passions are great in proportion as the intelligence is great. In a
great soul everything is great." In the light of that principle we must
say that if Dante's love attachment in early life runs counter to the
experience of mankind, he is, even as a boy, exceptional in the power of
imagination and peculiarly sensitive to heart impressions.
His experience as a nine year old boy loving with a depth of increasing
emotion a girl with whom there probably had never been any
communication except a mere greeting, a love reverential, persisting,
even after her marriage to another, continuing through the married life
of the poet himself, a love, the story of which is celebrated in
matchless verse,—all that is so unique a thing that critics have been
led to deny the very existence of Beatrice or to see in the story an
allegory which may be interpreted in various ways.
Some critics see in Beatrice only the ideal of womanhood; others make
her an allegory of conflicting things. Francesco Perez holds that
Beatrice is only the figure of Active Intelligence, while Dante Gabriel
Rossetti advances the fantastic theory that she is the symbol of the
Roman Empire, and love—the anagram of Roma—on Dante's part is only
devotion to the imperial cause. According to Scartazzini, Beatrice is
the symbol of the Papacy. Gietmann denies the historicity of Beatrice
and declares that she typifies the Church. The argument for this theory
expressed by a sympathetic reviewer of Gietmann's book, "Beatrice, Geist
und Kern der Danteshen Dichtung," follows: "Beatrice is the soul and
center of the poet's works, his inspiring genius, the ideal which moulds
his life and character. If we consider her as a mere historical personage
we must look upon those works as silly and meaningless romances, and on
the poet himself as a drivelling day-dreamer.
"But if we are able to assign to Dante's beloved an appropriate and
consistent allegorical character, in keeping with the views of the
poet's time, and with the quality of the varied material which goes to
build up his poetic structures, his creations will appear not only
intelligible and natural, but unfold a treasure of thought and beauty
nowhere else to be found, while the poet himself will be shown to be not
only one of the greatest masters of thought and imagination, but one of
the noblest and loftiest minds to be met with in the history of letters"
(John Conway, Am. Cath. Quar. Review, April, 1892).
The editor of the English Quarterly Review (July, 1896, p. 41) while not
denying the real existence of Beatrice argues that she represents Faith,
and affirms that the story of Dante's love for her, a love wavering at
times, represents the conflict of Faith and Science. You will be
interested in seeing, as a curiosity of literature, how that author
attempts the translation into allegory of Dante's account of his first
meeting with Beatrice.
This is the translation—Dante speaking in the first person says: "At
the close of my ninth year I experienced strong impressions of religion.
This was the time of my Confirmation and my First Communion. I was
filled with reverence for the wondrous truths instilled into my mind by
those whom I loved best: and my whole being glowed with the roseate glow
of a first love. My feelings were rapturous yet constant; and from that
time I date the beginning of a New Life. From that time forward I was so
completely under the influence of this divine principle that my soul
was, as it were, espoused to heavenly love, and it was in the precepts
and ordinances of the Church that this passion found its proper
satisfaction. Often and often did it lead me to the congregation of the
faithful, where I had meetings with my youthful angel and these were so
gratifying that all through my boyhood I would frequently go in search
of a repetition of those pleasures and I perceived her so noble and
admirable in all her bearings, that of her might assuredly be said that
saying of Homer: 'She seemed no daughter of mortal man but of God.'"
We need not be surprised that there is such divergence of opinion among
critics as to the interpretation of Dante. He himself in The Banquet
(bk. II, ch. 15), written some years after his New Life, tells us that
there is a hidden meaning back of the literal interpretation of his
words. That is especially true of the Divine Comedy, as he writes to Can
Grande in explanation of the purpose of the poem. In the Paradiso he
bids this lacking in power of penetration to pierce the symbolism, to
accompany him no longer on his journey through the invisible world.
"O ye who in some pretty little boat
Eager to listen, have been following
Behind my ship, that singing sails along,
Turn back to look again upon your shores,
Do not put out to sea, lest, peradventure,
In losing me, you might yourselves be lost."
(Par. bk. II, I.)
