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DIVINA COMMEDIA

OF

DANTE ALIGHIERI

As studied in Prof. Edward A. Grigg's class in Ethical Literature in Stanford University. The treatment will be of interest to those who have not had the advantages of a modern university education in that it shows how complete a study is made of a single poem.

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The Divine Comedy.

I. A--Florence.

"Florence the beautiful," at the time. Dante Alighieri became a mortal, was a very unique city and had much in it to create a poet; and call forth the peculiar genius of this most intense man.

Other cities had feuds, crimes, and stirring patriotism in their midst, but, Florence excelled them all. Other cities had works of art, but Florence excelled in this respect also.

The Florentine who was banished from home felt that no sentence could be more cruel, and he lived only in the hope of returning. B-Strife.

The insecurity of life and property in Florence at this time, is almost beyond our conception, the constant strife between Emperor and Pope, City and City, Father and Son, Brother and Sister was the cause of the condition. Strife and turmoil, public fight and private brawl on the one side, and art flourishing under the protection of the party in power, on the other, made an atmosphere conducive to intensity of character.

C-Dante's Early Life.

Dante's early life, tho spent in this atmosphere, was purified by an intense idealized love for a human being. At the age of nine he saw and loved Beatrice Portinari, a young girl nearly his own age.

Tho his real life began in the year 1265, at this time, the time of seeing the sweet girl in "modest crimson," his ideal life began, and from the first look into the beautiful eyes sprang his poetic soul.

His Later Life.

"The poet found himself in middle life, (1300) without a path, in the midst of Guelph and Ghibelline, Bianchi and Nerè, Cerchi and Donati, Secchi and Verdi" and the numerous other factions that made Florence at times a veritable counterpart of Dante's Inferno. At one time about to be made Podesta, then, by a then, by a turn of fortune's wheel banished with a death sentence hanging over him, Dante wandered far away from his beautiful Florence and his "Bel San Giovani." His homeless wanderings call from us deep sympathy but not regret, for had fortune turned in the other direction, Florence would have had, for a brief space, a great Podesta, but the world might have lost "The Divine Comedy." *

Lowell on Dante's Life.

Lowell says of Dante's life: "Looked at outwardly, the life of Dante seems to have been an utter and disastrous failure. What its inward satisfaction must have been, we, with the Paradise open before us, can form some faint conception.

To him longing with an intensity which only the word Dantesque will express, to realize an ideal upon earth and continually baffled and misunderstood, the far greater part of his mature life must have been labor and sorrow.t

We can see how essential all that sad experience was to him,
Dante gives an idea of his sorrows in the following lines:
"Thou shalt abandon everything beloved
Most tenderly, and this the arrow is

Which first the bow of banishment shoots forth
Thou shalt have proof how savoreth of salt,
The bread of others, and how hard a road
The going down and up another's stairs."

*Symonds Study of Dante, p. 53.

f1. Dr. Krien's lectures.

2. Lowell's Prose Vol. IV, p. 140.

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Besides Dante's familiarity with authors, he was abreast of his time in astronomy, astrology, and science in general, the isms can all be found in his writings, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, Mysticism, Monasticism, Scholasticism, and Pagan Mythology. We might expect to find, as we do, that he places great stress on the mystic numbers three and nine, accordingly the Divine Comedy is divided into three parts, each of these divided into three parts and the whole number of cantos without the prelude is ninety-nine. So in each canto the most minute descriptions and details are all worked out and these mystic numbers appear in bewildering frequency. It is not the province of a short thesis to work out the intricacies 1 of philosophic structure, but we are told by energetic authors that the three fold rhyme in which the poem is written suggests the Trinity, and the thirty-three cantos in each general division suggest the number of years that Christ lived on earth. t

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rived from the things signified by the letter. The first is called literal, the second allegorical or moral.....

The subject then, of the whole work taken literally, is the condition of souls after death, simply considered for on this and around this the whole action of the work turns.

But if the work be taken allegorically, the subject is man, how by actions of merit or demerit, thru freedom of the will he justly deserves reward or punishment."

IV The Story,

The story briefly told is that Dante while yet a mortal was conducted by the shade of Virgil thru Inferno and Purgatorio, then after being drawn thru Lethe, the river of forgetfulness and thru Eunce the river which restored his memory of good, he was taken by Beatrice to the very presence of God.

The first superficial reading of the poem makes one almost willing to say with Voltairé "That few people understand his oracles" and agree with him when he writes to Father Bettinelli:

2" I estimate highly the courage with which you have dared to say that Dante was a madman and his work a monster." A second reading and close study begin to reveal the depth of earnestness and the marvelous fitness of words and imagery. Everything fits together and produces a mosaic of life that never has been equalled.

