While on the brink thus one before the other
We went upon our way, oft the good Master
Said: "Take thou heed! suffice it that I warn thee."
On the right shoulder smote me now the sun,
That, raying out, already the whole west 5
Changed from its azure aspect into white.
And with my shadow did I make the flame
Appear more red; and even to such a sign
Shades saw I many, as they went, give heed.
This was the cause that gave them a beginning 10
To speak of me; and to themselves began they
To say: "That seems not a factitious body!"
Then towards me, as far as they could come,
Came certain of them, always with regard
Not to step forth where they would not be burned. 15
"O thou who goest, not from being slower
But reverent perhaps, behind the others,
Answer me, who in thirst and fire am burning.
Nor to me only is thine answer needful;
For all of these have greater thirst for it 20
Than for cold water Ethiop or Indian.
Tell us how is it that thou makest thyself
A wall unto the sun, as if thou hadst not
Entered as yet into the net of death."
Thus one of them addressed me, and I straight 25
Should have revealed myself, were I not bent
On other novelty that then appeared.
For through the middle of the burning road
There came a people face to face with these,
Which held me in suspense with gazing at them. 30
There see I hastening upon either side
Each of the shades, and kissing one another
Without a pause, content with brief salute.
Thus in the middle of their brown battalions
Muzzle to muzzle one ant meets another 35
Perchance to spy their journey or their fortune.
No sooner is the friendly greeting ended,
Or ever the first footstep passes onward,
Each one endeavours to outcry the other;
The new-come people: "Sodom and Gomorrah!" 40
The rest: "Into the cow Pasiphae enters,
So that the bull unto her lust may run!"
Then as the cranes, that to Riphaean mountains
Might fly in part, and part towards the sands,
These of the frost, those of the sun avoidant, 45
One folk is going, and the other coming,
And weeping they return to their first songs,
And to the cry that most befitteth them;
And close to me approached, even as before,
The very same who had entreated me, 50
Attent to listen in their countenance.
I, who their inclination twice had seen,
Began: "O souls secure in the possession,
Whene'er it may be, of a state of peace,
Neither unripe nor ripened have remained 55
My members upon earth, but here are with me
With their own blood and their articulations.
I go up here to be no longer blind;
A Lady is above, who wins this grace,
Whereby the mortal through your world I bring. 60
But as your greatest longing satisfied
May soon become, so that the Heaven may house you
Which full of love is, and most amply spreads,
Tell me, that I again in books may write it,
Who are you, and what is that multitude 65
Which goes upon its way behind your backs?"
Not otherwise with wonder is bewildered
The mountaineer, and staring round is dumb,
When rough and rustic to the town he goes,
Than every shade became in its appearance; 70
But when they of their stupor were disburdened,
Which in high hearts is quickly quieted,
"Blessed be thou, who of our border-lands,"
He recommenced who first had questioned us,
"Experience freightest for a better life. 75
The folk that comes not with us have offended
In that for which once Caesar, triumphing,
Heard himself called in contumely, 'Queen.'
Therefore they separate, exclaiming, 'Sodom!'
Themselves reproving, even as thou hast heard, 80
And add unto their burning by their shame.
Our own transgression was hermaphrodite;
But because we observed not human law,
Following like unto beasts our appetite,
In our opprobrium by us is read, 85
When we part company, the name of her
Who bestialized herself in bestial wood.
Now knowest thou our acts, and what our crime was;
Wouldst thou perchance by name know who we are,
There is not time to tell, nor could I do it. 90
Thy wish to know me shall in sooth be granted;
I'm Guido Guinicelli, and now purge me,
Having repented ere the hour extreme."
The same that in the sadness of Lycurgus
Two sons became, their mother re-beholding, 95
Such I became, but rise not to such height,
The moment I heard name himself the father
Of me and of my betters, who had ever
Practised the sweet and gracious rhymes of love;
And without speech and hearing thoughtfully 100
For a long time I went, beholding him,
Nor for the fire did I approach him nearer.
When I was fed with looking, utterly
Myself I offered ready for his service,
With affirmation that compels belief. 105
And he to me: "Thou leavest footprints such
In me, from what I hear, and so distinct,
Lethe cannot efface them, nor make dim.
