The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume I Part 23

And see at night thy western land of 'mine', &c.

'Progress of the Soul', 1 Song, 2. st.

This use of the word mine specifically for mines of gold, silver, or precious stones, is, I believe, peculiar to Donne.

[Footnote 1: Nothing remains of what was said on Donne in this Lecture.

Here, therefore, as in previous like instances, the gap is filled up with some notes written by Mr. Coleridge in a volume of Chalmers's 'Poets', belonging to Mr. Gillman. Ed.]

[Footnote 2: The verses were added in pencil to the collection of commendatory lines; No. I. is Mr. C.'s; the publication of No. II. I trust the all-accomplished author will, under the circ.u.mstances, pardon.

Numerous and elaborate notes by Mr. Coleridge on Donne's Sermons are in existence, and will be published hereafter. Ed.]

DANTE.

Born at Florence, 1265.--Died, 1321.

As I remarked in a former Lecture on a different subject (for subjects the most diverse in literature have still their tangents), the Gothic character, and its good and evil fruits, appeared less in Italy than in any other part of European Christendom. There was accordingly much less romance, as that word is commonly understood; or, perhaps, more truly stated, there was romance instead of chivalry. In Italy, an earlier imitation of, and a more evident and intentional blending with, the Latin literature took place than elsewhere. The operation of the feudal system, too, was incalculably weaker, of that singular chain of independent interdependents, the principle of which was a confederacy for the preservation of individual, consistently with general, freedom.

In short, Italy, in the time of Dante, was an afterbirth of eldest Greece, a renewal or a reflex of the old Italy under its kings and first Roman consuls, a net-work of free little republics, with the same domestic feuds, civil wars, and party spirit,--the same vices and virtues produced on a similarly narrow theatre,--the existing state of things being, as in all small democracies, under the working and direction of certain individuals, to whose will even the laws were swayed;--whilst at the same time the singular spectacle was exhibited amidst all this confusion of the flourishing of commerce, and the protection and encouragement of letters and arts. Never was the commercial spirit so well reconciled to the n.o.bler principles of social polity as in Florence. It tended there to union and permanence and elevation,--not as the overbalance of it in England is now doing, to dislocation, change and moral degradation. The intensest patriotism reigned in these communities, but confined and attached exclusively to the small locality of the patriot's birth and residence; whereas in the true Gothic feudalism, country was nothing but the preservation of personal independence. But then, on the other hand, as a counterbalance to these disuniting elements, there was in Dante's Italy, as in Greece, a much greater uniformity of religion common to all than amongst the northern nations.

Upon these hints the history of the republican aeras of ancient Greece and modern Italy ought to be written. There are three kinds or stages of historic narrative: 1. that of the annalist or chronicler, who deals merely in facts and events arranged in order of time, having no principle of selection, no plan of arrangement, and whose work properly const.i.tutes a supplement to the poetical writings of romance or heroic legends: 2. that of the writer who takes his stand on some moral point, and selects a series of events for the express purpose of ill.u.s.trating it, and in whose hands the narrative of the selected events is modified by the principle of selection;--as Thucydides, whose object was to describe the evils of democratic and aristocratic partizanships;--or Polybius, whose design was to show the social benefits resulting from the triumph and grandeur of Rome, in public inst.i.tutions and military discipline;--or Tacitus, whose secret aim was to exhibit the pressure and corruptions of despotism;--in all which writers and others like them, the ground-object of the historian colours with artificial lights the facts which he relates: 3. and which in idea is the grandest-the most truly, founded in philosophy--there is the Herodotean history, which is not composed with reference to any particular causes, but attempts to describe human nature itself on a great scale as a portion of the drama of providence, the free will of man resisting the destiny of events,--for the individuals often succeeding against it, but for the race always yielding to it, and in the resistance itself invariably affording means towards the completion of the ultimate result. Mitford's history is a good and useful work; but in his zeal against democratic government, Mitford forgot, or never saw, that ancient Greece was not, nor ought ever to be considered, a permanent thing, but that it existed, in the disposition of providence, as a proclaimer of ideal truths, and that everlasting proclamation being made, that its functions were naturally at an end.

However, in the height of such a state of society in Italy, Dante was born and flourished; and was himself eminently a picture of the age in which he lived. But of more importance even than this, to a right understanding of Dante, is the consideration that the scholastic philosophy was then at its acme even in itself; but more especially in Italy, where it never prevailed so exclusively as northward of the Alps.