With obscurity thus acknowledged, is it any wonder that Dante is
subjected to prolonged controversy by historical criticism which has not
hesitated to cast doubt upon the authorship of the Iliad and the Synotic
Gospels? In the face of this obscurity it is the opinion of such well
known Dantian scholars as D'Ancona, Charles Eliot Norton, John Addington
Symonds, Dean Plumtre, Edmund Gardiner, W.W. Vernon, Paget Toynbe, C.H.
Grandgent, Jefferson B. Fletcher, James Russell Lowell—that Beatrice is
both a real human being and a symbol.
The direct testimony, not to urge the subtle arguments furnished by
internal evidence of Dante's works, as to the reality of Beatrice
Portinari as the beloved of our poet is offered first by Boccaccio who
was acquainted with Dante's daughter Beatrice, a nun who lived near
enough to the poet to get information from the Portinari family.
Certainly Boccaccio did not hesitate when chosen in 1373 by the
Florentines to lecture on Dante, to make the very positive statement
that the boy Dante, "received the image of Beatrice Portinari into his
heart with such affection that from that day forward as long as he lived
it never departed from him." That statement was doubtless made within
the hearing of many relatives and friends of the families concerned, the
Alighieri, the Portinari, the Bardi. "If the statement was false,"
argues Dr. Edward Moore, England's foremost Dantian scholar, "it must
have been so glaring and palpable that its assertion could only have
covered Boccaccio with ridicule." The second authority for the statement
that Beatrice Portinari had a real existence and was the object of
Dante's love is furnished by Dante's own son Pietro, who wrote a
commentary on the Divine Comedy nineteen years after his father's
demise—a commentary in which he declares "because mention is here first
made of Beatrice of whom so much has been said, especially in the third
book of the Paradiso, it is to be premised that there really was a lady
Beatrice by name, greatly distinguished for her beauty and virtues who,
in the time of the author, lived in the city of Florence and who was of
the house of certain Florentine citizens called the Portinari, of whom
the author Dante was a suitor. During the life of the said lady, he was
her lover and he wrote many ballads to her honor. After her death in
order that he might make her name famous, he, in this his poem,
frequently introduced her under the allegory and style of theology."
The third witness quoted by W.W. Vernon, is Benvenuto da Imola who
attended the lectures of Boccaccio and succeeded him as incumbent of the
chair of Dantian literature, established by the government of Florence.
This Florentine professor whose "commentary on Dante was written only
fifty years after the death of the poet, expressly states that this
Beatrice (he does not mention her family name) was really and truly a
Florentine of great beauty and most honorable reputation. When she was
eight years old she so entered into Dante's heart that she never went
out from it and he loved her passionately for sixteen years, at which
time she died. His love increased with his years: he would follow her
where-ever she went and always thought that in her eyes he could behold
the summit of human happiness. Dante in his works, at one time, takes
Beatrice as a real personage and at another in a mysterious sense as
Sacred Theology" (Readings on Inf., I, 61.)
The question now arises: Did Beatrice know of Dante's love and did she
reciprocate his passion? Many critics answer in the negative, believing
that an affirmative view must premise a guilty love since Beatrice was
married to Simone de Bardi and Dante to Gemma Donati. But an opposite
view holds that such a deduction overlooks the unique fact that the love
of Dante and Beatrice was purely spiritual and mystical. Doctor Zahm
says that Dante's passion was "a species of homage to the beloved which
was common during the age of the troubadours but which has long since
disappeared—a chivalrous devotion to a woman, neither wife nor
mistress, by means of which the spirit of man, were he knight or poet,
was rendered capable of self-devotion, and of noble deeds and of rising
to a higher ideal of life" (Great Inspirers, p. 245.)
In any event we know that it was a most noble, exalting sentiment and if
we accept the statement of Bishop de Serravalle, the love was mutual and
lasting. This ecclesiastic while attending the council of Florence in
1414 was asked by the Bishops of Bath and Salisbury, England, to make a
Latin translation of the Divine Comedy. In the preamble to his
translation he not only declares that Dante historically and literally
loved Beatrice ("Dantes delexit hanc puellam historice et
literaliter") but he affirms that the love was reciprocal and that it
lasted during the lifetime of Beatrice, ("Philocaptus fuit de ipsa et
ipsa de ipso, qui se invicem dilexerunt quousque vixit ipsa puella").
