Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/525

LITERATURE.] ITALY 503 Latin, and the treatment is scholastic. Another work of Dante s, also written in Latin, is the De Vidgari Eloqido. It seems that it was to have consisted of four books, but only two were written. His work is a defence of the " volgare illustre " (the noble vulgar tongue) against the Italian dialects. Modern criticism regards it as very superficial. 1 The work which made Dante immortal, and raised him above all the other men of genius in Italy, was his Divina Commedia. The author himself called it a " comedy," as he says in his letter to Can Grande della Scala, for two reasons, because it has, like comedies, a sad beginning and a cheerful ending, and because it is written in a " middle " style, treating alike of lofty and of lowly things. Alighieri is the protagonist of the great drama. He represents himself as lost in a forest, in a night at the end of March and in the first days of April 1300, when he was thirty-five years old. At first he is much alarmed, but afterwards he is cheered when, at dawn, he finds himself at the foot of a hill. He wishes to ascend it, but three wild beasts prevent his doing so, a panther, a lion, and a she-wolf. When he flees back in haste to the forest, Virgil appears to him, and tells him that he is sent by Beatrice, at the command of the " Gentle Lady " (Mary) and of St Lucy. He tells him that, in order to escape from the she- wolf, he must go through hell and purgatory with him, and afterwards Beatrice herself will lead him up to heaven. Dante s Inferno takes the shape of a deep valley, reaching down in constantly narrowing circles from the surface of our hemisphere, in the midst of which stands the mount of Jerusalem, to the centre of the earth. This valley, or inverted cone, is cut by nine circles, where the souls of the damned are tortured ; they are divided into three principal classes, viz., the incontinent, the violent, and the fraudulent. The valley is shut in at its entrance by the river Acheron, and afterwards crossed by the Stygian marsh, and the rivers Phlegethon and Cocytus. The two poets pass through the ninth part of each circle, talking to some of the shades they meet, and at last they come to Lucifer, stationed in the centre of the earth. "Grappling at his hair," they pass the centre of gravity, and begin to ascend a narrow way which brings them to the other hemisphere. They reach a little inland, whence rises a very high mountain, which is purgatory. It also is divided into nine circles : in the first two are the souls of those who deferred their repentance till the hour of death ; in the others the shades are cleansing themselves from the seven deadly sins. Cato of Utica guards this place. The two poets ascend the mountain, going always to the right hand. On the summit they find the earthly paradise, which is the exact antipodes to the mountain of Jerusalem. Here appear a long train of venerable persons, who precede a chariot drawn by griffins. Beatrice makes her appearance, and with her Dante takes his flight through the nine heavens, where he sees the souls of the blessed according to the order of their desert. At the tenth heaven, the Empyrean, he sees them again all together, arranged in the shape of a gleaming rose round a most dazzling centre, which is God. Here the poet contemplates the mysteries of the Trinity and of the manhood of Christ. Then the vision comes to an end. An allegorical meaning is hidden under the literal one of the Commedia. Dante, travelling through the invisible worlds, is a symbol of mankind aiming at the double object of temporal and eternal happiness. By the forest in which the poet loses himself is meant the civil and religious confusion of society, deprived of its two guides, 1 See " Sul Trattato de Vulgari Eloquentia," in the Saygi Critid, by Francesco d Ovklio, Naples, 1879. the emperor and the pope. The mountain illuminated by the sun is universal monarchy. The three beasts are the three vices and the three powers which offered ths greatest obstacles to Dante s designs : envy is Florence, light, fickle, and divided by the Bianchi and Neri ; pride is the house of France ; avarice is the papal court ; irgil repre sents reason and the empire. Beatrice is the symbol of the supernatural aid without which man cannot attain the supreme end, which is God. But the merit of the poem does not lie in the allegory, which still connects it with mediaaval literature. What is new in it is the individual art of the poet, the classic art transfused for the first time into a Romance form. Dante is above all a great artist. Whether he describes nature, analyses passions, curses the vices, or sings hymns to the virtues, he is always wonderful for the grandeur and delicacy of his art. Out of the rude mediaeval vision he has made the greatest work of art of modern times. He took the materials for his poem from theology, from philosophy, from history, from mythology, but more especially from his own passions, from hatred and love ; and he has breathed the breath of genius into all these materials. Under the pen of the poet, the dead came to life again; they become men again, and speak the language of their time, of their passions. Farinata degli Uberti, Boniface VIII., Count Ugolino, Manfred, Bordello, Hugh Capet, St Thomas Aquinas, Cacciaguida, St Benedict, St Peter, are all so many objective creations; they stand bsfore us in all the life of their characters, their feelings, their habits. Yet this world of fancy in which the poet moves is not only made living by the power of his genius, but it is changed by his consciousness. The real chastizer of the sins, the rewarder of the virtues, is Dante himself. The personal interest which he brings to bear on the historical representation of the three worlds is what most interests us and stirs us. Dante remakes history after his own passions. Thus the Divina Commedia can fairly be called, not only the most life-like drama of the thoughts and feel ings that moved men at that time, but also the most clear and spontaneous reflexion of the individual feelings of the poet, from the indignation of the citizen and the exile to the faith of the believer and the ardour of the philo sopher. The Divina Commedia fixed and clearly defined the destiny of Italian literature, to give artistic lustre, and hence immortality, to all the forms of literature which the Middle Ages had produced. Dante begins the great era of the Renaissance. Two facts characterize the literary life of Petrarch Petrar&, (1304-1374), classical research and the new human feeling introduced into his lyric poetry. Nor are these two facts separate ; rather is the one the result of the other. The Petrarch who travelled about unearthing the works of the great Latin writers helps us to understand the Petrarch who, having completely detached himself from the Middle Ages, loved a real lady with a human love, and celebrated her in her life and after her death in poems full of studied elegance. Petrarch was the first humanist, and he was at the same time the first lyric poet of the modera school. His career was long and tempestuous. He lived for many years at Avignon, cursing the corruption of the papal court; he travelled through nearly the whole of Europe; he corresponded with emperors and popes; he was considered the first man of letters of his time ; he had honours and riches ; and he always bore about within him discontent, melancholy, and incapacity for satisfaction, three characteristics of the modern man. He wrote many Latin works, the most important- of which are the Epistolse, and the poem entitled Africa. He was the first to have a style of his own, and to attempt^ to revive the art of the Latin authors. He specially studied