Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

I. THE INFERNO*

D

ANTE, of whose "Divine Comedy" I shall speak in this and the two following papers,

was not only great, but one of the greatest of religious teachers. He was great in himself; he has been called "the voice of ten silent centuries." He was so great, and so conscious of his own greatness, that in his "Inferno," he calmly places himself among the six supremest poets known to him of all the ages; and posterity has fully ratified his judgment. What might be set down to insane vanity in smaller men, becomes in the greatest a calm consciousness of heaven-bestowed genius. "The man of great soul," says Aristotle, "is one who counts himself worthy of great things, being worthy." Few have quietly dared to claim this immortality whom time has not justified. Even an Ovid could boast

* In one or two passages of the paper I quote from a Lecture delivered by me in America.

that neither the wrath of Jove, nor fire, nor iron, nor devouring time could destroy his poem. Even a Horace could say, "Exegi monumentum ære perennius." Milton determined while yet a youth "to write something which the world would not willingly let die." Bacon, with dignified confidence, entrusted his reputation to future ages. Shakespeare says, even of one of his sonnets,

"Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Of princes, shall outlast this powerful verse."

And not only was Dante so great in himself, but he deals with the greatest of all subjects. He teaches verities the most awful and the most eternal, at some few of which we may be able to glance. And, once more, his great work, "The Divine Comedy," as it is called, concentrates into itself the essence of many of the most remarkable outcomes of all human literature in all their forms. Like the "Confessions" of St. Augustine and of Rousseau, and like the "Samson Agonistes" of Milton, it is, in part, a scarcely-veiled autobiography. Like Spenser's "Faerie Queene," it is an allegory. Like the "Apocalypse," and like Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," it is a vision. Like Goethe's "Faust," it is a soul's history. Like the "Paradise Lost," it embraces earth and heaven and hell. Like Wordsworth's "Excursion," it is

"

A song divine of high and passionate thoughts
To their own music chanted."

It contains, like the works of the Roman Satirists, many political elements. Like the De Rerum Natura of Lucretius, it sums up all the results of the then existing knowledge. Thus it represents the main life-work of one of the greatest of human souls. It is the intensest of beacon-lights kindled by one of the loftiest of human intellects. And these multitudinous elements are all harmoniously fused into one by what Coleridge calls the "esemplastic," the unifying force of a supreme imagination. Hence we may well say of the "Divine Comedy" with Dean Church that it is "one of the landmarks of history. More than a magnificent poem; more than the beginning of a language and the opening of a national literature; more than the inspirer of art and the glory of a great people; it is one of those rare and solemn monuments of the mind's power which measure and test what it can reach to; which rise up ineffaceably, and for ever, as time goes on, marking out its advance by greater divisions than its centuries, and adopted as epochs by the consent of all who come after. They who know it best would wish others also to know the power of that wonderful poem; its austere yet subduing beauty; what force there is in its free and earnest and solemn verse to strengthen, to tranquillise, to console. Its seriousness has put to shame their trifling; its magnanimity, their faint-heartedness; its living energy, their indolence. Its stern and sad grandeur

has rebuked low thoughts; its thrilling tenderness has overcome sullenness and assuaged distress; its strong faith has quelled despair and soothed perplexity; its vast grasp has imported the sense of harmony to clashing truths." "After holding converse with such grandeur," says Mr. Wicksteed, our lives can never be so small again."

But if we desire to learn the intense and infinitely important, and uniquely elevating lessons which this great poet can impart to us more powerfully than any human teacher except Shakespeare, we must not only read but study him. He does not care for ignorant, feeble, otiose readers, whose ordinary pabulum is the tenth-rate novel or the society newspaper. He ignores "the shoreless lake of human ditchwater," and "the stagnant gooseponds of village gossip." The seed of his poem was sown in tears, and reaped in misery. For many years, he says, it made him lean with thought. He warns off the frivolous and the foolish, and tells them, truly, that they will be unable to follow his little bark as it speeds fearlessly on its way through the deep waters of Eternity. Like the kindred soul of Milton, he cares only for "fit audience though few."

Two hints may help us to understand the poem. i. First, as to the name of the poem. Why is it called "The Divine Comedy"? The name "Divine" was not given to it by Dante. It expresses the humble admiration of subsequent ages.

« AnteriorContinuar »