Dante. An essay. To which is added a translation of De Monarchia. · R. W. Church
[JAN. 1850.]
Figure and symbol, then, are doubtless the law of composition in the _Commedia_; but this law discloses itself very variously, and with different degrees of strictness. In its primary and most general form, it is palpable, consistent, pervading. There can be no doubt that the poem is meant to be understood figuratively--no doubt of what in general it is meant to shadow forth--no doubt as to the general meaning of its parts, their connexion with each other. But in its secondary and subordinate applications, the law works--to our eye at least--irregularly, unequally, and fitfully. There can be no question that Virgil, the poet's guide, represents the purely human element in the training of the soul and of society, as Beatrice does the divine. But neither represent the whole; he does not sum up all appliances of wisdom in Virgil, nor all teachings and influences of grace in Beatrice; these have their separate figures. And both represent successively several distinct forms of their general antitypes. They have various degrees of abstractness, and narrow down, according to that order of things to which they refer and correspond, into the special and the personal.
Tu duca, tu signor, e tu maestro.--_Inf._ 2. And towards this great master, the poet's whole soul is poured forth in reverence and affection. To Dante he is no figure, but a person--with feelings and weaknesses--overcome by the vexation, kindling into the wrath, carried away by the tenderness, of the moment. He reads his scholar's heart, takes him by the hand in danger, carries him in his arms and in his bosom, "like a son more than a companion," rebukes his unworthy curiosity, kisses him when he shows a noble spirit, asks pardon for his own mistakes. Never were the kind, yet severe ways of a master, or the disciple's diffidence and open-heartedness, drawn with greater force, or less effort; and he seems to have been reflecting on his own affection to Virgil, when he makes Statius forget that they were both but shades: Or puoi la quantitate Comprender dell'amor ch'a te mi scalda, Quando _dismento la nostra vanitate Trattando l'ombre come cosa salda_.--_Purg._ 21.
And so with the poet's second guide. The great idea which Beatrice figures, though always present, is seldom rendered artificially prominent, and is often entirely hidden beneath the rush of real recollections, and the creations of dramatic power. Abstractions venture and trust themselves among realities, and for the time are forgotten. A name, a real person, a historic passage, a lament or denunciation, a tragedy of actual life, a legend of classic times, the fortunes of friends--the story of Francesca or Ugolino, the fate of Buonconte's corpse, the apology of Pier delle Vigne, the epitaph of Madonna Pia, Ulysses' western voyage, the march of Roman history--appear and absorb for themselves all interest: or else it is a philosophical speculation, or a theory of morality, or a case of conscience--not indeed alien from the main subject, yet independent of the allegory, and not translateable into any new meaning--standing on their own ground, worked out each according to its own law; but they do not disturb the main course of the poet's thought, who grasps and paints each detail of human life in its own peculiarity, while he sees in each a significance and interest beyond itself. He does not stop in each case to tell us so, but he makes it felt. The tale ends, the individual disappears, and the great allegory resumes its course. It is like one of those great musical compositions which alone seem capable of adequately expressing, in a limited time, a course of unfolding and change, in an idea, a career, a life, a society--where one great thought predominates, recurs, gives colour and meaning, and forms the unity of the whole, yet passes through many shades and transitions; is at one time definite, at another suggestive and mysterious; incorporating and giving free place and play to airs and melodies even of an alien cast; striking off abruptly from its expected road, but without ever losing itself, without breaking its true continuity, or failing of its completeness.
This then seems to us the end and purpose of the _Commedia_;--to produce on the mind a sense of the judgments of God, analogous to that produced by Scripture itself. They are presented to us in the Bible in shapes which address themselves primarily to the heart and conscience, and seek not carefully to explain themselves. They are likened to the "great deep," to the "strong mountains"--vast and awful, but abrupt and incomplete, as the huge, broken, rugged piles and chains of mountains. And we see them through cloud and mist, in shapes only approximating to the true ones. Still they impress us deeply and truly, often the more deeply because unconsciously. A character, an event, a word, isolated and unexplained, stamps its meaning ineffaceably, though ever a matter of question and wonder; it may be dark to the intellect, yet the conscience understands it, often but too well. In such suggestive ways is the Divine government for the most part put before us in the Bible--ways which do not satisfy the understanding, but which fill us with a sense of reality. And it seems to have been by meditating on them, which he certainly did, much and thoughtfully--and on the infinite variety of similar ways in which the strongest impressions are conveyed to us in ordinary life, by means short of clear and distinct explanation--by looks, by images, by sounds, by motions, by remote allusion and broken words, that Dante was led to choose so new and remarkable a mode of conveying to his countrymen his thoughts and feelings and presentiments about the mystery of God's counsel. The Bible teaches us by means of real history, traced so far as is necessary along its real course. The poet expresses his view of the world also in real history, but carried on into figure.
