In meeting [Ulysses], as in meeting Pier della Vigna and Brunetto Latini, the preacher and the prophet are lost in the poet.
Here, again, is a false simplification. These passages have no digressive beauty. The case of Brunetto is parallel to that of Francesca. The emotion of the passage resides in Brunetto’s excellence in damnation—so admirable a soul, and so perverse.
e parve de costoro
Quegli che vince e non colui che perde.
And I think that if Mr. Sidgwick had pondered the strange words of Ulysses,
com’ altrui piacque,
he would not have said that the preacher and prophet are lost in the poet. “Preacher” and “prophet” are odious terms; but what Mr. Sidgwick designates by them is something which is certainly not “lost in the poet,” but is part of the poet.
A variety of passages might illustrate the assertion that no emotion is contemplated by Dante purely in and for itself. The emotion of the person, or the emotion with which our attitude appropriately invests the person, is never lost or diminished, is always preserved entire, but is modified by the position assigned to the person in the eternal scheme, is coloured by the atmosphere of that person’s residence in one of the three worlds. About none of Dante’s characters is there that ambiguity which affects Milton’s Lucifer. The damned preserve any degree of beauty or grandeur that ever rightly pertained to them, and this intensifies and also justifies their damnation. As Jason
Guarda quel grande che viene!
E per dolor non par lagrima spanda,