Dante. An essay Part 4

[Footnote 66: Cunizza, Piccarda, Cacciaguida, Romeo. (_Parad._ 9, 3, 15, 6, 10.)

----La luce eterna di Sigieri Che leggendo nel vico degli Strami Sillogizz invidiosi veri----

in company with S. Thomas Aquinas, in the sphere of the Sun. Ozanam gives a few particulars of this forgotten professor of the "Rue du Fouarre," pp. 320-23.]

There is small resemblance in all this--this arbitrary and imperious tone, this range of ideas, feelings, and images, this unshackled freedom, this harsh reality--to the dreamy gentleness of the _Vita Nuova_, or even the staid argumentation of the more mature _Convito_.

The _Vita Nuova_ is all self-concentration--a brooding, not unpleased, over the varying tides of feeling, which are little influenced by the world without; where every fancy, every sensation, every superst.i.tion of the lover is detailed with the most whimsical subtlety. The _Commedia_, too, has its tenderness--and that more deep, more natural, more true, than the poet had before adapted to the traditionary formulae of the "Courts of Love,"--the eyes of Beatrice are as bright, and the "conquering light of her smile;"[67] they still culminate, but they are not alone, in the poet's heaven. And the professed subject of the _Commedia_ is still Dante's own story and life; he still makes himself the central point. And steeled as he is by that high and hard experience of which his poem is the projection and type--"Ben tetragono ai colpi di ventura"--a stern and brief-spoken man, set on objects, and occupied with a theme, lofty and vast as can occupy man's thoughts, he still lets escape ever and anon some pa.s.sing avowal of delicate sensitiveness,[68] lingers for a moment on some indulged self-consciousness, some recollection of his once quick and changeful mood--"io che son tras.m.u.tabil per tutte guise"[69]--or half playfully alludes to the whispered name of a lady,[70] whose pleasant courtesy has beguiled a few days of exile. But he is no longer spell-bound and entangled in fancies of his own weaving--absorbed in the unprofitable contemplation of his own internal sensations. The man is indeed the same, still a Florentine, still metaphysical, still a lover. He returns to the haunts and images of youth, to take among them his poet's crown; but "with other voice and other garb,"[71] a penitent and a prophet--with larger thoughts, wider sympathies, freer utterance; sterner and fiercer, yet n.o.bler and more genuine in his tenderness--as one whom trial has made serious, and keen, and intolerant of evil, but not sceptical or callous; yet with the impressions and memories of a very different scene from his old day-dreams.

[Footnote 67: Vincendo me col lume d'un sorriso.--_Parad._ 18.]

[Footnote 68: For instance, his feeling of distress at gazing at the blind, who were not aware of his presence--

A me pareva andando fare oltraggio Vedendo altrui, non essendo veduto:--_Purg._ 13.

and of shame, at being tempted to listen to a quarrel between two lost spirits:

Ad ascoltarli er'io del tutto fisso, Quando 'l Maestro mi disse: or pur mira, Che per poco e, che teco non mi risso.

Quando io 'l senti' a me parlar con ira Volsimi verso lui con tal vergogna, Ch'ancor per la memoria mi si gira, &c.--_Inf._ 30.

and the burst,

O dignitosa coscienza e netta, Come t'e picciol fallo amaro morso.--_Purg._ 3.]

[Footnote 69: _Parad._ 5.]

[Footnote 70: _Purg._ 24.]

[Footnote 71: _Parad._ 25.]

After that it was the pleasure of the citizens of that fairest and most famous daughter of Rome, Florence, to cast me forth from her most sweet bosom (wherein I had been nourished up to the maturity of my life, and in which, with all peace to her, I long with all my heart to rest my weary soul, and finish the time which is given me), I have pa.s.sed through almost all the regions to which this language reaches, a wanderer, almost a beggar, displaying, against my will, the stroke of fortune, which is ofttimes unjustly wont to be imputed to the person stricken. Truly, I have been a ship without a sail or helm, carried to divers harbours, and gulfs, and sh.o.r.es, by that parching wind which sad poverty breathes; and I have seemed vile in the eyes of many, who perchance, from some fame, had imagined of me in another form; in the sight of whom not only did my presence become nought, but every work of mine less prized, both what had been and what was to be wrought.--_Convito_, Tr. i. c. 3.