But if thy words just now the truth have sworn,
Tell me what is the cause why thou displayest 110
In word and look that dear thou holdest me?"
And I to him: "Those dulcet lays of yours
Which, long as shall endure our modern fashion,
Shall make for ever dear their very ink!"
"O brother," said he, "he whom I point out," 115
And here he pointed at a spirit in front,
"Was of the mother tongue a better smith.
Verses of love and proses of romance,
He mastered all; and let the idiots talk,
Who think the Lemosin surpasses him. 120
To clamour more than truth they turn their faces,
And in this way establish their opinion,
Ere art or reason has by them been heard.
Thus many ancients with Guittone did,
From cry to cry still giving him applause, 125
Until the truth has conquered with most persons.
Now, if thou hast such ample privilege
'Tis granted thee to go unto the cloister
Wherein is Christ the abbot of the college,
To him repeat for me a Paternoster, 130
So far as needful to us of this world,
Where power of sinning is no longer ours."
Then, to give place perchance to one behind,
Whom he had near, he vanished in the fire
As fish in water going to the bottom. 135
I moved a little tow'rds him pointed out,
And said that to his name my own desire
An honourable place was making ready.
He of his own free will began to say:
'Tan m' abellis vostre cortes deman, 140
Que jeu nom' puesc ni vueill a vos cobrire;
Jeu sui Arnaut, que plor e vai chantan;
Consiros vei la passada folor,
E vei jauzen lo jorn qu' esper denan.
Ara vus prec per aquella valor, 145
Que vus condus al som de la scalina,
Sovenga vus a temprar ma dolor.'*
Then hid him in the fire that purifies them.
* So pleases me your courteous demand,
I cannot and I will not hide me from you. 150
I am Arnaut, who weep and singing go;
Contrite I see the folly of the past,
And joyous see the hoped-for day before me.
Therefore do I implore you, by that power
Which guides you to the summit of the stairs, 155
Be mindful to assuage my suffering!
NOTES
1 - 1
The punishment of the sin of Lust.
5 - 5
It is near sunset, and the western sky is white, as the sky always is in the neighborhood of the sun.
12 - 12
A ghostly or spiritual body.
41 - 41
Pasiphae, wife of Minos, king of Crete, and mother of the Minotaur. Virgil, Eclogue VI. 45, Davidson's Tr.: –
“And he soothes Pasiphae in her passion for the snow-white
bull: happy woman if herds had never been! Ah, ill-fated
maid, what madness seized thee? The daughters of Proteus
with imaginary lowings filled the fields; yet none of them
pursued such vile embraces of a beast, however they might
dread the plough about their necks, and often feel for horns
on their smooth foreheads. Ah, ill-fated maid, thou now art
roaming on the mountains! He, resting his snowy side on the
soft hyacinth, ruminates the blenched herbs under some
gloomy oak, or courts some female in the numerous herd.”43 - 43
The Riphaean mountains are in the north of Russia. The sands are the sands of the deserts.
59 - 59
Beatrice.
62 - 62
The highest heaven. Par. XXVII.
78 - 78
In one of Caesar's triumphs the Roman soldiery around his chariot called him “Queen”; thus reviling him for his youthful debaucheries with Nicomedes, king of Bithynia.
87 - 87
The cow made by Daedalus.
92 - 92
Guido Guinicelli, the best of the Italian poets before Dante, flourished in the first half of the thirteenth century. He was a native of Bologna, but of his life nothing is known. His most celebrated poem is a Canzone on the Nature of Love, which goes far to justify the warmth and tenderness of Dante's praise. Rossetti, Early Italian Poets, p. 24, gives the following version of it, under the title of The Gentle Heart: –
“Within the gentle heart Love shelters him,
As birds within the green shade of the grove.
Before the gentle heart, in Nature's scheme,
Love was not, nor the gentle heart ere Love.
For with the sun, at once,
So sprang the light immediately; nor was
Its birth before the sun's.
And Love hath his effect in gentleness
Of very self; even as
Within the middle fire the heat's excess.
”The fire of Love comes to the gentle heart
Like as its virtue to a precious stone;
To which no star its influence can impart
Till it is made a pure thing by the sun:
For when the sun hath smit
From out its essence that which there was vile,
The star endoweth it.
