Handbook of Universal Literature, From the Best and Latest Authorities

by Anne C. Lynch Botta

3. DANTE (1265-1331).—No poet had yet arisen gifted with absolute power over the empire of the soul; no philosopher had pierced into the depths of feeling and of thought, when Dante, the greatest name of Italy and the father of Italian literature, appeared in the might of his genius, and availing himself of the rude and imperfect materials within his reach, constructed his magnificent work. Dante was born in Florence, of the noble family of Alighieri, which was attached to the papal, or Guelph party, in opposition to the imperial, or Ghibelline. He was but a child when death deprived him of his father; but his mother took the greatest pains with his education, placing him under the tuition of Brunetto Latini, and other masters of eminence. He early made great progress, not only in an acquaintance with classical literature and politics, but in music, drawing, horsemanship, and other accomplishments suitable to his station. As he grew up, he pursued his studies in the universities of Padua, Bologna, and Paris. He became an accomplished scholar, and at the same time appeared in public as a gallant and high-bred man of the world. At the age of twenty-five, he took arms on the side of the Florentine Guelphs, and distinguished himself in two battles against the Ghibellines of Arezzo and Pisa. But before Dante was either a student or a soldier, he had become a lover; and this character, above all others, was impressed upon him for life. At a May-day festival, when only nine years of age, he had singled out a girl of his own age, by the name of Bice, or Beatrice, who thenceforward became the object of his constant and passionate affection, or the symbol of all human wisdom and perfection. Before his twenty-fifth year she was separated from him by death, but his passion was refined, not extinguished by this event; not buried with her body but translated with her soul, which was its object. On the other hand, the affection of Beatrice for the poet troubled her spirit amid the bliss of Paradise, and the visions of the eternal world with which he was favored were a device of hers for reclaiming him from sin, and preparing him for everlasting companionship with herself.

At the age of thirty-five he was elected prior, or supreme magistrate of Florence, an honor from which he dates all his subsequent misfortunes. During his priorship, the citizens were divided into two factions called the Neri and Bianchi, as bitterly opposed to each other as both had been to the Ghibellines. In the absence of Dante on an embassy to Rome, a pretext was found by the Neri, his opponents, for exciting the populace against him. His dwelling was demolished, his property confiscated, himself and his friends condemned to perpetual exile, with the provision that, if taken, they should be burned alive. After a fruitless attempt, by himself and his party, to surprise Florence, he quitted his companions in disgust, and passed the remainder of his life in wandering from one court of Italy to another, eating the bitter bread of dependence, which was granted him often as an alms. The greater part of his poem was composed during this period; but it appears that till the end of his life he continued to retouch the work.

The last and most generous patron of Dante was Guido di Polenta, lord of Ravenna, and father of Francesca da Rimini, whose fatal love forms one of the most beautiful episodes of this poem. Polenta treated him, not as a dependent but as an honored guest, and in a dispute with the Republic of Venice he employed the poet as his ambassador, to effect a reconciliation; but he was refused even an audience, and, returning disappointed and broken-hearted to Ravenna, he died soon after at the age of fifty-six, having been in exile nineteen years.

His fellow-citizens, who had closed their hearts and their gates against him while living, now deeply bewailed his death; and, during the two succeeding centuries, embassy after embassy was vainly sent from Florence to recover his honored remains. Not long after his death, those who had exiled him and confiscated his property provided that his poem should be read and expounded to the people in a church. Boccaccio was appointed to this professorship. Before the end of the sixteenth century, the "Divine Comedy" had gone through sixty editions.

The Divine Comedy is one of the greatest monuments of human genius. It is an allegory conceived in the form of a vision, which was the most popular style of poetry at that age. At the close of the year 1300 Dante represents himself as lost in a forest at the foot of a hill, near Jerusalem. He wishes to ascend it, but is prevented by a panther, a lion, and a she-wolf which beset the way. He is met by Virgil, who tells him that he is sent by Beatrice as a guide through the realm of shadows, hell, and purgatory, and that she will afterwards lead him up to heaven. They pass the gates of hell, and penetrate into the dismal region beyond. This, as represented by Dante, consists of nine circles, forming an inverted cone, of the size of the earth, each succeeding circle being lower and narrower than the former, while Lucifer is chained in the centre and at the bottom of the dreadful crater. Each circle contains various cavities, where the punishments vary in proportion to the guilt, and the suffering increases in intensity as the circles descend and contract. In the first circle were neither cries nor tears, but the eternal sighs of those who, having never received Christian baptism, were, according to the poet's creed, forever excluded from the abodes of bliss. In the next circle, appropriated to those whose souls had been lost by the indulgence of guilty love, the poet recognizes the unhappy Francesca da Rimini, whose history forms one of the most beautiful episodes of the poem. The third circle includes gluttons; the fourth misers and spendthrifts; each succeeding circle embracing what the poet deems a deeper shade of guilt, and inflicting appropriate punishment. The Christian and heathen systems of theology are here freely interwoven. We have Minos visiting the Stygian Lake, where heretics are burning; we meet Cerberus and the harpies, and we accompany the poet across several of the fabulous rivers of Erebus. A fearful scene appears in the deepest circle of the infernal abodes. Here, among those who have betrayed their country, and are entombed in eternal ice, is Count Ugolino, who, by a series of treasons, had made himself master of Pisa. He is gnawing with savage ferocity the skull of the archbishop of that state, who had condemned him and his children to die by starvation. The arch-traitor, Satan, stands fixed in the centre of hell and of the earth. All the streams of guilt keep flowing back to him as their source, and from beneath his threefold visage issue six gigantic wings with which he vainly struggles to raise himself, and thus produces winds which freeze him more firmly in the marsh.

