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

oft so steers, and shifts her sail;
So varied he, and of his tortuous train
Curled many a wanton wreath in sight of Eve.
… Oft he bowed
His turret crest, and sleek enamelled neck,
Fawning; and licked the ground whereon she trod.”

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In the original al sommo smalto, to the highest enamel; referring either to the Terrestrial Paradise, enamelled with flowers, or to the highest heaven enamelled with stars. The azure-stone, pierre d’azur, or lapis lazuli, is perhaps a fair equivalent for the smalto, particularly if the reference be to the sky. ↩

The valley in Lunigiana, through which runs the Magra, dividing the Genoese and Tuscan territories. Paradiso IX 89:⁠—

“The Magra, that with journey short
Doth from the Tuscan part the Genoese.”

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Currado or Conrad Malaspina, father of Marcello Malaspina, who six years later sheltered Dante in his exile, as foreshadowed in line 136, It was from the convent of the Corvo, overlooking the Gulf of Spezia, in Lunigiana, that Frate Ilario wrote the letter describing Dante’s appearance in the cloister. ↩

Pope Boniface the Eighth. ↩

Before the sun shall be seven times in Aries, or before seven years are passed. ↩

Ecclesiastes 12:11:⁠—

“The words of the wise are as goads, and as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies.”

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With this canto ends the first day in Purgatory, as indicated by the description of evening at the beginning, and the rising of the stars in line 89. With it closes also the first subdivision of this part of the poem, indicated, as the reader will not fail to notice, by the elaborate introduction of the next canto. ↩

“Dante begins this canto,” says Benvenuto da Imola, “by saying a thing that was never said or imagined by any other poet, which is, that the aurora of the moon is the concubine of Tithonus. Some maintain that he means the aurora of the sun; but this cannot be, if we closely examine the text.” This point is elaborately discussed by the commentators. I agree with those who interpret the passage as referring to a lunar aurora. It is still evening; and the hour is indicated a few lines lower down.

To Tithonus was given the gift of immortality, but not of perpetual youth. As Tennyson makes him say:⁠—

“The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapors weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality
Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms,
Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-haired shadow roaming like a dream
The ever silent spaces of the East,
Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.”

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Don Quixote, I 2:⁠—

“Scarcely had ruddy Phoebus spread the golden tresses of his beauteous hair over the face of the wide and spacious earth, and scarcely had the painted little birds, with the sweet and mellifluous harmony of their serrated tongues, saluted the approach of rosy Aurora, when, quitting the soft couch of her jealous husband, she disclosed herself to mortals through the gates and balconies of the Manchegan horizon.”

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As the sun was in Aries, and it was now the fourth day after the full moon, the Scorpion would be rising in the dawn which precedes the moon. ↩

This indicates the time to be two hours and a half after sunset, or half past eight o’clock. Two hours of the ascending night are passed, and the third is half over.

This circumstantial way of measuring the flight of time is Homeric. Iliad, X 250:⁠—

“Let us be going, then, for the night declines fast, and the morning is near. And the stars have already far advanced, and the greater portion of the night, by two parts, has gone by, but the third portion still remains.”

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Namely, his body. ↩

Virgil, Sordello, Dante, Nino, and Conrad. And here Dante falls upon the grass and sleeps till dawn. There is a long pause of rest and sleep between this line and the next, which makes the whole passage doubly beautiful. The narrative recommences like the twitter of early birds just beginning to stir in the woods. ↩

For the tragic story of Tereus, changed to a lapwing, Philomela to a nightingale, and Procne to a swallow, see Ovid, Metamorphoses, VI:⁠—

“Now, with drawn sabre and impetuous speed,
In close pursuit he drives Pandion’s breed;
Whose nimble feet spring with so swift a force
Across the fields, they seem to wing their course.
And now, on real wings themselves they raise,
And steer their airy flight by different ways;
One to the woodland’s shady covert hies,
Around the smoky roof the other flies;
Whose feathers yet the marks of murder stain,
Where stamped upon her breast the crimson spots remain.
Tereus, through grief and haste to be revenged,
Shares the like fate, and to a bird is changed;
Fixed on his head the crested plumes appear,
Long is his beak, and sharpened like a spear;
Thus armed, his looks his inward mind display,
And, to a lapwing turned, he fans his way.”

See also Confessio Amantis, V:⁠—

“And of her suster Progne I finde
How she was torned out of kinde
Into a swalwe swift of wing,
Which eke in winter lith swouning
There as she may no thing be sene,
And whan the world is woxe grene
And comen is the somer tide,
Then fleeth she forth and ginneth to chide
And chitereth out in her langage
What falshede is in mariage,
And telleth in a maner speche
Of Tereus the spouse breche.”

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Pope, Temple of Fame, 7:⁠—

“What time the morn mysterious visions brings,
While purer slumbers spread their golden wings.”

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Mount Ida. ↩

To the region of fire. Brunetto Latini, Tresor, Ch. CXIII, says:⁠—

“After the environment of