The Divine Comedy Of Dante Alighieri Part 10

Benvenuto lectured on the _Comedy_ in Bologna for some years about 1370.

It is greatly to be wished that his commentary, lively and full of side-lights as it is, should be printed in full from the original Latin.

[234] _The lords, etc._: Not the company of him--Homer or Virgil--who is lord of the great song, and soars above all others; but the company of the great masters, whose verse, etc.

[235] _Did my Master smile_: To see Dante made free of the guild of great poets; or, it may be, to think they are about to discover in him a fellow poet.

[236] _A n.o.ble castle_: Where the light burns, and in which, as their peculiar seat, the shades of the heathen distinguished for virtue and genius reside. The seven walls are in their number symbolical of the perfect strength of the castle; or, to take it more pedantically, may mean the four moral virtues and the three speculative. The gates will then stand for the seven liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric, etc. The moat may be eloquence, set outside the castle to signify that only as reflected in the eloquent words of inspired men can the outside world get to know wisdom. Over the stream Dante pa.s.ses easily, as being an adept in learned speech. The castle encloses a s.p.a.cious mead enamelled with eternal green.

[237] _Caesar in arms, etc._: Suetonius says of Caesar that he was of fair complexion, but had black and piercing eyes. Brunetto Latini, Dante's teacher, says in his _Tesoro_ (v. 11), of the hawk here mentioned--the _grif.a.gno_--that its eyes 'flame like fire.'

[238] _Brutus_: Introduced here that he may not be confounded with the later Brutus, for whom is reserved the lowest place of all in Inferno.

[239] _Marcia_: Wife of Cato; mentioned also in _Purg._ i. _Julia_: daughter of Caesar and wife of Pompey.

[240] _Saladin_: Died 1193. To the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries he supplied the ideal of a just Mohammedan ruler. Here are no other such. 'He sits apart, because not of gentle birth,' says Boccaccio; which shows what even a man of genius risks when he becomes a commentator.

[241] _The Master_: Aristotle, often spoken of by Dante as the Philosopher, and reverenced by him as the genius to whom the secrets of nature lay most open.

[242] _Democritus, etc._: According to whom the world owes its form to a chance arrangement of atoms.

[243] _Linus_: Not Livy, into which some have changed it. Linus is mentioned by Virgil along with Orpheus, _Egl._ iv.

[244] _Ptolemy_: Greek geographer of the beginning of the second century, and author of the system of the world believed in by Dante, and freely used by him throughout the poem.

[245] _Avicenna_: A physician, born in Bokhara, and died at Ispahan, 1037. His _Medical Canon_ was for centuries used as a text-book in Europe.

[246] _Averroes_: A Mohammedan philosopher of Cordova, died 1198. In his great Commentary on Aristotle he gives and explains every sentence of that philosopher's works. He was himself ignorant of Greek, and made use of Arabic versions. Out of his Arabic the Commentary was translated into Hebrew, and thence into Latin. The presence of the three Mohammedans in this honourable place greatly puzzles the early commentators.

[247] _A part, etc._: He pa.s.ses into the darkness of the Limbo out of the brightly-lit, fortified enclosure. It is worth remarking, as one reads, how vividly he describes his first impression of a new scene, while when he comes to leave it a word is all he speaks.

CANTO V.

From the First Circle thus I downward went Into the Second,[248] which girds narrower s.p.a.ce, But greater woe compelling loud lament.

Minos[249] waits awful there and snarls, the case Examining of all who enter in; And, as he girds him, dooms them to their place.

I say, each ill-starred spirit must begin On reaching him its guilt in full to tell; And he, omniscient as concerning sin, Sees to what circle it belongs in h.e.l.l; 10 Then round him is his tail as often curled As he would have it stages deep to dwell.

And evermore before him stand a world Of shades; and all in turn to judgment come, Confess and hear, and then are downward hurled.[250]

'O thou who comest to the very home Of woe,' when he beheld me Minos cried, Ceasing a while from utterance of doom, 'Enter not rashly nor in all confide; By ease of entering be not led astray.' 20 'Why also[251] growling?' answered him my Guide; 'Seek not his course predestinate to stay; For thus 'tis willed[252] where nothing ever fails Of what is willed. No further speech essay.'

And now by me are agonising wails Distinguished plain; now am I come outright Where grievous lamentation me a.s.sails.

Now had I reached a place devoid of light, Raging as in a tempest howls the sea When with it winds, blown thwart each other, fight. 30 The infernal storm is raging ceaselessly, Sweeping the shades along with it, and them It smites and whirls, nor lets them ever be.

Arrived at the precipitous extreme,[253]

In shrieks and lamentations they complain, And even the Power Divine itself blaspheme.

I understood[254] that to this mode of pain Are doomed the sinners of the carnal kind, Who o'er their reason let their impulse reign.

As starlings in the winter-time combined 40 Float on the wing in crowded phalanx wide, So these bad spirits, driven by that wind, Float up and down and veer from side to side; Nor for their comfort any hope they spy Of rest, or even of suffering mollified.

And as the cranes[255] in long-drawn company Pursue their flight while uttering their song, So I beheld approach with wailing cry Shades lifted onward by that whirlwind strong.

'Master, what folk are these,'[256] I therefore said, 50 'Who by the murky air are whipped along?'

'She, first of them,' his answer thus was made, 'Of whom thou wouldst a wider knowledge win, O'er many tongues and peoples, empire swayed.

So ruined was she by licentious sin That she decreed l.u.s.t should be uncontrolled, To ease the shame that she herself was in.

She is Semiramis, of whom 'tis told She followed Ninus, and his wife had been.

Hers were the realms now by the Sultan ruled. 60 The next[257] is she who, amorous and self-slain, Unto Sichaeus' dust did faithless show: Then l.u.s.tful Cleopatra.' Next was seen Helen, for whom so many years in woe Ran out; and I the great Achilles knew, Who at the last[258] encountered love for foe.

Paris I saw and Tristram.[259] In review A thousand shades and more, he one by one Pointed and named, whom love from life withdrew.

And after I had heard my Teacher run 70 O'er many a dame of yore and many a knight, I, lost in pity, was wellnigh undone.

Then I: 'O Poet, if I only might Speak with the two that as companions hie, And on the wind appear to be so light!'[260]

And he to me: 'When they shall come more nigh Them shalt thou mark, and by the love shalt pray Which leads them onward, and they will comply.'

Soon as the wind bends them to where we stay I lift my voice: 'O wearied souls and worn! 80 Come speak with us if none[261] the boon gainsay.'

Then even as doves,[262] urged by desire, return On outspread wings and firm to their sweet nest As through the air by mere volition borne, From Dido's[263] band those spirits issuing pressed Towards where we were, athwart the air malign; My pa.s.sionate prayer such influence possessed.

'O living creature,[264] gracious and benign, Us visiting in this obscured air, Who did the earth with blood incarnadine; 90 If in the favour of the King we were Who rules the world, we for thy peace[265] would pray, Since our misfortunes thy compa.s.sion stir.

Whate'er now pleases thee to hear or say We listen to, or tell, at your demand;[266]

While yet the wind, as now, doth silent stay.

My native city[267] lies upon the strand Where to the sea descends the river Po For peace, with all his tributary band.

Love, in a generous heart set soon aglow, 100 Seized him for the fair form was mine above; And still it irks me to have lost it so.[268]

Love, which absolves[269] no one beloved from love, So strong a pa.s.sion for him in me wrought That, as thou seest, I still its mastery prove.

Love led us where we in one death were caught.

For him who slew us waits Cana[270] now.'

Unto our ears these words from them were brought.

When I had heard these troubled souls, my brow I downward bent, and long while musing stayed, 110 Until the Poet asked: 'What thinkest thou?'

And when I answered him, 'Alas!' I said, 'Sweet thoughts how many, and what strong desire, These to their sad catastrophe betrayed!'

