Читать книгу: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 17, March, 1859», страница 10

"Dante took great delight in music, and was an excellent draughtsman," says Aretino, his second biographer; and Boccaccio reports, that in his youth he took great pleasure in music, and was the friend of all the best musicians and singers of his time. There is, perhaps, in the whole range of literature, no nobler homage to Art than that which is contained in the tenth and twelfth cantos of the "Purgatory," in which Dante represents the Creator himself as using its means to impress the lessons of truth upon those whose souls were being purified for the final attainment of heaven. The passages are too long for extract, and though their wonderful beauty tempts us to linger over them, we must return to the course of the story of Dante's life as it appears in the concluding pages of the "New Life."

Many months had passed since Beatrice's death, when Dante happened to be in a place which recalled the past time to him, and filled him with grief. While standing here, he raised his eyes and saw a young and beautiful lady looking out from a window compassionately upon his sad aspect. The tenderness of her look touched his heart and moved his tears. Many times afterwards he saw her, and her face was always full of compassion, and pale, so that it reminded him of the look of his own most noble lady. But at length his eyes began to delight too much in seeing her; wherefore he often cursed their vanity, and esteemed himself as vile, and there was a hard battle within himself between the remembrance of his lady and the new desire of his eyes.

At length, he says, "The sight of this lady brought me into so new a condition, that I often thought of her as of one who pleased me exceedingly,—and I thought of her thus: 'This is a gentle, beautiful, young, and discreet lady, and she has perhaps appeared by will of Love, in order that my life may find repose.' And often I thought more amorously, so that my heart consented in it, that is, approved my reasoning. And after it had thus consented, I, moved as if by reason, reflected, and said to myself, 'Ah, what thought is this that in so vile a way seeks to console me, and leaves me scarcely any other thought?' Then another thought rose up and said, 'Now that thou hast been in so great tribulation of Love, why wilt thou not withdraw thyself from such bitterness? Thou seest that this is an inspiration that sets the desires of Love before thee, and proceeds from a place no less gentle than the eyes of the lady who has shown herself so pitiful toward thee.' Wherefore, I, having often thus combated with myself, wished to say some words of it. And as, in this battle of thoughts, those which spoke for her won the victory, it seemed to me becoming to address her, and I said this sonnet, which begins, 'A gentle thought'; and I called it gentle because I was speaking to a gentle lady,—but otherwise it was most vile.

 
  "A gentle thought that of you holds discourse
    Cometh now frequently with me to dwell,
    And in so sweet a way of Love doth tell,
    My heart to yield unto him he doth force.
  "'Who, then, is this,' the soul says to the heart,
    'Who cometh to bring comfort to our mind?
    And is his virtue of so potent kind,
    That other thoughts he maketh to depart?'
  "'O saddened soul,' the heart to her replies,
    'This is a little spirit fresh from Love,
    Whose own desires he before me brings;
  "'His very life and all his power doth move
    Forth from the sweet compassionating eyes
    Of her so grieved by our sufferings.'"
 

"One day, about the ninth hour, there arose within me a strong imagination opposed to this adversary of reason. For I seemed to see the glorified Beatrice in that crimson garment in which she had first appeared to my eyes, and she seemed to me young, of the same age as when I first saw her. Then I began to think of her, and, calling to mind the past time in its order, my heart began to repent bitterly of the desire by which it had so vilely allowed itself for some days to be possessed, contrary to the constancy of reason. And this so wicked desire being expelled, all my thoughts returned to their most gentle Beatrice, and I say that thenceforth I began to think of her with my heart possessed utterly by shame, so that it was often manifested by my sighs; for almost all of them, as they went forth, told what was discoursed of in my heart,—the name of that gentlest one, and how she had gone from us…. And I wished that my wicked desire and vain temptation might be known to be at an end; and that the rhymed words which I had before written might induce no doubt, I proposed to make a sonnet in which I would include what I have now told."

With this sonnet Dante ends the story in the "Vita Nuova" of the wandering of his eyes, and the short faithlessness of his heart; but it is retold with some additions in the "Convito" or "Banquet," a work written many years afterward; and in this later version there are some details which serve to fill out and illustrate the earlier narrative.¹² The same tender and refined feeling which inspires the "Vita Nuova" gives its tone to all the passages in which the poet recalls his youthful days and the memory of Beatrice in this work of his sorrowful manhood. In the midst of its serious and philosophic discourse this little story winds in and out its thread of personal recollection and of sweet romantic sentiment. It affords new insight into the recesses of Dante's heart, and exhibits the permanence of the gracious qualities of his youth.

