The Bridling of Pegasus Part 12

Is it fanciful to think that in that line also Dante has betrayed and bequeathed to us, perhaps unconsciously, his main conception of Woman, as a gentle and adoring creature, who finds her greatest happiness in subordinating her will to those who are deserving of the trust she reposes in them?

But Piccarda does not end the dialogue with her own story. She tells Dante that the great Costanza, as she calls her, who married the German Henry the Fifth, was also torn from a convent where she had taken the veil, and forced into Royal nuptials. But when she was thus compelled to violate her vows,

Contra suo grado e contra buona usanza, Non fu dal vel del cuor giammai disciolta.

She wore the vestal's veil within her heart.

And, as if to indicate that the conduct of each was condoned by the Virgin of Virgins, Dante concludes by saying:

... _Ave Maria_, cantando; e cantando vanio,

She faded from our sight, singing _Ave Maria_,

and once again he concentrated his gaze on Beatrice, Beatrice whom he regarded as his highest poetic conception of Woman. Fully to grasp what that was, we must descend from Heaven to earth and recall the origin and growth of his adoration of her, as described in the _Vita Nuova_.

To some commentators on Dante, the narrative to be read there has suggested difficulties when, in reality, there are none, leading them to urge that a child of nine years of age could not feel what is therein described, and that, therefore, it is purely symbolic, and was written not about any human creature, but indicated Philosophy, or the desire for spiritual enlightenment and the search for heavenly wisdom, which was Dante's overpowering impulse almost from the cradle. The answer to such an interpretation of the pa.s.sage is that it betrays an utter ignorance of the emotional precocity of the poetic temperament, and of the vague but intense hold Love can acquire over Poets from their earliest years.

Of the reality underlying the idealism of the _Vita Nuova_, we therefore need have no doubt whatever. Dante's Beatrice was Beatrice Portinari, a Florentine maid first, a Florentine bride later, whose people lived in the Corso, near the Canto de' Pazzi.

All that follows in the narrative of the _Vita Nuova_ may be relied on just as implicitly; how, when she was eighteen years of age, he met her again walking in the streets of Florence between two n.o.ble ladies older than herself, and graciously, as Dante says, returned his salute; how, with the naf shyness of a youth consumed with love, he tried to dissemble it by pretending to be enamoured of another damsel, which only made Beatrice look away when she met him; and how he contrived to convey to her indirectly, through a poem he wrote, that she had misjudged him; how, thereon, she looked on him graciously once more; and how, alas! in her twenty-fifth year, she was summoned from this world to the world above.

Then the _Vita Nuova_ draws mournfully to a close, ending with these significant words:--

After I had written this sonnet, there appeared to me a wonderful vision, in which I saw things that made me determine to write no more of this dear Saint until I should be able to write of her more worthily; and, of a surety, she knows that I study to attain unto this end with all my powers. So, if it shall please Him by Whom all things live, to spare my life for some more years, I hope to say that of her which never yet hath been said of any lady; and then may it please Him, who is the Father of all good, to suffer my soul to see the glory of its mistress, the sainted Beatrice, who now, abiding in glory, looketh upon the face of Him who is blessed for ever and ever.

For the fulfilment of that determination we must return to the _Divina Commedia_, written in the fullness of the Poet's powers. But there are three lines in the _Vita Nuova_ about the death of Beatrice that have haunted me ever since I first read them, and whose beauty, I am sure, all will feel:

Non la ci tolse qualit di gelo, N di color, siccome l'altro fece, Ma sola fu sua gran benignitade:

lines very difficult to translate, but the meaning of which is that she died neither from chill nor from fever, which carries off other mortals, but only of her great benignness, or excess of goodness, which rendered earth an unfitting dwelling-place for her, and Paradise her only true home.

It is not necessary to comment here on the First Canto of the _Divina Commedia_. That, one has done already before the Dante Society, and it is not requisite for one's present theme. But in Canto the Second we meet with the Beatrice of the _Vita Nuova_. She it is that sends Virgil, who dwells in the neutral territory of Limbo, to the Poet, saying:

Io son Beatrice, che ti faccio andare: Amor mi mosse, che mi fa parlare.

And not only does she say that she is animated by love, which has caused her, now in Heaven, to feel so compa.s.sionately towards him, but also because he loved her so while she was on earth, and continued to do so after she had quitted it, with a fidelity that has lifted him above the crowd of ordinary mortals, and made of him a Poet. Here, let it be said in pa.s.sing, we get another indication of Dante's poetic conception of Woman, which is, among other qualities, to co-operate in the making and fostering of Poets, a mission in which they have never been wanting. Where, indeed, is the Poet who could not say of some woman, and, if he be fortunate, of more than one, what, in the Twenty-second Canto of the _Purgatorio_, Dante makes Statius say to Virgil, "_Per te poeta fui_," "It was through you that I became a Poet."

Throughout the remaining Cantos of the _Inferno_, Beatrice naturally is never mentioned, nor yet in the _Purgatorio_, till we reach Canto the Thirtieth, wherein occurs perhaps the most painful scene in the awe-inspiring poem. In it she descends from Heaven, an apparition of celestial light, compared by the Poet to the dazzling dawn of a glorious day. Smitten with fear, he turns for help to Virgil, but Virgil has left him. "Weep not," says Beatrice to him, "that Virgil is no longer by your side; you will need all your tears when you hear me." Then begins her terrible arraignment:

Guardaci ben: ben sem, ben sem Beatrice.

Look on me well! Yes, I am Beatrice.

Confused, Dante gazes upon the ground, and then glances at a fountain hard by; but, seeing his own image trembling in the water, he lowers his eyes to the green sward encircling it, and fixes them there, while she upbraids him for his deviation from absolute fidelity to her memory, and his disregard of her heavenly endeavours still to help and purify him.

Boccaccio says that Dante was a man of strong pa.s.sions, and possibly, indeed probably, he was. But Beatrice seems to reproach him with only one transgression, and, if one is to say what one thinks, she has always appeared to me a little hard on him. Nor does she rest content till she has compelled him to confess his fault. He does so, and then she tells him to lay aside his grief, and think no more of it, for he is forgiven.

Perhaps, in mitigation of the feeling that her severity was in excess of the cause, one ought to remember, since it is peculiarly pertinent to my theme, that we are in the above harrowing scene presented with the crowning characteristic of Dante's poetic conception of Woman, that, be the offence against her what it may, she forgets and forgives.

It might be interesting on some other occasion to inquire how far Dante's poetic conception of Woman is shared by Poets generally, and by the greater Poets of our own land in particular. Meanwhile one may affirm that the inquiry would serve to show that it is in substance the same, though no other Poet, in whatsoever tongue, has extolled and glorified a woman as Dante did Beatrice. But Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare, Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Sh.e.l.ley, Tennyson, could all be shown, by apposite ill.u.s.tration, to leave on the mind a conception of woman as a being tender, devoted, faithful, helpful, "sweet, and serviceable," as Tennyson says of Elaine, quick to respond to affection, sensitive to beauty in Nature and Arts, sympathising companion alike of the hearth and of man's struggle with life--in a word, a creature of whom it is true to say, as, indeed, Byron _has_ said, that "Love is her whole existence," meaning by Love not what is too frequently in these days falsely presented to us in novels as such, but Love through all the harmonious scale of loving, maternal, filial, conjugal, romantic, religious, and universal.

Read then the Poets. They have a n.o.bler conception of woman and of life than the novelists. Their un.o.btrusive but conspicuous teaching harmonises with the conduct of the best women, and has its deep foundation in a belief in the beneficent potency of Love, from the most elementary up to an apprehension of the meaning of the last line of the _Divina Commedia_:

L'amor che muove il Sole e l'altre stelle.

Love that keeps the sun in its course, and journeys with the planets in their orbit.

POETRY AND PESSIMISM

The term Pessimism has in these later days been so intimately a.s.sociated with the philosophical theories of a well-known German writer, that I can well excuse those who ask, What may be the connection between Pessimism and Poetry? There are few matters of human interest that may not become suitable themes for poetic treatment; but I scarcely think Metaphysics is among them. It is not, therefore, to Schopenhauer's theory of the World conceived as Will and Idea, that I invite your attention. The Pessimism with which we are concerned is much older than Metaphysics, is as old as the human heart, and is never likely to become obsolete. It is the Pessimism of which the simplest, the least cultured, and the most unsophisticated of us may become the victims, and which expresses the feeling that, on the whole, life is rather a bad business, that it is not worth having, and that it is a thing which, in the language used by the Duke in _Measure for Measure_, in order to console Claudio, none but fools would keep.

Now, as all forms of feeling, and most forms of thought, are reflected in the magic mirror of Poetry, it is only natural that gloomy views of existence, of the individual life, and of the world's destiny should from time to time find expression in the poet's verse. There is quite enough pain in the experience of the individual, quite enough vicissitude in the history of nations, quite enough doubt and perplexity in the functions and mission of mankind, for even the most cheerful and masculine Song to change sometimes into the pathetic minor. What I would ask you to consider with me is if there be not a danger lest poetry should remain for long in this minor key, and if the Poet does not find ample justification and warrant--nay, should he be a true and comprehensive interpreter of life, of

All moods, all pa.s.sions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame,

if he does not find himself compelled, in reply to the question, "What of the night?" to answer, "The stars are still s.h.i.+ning."

No survey of the att.i.tude of Poetry towards Pessimism would be satisfactory that confined itself to one particular age; and I shall ask you, therefore, to attend to the utterances of poets in other generations than our own. But, since our own age necessarily interests us the most, let us at least _begin_ with IT.