Thus proved, and thus furnished--thus independent and confident, daring to trust his instinct and genius in what was entirely untried and unusual, he entered on his great poem, to shadow forth, under the figure of his own conversion and purification, not merely how a single soul rises to its perfection, but how this visible world, in all its phases of nature, life, and society, is one with the invisible, which borders on it, actuates, accomplishes, and explains it. It is this vast plan--to take into his scope, not the soul only in its struggles and triumph, but all that the soul finds itself engaged with in its course; the accidents of the hour, and of ages past; the real persons, great and small, apart from and without whom it cannot think or act; the material world, its theatre and home--it is this which gives so many various sides to the _Commedia_, which makes it so novel and strange. It is not a mere personal history, or a pouring forth of feeling, like the _Vita Nuova_, though he is himself the mysterious voyager, and he opens without reserve his actual life and his heart; he speaks, indeed, in the first person, yet he is but a character of the drama, and in great part of it with not more of distinct personality than in that paraphrase of the penitential Psalms, in which he has preluded so much of the _Commedia_. Yet the _Commedia_ is not a pure allegory; it admits, and makes use of the allegorical, but the laws of allegory are too narrow for it; the real in it is too impatient of the veil, and breaks through in all its hardness and detail, into what is most shadowy. History is indeed viewed not in its ephemeral look, but under the light of G.o.d's final judgments; in its completion, not in its provisional and fragmentary character; viewed therefore but in faith;--but its issues, which in this confused scene we ordinarily contemplate in the gross, the poet brings down to detail and individuals; he faces and grasps the tremendous thought that the very men and women whom we see and speak to, are now the real representatives of sin and goodness, the true actors in that scene which is so familiar to us as a picture--unflinching and terrible heart, he endures to face it in its most harrowing forms. But he wrote not for sport, nor to give poetic pleasure; he wrote to warn; the seed of the _Commedia_ was sown in tears, and reaped in misery: and the consolations which it offers are awful as they are real.

Thus, though he throws into symbol and image, what can only be expressed by symbol and image, we can as little forget in reading him this real world in which we live, as we can in one of Shakspere's plays. It is not merely that the poem is crowded with real personages, most of them having the single interest to us of being real. But all that is a.s.sociated with man's history and existence is interwoven with the main course of thought--all that gives character to life, all that gives it form and feature, even to quaintness, all that occupies the mind, or employs the hand--speculation, science, arts, manufactures, monuments, scenes, customs, proverbs, ceremonies, games, punishments, att.i.tudes of men, habits of living creatures. The wildest and most unearthly imaginations, the most abstruse thoughts take up into, and incorporate with themselves the forcible and familiar impressions of our mother earth, and do not refuse the company and aid even of the homeliest.

This is not mere poetic ornament, peculiarly, profusely, or extravagantly employed. It is one of the ways in which his dominant feeling expresses itself--spontaneous and instinctive in each several instance of it, but the kindling and effluence of deliberate thought, and attending on a clear purpose--the feeling of the real and intimate connexion between the objects of sight and faith. It is not that he sees in one the simple counterpart and reverse of the other, or sets himself to trace out universally their mutual correspondences; he has too strong a sense of the reality of this familiar life to reduce it merely to a shadow and type of the unseen. What he struggles to express in countless ways, with all the resources of his strange and gigantic power, is that this world and the next are both equally real, and both one--parts, however different, of one whole. The world to come we know but in "a gla.s.s darkly;" man can only think and imagine of it in images, which he knows to be but broken and faint reflections: but this world we know, not in outline, and featureless idea, but by name, and face, and shape, by place and person, by the colours and forms which crowd over its surface, the men who people its habitations, the events which mark its moments. Detail fills the sense here, and is the mark of reality. And thus he seeks to keep alive the feeling of what that world is which he connects with heaven and h.e.l.l; not by abstractions, not much by elaborate and highly-finished pictures, but by names, persons, local features, definite images.

