Stories from the Italian Poets: with Lives of the Writers Volume I Part 11

The soul overtook the pilgrims as they were journeying in amazement onwards; and it turned out to be that of Statius, who had been converted to Christianity in the reign of Domitian.[42] Mutual astonishment led to inquiries that explained who the other Latin poet was; and Statius fell at his master's feet.

Statius had expiated his sins in the circle of Avarice, not for that vice, but for the opposite one of Prodigality.

An angel now, as before, took the fifth letter from Dante's forehead; and the three poets having ascended into the sixth round of the mountain, were journeying on lovingly together, Dante listening with reverence to the talk of the two ancients, when they came up to a sweet-smelling fruit-tree, upon which a clear stream came tumbling from a rock beside it, and diffusing itself through the branches. The Latin poets went up to the tree, and were met by a voice which said, "Be chary of the fruit. Mary thought not of herself at Galilee, but of the visitors, when she said, 'They have no wine.' The women of oldest Rome drank water. The beautiful age of gold feasted on acorns. Its thirst made nectar out of the rivulet. The Baptist fed on locusts and wild honey, and became great as you see him in the gospel."

The poets went on their way; and Dante was still listening to the others, when they heard behind them a mingled sound of chanting and weeping, which produced an effect at once sad and delightful. It was the psalm, "O Lord, open thou our lips!" and the chanters were expiators of the sin of Intemperance in Meats and Drinks. They were condemned to circuit the mountain, famished, and to long for the fruit and waters of the tree in vain. They soon came up with the poets--a pallid mult.i.tude, with hollow eyes, and bones staring through the skin. The sockets of their eyes looked like rings from which the gems had dropped.[43] One of them knew and accosted Dante, who could not recognise him till he heard him speak. It was Forese Donati, one of the poet's most intimate connexions. Dante, who had wept over his face when dead, could as little forbear weeping to see him thus hungering and thirsting, though he had expected to find him in the outskirts of the place, among the delayers of repentance. He asked his friend how he had so quickly got higher.

Forese said it was owing to the prayers and tears of his good wife Nella; and then he burst into a strain of indignation against the contrast exhibited to her virtue by the general depravity of the Florentine women, whom he described as less modest than the half-naked savages in the mountains of Sardinia.

"What is to be said of such creatures?" continued he. "O my dear cousin!

I see a day at hand, when these impudent women shall be for bidden from the pulpit to go exposing their naked bosoms. What savages or what infidels ever needed that? Oh! if they could see what Heaven has in store for them, their mouths would be this instant opened wide for howling."[44]

Forese then asked Dante to explain to himself and his astonished fellow-sufferers how it was that he stood there, a living body of flesh and blood, casting a shadow with his substance.

"If thou callest to mind," said Dante, "what sort of life thou and I led together, the recollection may still grieve thee sorely. He that walks here before us took me out of that life; and through his guidance it is that I have visited in the body the world of the dead, and am now traversing the mountain which leads us to the right path."[45]

After some further explanation, Forese pointed out to his friend, among the expiators of intemperance, Buonaggiunta of Lucca, the poet; and Pope Martin the Fourth, with a face made sharper than the rest for the eels which he used to smother in wine; and Ubaldino of Pila, grinding his teeth on air; and Archbishop Boniface of Ravenna, who fed jovially on his flock; and Rigogliosi of Forli, who had had time enough to drink in the other world, and yet never was satisfied. Buonaggiunta and Dante eyed one another with curiosity; and the former murmured something about a lady of the name of Gentucca.

"Thou seemest to wish to speak with me," said Dante.

"Thou art no admirer, I believe, of my native place," said Buonaggiunta; "and yet, if thou art he whom I take thee to be, there is a damsel there shall make it please thee. Art thou not author of the poem beginning

"Ladies, that understand the lore of love?"[46]

"I am one," replied Dante, "who writes as Love would have him, heeding no manner but his dictator's, and uttering simply what he suggests."[47]

"Ay, that is the sweet new style," returned Buonaggiunta; "and I now see what it was that hindered the notary, and Guittone, and myself, from hitting the right natural point." And here he ceased speaking, looking like one contented to have ascertained a truth.[48]

The whole mult.i.tude then, except Forese, skimmed away like cranes, swift alike through eagerness and through leanness. Forese lingered a moment to have a parting word with his friend, and to prophesy the violent end of the chief of his family, Corso, run away with and dragged at the heels of his horse faster and faster, till the frenzied animal smites him dead. Having given the poet this information, the prophet speeded after the others.

