G. Rossetti.
H.
1st February 1842.
My very dear Sir,
... Have you ever read Le Livre Mystique of De Balzac, a living French author—a book published in 1836? Read it, for it is truly curious. It is divided into three parts, and expounds mysticism in mystic language, somewhat less obscure than in the ancient works of like kind. In the first part he introduces a certain Louis Lambert as expounder of mysticism; in the second he introduces Dante at the school of Sigier in Paris, “al Vico degli Strami, Sillogizzando invidiosi veri”:[90] in the third he introduces a nephew of Swedenborg, female and male, a fantastic and changeful being, Seraphita-Seraphitus; and she-and-he expresses herself in terms fit to set the soundest head in a whirl,—and says among other things: “L’union qui se fait d’un esprit d’amour et d’un esprit de sagesse met la créature à l’état divin, pendant que son âme est femme et que son corps est homme; dernière expression humaine où l’esprit l’emporte sur la forme, et la forme se débat encore contre l’esprit divin.... Ainsi le naturel (état dans lequel sont les êtres non régénérés), le spirituel (état dans lequel sont les esprits angéliques), et le divin (état dans lequel demeure l’ange avant de briser son enveloppe), sont les trois degrés de l’exister par lesquels l’homme parvient au ciel.” (Vol. II. p. 102.) And so on to a large extent. What seems to me most noticeable is to see Dante and Swedenborg put on the same footing. And Reghellini says plainly that Dante was a Freemason (vide Vol. III. pp. 48, 49). And Ragon affirms the same (pp. 290-332)....
Your most attached
G. Rossetti.
No. 3.—From Three Letters from Seymour [Barone] Kirkup to Gabriele Rossetti
[Mr Seymour Kirkup, an English painter and man of letters established in Florence, became an enthusiastic adherent to Rossetti’s scheme of Dantesque interpretation, from reading his Comment on the Inferno and his Spirito Antipapale. In his later years he was made a Barone of the Italian Kingdom, and he died at a great age towards 1880. The following extracts relate chiefly to the deeply interesting discovery, in which he bore a very principal part, of the portrait of Dante by Giotto in the Chapel of the Podestà, in the Bargello of Florence.]