Dante. An essay. To which is added a translation of De Monarchia. · R. W. Church
[JAN. 1850.]
The journey begins under the Easter moon of the year of jubilee, on the evening of Good Friday; the days of her mourning he spends in the regions of woe, where none dares to pronounce the name of the Redeemer, and he issues forth to "behold again the stars," to learn how to die to sin and rise to righteousness, very early in the morning, as it begins to dawn, on the day of the Resurrection. The whole arrangement of the _Purgatorio_ is drawn from Church usages. It is a picture of men suffering in calm and holy hope the sharp discipline of repentance, amid the prayers, the melodies, the consoling images and thoughts, the orderly ritual, the hours of devotion, the sacraments of the Church militant.
When he ascends in his hardiest flight, and imagines the joys of the perfect and the vision of God, his abundant fancy confines itself strictly to the limits sanctioned by her famous teachers--ventures into no new sphere, hazards no anticipations in which they have not preceded it, and is content with adding to the poetry which it elicits from their ideas, a beauty which it is able to conceive apart altogether from bodily form--the beauty, infinite in its variety, of the expression of the human eye and smile--the beauty of light, of sound, of motion. And when his song mounts to its last strain of triumph, and the poet's thought, imagination, and feeling of beauty, tasked to the utmost, nor failing under the weight of glory which they have to express, breathe themselves forth in words, higher than which no poetry has ever risen, and represent, in images transcending sense, and baffling it, yet missing not one of those deep and transporting sympathies which they were to touch, the sight, eye to eye, of the Creator by the creature--he beholds the gathering together, in the presence of God, of "all that from our earth has to the skies returned," and of the countless orders of their thrones mirrored in His light-- Mira Quanto è 'l convento delle bianche stole-- under a figure already taken into the ceremonial of the Church--the mystic Rose, whose expanding leaves image forth the joy of the heavenly Jerusalem, both triumphant and militant.[108]
His faith allowed him to admire all that was beautiful and excellent among the heathen, without forgetting that it fell short of what the new gift of the Gospel can alone impart. He saw in it proof that God had never left His will and law without their witness among men. Virtue was virtue still, though imperfect, and unconsecrated--generosity, largeness of soul, truth, condescension, justice, were never unworthy of the reverence of Christians. Hence he uses without fear or scruple the classic element. The examples which recall to the minds of the penitents, by sounds and sights, in the different terraces of Purgatory, their sin and the grace they have to attain to, come indiscriminately from poetry and Scripture. The sculptured pavement, to which the proud are obliged ever to bow down their eyes, shows at once the humility of S. Mary and of the Psalmist, and the condescension of Trajan; and elsewhere the pride of Nimrod and Sennacherib, of Niobe, and Cyrus. The envious hear the passing voices of courtesy from saints and heroes, and the bursting cry, like crashing thunder, of repentant jealousy from Cain and Aglaurus; the avaricious, to keep up the memory of their fault, celebrate by day the poverty of Fabricius and the liberality of S. Nicolas, and execrate by night the greediness of Pygmalion and Midas, of Achan, Heliodorus, and Crassus.
Dante's all-surveying, all-embracing mind, was worthy to open the grand procession of modern poets. He had chosen his subject in a region remote from popular thought--too awful for it, too abstruse. He had accepted frankly the dogmatic limits of the Church, and thrown himself with even enthusiastic faith into her reasonings, at once so bold and so undoubting--her spirit of certainty, and her deep contemplations on the unseen and infinite. And in literature, he had taken as guides and models, above all criticism and all appeal, the classical writers. Yet with his mind full of the deep and intricate questions of metaphysics and theology, and his poetical taste always owning allegiance to Virgil, Ovid, and Statius--keen and subtle as a Schoolman--as much an idolator of old heathen art and grandeur as the men of the _Renaissance_--his eye is as open to the delicacies of character, to the variety of external nature, to the wonders of the physical world--his interest in them as diversified and fresh, his impressions as sharp and distinct, his rendering of them as free and true and forcible, as little weakened or confused by imitation or by conventional words, his language as elastic, and as completely under his command, his choice of poetic materials as unrestricted and original, as if he had been born in days which claim as their own such freedom, and such keen discriminative sense of what is real, in feeling and image;--as if he had never felt the attractions of a crabbed problem of scholastic logic, or bowed before the mellow grace of the Latins. It may be said, indeed, that the time was not yet come when the classics could be really understood and appreciated; and this is true, perhaps fortunate.