And so the heart created by God's breath
Pure, true, and clean from guile,
A woman, like a star, enamoreth.
“In gentle heart Love for like reason is
For which the lamp's high flame is fanned bowed:
Clear, piercing bright, it shines for its own bliss;
Nor would it burn there else, it is so proud.
For evil natures meet
With Love as it were water met with fire,
As cold abhorring heat.
Through gentle heart Love doth a track divine, –
Like knowing like; the same
As diamond runs through iron in the mine.
”The sun strikes full upon the mud all day;
It remains vile, nor the sun's worth is less.
'By race I am gentle,' the proud man doth say:
He is the mud, the sun is gentleness.
Let no man predicate
That aught the name of gentleness should have,
Even in a king's estate,
Except the heart there be a gentle man's.
The star-beam lights the wave, –
Heaven holds the star and the star's radiance.
“God, is the understanding of high Heaven,
Burns more than in our sight the living sun:
Here to behold His Face unveiled is given;
And Heaven, whose will is homage paid to One,
Fulfils the things which live
In God, from the beginning excellent.
So should my lady give
That truth which in her eyes is glorified,
On which her heart is bent,
To me whose service waiteth at her side.
”My lady, God shall ask, 'What daredst thou?'
(When my soul stands with all her acts reviewed;)
'Thou passedst Heaven, into My sight, as now,
To make Me of vain love similitude.
To Me doth praise belong,
And to the Queen of all the realm of grace
Who endeth fraud and wrong.'
Then may I plead: 'As though from Thee he came,
Love wore an angel's face:
Lord, if I loved her, count it not my shame.'“94 - 94
Hypsipyle was discovered and rescued by her sons Eumenius and Thoas, (whose father was the ”bland Jason,“ (as Statius calls him,) just as King Lycurgus in his great grief was about to put her to death for neglecting the care of his child, who through her neglect had been stung by a serpent.
Statius, Thebaid, V. 949, says it was Tydeus who saved Hysiple: –
”But interposing Tydeus rushed between,
And with his shield protects the Lemnian queen.“118 - 118
In the old Romance languages the name of prosa was applied generally to all narrative poems, and particularly to the monorhythmic romances. Thus Gonzalo de Berceo, a Spanish poet of the thirteenth century, begins a poem on the Vida del Glorioso Confessor Santo Domingo de Silos: –
”De un confessor Sancto quiero fer una prosa,
Quiero fer una prosa en roman paladino,
En qual suele el pueblo fablar á su vecino,
Ca non so tan letrado per fer otro Latino.“120 - 120
Gerault de Berneil of Limoges, born of poor parents, but a man of talent and learning, was one of the most famous Troubadours of the thirteenth century. The old Provenal biographer, quoted y Raynouard, Choix de Poésies, V. 166, says: ”He was a better poet than any who preceded or followed him, and was therefore called the Master of the Troubadours..... He passed his winters in study, and his summers in wandering from court to court with two minstrels who sang his songs.“
The following specimen of his poems is from [Taylor's] Lays of the Minnesingers and Troubadours, p. 247. It is an Aubade, or song o the morning: –
”Companion dear! or sleeping or awaking,
Sleep not again! for lo! the morn is nigh,
And in the east that early star is breaking,
The day's forerunner, known unto mine eye;
The morn, the morn is near.
“Companion dear! with carols sweet I call thee;
Sleep not again! I hear the birds' blithe song
Loud in the woodlands; evil may befall thee,
And jealous eyes awaken, tarrying long,
Now that the morn is near.
”Companion dear! forth from the window looking,
Attentive mark the signs of yonder heaven;
Judge if aright I read what they betoken:
Thine all the loss, if vain the warning given;
The morn, the morn is near.
“Companion dear! since thou from hence wert straying,
Nor sleep nor rest these eyes have visited;
My prayers unceasing to the Virgin paying,
That thou in peace thy backward way might tread.
The morn, the morn is near.
”Companion dear! hence to the fields with me!
Me thou forbad'st to slumber through the night,
And I have watched that livelong night for thee;
But thou in song or me hast no delight,
And now the morn is near.ANSWER.