Other poets have written down the development of one or a dozen souls, but Dante in the Divine Comedy works out hundreds. Every sin in the decalog is pictured in all its phases, every circle in hell is filled with shades writhing in torment suited to the sin committed.**

And such torment !! ¡

One turns from it with nausea and horror, but if we stop to analyze it, soon this feeling gives place to one of surprise at Dante's deep insight into the effect of sin on the human soul.

W. T. Harris says: "I Human defect as sin must be adjudged and recompensed differently from human defect as crime." Dante makes these cestinctions so clear in his Divine Comedy, the punishment for the sin of anger is different from the punishment for the crimes which grow out of the sin of anger. So the punishment for the crimes which grow out of the sin of lust are different.††

with eternal death beThis beautiful woman

B-Sins and People. Dante punishes Francesca da Rimini cause she gave way to all absorbing love. was the daughter of one of Dante's friends, and as a child, perhaps, was dear to him. Yet he places her where she belongs according to his scheme of punishment.

In his own purification for this particular sin Dante passed thru a flame so fierce that he tells us

"When I was in it, into molten glass I would have cast me to refresh myself, so without measure was the burning there."

Dante believed so utterly in the scenes he described that his poem becomes more than an allegory, and to him at least his journey thru hell was an actual fact and he spares no one, popes, peasants, captains, lords, ladies, men of his own time, men of the earliest times are all marshalled into their proper places according to their deeds done in the body.‡‡

I Every educated person at the mention of Dante's name thinks of Francesca da Rimini and Ugolino, Virgil, Beatrice, Bun. conti, Sordello and a host of others. His genius was so great that with a few lines he burns these different characters into our

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B-General Characteristics of Dante's Style.

We find force, depth, definiteness, brevity, sincerity, intensity and subordination to a fixed purpose all wonderfully displayed in the Divine Comedy.

This fixed purpose he has told us was to eulogize Beatrice Portinari, to say of her what never had been said of woman and set up a glass wherein each human being might see the effect of sin and the way to eternal joy.*

B-Structure.

The mechanical structure of the poem is so exact that we are able to draw charts of the regions he visited and estimate the days and hours of his journey. I "He starts the evening before Good Friday, March 24th, 1300, and ends the tour of hell and purgatory upon the 30th of the same month, Symonds tells us.

C-Time-Scheme.

Another tells us: 2 He starts the evening before Good Friday, March 24th, 1300. Good Friday morning goes up the hill and enters Inferno with Virgil in the evening. Saturday evening they arrive at the last circle. Easter morning they find themselves at the entrance of a great cavern leading to the other hemisphere. The whole day and night Sunday are spent in this subterranean journey. †

Monday before daybreak they come out on the side opposite to Hell at the foot of the mountain of Purgatory. It takes him four days to go thru Purgatory, Mon lay, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday after Easter. Friday and Saturday he traverses the nine movable Heavens, and Sunday a week after Easter he rises to the Empyrean." Did any one ever conceive a more eventful journey?

D-Figures of Speech.

Dante's power in the use of images was very great. One of the finest similes in literature is the one of the sheep:

I "As sheep come issuing forth from out the fold
By ones and twos and threes and the others stand
Timidly, holding down their eyes and nostrils,
And what the foremost does, the others do,
Huddling themselves against her, if she stops,‡
Simple and quiet and the wherefore know not,
So moving to approach us thereupon

I saw the leader of that fortunate flock,
Modest in face and dignified in gait.

As soon as those in the advance saw broken

The light upon the ground at my right side,

So that from me the shadow reached the rock,

They stopped, and backward drew themselves somewhat:
And all the others, who came after them,
Not knowing why nor wherefore, did the same."

Macaulay advises everyone "who can muster sufficient Italian to read the simile of the sheep." and continues: "I think it the most perfect passage of the kind in the world, the most imaginative, the most picturesque and the most sweetly expressed. "S This like most of Dante's images loses somewhat by removal from the context. One must recall the fact that Dante a mortal casts a shadow. The shades in Purgatory being nothing but shades do not cast a shadow, the sun shines thru them, seeing the shadow of Dante the foremost one stops affrighted, the others, like sheep stop too. He employs imagery to give exact images to his thought and the scenes he is describing, tho they often are very beautiful that is not their first use.

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The

mystic sense and often a combination of circumstances. color symbolism of the Middle Ages is carried out in his uses of words denoting color, and paragraphs are requ red to explain the meaning of a single word.

I "Green, the emerald, is the color of Spring, of hope, particularly hope in immortality; and of victory, as the color of the palm and the laurel." So where Dante speaks of the garments of two angels:2 "Green as the little leaflets just now born, Their garments were,"

We know that the particular shade of green described has a deeper meaning than simple light green.

It signifies hope, this being the distinguishing virtue of purgatory, he clothes these two angels in green tho they symbolize justice.

Who could ask for more justice, clothed in hope, carrying a sword tempered with mercy.

That thought alone ought to relieve Dante from the accusation of moroseness.