The poetry with which the Christian Church had been instinct from the beginning, converges and is gathered up in the _Commedia_. The faith had early shown its poetical aspect. It is superfluous to dwell on this, for it is the charge against ancient teaching that it was too large and imaginative. It soon began to try rude essays in sculpture and mosaic: expressed its feeling of nature in verse and prose, rudely also, but often with originality and force; and opened a new vein of poetry in the thoughts, hopes, and aspirations of regenerate man. Modern poetry must go back, for many of its deepest and most powerful sources, to the writings of the Fathers, and their followers of the School.
The Church further had a poetry of its own, besides the poetry of literature; it had the poetry of devotion--the Psalter chanted daily, in a new language and a new meaning; and that wonderful body of hymns, to which age after age had contributed its offering, from the Ambrosian hymns to the _Veni, Sancte Spiritus_ of a king of France, the _Pange lingua_ of Thomas Aquinas, the _Dies iræ_, and _Stabat Mater_, of the two Franciscan brethren, Thomas of Celano, and Jacopone.[94] The elements and fragments of poetry were everywhere in the Church--in her ideas of life, in her rules and institutions for passing through it, in her preparation for death, in her offices, ceremonial, celebrations, usages, her consecration of domestic, literary, commercial, civic, military, political life, the meanings and ends she had given them, the religious seriousness with which the forms of each were dignified--in her doctrine, and her dogmatic system--her dependence on the unseen world--her Bible. From each and all of these, and from that public feeling, which, if it expressed itself but abruptly and incoherently, was quite alive to the poetry which surrounded it, the poet received due impressions of greatness and beauty, of joy and dread. Then the poetry of Christian religion and Christian temper, hitherto dispersed, or manifested in act only, found its full and distinct utterance, not unworthy to rank in grandeur, in music, in sustained strength, with the last noble voices from expiring Heathenism.
But a long interval had passed since then. The _Commedia_ first disclosed to Christian and modern Europe that it was to have a literature of its own, great and admirable, though in its own language and embodying its own ideas. "It was as if, at some of the ancient games, a stranger had appeared upon the plain, and thrown his quoit among the marks of former casts, which tradition had ascribed to the demi-gods."[95] We are so accustomed to the excellent and varied literature of modern times, so original, so perfect in form and rich in thought, so expressive of all our sentiments, meeting so completely our wants, fulfilling our ideas, that we can scarcely imagine the time when this condition was new--when society was beholden to a foreign language for the exponents of its highest thoughts and feelings. But so it was when Dante wrote. The great poets, historians, philosophers of his day, the last great works of intellect, belonged to old Rome, and the Latin language. So wonderful and prolonged was the fascination of Rome.
Men still lived under its influence; believed that the Latin language was the perfect and permanent instrument of thought in its highest forms, the only expression of refinement and civilisation; and had not conceived the hope that their own dialects could ever rise to such heights of dignity and power. Latin, which had enchased and preserved such precious remains of ancient wisdom, was now shackling the living mind in its efforts. Men imagined that they were still using it naturally on all high themes and solemn business; but though they used it with facility, it was no longer natural; it had lost the elasticity of life, and had become in their hands a stiffened and distorted, though still powerful, instrument. The very use of the word _latino_ in the writers of this period, to express what is clear and philosophical in language,[96] while it shows their deep reverence for it, shows how Latin civilisation was no longer their own, how it had insensibly become an external and foreign element. But they found it very hard to resign their claim to a share in its glories; with nothing of their own to match against it, they still delighted to speak of it as "our language," or its writers as "our poets," "our historians."[97]
The spell was indeed beginning to break. Guido Cavalcanti, Dante's strange, stern, speculative friend, who is one of the fathers of the Italian language, is characterised in the _Commedia_[98] by his scornful dislike of Latin, even in the mouth of Virgil. Yet Dante himself, the great assertor, by argument and example, of the powers of the Vulgar tongue, once dared not to think that the Vulgar tongue could be other to the Latin, than as a subject to his sovereign. He was bolder when he wrote _De Vulgari Eloquio_: but in the earlier _Convito_, while pleading earnestly for the beauty of the Italian, he yields with reverence the first place to the Latin--for nobleness, because the Latin is permanent, and the Vulgar subject to fluctuation and corruption; for power, because the Latin can express conceptions to which the Vulgar is unequal; for beauty, because the structure of the Latin is a masterly arrangement of scientific art, and the beauty of the Vulgar depends on mere use.[99] The very title of his poem, the _Commedia_, contains in it a homage to the lofty claims of the Latin. It is called a Comedy, and not Tragedy, he says, after a marvellous account of the essence and etymology of the two, first, because it begins sadly, and ends joyfully; and next, because of its language, that humble speech of ordinary life, "in which even women converse."[100]