The companions now came to a second fruit-tree, to which a mult.i.tude were in vain lifting up their hands, just as children lift them to a man who tantalises them with shewing something which he withholds; but a voice out of a thicket by the road-side warned the travellers not to stop, telling them that the tree was an offset from that of which Eve tasted. "Call to mind," said the voice, "those creatures of the clouds, the Centaurs, whose feasting cost them their lives. Remember the Hebrews, how they dropped away from the ranks of Gideon to quench their effeminate thirst."[49]

The poets proceeded, wrapt in thought, till they heard another voice of a nature that made Dante start and shake as if he had been some paltry hackney.

"Of what value is thought," said the voice, "if it lose its way? The path lies. .h.i.ther."

Dante turned toward the voice, and beheld a shape glowing red as in a furnace, with a visage too dazzling to be looked upon. It met him, nevertheless, as he drew nigh, with an air from the fanning of its wings fresh as the first breathing of the wind on a May morning, and fragrant as all its flowers; and Dante lost the sixth letter on his forehead, and ascended with the two other poets into the seventh and last circle of the mountain.

This circle was all in flames, except a narrow path on the edge of its precipice, along which the pilgrims walked. A great wind from outside of the precipice kept the flames from raging beyond the path; and in the midst of the fire went spirits expiating the sin of Incontinence. They sang the hymn beginning "G.o.d of consummate mercy!"[50] Dante was compelled to divide his attention between his own footsteps and theirs, in order to move without destruction. At the close of the hymn they cried aloud, "I know not a man!"[51] and then recommenced it; after which they again cried aloud, saying, "Diana ran to the wood, and drove Calisto out of it, because she knew the poison of Venus!" And then again they sang the hymn, and then extolled the memories of chaste women and husbands; and so they went on without ceasing, as long as their time of trial lasted.

Occasionally the mult.i.tude that went in one direction met another which mingled with and pa.s.sed through it, individuals of both greeting tenderly by the way, as emmets appear to do, when in pa.s.sing they touch the antennae of one another. These two mult.i.tudes parted with loud and sorrowful cries, proclaiming the offences of which they had been guilty; and then each renewed their spiritual songs and prayers.

The souls here, as in former circles, knew Dante to be a living creature by the shadow which he cast; and after the wonted explanations, he learned who some of them were. One was his predecessor in poetry, Guido Guinicelli, from whom he could not take his eyes for love and reverence, till the sufferer, who told him there was a greater than himself in the crowd, vanished away through the fire as a fish does in water. The greater one was Arnauld Daniel, the Provencal poet, who, after begging the prayers of the traveller, disappeared in like manner.

The sun by this time was setting on the fires of Purgatory, when an angel came crossing the road through them, and then, standing on the edge of the precipice, with joy in his looks, and singing, "Blessed are the pure in heart!" invited the three poets to plunge into the flames themselves, and so cross the road to the ascent by which the summit of the mountain was gained. Dante, clasping his hands, and raising them aloft, recoiled in horror. The thought of all that he had just witnessed made him feel as if his own hour of death was come. His companion encouraged him to obey the angel; but he could not stir. Virgil said, "Now mark me, son; this is the only remaining obstacle between thee and Beatrice;" and then himself and Statius entering the fire, Dante followed them.

"I could have cast myself," said he, "into molten gla.s.s to cool myself, so raging was the furnace." Virgil talked of Beatrice to animate him. He said, "Methinks I see her eyes beholding us." There was, indeed, a great light upon the quarter to which they were crossing; and out of the light issued a voice, which drew them onwards, singing, "Come, blessed of my Father! Behold, the sun is going down, and the night cometh, and the ascent is to be gained."

The travellers gained the ascent, issuing out of the fire; and the voice and the light ceased, and night was come. Unable to ascend farther in the darkness, they made themselves a bed, each of a stair in the rock; and Dante, in his happy humility, felt as if he had been a goat lying down for the night near two shepherds.

