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

coming, shall rule me!’

“At that instant, the spirit of the soul, which dwells in the high chamber to which all the spirits of the senses bring their perceptions, began to marvel greatly, and, addressing the spirits of the sight, said these words: Apparuit jam beatitudo vestra⁠—‘Now hath appeared your bliss.’ “At that instant the natural spirit, which dwells in that part where the nourishment is supplied, began to weep, and, weeping, said these words: Heu miser! quia frequenter impeditus ero deinceps⁠—‘Woe is me wretched! because frequently henceforth shall I be hindered.’

“From this time forward I say that Love lorded it over my soul, which had been thus quickly put at his disposal; and he began to exercise over me such control and such lordship, through the power which my imagination gave to him, that it behoved me to perform completely all his pleasure. He commanded me many times that I should seek to see this youthful angel, so that I in my boyhood often went seeking her, and saw her of such noble and praiseworthy deportment, that truly of her might be said that saying of the poet Homer: ‘She does not seem the daughter of mortal man, but of God.’ And though her image, which stayed constantly with me, inspired confidence in Love to hold lordship over me, yet it was of such noble virtue, that it never suffered that Love should rule without the faithful counsel of Reason in those matters in which such counsel could be useful.”

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Dante here translates Virgil’s own words, as he has done so many times before. Aeneid, IV 23:⁠—

“Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae.”

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The Terrestrial Paradise lost by Eve. ↩

Psalm 31:1, 8:⁠—

“In thee, O Lord, have I put my trust⁠ ⁠… Thou hast set my feet in a large room.”

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Aeneid, VI 180:⁠—

“Down drop the firs; crashes, by axes felled, the ilex; and the ashen rafters and the yielding oaks are cleft by wedges.”

And IX 87:⁠—

“A wood⁠ ⁠… dark with gloomy firs, and rafters of the maple.”

Denistoun, Mem. of the Duke of Urbino I 4, says:⁠—

“On the summit grew those magnificent pines, which gave to the district of Massa the epithet of ‘Trabaria,’ from the beams which were carried thence for the palaces of Rome, and which are noticed by Dante as

‘The living rafters
Upon the back of Italy.’ ”

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Shakespeare, Winter’s Tale, IV 3:⁠—

“The fanned snow
That’s bolted by the northern blast twice o’er.”

And Midsummer Night’s Dream:⁠—

“High Taurus’ snow
Fanned with the eastern wind.”

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Which are formed in such lofty regions, that they are beyond human conception. ↩

Beatrice died in 1290, at the age of twenty-five. ↩

How far these self-accusations of Dante were justified by facts, and how far they may be regarded as expressions of a sensitive and excited conscience, we have no means of determining. It is doubtless but simple justice to apply to him the words which he applies to Virgil, Canto III 8:⁠—

“O noble conscience, and without a stain,
How sharp a sting is trivial fault to thee!”

This should be borne in mind when we read what Dante says of his own shortcomings; as, for instance, in his conversation with his brother-in-law Forese, Canto XXIII 115:⁠—

“If thou bring back to mind
What thou with me hast been and I with thee,
The present memory will be grievous still.”

But what shall we say of this sonnet addressed to Dante by his intimate friend, Guido Cavalcanti? Rossetti, Early Italian Poets, p. 358:⁠—

“I come to thee by daytime constantly,
But in thy thoughts too much of baseness find:
Greatly it grieves me for thy gentle mind,
And for thy many virtues gone from thee.
It was thy wont to shun much company,
Unto all sorry concourse ill inclined:
And still thy speech of me, heartfelt and kind,
Had made me treasure up thy poetry.
But now I dare not, for thine abject life,
Make manifest that I approve thy rhymes;
Nor come I in such sort that thou may’st know.
Ah! prithee read this sonnet many times:
So shall that evil one who bred this strife
Be thrust from thy dishonored soul, and go.”

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In this canto Dante, having made confession of his sins, is drawn by Matilda through the river Lethe. ↩

Hitherto Beatrice has directed her discourse to her attendant handmaidens around the chariot. Now she speaks directly to Dante. ↩

As in a castle or fortress. ↩

As one fascinated and enamored with them. ↩

The sword of justice is dulled by the wheel being turned against its edge. This is the usual interpretation; but a friend suggests that the allusion may be to the wheel of St. Catherine, which is studded with sword-blades. ↩

The grief which is the cause of your weeping. ↩

There is a good deal of gossiping among the commentators about this little girl or Pargoletta. Some suppose it to be the same as the Gentucca of Canto XXIV 37, and the Pargoletta of one of the poems in the Canzoniere, which in Mr. Lyell’s translation runs as follows:⁠—

“Ladies, behold a maiden fair, and young;
To you I come heaven’s beauty to display,
And manifest the place from whence I am.
In heaven I dwelt, and thither shall return,
Joy to impart to angels with my light.
He who shall me behold nor be enamored,
Of Love shall never comprehend the charm;
For every pleasing gift was freely given,
When Nature sought the grant of me from him
Who willed that your companion I should be.
Each star upon my eyes its influence sheds,
And with its light and virtue I am blest:
Beauties are mine the world hath never