He honoured the Latin, but his love was for the Italian. He was its champion, and indignant defender against the depreciation of ignorance and fashion. Confident of its power and jealous of its beauty, he pours forth his fierce scorn on the blind stupidity, the affectation, the vain glory, the envy, and above all, the cowardice of Italians who held lightly their mother tongue. "Many," he says, after enumerating the other offenders, "from this pusillanimity and cowardice disparage their own language, and exalt that of others; and of this sort are those hateful dastards of Italy--_abbominevoli cattivi d'Italia_--who think vilely of that precious language; which, if it is vile in anything, is vile only so far as it sounds in the prostituted mouth of these adulterers."[101] He noted and compared its various dialects; he asserted its capabilities not only in verse, but in expressive, flexible, and majestic prose. And to the deliberate admiration of the critic and the man, were added the homely but dear associations, which no language can share with that of early days. Italian had been the language of his parents--"_Questo mio Volgare fu il congiugnitore delli miei generanti, che con esso parlavano_"--and further, it was this modern language, "_questo mio Volgare_," which opened to him the way of knowledge, which had introduced him to Latin, and the sciences which it contained. It was his benefactor and guide--he personifies it--and his boyish friendship had grown stronger and more intimate by mutual good offices. "There has also been between us the goodwill of intercourse; for from the beginning of my life I have had with it kindness and conversation, and have used it, deliberating, interpreting, and questioning; so that, if friendship grows with use, it is evident how it must have grown in me."[102]
From this language he exacted a hard trial;--a work which should rank with the ancient works. None such had appeared; none had even advanced such a pretension. Not that it was a time dead to literature or literary ambition. Poets and historians had written, and were writing in Italian. The same year of jubilee which fixed itself so deeply in Dante's mind, and became the epoch of his vision--the same scene of Roman greatness in its decay, which afterwards suggested to Gibbon the _Decline and Fall_, prompted, in the father of Italian history, the desire to follow in the steps of Sallust and Livy, and prepare the way for Machiavelli and Guicciardini, Davila, and Fra Paolo.[103] Poetry had been cultivated in the Roman languages of the West--in Aquitaine and Provence, especially--for more than two centuries; and lately, with spirit and success, in Italian. Names had become popular, reputations had risen and waned, verses circulated and were criticised, and even descended from the high and refined circles to the workshop. A story is told of Dante's indignation, when he heard the canzoni which had charmed the Florentine ladies mangled by the rude enthusiasm of a blacksmith at his forge.[104] Literature was a growing fashion; but it was humble in its aspirations and efforts. Men wrote like children, surprised and pleased with their success; yet allowing themselves in mere amusement, because conscious of weakness which they could not cure.
Dante, by the _Divina Commedia_, was the restorer of seriousness in literature. He was so, by the magnitude and pretensions of his work, and by the earnestness of its spirit. He first broke through the prescription which had confined great works to the Latin, and the faithless prejudices which, in the language of society, could see powers fitted for no higher task than that of expressing, in curiously diversified forms, its most ordinary feelings. But he did much more. Literature was going astray in its tone, while growing in importance; the _Commedia_ checked it. The Provençal and Italian poetry was, with the exception of some pieces of political satire, almost exclusively amatory, in the most fantastic and affected fashion. In expression, it had not even the merit of being natural; in purpose it was trifling; in the spirit which it encouraged, it was something worse. Doubtless it brought a degree of refinement with it, but it was refinement purchased at a high price, by intellectual distortion, and moral insensibility. But this was not all. The brilliant age of Frederick II., for such it was, was deeply mined by religious unbelief.
However strange this charge first sounds against the thirteenth century, no one can look at all closely into its history, at least in Italy, without seeing that the idea of infidelity--not heresy, but infidelity--was quite a familiar one; and that side by side with the theology of Aquinas and Bonaventura, there was working among those who influenced fashion and opinion, among the great men, and the men to whom learning was a profession, a spirit of scepticism and irreligion almost monstrous for its time, which found its countenance in Frederick's refined and enlightened court. The genius of the great doctors might have kept in safety the Latin Schools, but not the free and home thoughts which found utterance in the language of the people, if the solemn beauty of the Italian _Commedia_ had not seized on all minds. It would have been an evil thing for Italian, perhaps for European literature, if the siren tales of the _Decameron_ had been the first to occupy the ear with the charms of a new language.
