Studies in the Poetry of Italy Part 3

SUMMARY AND QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW

Early Tuscan poetry--Guido Cavalcanti, a contemporary of Dante--Guelphs and Ghibellines, Whites and Blacks at Florence--Dante born 1265; his education; his love for Beatrice; marriage and home life; an exile; dies in Ravenna 1321.

1. Mention some of the early Tuscan poets.

2. What is the date of Dante's birth?

3. What is known of his family?

4. How and where was he educated?

5. Tell what you can of his family life.

6. What was the political condition of Florence in Dante's time?

7. Who were the Guelphs and Ghibellines,--the Whites and Blacks?

8. When and why was Dante exiled?

9. Name some of the places he is known to have visited.

10. How and when did he die?

11. Describe briefly his character.

12. Name the chief works of Dante, giving a brief indication of their contents.

13. Tell briefly the story of his love for Beatrice.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

No poet in Italian literature is better adapted to special study than Dante, nor is any so profitable. The material is abundant.

The reader should provide himself with Scartazzini's Companion to Dante, translated by A. J. Butler, or Symond's Introduction to Dante. These will furnish all necessary facts concerning the life and works of the poet. It must be remembered that the Divine Comedy is a difficult poem, and that it takes many readings and much study to master it. It will be best to begin by reading Maria F. Rossetti's A Shadow of Dante, which gives a general outline of the story with copious extracts. Then one of the numerous translations should be taken up and studied carefully, canto by canto--Cary's, Longfellow's, and Norton's translations (the latter in prose) are the best. An edition of Cary's translation has been made by the writer of this book (published by T. Y. Crowell & Co.), with special reference to the general reader. It contains an introduction, Rossetti's translation of the New Life, and a revised reprint of Cary's version of the Divine Comedy furnished with a popular commentary in the form of foot notes. The number of essays and critical estimates of Dante in English is legion; perhaps the best three are those by Carlyle (in Heroes and Hero Worship), Dean Church, and Lowell. Of especial value is Dinsmore's Aids to the Study of Dante (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.).

FOOTNOTES:

[3] The Quadrivium included arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music; the Trivium, grammar (_i. e._, Latin), dialectics, and rhetoric.

[4] The soul of Beatrice.

[5] Dante's sister.

[6]

"You and I would rather see that angel, Painted by the tenderness of Dante, Would we not? than read a fresh Inferno."

Browning (One Word More).

CHAPTER III

THE DIVINE COMEDY

We have seen, at the end of the last chapter, how Dante had made a vow to glorify Beatrice, as no other woman had ever been glorified, and how he studied and labored to prepare himself for the lofty task. The Divine Comedy is the fulfilment of this "immense promise." Although it is probable that Dante did not begin to write this poem till after the death of Henry VII. (1313), yet there can be no doubt that it was slowly developing in his mind during all the years of his exile.

The Divine Comedy is divided into three parts or books, _canticas_, as they are called by Dante: h.e.l.l, Purgatory, and Paradise, each one containing thirty-three cantos, with one additional introductory canto prefixed to the h.e.l.l. Even the number of lines in the three _canticas_ is approximately the same.[7] Dante's love for number-symbols was shown in the New Life, hence we are justified in accepting the theory that the threefold division of the poem is symbolical of the Trinity, and that the thirty-three cantos of each _cantica_ represent the years of the Savior's life. It is worthy of note that the last word in each of the three books is "stars."

The allegory of the Divine Comedy has been the subject of countless discussions. The consensus of the best modern commentators seems to be, however, that although the allegory is more or less political, it is chiefly religious. The great theme is the salvation of the human soul, represented by Dante himself, who is the protagonist of the poem. As he wanders first through h.e.l.l, he sees in all its loathly horrors the "exceeding sinfulness of sin," and realizes its inevitable punishment; as he climbs the steep slopes of purgatory, at first with infinite difficulty, but with ever-increasing ease as he approaches the summit, he learns by his own experience how hard it is to root out the natural tendencies to sin that pull the soul downward; and finally, as he mounts from heaven to heaven, till he arrives in the very presence of G.o.d Himself, he experiences the joy unspeakable that comes to him who, having purged himself of all sin, is found worthy to join "the innumerable company of saints and the spirits of just men made perfect."

The Divine Comedy is a visionary journey through the three supernatural worlds, h.e.l.l, Purgatory, and Paradise. Such visions were by no means infrequent in the Middle Ages, and Dante had many predecessors. He simply adopted a poetical device well known to his contemporaries. What differentiated him from others is the dramatic and intensely personal character of his vision; the consummate skill with which he interwove into this one poem all the science, learning, philosophy, and history of the times; and the lovely poetry in which all these things are embalmed.

To appreciate the vast difference between the Divine Comedy and previous works of a similar nature, we need only to read a few pages of such crude books as the Visions of Alberico, Tugdale, and Saint Brandon.

