The Bridling of Pegasus: Prose Papers on Poetry

by Alfred Austin

Se nuova legge non ti toglie
Memoria o uso all’ amoroso canto,
Che mi solea quetar tutte mie voglie,
Di ciò ti piaccia consolare alquanto
L’anima mia, che con la sua persona
Venendo qui, è affannata tanto.
If by new dispensation not deprived
Of the remembrance of belovëd song
Wherewith you used to soothe my restlessness,
I pray you now a little while assuage
My spirit, which, since burdened with the body
In journeying here, is wearied utterly.

Quickly comes the melodious response:

“Amor che nella mente mi ragiona,”
Cominciò egli allor sì dolcemente,
Che la dolcezza ancor dentro mi suona.
Lo mio Maestro, ed io, e quella gente
Ch’eran con lui, parevan sì contenti,
Com’a nessun toccasse altro la mente.
“Love that holds high discourse within mind,”
With such sweet tenderness he thus began
That still the sweetness lingers in my ear.
Virgil, and I, and that uncarnal group
That with him were, so captivated seemed,
That in our hearts was room for naught beside.

Not so, however, the guide of the spirits newly arrived in Purgatory. Seeing them “fissi ed attenti alle sue note,” enthralled by Casella’s singing, he begins to rate them soundly as “spiriti lenti,” lazy, loitering spirits, asks them what they mean by thus halting on the way, and bids them hasten to the spot where they will be gradually purged of their earthly offences, and be admitted to the face of God. The canto closes with the following exquisite lines:

Come quando, cogliendo biada o loglio,
Gli colombi adunati alla pastura,
Queti, senza mostrar l’usato orgoglio,
Se cosa appare ond’ elli abbian paura,
Subitamente lasciano star l’esca,
Perchè assaliti son da maggior cura;
Così vid’io quella masnada fresca
Lasciar il canto, e fuggir ver la costa,
Com’uom che va, nè sa dove riesca.
As when a flight of doves, in quest of food,
Have settled on a field of wheat or tares,
And there still feed in silent quietude,
If by some apparition that they dread
A sudden scared, forthway desert the meal,
Since by more strong anxiety assailed,
So saw I that new-landed company
Forsake the song and seek the mountain side,
Like one who flees, but flies he knows not whither.

Now, if we consider this episode in its integrity, do we not find ourselves, from first to last, essentially in the region of the Ideal? Whether you believe in the existence of a local habitation named Purgatory, or you do not, none of us, not even Dante himself, has seen it, save with the mind’s eye. It was said of his austere countenance by his contemporaries that it was the face of the man who had seen Hell. But the phrase, after all, was figurative, and not even the divine poet had, with the bodily vision, seen what Virgil, in one of the most pathetic of his lines, calls the further ashore. Moreover, for awhile, and in what may be termed the exordium of the episode, Dante surrenders himself wholly to this Ideal, and treats it idealistically. First he discerns only two wings of pure white light, which, when he has grown more accustomed to their brightness, he perceives to be the Angel of the Lord, the steersman of the purgatorial bark:

Vedi che sdegna gli argomenti umani,
Sì che remo non vuol, nè altro velo
Che l’ale sue, tra liti sì lontani
······
Trattando l’aere con l’eterne penne—

lines that for ethereal beauty, are, I think unmatched; and I will not presume to render them into verse. But what they say is that the Angel had no need of mortal expedients, of sail, or oar, or anything beside, save his own wings, that fanned the air with their eternal breath. The barque, thus driven and thus steered, is equally unsubstantial and ideal, for it makes no ripple in the wave through which it glides. But at length—not, you may be quite sure, of purpose prepense, but guided by that unerring instinct which is the great poet’s supreme gift—Dante gradually passes from idealistic to realistic treatment of the episode, thereby compelling you, by what Shakespeare, in The Tempest, through the mouth of Prospero, calls “my so potent art,” to believe implicitly in its occurrence, even if your incapacity to linger too long in the rarefied atmosphere of the Ideal has begun to render you incredulous concerning it. For all at once he introduces Casella, Florence, his own past cares and labours there, the weariness of the spirit that comes over all of us, even from our very spiritual efforts, and the soothing power of tender music. Then, with a passing touch of happy egotism, which has such a charm for us in poets that are dead, but which, I am told, is resented, though perhaps not by the gracious or the wise, in living ones, Dante enforces our belief by representing Casella as forthwith chanting a line of the poet’s own that occurs in a Canzone of the Convito:

Amor che nella mente mi ragiona.
Love that holds high discourse within my mind.

For a moment we seem to be again transported into the pure realm of the Ideal, as not Dante and Virgil alone, but the souls just landed on the shores of Purgatory, are described as being so enthralled by the song—tutti fissi ed attenti—that they can think of and heed nothing else. But quickly comes another realistic touch in the reproof to the spellbound spirits not there to loiter listening to the strain, but to hurry forward to their destined bourne. Finally, as if to confirm the impression of absolute reality, while not removing us from the world, or withdrawing from us the charm, of the Ideal, the poet ends with the exquisite but familiar simile of the startled doves already recited to you.