Widely and keenly has he ranged over and searched into the world--with a largeness of mind which disdained not to mark and treasure up, along with much unheeded beauty, many a characteristic feature of nature, unnoticed because so common. All his pursuits and interests contribute to the impression, which, often instinctively it may be, he strives to produce, of the manifold variety of our life. As a man of society, his memory is full of its usages, formalities, graces, follies, fashions--of expressive motions, postures, gestures, looks--of music, of handicrafts, of the conversation of friends or a.s.sociates--of all that pa.s.ses, so transient, yet so keenly pleasant or distasteful, between man and man. As a traveller, he recalls continually the names and scenes of the world;--as a man of speculation, the secrets of nature--the phenomena of light, the theory of the planets' motions, the idea and laws of physiology. As a man of learning, he is filled with the thoughts and recollections of ancient fable and history; as a politician, with the thoughts, prognostications, and hopes, of the history of the day; as a moral philosopher he has watched himself, his external sensations and changes, his inward pa.s.sions, his mental powers, his ideas, his conscience; he has far and wide noted character, discriminated motives, cla.s.sed good and evil deeds. All that the man of society, of travel, of science, of learning, the politician, the moralist, could gather, is used at will in the great poetic structure; but all converges to the purpose, and is directed by the intense feeling of the theologian, who sees this wonderful and familiar scene melting into, and ending in another yet more wonderful, but which will one day be as familiar--who sees the difficult but sure progress of the manifold remedies of the Divine government to their predestined issue; and, over all, G.o.d and His saints.

So comprehensive in interest is the _Commedia_. Any attempt to explain it, by narrowing that interest to politics, philosophy, the moral life, or theology itself, must prove inadequate. Theology strikes the key-note; but history, natural and metaphysical science, poetry, and art, each in their turn join in the harmony, independent, yet ministering to the whole. If from the poem itself we could be for a single moment in doubt of the reality and dominant place of religion in it, the plain-spoken prose of the _Convito_ would show how he placed "the Divine Science, full of all peace, and allowing no strife of opinions and sophisms, for the excellent certainty of its subject, which is G.o.d," in single perfection above all other sciences, "which are, as Solomon speaks, but queens, or concubines, or maidens; but she is the 'Dove,' and the 'perfect one'--'Dove,' because without stain of strife--'perfect,' because perfectly she makes us behold the truth, in which our soul stills itself and is at rest." But the same pa.s.sage[72]

shows likewise how he viewed all human knowledge and human interests, as holding their due place in the hierarchy of wisdom, and among the steps of man's perfection. No account of the _Commedia_ will prove sufficient, which does not keep in view, first of all, the high moral purpose and deep spirit of faith with which it was written, and then the wide liberty of materials and means which the poet allowed himself in working out his design.

[Footnote 72: _Convito_, Tr. 2, c. 14, 15.]

Doubtless, his writings have a political aspect. The "great Ghibelline poet" is one of Dante's received synonymes; of his strong political opinions, and the importance he attached to them, there can be no doubt. And he meant his poem to be the vehicle of them, and the record to all ages of the folly and selfishness with which he saw men governed. That he should take the deepest interest in the goings on of his time, is part of his greatness; to suppose that he stopped at them, or that he subordinated to political objects or feelings all the other elements of his poem, is to shrink up that greatness into very narrow limits. Yet this has been done by men of mark and ability, by Italians, by men who read the _Commedia_ in their own mother-tongue.

It has been maintained as a satisfactory account of it--maintained with great labour and pertinacious ingenuity--that Dante meant nothing more by his poem than the conflicts and ideal triumph of a political party. The hundred cantos of that vision of the universe are but a manifesto of the Ghibelline propaganda, designed, under the veil of historic images and scenes, to insinuate what it was dangerous to announce; and Beatrice, in all her glory and sweetness, is but a specimen of the jargon, cant, and slang of Ghibelline freemasonry.