Alto sospir, che duolo strinse in _hui_;--_Purg._ 16. or the noise of the cracking ice: Se Tabernicch Vi fosse sù caduto, o Pietra-pana Non avria pur da l'orlo fatto _cricch_;--_Inf._ 32. even separate letters--to express an image, to spell a name, or as used in some popular proverb.[112] He employs without scruple, and often with marvellous force of description, any recollection that occurs to him, however homely, of everyday life;--the old tailor threading his needle with trouble (_Inf._ 15);--the cook's assistant watching over the boiling broth (_Inf._ 21);--the hurried or impatient horse-groom using his curry-comb (_Inf._ 29);--or the common sights of the street or the chamber--the wet wood sputtering on the hearth: Come d'un stizzo verde che arso sia Dall'un de' capi, che dall'altro geme E cigola per vento che va via;--_Inf._ 13.[113] the paper changing colour when about to catch fire: Come procede innanzi dall'ardore Per lo papiro suso un color bruno Che non è nero ancora, e 'l bianco muore:--_Inf._ 25.[114] the steaming of the hand when bathed, in winter: Fuman come man bagnata il verno:-- or the ways and appearances of animals--ants meeting on their path: Lì veggio d'ogni parte farsi presta Ciascun'ombra, e baciarsi una con una Senza restar, contente a breve festa: Così per entro loro schiera bruna _S'ammusa l'una con l'altra formica_, Forse a spiar lor via e lor fortuna;--_Purg._ 26.[115]
Due e nessun l'imagine perversa Parea.--_Inf._ 25. And when the traitor, who murdered his own kinsman, was still alive, and seemed safe from the infamy which it was the poet's rule to bestow only on the dead, Dante found a way to inflict his vengeance without an anachronism:--Branca D'Oria's body, though on earth, is only animated by a fiend, and his spirit has long since fled to the icy prison.[118] [Footnote 118: Ed egli a me: Come 'l mio corpo stea Nel mondo sù, nulla scienzia porto. Cotal vantaggio ha questa Tolommea, Che spesse volte l'anima ci cade Innanzi, ch'Atropòs mossa le dea. E perchè tu più volontier mi rade Le 'nvetriate lagrime dal volto, Sappi, che tosto che l'anima trade, Come fec'io, il corpo suo l'è tolto Da un Dimonio, che poscia il governa, Mentre che 'l tempo suo tutto sia volto. Ella ruina in sì fatta cisterna; E forse pare ancor lo corpo suso Dell'ombra, che di qua dietro mi verna. Tu 'l dei saper, se tu vien pur mo giuso: Egli è ser Branca d'Oria, e son più anni Poscia passati, ch'ei fu sì racchiuso. Io credo, diss'io lui, che tu m'inganni, Che Branca d'Oria non morì unquanche, E mangia, e bee, e dorme, e veste panni. Nel fosso sù, diss'ei, di Malebranche, Là dove bolle la tenace pece, Non era giunto ancora Michel Zanche; Che questi lasciò 'l diavolo in sua vece Nel corpo suo, e d'un suo prossimano, Che 'l tradimento insieme con lui fece.--_Inf._ 33.]
These are strange experiments in poetry; their strangeness is exaggerated as detached passages; but they are strange enough when they meet us in their place in the context, as parts of a scene, where the mind is strung and overawed by the sustained power, with which dreariness, horror, hideous absence of every form of good, is kept before the imagination and feelings, in the fearful picture of human sin. But they belong to the poet's system of direct and forcible representation. What his inward eye sees, what he feels, that he means us to see and feel as he does; to make us see and feel is his art. Afterwards we may reflect and meditate; but first we must see--must see what he saw. Evil and deformity are in the world, as well as good and beauty; the eye cannot escape them, they are about our path, in our heart and memory. He has faced them without shrinking or dissembling, and extorted from them a voice of warning. In all poetry that is written for mere delight, in all poetry which regards but a part or an aspect of nature, they have no place--they disturb and mar; but he had conceived a poetry of the whole, which would be weak or false without them. Yet they stand in his poem as they stand in nature--subordinate and relieved. If the grotesque is allowed to intrude itself--if the horrible and the foul, undisguised and unsoftened, make us shudder and shrink, they are kept in strong check and in due subjection by other poetical influences; and the same power which exhibits them in their naked strength, renders its full grace and glory to beauty; its full force and delicacy to the most evanescent feeling.