Then, turned once more to them, I to inquire Began: 'Francesca, these thine agonies Me with compa.s.sion unto tears inspire.

But tell me, at the season of sweet sighs What sign made love, and what the means he chose To strip your dubious longings of disguise?' 120 And she to me: 'The bitterest of woes Is to remember in the midst of pain A happy past; as well thy teacher[271] knows.

Yet none the less, and since thou art so fain The first occasion of our love to hear, Like one I speak that cannot tears restrain.

As we for pastime one day reading were How Lancelot[272] by love was fettered fast-- All by ourselves and without any fear-- Moved by the tale our eyes we often cast 130 On one another, and our colour fled; But one word was it, vanquished us at last.

When how the smile, long wearied for, we read Was kissed by him who loved like none before, This one, who henceforth never leaves me, laid A kiss on my mouth, trembling the while all o'er.

The book was Galahad,[273] and he as well Who wrote the book. That day we read no more.'

And while one shade continued thus to tell, The other wept so bitterly, I swooned 140 Away for pity, and as dead I fell: Yea, as a corpse falls, fell I on the ground.

FOOTNOTES:

[248] _The Second_: The Second Circle of the Inferno, and the first of punishment. The lower the circle, the more rigorous the penalty endured in it. Here is punished carnal sin.

[249] _Minos_: Son of Jupiter and King of Crete, so severely just as to be made after death one of the judges of the under world. He is degraded by Dante, as many other n.o.ble persons of the old mythology are by him, into a demon. Unlike the fallen angels of Milton, Dante's devils have no interest of their own. Their only function is to help in working out human destinies.

[250] _Downward hurled_: Each falls to his proper place without lingering by the way. All through Inferno there is an absence of direct Divine interposition. It is ruled, as it were, by a course of nature.

The sinners, compelled by a fatal impulse, advance to hear their doom, just as they fall inevitably one by one into Charon's boat. Minos by a sort of devilish instinct sentences each sinner to his appropriate punishment. In _Inf._ xxvii. 127 we find the words in which Minos utters his judgment. In _Inf._ xxi. 29 a devil bears the sinner to his own place.

[251] _Why also, etc._: Like Charon. If Minos represents conscience, as some would have it, Dante is here again a.s.sailed by misgivings as to his enterprise, and is quieted by reason in the person of Virgil.

[252] _Thus 'tis willed, etc._: These two lines are the same as those to Charon, _Inf._ iii. 95, 96.

[253] _Precipitous extreme_: Opinions vary as to what is meant by _ruina_. As Dante is certainly still on the outer edge of the Second Circle or terrace, and while standing there hears distinctly the words the spirits say when they reach the _ruina_, it most likely denotes the steep slope falling from the First to the Second Circle. The spirits, driven against the wall which hems them in, burst into sharp lamentations against their irremediable fate.

[254] _I understood, etc._: From the nature of the punishment, which, like all the others invented by Dante, bears some relation to the sin to which it is a.s.signed. They who on earth failed to exercise self-restraint are beaten hither and thither by every wind that blows; and, as once they were blinded by pa.s.sion, so now they see nothing plainly in that dim and obscure place. That Dante should a.s.sign the least grievous punishment of all to this sin throws light upon his views of life. In his eyes it had more than any other the excuse of natural bent, and had least of malice. Here, it must be remarked, are no seducers. For them a lower depth is reserved (_Inf._ xviii. See also _Purg._ xxvii. 15).

[255] _The cranes_: 'The cranes are a kind of bird that go in a troop, as cavaliers go to battle, following one another in single file. And one of them goes always in front as their gonfalonier, guiding and leading them with its voice' (Brunetto Latini, _Tesoro_, v. 27).

[256] _What folk are these_: The general crowd of sinners guilty of unlawful love are described as being close packed like starlings. The other troop, who go in single file like cranes, are those regarding whom Dante specially inquires; and they prove to be the n.o.bler sort of sinners--lovers with something tragic or pathetic in their fate.