Dante Part 3

[Footnote 27: Canzone xvi., 'Le dolci rime,' st. vii. See _Convito_, trat. iv. Translation slightly altered from Lyell.]

[Footnote 28: Canzone xix., 'Tre donne.']

[Footnote 29: _De Vulgari Eloquio._]

[Footnote 30: _Paradiso_, xxv. 5.]

III

h.e.l.l

The first cantica of the 'Divine Comedy'--the Inferno or h.e.l.l--is the best known of all Dante's works in prose or verse, in Latin or Italian; and though students of Dante may sometimes regret this fact, yet no one can be at a moment's loss to understand it.

For the attributes of heart and brain requisite for some kind of appreciation of the Inferno are by many degrees more common than those to which the other works of Dante appeal. It is easy to imagine a reader who has not even begun truly to understand either the poet or the poem nevertheless rendering a sincere tribute of admiration to the colossal force of the Inferno, and feeling the weird spell of fascination and horror ever tightening its grasp on him as he descends from circle to circle of that starless realm.

There is no mystery in the inveterate tendency to regard Dante as pre-eminently the poet of h.e.l.l. Nor is it a new phenomenon. Tradition tells of the women who shrank aside as Dante pa.s.sed them by, and said one to another, shuddering as they spoke, 'See how his black hair crisped in the fire as he pa.s.sed through h.e.l.l!' But no tradition tells of awe-struck pa.s.sers-by who noted that the stains had been wiped from that clear brow in Purgatory, that the gleam of that pure and dauntless eye had been kindled in Heaven.

The machinery of the Inferno, then, is moderately familiar to almost all. Dante, lost in the darksome forest, scared from the sunlit heights by the wild beasts that guard the mountain side, meets the shade of Virgil, sent to rescue him by Beatrice, and suffered by Omnipotence to leave for a time his abode in the limbo of the unbaptised, on this mission of redeeming love. Virgil guides Dante through the open gate of h.e.l.l, down through circle after circle of contracting span and increasing misery and sin, down to the central depth where the arch-rebel Satan champs in his triple jaws the arch-traitors against Church and State, Judas Iscariot, and Brutus and Ca.s.sius.[31]

Through all these circles Dante pa.s.ses under Virgil's guidance. He sees and minutely describes the varying tortures apportioned to the varying guilt of the d.a.m.ned, and converses with the souls of many ill.u.s.trious dead in torment.

And is this the poem that has enthralled and still enthrals so many a heart? Are we to look for the strengthening, purifying, and uplifting of our lives, are we to look for the very soul of poetry in an almost unbroken series of descriptions, unequalled in their terrible vividness, of ghastly tortures, interspersed with tales of shame, of guilt, of misery? Even so. And we shall not look in vain.

But let us listen first to Dante's own account of the subject-matter of his poem. Five words of his are better than a volume of the commentators. 'The subject of the whole work, literally accepted,' he says, 'is the state of souls after death.... But if the work is taken allegorically the subject is MAN, as rendering himself liable, by good or ill desert in the exercise of his free will, to rewarding or punishing justice.'[32]

According to Dante, then, the real subject of the Inferno is 'Man, as rendered liable, by ill desert in the exercise of his free will, to punishing justice.' Surely a subject fraught with unutterable sadness, compa.s.sed by impenetrable mystery, but one which in the hands of a prophet may well be made to yield the bread of life; a subject fitly introduced by those few pregnant words, 'The day was going, and the dusky air gave respite to the animals that are on earth from all their toils; and I alone girt me in solitude to bear the strain both of the journey and the piteous sight, which memory that errs not shall retrace.'[33]

Now if this be the true subject of the poem, it follows that all those physical horrors of which it seems almost to consist must be strictly subordinate to something else, must be part of the machinery or means by which the end of the poet is reached, but in no way the end itself.

If the subject of the poem is a moral one, then the descriptions of physical torment and horror must never even for a moment overbalance or overwhelm the true 'motive' of the work, must never even for a moment so crush or deaden the feelings as to render them incapable of moral impressions, must never in a single instance leave a prevailingly physical impression upon the mind.

And it is just herein that the transcendent power of the Inferno is displayed. Horrors which rise and ever rise in intensity till they culminate in some of the ghastliest scenes ever conceived by mortal brain are from first to last held under absolute control, are forced to support and intensify moral conceptions which in less mighty hands they would have numbed and deadened.

