Part 13 (1/2)
I answered that I was reading in Virgil how the son of Anchises perceived Dido like a moon behind the foliage.*
* The text runs
. . .qualem primo qui syrgere mense Aut videt aut vidisse putat per nubila lunam.
Brother Marbodius, by a strange misunderstanding, subst.i.tutes an entirely different image for the one created by the poet.
”Brother Marbodius,” he replied, ”I am certain that on all occasions Virgil gives expression to wise maxims and profound thoughts. But the songs that he modulates on his Syracusan flute hold such a lofty meaning and such exalted doctrine that I am continually puzzled by them.”
”Take care, father,” cried Brother Jacinth, in an agitated voice.
”Virgil was a magician who wrought marvels by the help of demons. It is thus he pierced through a mountain near Naples and fas.h.i.+oned a bronze horse that had power to heal all the diseases of horses. He was a necromancer, and there is still shown, in a certain town in Italy, the mirror in which he made the dead appear. And yet a woman deceived this great sorcerer. A Neapolitan courtesan invited him to hoist himself up to her window in the basket that was used to bring the provisions, and she left him all night suspended between two storeys.”
Brother Hilary did not appear to hear these observations.
”Virgil is a prophet,” he replied, ”and a prophet who leaves far behind him the sibyls with their sacred verses as well as the daughter of King Priam, and that great diviner of future things, Plato of Athens. You will find in the fourth of his Syracusan cantos the birth of our Lord foretold in a lancune that seems of heaven rather than of earth.* In the time of my early studies, when I read for the first time JAM REDIT ET VIRGO, I felt myself bathed in an infinite delight, but I immediately experienced intense grief at the thought that, for ever deprived of the presence of G.o.d, the author of this prophetic verse, the n.o.blest that has come from human lips, was pining among the heathen in eternal darkness. This cruel thought did not leave me. It pursued me even in my studies, my prayers, my meditations, and my ascetic labours. Thinkin that Virgil was deprived of the sight of G.o.d and that possibly he might even be suffering the fate of the reprobate in h.e.l.l, I could neither enjoy peace nor rest, and I went so far as to exclaim several times a day with my arms outstretched to heaven:
”'Reveal to me, O Lord, the lot thou hast a.s.signed to him who sang on earth as the angels sing in heaven!'
*Three centuries before the epoch in which our Marbodius lived the words--
'Maro, vates gentilium Da Christo testimonium.'
Were sung in the churches on Christmas Day.
”After some years my anguish ceased when I read in an old book that the great apostle St. Paul, who called the Gentiles into the Church of Christ, went to Naples and sanctified with his tears the tomb of the prince of poets.* This was some ground for believing that Virgil, like the Emperor Trajan, was admitted to Paradise because even in error he had a presentiment of the truth. We are not compelled to believe it, but I can easily persuade myself that it is true.”
*Ad maronis mausoleum Ductus, fudit super eum Piae rorem lacrymae.
Quem te, intuit, reddidissem, Si te vivum invenissem Poetarum maxime!
Having thus spoken, old Hilary wished me the peace of a holy night and went away with Brother Jacinth.
I resumed the delightful study of my poet. Book in hand, I meditated upon the way in which those whom Love destroys with its cruel malady wander through the secret paths in the depth of the myrtle forest, and, as I meditated, the quivering reflections of the stars came and mingled with those of the leafless eglantines in the waters of the cloister fountain. Suddenly the lights and the perfumes and the stillness of the sky were overwhelmed, a fierce Northwind charged with storm and darkness burst roaring upon me. It lifted me up and carried me like a wisp of straw over fields, cities, rivers, and mountains, and through the midst of thunder-clouds, during a long night composed of a whole series of nights and days. And when, after this prolonged and cruel rage, the hurricane was at last stilled, I found myself far from my native land at the bottom of a valley bordered by cypress trees. Then a woman of wild beauty, trailing long garments behind her, approached me. She placed her left hand on my shoulder, and, pointing her right arm to an oak with thick foliage:
”Look!” said she to me.