Only by holding such a view can we really appreciate the significance
and beauty of that episode in Purgatorio depicting the first meeting of
the lovers in the invisible world after ten years' separation—a meeting
said to be "one of the most touching and beautiful episodes in all
literature."
In the Terrestrial Paradise a voice is heard after the sudden departure
of Virgil. "Dante" it says "though Virgil leave thee, weep not, weep not
yet, for thou must weep for a greater wound. I beheld that Lady who had
erst appeared to me under a cloud of flowers cast by angel's hands: and
she was gazing at me across the stream ... 'Look at us well. We are,
indeed Beatrice. Hast thou then condescended to come to the mountain?'
(the mountain of discipline)—Shame weighed down my brow. The ice that
had collected about my heart, turned to breath and water and with agony
issued from my breast through lips and eyes." Beatrice then proceeds to
tell the angels of her love for the poet and of his faithlessness to
her. "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."
Beatrice now turns to Dante and rebukes him: "In order the more to shame
thee from thine error and to make thee stronger, never did nature and
art present to thee a charm equal to that fair form now scattered in
earth with 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 hour of disappointment 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 maid or by any other so short lived
vanity." The effect of her rebuke is the overwhelming of his heart with
shame and contrition. "So much remorse gnawed at my heart that I fell
vanquished and what I then became she knoweth who gave me the cause"
(Purg. XXXI, 49). He arose forgiven, the memory of his sin removed by
the waters of Lethe. Then drinking of the waters of Eunoe he was made
fit to ascend to Heaven.
To understand the allusion to his defection and to see the progressive
development of his love of Beatrice as a woman, then as a living ideal
and finally as an animated symbol—the various transfigurations in which
Beatrice appears to him, we must go back to his New Life—the book of
which Charles Eliot Norton says—"so long as there are lovers in the
world and so long as lovers are poets this first and tenderest
love-story of modern literature will be read with appreciation and
responsive sympathy."
It is hardly to be supposed that the nine year old lover noted with
minute care in his diary, his first meeting of Beatrice Portinari but as
he looked back on the event years later he saw that the vision had been
the the greatest crisis in his mental, moral and spiritual history. The
story begins in the first page of the New Life. A real living child
familiarly called Bice, the diminutive for Beatrice, enamoured Dante
with a real, genuine love. "After that meeting," says the poet, "I in my
boyhood often went seeking her and saw her of such noble and
praiseworthy deportment that truly of her might be said the word of the
poet Homer: 'She seems not the daughter of mortal man but of God.'" Nine
years passed and the child, now a maiden, "blooming in her beauty's
spring, saluted me with such virtue that it seemed to me that I saw all
the bounds of bliss. Since it was the first time her words came to my
ears I took in such sweetness that, as it were intoxicated, I turned
away from the folk and betaking myself to the solitude of my own
chamber I sat myself down to think of this most courteous lady."
A little later the wrapt expression of his loving eyes as he looks at
Beatrice attracts the attention of others and to misdirect them, he
feigns love for the lady he calls the screen of truth and writes verses
in her honor. On the part of Beatrice there is misunderstanding of the
amatory verses he writes at this period and she withholds her greeting.
Then, more than ever, he realizes what that salutation meant to him.
Deprived of it now, he dwells upon the sweet memory of the salutation:
"In the hope of her marvelous salutation there no longer remained to me
an enemy, nay, a flame of charity possessed me which made me pardon
everyone who had done me wrong." Under the influence of her salutation,
Dante tells us that he devised this sonnet:
"So gentle and so gracious doth appear
My lady when she giveth her salute
That every tongue becometh, trembling, mute:
Nor do the eyes to look upon her dare
Although she hears her praises, she doth go
Benignly vested with humility:
And like a thing come down, she seems to be,
From heaven to earth, a miracle to show.
So pleaseth she whoever cometh nigh.
She gives the heart a sweetness through the eyes,
Which none can understand who doth not prove
And from her countenance there seems to move
A spirit, sweet, and in Love's very guise,
Who to the soul, in going sayeth: 'Sigh.'"
(Norton's translation.)