Oh, the pity of this sin, the unutterable, indelible pity of it! Its wail can never be stilled in our hearts while thought and memory remain. The misery of some forms of sin, the foul shame of others, the vileness, the hatefulness, the hideous deformity of others yet--this, and not horror at the punishment of sin, is what Dante stamps and brands upon our hearts as we descend with him towards the central depths, stamps and brands upon our hearts till the pity, the loathing, the horror can endure no more;--then in the very depth of h.e.l.l, at the core of the Universe, with one mighty strain that leaves us well-nigh spent, we turn upon that central point, and, leaving h.e.l.l beneath our feet, ascend by the narrow path at the antipodes.

With the horror and the burden of the starless land far off, we lift up our eyes again to see the stars, and our souls are ready for the purifying sufferings of Purgatory.

Sometimes the tortures of the d.a.m.ned are a mere physical translation, so to speak, of their crimes. Thus the ruthless disseminators of strife and dissension who have torn asunder those who belonged one to another, those who had no proper existence apart from one another, are in their turn hewn and cleft by the avenging sword; and ever as their bodies reunite and their wounds are healed, the fierce blow falls again.

Amongst them Dante sees the great troubadour Bertram de Born, who fostered the rebellion of the sons of our own king Henry II. In that he made father and son each other's enemy, his head is severed from his trunk, his brain from its own root.[34]

In other cases a transparent metaphor or allegory dictates the form of punishment; as when the hypocrites crawl in utter weariness under the crushing weight of leaden garments, shaped like monkish cloaks and cowls, and all covered with shining gold outside.[35] Or when the flatterers and sycophants wallow in filth which fitly symbolises their foul life on earth.[36]

It is probable that some special significance and appropriateness might be traced in almost all the forms of punishment in Dante's h.e.l.l, though it is not always obvious. But one thing at least is obvious: the uniform congruousness of the impression which the physical and moral factors of each description combine to produce. In fact, the Inferno is an account of 'man, as deserving ill by the exercise of his free will,'

in which all the external surroundings are brought into precise accord with the central conception. The tortures are only the background; and as in the picture of a great artist, whether we can trace any special significance and appropriateness in the background or not, we always feel that it supports the true subject of the picture and never overpowers it, so it is here. Man as misusing his free will. This is the real subject of the Inferno. All else is accessory and subordinate.

But if this be so, we should expect to find an endless variety and gradation, alike of guilt and punishment, as we pa.s.s through the circles of h.e.l.l. And so we do. At one moment indignation and reproof are all swallowed up in pity, and the suffering of the exiled soul only serves to quicken an infinite compa.s.sion in our hearts, a compa.s.sion not so much for the punishment of sin as for sin itself with its woeful loss and waste of the blessings and the holiness of life. At another moment we are brought face to face with a wretch whose tortures only serve to throw his vileness into sharper relief; and when we think of him and of his deeds, of him and of his victims, we can understand those awful words of Virgil's when Dante weeps, 'Art thou too like the other fools? The death of pity is true pity here.'[37] Infinite pity would indeed embrace the most abandoned, but it is only weak and misdirected pity that wakes or slumbers at the dictate of mere suffering.

And as there is infinite variety of guilt and woe, so is there infinite variety of character in Dante's h.e.l.l. Though the poet condemns with sternest impartiality all who have died in unrepented sin, yet he recognises and honours the moral distinctions amongst them. What a difference, for instance, between the wild blaspheming robber Vanni Fucci,[38] and the defiant Capaneus,[39] a prototype of Milton's Satan, the one incited by the b.e.s.t.i.a.l rage of reckless self-abandonment, the other by the proud self-reliance of a spirit that eternity cannot break--alike in their defiance of the Almighty, but how widely severed in the sources whence it springs.

