The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (13 inch ebook reader .txt) 📕

in a play upon words as much as Shakespeare. ↩

The stars of Aries. Some philosophers and fathers think the world was created in Spring. ↩

Ambition; and politically the royal house of France. ↩

Some editions read temesse, others tremesse. ↩

Avarice; and politically the Court of Rome, or temporal power of the Popes. ↩

Dante as a Ghibelline and Imperialist is in opposition to the Guelfs, Pope Boniface VIII, and the King of France, Philip the Fair, and is banished from Florence, out of the sunshine, and into “the dry wind that blows from dolorous poverty.”

Cato speaks of the “silent moon” in De Re Rustica, XXIX, Evehito luna silenti; and XL, Vites inseri luna silenti. Also Pliny, XVI 39, has Silens luna; and Milton, in Samson Agonistes “Silent as the moon.” ↩

The long neglect of classic studies in Italy before Dante’s time. ↩

Born under Julius Caesar, but too late to grow up to manhood during his Imperial reign. He flourished later under Augustus. ↩

In this passage Dante but expresses the universal veneration felt for Virgil during the Middle Ages, and especially in Italy. Petrarch’s copy of Virgil is still preserved in the Ambrosian Library at Milan; and at the beginning of it he has recorded in a Latin note the time of his first meeting with Laura, and the date of her death, which, he says:⁠—

“I write in this book, rather than elsewhere, because it comes often under my eye.”

In the popular imagination Virgil became a mythical personage and a mighty magician. See the story of Virgilius in Thom’s Early Prose Romances, 11. Dante selects him for his guide, as symbolizing human science or Philosophy. “I say and affirm,” he remarks, Convito, V 16, “that the lady with whom I became enamored after my first love was the most beautiful and modest daughter of the Emperor of the Universe, to whom Pythagoras gave the name of Philosophy.” ↩

Dante seems to have been already conscious of the fame which his Vita Nuova and Canzoni had given him. ↩

The greyhound is Can Grande della Scala, Lord of Verona, Imperial Vicar, Ghibelline, and friend of Dante. Verona is between Feltro in the Marca Trivigiana, and Montefeltro in Romagna. Boccaccio, Decameron, I 7, speaks of him as “one of the most notable and magnificent lords that had been known in Italy, since the Emperor Frederick the Second.” To him Dante dedicated the Paradiso. Some commentators think the Veltro is not Can Grande, but Ugguccione della Faggiola. See Troya, Del Veltro Allegorico di Dante. ↩

The plains of Italy, in contradistinction to the mountains; the humilemque Italiam of Virgil, Aeneid, III 522:⁠—

“And now the stars being chased away, blushing Aurora appeared, when far off we espy the hills obscure, and lowly Italy.”

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I give preference to the reading, Di quegli antichi spiriti dolenti. ↩

Beatrice. ↩

The evening of Good Friday. Dante, Convito, III 2, says:⁠—

“Man is called by philosophers the divine animal.”

Chaucer’s Assemble of Foules:⁠—

“The daie gan failen, and the darke night
That reveth bestes from hir businesse
Berafte me my boke for lacke of light.”

Mr. Ruskin, Modern Painters, III 240, speaking of Dante’s use of the word “bruno,” says:⁠—

“In describing a simple twilight⁠—not a Hades twilight, but an ordinarily fair evening⁠—(Inferno II 1), he says, the ‘brown’ air took the animals away from their fatigues;⁠—the waves under Charon’s boat are ‘brown’ (Inferno III 117); and Lethe, which is perfectly clear and yet dark, as with oblivion, is ‘bruna-bruna,’ ‘brown’ exceeding brown.’ Now, clearly in all these cases no warmth is meant to be mingled in the color. Dante had never seen one of our bog-streams, with its porter-colored foam; and there can be no doubt that, in calling Lethe brown, he means that it was dark slate-gray, inclining to black; as, for instance, our clear Cumberland lakes, which, looked straight down upon where they are deep, seem to be lakes of ink. I am sure this is the color he means; because no clear stream or lake on the Continent ever looks brown, but blue or green; and Dante, by merely taking away the pleasant color, would get at once to this idea of grave clear gray. So, when he was talking of twilight, his eye for color was far too good to let him call it brown in our sense. Twilight is not brown, but purple, golden, or dark gray; and this last was what Dante meant. Farther, I find that this negation of color is always the means by which Dante subdues his tones. Thus the fatal inscription on the Hades gate is written in ‘obscure color,’ and the air which torments the passionate spirits is ‘aer nero,’ black air (Inferno V 51), called presently afterwards (line 81) malignant air, just as the gray cliffs are called malignant cliffs.”

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Aeneas, founder of the Roman Empire. Virgil, Aeneid, B. VI. ↩

“That is,” says Boccaccio, Comento, “St. Peter the Apostle, called the greater on account of his papal dignity, and to distinguish him from many other holy men of the same name.” ↩

St. Paul. Acts, 9:15:⁠—

“He is a chosen vessel unto me.”

Also, 2 Corinthians 12:3, 4:⁠—

“And I knew such a man, whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell; God knoweth; how that he was caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man