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

Dante in “a kind of lingua-franca, part Provençal and part Catalan, joining together the perfidious French with the vile Spanish, perhaps to show that Arnaud was a clever speaker of the two.” And again Biagioli suppresses him with “that unbridled beast of a Venturi,” and this “most potent argument of his presumptuous ignorance and impertinence.” ↩

Translation:⁠—

So pleases me your courteous demand,
I cannot and I will not hide me from you.
I am Arnaut, who weep and singing go;
Contrite I see the folly of the past,
And joyous see the hoped-for day before me.
Therefore do I implore you, by that power
Which guides you to the summit of the stairs,
Be mindful to assuage my suffering!

↩

The description of the Seventh and last Circle continued.

Cowley, “Hymn to Light”:⁠—

“Say from what golden quivers of the sky
Do all thy winged arrows fly?”

↩

When the sun is rising at Jerusalem, it is setting on the Mountain of Purgatory; it is midnight in Spain, with Libra in the meridian, and noon in India.

“A great labyrinth of words and things,” says Venturi, “meaning only that the sun was setting!” and this time the “dolce pedagogo” Biagioli lets him escape without the usual reprimand. ↩

Matthew 5:8:⁠—

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

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With the hands clasped and turned palm downwards, and the body straightened backward in attitude of resistance. ↩

Inferno XVII. ↩

Knowing that he ought to confide in Virgil and go forward. ↩

The story of the Babylonian lovers, whose trysting-place was under the white mulberry-tree near the tomb of Ninus, and whose blood changed the fruit from white to purple, is too well known to need comment. Ovid, Metamorphoses IV, Eusden’s Tr.:⁠—

“At Thisbe’s name awaked, he opened wide
His dying eyes; with dying eyes he tried
On her to dwell, but closed them slow and died.”

↩

Statius had for a long while been between Virgil and Dante. ↩

Matthew 25:34:⁠—

“Then shall the king say unto them on his right hand. Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”

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Dr. Furness’s “Hymn”:⁠—

“Slowly by God’s hand unfurled,
Down around the weary world
Falls the darkness.”

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Evening of the Third Day of Purgatory. Milton, Paradise Lost, IV 598:⁠—

“Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad:
Silence accompanied; for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;
She all night long her amorous descant sung;
Silence was pleased: now glowed the firmament
With living sapphires: Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length,
Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light,
And o’er the dark her silver mantle threw.”

↩

The vision which Dante sees is a foreshadowing of Matilda and Beatrice in the Terrestrial Paradise. In the Old Testament Leah is a symbol of the Active life, and Rachel of the Contemplative; as Martha and Mary are in the New Testament, and Matilda and Beatrice in the Divine Comedy.

“Happy is that house,” says Saint Bernard, “and blessed is that congregation, where Martha still complaineth of Mary.”

Dante says in the Convito, IV 17:⁠—

“Truly it should be known that we can have in this life two felicities, by following two different and excellent roads, which lead thereto; namely, the Active life and the Contemplative.”

And Owen Feltham in his Resolves:⁠—

“The mind can walk beyond the sight of the eye, and, though in a cloud, can lift us into heaven while we live. Meditation is the soul’s perspective glass, whereby, in her long remove, she discerneth God as if he were nearer hand. I persuade no man to make it his whole life’s business. We have bodies as well as souls. And even this world, while we are in it, ought somewhat to be cared for. As those states are likely to flourish, where execution follows sound advisements, so is man, when contemplation is seconded by action. Contemplation generates; action propagates. Without the first, the latter is defective. Without the last, the first is but abortive and embryous. Saint Bernard compares contemplation to Rachel, which was the more fair; but action to Leah, which was the more fruitful. I will neither always be busy and doing, nor ever shut up in nothing but thoughts. Yet that which some would call idleness, I will call the sweetest part of my life, and that is, my thinking.”

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Venus, the morning star, rising with the constellation Pisces, two hours before the sun. ↩

Ruskin, Modern Painters, III 221:⁠—

“This vision of Rachel and Leah has been always, and with unquestionable truth, received as a type of the Active and Contemplative life, and as an introduction to the two divisions of the Paradise which Dante is about to enter. Therefore the unwearied spirit of the Countess Matilda is understood to represent the Active life, which forms the felicity of Earth; and the spirit of Beatrice the Contemplative life, which forms the felicity of Heaven. This interpretation appears at first straightforward and certain; but it has missed count of exactly the most important fact in the two passages which we have to explain. Observe: Leah gathers the flowers to decorate herself, and delights in her own Labor. Rachel sits silent, contemplating herself, and delights in her own Image. These are the types of the Unglorified Active and Contemplative powers of Man. But Beatrice and Matilda are the same powers, glorified. And how are they glorified? Leah took delight in her own labor; but Matilda, in operibus manuum Tuarum⁠—in God’s labor: Rachel, in the sight of her own face; Beatrice, in the sight