Dante has had hard measure, and from some who are most beholden to him. No one in his day served the Church more highly, than he whose faith and genius secured on her side the first great burst of imagination and feeling, the first perfect accents of modern speech. The first-fruits of the new literature were consecrated, and offered up. There was no necessity, or even probability in Italy in the fourteenth century that it should be so, as there might perhaps have been earlier. It was the poet's free act--free in one, for whom nature and heathen learning had strong temptations--that religion was the lesson and influence of the great popular work of the time. That which he held up before men's awakened and captivated minds, was the verity of God's moral government. To rouse them to a sense of the mystery of their state; to startle their commonplace notions of sin into an imagination of its variety, its magnitude, and its infinite shapes and degrees; to open their eyes to the beauty of the Christian temper, both as suffering and as consummated; to teach them at once the faithfulness and awful freeness of God's grace; to help the dull and lagging soul to conceive the possibility, in its own case, of rising step by step in joy without an end--of a felicity not unimaginable by man, though of another order from the highest perfection of earth;--this is the poet's end. Nor was it only vague religious feelings which he wished to excite. He brought within the circle of common thought, and translated into the language of the multitude, what the Schools had done to throw light on the deep questions of human existence, which all are fain to muse upon, though none can solve. He who had opened so much of men's hearts to themselves, opened to them also that secret sympathy which exists between them and the great mysteries of the Christian doctrine.[105] He did the work, in his day, of a great preacher. Yet he has been both claimed and condemned, as a disturber of the Church's faith.
He certainly did not spare the Church's rulers. He thought they were betraying the most sacred of all trusts; and if history is at all to be relied on, he had some grounds for thinking so. But it is confusing the feelings of the middle ages with our own, to convert every fierce attack on the Popes into an anticipation of Luther. Strong language of this sort was far too commonplace to be so significant. No age is blind to practical abuses, or silent on them; and when the middle ages complained, they did so with a full-voiced and clamorous rhetoric, which greedily seized on every topic of vilification within its reach. It was far less singular, and far less bold, to criticise ecclesiastical authorities, than is often supposed; but it by no means implied unsettled faith, or a revolutionary design. In Dante's case, if words have any meaning--not words of deliberate qualification, but his unpremeditated and incidental expressions--his faith in the Divine mission and spiritual powers of the Popes was as strong as his abhorrence of their degeneracy, and desire to see it corrected by a power which they would respect--that of the temporal sword. It would be to mistake altogether his character, to imagine of him, either as a fault or as an excellence, that he was a doubter. It might as well be supposed of Aquinas.
No one ever acknowledged with greater seriousness, as a fact in his position in the world, the agreement in faith among those with whom he was born. No one ever inclined with more simplicity and reverence before that long communion and consent in feeling and purpose, the "_publicus_ sensus" of the Christian Church. He did feel difficulties; but the excitement of lingering on them was not among his enjoyments. That was the lot of the heathen; Virgil, made wise by death, counsels him not to desire it: "Matto è chi spera, che nostra ragione Possa trascorrer la 'nfinita via Che tiene una sustanzia in tre Persone. State contenti, umana gente, al _quia_; Chè se potuto aveste veder tutto, Mestier non era partorir Maria: E disiar vedeste senza frutto Tai, che sarebbe lor disio quetato, Ch'eternamente è dato lor per lutto; I' dico d'Aristotile e di Plato, E di molti altri:"--e qui chinò la fronte, E più non disse, e rimase turbato.--_Purg._ c. 3.[106] [Footnote 106: "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 contented; 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 Stagirite; and many more, I here allude to;"--then his head he bent, Was silent, and a troubled aspect wore.--WRIGHT.]
The Christian poet felt that it was greater to believe and to act. In the darkness of the world one bright light appeared, and he followed it. Providence had assigned him his portion of truth, his portion of daily bread; if to us it appears blended with human elements, it is perfectly clear that he was in no position to sift them. To choose was no trial of his. To examine and seek, where it was impossible to find, would have been folly. The authority from which he started had not yet been seriously questioned; there were no palpable signs of doubtfulness on the system which was to him the representative of God's will; and he sought for none. It came to him claiming his allegiance by custom, by universality, by its completeness as a whole, and satisfying his intellect and his sympathies in detail. And he gave his allegiance--reasonably, because there was nothing to hope for in doubting--wisely, because he gave it loyally and from his heart.
And he had his reward--the reward of him who throws himself with frankness and earnestness into a system; who is not afraid or suspicious of it; who is not unfaithful to it. He gained not merely power--he gained that freedom and largeness of mind which the suspicious or the unfaithful miss. His loyalty to the Church was no cramping or blinding service; it left to its full play that fresh and original mind, left it to range at will in all history and all nature for the traces of Eternal wisdom, left it to please itself with all beauty, and pay its homage to all excellence. For upon all wisdom, beauty, and excellence, the Church had taught him to see, in various and duly distinguished degrees, the seal of the one Creator. She imparts to the poem, to its form and progressive development, her own solemnity, her awe, her calm, her serenity and joy; it follows her sacred seasons and hours; repeats her appointed words of benediction and praise; moulds itself on her belief, her expectations, and forecastings.[107] Her intimations, more or less distinct, dogma or tradition or vague hint, guide the poet's imagination through the land where all eyes are open.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.