It is impossible to understand the genius of Dante, and difficult to understand his poem, without some knowledge of the characters, studies, and writings of the schoolmen of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. For Dante was the living link between religion and philosophy; he philosophized the religion and christianized the philosophy of Italy; and, in this poetic union of religion and philosophy, he became the ground of transition into the mixed Platonism and Aristotelianism of the Schools, under which, by numerous minute articles of faith and ceremony, Christianity became a craft of hair-splitting, and was ultimately degraded into a complete 'fetisch'

worship, divorced from philosophy, and made up of a faith without thought, and a credulity directed by pa.s.sion. Afterwards, indeed, philosophy revived under condition of defending this very superst.i.tion; and, in so doing, it necessarily led the way to its subversion, and that in exact proportion to the influence of the philosophic schools. Hence it did its work most completely in Germany, then in England, next in France, then in Spain, least of all in Italy. We must, therefore, take the poetry of Dante as christianized, but without the further Gothic accession of proper chivalry. It was at a somewhat later period, that the importations from the East, through the Venetian commerce and the crusading armaments, exercised a peculiarly strong influence on Italy.

In studying Dante, therefore, we must consider carefully the differences produced, first, by allegory being subst.i.tuted for polytheism; and secondly and mainly, by the opposition of Christianity to the spirit of pagan Greece, which receiving the very names of its G.o.ds from Egypt, soon deprived them of all that was universal. The Greeks changed the ideas into finites, and these finites into 'anthropomorphi,' or forms of men. Hence their religion, their poetry, nay, their very pictures, became statuesque. With them the form was the end. The reverse of this was the natural effect of Christianity; in which finites, even the human form, must, in order to satisfy the mind, be brought into connexion with, and be in fact symbolical of, the infinite; and must be considered in some enduring, however shadowy and indistinct, point of view, as the vehicle or representative of moral truth.

Hence resulted two great effects; a combination of poetry with doctrine, and, by turning the mind inward on its own essence instead of letting it act only on its outward circ.u.mstances and communities, a combination of poetry with sentiment. And it is this inwardness or subjectivity, which princ.i.p.ally and most fundamentally distinguishes all the cla.s.sic from all the modern poetry. Compare the pa.s.sage in the 'Iliad' (Z. vi.

119-236.) in which Diomed and Glaucus change arms,--

[Greek (transliterated): Cheiras t'allilon labetin kai pistosanto]

They took each other by the hand, and pledged friendship--

with the scene in 'Ariosto' (Orlando Furioso, c. i. st. 20-22.), where Rinaldo and Ferrauto fight and afterwards make it up:--

Al Pagan la proposta non dispiacque: Cos fu differita la tenzone; E tal tregua tra lor subito nacque, S l' odio e l' ira va in oblivone, Che 'l Pagano al partir dalle fresche acque Non lasci a piede il buon figliuol d' Amone: Con preghi invita, e al fin lo toglie in groppa, E per l' orme d' Angelica galoppa.

Here Homer would have left it. But the Christian poet has his own feelings to express, and goes on:--

Oh gran bonta de' cavalieri antiqui!

Eran rivali, eran di fe diversi, E si sentian degli aspri colpi iniqui Per tutta la persona anco dolersi; E pur per selve oscure e calli obbliqui Insieme van senza sospetto aversi!

And here you will observe, that the reaction of Ariosto's own feelings on the image or act is more fore-grounded (to use a painter's phrase) than the image or act itself.

The two different modes in which the imagination is acted on by the ancient and modern poetry, may be ill.u.s.trated by the parallel effects caused by the contemplation of the Greek or Roman-Greek architecture, compared with the Gothic. In the Pantheon, the whole is perceived in a perceived harmony with the parts which compose it; and generally you will remember that where the parts preserve any distinct individuality, there simple beauty, or beauty simply, arises; but where the parts melt undistinguished into the whole, there majestic beauty, or majesty, is the result. In York Minster, the parts, the grotesques, are in themselves very sharply distinct and separate, and this distinction and separation of the parts is counterbalanced only by the mult.i.tude and variety of those parts, by which the attention is bewildered;--whilst the whole, or that there is a whole produced, is altogether a feeling in which the several thousand distinct impressions lose themselves as in a universal solvent. Hence in a Gothic cathedral, as in a prospect from a mountain's top, there is, indeed, a unity, an awful oneness;--but it is, because all distinction evades the eye. And just such is the distinction between the 'Antigone' of Sophocles and the 'Hamlet' of Shakespeare.

