14 September: Boreham on Alighieri Dante

The Star of the First Magnitude
It was on the fourteenth of September, 1321, that the world was unspeakably impoverished by the death, at Ravenna, of Alighieri Dante. Dante is far more than a classical poet, a commanding personality, a dominant historical figure. He is a beautiful legend, an encrusted tradition, a cherished ideal. Edward FitzGerald tells us that he and Tennyson were one day looking in a shop window in Regent St. They saw a long row of busts, among which were those of Goethe and Dante. The laureate and his friend studied them closely and in silence. At last FitzGerald spoke. "What is it," he asked, "which is present in Dante's face and absent from Goethe's?" Tennyson turned abruptly. "The divine, FitzGerald," he replied, "the divine!" A subtle secret lies there.

No nation ever idolised a poet as Italy idolised Dante; and no nation ever forgot as completely as did Italy the reasons that led to the idolisation. Somebody has said that Italy still worships Dante in a blind kind of way inspite of the fact that all she knows about him can be stated in a single sentence—"he loved Beatrice and wrote the 'Divine Comedy.'" It is part of the religion of an Italian to maintain that Dante stands transcendent and incomparable; his dark face glows with a species of reverential awe at the mere mention of the poet's name. The world at large ranks the name of Dante with two others, Homer and Shakespeare. When men attain this titanic stature they become cosmopolites. Such figures become the possession and the pride of the race. We pool our intellectual and spiritual wealth. Men of this sublime measure cannot be imprisoned by geographical frontierlines; they are citizens of the world and their works are the heritage of the ages.

Magnificent as Milton: Comparison and Contrast
It would almost seem as if the dazzling genius of such men blinds their contemporaries and successors to all matters of personal detail. Of smaller men we know everything: of these we seem to know nothing. The life of Homer is an impenetrable mystery: of Shakespeare's personal career we have but a shadowy and tantalising outline: of Dante we know very little indeed. Many of the recorded incidents are obviously apocryphal. Such men—earth's superlative men—live only in their works. They seem jealous lest, catching sight of them, we should bestow upon their personalities the homage that they covet for their poesy. They are remembered only by what they have done.

Such a man is Dante, whose deep, rich voice—the voice of ten long silent centuries articulate at last—moves Europe with its mystic, unfathomable singing. Dante's face is a sad one; indeed, it was his sorrow that inspired his song. He turned to his manuscript for consolation when his very heart was breaking. If, as Carlyle says, he had achieved his commercial ambition and had married his Beatrice, Florence would probably have had one more prosperous Lord Mayor, but the world would have lost its most sublime singer. It is not unusual to associate the name of Dante with that of Milton. There is, however, no real parallel. As Macaulay has tersely declared, the poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante as the hieroglyphics of Egypt differ from the picture-writing of Mexico. Milton is essentially otherworldly: Dante is essentially human. Milton is ethereal, nebulous, indeterminate; his images float undefined in a gorgeous haze of language. Dante, on the contrary, is precise and condescends to the most microscopic and matter-of-fact particulars. Milton and Dante possessed the same type of mind. But Milton was blind whilst Dante saw. Milton lived in modest comfort whilst Dante wandered a sorrowful and lonely exile. Their differing circumstances gave to each mind a distinctive outlook and to each powerful imagination a distinctive range.

Inspired Poesy Deeply Rooted In Experience
Dante's "Divine Comedy" is not only an audacious adventure of the human fancy into other worlds; nor is it merely an awe-inspiring and exquisitely-balanced poem, revealing intellectual power of really sublime splendour; it is also a masterpiece of spiritual autobiography. He opens his "Vision of Hell" by describing the emotions with which, at the age of 35, his soul awoke. His mind was in a whirl of perplexity. In a word, he was lost.

"In the midway of this our mortal life.
I found me in a gloomy wood,
astray,
Gone from the path direct: and e'en to tell
It were no easy task,
how savage wild
That forest, how robust and rough its growth,
Which to
remember only, my dismay
Renews in bitterness not far from death."

Neither Bunyan's pilgrim in his "City of Destruction" nor Milton's "Army of Fallen Angels" present us with a conception quite as human or quite as convincing as this weird scene in the forest. The gloom, the loneliness, the silence and the absence of all hints as to a way out of his misery; here is a scene that combines all the elements of adventure with all the elements of reality.

The poet cannot tell us by what processes he became entangled in this jungle. "How first I entered it I scarce can say." It is to the story of his escape that he bravely addresses himself. He regards his discovery of his benighted condition as the first notable step in his disentanglement. His "I found me" is reminiscent of the parable of the Prodigal, "he came to himself." And from that moment he moves towards better and brighter things. The pathos, the insight and the transparent simplicity of those opening stanzas of the "Comedy" are worthy of comparison with the choicest treasures of Augustine, Bunyan, Wesley or Fox, and on these, as well as on historical and literary grounds, the name of Dante deserves to be held in perpetual remembrance.

F W Boreham

Image: Alighieri Dante