After leaving the infernal regions, and entering purgatory, they find an immense cone divided into seven circles, each of which is devoted to the expiation of one of the seven mortal sins. The proud are overwhelmed with enormous weights; the envious are clothed in garments of horse-hair, their eye-lids closed; the choleric are suffocated with smoke; the indolent are compelled to run about continually; the avaricious are prostrated upon the earth; epicures are afflicted with hunger and thirst; and the incontinent expiate their crimes in fire. In this portion of the work, however, while there is much to admire, there is less to excite and sustain the interest. On the summit of the purgatorial mountain is the terrestrial paradise, whence is the only assent to the celestial. Beatrice, the object of his early and constant affection, descends hither to meet the poet. Virgil disappears, and she becomes his only guide. She conducts him through the nine heavens, and makes him acquainted with the great men who, by their virtuous lives, have deserved the highest enjoyments of eternity. In the ninth celestial sphere, Dante is favored with a manifestation of divinity, veiled, however, by three hierarchies of attending angels. He sees the Virgin Mary, and the saints of the Old and New Testament, and by these personages, and by Beatrice, all his doubts and difficulties are finally solved, and the conclusion leaves him absorbed in the beatific vision.

The allegorical meaning of the poem is hidden under the literal one. Dante, traveling through the invisible world, is a symbol of mankind aiming at the double object of temporal and eternal happiness. The forest typifies the civil and religious confusion of society deprived of its two judges, the pope and the emperor. The three beasts are the powers which offered the greatest obstacles to Dante's designs, Florence, France, and the papal court. Virgil represents reason and the empire, and Beatrice symbolizes the supernatural aid, without which man cannot attain the supreme end, which is God.

But the merit of the poem is that for the first time classic art is transferred into a Romance form. Dante is, above all, a great artist. Whether he describes nature, analyzes passions, curses the vices, or sings hymns to the virtues, he is always wonderful for the grandeur and delicacy of his art. He took his materials from mythology, history, and philosophy, but more especially from his own passions of hatred and love, breathed into them the breath of genius and produced the greatest work of modern times.

The personal interest that he brings to bear on the historical representation of the three worlds is that which most interests and stirs us. The Divine Comedy is not only the most lifelike drama of the thoughts and feelings that moved men at that time, but it is also the most spontaneous and clear reflection of the individual feelings of the poet, who remakes history after his own passions, and who is the real chastiser of the sins and rewarder of the virtues. He defined the destiny of Italian literature in the Middle Ages, and began the great era of the Renaissance.

4. PETRARCH.—Petrarch (1304-1374) belonged to a respected Florentine family. His father was the personal friend of Dante, and a partaker of the same exile. While at Avignon, then the seat of the papal court, on one occasion he made an excursion to the fountain of Vaucluse, taking with him his son, the future poet, then in the tenth year of his age. The wild and solitary aspect of the place inspired the boy with an enthusiasm beyond his years, leaving an impression which was never afterwards effaced, and which affected his future life and writings. As Petrarch grew up, unlike the haughty, taciturn, and sarcastic Dante, he seems to have made friends wherever he went. With splendid talents, engaging manners, a handsome person, and an affectionate and generous disposition, he became the darling of his age, a man whom princes delighted to honor. At the age of twenty-three, he first met Laura de Sade in a church at Avignon. She was only twenty years of age, and had been for three years the wife of a patrician of that city. Laura was not more distinguished for her beauty and fortune than for the unsullied purity of her manners in a licentious court, where she was one of the chief ornaments. The sight of her beauty inspired the young poet with an affection which was as pure and virtuous as it was tender and passionate. He poured forth in song the fervor of his love and the bitterness of his grief. Upwards of three hundred sonnets, written at various times, commemorate all the little circumstances of this attachment, and describe the favors which, during an acquaintance of fifteen or twenty years, never exceeded a kind word, a look less severe than usual, or a passing expression of regret at parting. He was not permitted to visit at Laura's house; he had no opportunity of seeing her except at mass, at the brilliant levees of the pope, or in private assemblies of beauty and fashion: but she forever remained the dominant object of his existence. He purchased a house at Vaucluse, and there, shut in by lofty and craggy heights, the river Sorgue traversing the valley on one side, amidst hills clothed with umbrageous trees, cheered only by the song of birds, the poet passed his lonely days. Again and again he made tours through Italy, Spain, and Flanders, during one of which he was crowned with the poet's laurel at Rome, but he always returned to Vaucluse, to Avignon, to Laura. Thus years passed away. Laura became the mother of a numerous family, and time and care made havoc of her youthful beauty. Meanwhile, the sonnets of Petrarch had spread her fame throughout France and Italy, and attracted many to the court of Avignon, who were surprised and disappointed at the sight of her whom they had believed to be the loveliest of mortals. In 1347, during the absence of the poet from Avignon, Laura fell a victim to the plague, just twenty-one years from the day that Petrarch first met her. Now all his love was deepened and consecrated, and the effusions of his poetic genius became more melancholy, more passionate, and more beautiful than ever. He declined the offices and honors that his countrymen offered him, and passed his life in retirement. He was found one morning by his attendants dead in his library, his head resting on a book.