Its opening sentence is full of the imagery of love. "Since the death of that blessed Beatrice who lives in heaven with the angels, and on earth with my soul, the star of Venus had twice shone in the different seasons, as the star of morning and of evening, when that gentle lady, of whom I have made mention near the close of the "New Life," first appeared before my eyes accompanied by Love, and gained some place in my mind. … And before this love could become perfect, there arose a great battle between the thought that sprang from it and that which was opposed to it, and which still held the fortress of my mind for the glorified Beatrice."¹³

And so hard was this struggle, and so painful, that Dante took refuge from it in the composition of a poem addressed to the Angelic Intelligences who move the third heaven, that is, the heaven of Venus; and it is to the exposition of the true meaning of this Canzone that the second book or treatise of the "Convito" is directed. In one of the later chapters he says, (and the passage is a most striking one, from its own declaration, as well as from its relation to the vision of the "Divina Commedia,")—"The life of my heart was wont to be a sweet and delightful thought, which often went to the feet of the Lord of those to whom I speak, that is, to God,—for, thinking, I contemplated the kingdom of the Blessed. And I tell [in my poem] the final cause of my mounting thither in thought, when I say, 'There I beheld a lady in glory'; [and I say this] in order that it may be understood that I was certain, and am certain, through her gracious revelation, that she was in heaven, whither I in my thought oftentimes went,—as it were, seized up. And this made me desirous of death, that I might go there where she was."¹⁴ Following upon the chapter in which this remarkable passage occurs is one which is chiefly occupied with a digression upon the immortality of the soul,—and with discourse upon this matter, says Dante, "it will be beautiful to finish speaking of that living and blessed Beatrice, of whom I intend to say no more in this book…. And I believe and affirm and am certain that I shall pass after this to another and better life, in which that glorious lady lives of whom my soul was enamored."¹⁵

But it is not from the "Convito" alone that this portion of the "Vita Nuova" receives illustration. In that passage of the "Purgatory" in which Beatrice is described as appearing in person to her lover the first time since her death, she addresses him in words of stern rebuke of his fickleness and his infidelity to her memory. The whole scene is, perhaps, unsurpassed in imaginative reality; the vision appears to have an actual existence, and the poet himself is subdued by the power of his own imagination. He tells the words of Beatrice with the same feeling with which he would have repeated them, had they fallen on his mortal ear. His grief and shame are real, and there is no element of feigning in them. That in truth he had seemed to himself to listen to and to behold what he tells, it is scarcely possible to doubt. Beatrice says,—

 
  "Some while at heart my presence kept him sound;
    My girlish eyes to his observance lending,
  I led him with me on the right way bound.
    When of my second age the steps ascending,
  I bore my life into another sphere,
    Then stole he from me, after others bending.
  When I arose from flesh to spirit clear,
  When beauty, worthiness, upon me grew,
  I was to him less pleasing and less dear."¹⁶
 

But although Beatrice only gives utterance to the self-reproaches of Dante, we have seen already how fully he had atoned for this first and transient unfaithfulness of his heart. The remainder of the "Vita Nuova" shows how little she had lost of her power over him, how reverently he honored her memory, how constant was his love of her whom he should see never again with his earthly eyes. Returning to the "New Life,"—

"After this tribulation," he says, "at that time when many people were going to see the blessed image which Jesus Christ left to us as the likeness of his most beautiful countenance,¹⁷ which my lady now beholds in glory, it happened that certain pilgrims passed through a street which is almost in the middle of that city where the gentlest lady was born, lived, and died,—and they went along, as it seemed to me, very pensive. And thinking about them, I said to myself, 'These appear to me to be pilgrims from a far-off region, and I do not believe that they have even heard speak of this lady, and they know nothing of her; their thoughts are rather of other things than of her; for, perhaps, they are thinking of their distant friends, whom we do not know.' Then I said to myself, 'I know, that, if these persons were from a neighboring country, they would show some sign of trouble as they pass through the midst of this grieving city.' Then again I said, 'If I could hold them awhile, I would indeed make them weep before they went out from this city; for I would say words to them which would make whoever should hear them weep.' Then, when they had passed out of sight, I proposed to make a sonnet in which I would set forth that which I had said to myself; and in order that it might appear more pity-moving, I proposed to say it as if I had spoken to them, and I said this sonnet, which begins, 'O pilgrims.'

"I called them pilgrims in the wide sense of that word; for pilgrims may be understood in two ways,—one wide, and one narrow. In the wide, whoever is out of his own country is so far a pilgrim; in the narrow use, by pilgrim is meant he only who goes to or returns from the house of St. James.¹⁸ Moreover, it is to be known that those who travel in the service of the Most High are called by three distinct terms. Those who go beyond the sea, whence often they bring back the palm, are called palmers. Those who go to the house of Galicia are called pilgrims, because the burial-place of St. James was more distant from his country than that of any other of the Apostles. And those are called romei who go to Rome, where these whom I call pilgrims were going.