Because she now denies to him the bliss of salutation he says: "I went
into a solitary place to bathe the earth with most bitter tears." But
this misunderstanding is not his only torment. Almost from his second
meeting he fears that his beloved will soon die. His prophetic vision
becomes an agonising reality when in 1290 in her twenty-fourth year, the
eyes that radiated bliss are closed in death.
So stunned was he by the blow that his life was despaired of. When he
recovered it seemed to him that Florence had lost her gaiety and
desolate is mourning the loss of his beloved one. Pilgrims passing on
their way to Galicia do not appear to share the general grief. To arouse
their sympathy in the loss which the city has sustained the heart-broken
poet lover devises a sonnet "in which I set forth that which I had said
to myself.
Pilgrims:
If through your will to hear, awhile ye stay,
Truly my heart with sighs declare to me
That ye shall afterwards depart in tears.
Alas her Beatrice now lost hath she.
And all the words that one of her way may say
Have virtue to make weep whoever hears."
(Norton's translation.)
In his great affliction his grieving heart is sustained by his belief in
immortality. His vision penetrates the skies and he sees his 'lady of
virtue' in glory in the regions of the eternal.
"The gentle lady to my mind had come
Who, for the sake of her exceeding youth,
Had by the Lord most High been ta'en from earth
To that calm heaven where Mary hath her home."
In heaven indeed more than upon earth she enamours the poet. There
divested of her mortal veil, to his eyes she
"grew perfectly and spiritually fair,"
leading him to fit himself to put on immortality. The passion of his
boyhood has now become the ennobling ideal of his life. Sustaining and
stimulating him, saving him from himself, ever leading him upward and
onward, his angelicized lady is an abiding presence with him whether he
is deep in the contemplation of the study of philosophy and the learning
of the ancients, or engaged in the activity of military or political
life, or as homeless wayfarer in exile, making his way from place to
place. When he falls from grace it is Beatrice who disturbs his peace of
mind by "a battle of thoughts." It is the "strong image" of Beatrice who
comes to him as he had seen her as a child, raises him from moral
obliquity, fills him with the very essence of the spiritual. Then he has
a wonderful vision—"a vision in which I saw things which made me
resolve to speak no more of this blessed one (Beatrice) until I could
more worthily treat of her. And to attain to this I study to the utmost
of my power as she truly knows: So that if it shall please Him through
whom all things live that my life be prolonged for some years, I hope to
say of her what was never said of any woman."
That promise, involving years of intense study and increasing devotion
to his beloved, Dante kept. The Divine Comedy is his matchless monument
to her who is the protagonist and muse of his poem and the love of his
heart. "Not only has the poet made her" says Norton, "the loveliest and
most womanly woman of the Middle Ages at once absolutely real and truly
ideal," but he has done what no poet had ever before conceived, thereby
achieving something unique in the whole range of literature—he has
"imparadised" among the saints and angels his lovely wonder, Beatrice,
"that so she spreads even there a light of love which makes the angels
glad and even to their subtle minds can bring a certain awe of profound
marvelling." He has given to her such a glorious exaltation that after
Rachel and Eve she of all women is enthroned in the glowing Rose of
Heaven next to the Virgin Mother, "our tainted nature's solitary boast,"
and so enthroned, Beatrice is at once his beloved and the symbol of
revelation, the heavenly light that discloses to mankind both the true
end of our being and the realities of Eternity.
Now with tremulous delight in his heart, admiration on his lips, ecstasy
in his soul, he is able to render her perhaps the very purest tribute of
praise and gratitude that ever came out of a human soul:
"O Lady, thou in whom my hope is strong
And who, for my salvation, didst endure
In Hell to leave the imprint of thy feet,
Of whatsoever things I have beheld,
As coming from thy power and from thy goodness
I recognize the power and the grace.
Thou from a slave hast brought me unto freedom,
By all those ways, by all the expedients,
Whereby thou hast the power of doing it.
Preserve towards me thy magnificence
So that this soul of mine, which thou hast healed
Pleasing to thee be loosened from the body."
Norton says: "It is needful to know Dante as a man in order fully to
appreciate him as poet."
What manner of man then was he? Redeemed by love, he was, to quote John
Addington Symonds, "the greatest, truest, sincerest man of modern
Europe."
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