Imaginative creation has no mere vague sensory support; that is to say, it is not the unbridled divagation of the fancy among images of light, color, sounds and impressions; but it is a construction firmly allied to reality; and the more it holds fast to the forms of the external created world, the loftier will the value of its internal creations be. Even in imagining an unreal and superhuman world, the imagination must be contained within limits which recall those of reality. Man creates, but on the model of that divine creation in which he is materially and spiritually immersed.
In literary works of the highest order, such as the Divina Commedia, we admire the continual recurrence to the mind of the supreme poet of material and tangible things which illustrate by comparison the things imagined:
As doves
By fond desire invited, on wide wings
And firm to their sweet nest returning home,
Cleave the air, wafted by their will along;
Thus issued from that troop where Dido ranks,
They, through the ill air speeding.
(Carey's translation of Dante's Inferno, Canto V.)
And as a man with difficult short breath
Forespent with toiling, 'scaped from sea to shore,
Turns to the perilous wide waste, and stands
At gaze; e'en so my spirit, that yet fail'd
Struggling with terror, turn'd to view the straits
That none hath passed and lived.
(Carey's translation of Dante's Inferno, Canto I.)
As sheep that step from forth their fold by one
Or pairs, or three at once; meanwhile the rest
Stand fearfully, bending the eye and nose
To ground, and what the foremost does, that do.
The others, gathering round her if she stops,
Simple and quiet, nor the cause discern;
So saw I moving to advance the first
Who of that fortunate crew were at the head,
Of modest mien, and graceful in their gait.
(Carey's translation of Dante's Purgatorio, Canto III.)
As though translucent and smooth glass or wave
Clear and unmoved, and flowing not so deep
As that its bed is dark, the shape returns
So faint of our impictured lineaments
That on white forehead set, a pearl as strong
Comes to the eye; such saw I many a face
All stretch'd to speak.
(Carey's translation of Dante's Paradiso, Canto III.)
Dante's metaphors are profuse and marvelous, but every lofty writer and every great orator perpetually links the fruits of the imagination with the observation of fact; and then we say that he is a genius, full of imagination and knowledge, and that his thought is clear and vital.
"As a pack of hounds, after vainly pursuing a hare, returns in mortification to the master with hanging heads and drooping tails, so on that tumultuous night did the mercenaries return to Don Rodrigo's stronghold" (Manzoni, I promessi Sposi).