To Dante and his contemporaries the supernatural world was not what it is to us to-day, a vast, unbounded s.p.a.ce filled with star-systems like our own: the topography of h.e.l.l, Purgatory, and Paradise seemed to them as definite as that of our own planet. The Ptolemaic system of astronomy (overthrown by Copernicus, yet still forming the framework of Milton's Paradise Lost) was accepted with implicit confidence. According to this system the universe consisted of ten heavens or concentric spheres, in the center of which was our earth, immovable itself, while around it revolved the heavenly spheres. The earth was surrounded by an atmosphere of air, then one of fire, and then came in order the heavens of the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the fixed stars, and the Primum Mobile (the source of the motion of the spheres) beyond which stretched out to infinity the Empyrean, the heaven of light and love, the seat of G.o.d and the angels.

According to Dante, h.e.l.l is situated in the interior of the earth, being in shape a sort of funnel with the point downward, and reaching to the center of the earth, which is also the center of the universe. Purgatory rises in the form of a truncated cone in the surface of the southern hemisphere, having in solid form, the same shape as the hollow funnel of h.e.l.l. It was formed of the earth which fled before Lucifer, and splashed up behind him like water, when, after his revolt against the Almighty he was flung headlong from heaven and became fixed in the center of the earth, as far as possible according to the Ptolemaic system from the Empyrean and G.o.d.

h.e.l.l is formed of nine concentric, ever-narrowing terraces, or circles, exhibiting a great variety of landscapes, rivers, and lakes, gloomy forests and sandy deserts, all shrouded in utter darkness except where flickering flames tear the thick pall of night, or the red-hot walls of Dis gleam balefully over the waters of the Stygian marsh. Here are punished the various groups of sinners, whom Dante sees, whose suffering he describes, and with whom he converses as he makes his way downward from circle to circle.

It was in the year 1300, at Easter time, when Dante began his strange and eventful pilgrimage, "midway in this our mortal life," he says in the first line of the poem, that is when he himself was thirty-five years old. He finds himself lost in a dense forest, not knowing how he came there, and after wandering for some time, reaches the foot of a lofty mountain, whose top is lighted by the rays of the morning sun. He is about to make his way thither, when he is stopped by the appearance, one after the other, of three terrible beasts, a leopard, a lion, and a wolf. He falls back in terror to the forest, when suddenly he sees a figure advancing toward him and learns that this is Vergil, who has been sent by Beatrice (now in heaven) to lead her lover from the wood of sin to salvation. To do this it will be necessary for Dante to pa.s.s through the infernal world, then up the craggy heights of purgatory to the earthly paradise, where Beatrice herself will take charge of him and lead him from heaven to heaven, even to the presence of G.o.d Himself.

Dante's courage and confidence fail at this prospect--he is not aeneas or St. Paul, he says, to undertake such supernatural journeys--but when Vergil tells him that Beatrice herself has sent him, Dante expresses his willingness to undertake the difficult and awe-inspiring task.

It is nightfall when they reach the gate of h.e.l.l, over which is written the dread inscription:

"Through me you pa.s.s into the city of woe: Through me you pa.s.s into eternal pain: Through me among the people lost for aye: Justice the founder of my fabric moved: To rear me was the task of power divine, Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.

Before me things create were none, save things Eternal, and eternal I endure.

All hope abandon, ye who enter here."

Entering in they are met with the sound of sighs, moans, and lamentations, mingled with curses hoa.r.s.e and deep, and the beating of hands, all making a hideous din in the starless air, in which a long train of spirits is whirled about hither and thither stung by wasps and hornets. These spirits are the souls of those ign.o.ble ones who were neither for G.o.d nor against him.

"The wretched souls of those, who lived Without or praise or blame, with that ill band Of angels mixed, who nor rebellious proved, Nor yet were true to G.o.d, but for themselves Were only. From his bounds Heaven drove them forth Not to impair his l.u.s.ter; nor the depth Of h.e.l.l receives them, lest the accursed tribe Should glory thence with exultation vain."

Here Dante recognizes the soul of him who made the "great refusal,"

recalling thus the strange story of the aged hermit, Peter Murrone, who after fifty-five years and more of solitary life in a cave high up among the Abruzzi Mountains, was forced to ascend the papal throne, and who after a short period of ineffectual reign under the name of Celestine V., resigned, thus making way for Boniface VIII., Dante's bitter enemy.

Vergil's contemptuous remark concerning these souls,

"Speak not of them, but look and pa.s.s them by,"

has become proverbial.

Soon after this the two poets reach the sh.o.r.es of the river Acheron, where Charon, the infernal boatman, is busy ferrying the souls of the d.a.m.ned to the other side. He refuses to take Dante in his boat, and the latter falls into a swoon, and being aroused by a clap of thunder, finds himself on the other side. How he was carried over we are not told. The wanderers are now in limbo or the first circle of h.e.l.l, in which are contained the souls of unbaptized children and of the great and good of the pagan world, especially the poets and philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome, who, having lived before the coming of Christ, had through no fault of their own died without faith in Him who alone can save. These souls are not punished by physical pain, as is the case with those in the following circles, but nourishing forever a desire which they have no hope of ever having satisfied, they pa.s.s the endless years of eternity in gentle melancholy. Here Dante meets the spirits of Homer, Ovid, Horace, and Lucan, who treat him kindly and make him one of the band, thus consecrating him as a great poet.

"When they together short discourse had held, They turned to me, with salutation kind Beckoning me; at the which my master smiled: Nor was this all; but greater honor still They gave me, for they made me of their tribe; And I was sixth amid so learn'd a band.