Vagliami il lungo studio e il grande amore,
Che m’han fatto cercar lo tuo volume.
But love and study of Dante will not of themselves suffice to make discourse concerning him interesting or adequate; and I am deeply impressed with the disadvantages under which I labour this evening. But my task has been made even exceptionally perilous, since it has been preceded by the entrancing influence of music, and music that borrowed an added charm from the melodious words of the poet himself. May it not be with you as it was with him when the musician Casella—“Casella mio”—acceded to his request in the Purgatorial Realm, and sang to him, he says,
sì dolcemente,
Che la dolcezza ancor dentro mi suona—
sang to him so sweetly that the sweetness of it still sounded in his ears; words that strangely recall the couplet in Wordsworth, though I scarcely think Wordsworth was a Dante scholar:
The music in my heart I bore
Long after it was heard no more.
Many of you remember, I am sure, the entire passage in the second canto of the Purgatorio. But, since there may be some who have forgotten it—and the best passages in the Divina Commedia can never be recalled too often—and since, moreover, it will serve as a fitting introduction to the theme on which I propose for a brief while to descant this evening, let me recall it to your remembrance. Companioned by Virgil, and newly arrived on the shores of Purgatory, Dante perceives a barque approaching, so swift and light that it causes no ripple on the water, driven and steered only by the wings of an Angel of the Lord, and carrying a hundred disembodied spirits, singing “In exitu Israel de Ægypto.” As they disembark, one of them recognises Dante, and stretches out his arms to embrace the Poet. The passage is too beautiful to be shorn of its loveliness either by curtailment or by mere translation:
Io vidi uno di lor trarresi avante
Per abbracciarmi con sì grande affetto,
Che mosse me a far lo somigliante.
O ombre vane, fuor che nell’ aspetto!
Tre volte dietro a lei le mani avvinsi,
E tante mi tornai con esse al petto.
Among them was there one who forward pressed,
So keen to fold me to his heart, that I
Instinctively was moved to do the like.
O shades intangible, save in your seeming!
Toward him did I thrice outstretch my arms,
And thrice they fell back empty to my side.[2]
Words that will recall to many of you the lines in the second book of the Æneid, where Æneas describes to Dido how the phantom of his perished wife appeared to him as he was seeking for her through the flames and smoke of Troy, and how in vain he strove to fold her in one farewell embrace.
Ter conatus ibi collo dare bracchia circum,
Ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago.
Similarly, the incorporeal figure in the Divine Comedy bids Dante desist from the attempt to embrace him, since it is useless; and then Dante discerns it is that of Casella, who used oftentimes in Florence to sing to him, and now assures the poet that, as he loved him upon earth, so here he loves him still. Encouraged by the tender words, Dante calls him “Casella mio,” and addresses to him the following request: