Stories from the Italian Poets: with Lives of the Writers Volume I Part 8

"Bolgia" (says the _Vocabolario della Crusca, compendiato_, Ven. 1792), "a valise; Latin, bulga, hippopera; Greek, ippopetha [Greek]. In reference to valises which open lengthways like a chest, Dante uses the word to signify those compartments which he feigns in his h.e.l.l." (Per similitudine di quelle valigie, che s'ap.r.o.no per lo lungo, a guisa di ca.s.sa, significa quegli spartimenti, che Dante finge nell' Inferno.) The reader will think of the homely figurative names in Bunyan, and the contempt which great and awful states of mind have for conventional notions of rank in phraseology. It is a part, if well considered, of their grandeur.]

[Footnote 25: Boniface the Eighth was the pope then living, and one of the causes of Dante's exile. It is thus the poet contrives to put his enemies in h.e.l.l before their time.]

[Footnote 26: An allusion to the pretended gift of the Lateran by Constantine to Pope Sylvester, ridiculed so strongly by Ariosto and others.]

[Footnote 27: A truly infernal sentiment. The original is,

"Qu vive la pieta quand' e ben morta."

Here pity lives when it is quite dead.

"Chi e piu scellerato," continues the poet, "di colui, Ch'al giudicio divin pa.s.sion porta."

That is: "Who is wickeder than he that sets his impa.s.sioned feelings against the judgments of G.o.d?" The answer is: He that attributes judgments to G.o.d which are to render humanity pitiless.]

[Footnote 28: _Ne' fianchi cos poco_. Michael Scot had been in Florence; to which circ.u.mstance we are most probably indebted for this curious particular respecting his shape. The consignment of such men to h.e.l.l is a mortifying instance of the great poet's partic.i.p.ation in the vulgarest errors of his time. It is hardly, however, worth notice, considering what we see him swallowing every moment, or pretending to swallow.]

[Footnote 29: "Bonturo must have sold him something cheap," exclaimed a hearer of this pa.s.sage. No:--the exception is an irony! There was not one honest man in all Lucca!]

[Footnote 30:

"Intorno si mira Tutto smarrito da la grande angoscia Ch'egli ha sofferta, e guardando sospira."

This is one of the most terribly natural pictures of agonised astonishment ever painted.]

[Footnote 31: I retain this pa.s.sage, horrible as it is to Protestant ears, because it is not only an instance of Dante's own audacity, but a salutary warning specimen of the extremes of impiety generated by extreme superst.i.tion; for their first cause is the degradation of the Divine character. Another, no doubt, is the impulsive vehemence of the South. I have heard more blasphemies, in the course of half an hour, from the lips of an Italian postilion, than are probably uttered in England, by people not out of their senses, for a whole year. Yet the words, after all, were mere words; for the man was a good-natured fellow, and I believe presented no image to his mind of anything he was saying. Dante, however, would certainly not have taught him better by attempting to frighten him. A violent word would have only produced more violence. Yet this was the idle round which the great poet thought it best to run!]

[Footnote 32: Cianfa, probably a condottiere of Mrs. Radcliffe's sort, and robber on a large scale, is said to have been one of the Donati family, connexions of the poet by marriage.]

[Footnote 33: This, and the transformation that follows, may well excite the pride of such a poet as Dante; though it is curious to see how he selects inventions of this kind as special grounds of self-complacency.

They are the most appalling ever yet produced.]

[Footnote 34: Guido, Conte di Montefeltro, a celebrated soldier of that day, became a Franciscan in his old age, in order to repent of his sins; but, being consulted in his cloister by Pope Boniface on the best mode of getting possession of an estate belonging to the Colonna family, and being promised absolution for his sins in the lump, including the opinion requested, he recommended the holy father to "promise much, and perform nothing" (_molto promettere, e nulla attendere_).]

[Footnote 35: Dolcino was a Lombard friar at the beginning of the fourteenth century, who is said to have preached a community of goods, including women, and to have pretended to a divine mission for reforming the church. He appears to have made a considerable impression, having thousands of followers, but was ultimately seized in the mountains where they lived, and burnt with his female companion Margarita, and many others. Landino says he was very eloquent, and that "both he and Margarita endured their fate with a firmness worthy of a better cause."

Probably his real history is not known, for want of somebody in such times bold enough to write it.]

[Footnote 36: Literally, "under the breastplate of knowing himself to be pure:"

"Sotto l'osbergo del sentirsi pura."

The expression is deservedly admired; but it is not allowable in English, and it is the only one admitting no equivalent which I have met with in the whole poem. It might be argued, perhaps, against the perfection of the pa.s.sage, that a good "conscience," and a man's "knowing himself to be pure," are a tautology; for Dante himself has already used that word;

"Conscienzia m'a.s.sicura; La buona compagnia che l'uom francheggia Sotto l'osbergo," &c.

But still we feel the impulsive beauty of the phrase; and I wish I could have kept it.]

[Foonote 37: This ghastly fiction is a rare instance of the meeting of physical horror with the truest pathos.]