Towards dawn, at the hour of the rising of the star of love, he had a dream, in which he saw a young and beautiful lady coming over a lea, and bending every now and then to gather flowers; and as she bound the flowers into a garland, she sang, "I am Leah, gathering flowers to adorn myself, that my looks may seem pleasant to me in the mirror. But my sister Rachel abides before the mirror, flowerless; contented with her beautiful eyes. To behold is my sister's pleasure, and to work is mine."[52]

When Dante awoke, the beams of the dawn were visible; and they now produced a happiness like that of the traveller, who every time he awakes knows himself to be nearer home. Virgil and Statius were already up; and all three, resuming their way to the mountain's top, stood upon it at last, and gazed round about them on the skirts of the terrestrial Paradise. The sun was sparkling bright over a green land, full of trees and flowers. Virgil then announced to Dante, that here his guidance terminated, and that the creature of flesh and blood was at length to be master of his own movements, to rest or to wander as he pleased, the tried and purified lord over himself.

The Florentine, eager to taste his new liberty, left his companions awhile, and strolled away through the celestial forest, whose thick and lively verdure gave coolness to the senses in the midst of the brightest sun. A fragrance came from every part of the soil; a sweet unintermitting air streamed against the walker's face; and as the full-hearted birds, warbling on all sides, welcomed the morning's radiance into the trees, the trees themselves joined in the concert with a swelling breath, like that which rises among the pines of Chia.s.si, when Eolus lets loose the south-wind, and the gathering melody comes rolling through the forest from bough to bough.[53]

Dante had proceeded far enough to lose sight of the point at which he entered, when he found himself on the bank of a rivulet, compared with whose crystal purity the limpidest waters on earth were clouded. And yet it flowed under a perpetual depth of shade, which no beam either of sun or moon penetrated. Nevertheless the darkness was coloured with endless diversities of May-blossoms; and the poet was standing in admiration, looking up at it along its course, when he beheld something that took away every other thought; to wit, a lady, all alone, on the other side of the water, singing and culling flowers.

"Ah, lady!" said the poet, "who, to judge by the cordial beauty in thy looks, hast a heart overflowing with love, be pleased to draw thee nearer to the stream, that I may understand the words thou singest. Thou remindest me of Proserpine, of the place she was straying in, and of what sort of creature she looked, when her mother lost her, and she herself lost the spring-time on earth."

As a lady turns in the dance when it goes smoothest, moving round with lovely self-possession, and scarcely seeming to put one foot before the other, so turned the lady towards the water over the yellow and vermilion flowers, dropping her eyes gently as she came, and singing so that Dante could hear her. Then when she arrived at the water, she stopped, and raised her eyes towards him, and smiled, shewing him the flowers in her hands, and shifting them with her fingers into a display of all their beauties. Never were such eyes beheld, not even when Venus herself was in love. The stream was a little stream; yet Dante felt it as great an intervention between them, as if it had been Leander's h.e.l.lespont.

The lady explained to him the nature of the place, and how the rivulet was the Lethe of Paradise;--Lethe, where he stood, but called Eunoe higher up; the drink of the one doing away all remembrance of evil deeds, and that of the other restoring all remembrance of good.[54] It was the region, she said, in which Adam and Eve had lived; and the poets had beheld it perhaps in their dreams on Mount Parna.s.sus, and hence imagined their golden age;--and at these words she looked at Virgil and Statius, who by this time had come up, and who stood smiling at her kindly words.

Resuming her song, the lady turned and pa.s.sed up along the rivulet the contrary way of the stream, Dante proceeding at the same rate of time on his side of it; till on a sudden she cried, "Behold, and listen!" and a light of exceeding l.u.s.tre came streaming through the woods, followed by a dulcet melody. The poets resumed their way in a rapture of expectation, and saw the air before them glowing under the green boughs like fire. A divine spectacle ensued of holy mystery, with evangelical and apocalyptic images, which gradually gave way and disclosed a car brighter than the chariot of the sun, accompanied by celestial nymphs, and showered upon by angels with a cloud of flowers, in the midst of which stood a maiden in a white veil, crowned with olive.