“Companion dear! so happily sojourning,
So blest am I, I care not forth to speed:
Here brightest beauty reigns, her smiles adorning
Her dwelling-place, – then wherefore should I heed
The morn or jealous eyes?”According to Nostrodamus he died in 1278. Notwithstanding his great repute, Dante gives the palm of excellence to Arnaud Daniel, his rival and contemporary. But this is not the general verdict of literary history.
124 - 124
Fra Guittone d'Arezzo. See Canto XXIV. Note 56.
137 - 137
Venturi has the indiscretion to say: “This is a disgusting compliment after the manner of the French; in the Italian fashion we should say, 'You will do me a favor, if you will tell me your name.'” Whereupon Biagioli thunders at him in this wise: “Infamous dirty dog that you are, how can you call this a compliment after the manner of the French? How can you set off against it what any cobbler might say? Away! and a murrain on you!”
142 - 142
Arnaud Daniel, the Troubadour of the thirteenth century, whom Dante lauds so highly, and whom Petrarca calls “the Grand Master of Love,” was born of a noble family at the castle of Ribeyrac in Pèrigord. Millot, Hist. des Troub., II. 479, says of him: “In all ages there have been false reputations, founded on some individual judgment, whose authority has prevailed without examination, until at last criticism discusses, the truth penetrates, and the phantom of prejudice vanishes. Such has been the reputation of Arnaud Daniel.”
Raynouard confirms this judgment, and says that, “reading the works of this Troubadour, it is difficult to conceive the causes of the great celebrity he enjoyed during his life.”
Arnaud Daniel was the inventor of the Sestina, a song of six stanzas of six lines each, with the same rhymes repeated in all, through arranged in different and intricate order, which must be seen to be understood. He was also author of the metrical romance of Lancillotto, or Launcelot of the Lake, to which Dante doubtless refers in his expression prose di romanzi, or proses of romance. The following anecdote is from the old Provençal authority, quoted both by Millot and Raynouard, and is thus translated by Miss Costello, Early Poetry of France, p. 37: –
“Arnaud visited the court of Richard Coeur de Lion in
England, and encountered there a jongleur, who defied him to
a trial of skill, and boasted of being able to make more
difficult rhymes than Arnaud, a proficiency on which he
chiefly prided himself. He accepted the challenge, and the
two poets separated, and retired to their respective
chambers to prepare for the contest. The Muse of Arnaud was
not propitious, and he vainly endeavored to string two
rhymes together. His rival, on the other hand, quickly
caught the inspiration. The king had allowed ten days as
the term of preparation, five for composition, and the
remainder for learning it by heart to sing before the court.
On the third day the jongleur declared that he had finished
his poem, and was ready to recite it, but Arnaud replied
that he had not yet thought of his. It was the jongleur's
custom to repeat his verses out loud every day, in order to
learn them better, and Arnaud, who was in vain endeavoring
to devise some means to save himself from the mockery of the
court at being outdone in this contest, happened to overhear
the jongleur singing. He went to his door and listened, and
succeeded in retaining the words and the air. On the day
appointed they both appeared before the king. Arnaud
desired to be allowed to sing first, and immediately gave
the song which the jongleur had composed. The latter,
stupefied with astonishment, could only exclaim: 'It is my
song, it is my song.' 'Impossible!' cried the king; but the
jongleur, persisting, requested Richard to interrogate
Arnaud, who would not dare, he said, to deny it. Daniel
confessed the fact, and related the manner in which the
affair had been conducted, which amused Richard far more
than the song itself. The stakes of the wager were restored
to each, and the king loaded them both with presents.”According to Nostrodamus, Arnaud died about 1189. There is no other reason for making him speak in Provençal than the evident delight which Dante took in the sound of the words, and the peculiar flavor they give to the close of the canto. Raynouard says that the writings of none of the Troubadours have been so disfigured by copyists as those of Arnaud. This would seem to be true of the very lines which Dante writes for him; as there are in least seven different readings of them.
Here Venturi has again the indiscretion to say that Arnaud answers Dante in “a kind of lingua-franca, part Provençal and part Catalan, joining together the perfidious French with the vile Spanish, perhaps to show that Arnaud was a clever speaker of the two.” And again Biagioli suppresses him with “that unbridled beast of a Venturi,” and this “most potent argument of his presumptuous ignorance and impertinence.”