[Footnote 38: The reader will not fail to notice this characteristic instance of the ferocity of the time.]

[Footnote 39: This is admirable sentiment; and it must have been no ordinary consciousness of dignity in general which could have made Dante allow himself to be the person rebuked for having forgotten it. Perhaps it was a sort of penance for his having, on some occasion, fallen into the unworthiness.]

[Footnote 40: By the Saracens in Roncesvalles; afterwards so favourite a topic with the poets. The circ.u.mstance of the horn is taken from the Chronicle of the pretended Archbishop Turpin, chapter xxiv.]

[Footnote 41: The gaping monotony of this jargon, full of the vowel _a_, is admirably suited to the mouth of the vast, half-stupid speaker. It is like a babble of the gigantic infancy of the world.]

[Footnote 42:

"Ne s chinato li fece dimora, E come albero in nave si lev."

A magnificent image! I have retained the idiomatic expression of the original, _raised himself_, instead of saying rose, because it seemed to me to give the more grand and deliberate image.]

[Footnote 43: Of "_mamma_" and "_babbo_," says the primitive poet. We have corresponding words in English, but the feeling they produce is not identical. The lesser fervour of the northern nations renders them, in some respects, more sophisticate than they suspect, compared with the "artful" Italians.]

[Footnote 44: Alessandro and Napoleon degli Alberti, sons of Alberto, lord of the valley of Falterona in Tuscany. After their father's death they tyrannised over the neighbouring districts, and finally had a mortal quarrel. The name of Napoleon used to be so rare till of late years, even in Italian books, that it gives one a kind of interesting surprise to meet with it.]

[Footnote 45:

"Se _voler_ fu, o destino o fortuna, Non so."

What does the Christian reader think of that?]

[Footnote 46: Latrando.]

[Footnote 47: Bocca degli Abbati, whose soul barks like a dog, occasioned the defeat of the Guelfs at Montaperto, in the year 1260, by treacherously cutting off the hand of the standard-bearer.]

[Footnote 48: This is the famous story of Ugolino, who betrayed the castles of Pisa to the Florentines, and was starved with his children in the Tower of Famine.]

[Footnote 49: I should be loath to disturb the inimitable pathos of this story, if there did not seem grounds for believing that the poet was too hasty in giving credit to parts of it, particularly the ages of some of his fellow-prisoners, and the guilt of the archbishop. See the Appendix to this volume.]

[Footnote 50: This is the most tremendous lampoon, as far as I am aware, in the whole circle of literature.]

[Footnote 51: "Cortesia fu lui esser villano." This is the foulest blot which Dante has cast on his own character in all his poem (short of the cruelties he thinks fit to attribute to G.o.d). It is argued that he is cruel and false, out of hatred to cruelty and falsehood. But why then add to the sum of both? and towards a man, too, supposed to be suffering eternally? It is idle to discern in such barbarous inconsistencies any thing but the writer's own contributions to the stock of them. The utmost credit for right feeling is not to be given on every occasion to a man who refuses it to every one else.]

[Footnote 52: "La creatura ch'ebbe il bel sembiante."

This is touching; but the reader may as well be prepared for a total failure in Dante's conception of Satan, especially the English reader, accustomed to the sublimity of Milton's. Granting that the Roman Catholic poet intended to honour the fallen angel with no sublimity, but to render him an object of mere hate and dread, he has overdone and degraded the picture into caricature. A great stupid being, stuck up in ice, with three faces, one of which is yellow, and three mouths, each eating a sinner, one of those sinners being Brutus, is an object for derision; and the way in which he eats these, his everlasting _bonnes-bouches,_ divides derision with disgust. The pa.s.sage must be given, otherwise the abstract of the poem would be incomplete; but I cannot help thinking it the worst anti-climax ever fallen into by a great poet.]

[Footnote 53: This silence is, at all events, a compliment to Brutus, especially from a man like Dante, and the more because it is extorted.

Dante, no doubt, hated all treachery, particularly treachery to the leader of his beloved Roman emperors; forgetting three things; first, that Caesar was guilty of treachery himself to the Roman people; second, that he, Dante, has put Curio in h.e.l.l for advising Caesar to cross the Rubicon, though he has put the crosser among the good Pagans; and third, that Brutus was educated in the belief that the punishment of such treachery as Caesar's by a.s.sa.s.sination was one of the first of duties.

How differently has Shakspeare, himself an aristocratic rather than democratic poet, and full of just doubt of the motives of a.s.sa.s.sins in general, treated the error of the thoughtful, conscientious, Platonic philosopher!]

[Footnote 54: At the close of this medley of genius, pathos, absurdity, sublimity, horror, and revoltingness, it is impossible for any reflecting heart to avoid asking, _Cui bono?_ What is the good of it to the poor wretches, if we are to suppose it true? and what to the world--except, indeed, as a poetic study and a warning against degrading notions of G.o.d--if we are to take it simply as a fiction? Theology, disdaining both questions, has an answer confessedly incomprehensible.

Humanity replies: a.s.sume not premises for which you have worse than no proofs.]

II.