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

this is all that is known of the “Fiorentino spirito bizzaro,” forgotten by history, and immortalized in song. “What a barbarous strength and confusion of ideas,” exclaims Leigh Hunt, Italian Poets, p. 60, “is there in this whole passage about him! Arrogance punished by arrogance, a Christian mother blessed for the unchristian disdainfulness of her son, revenge boasted of and enjoyed, passion arguing in a circle.” ↩

The word “mosques” paints at once to the imagination the City of Unbelief. ↩

Virgil, Aeneid, VI, Davidson’s Translation:⁠—

“Aeneas on a sudden looks back, and under a rock on the left sees vast prisons enclosed with a triple wall, which Tartarean Phlcgethon’s rapid flood environs with torrents of flame, and whirls roaring rocks along. Fronting is a huge gate, with columns of solid adamant, that no strength of men, nor the gods themselves, can with steel demolish. An iron tower rises aloft; and there wakeful Tisiphone, with her bloody robe tucked up around her, sits to watch the vestibule both night and day.”

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This arrogance of theirs; tracotanza, oltracotanza; Brantome’s outrecuidance; and Spenser’s surquedrie. ↩

The gate of the Inferno. ↩

The coming of the Angel, whose approach is described in the next canto, beginning at line 64. ↩

The flush of anger passes from Virgil’s cheek on seeing the pallor of Dante’s, and he tries to encourage him with assurances of success; but betrays his own apprehensions in the broken phrase, “If not,” which he immediately covers with words of cheer. ↩

Such, or so great a one, is Beatrice, the “fair and saintly Lady” of Virgil’s cheek on seeing the pallor of Canto II 53. ↩

The Angel who will open the gates of the City ot Dis. ↩

Dante seems to think that he has already reached the bottom ot the infernal conch, with its many convolutions. ↩

Gower, Confessio Amantis, I:⁠—

“Cast nought thin eye upon Meduse
That thou be turned into stone.”

Hawthorne has beautifully told the story of “The Gorgon’s Head,” as well as many more of the classic fables, in his Wonder-Book. ↩

The attempt which Theseus and Pirithous made to rescue Proserpine from the infernal regions. ↩

The hidden doctrine seems to be, that Negation or Unbelief is the Gorgon’s head which changes the heart to stone; after which there is “no more returning upward.” The Furies display it from the walls of the City of Heretics. ↩

At Aries lie buried, according to old tradition, the Peers of Charlemagne and their ten thousand men at arms. Archbishop Turpin, in his famous History of Charles the Great, XXX, Rodd’s Translation, I, says:⁠—

“After this the King and his army proceeded by the way of Gascony and Thoulouse, and came to Aries, where we found the army of Burgundy, which had left us in the hostile valley, bringing their dead by the way of Morbihan and Thoulouse, to bury them in the plain of Aries. Here we performed the rites of Estolfo, Count of Champagne; of Solomon; Sampson, Duke of Burgundy; Arnold of Berlanda; Alberic of Burgundy; Gumard, Esturinite, Hato, Juonius, Berard, Berengaire, and Naaman, Duke of Bourbon, and of ten thousand of their soldiers.”

Bocccacio comments upon these tombs as follows:⁠—

“At Arles, somewhat out of the city, are many tombs of stone, made of old for sepulchres, and some are large, and some are small, and some are better sculptured, and some not so well, peradventure according to the means of those who had them made; and upon some of them appear inscriptions after the ancient custom, I suppose in indication of those who are buried within. The inhabitants of the country repeat a tradition of them, affirming that in that place there was once a great battle between William of Orange, or some other Christian prince, with his forces on one side, and infidel barbarians from Africa [on the other]; and that many Christians were slain in it; and that on the following night, by divine miracle, those tombs were brought there for the burial of the Christians, and so on the following morning all the dead Christians were buried in them.”

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Pola is a city in Istria. “Near Pola,” says Benvenuto da Imola, “are seen many tombs, about seven hundred, and of various forms.”

Quarnaro is a gulf of the northern extremity of the Adriatic. ↩

In this Canto is described the punishment of Heretics.

Brunetto Latini, Tesoretto, XIII:⁠—

“Or va mastro Brunetto
Per lo cammino stretto.”

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Sir Thomas Browne, Urn Burial, Chap. IV, says:⁠—

“They may sit in the orchestra and noblest seats of heaven who have held up shaking hands in the fire, and humanly contended for glory. Meanwhile Epicurus lies deep in Dante’s hell, wherein we meet with tombs enclosing souls, which denied their immortalities. But whether the virtuous heathen, who lived better than he spake, or, erring in the principles of himself, yet lived above philosophers of more specious maxims, lie so deep as he is placed, at least so low as not to rise against Christians, who, believing or knowing that truth, have lastingly denied it in their practice and conversation⁠—were a query too sad to insist on.”

Also Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part II Sec. 2. Mem. 6. Subs. 1, thus vindicates the memory of Epicurus:⁠—

“A quiet mind is that voluptas, or summum bonum of Epicurus; non dolere, curis vacare, animo tranquillo esse, not to grieve, but to want cares, and have a quiet soul, is the only pleasure of the world, as Seneca truly recites his opinion, not that of eating and drinking, which injurious