Come augelli surti di riviera _Quasi congratulando a lor pasture_, Fanno di sè or tonda or lunga schiera;--_Parad._ 18.[120] the rooks, beginning to move about at daybreak: E come per lo natural costume, Le pole insieme, al cominciar del giorno Si muovono a scaldar le fredde piume, Poi altre vanno via senza ritorno, Altre rivolgon sè onde son mosse Ed altre roteando fan soggiorno;--_Parad._ 21.[121] the morning sounds of the swallow: Nell'ora che comincia i tristi lai La rondinella presso alla mattina, Forse a memoria de' suoi primi guai;--_Purg._ 9.[122] the joy and delight of the nightingale's song (_Purg._ 17); the lark, silent at last, filled with its own sweetness: Qual lodoletta, che 'n aere si spazia, Prima cantando, e _poi tace contenta Dell'ultima dolcezza che la sazia_;--_Parad._ 20.[123] the flight of the starlings and storks (_Inf._ 5, _Purg._ 24); the mournful cry and long line of the cranes (_Inf._ 5, _Purg._ 26); the young birds trying to escape from the nest (_Purg._ 25); the eagle hanging in the sky: Con l'ale aperte, e a calare intesa;-- the dove, standing close to its mate, or wheeling round it: Sì come quando 'l _colombo si pone Presso al compagno_, l'uno e l'altro pande _Girando e mormorando_ l'affezione;--_Parad._ 25.[124] or the flock of pigeons, feeding: Adunati alla pastura, Queti, _senza mostrar l'usato orgoglio_.--_Purg._ 2.
Dr. Carlyle has given up the idea of attempting to represent Dante's verse by English verse, and has confined himself to assisting Englishmen to read him in his own language. His prose translation is accurate and forcible. And he has added sensible and useful notes.] Take, again, the _times of the day_, with what is characteristic of them--appearances, lights, feelings--seldom dwelt on at length, but carried at once to the mind, and stamped upon it sometimes by a single word. The sense of _morning_, its inspiring and cheering strength, softens the opening of the _Inferno_; breathes its refreshing calm, in the interval of repose after the last horrors of hell, in the first canto of the _Purgatorio_; and prepares for the entrance into the earthly Paradise at its close. In the waning light of _evening_, and its chilling sense of loneliness, he prepared himself for his dread pilgrimage: Lo giorno se n'andava, e l'aer bruno Toglieva gli animai che sono 'n terra Dalle fatiche loro; ed io sol uno M'apparechiava a sostener la guerra Sì del cammino, e sì della pietate.--_Inf._ 2.
Ed ecco intorno di chiarezza pari Nascer un lustro sopra quel che v'era, A guisa d'orizzonte, che rischiari. _E sì come al salir di prima sera Comincian per lo Ciel nuove parvenze, Sì che la cosa pare e non par vera_;--_Parad._ 14.[130] or else, bursting out suddenly over the heavens: Quando colui che tutto il mondo alluma, De l'emisperio nostro si discende, E 'l giorno d'ogni parte si consuma; Lo ciel che sol di lui prima s'accende, Subitamente si rifà parvente Per molte luci in che una risplende;--_Parad._ 20.[131] or the effect of shooting-stars: Quale per li seren tranquilli e puri Discorre ad ora ad or subito fuoco Movendo gli occhi che stavan sicuri, E pare stella che tramuti loco, Se non che dalla parte onde s'accende Nulla sen perde, ed esso dura poco;--_Parad._ 15.[132] or, again, that characteristic sight of the Italian summer night--the fire-flies: Quante il villan che al poggio si riposa, Nel tempo che colui che 'l mondo schiara La faccia sua a noi tien men ascosa, Come la mosca cede alla zenzara, Vede lucciole giù per la vallea Forse colà dove vendemmia ed ara.--_Inf._ 26.[133] [Footnote 130: And lo, on high, and lurid as the one Now there, encircling it, a light arose, Like heaven when re-illumined by the sun: And as at the first lighting up of eve The sky doth new appearances disclose, That now seem real, now the sight deceive.--WRIGHT.]
Nor is he less observant of the more delicate phenomena of mind, in its inward workings, and its connexion with the body. The play of features, the involuntary gestures and attitudes of the passions, the power of eye over eye, of hand upon hand, the charm of voice and expression, of musical sounds even when not understood--feelings, sensations, and states of mind which have a name, and others, equally numerous and equally common, which have none--these, often so fugitive, so shifting, so baffling and intangible, are expressed with a directness, a simplicity, a sense of truth at once broad and refined, which seized at once on the congenial mind of his countrymen, and pointed out to them the road which they have followed in art, unapproached as yet by any competitors.[146] [Footnote 146: For instance:--_thoughts upon thoughts, ending in sleep and dreams_: Nuovo pensier dentro de me si mise, Dal qual più altri nacquero e diversi: _E tanto d'uno in altro vaneggiai Che gli occhi per vaghezza ricopersi, E 'l pensamento in sogno trasmutai_.--_Purg._ 18. _sleep stealing off when broken by light_: Come si frange il sonno, ove di butto Nuova luce percuote 'l viso chiuso, _Che fratto guizza pria che muoja tutto_.--_Ibid._ 17. _the shock of sudden awakening_: Come al lume acuto si disonna, * * * * _E lo svegliato ciò che vede abborre,_ Sì nescia è la subita vigilia, Finchè la stimativa nol soccorre.--_Parad._ 26.