The love that had never left Dante's heart from childhood told him who it was; and trembling in every vein, he turned round to Virgil for encouragement. Virgil was gone. At that moment, Paradise and Beatrice herself could not requite the pilgrim for the loss of his friend; and the tears ran down his cheeks.

"Dante," said the veiled maiden across the stream, "weep not that Virgil leaves thee. Weep thou not yet. The stroke of a sharper sword is coming, at which it will behove thee to weep." Then a.s.suming a sterner att.i.tude, and speaking in the tone of one who reserves the bitterest speech for the last, she added, "Observe me well. I am, as thou suspectest, Beatrice indeed;--Beatrice, who has to congratulate thee on deigning to seek the mountain at last. And hadst thou so long indeed to learn, that here only can man be happy?"

Dante, casting down his eyes at these words, beheld his face in the water, and hastily turned aside, he saw it so full of shame.

Beatrice had the dignified manner of an offended parent; such a flavour of bitterness was mingled with her pity.

She held her peace; and the angels abruptly began singing, "In thee, O Lord, have I put my trust;" but went no farther in the psalm than the words, "Thou hast set my feet in a large room." The tears of Dante had hitherto been suppressed; but when the singing began, they again rolled down his cheeks.

Beatrice, in a milder tone, said to the angels, "This man, when he proposed to himself in his youth to lead a new life, was of a truth so gifted, that every good habit ought to have thrived with him; but the richer the soil, the greater peril of weeds. For a while, the innocent light of my countenance drew him the right way; but when I quitted mortal life, he took away his thoughts from remembrance of me, and gave himself to others. When I had risen from flesh to spirit, and increased in worth and beauty, then did I sink in his estimation, and he turned into other paths, and pursued false images of good that never keep their promise. In vain I obtained from Heaven the power of interfering in his behalf, and endeavoured to affect him with it night and day. So little was he concerned, and into such depths he fell, that nothing remained but to shew him the state of the condemned; and therefore I went to their outer regions, and commended him with tears to the guide that brought him hither. The decrees of Heaven would be nought, if Lethe could be pa.s.sed, and the fruit beyond it tasted, without any payment of remorse.[55]

"O thou," she continued, addressing herself to Dante, "who standest on the other side of the holy stream, say, have I not spoken truth?"

Dante was so confused and penitent, that the words failed as they pa.s.sed his lips.

"What could induce thee," resumed his monitress, "when I had given thee aims indeed, to abandon them for objects that could end in nothing?"

Dante said, "Thy face was taken from me, and the presence of false pleasure led me astray."

"Never didst thou behold," cried the maiden, "loveliness like mine; and if bliss failed thee because of my death, how couldst thou be allured by mortal inferiority? That first blow should have taught thee to disdain all perishable things, and aspire after the soul that had gone before thee. How could thy spirit endure to stoop to further chances, or to a childish girl, or any other fleeting vanity? The bird that is newly out of the nest may be twice or thrice tempted by the snare; but in vain, surely, is the net spread in sight of one that is older."[56]

Dante stood as silent and abashed as a sorry child.

"If but to hear me," said Beatrice, "thus afflicts thee, lift up thy beard, and see what sight can do."

Dante, though feeling the sting intended by the word "beard," did as he was desired. The angels had ceased to scatter their clouds of flowers about the maiden; and be beheld her, though still beneath her veil, as far surpa.s.sing her former self in loveliness, as that self had surpa.s.sed others. The sight pierced him with such pangs, that the more he had loved any thing else, the more he now loathed it; and he fell senseless to the ground.

When he recovered his senses, he found himself in the hands of the lady he had first seen in the place, who bidding him keep firm hold of her, drew him into the river Lethe, and so through and across it to the other side, speeding as she went like a weaver's shuttle, and immersing him when she arrived, the angels all the while singing, "Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."[57] She then delivered him into the hands of the nymphs that had danced about the car,--nymphs on earth, but stars and cardinal virtues in heaven; a song burst from the lips of the angels; and Faith, Hope, and Charity, calling upon Beatrice to unveil her face, she did so; and Dante quenched the ten-years thirst of his eyes in her ineffable beauty.[58]

After a while he and Statius were made thoroughly regenerate with the waters of Eunoe; and he felt pure with a new being, and fit to soar into the stars.

[Footnote 1: