Stories from the Italian Poets: with Lives of the Writers Volume I Part 14

Forese, like many of Dante's preachers, seems to have been one of those self-ignorant or self-exasperated denouncers, who "Compound for sins they are inclined to, By d.a.m.ning those they have no mind to." He was a glutton, who could not bear to see ladies too little clothed. The defacing of "G.o.d's image" in his own person he considered nothing.]

[Footnote 45: The pa.s.sage respecting his past life is unequivocal testimony to the fact, confidently disputed by some, of Dante's having availed himself of the license of the time; though, in justice to such candour, we are bound not to think worse of it than can be helped. The words in the original are

"Se ti riduci a mente Qual fosti meco, e quale io teco fui, Ancor fia grave il memorar presente."

Literally: "If thou recallest to mind what (sort of person) thou wast with me, and what I was with thee, the recollection may oppress thee still."

His having been taken out of that kind of life by Virgil (construed in the literal sense, in which, among other senses, he has directed us to construe him), may imply, either that the delight of reading Virgil first made him think of living in a manner more becoming a man of intellect, or (possibly) that the Latin poet's description of aeneas's descent into h.e.l.l turned his thoughts to religious penitence. Be this as it may, his life, though surely it could at no time have been of any very licentious kind, never, if we are to believe Boccaccio, became spotless.]

[Footnote 46: The mention of Gentucca might be thought a compliment to the lady, if Dante had not made Beatrice afterwards treat his regard for any one else but herself with so much contempt. (See page 216 of the present volume.) Under that circ.u.mstance, it is hardly acting like a gentleman to speak of her at all; unless, indeed, he thought her a person who would be pleased with the notoriety arising even from the record of a fugitive regard; and in that case the good taste of the record would still remain doubtful. The probability seems to be, that Dante was resolved, at all events, to take this opportunity of bearding some rumour.]

[Footnote 47: A celebrated and charming pa.s.sage:

"Io mi son un, che quando Amore spira, noto; e a quel modo Che detta dentro, vo significando."

I am one that notes When Love inspires; and what he speaks I tell In his own way, embodying but his thoughts.

[Footnote 48: Exquisite truth of painting! and a very elegant compliment to the handsome nature of Buonaggiunta. Jacopo da Lentino, called the Notary, and Fra Guittone of Arezzo, were celebrated verse-writers of the day. The latter, in a sonnet given by Mr. Cary in the notes to his translation, says he shall be delighted to hear the trumpet, at the last day, dividing mankind into the happy and the tormented (sufferers under _crudel martire_), _because_ an inscription will then be seen on his forehead, shewing that he had been a slave to love! An odd way for a poet to shew his feelings, and a friar his religion!]

[Footnote 49: Judges vii. 6.]

[Footnote 50: _Summae Deus clementiae_. The ancient beginning of a hymn in the Roman Catholic church; now altered, say the commentators, to "Summae parens clementiae."]

[Footnote 51: _Virum non cognosco_. "Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?"--_Luke_ i. 34.

The placing of Mary's interview with the angel, and Ovid's story of Calisto, upon apparently the same identical footing of authority, by spirits in all the sincerity of agonised penitence, is very remarkable.

A dissertation, by some competent antiquary, on the curious question suggested by these anomalies, would be a welcome novelty in the world of letters.]

[Footnote 52: An allegory of the Active and Contemplative Life;--not, I think, a happy one, though beautifully painted. It presents, apart from its terminating comment no necessary intellectual suggestion; is rendered, by the, comment itself, hardly consistent with Leah's express love of ornament; and, if it were not for the last sentence, might be taken for a picture of two different forms of Vanity.]

[Footnote 53:

"Tal, qual di ramo in ramo si raccoglie Per la pineta in sul lito di Chia.s.si, Quand' Eolo scirocco fuor discioglie."

Even as from branch to branch Along the piny forests on the sh.o.r.e Of Chia.s.si, rolls the gathering melody, When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed The dripping south."--_Cary_.

"This is the wood," says Mr. Cary, "where the scene of Boccaccio's sublimest story (taken entirely from Elinaud, as I learn in the notes to the Decameron, ediz. Giunti, 1573, p. 62) is laid. See Dec., G. 5, N.

8, and Dryden's Theodore and Honoria. Our poet perhaps wandered in it during his abode with Guido Novello da Polenta."--_Translation of Dante_, ut sup. p. 121.]

[Footnote 54: Lethe, _Forgetfulness_; Eunoe, _Well-mindedness_.]

[Footnote 55:

"Senza alcuno scotto Di pentimento."

Literally, _scot-free_.--"Scotto," scot;--"payment for dinner or supper in a tavern" (says Rubbi, the Petrarchal rather than Dantesque editor of the _Parnaso Italiano_, and a very summary gentleman); "here used figuratively, though it is not a word fit to be employed on serious and grand occasions" (in cose gravi ed ill.u.s.tri). See his "Dante" in that collection, vol. ii. p. 297.]

[Footnote 56: The allusion to the childish girl (_pargoletta_) or any other fleeting vanity,

"O altra vanita con s breve use,"

is not handsome. It was not the fault of the childish girls that he liked them; and he should not have taunted them, whatever else they might have been. What answer could they make to the great poet?

Nor does Beatrice make a good figure throughout this scene, whether as a woman or an allegory. If she is Theology, or Heavenly Grace, &c. the sternness of the allegory should not have been put into female shape; and when she is to be taken in her literal sense (as the poet also tells us she is), her treatment of the poor submissive lover, with leave of Signor Rubbi, is no better than _snubbing_;--to say nothing of the vanity with which she pays compliments to her own beauty.

I must, furthermore, beg leave to differ with the poet's thinking it an exalted symptom on his part to hate every thing he had loved before, out of supposed compliment the transcendental object of his affections and his own awakened merits. All the heights of love and wisdom terminate in charity; and charity, by very reason of its knowing the poorness of so many things, hates nothing. Besides, it is any thing but handsome or high-minded to turn round upon objects whom we have helped to lower with our own gratified pa.s.sions, and pretend a right to scorn them.]

[Footnote 57:

"Tu asperges me, et mundabor," &c. "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."--Psalm li. 7.]

[Footnote 58: Beatrice had been dead ten years.]

III.

THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN. Argument.

The Paradise or Heaven of Dante, in whose time the received system of astronomy was the Ptolemaic, consists of the Seven successive Planets according to that system, or the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; of the Eighth Sphere beyond these, or that of the Fixed Stars; of the Primum Mobile, or First Mover of them all round the moveless Earth; and of the Empyrean, or Region of Pure Light, in which is the Beatific Vision. Each of these ascending spheres is occupied by its proportionate degree of Faith and Virtue; and Dante visits each under the guidance of Beatrice, receiving many lessons, as he goes, on theological and other subjects (here left out), and being finally admitted, after the sight of Christ and the Virgin, to a glimpse of the Great First Cause.

THE JOURNEY THROUGH HEAVEN.

It was evening now on earth, and morning on the top of the hill in Purgatory, when Beatrice having fixed her eyes upon the sun, Dante fixed his eyes upon hers, and suddenly found himself in Heaven.

He had been transported by the attraction of love, and Beatrice was by his side.

The poet beheld from where he stood the blaze of the empyrean, and heard the music of the spheres; yet he was only in the first or lowest Heaven, the circle of the orb of the moon.

This...o...b.. with his new guide, he proceeded to enter. It had seemed, outside, as solid, though as lucid, as diamond; yet they entered it, as sunbeams are admitted into water without dividing the substance. It now appeared, as it enclosed them, like a pearl, through the essence of which they saw but dimly; and they beheld many faces eagerly looking at them, as if about to speak, but not more distinct from the surrounding whiteness than pearls themselves are from the forehead they adorn.[1]

Dante thought them only reflected faces, and turned round to see to whom they belonged, when his smiling companion set him right; and he entered into discourse with the spirit that seemed the most anxious to accost him. It was Piccarda, the sister of his friend Forese Donati, whom he had met in the sixth region of Purgatory. He did not know her, by reason of her wonderful increase in beauty. She and her a.s.sociates were such as had been Vowed to a Life of Chast.i.ty and Religion, but had been Compelled by Others to Break their Vows. This had been done, in Piccarda's instance, by her brother Corso.[2] On

Dante's asking if they did not long for a higher state of bliss, she and her sister-spirits gently smiled; and then answered, with faces as happy as first love,[3] that they willed only what it pleased G.o.d to give them, and therefore were truly blest. The poet found by this answer, that every place in Heaven was Paradise, though the bliss might be of different degrees. Piccarda then shewed him the spirit at her side, l.u.s.trous with all the glory of the region, Costanza, daughter of the king of Sicily, who had been forced out of the cloister to become the wife of the Emperor Henry. Having given him this information, she began singing _Ave Maria_; and, while singing, disappeared with the rest, as substances disappear in water.[4]

A loving will transported the two companions, as before, to the next circle of Heaven, where they found themselves in the planet Mercury, the residence of those who had acted rather out of Desire of Fame than Love of G.o.d. The spirits here, as in the former Heaven, crowded towards them, as fish in a clear pond crowd to the hand that offers them food. Their eyes sparkled with celestial joy; and the more they thought of their joy, the brighter they grew; till one of them who addressed the poet became indistinguishable for excess of splendour. It was the soul of the Emperor Justinian. Justinian told him the whole story of the Roman empire up to his time; and then gave an account of one of his a.s.sociates in bliss, Romeo, who had been minister to Raymond Beranger, Count of Provence. Four daughters had been born to Raymond Beranger, and every one became a queen; and all this had been brought about by Romeo, a poor stranger from another country. The courtiers, envying Romeo, incited Raymond to demand of him an account of his stewardship, though he had brought his master's treasury twelve-fold for every ten it disbursed.

Romeo quitted the court, poor and old; "and if the world," said Justinian, "could know the heart such a man must have had, begging his bread as he went, crust by crust--praise him as it does, it would praise him a great deal more."[5]

"Hosanna, Holy G.o.d of Sabaoth, Superillumining with light of light The happy fires of these thy Malahoth!"[6]

Thus began singing the soul of the Emperor Justinian; and then, turning as he sang, vanished with those about him, like sparks of fire.

Dante now found himself, before he was aware, in the third Heaven, or planet Venus, the abode of the Amorous.[7] He only knew it by the increased loveliness in the face of his companion.

The spirits in this...o...b.. who came and went in the light of it like sparks in fire, or like voices chanting in harmony with voice, were spun round in circles of delight, each with more or less swiftness, according to its share of the beatific vision. Several of them came sweeping out of their dance towards the poet who had sung of Love, among whom was his patron, Charles Martel, king of Hungary, who shewed him the reason why diversities of natures must occur in families; and Cunizza, sister of the tyrant Ezzelino, who was overcome by this her star when on earth; and Folco the Troubadour, whose place was next Cunizza in Heaven; and Rahab the harlot, who favoured the entrance of the Jews into the Holy Land, and whose place was next Folco.[8] Cunizza said that she did not at all regret a lot which carried her no higher, whatever the vulgar might think of such an opinion. She spoke of the glories of the jewel who was close to her, Folco--contrasted his zeal with the inertness of her contemptible countrymen--and foretold the bloodshed that awaited the latter from wars and treacheries. The Troubadour, meanwhile, glowed in his aspect like a ruby stricken with the sun; for in heaven joy is expressed by effulgence, as on earth by laughter. He confessed the lawless fires of his youth, as great (he said) as those of Dido or Hercules; but added, that he had no recollection of them, except a joyous one, not for the fault (which does not come to mind in heaven), but for the good which heaven brings out of it. Folco concluded with explaining how Rahab had come into the third Heaven, and with denouncing the indifference of popes and cardinals (those adulterers of the Church) to every thing but accursed money-getting.[9]

In an instant, before he could think about it, Dante was in the fourth Heaven, the sun, the abode of Blessed Doctors of the Church. A band of them came encircling him and his guide, as a halo encircles the moon, singing a song, the beauty of which, like jewels too rich to be exported, was not conveyable by expression to mortal fancy. The spirits composing the band were those of St. Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Gratian the Benedictine, Pietro Lombardo, Solomon, Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, Paulus Orosius, Boetius, Isidore, the Venerable Bede, Richard of St. Victor, and Sigebert of Gemblours. St. Thomas was the namer of them to Dante. Their song had paused that he might speak; but when he had done speaking, they began resuming it, one by one, and circling as they moved, like the wheels of church-clocks that sound one after another with a sweet tinkling, when they summon the hearts of the devout to morning prayer.[10]

Again they stopped, and again St. Thomas addressed the poet. He was of the order of St. Dominic; but with generous grace he held up the founder of the Franciscans, with his vow of poverty, as the example of what a pope should be, and reproved the errors of no order but his own. On the other hand, a new circle of doctors of the Church making their appearance, and enclosing the first as rainbow encloses rainbow, rolling round with it in the unison of a two-fold joy, a voice from the new circle attracted the poet's ear, as the pole attracts the needle, and Saint Buonaventura, a Franciscan, opened upon the praises of St.