Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

CANTO VII.

[ocr errors]

somewhat defective in clearness; for (accidioso fummo) lazy smoke' induces many to contend that it is no description of anger, but merely sloth that is stifling in the bottom of Styx. But why make sloth more criminal than anger? Dante does quite the contrary in Purgatory: nor would he have subverted there, the ethical scale which he had adopted here. Besides, the slothful are evidently included among the despicable crew who ne'er were living yet '(che mai non fur vivi (1)) and whom we saw in the Vestibule. The epithet 'sor. rowful' ( tristi ) applied to haters, has a twofold propriety; from hate being always melancholy, and from sorrowful' (tristo) and wicked' ( scellerato) being most commonly employed as synonimes in Italian. The 'lazy smoke of hate' comes near the Latin ira lenta, and still near the μñvis (ira permanens) of the Greeks. But the situation in which these haters are, being buried in the mud, is so naturally suggested by another Greek name for deep hate, xóros (ira vetus), that I can scarcely forbear affirming that Dante had it in his mind. Κότος is a derivative of κείμαι ( jaceo, vel sepultus sum) to lie buried (2).' It were to make our Author more habitually familiar with Greek than I ever intended (3): yet the coincidence of the wrathful striking about their members (nou

(1) Inferno, Canto 111. v. 64.

(2) Lexicon Ernest.

(3) Hell, Comment, Canto in. p. 200.

CANTO VIL.

pur con mano, ma con la testa, piedi, ec.) with the original signification of opy, and of that of haters with the radical meaning of zoros, makes me doubt, whether it would not be far more difficult to believe in such circumstances being casual, than to allow Dante was a little more versed in Greek, than was at first imagined.

[ocr errors][merged small]

I said there was a path close under the wall aud bordering the lake (1). It is along that path they

now go.

(1) Pag. 450.

COMMENT

HELL

CANTO THE EIGHTH.

4.

Having in last Canto entered the fifth circle, I

then noticed both the nature of its denizens and its form and dimensions. We left our travellers winding along the narrow path that skirts the baleful lake, and at length coming in sight of a tower situated on that same path. They still walk along the water's brim, and reach the tower whose summit long attracted their attention from its two small flames that incessantly kept up a telegraphie correspondence with another beacon-light far away over Styx. The meaning of these signals is soon revealed by the arrival of a boat; for this shows, that they served to inform the inhabitants of the lower circles of the approach of an additional lodger, for whom the infernal pinnace was to be dispatched. Under this error, the rugged mariner' rows quickly up; and is obliged to embark Virgil and Dante and convey them to the City in the centre of the lake in crossing which they have an adventure with one of its wild swimmers.

CANTO VIII.

At the gate of the town they land, but are denied admittance by its demoniac guard; and the Canto closes with the appearance of a glorious creature coming down from the better regions of hell to their assistance.

We are come to the proper place for proving, what I more than once premised, that the first Cantos of this poem were written before their Author's exile from Florence. Let me observe however, the line before us does not in itself convey any internal evidence in favour of what I advance, any more than this passage often quoted from Villani does against it: Dante while in exile wrote many songs, letters, and the Comedy (1). What does this imply ( if taken with the fair latitude to be conceded to the composer, not of a biographical memoir, but of an universal history) but simply, that Dante wrote the chief part of the Divine Comedy during his exile? -a position that is undeniable. His reputation, not only in science and politics, but in poetry, was fully established long previous to his exile; if he had never written a word of his COMEDY, he would still have been the founder of Italian poetry. He showed he was conscious of this from the very opening of this poem, by asserting that his beautiful Virgilian style had already secured his fame:

(1) Gio. Villani, Ist. Lib. Ix. cap. 135.

GANTO VII.

O Author! who did'st form my style

To beauty, that hath won me fame (1).

What is really astonishing, and argues Athenian superiority of intellect in the Florentines of that day, is that his intense poetry was popular not in the English, but the extensive, Tuscan sense of that word: for his verses were more commonly sung by the lowest of the people then, than ever those of Tasso have since been (2). It

(1) Tu se solo colui da cu'io tolsi

Lo bello stile che m'ha fatto onore.

Inferno, Canto, 1. v. 86.

(2) Proofs are extant: as a story about a black-smith chaunting some of Dante's verses in his smithy; and another of an ass-driver beguiling labour in a similar way while driving a parcel of asses near one of the gates in Florence. The ass-driver was exerting his lungs still more injuriously for the melody of the poet, than a carpenter whom I heard every night during an entire summer vociferating the Gernsalemme along the banks of the Arno the seventh Canto of it, I mean; for this is the favourite one with the Pisans, and, only the other day, a Vetturino driving me from Pisa to Leghorn performed from the first verse (Intanto Erminia infra, etc.) even to the very last (orribile armonia, etc.) without once stopping during the journey. Nor were the performer's closing notes ill adapted to his performance. The man who transmits the stories (Franco Sacchetti) was a contemporary of Petrarch and Boccaccio and almost, if not entirely, of Dante : for the precise year of Sachetti's birth is not ascertained. He was also one of the most distinguished noblemen of Florence; so that his authority is every way conclusive. Pelli represents him as saying the ass-driver was singing 'some verses of the Comedy' (un pezzo della sua Commedia. Mem. ec. p. 132); but this is one of Pelli's inaccuracies. Sacchetti says no such thing - for he only mentions the book of Dante, 'without noticing which of his books it was. It could not have been the COMEDY: for though some Cantos of it were written, they were not published, nor even shown to Dante's intimate friends. His first friend, Cavalcanti, probably knew of them, but no one else -not even Ser Dino Perrini, who, Boccaccio writes, was quanto più si potesse familiare ed amico di Dante. Comente. vol. 2. p. 69. The

« AnteriorContinuar »