When Italians write thus, they degrade the greatest name of their country to a depth of laborious imbecility, to which the trifling of schoolmen and academicians is as nothing. It is to solve the enigma of Dante's works, by imagining for him a character in which it is hard to say which predominates, the pedant, mountebank, or infidel. After that we may read Voltaire's sneers with patience, and even enter with gravity on the examination of Father Hardouin's Historic Doubts. The fanaticism of an outraged liberalism, produced by centuries of injustice and despotism, is but a poor excuse for such perverse blindness.[73]

[Footnote 73: In the _Remains of Arthur Henry Hallam_ is a paper, in which he examines and disposes of this theory with a courteous and forbearing irony, which would have deepened probably into something more, on thinking over it a second time.]

Dante was not a Ghibelline, though he longed for the interposition of an Imperial power. Historically he did not belong to the Ghibelline party. It is true that he forsook the Guelfs, with whom he had been brought up, and that the White Guelfs, with whom he was expelled from Florence, were at length merged and lost in the Ghibelline party[74]; and he acted with them for a time.[75] But no words can be stronger than those in which he disjoins himself from that "evil and foolish company," and claims his independence--

A te fia bello _Averti fatto parte per te stesso_.[76]

[Footnote 74: _Dino Comp._ pp. 89-91.]

[Footnote 75: His name appears among the White delegates in 1307.

Pelli, p. 117.]

[Footnote 76: _Parad._ 17.]

And it is not easy to conceive a Ghibelline partisan putting into the mouth of Justinian, the type of law and empire, a general condemnation of his party as heavy as that of their antagonists;--the crime of having betrayed, as the Guelfs had resisted, the great symbol of public right--

Omai puoi giudicar di que' cotali Ch'io accusai di sopra, e de' lor falli Che son cagion di tutti i vostri mali.

L'uno al pubblico segno i gigli gialli Oppone, e _quel s'appropria l'altro a parte_, S ch'e forte a veder qual piu si falli.

_Faccian li Ghibellin, faccian lor arte Sott'altro segno; che mal segue quello Sempre chi la giustizia e lui diparte._[77]

[Footnote 77: _Ibid._ 6.]

And though, as the victim of the Guelfs of Florence, he found refuge among Ghibelline princes, he had friends among Guelfs also. His steps and his tongue were free to the end. And in character and feeling, in his austerity, his st.u.r.diness and roughness, his intolerance of corruption and pride, his strongly-marked devotional temper, he was much less a Ghibelline than like one of those stern Guelfs who hailed Savonarola.

But he had a very decided and complete political theory, which certainly was not Guelf; and, as parties then were, it was not much more Ghibelline. Most a.s.suredly no set of men would have more vigorously resisted the attempt to realise his theory, would have joined more heartily with all immediate opponents--Guelfs, Black, White, and Green, or even Boniface VIII.,--to keep out such an emperor as Dante imagined, than the Ghibelline n.o.bles and potentates.

Dante's political views were a dream; though a dream based on what had been, and an antic.i.p.ation of what was, in part at least, to come. It was a dream in the middle ages, in divided and republican Italy, the Italy of cities--of a real and national government, based on justice and law. It was the dream of a real _state_. He imagined that the Roman empire had been one great state; he persuaded himself that Christendom might be such. He was wrong in both instances; but in this case, as in so many others, he had already caught the spirit and ideas of a far-distant future; and the political organisation of modern times, so familiar to us that we cease to think of its exceeding wonder, is the practical confirmation, though in a form very different from what he imagined, of the depth and farsightedness of those expectations which are in outward form so chimerical--"_i miei non falsi errori_."

