Dante. An essay Part 6

[Footnote 96: _Parad._ 3, 12, 17. _Convit._ p. 108. "A piu _Latinamente_ vedere la sentenza letterale."]

[Footnote 97: _Vid._ the _De Monarchia_.]

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 a.s.sertor, 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 n.o.bleness, 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 t.i.tle 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]

[Footnote 98: _Inf._ 10, and compare the _Vit. N._ p. 334, ed.

Fraticelli.]

[Footnote 99: _Convito_, i. 5.]

[Footnote 100: Ep. ad Kan Grand. --9,--a curious specimen of the learning of the time: "Sciendum est, quod _Comoedia_ dicitur a [Greek: kome], _villa_ et [Greek: ode], quod est _cantus_, unde _Comoedia_ quasi _villa.n.u.s cantus_. Et est _Comoedia genus quoddam poeticae narrationis_, ab omnibus aliis differens. Differt ergo a Tragoedia in materia per hoc, quod Tragoedia in principio est admirabilis et quieta, in fine foetida et horribilis; et dicitur propter hoc a [Greek: tragos], i.e. _hircus_, et [Greek: ode], quasi _cantus hircinus_, i.e. foetidus ad modum hirci, ut patet per Senecam in suis tragoediis. _Comoedia_ vero inchoat asperitatem alicujus rei, sed ejus materia prospere terminatur, ut patet per Terentium in suis _Comoediis_.... Similiter differunt in modo loquendi; elate et sublime Tragoedia, _Comoedia_ vero remisse et humiliter sicut vult Horat. in Poet.... Et per hoc patet, quod _Comoedia_ diciter praesens opus. Nam si ad materiam respiciamus, a principio horribilis et foetida est, quia _Infernus_: in fine prospera, desiderabilis et grata, quia _Paradisus_. Si ad modum loquendi, remissus est modus et humilis, quia locutio Vulgaris, in qua et mulierculae communicant. Et sic patet quia _Comoedia_ dicitur."

Cf. de Vulg. Eloq. 2, 4, _Parad._ 30. He calls the aeneid, "_l'alta Tragedia_," _Inf._ 20, 113. Compare also Boccaccio's explanation of his mother's dream of the _peac.o.c.k_. Dante, he says, is like the Peac.o.c.k, among other reasons, "because the peac.o.c.k has coa.r.s.e feet, and a quiet gait;" and "the vulgar language, on which the _Commedia_ supports itself, is coa.r.s.e in comparison with the high and masterly literary style which every other poet uses, though it be more beautiful than others, being in conformity with modern minds. The quiet gait signifies the humility of the style, which is necessarily required in _Commedia_, as those know who understand what is meant by _Commedia_."]

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 prost.i.tuted mouth of these adulterers."[101] He noted and compared its various dialects; he a.s.serted 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 a.s.sociations, 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]

[Footnote 101: _Convito_, i. 11.]

[Footnote 102: _Convito_, i. 13.]

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 Sall.u.s.t 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, because conscious of weakness which they could not cure.

[Footnote 103: G. Villani was at Rome in the year of jubilee 1300, and describes the great concourse and order of the pilgrims, whom he reckons at 200,000, in the course of the year. "And I," he proceeds, "finding myself in that blessed pilgrimage in the holy city of Rome, seeing the great and ancient things of the same, and reading the histories of the great deeds of the Romans, written by Virgil, and by Sall.u.s.t, and Lucan, and t.i.tus Livius, and Valerius, and Paulus Orosius, and other masters of histories, who wrote as well of the smaller matters as of the greater, concerning the exploits and deeds of the Romans; and further, of the strange things of the whole world, for memory and example's sake to those who should come after--I, too, took their style and fashion, albeit that, as their scholar, I be not worthy to execute such a work. But, considering that our city of Florence, the daughter and creation of Rome, was in its rising, and on the eve of achieving great things, as Rome was in its decline, it seemed to me convenient to bring into this volume and new chronicle all the deeds and beginnings of the city of Florence, so far as I have been able to gather and recover them; and for the future, to follow at large the doings of the Florentines, and the other notable things of the world briefly, as long as it may be G.o.d's pleasure; under which hope, rather by his grace than by my poor science, I entered on this enterprise: and so, in the year 1300, being returned from Rome, I began to compile this book, in reverence towards G.o.d and St. John, and commendation of our city of Florence."--_G. Vill._ viii. 36.]

[Footnote 104: _Sacchetti_, Nov. 114.]

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 Provencal 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d'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 mult.i.tude, 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.

[Footnote 105: _Vide_ Ozanam.]

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 antic.i.p.ation 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 e chi spera, che nostra ragione Possa trascorrer la 'nfinita via Che tiene una sustanzia in tre Persone.

State contenti, umana gente, al _quia_; Che se potuto aveste veder tutto, Mestier non era partorir Maria: E disiar vedeste senza frutto Tai, che sarebbe lor disio quetato, Ch'eternamente e dato lor per lutto; I' dico d'Aristotile e di Plato, E di molti altri:"--e qui chin la fronte, E piu 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 const.i.tute 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 a.s.signed 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 G.o.d'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. 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 p.r.o.nounce 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 G.o.d, his abundant fancy confines itself strictly to the limits sanctioned by her famous teachers--ventures into no new sphere, hazards no antic.i.p.ations 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 G.o.d, 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 e '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]

[Footnote 107: See an article in the _Brit. Critic_, No. 65, p. 120.]

[Footnote 108: See the form of benediction of the "Rosa d'oro."

_Rituum Ecclesiae Rom. Libri Tres._ fol. x.x.xv. Venet. 1516. Form of giving: "Accipe rosam de manibus nostris ... per quam designatus gaudium utriusque Hierusalem triumphantis scilicet et militantis ecclesiae per quam omnibus Christi fidelibus manifestatur flos ipse pretiosissimus qui est gaudium et corona sanctorum omnium." He alludes to it in the _Convito_, iv. 29.

O isplendor di Dio, per cu' io vidi L'alto trionfo del regno verace, Dammi virtu a dir com'io lo vidi.

Lume e la.s.su, che visibile face Lo creatore a quella creatura, Che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace: E si distende in circular figura In tanto, che la sua circonferenza Sarebbe al Sol troppo larga cintura.

E come clivo in acqua di suo imo Si specchia quasi per vedersi adorno, Quanto e nel verde e ne' fioretti opimo; S soprastando al lume intorno intorno Vidi specchiarsi in piu di mille soglie, Quanto di noi la.s.su fatto ha ritorno.

E se l'infimo grado in se raccoglie S grande lume, quant'e la larghezza Di questa rosa nell'estreme foglie?

Nel giallo della rosa sempiterna, Che si dilata, rigrada, e redole Odor di lode al Sol, che sempre verna, Qual'e colui, che tace e dicer vuole, Mi tra.s.se Beatrice, e disse; mira Quanto e 'l convento delle bianche stole!

Vedi nostra Citta quanto ella gira!

Vedi li nostri scanni s ripieni, Che poca gente omai ci si disira.

In forma dunque di candida rosa Mi si mostrava la milizia santa, Che nel suo sangue Cristo fece sposa.--_Parad._ 30, 31.]

But this universal reference to the religious ideas of the Church is so natural, so unaffected, that it leaves him at full liberty in other orders of thought. He can afford not to be conventional--he can afford to be comprehensive and genuine. It has been remarked how, in a poem where there would seem to be a fitting place for them, the ecclesiastical legends of the middle ages are almost entirely absent.

The sainted spirits of the _Paradiso_ are not exclusively or chiefly the Saints of popular devotion. After the Saints of the Bible, the holy women, the three great Apostles, the Virgin mother, they are either names personally dear to the poet himself, friends whom he had loved, and teachers to whom he owed wisdom--or great men of masculine energy in thought or action, in their various lines "compensations and antagonists of the world's evils"--Justinian and Constantine, and Charlemagne--the founders of the Orders, Augustine, Benedict, and Bernard, Francis and Dominic--the great doctors of the Schools, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventura, whom the Church had not yet canonized. And with them are joined--and that with a full consciousness of the line which theology draws between the dispensations of nature and grace--some rare types of virtue among the heathen. Cato is admitted to the outskirts of Purgatory; Trajan, and the righteous king of Virgil's poem, to the heaven of the just.[109]

[Footnote 109:

Chi crederebbe giu nel mondo errante, Che Rifeo Trojano[A] in questo tondo Fosse la quinta delle luci sante?

Ora conosce a.s.sai di quel, che 'l mondo Veder non pu della divina grazia; Benche sua vista non discerna il fondo.--_Parad._ c. 20.]

[Footnote A:

Rhipeus justissimus unus Qui fuit in Teucris, et servantissimus aequi.--_aen._ ii.]

Without confusion or disturbance to the religious character of his train of thought, he is able freely to subordinate to it the lessons and the great recollections of the Gentile times. He contemplates them with the veil drawn off from them; as now known to form but one whole with the history of the Bible and the Church, in the design of Providence. He presents them in their own colours, as drawn by their own writers--he only adds what Christianity seems to show to be their event. Under the conviction, that the light of the Heathen was a real guide from above, calling for vengeance in proportion to unfaithfulness, or outrage done to it--"He that nurtureth the heathen, it is He that teacheth man knowledge--shall not He punish?"--the great criminals of profane history are mingled with sinners against G.o.d's revealed will--and that, with equal dramatic power, with equal feeling of the greatness of their loss. The story of the voyage of Ulysses is told with as much vivid power and pathetic interest as the tales of the day.[110] He honours unfeignedly the old heathen's brave disdain of ease; that spirit, even to old age, eager, fresh, adventurous, and inquisitive. 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 G.o.d 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 cla.s.sic 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 pa.s.sing 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 Cra.s.sus.

[Footnote 110: _Inf._ c. 26.]

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 cla.s.sical 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 cla.s.sics could be really understood and appreciated; and this is true, perhaps fortunate. But admiring them with a kind of devotion, and showing not seldom that he had caught their spirit, he never _attempts_ to copy them. His poetry in form and material is all his own. He a.s.serted the poet's claim to borrow from all science, and from every phase of nature, the a.s.sociations and images which he wants; and he showed that those images and a.s.sociations did not lose their poetry by being expressed with the most literal reality.