 
  "O pilgrims, who in pensive mood move
      slow,
  Thinking perchance of those who absent
      are,
    Say, do ye come from land away so far
    As your appearance seems to us to show?
 
 
  "For ye weep not, the while ye forward go
    Along the middle of the mourning town,
    Seeming as persons who have nothing
      known
    Concerning the sad burden of her woe.
 
 
  "If, through your will to hear, your steps ye
      stay,
    Truly my sighing heart declares to me
    That ye shall afterwards depart in tears.
 
 
  "For she¹⁹ her Beatrice hath lost: and ye
    Shall know, the words that man of her
      may say
    Have power to make weep whoever
      hears."
 

Some time after this sonnet was written, two ladies sent to Dante, asking him for some of his rhymes. That he might honor their request, he wrote a new sonnet and sent it to them with two that he had previously composed. In his new sonnet, he told how his thought mounted to heaven, as a pilgrim, and beheld his lady in such condition of glory as could not be comprehended by his intellect; for our intellect, in regard to the souls of the blessed, is as weak as our eyes are to the sun. But though he could not clearly see where his thought led him, at least he understood that his thought told of his lady in glory.

 
  "Beyond the sphere that widest orbit hath
    Passeth the sigh that issues from my
    heart,
    While weeping Love doth unto him impart
    Intelligence which leads him on his path,
 
 
  "When at the wished-for place his flight he
      stays,
    A lady he beholds, in honor dight,
    And shining so, that, through her splendid
      light,
    The pilgrim spirit upon her doth gaze.
 
 
  "He sees her such that his reporting words
    I understand not, for he speaketh low
    And strange to the sad heart which makes
      him tell;
 
 
  "He speaketh of that gentle one, I know,
    Since oft he Beatrice's name records;
    So, ladies dear, I understand him well."
 

This was the last of the poems which Dante composed in immediate honor and memory of Beatrice, and is the last of those which he inserted in the "Vita Nuova." It was not that his love grew cold, or that her image became faint in his remembrance; but, as he tells us in a few concluding and memorable words, from this time forward he devoted himself to preparation for a work in which the earthly Beatrice should have less part, while the heavenly and blessed spirit of her whom he had loved should receive more becoming honors. The lover's grief was to find no more expression; the lamentations for the loss which could never be made good to him were to cease; the exhibition of a personal sorrow was at an end. Love and grief, in their double ministry, had refined, enlarged, and exalted his spirit to the conception of a design unparalleled in its nature, and of which no intellectual genius, unpurged by suffering, and impenetrated in its deepest recesses by the spiritualizing heats of emotion, would have been capable of conceiving. Moreover, as time wore on, its natural result was gradually to withdraw the poet from the influence of temporary excitements of feeling, resulting from his experience of love and death, and to bring him to the contemplation of life as affected by the presence and the memory of Beatrice in its eternal and universal relations. He tells us in the "Convito," that, "after some time, my mind, which neither such consolation as I could give it, nor that offered to it by others, availed to comfort, determined to turn to that method by which others in grief had consoled themselves. And I set myself to read that book, but little known, of Boethius, in which in prison and exile he had consoled himself. And hearing, likewise, that Tully had written a book, in which, treating of friendship, he had offered some words of comfort to Laelius, a most excellent man, on the death of Scipio, his friend, I read this also. And although at first it was hard for me to enter into their meaning, I at length entered into it so far as my knowledge of language, and such little capacity as I had, enabled me; by means of which capacity, I had already, like one dreaming, seen many things, as may be seen in the 'New Life.' And as it might happen that a man seeking silver should, beyond his expectation, find gold, which a hidden chance presents to him, not, perhaps, without Divine direction, so I, who sought for consolation, found not only a remedy for my tears, but also acquaintance with authors, with knowledge, and with books."

Nor did these serious and solitary studies withdraw him from the pursuit of wisdom among men and in the active world. Year by year, he entered more fully into the affairs of state, and took a larger portion of their conduct upon himself.

His heart kept fresh by abiding recollections of love, his faith quickened by and intermingled with the tenderest hopes, his imagination uplifted by the affection which overleaped the boundaries of the invisible world, and his intellect disciplined by study of books and of men, his experience enlarged by constant occupation in affairs, his judgment matured by the quick succession of important events in which he was involved,—every part of his nature was thus prepared for the successful accomplishment of that great and sacred design which he set before himself now in his youth. Heaven had called and selected him for a work which even in his own eyes partook somewhat of the nature of a prophetic charge. His strength was to be tested and his capacity to be approved. Life was ordered for the fulfilment of his commission. The men to whom God intrusts a message for the world find the service to which they are appointed one in which they must be ready to sacrifice everything. Dante looked forward, even at the beginning, to the end, and saw what lay between.