And he has anticipated the latest schools of modern poetry, by making not merely nature, but science tributary to a poetry with whose general aim and spirit it has little in common--tributary in its exact forms, even in its technicalities. He speaks of the Mediterranean Sea, not merely as a historian, or an observer of its storms or its smiles, but as a geologist;[147] of light, not merely in its beautiful appearances, but in its natural laws.[148] There is a charm, an imaginative charm to him, not merely in the sensible magnificence of the heavens, "in their silence, and light, and watchfulness," but in the system of Ptolemy and the theories of astrology; and he delights to interweave the poetry of feeling and of the outward sense with the grandeur--so far as he knew it--of order, proportion, measured magnitudes, the relations of abstract forces, displayed on such a scene as the material universe, as if he wished to show that imagination in its boldest flight was not afraid of the company of the clear and subtle intellect.
Indeed the real never daunts him. It is his leading principle of poetic composition, to draw out of things the poetry which is latent in them, either essentially, or as they are portions, images, or reflexes of something greater--not to invest them with a poetical semblance, by means of words which bring with them poetical associations, and have received a general poetical stamp. Dante has few of those indirect charms which flow from the subtle structure and refined graces of language--none of that exquisitely-fitted and self-sustained mechanism of choice words of the Greeks--none of that tempered and majestic amplitude of diction, which clothes, like the folds of a royal robe, the thoughts of the Latins--none of that abundant play of fancy and sentiment, soft or grand, in which the later Italian poets delighted. Words with him are used sparingly, never in play--never because they carry with them poetical recollections--never for their own sake; but because they are instruments which will give the deepest, clearest, sharpest stamp of that image which the poet's mind, piercing to the very heart of his subject, or seizing the characteristic feature which to other men's eyes is confused and lost among others accidental and common, draws forth in severe and living truth. Words will not always bend themselves to his demands on them; they make him often uncouth, abrupt, obscure. But he is too much in earnest to heed uncouthness; and his power over language is too great to allow uncertainty as to what he means, to be other than occasional. Nor is he a stranger to the utmost sweetness and melody of language. But it appears, unsought for and unlaboured, the spontaneous and inevitable obedience of the tongue and pen to the impressions of the mind; as grace and beauty, of themselves, "command and guide the eye" of the painter, who thinks not of his hand but of them.
All is in character with the absorbed and serious earnestness which pervades the poem; there is no toying, no ornament, that a man in earnest might not throw into his words;--whether in single images, or in pictures, like that of the Meadow of the Heroes (_Inf._ 4), or the angel appearing in hell to guide the poet through the burning city (_Inf._ 9)--or in histories, like those of Count Ugolino, or the life of S. Francis (_Parad._ 11)--or in the dramatic scenes like the meeting of the poets Sordello and Virgil (_Purgat._ 6), or that one, unequalled in beauty, where Dante himself, after years of forgetfulness and sin, sees Beatrice in glory, and hears his name, never but once pronounced during the vision, from her lips.[149] [Footnote 149: Io vidi già nel cominciar del giorno La parte oriental tutta rosata, E l'altro ciel di bel sereno adorno, E la faccia del sol nascere ombrata, Sì che per temperanza di vapori L'occhio lo sostenea lunga fiata; Così dentro una nuvola di fiori, Che dalle mani angeliche saliva, E ricadeva giù dentro e di fuori, Sovra candido vel cinta d'oliva Donna m'apparve sotto verde manto Vestita di color di fiamma viva. E lo spirito mio, che già cotanto Tempo era stato che alla sua presenza Non era di stupor, tremando, affranto. Senza degli occhi aver più conoscenza, Per occulta virtù, che da lei mosse, D'antico amor senti' la gran potenza.