The 'Divina Commedia' is a system of moral, political, and theological truths, with arbitrary personal exemplifications, which are not, in my opinion, allegorical. I do not even feel convinced that the punishments in the Inferno are strictly allegorical. I rather take them to have been in Dante's mind 'quasi'-allegorical, or conceived in a.n.a.logy to pure allegory.

I have said, that a combination of poetry with doctrines, is one of the characteristics of the Christian muse; but I think Dante has not succeeded in effecting this combination nearly so well as Milton.

This comparative failure of Dante, as also some other peculiarities of his mind, in 'malam partem', must be immediately attributed to the state of North Italy in his time, which is vividly represented in Dante's life; a state of intense democratical partizanship, in which an exaggerated importance was attached to individuals, and which whilst it afforded a vast field for the intellect, opened also a boundless arena for the pa.s.sions, and in which envy, jealousy, hatred, and other malignant feelings, could and did a.s.sume the form of patriotism, even to the individual's own conscience.

All this common, and, as it were, natural partizanship, was aggravated arid coloured by the Guelf and Ghibelline factions; and, in part explanation of Dante's adherence to the latter, you must particularly remark, that the Pope had recently territorialized his authority to a great extent, and that this increase of territorial power in the church, was by no means the same beneficial movement for the citizens of free republics, as the parallel advance in other countries was for those who groaned as va.s.sals under the oppression of the circ.u.mjacent baronial castles. [1]

By way of preparation to a satisfactory perusal of the 'Divina Commedia', I will now proceed to state what I consider to be Dante's chief excellences as a poet. And I begin with:

I. Style--the vividness, logical connexion, strength and energy of which cannot be surpa.s.sed. In this I think Dante superior to Milton; and his style is accordingly more imitable than Milton's, and does to this day exercise a greater influence on the literature of his country. You cannot read Dante without feeling a gush of manliness of thought within you. Dante was very sensible of his own excellence in this particular, and speaks of poets as guardians of the vast armory of language, which is the intermediate something between matter and spirit:--

Or se' tu quel Virgilio, e quella fonte, Che spande di parlar s largo fiume?

Risposi lui con vergognosa fronte.

O degli altri poeti onore e lume, Vagliami 'l lungo studio e 'l grande amore, Che m' han fatto cercar lo tuo volume.

Tu se' lo mio maestro, e 'l mio autore: _Tu se' solo colui, da cu' io tolsi Lo bello stile, che m' ha fatto onore._

('Inf'. c. 1. v. 79.)

"And art thou then that Virgil, that well-spring, From which such copious floods of eloquence Have issued?" I, with front abash'd, replied: "Glory and light of all the tuneful train!

May it avail me, that I long with zeal Have sought thy volume, and with love immense Have conn'd it o'er. My master, thou, and guide!

'Thou he from whom I have alone deriv'd That style, which for its beauty into fame Exalts me.'"

(Cary. [his translation--text Ed.])

Indeed there was a pa.s.sion and a miracle of words in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, after the long slumber of language in barbarism, which gave an almost romantic character, a virtuous quality and power, to what was read in a book, independently of the thoughts or images contained in it. This feeling is very often perceptible in Dante.

II. The Images in Dante are not only taken from obvious nature, and are all intelligible to all, but are ever conjoined with the universal feeling received from nature, and therefore affect the general feelings of all men. And in this respect, Dante's excellence is very great, and may be contrasted with the idiosyncracies of some meritorious modern poets, who attempt an eruditeness, the result of particular feelings.

Consider the simplicity, I may say plainness, of the following simile, and how differently we should in all probability deal with it at the present day:

Quale i fioretti dal notturno gelo Chinati e chiusi, poi che 'l sol gl' imbianca, Si drizzan tutti aperti in loro stelo,-- Fal mi fec' io di mia virtute stanca;

('Inf.' c. 2. v. 127.)

As florets, by the frosty air of night Bent down and clos'd, when day has blanch'd their leaves, Rise all unfolded on their spiry stems,-- So was my fainting vigour new restor'd.