When Dante speaks of carnal sinners whose punishment is"To be imprisoned in the viewless winds and blown with restless violence round about-

The pendent world,"**

he describes them as going thru the "L'ær perso" or perse air. Perse air with figures passing thru it, makes a striking picture when we remember the definition of perse that Dante gave 3 "A color mixed of purple and black, but the black predominates."

At other times he speaks of 3 "the embrowned air" and makes Malbolge in hell the color of stone and iron. menting upon this says:

Ruskin com

"The Appenine limestone is so gray and toneless that I know not any mountain district so utterly melancholy as those which are composed of this rock, when unwooded.

Now as far as I can discover from the internal evidence in his poem nearly all Dante's mountain wanderings had been upon this ground. t

I do not know the "Fall at Forli," but every other scene to which he alludes is among these Appenine limestones;

His idea therefore of rock color founded on these experiences

is that of a dull or ashen gray, more or less stained by brown iron ochre, precisely as the Appennine limestones nearly always are; the gray being peculiarly cold and disagreeable."

With such attention to shades of meaning in words we expect to find accurate description of natural scenery, but, Macaulay in his essay on Dante says:

2'No person can have attended to the Divine Comedy without observing how little impression the forms of the external world appear to have made on the mind of Dante: His temper and his situation had led him to fix his observation almost exclusively on human nature. The exquisite opening of the eighth canto of the purgatorio affords a strong instance of this:

'Twas now the hour that turneth back desire
In those who sail the sea, and melts the earth,
The day they've said to their sweet friends farewell
And the new pilgrim penetrates with love-
If he doth hear from far away a bell
That seemeth to deplore the dying day.'

SSHe leaves to others the earth, the ocean and the sky. His business is with man. To other writers evening maybe the season of dews and stars and radiant clouds, to Dante it is the hour of fond recollection and passionate devotion, the hour which melts the heart of the mariner and kindles the love of the pilgrim,-the hour when the toll of the

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bell seems to mourn for another day, which is gone, and will return no more."

I Ruskin remarks that Daute had little love for mountains or sky except in the "white clearness" characteristic of the sky of Italy.

Notwithstanding the opinions of these authors, it seems to me no one can read Dante's Divine Comedy without seeing that he was as keen an observer of nature, as he was of human char

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acter.

He is describing the other world but he is so skillful in explaining, that we see just what he sees and in order to make us know just how every inch of the ground looked he uses terms of the natural world, and if he had not been an accurate observer he could not have done this. He makes one feel the color of the air as not even Ruskin with all his love for cloud effects can do.*

IV-Love Incited Dante's Creed.

Love roused Dante to write something greater, grander of Beatrice Portinari- than had ever been written of woman-Patriotism was the next strong characteristic of this virile being, and it sustained him in his purpose of writing a work that should be eternal, finally eternal love filled his life and paradiso was gained. The steps are natural, love for a human being widens into love for country, or all humanity and God the author of all.

His Creed.

A writer has the following to say of Dante's creed:--1 "The following then, is a summary of what in the thirteenth century, Dante believed. God is one,-the universe is one thought of God, -the universe therefore is one. All things come from God,they all participate, more or less, in the Divine nature, according to the end for which they are created. They all float toward different points over the great ocean of existence, but they are all moved by the same will. Flowers in the garden of God all merit our love according to the degree of excellence he has bestowed upon each; of these man is the most eminent. Upon him God has bestowed more of his own nature than upon any other crea

ture.

In the continuous scale of being, that man whose nature is the most degraded touches upon the animal; he whose nature is the most noble approaches that of the angel..

Mankind is one, God has made nothing in vain, and if there exists a multitude, a collection of men, it is because there is one aim for them all,-one work to be accomplished by them all. Whatever this aim may be, it does certainly exist, and we must endeavor to discover and attain it. Unity is taught by the manifest design of God in the external world, and by the necessity of

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I "Modern thought carried out in evolution teaches us that Dante's idea of justice is true nature, tho we cannot accept a static Hell, there is no time in life when change is impossible."

Each earnest student will glean as much from Dante's Divine Comedy as his culture enables him to see, and if life has come to him with broader significance he will find the germ, which expanded, fits his life and the creed of his time for Dante deals with the hell of sin; the Purgatory of repentance; and the Paradise of the perfect adjustment to the Source of Love.

*1. Modern Painters III 248.

+1. Foreign Quarterly Revtew, LXV Art I

11. Prof. Grigg's Lecture.

ROMNEYA COULTERI.

The Romneya is one of the showiest flowers of the South. west. Alice! Merrit Davidson in her book on California Plants says: "It has great crinkled, white petals and marvelous yellow antlers, and the bumble bees fairly wallow in its pollen. The Romneya is often known as the Matilija poppy because it is found in a canon by that name in Ventura County, but it is found in many other canons in Southern California and is gaining rapidly in favor as a cultivated plant."

The Quarrel.

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