He had studied the "infinite disorders of the world" in one of their most unrestrained scenes, the streets of an Italian republic. Law was powerless, good men were powerless, good intentions came to naught; neither social habits nor public power could resist, when selfishness chose to have its way. The Church was indeed still the salt of the nations; but it had once dared and achieved more; it had once been the only power which ruled them. And this it could do no longer. If strength and energy had been enough to make the Church's influence felt on government, there was a Pope who could have done it--a man who was undoubtedly the most wondered at and admired of his age, whom friend or foe never characterised, without adding the invariable epithet of his greatness of soul--the "_magnanimus peccator_,"[78]

whose Roman grandeur in meeting his unworthy fate fascinated into momentary sympathy even Dante.[79] But among the things which Boniface VIII. could not do, even if he cared about it, was the maintaining peace and law in Italian towns. And while this great political power was failing, its correlative and antagonist was paralysed also. "Since the death of Frederic II.," says Dante's contemporary, "the fame and recollections of the empire were well-nigh extinguished."[80] Italy was left without government--"come nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta"--to the mercies of her tyrants:

Che le terre d'Italia tutte piene Son di tiranni, e un Marcel diventa Ogni villan, che parteggiando viene.--_Purg._ 6.

[Footnote 78: Benvenuto da Imola.]

[Footnote 79:

Veggio in Alagna entrar lo fiordaliso, E nel vicario suo Cristo esser catto; Veggiolo un'altra volta esser deriso; Veggio rinnovellar l'aceto e 'l fele, E tra vivi ladroni essere anciso.--_Purg._ 20.

G. Villani, viii. 63. Come magnanimo e valente, disse, _Dacche per tradimento, come Gesu Cristo, voglio esser preso e mi conviene morire, almeno voglio morire come Papa_; e di presente si fece parare dell'ammanto di S. Piero, e colla corona di Constantino in capo, e colle chiavi e croce in mano, e in su la sedia papale si pose a sedere, e giunto a lui Sciarra e gli altri suoi nimici; con villane parole lo scherniro.]

[Footnote 80: _Dino Compagni_, p. 135.]

In this scene of violence and disorder, with the Papacy gone astray, the empire debased and impotent, the religious orders corrupted, power meaning lawlessness, the well-disposed become weak and cowardly, religion neither guide nor check to society, but only the consolation of its victims--Dante was bold and hopeful enough to believe in the Divine appointment, and in the possibility, of law and government--of a state. In his philosophy, the inst.i.tutions which provide for man's peace and liberty in this life are part of G.o.d's great order for raising men to perfection;--not indispensable, yet ordinary parts; having their important place, though but for the present time; and though imperfect, real instruments of His moral government. He could not believe it to be the intention of Providence, that on the introduction of higher hopes and the foundation of a higher society, civil society should collapse and be left to ruin, as henceforth useless or prejudicial in man's trial and training; that the significant intimations of nature, that law and its results, justice, peace, and stability, ought to be and might be realised among men, had lost their meaning and faded away before the announcement of a kingdom not of this world. And if the perfection of civil society had not been superseded by the Church, it had become clear, if events were to be read as signs, that she was not intended to supply its political offices and functions. She had taught, elevated, solaced, blessed, not only individual souls, but society; she had for a time even governed it: but though her other powers remained, she could govern it no longer. Failure had made it certain that, in his strong and quaint language, "_Virtus authorizandi regnum nostrae mortalitatis est contra naturam ecclesiae; ergo non est de numero virtutum suarum_."[81]

Another and distinct organisation was required for this, unless the temporal order was no longer worthy the attention of Christians.

[Footnote 81: _De Monarch._ lib. iii. p. 188, Ed. Fraticelli.]

This is the idea of the _De Monarchia_; and though it holds but a place in the great scheme of the _Commedia_, it is prominent there also--an idea seen but in a fantastic shape, enc.u.mbered and confused with most grotesque imagery, but the real idea of polity and law, which the experience of modern Europe has attained to.

He found in clear outline in the Greek philosophy, the theory of merely human society; and raising its end and purpose, "_finem totius humanae civilitatis_," to a height and dignity which Heathens could not forecast, he adopted it in its more abstract and ideal form. He imagined a single authority, unselfish, inflexible, irresistible, which could make all smaller tyrannies to cease, and enable every man to live in peace and liberty, so that he lived in justice. It is simply what each separate state of Christendom has by this time more or less perfectly achieved. The theoriser of the middle ages could conceive of its accomplishment only in one form, as grand as it was impossible--a universal monarchy.