Part 12 (1/2)
a.s.sist him: so to me will comfort spring.
I who now bid thee on this errand forth Am Beatrice.
Who and what was Beatrice, whose message gave Dante strength to explore the fearful depths of evil and its punishment? This we may learn elsewhere.
Dante, pa.s.sionate poet in his youth, has left to posterity a work unique of its sort,--the romance of a childish love which grew with the growth of the lover. In his adolescence, its intensity at times overpowers his bodily senses. The years that built up his towering manhood built up along with it this ideal womanhood, which, whether realized or realizable, or neither, was the highest and holiest essence which his imagination could infuse into a human form. The sweet shyness of that first peep at the Beautiful, of that first thrill of the master chord of being, is rendered immortal for us by the candor of this great master.
We can see the shamefaced boy, taken captive by the dazzling vision of Beatrice, veiling the features of his unreasonable pa.s.sion, and retiring to his own closet, there to hide his joy at having found on earth a thing so beautiful.
Dante's love for Beatrice dates from the completion of his own ninth year, and the beginning of hers. He first sees her at a May party, at the house of her father, Folco Polinari. Her apparel, he says, ”was of a most n.o.ble tincture, a subdued and becoming crimson; and she wore a girdle and ornaments becoming her childish years.” At the sight of her, his heart began to beat with painful violence. A master thought had taken possession of him, and that master's name was well known to him, as how should it not have been in that day when, if ever in this world, Love was crowned lord of all? Urged by this tyrant, from time to time, to go in search of Beatrice, he beheld in her, he says, a demeanor so praiseworthy and so n.o.ble as to remind him of a line of Homer, regarding Helen of Troy:--
”From heaven she had her birth, and not from mortal clay.”
These glimpses of her must have been transient ones, for the poet tells us that his second meeting, face to face, with Beatrice occurred nine years after their first encounter. Her childish charm had now ripened into maidenly loveliness. He beholds her arrayed in purest white, walking between two n.o.ble ladies older than herself. ”As she pa.s.sed along the street, she turned her eyes toward the spot where I, thrilled through and through with awe, was standing; and in her ineffable courtesy, which now hath its guerdon in everlasting life, she saluted me in such gracious wise that I seemed in that moment to behold the utmost bounds of bliss.”
He now begins to dream of her in his sleeping moments, and to rhyme of her in his waking hours. In his first vision, Love appears with Beatrice in his arms. In one hand he holds Dante's flaming heart, upon which he constrains her to feed; after which, weeping, he gathers up his fair burthen and ascends with her to Heaven. This dream seemed to Dante fit to be communicated to the many famous poets of the time. He embodies it in a sonnet, which opens thus:--
To every captive soul and gentle heart Into whose sight shall come this song of mine, That they to me its matter may divine, Be greeting in Love's name, our master's, sent.
And now begins for him a season of love-lorn pining and heart-sickness.
The intensity of the attraction paralyzes in him the power of approaching its object. His friends notice his altered looks, and ask the cause of this great change in him. He confesses that it is the master pa.s.sion, but so misleads them as to the person beloved, as to bring upon another a scandal by his feigning. For this he is punished by the displeasure of Beatrice, who, pa.s.sing him in the street, refuses him that salutation the very hope of which, he says, kindled such a flame of charity within him as to make him forget and forgive every offence and injury.
Love now visits him in his sleep, in the guise of a youth arrayed in garments of exceeding whiteness, and desires him to indite certain words in rhyme, which, though not openly addressed to Beatrice, shall yet a.s.sure her of what she partly knows,--that the poet's heart has been hers from boyhood. The ballad which he composes in obedience to his love's command is not a very literal rendering of his story.
He now begins to have many conflicting thoughts about Love, two of which const.i.tute a very respectable antinomy. One of these tells him that the empire of Love is good, because it turns the inclinations of its va.s.sal from all that is base. The opposite thought is: ”The empire of Love is not good, since the more absolute the allegiance of his va.s.sal, the more severe and woful are the straits through which he must perforce pa.s.s.”
These conflicting thoughts sought expression in a sonnet, of which I will quote a part:--
Of Love, Love only, speaks my every thought; And all so various they be that one Bids me bow down to his dominion, Another counsels me his power is naught.
One, flushed with hopes, is all with sweetness fraught; Another makes full oft my tears to run.
Where, then, to turn, what think, I cannot tell.
Fain would I speak, yet know not what to say.
While these uncertainties still possess him, Dante is persuaded by a friend to attend a bridal festivity, where it is hoped that the sight of much beauty may give him great pleasure.
”Why have you brought me among these ladies?” he asks. ”In order that they may be properly attended,” is the answer.
Small attendance can Dante give upon these n.o.ble beauties. A fatal tremor seizes him; he looks up and, beholding Beatrice, can see nothing else. Nay, even of her his vision is marred by the intensity of his feeling. The ladies first wonder at his agitation, and then make merry over it, Beatrice apparently joining in their merriment. His friend, chagrined at his embarra.s.sment, now asks the cause of it; to which question Dante replies: ”I have set my foot in that part of life to pa.s.s beyond which, with purpose to return, is impossible.”
With these words the poet departs, and in his chamber of tears persuades himself that Beatrice would not have joined in the laughter of her friends if she had really known his state of mind. Then follows, naturally, a sonnet:--
With other ladies thou dost flaunt at me, Nor thinkest, lady, whence doth come the change, What fills mine aspect with a trouble strange When I the wonder of thy beauty see.
If thou didst know, thou must, for charity, Forswear the wonted rigor of thine eye.
With this poetic utterance comes the plain prose question: ”Seeing thou dost present an aspect so ridiculous whenever thou art near this lady, wherefore dost thou seek to come into her presence?”
It takes two sonnets to answer this question. He is not the only person who asks it. Meeting with some merry dames, he is thus questioned by her of them who seems ”most gay and pleasant of discourse:” ”Unto what end lovest thou this lady, seeing that her near presence overwhelms thee?”
In reply, he professes himself happy in having words wherewith to speak the praises of his lady, and going thence, determines in his heart to devote his powers of expression to that high theme. He leaves the cramping sonnet now, and expands his thought in the _canzone_, of which I need only repeat the first line:--