Compare also the words in Isaiah (lx, 8), 'Who are these that fly as a cloud and as the doves to their windows?' (Qui sunt isti, qui ut nubes volant, et quæ columbæ ad fenestras suas ?)1 1 For further treatment of the Virgilian passages, see EDWARD MOORE, Studies, First Series, pp. 184-185. CHAPTER XLIV THE STARLING To cast before our mind's eye a vision of lost souls driven onward forever, swept along by the blast in Hell, even as they had been swept onward in the upper life to the end of their passions, Dante uses an image of extraordinary power. These beaten, whirling souls of the lustful damned are countless, scarcely to be distinguished as individuals, made dusky by the gloom. La bufera infernal che mai non resta, 1 Not diminutive in meaning. 'Storno' is the simple form, but VINCENZO TANARO (Scelta di Curios. Lett. vol. 217, p. 191) speaks of 'i stornelli giovani,' and FREDERICK II (De A. V. cum A. I, cap. 18) uses 'sturnelli' (= Dante's stornei) as equivalent to 'sturni.' In Dante's time, starlings were very common. TANARO (loc. cit.) tells how they appeared on the roofs of the dovecotes in spring, and left when the olives were ripe. Cf. also, FREDERICK II, op. cit., passim. Nel freddo tempo, a schiera larga e piena, Di qua, di là, di giù, di su gli mena : The infernal blast, which never knoweth rest And when destruction's very brink they reach, Then shriek, then scream and yell the frantic throng, But of diminished pain, one moment's hope. Though Dante, without the shadow of a doubt, borrowed the plan of this simile from Virgil, who likens the swept souls on the banks of Acheron to a swarm of birds driven in the chilly part of the year to sunny climates over sea, Dante has shown how to add the master touch. He deals not in generalities, but with a few swift strokes he throws before the eye a definite 2 Æn. VI, 308–312:— 'Quam multa in silvis autumni frigore primo truth in nature. For critic or commentator to spend more words clarifying such art would certainly be holding a lantern to the sun. 1 Any observer of nature has noticed our American ‘blackbirds,' which fly precisely like the two hundred odd species of European starlings. The various starlings differ greatly in colouring, but in shape and size they resemble our catbird. A note to letter XLVIII of WHITE'S Natural History of Selborne is apposite: 'The starlings also congregate in autumn. We saw a flight of these birds in the autumn of 1814, in King's County, Ireland, which literally darkened the air, and must have consisted of at least a hundred thousand; they were flying near the immense marshy plain near Banacher, through which the Shannon flows.' 'In the autumnal and hyemal months,' says Selby, 'these birds gather in immense flocks, and are particularly abundant in the fenny parts of Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, where they roost among the reeds.' Benvenuto da Imola comments thus, 'Starlings are lustful as birds naturally are; starlings are light, and so are lovers; starlings cross over to warm parts whither the heat of lechery calls them, and flee cold regions where there are no pretty women,' etc. CHAPTER XLV THE CRANE In the second circle of Hell Dante's ears were smitten by the wails, the shrieks and curses of the damned, who soon appeared to him through the darkness, driven on by the blast like a flock of starlings, and (writes Dante) As cranes that fly, and, singing still their lay, Borne onward ever with a mournful cry. E come i gru van cantando lor lai, Not only does Dante portray the cranes as flying in a long line in Indian file- rather than in a wedge, but they go singing their 'lay.' How strange a conception of the chattering pipe of the crane! Yet such an attribution to birds of a human poetic formula may be conventional, and is certainly not new; for the Provençal poet, Deude de Pradas, tells how the nightingale blithely sings his 'lays' beneath green leaves in spring: — 1 El temps qu'el rossinhol s'esjau E fai sos lais sotz lo vert fuelh.2 1 Inf. V, 46-49. 2 RAYNOUARD, Lexique, s.v. 'lai.' |