The greatness of his work is not in its details--to be made or marred by them. It is the greatness of a comprehensive and vast conception, sustaining without failure the trial of its long and hazardous execution, and fulfilling at its close the hope and promise of its beginning; like the greatness--which we watch in its course with anxious suspense, and look back upon when it is secured by death, with deep admiration--of a perfect life. Many a surprise, many a difficulty, many a disappointment, many a strange reverse and alternation of feelings, attend the progress of the most patient and admiring reader of the _Commedia_; as many as attend on one who follows the unfolding of a strong character in life. We are often shocked when we were prepared to admire--repelled, when we came with sympathy; the accustomed key fails at a critical moment--depths are revealed which we cannot sound, mysteries which baffle and confound us. But the check is for a time--the gap and chasm does not dissever. Haste is even an evidence of life--the brief word, the obscure hint, the unexplained, the unfinished, or even the unachieved, are the marks of human feebleness, but are also among those of human truth. The unity of the whole is unimpaired.
In pianto ed in affanno Cambiò onesto riso e dolce giuoco: or rising finally above mortal experience, to imagine the freedom of the saints and the peace of eternity. In this consists the greatness of his power. It is not necessary to read through the _Commedia_ to see it--open it where we please, we see that he is on his way, and whither he is going; episode and digression share in the solemnity of the general order. And his greatness was more than that of power. That reach and play of sympathy ministered to a noble wisdom, which used it thoughtfully and consciously for a purpose to which great poetry had never yet been applied, except in the mouth of prophets. Dante was a stern man, and more than stern, among his fellows. But he has left to those who never saw his face an inheritance the most precious; he has left them that which, reflecting and interpreting their minds, does so, not to amuse, not to bewilder, not to warp, not to turn them in upon themselves in distress or gloom or selfishness; not merely to hold up a mirror to nature; but to make them true and make them hopeful. Dark as are his words of individuals, his thoughts are not dark or one-sided about mankind; his is no cherished and perverse severity--his faith is too large, too real, for such a fault. He did not write only the _Inferno_. And the _Purgatorio_ and the _Paradiso_ are not an afterthought, a feebler appendix and compensation, conceived when too late, to a finished whole, which has taken up into itself the poet's real mind.
Nowhere else in poetry of equal power is there the same balanced view of what man is, and may be; nowhere so wide a grasp shown of his various capacities, so strong a desire to find a due place and function for all his various dispositions. Where he stands contrasted in his idea of human life with other poets, who have been more powerful exponents of its separate sides, is in his large and truthful comprehensiveness. Fresh from the thought of man's condition as a whole, fresh from the thought of his goodness, his greatness, his power, as well as of his evil, his mind is equally in tune when rejoicing over his restoration, as when contemplating the ruins of his fall. He never lets go the recollection that human life, if it grovels at one end in corruption and sin, and has to pass through the sweat and dust and disfigurement of earthly toil, has throughout, compensations, remedies, functions, spheres innumerable of profitable activity, sources inexhaustible of delight and consolation--and at the other end a perfection which cannot be named. No one ever measured the greatness of man in all its forms with so true and yet with so admiring an eye, and with such glowing hope, as he who has also portrayed so awfully man's littleness and vileness.
And he went farther--no one who could understand and do homage to greatness in man, ever drew the line so strongly between greatness and goodness, and so unhesitatingly placed the hero of this world only--placed him in all his magnificence, honoured with no timid or dissembling reverence--at the distance of worlds, below the place of the lowest saint. Those who know the _Divina Commedia_ best, will best know how hard it is to be the interpreter of such a mind; but they will sympathise with the wish to call attention to it. They know, and would wish others also to know, not by hearsay, but by experience, the power of that wonderful poem. They know its austere, yet subduing beauty; they know what force there is, in its free and earnest and solemn verse, to strengthen, to tranquillise, to console. It is a small thing that it has the secret of Nature and Man; that a few keen words have opened their eyes to new sights in earth, and sea, and sky; have taught them new mysteries of sound; have made them recognise, in distinct image or thought, fugitive feelings, or their unheeded expression, by look, or gesture, or motion; that it has enriched the public and collective memory of society with new instances, never to be lost, of human feeling and fortune; has charmed ear and mind by the music of its stately march, and the variety and completeness of its plan. But, besides this, they know how often its seriousness has put to shame their trifling, its magnanimity their faintheartedness, its living energy their indolence, its stern and sad grandeur rebuked low thoughts, its thrilling tenderness overcome sullenness and assuaged distress, its strong faith quelled despair and soothed perplexity, its vast grasp imparted the sense of harmony to the view of clashing truths. They know how often they have found, in times of trouble, if not light, at least that deep sense of reality, permanent, though unseen, which is more than light can always give--in the view which it has suggested to them of the judgments and the love of God.[150]
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.