Immediately I recognised the Sibyl who guards the sacred wood of Avernus, and I discerned the fair Proserpine's beautiful golden twig amongst the tufted boughs of the tree to which her finger pointed.
”O prophetic Virgin,” I exclaimed, ”thou hast comprehended my desire and thou hast satisfied it in this way. Thou hast revealed to me the tree that bears the s.h.i.+ning twig without which none can enter alive into the dwelling-place of the dead. And in truth, eagerly did I long to converse with the shade of Virgil.”
Having said this, I s.n.a.t.c.hed the golden branch from its ancient trunk and I advanced without fear into the smoking gulf that leads to the miry banks of the Styx, upon which the shades are tossed about like dead leaves. At sight of the branch dedicated to Proserpine, Charon took me in his bark, which groaned beneath my weight, and I alighted on the sh.o.r.es of the dead, and was greeted by the mute baying of the threefold Cerberus. I pretended to throw the shade of a stone at him, and the vain monster fled into his cave. There, amidst the rushes, wandered the souls of those children whose eyes had but opened and shut to the kindly light of day, and there in a gloomy cavern Minos judges men. I penetrated into the myrtle wood in which the victims of love wander languis.h.i.+ng, Phaedra, Procris, the sad Eriphyle, Evadne, Pasiphae, Laodamia, and Cenis, and the Phoenician Dido. Then I went through the dusty plains reserved for famous warriors. Beyond them open two ways. That to the left leads to Tartarus, the abode of the wicked. I took that to the right, which leads to Elysium and to the dwellings of Dis. Having hung the sacred branch at the G.o.ddess's door, I reached pleasant fields flooded with purple light. The shades of philosophers and poets hold grave converse there. The Graces and the Muses formed sprightly choirs upon the gra.s.s. Old Homer sang, accompanying himself upon his rustic lyre. His eyes were closed, but divine images shone upon his lips. I saw Solon, Democritus, and Pythagoras watching the games of the young men in the meadow, and, through the foliage of an ancient laurel, I perceived also Hesiod, Orpheus, the melancholy Euripides, and the masculine Sappho. I pa.s.sed and recognised, as they sat on the bank of a fresh rivulet, the poet Horace, Varius, Gallus, and Lycoris. A little apart, leaning against the trunk of a dark holm-oak, Virgil was gazing pensively at the grove. Of lofty stature, though spare, he still preserved that swarthy complexion, that rustic air, that negligent bearing, and unpolished appearance which during his lifetime concealed his genius. I saluted him piously and remained for a long time without speech.
At last when my halting voice could proceed out of my throat:
”O thou, so dear to the Ausonian Muses, thou honour of the Latin name, Virgil,” cried I, ”it is through thee I have known what beauty is, it is through thee I have known what the tables of the G.o.ds and the beds of the G.o.ddesses are like. Suffer the praises of the humblest of thy adorers.”
”Arise, stranger,” answered the divine poet. ”I perceive that thou art a living being among the shades, and that thy body treads down the gra.s.s in this eternal evening. Thou art not the first man who has descended before his death into these dwellings, although all intercourse between us and the living is difficult. But cease from praise; I do not like eulogies and the confused sounds of glory have always offended my ears.
That is why I fled from Rome, where I was known to the idle and curious, and laboured in the solitude of my beloved Parthenope. And then I am not so convinced that the men of thy generation understand my verses that should be gratified by thy praises. Who art thou?”
”I am called Marbodius of the Kingdom of Alca. I made my profession in the Abbey of Corrigan. I read thy poems by day and I read them by night.
It is thee whom I have come to see in h.e.l.l; I was impatient to know what thy fate was. On earth the learned often dispute about it. Some hold it probable that, having lived under the power of demons, thou art now burning in inextinguishable flames; others, more cautious, p.r.o.nounce no opinion, believing that all which is said concerning the dead is uncertain and full of lies; several, though not in truth the ablest, maintain that, because thou didst elevate the tone of the Sicilian Muses and foretell that a new progeny would descend from heaven, thou wert admitted, like the Emperor Trajan, to enjoy eternal blessedness in the Christian heaven.”