Look again where Jason strides. The wrongs he did Medea and Hypsipyle have condemned him to the fierce lash under which his base companions shriek and fly; but he, still kingly in his mien, without a tear or cry bears his eternal pain.[40]

See Farinata, the great Florentine--in his ever burning tomb he stands erect and proud, 'as holding h.e.l.l in great disdain;' tortured less by the flames than by the thought that the faction he opposed is now triumphant in his city; proud, even in h.e.l.l, to remember how once he stood alone between his country and destruction.[41]

See again where Pietro delle Vigne, in the ghastly forest of suicides, longs with a pa.s.sionate longing that his fidelity at that time when he 'held both the keys of the great Frederick's heart' should be vindicated upon earth from the unjust calumnies that drove him to self-slaughter.[42]

And see where statesmen and soldiers of Florence, themselves condemned for foul and unrepented sin, still love the city in which they lived, still long to hear some good of her. As the flakes of fire fall 'like snow upon a windless day' on their defenceless bodies, see with what dismay they gaze into one another's eyes when Dante brings ill news to them of Florence.[43]

In a word, the souls in h.e.l.l are what they were on earth, no better and no worse. This is the key-note to the comprehension of the poem. No change has taken place; none are made rebels to G.o.d's will, and none are brought into submission to it, by their punishment; but all are as they were. Even amongst the vilest there is only the rejection of a thin disguise, no real increase of shamelessness. Many souls desire to escape notice and to conceal their crimes, just as they would have done on earth; many condemn their evil deeds and are ashamed of them, just as they would have been on earth; but there is no change of character, no infusion of a new spirit either for good or ill; with all their variety and complexity of character, the unrepentant sinners wake in h.e.l.l as they would wake on earth our mingled pity and horror, our mingled loathing and admiration. Man as misusing his free will, in all the scope and variety of the infinite theme, is the subject of the poem.

And this brings us to another consideration: the eternity of Dante's h.e.l.l. Those who know no other line of Dante, know the last verse of the inscription upon the gate of h.e.l.l: 'All hope relinquish, ye that enter here.' The whole inscription is as follows: 'Through me the way lies to the doleful city; through me the way lies to eternal pain; through me the way lies 'mongst the people lost. 'Twas justice moved my Lofty Maker; Divine Power made me, Wisdom Supreme and Primal Love. Before me were no things created, save things eternal; and I, too, last eternal.

All hope relinquish, ye that enter here.'[44]

The gates of h.e.l.l reared by the Primal Love! If we believe in the eternity of sin and evil, the eternity of suffering and punishment follows of necessity. To be able to acquiesce in the one, but to shrink from the thought of the other, is sheer weakness. The eternity and hopelessness of Dante's h.e.l.l are the necessary corollaries of the impenitence of his sinners. To his mind wisdom and love cannot exist without justice, and justice demands that eternal ill-desert shall reap eternal woe.

But how could one who so well knew what an eternal h.e.l.l of sin and suffering meant, believe it to be founded on eternal love? Why did not Dante's heart in the very strength of that eternal love rebel against the hideous belief in eternal sin and punishment? I cannot answer the question I have asked. Dante believed in the Church, believed in the theology she taught, and could not have been what he was had he not done so. Had he rejected any of the cardinal beliefs of the Christianity of his age and rebelled against the Church, he might have been the herald of future reformations, but he could never have been the index and interpreter to remotest generations of that mediaeval Catholic religion of which his poem is the very soul.

Meanwhile note this, that if ever man realised the awful mystery and contradiction involved in the conception of a good G.o.d condemning the virtuous heathen to eternal exile, that man was Dante. If ever heart of man was weighed down beneath the load of pity for the d.a.m.ned, that heart was Dante's. The virtuous heathen he places in the first round of h.e.l.l; here 'no plaint is to be heard except of sighs, which make the eternal air to tremble;' here, with no other torture than the death of hope without the death of longing, they live in neither joy nor sorrow, eternal exiles from the realms of bliss.[45]

Dante, as we shall see hereafter, longed with a pa.s.sionate thirsty longing to know how the Divine justice could thus condemn the innocent.

But his thirst was never slaked. It was and remained an utter mystery to him; and there are few pa.s.sages of deeper pathos than those in which he remembers that his beloved and honoured guide and master, even Virgil, the very type of human wisdom and excellence, was himself amongst these outcasts.[46]

Again and again, as we pa.s.s with Dante through the circles of h.e.l.l, we feel that his yearning pity for the lost, racking his very soul and flinging him senseless to the ground for misery, shows an awakening spirit which could not long exist in human hearts without teaching them that G.o.d's redeeming pity is greater and more patient than their own.

So, too, when Francesca and Paolo, touched by Dante's pitying sympathy, exclaim, 'Oh, thou gracious being, if we were dear to G.o.d, how would we pray for thee!'[47] who can help feeling that Dante was not far from the thought that all souls are dear to G.o.d?

