CHAPTER IX.

DANTE AND BEATRICE CONTINUED.

Through the two first parts of the Divina Commedia, (Hell and

Purgatory,) Beatrice is merely announced to the reader--she does not

appear in person; for what should the sinless and sanctified spirit of

Beatrice do in those abodes of eternal anguish and expiatory torment?

Her appearance, however, in due time and place, is prepared and shadowed

forth in many beautiful allusions: for instance, it is she, who

descending from the empyreal height, sends Virgil to be the deliverer of

Dante in the mysterious forest, and his guide through the abysses of

torment.

Io son Beatrice che ti faccio andare;

Vegno di loco ove tornar disio:

Amor mi mosse che mi fa parlare.

INFERNO, c. 2.

"I who now bid thee on this errand forth

Am Beatrice; from a place I come

Revisited with joy; love brought me thence,

Who prompts my speech."

CAREY'S TRANS.

And she is _indicated_, as it were, several times in the course of the

poem, in a manner which prepares us for the sublimity with which she is

at length introduced, in all the majesty of a superior nature, all the

dreamy splendour of an ideal presence, and all the melancholy charm of a

beloved and lamented reality. When Dante has left the confines of

Purgatory, a wondrous chariot approaches from afar, surrounded by a

flight of angelic beings, and veiled in a cloud of flowers ("un nuvola

di fiori," is the beautiful expression.)--A female form is at length

apparent in the midst of this angelic pomp, seated in the car, and

"robed in hues of living flame:" she is veiled: he cannot discern her

features, but there moves a hidden virtue from her,

At whose touch

The power of ancient love was strong within him.

He recognises the influence which even in his childish days had smote

him--

Che gia m'avea trafitto

Prima ch' io fuor della puerizia fosse;

and his failing heart and quivering frame confess the thrilling presence

of his Beatrice--

Conosco i segni dell'antica fiamma!

The whole passage is as beautifully wrought as it is feelingly and truly

conceived.

Beatrice,--no longer the soft, frail, and feminine being he had known

and loved upon earth, but an admonishing spirit,--rises up in her

chariot,

And with a mien

Of that stern majesty which doth surround

A mother's presence to her awe-struck child,

She looked--a flavour of such bitterness

Was mingled with her pity!

CAREY'S TRANS.

Dante then puts into her mouth the most severe yet eloquent accusation

against himself: while he stands weeping by, bowed down by shame and

anguish. She accuses him before the listening angels for his neglected

time, his wasted talents, his forgetfulness of her, when she was no

longer upon earth to lead him with the light of her "youthful eyes,"

(gli occhi giovinetti.)

Soon as I had changed

My mortal for immortal, then he left me,

And gave himself to others; when from flesh

To spirit I had risen, and increase

Of beauty and of virtue circled me,

I was less dear to him and valued less!

PURGATORY, C. 30.--CAREY'S TRANS.

This praise of herself and stern upbraiding of her lover, would sound

harsh from woman's lips, but have a solemnity, and even a sublimity, as

uttered by a disembodied and angelic being. When Dante, weeping, falters

out a faint excuse--

Thy fair looks withdrawn,

Things present with deceitful pleasures turned

My steps aside,--

she answers by reproaching him with his inconstancy to her memory:--

Never didst thou spy

In art or nature aught so passing sweet

As were the limbs that in their beauteous frame

Enclosed me, and are scattered now in dust.

If sweetest thing thus failed thee with my death,

What afterward of mortal should thy wish

Have tempted?

PURGATORY, c. 31.

And she rebukes him, for that he could stoop from the memory of her love

to be the thrall of a _slight girl_. This last expression is supposed to

allude either to Dante's unfortunate marriage with Gemma Donati,[44] or

to the attachment he formed during his exile for a beautiful Lucchese

named Gentucca, the subject of several of his poems. But,

notwithstanding all this severity of censure, Dante, gazing on his

divine monitress, is so rapt by her loveliness, his eyes so eager to

recompence themselves for "their ten years' thirst," (Beatrice had been

dead ten years) that not being yet freed from the stain of his earthly

nature, he is warned not to gaze "too fixedly" on her charms. After a

farther probation, Beatrice introduces him into the various spheres

which compose the celestial paradise; and thenceforward she certainly

assumes the characteristics of an allegorical being. The true

distinction seems this, that Dante has not represented Divine Wisdom

under the name and form of Beatrice, but the more to exalt his Beatrice,

he has clothed her in the attributes of Divine Wisdom.

She at length ascends with him into the Heaven of Heavens, to the source

of eternal and uncreated light, without shadow and without bound; and

when Dante looks round for her, he finds she has quitted his side, and

has taken her place throned among the supremely blessed, "as far above

him as the region of thunder is above the centre of the sea:" he gazes

up at her in a rapture of love and devotion, and in a sublime apostrophe

invokes her still to continue her favour towards him. She looks down

upon him from her effulgent height, smiles on him with celestial

sweetness, and then fixing her eyes on the eternal fountain of glory, is

absorbed in ecstasy. Here we leave her: the poet had touched the limits

of permitted thought; the seraph wings of imagination, borne upwards by

the inspiration of deep love, could no higher soar,--the audacity of

genius could dare no farther!

* * * * *

Dante died at Ravenna in 1321, and was sumptuously interred at the cost

of Guido da Polenta, the father of that unfortunate Francesca di Rimini,

whose story he has so exquisitely told in the fifth canto of the

Inferno. He left several sons and an only daughter, whom he had named

Beatrice, in remembrance of his early love: she became a nun at Ravenna.

Now where, in the name of all truth and all feeling, were the heads, or

rather the hearts, of those commentators, who could see nothing in the

Beatrice thus beautifully pourtrayed, thus tenderly lamented, and thus

sublimely commemorated, but a mere allegorical personage, the creation

of a poet's fancy? Nothing can come of nothing; and it was no unreal or

imaginary being who turned the course of Dante's ardent passions and

active spirit, and burning enthusiasm, into one sweeping torrent of love

and poetry, and gave to Italy and to the world the Divina Commedia!

FOOTNOTES:

[44] This marriage was one of policy, and negociated by the friends of

Dante and of Gemma Donati: her temper was violent and harsh, and their

domestic peace was, probably, not increased by Dante's obstinate regret

for his first love.