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

↩

The morning of the Fourth Day of Purgatory. ↩

Happiness. ↩

The Terrestrial Paradise. Compare Milton, Paradise Lost, IV 214:⁠—

“In this pleasant soil
His far more pleasant garden God ordained:
Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow
All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste;
And all amid them stood the Tree of Life,
High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit
Of vegetable gold; and next to Life,
Our death, the Tree of Knowledge, grew fast by,
Knowledge of good bought dear by knowing ill.
Southward through Eden went a river large,
Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill
Passed underneath Ingulfed; for God had thrown
That mountain as his garden mould, high raised
Upon the rapid current, which through veins
Of porous earth with kindly thirst up drawn,
Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill
Watered the garden; thence united fell
Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood,
Which from his darksome passage now appears;
And now, divided into four main streams,
Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm
And country, whereof here needs no account;
But rather to tell how, if art could tell,
How from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks,
Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold,
With mazy error under pendent shades
Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed
Flowers worthy of Paradise; which not nice art
In beds and curious knots, but nature boon
Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain;
Both where the morning sun first warmly smote
The open field, and where the unpierced shade
Imbrowned the noontide bowers. Thus was this place
A happy rural seat of various view:
Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm;
Others, whose fruit, burnished with golden rind,
Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true,
If true, here only, and of delicious taste.
Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks
Grazing the tender herb, were interposed;
Or palmy hillock, or the flowery lap
Of some irriguous valley spread her store;
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.
Another side, umbrageous grots and caves
Of cool recess, o’er which the mantling vine
Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps
Luxuriant: meanwhile murmuring waters fall
Down the slope hills, dispersed, or in a lake,
That to the fringed bank with myrtle crowned
Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams.
The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs,
Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune
he trembling leaves; while universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Led on the eternal spring.”

↩

Ruskin, Modern Painters, III 219:⁠—

“As Homer gave us an ideal landscape, which even a god might have been pleased to behold, so Dante gives us, fortunately, an ideal landscape, which is specially intended for the terrestrial paradise. And it will doubtless be with some surprise, after our reflections above on the general tone of Dante’s feelings, that we find ourselves here first entering a forest, and that even a thick forest.⁠ ⁠…

“This forest, then, is very like that of Colonos in several respects⁠—in its peace and sweetness, and number of birds; it differs from it only in letting a light breeze through it, being therefore somewhat thinner than the Greek wood; the tender lines which tell of the voices of the birds mingling with the wind, and of the leaves all turning one way before it, have been more or less copied by every poet since Dante’s time. They are, so far as I know, the sweetest passage of wood description which exists in literature.”

Homer’s ideal landscape, here referred to, is in Odyssey V, where he describes the visit of Mercury to the Island of Calypso. It is thus translated by Buckley:⁠—

“Immediately then he bound his beautiful sandals beneath his feet, ambrosial, golden; which carried him both over the moist wave, and over the boundless earth, with the breath of the wind.⁠ ⁠… Then he rushed over the wave like a bird, a seagull, which, hunting for fish in the terrible bays of the barren sea, dips frequently its wings in the brine; like unto this Mercury rode over many waves. But when he came to the distant island, then, going from the blue sea, he went to the continent; until he came to the great cave in which the fair-haired Nymph dwelt; and he found her within. A large fire was burning on the hearth, and at a distance the smell of well-cleft cedar, and of frankincense, that were burning, shed odor through the island: but she within was singing with a beautiful voice, and, going over the web, wove with a golden shuttle. But a flourishing wood sprung up around her grot, alder and poplar, and sweet-smelling cypress. There also birds with spreading wings slept, owls and hawks, and wide tongued crows of the ocean, to which maritime employments are a care. There a vine in its prime was spread about the hollow grot, and it flourished with clusters. But four fountains flowed in succession with white water, turned near one another, each in different ways; but around there flourished soft meadows of violets and of parsley. There indeed even an immortal coming would admire it when he beheld, and would be delighted in his mind; there the messenger, the slayer of Argus, standing, admired.”

And again, at the close of the same book, where Ulysses reaches the shore at Phaeacia:⁠—

“Then he hastened to the wood; and found it near the water in a conspicuous place, and he came under two shrubs, which sprang from the same place; one of wild olive, the other of olive. Neither the strength of the moistly blowing winds breathes through them, nor has the shining sun ever struck them with its beams, nor has the shower penetrated entirely through them: so thick were they grown entangled with one another; under which Ulysses came.”

The wood of Colonos is thus described in one of the Choruses of the Oedipus Coloneus of Sophocles, Oxford Tr., Anon.:⁠—

“Thou hast come, O stranger, to the seats of this land, renowned for the steed; to seats the fairest on earth, the chalky Colonus; where the vocal nightingale, chief abounding, trills her plaintive