Meanwhile, how strong that faith which could lift up all this weight of mystery and woe, and still believe in the Highest Wisdom and the Primal Love! Only the man who knew the holiness of human life to the full as well as he knew its infamy, only the man who had seen Purgatory and Heaven, and who had actually felt the love of G.o.d, could know that with all its mystery and misery the universe was made not only by the Divine Power, but by the Supreme Wisdom and the Primal Love, could weave this Trinity of Power, Wisdom, Love, into the Unity of the all-sustaining G.o.d, who made both Heaven and h.e.l.l.

And we still have to face the same insoluble mystery. The darker shade is indeed lifted from the picture upon which we gaze; we have no eternal h.e.l.l, no eternity of sin, to reckon with; but to us too comes the question, 'Can the world with all its sin and misery be built indeed upon the Primal Love?' And our answer too must be the answer not of knowledge but of faith. Only by making ourselves G.o.d's fellow workers till we _feel_ that the Divine Power and the Primal Love are one, can we gain a faith that will sustain the mystery it cannot solve.

Alas! how often our weaker faith fails in its lighter task, how often do we speak of sin and misery as though they were discoveries of yesterday that had brought new trials to our faith, unknown before; how often do we feel it hard to say even of earth what Dante in the might of his unshaken faith could say of h.e.l.l itself--that it is made by Power, Wisdom, Love!

But perhaps we have dwelt too long already on this topic, and in any case we must now hasten on. Dante's h.e.l.l, as we have seen, represents sinful and impenitent humanity with all its fitting surroundings and accessories, cut off from everything that can distract the attention, confuse the moral impression, or alleviate its appalling strength. And as the magic power of his words, with the absolute sincerity and clearness of his own conceptions, forces us to realise the details of his vision as if we had trodden every step of the way with him, this result follows amongst others: that we realise, with a vividness that can never again grow dim, an existence without any one of those sweet surroundings and embellishments of human life which seem the fit support and reflection of purity and love.

We have been in a land where none of the fair sounds or sights of nature have access, no flowers, no stars, no light, and if there are streams and hills there they are hideously transformed into instruments and emblems not of beauty but of horror. We are made to realise all this, and to feel that it is absolutely and eternally fitting as the abode of sin and of impenitence. And when once this a.s.sociation has been stamped upon our minds, the beauty and the sweetness of the world in which we live gain a new meaning for us. They become the standing protest of all that is round us against every selfish, every sinful thought or deed; the standing appeal to us to bring our souls into sweet harmony with their surroundings, since G.o.d in His mercy brings not their surroundings into ghastly harmony with them.

When we have been with the poor wretch, deep down in h.e.l.l, who gasps in his burning fever for 'the rivulets that from the green slopes of Casentino drop down into the Arno, freshening the soft, cool channels, where they glide,'[48] and have realised that in that land there are not and ought not to be the cooling streams and verdant slopes of earth; we can never again enjoy the sweetness and the peace of nature without our hearts being consciously or unconsciously purified, without every evil thing in our lives feeling the rebuke.

When we have known what it is to be in a starless land, and have felt how strange and incongruous the fair sights of Heaven would be, have felt that they would have no place or meaning there, have felt that cheerless gloom alone befits the souls enveloped there, then when we leave the dreary realms, and once more gaze upon the heavens by night and day, they are more to us than they have ever been before, they are indeed what Dante so often calls them, using the language of the falconers, the _lure_ by which G.o.d summons back our wayward souls from vain and mean pursuits.

Look, again, upon this fearful picture. Dante and Virgil come to a black and muddy lake in which the pa.s.sionate tear and smite one another in b.e.s.t.i.a.l rage; and all over its surface are bubbles rising up. They come from the cries of the morose and sullen ones 'who are fixed in the slime at the bottom of the lake. They cry: "Gloomy we were in the sweet air that the sun gladdens, bearing in our hearts the smoke of sullenness; now we are gloomy here in the black slime"--such is the strain that gurgles in their throats, but cannot find full utterance.'[49] Who that has seen those bubbles rise upon the lake can ever suffer himself again to cherish sullenness within his heart without feeling at the very instant the rebuke of the 'sweet air that the sun gladdens,' and thinking of that gurgling strain of misery?