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

permitting any man in the town to keep an inn for money. But there was a stone column in the middle of the town,” (upon which were rings or knockers. Ho if all the front-doors were there represented,) “and to this, as soon as a stranger made his appearance, he was conducted, and to one of the rings hitched his horse or hung his hat upon it; and thus, as chance decreed, he was taken to the house of the gentleman to whom the ring belonged, and honored according to his rank. This column and its rings were invented to remove all cause of quarrel among the noblemen, who used to run to get possession of a stranger, as nowadays they almost run away from him.”

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Towns in Romagna. “Bagnacavallo, and Castrocaro, and Conio,” says the Ottimo, “were all habitations of courtesy and honor. Now in Bagnacavallo the Counts are extinct; and he (Dante) says it does well to produce no more of them because they had degenerated like those of Conio and Castrocaro. ↩

The Pagani were Lords of Faenza and Imola. The head of the family, Mainardo, was surnamed “the Devil.”⁠—See Note 403. His bad repute will always be a reproach to the family. ↩

A nobleman of Faenza, who died without heirs, and thus his name was safe. ↩

Milton, Comus:⁠—

“Of calling shapes and beckoning shadows dire,
And airy tongues that syllable men’s names.”

These voices in the air proclaim examples of envy. ↩

Genesis 4:13, 14:⁠—

“And Cain said unto the Lord,⁠ ⁠… Every one that findeth me shall slay me.”

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Aglauros through envy opposed the interview of Mercury with her sister Herse, and was changed by the god into stone. Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, Addison’s Tr.:⁠—

“ ‘Then keep thy seat forever,’ cries the god,
And touched the door, wide opening to his rod.
Fain would she rise and stop him, but she found
Her trunk too heavy to forsake the ground;
Her joints are all benumbed, her hands are pale,
And marble now appears in every nail.
As when a cancer in the body feeds,
And gradual death from limb to limb proceeds,
So does the chillness to each vital part
Spread by degrees, and creeps into her heart;
Till hardening everywhere, and speechless grown,
She sits unmoved, and freezes to a stone.
But still her envious hue and sullen mien
Are in the sedentary figure seen.”

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The falconer’s call or lure, which he whirls round in the air to attract the falcon on the wing. ↩

Ovid, Metamorphoses, I, Dryden’s Tr.:⁠—

“Thus, while the mute creation downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
Man looks aloft; and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.”

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Beaumont and Fletcher, The Laws of Candy, IV 1:⁠—

“Seldom despairing men look up to heaven,
Although it still speak to ’em in its glories;
For when sad thoughts perplex the mind of man,
There is a plummet in the heart that weighs
And pulls us, living, to the dust we came from.”

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In this canto is described the ascent to the Third Circle of the mountain. The hour indicated by the peculiarly Dantesque introduction is three hours before sunset, or the beginning of that division of the canonical day called Vespers. Dante states this simple fact with curious circumlocution, as if he would imitate the celestial sphere in this scherzoso movement. The beginning of the day is sunrise; consequently the end of the third hour, three hours after sunrise, is represented by an arc of the celestial sphere measuring forty-five degrees. The sun had still an equal space to pass over before his setting. This would make it afternoon in Purgatory, and midnight in Tuscany, where Dante was writing the poem. ↩

From a perpendicular. ↩

Matthew 5:7:⁠—

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy”;

—sung by the spirits that remained behind. See Note 758. ↩

Perhaps an allusion to “what the Spirit saith unto the churches,” Revelation 2:7:⁠—

“To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”

And also the “hidden manna,” and the “morning star,” and the “white raiment,” and the name not blotted “out of the book of life.” ↩

Milton, Paradise Lost, V 71:⁠—

“Since good the more
Communicated, more abundant grows.”

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Convito, IV 20:⁠—

“According to the Apostle, ‘Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and Cometh down from the Father of lights.’ He says then that God only giveth this grace to the soul of him whomhe sees to be prepared and disposed in his person to receive this divine act⁠ ⁠… Whence if the soul is imperfectly placed, it is not disposed to receive this blessed and divine infusion; as when a pearl is badly disposed, or is imperfect, it cannot receive the celestial virtue, as the noble Guido Guinizzelli says in an ode of his, beginning,

‘To noble heart love doth for shelter fly.’

The soul, then, may be ill placed in the person through defect of temperament, or of time; and in such a soul this divine radiance never shines. And of those whose souls are deprived of this light it may be said that they are like valleys turned toward the north, or like subterranean caverns, where the light of the sun never falls, unless reflected from some other place illuminated by it.”

The following are the first two stanzas of Guido’s “Ode”:⁠—

“To noble heart love doth for shelter fly,
As seeks the bird the forest’s leafy shade;
Love was not felt till noble heart beat high,
Nor before love the noble heart was made;
Soon as the sun’s broad flame
Was formed, so soon the clear light filled the