I should be surprised to find any one doubting that during the last few years a wave of disillusion, of doubt, misgiving, and despondency has pa.s.sed over the world. We are no longer so confident as we were in the abstract wisdom and practical working of our Inst.i.tutions; we no longer express ourselves with such certainty concerning the social and moral advantages of our material discoveries; we entertain growing anxiety as to the future of our Commerce; many persons have questioned the very foundations of religious belief, and numbers have taken refuge from conflicting creeds in avowed Agnosticism, or the confession that we know and can know absolutely nothing concerning what it had long been a.s.sumed it most behoves us to know. One by one, all the fondly cherished theories of life, society and Empire; our belief in Free Trade as the evangelist of peace, the solution of economic difficulties and struggles, and the sure foundation of national greatness; all the sources of our satisfaction with ourselves, our confidence in our capacity to reconcile the rivalry of capital and labour, to repress drunkenness, to abolish pauperism, to form a fraternal confederation with our Colonies, and to be the example to the whole world of wealth, wisdom, and virtue, are one by one deserting us. We no longer believe that Great Exhibitions will disarm the inherent ferocity of mankind, that a judicious administration of the Poor Law will gradually empty our workhouses, or that an elastic law of Divorce will correct the aberrations of human pa.s.sion and solve all the problems of the hearth. The boastfulness, the sanguine expectations, the confident prophecies of olden times are exchanged for hesitating speculations and despondent whispers.

We no longer seem to know whither we are marching, and many appear to think that we are marching to perdition. We have curtailed the authority of kings; we have narrowed the political competence of aristocracies; we have widened the suffrage, till we can hardly widen it any further; we have introduced the ballot, abolished bribery and corruption, and called into play a more active munic.i.p.al life; we have multiplied our railways, and the pace of our travel has been greatly accelerated. Telegraph and telephone traverse the land. Surgical operations of the most difficult and dangerous character are performed successfully by the aid of ansthetics, without pain to the patient. We have forced from heaven more light than ever Prometheus did; with the result that we transcend him likewise in our pain. No one would a.s.sert that we are happier, more cheerful, more full of hope, than our predecessors, or that we confront the Future with greater confidence. All our Progress, so far, has ended in Pessimism more or less p.r.o.nounced; by some expressed more absolutely, by some with more moderation; but felt by all, permeating every utterance, and infiltrating into every stratum of thought.

Now let us see to what extent these gloomy views have found expression in poetry, and, first of all, in the writings of not only the most widely read but the most sensitive and receptive poet of our time, Alfred Tennyson. Tennyson came of age in 1830, or just on the eve of the first Reform Bill, when a great Party in the State, which was to enjoy almost a monopoly of power for the next thirty years, firmly believed, and was followed by a majority of the nation in believing, that we had only to legislate in a generous and what was called a liberal sense, to bring about the Millennium within a reasonable period. They had every possible opportunity of putting their belief into practice, and they did so with generous ardour. Now in that year 1830 there appeared what was practically Tennyson's first volume; and save in the instance of the short poem beginning

You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease, Within this region I subsist,

and the somewhat longer but still comparatively brief one, opening with

Love thou thy land, with love far-brought From out the storied Past,

there is no reference in it to the political or social condition of the English people. The bulk of the poems had evidently been composed, so to speak, in the lofty vacuum created by the poet and the artist for himself, save where, in the lines,

Vex not thou the Poet's mind With thy shallow wit: Vex not thou the poet's mind, For thou canst not fathom it,

he seemed to be giving the great body of his countrymen notice that they had nothing in common with him, or he with them. And, in the two exceptions I have named, what is his att.i.tude? You all remember the lines:

But pamper not a hasty time, Nor feed with vague imaginings The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings That every sophister can lime.

And so he goes on, through stanzas with which, I am sure, you are thoroughly familiar, ending with the often-quoted couplet:

Earn well the thrifty months, nor wed Raw Haste, half-sister to Delay.

It would be difficult to find, in verse, a more terse or accurate embodiment of what, in no Party sense, we may call the Conservative mind, the Conservative way of looking at things, or a more striking instance of contemporaneous verse reflecting what had recently been the average public temper of the moment. The England of the years that immediately preceded 1830 was an England wearied with the strain and stress of the great war and the mighty agitations of the early part of the century, and now, craving for repose, was in politics more or less stationary. Therefore in this earliest volume, of one of the most sensitive and receptive of writers, we encounter only quiet panegyrics of

A land of settled government, A land of just and old renown, Where Freedom slowly broadens down From precedent to precedent.

Where Faction seldom gathers head, But, by degrees to fulness wrought, The strength of some diffusive thought Hath time and s.p.a.ce to work and spread.