The pages of the "New Life" fitly close with words of that life in which all things shall be made new, "and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away." The little book ends thus:—

"Soon after this, a wonderful vision appeared to me, in which I saw things which made me purpose to speak no more of this blessed one until I could more worthily treat of her. And to attain to this, I study to the utmost of my power, as she truly knoweth. So that, if it shall please Him through whom all things live, that my life be prolonged for some years, I hope to speak of her as never was spoken of any woman. And then may it please Him who is the Lord of Grace, that my soul may go to behold the glory of its lady, the blessed Beatrice, who in glory looks upon the face of Him, qui est per omnia saecula benedictus [who is Blessed forever]!"

In 1320, or perhaps not till 1321, the "Paradiso" was finished; in 1321, Dante died.

* * * * *

THE DOUBLE-HEADED SNAKE OF NEWBURY

"Concerning ye Amphisbaena, as soon as I received your commands, I made diligent inquiry: he assures me y't it had really two heads, one at each end, two mouths, two stings or tongues."

Rev. Christopher Toppan to Cotton Mather.

 
  Far away in the twilight time
  Of every people, in every clime,
  Dragons and griffins and monsters dire,
  Born of water, and air, and fire,
  Or nursed, like the Python, in the mud
  And ooze of the old Deucalion flood,
  Crawl and wriggle and foam with rage,
  Through dusk tradition and ballad age.
  So from the childhood of Newbury town
  And its time of fable the tale comes down
  Of a terror which haunted bush and brake,
  The Amphisbaena, the Double Snake!
 
 
  Thou who makest the tale thy mirth,
  Consider that strip of Christian earth
  On the desolate shore of a sailless sea,
  Full of terror and mystery,
  Half-redeemed from the evil hold
  Of the wood so dreary and dark and old,
  Which drank with its lips of leaves the dew
  When Time was young and the world was new,
  And wove its shadows with sun and moon
  Ere the stones of Cheops were squared and hewn;
  Think of the sea's dread monotone,
  Of the mournful wail from the pine-wood blown,
  Of the strange, vast splendors that lit the North,
  Of the troubled throes of the quaking earth,
  And the dismal tales the Indian told,
  Till the settler's heart at his hearth grew cold,
  And he shrank from the tawny wizard's boasts,
  And the hovering shadows seemed full of ghosts,
  And above, below, and on every side,
  The fear of his creed seemed verified;—
  And think, if his lot were now thine own,
  To grope with terrors nor named nor known,
  How laxer muscle and weaker nerve
  And a feebler faith thy need might serve;
  And own to thyself the wonder more
  That the snake had two heads and not a score!
 
 
  Whether he lurked in the Oldtown fen,
  Or the gray earth-flax of the Devil's Den,
  Or swam in the wooded Artichoke,
  Or coiled by the Northman's Written Rock,
  Nothing on record is left to show;
  Only the fact that he lived, we know,
  And left the cast of a "double head"
  In the scaly mask which he yearly shed.
  For he carried a head where his tail should be,
  And the two, of course, could never agree,
  But wriggled about with main and might,
  Now to the left and now to the right;
  Pulling and twisting this way and that,
  Neither knew what the other was at.
 
 
  A snake with two heads, lurking so near!—
  Judge of the wonder, guess at the fear!
  Think what ancient gossips might say,
  Shaking their heads in their dreary way,
  Between the meetings on Sabbath-day!
  How urchins, searching at day's decline
  The Common Pasture for sheep or kine,
  The terrible double-ganger heard
  In leafy rustle or whirr of bird!
  Think what a zest it gave to the sport
  In berry-time of the younger sort,
  As over pastures blackberry-twined
  Reuben and Dorothy lagged behind,
  And closer and closer, for fear of harm,
  The maiden clung to her lover's arm;
  And how the spark, who was forced to stay,
  By his sweetheart's fears, till the break of day,
  Thanked the snake for the fond delay!
 
 
  Far and wide the tale was told,
  Like a snowball growing while it rolled.
  The nurse hushed with it the baby's cry;
  And it served, in the worthy minister's eye,
  To paint the primitive Serpent by.
  Cotton Mather came posting down
  All the way to Newbury town,
  With his eyes agog and his ears set wide,
  And his marvellous inkhorn at his side;
  Stirring the while in the shallow pool
  Of his brains for the lore he learned at school,
  To garnish the story, with here a streak
  Of Latin, and there another of Greek:
  And the tales he heard and the notes he took,
  Behold! are they not in his Wonder-Book?
 
 
  Stories, like dragons, are hard to kill.
  If the snake does not, the tale runs still
  In Byfield Meadows, on Pipestone Hill.
  And still, whenever husband and wife
  Publish the shame of their daily strife,
  And, with mad cross-purpose, tug and strain
  At either end of the marriage-chain,
  The gossips say, with a knowing shake
  Of their gray heads, "Look at the Double Snake!
  One in body and two in will,
  The Amphisbaena is living still!"