The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (essential books to read TXT) 📕

perceived that he had passed from the meridian circle to the eastern horizon, the half of our hemisphere, and a quarter of the heaven.

 

v. 76. From Gades.] See Hell, Canto XXVI. 106

 

v. 78. The shore.] Phoenicia, where Europa, the daughter of Agenor mounted on the back of Jupiter, in his shape of a bull.

 

v. 80. The sun.] Dante was in the constellation Gemini, and the sun in Aries. There was, therefore, part of those two constellations, and the whole of Taurus, between them.

 

v. 93. The fair nest of Leda.] “From the Gemini;” thus called, because Leda was the mother of the twins, Castor and Pollux v. 112. Time’s roots.] “Here,” says Beatrice, “are the roots, from whence time springs: for the parts, into which it is divided, the other heavens must be considered.” And she then breaks out into an exclamation on the degeneracy of human nature, which does not lift itself to the contemplation of divine things.

 

v. 126. The fair child of him.] So she calls human nature.

Pindar by a more easy figure, terms the day, “child of the sun.”

 

v. 129. None.] Because, as has been before said, the shepherds are become wolves.

 

v. 131. Before the date.] “Before many ages are past, before those fractions, which are drops in the reckoning of every year, shall amount to so large a portion of time, that January shall be no more a winter month.” By this periphrasis is meant ” in a short time,” as we say familiarly, such a thing will happen before a thousand years are over when we mean, it will happen soon.

 

v. 135. Fortune shall be fain.] The commentators in general suppose that our Poet here augurs that great reform, which he vainly hoped would follow on the arrival of the Emperor Henry VII. in Italy. Lombardi refers the prognostication to Can Grande della Scala: and, when we consider that this Canto was not finished till after the death of Henry, as appears from the mention that is made of John XXII, it cannot be denied but the conjecture is probable.

 

CANTO XXVIII

 

v. 36. Heav’n, and all nature, hangs upon that point.] [GREEK

HERE]

Aristot. Metaph. 1. xii. c. 7. “From that beginning depend heaven and nature.”

 

v. 43. Such diff’rence.] The material world and the intelligential (the copy and the pattern) appear to Dante to differ in this respect, that the orbits of the latter are more swift, the nearer they are to the centre, whereas the contrary is the case with the orbits of the former. The seeming contradiction is thus accounted for by Beatrice. In the material world, the more ample the body is, the greater is the good of which itis capable supposing all the parts to be equally perfect. But in the intelligential world, the circles are more excellent and powerful, the more they approximate to the central point, which is God. Thus the first circle, that of the seraphim, corresponds to the ninth sphere, or primum mobile, the second, that of the cherubim, to the eighth sphere, or heaven of fixed stars; the third, or circle of thrones, to the seventh sphere, or planet of Saturn; and in like manner throughout the two other trines of circles and spheres.

 

In orbs

Of circuit inexpressible they stood, Orb within orb

Milton, P. L. b. v. 596.

 

v. 70. The sturdy north.] Compare Homer, II. b. v. 524.

 

v. 82. In number.] The sparkles exceeded the number which would be produced by the sixty-four squares of a chess-board, if for the first we reckoned one, for the next, two; for the third, four; and so went on doubling to the end of the account.

 

v. 106. Fearless of bruising from the nightly ram.] Not injured, like the productions of our spring, by the influence of autumn, when the constellation Aries rises at sunset.

 

v. 110. Dominations.]

Hear all ye angels, progeny of light, Thrones, domination’s, princedoms, virtues, powers.

Milton, P. L. b. v. 601.

 

v. 119. Dionysius.] The Areopagite, in his book De Caelesti Hierarchia.

 

v. 124. Gregory.] Gregory the Great. “Novem vero angelorum ordines diximus, quia videlicet esse, testante sacro eloquio, scimus: Angelos, archangelos, virtutes, potestates, principatus, dominationae, thronos, cherubin atque seraphin.” Divi Gregorii, Hom. xxxiv. f. 125. ed. Par. 1518. fol.

 

v. 126. He had learnt.] Dionysius, he says, had learnt from St.

Paul. It is almost unnecessary to add, that the book, above referred to, which goes under his name, was the production of a later age.

 

CANTO XXIX

 

v. 1. No longer.] As short a space, as the sun and moon are in changing hemispheres, when they are opposite to one another, the one under the sign of Aries, and the other under that of Libra, and both hang for a moment, noised as it were in the hand of the zenith.

 

v. 22. For, not in process of before or aft.] There was neither “before nor after,” no distinction, that is, of time, till the creation of the world.

 

v. 30. His threefold operation.] He seems to mean that spiritual beings, brute matter, and the intermediate part of the creation, which participates both of spirit and matter, were produced at once.

 

v. 38. On Jerome’s pages.] St. Jerome had described the angels as created before the rest of the universe: an opinion which Thomas Aquinas controverted; and the latter, as Dante thinks, had Scripture on his side.

 

v. 51. Pent.] See Hell, Canto XXXIV. 105.

 

v. 111. Of Bindi and of Lapi.] Common names of men at Florence v. 112. The sheep.] So Milton, Lycidas.

The hungry sheep look up and are not fed, But, swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly.

 

v. 121. The preacher.] Thus Cowper, Task, b. ii.

 

‘Tis pitiful

To court a grin, when you should woo a soul, &c.

 

v. 131. Saint Anthony.

Fattens with this his swine.]

On the sale of these blessings, the brothers of St. Anthony supported themselves and their paramours. From behind the swine of St. Anthony, our Poet levels a blow at the object of his inveterate enmity, Boniface VIII, from whom, “in 1297, they obtained the dignity and privileges of an independent congregation.” See Mosheim’s Eccles. History in Dr. Maclaine’s Translation, v. ii. cent. xi. p. 2. c. 2. - 28.

 

v. 140. Daniel.] “Thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.” Dan. c. vii.

10.

 

CANTO XXX

 

v. 1. Six thousand miles.] He compares the vanishing of the vision to the fading away of the stars at dawn, when it is noonday six thousand miles off, and the shadow, formed by the earth over the part of it inhabited by the Poet, is about to disappear.

 

v. 13. Engirt.] ” ppearing to be encompassed by these angelic bands, which are in reality encompassed by it.”

 

v. 18. This turn.] Questa vice.

Hence perhaps Milton, P. L. b. viii. 491.

This turn hath made amends.

 

v. 39. Forth.] From the ninth sphere to the empyrean, which is more light.

 

v. 44. Either mighty host.] Of angels, that remained faithful, and of beatified souls, the latter in that form which they will have at the last day.

v. 61. Light flowing.] “And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” Rev. cxxii. I.

 

—underneath a bright sea flow’d

Of jasper, or of liquid pearl.

Milton, P. L. b. iii. 518.

 

v. 80. Shadowy of the truth.]

Son di lor vero ombriferi prefazii.

So Mr. Coleridge, in his Religious Musings, v. 406.

Life is a vision shadowy of truth.

 

v. 88. —the eves

Of mine eyelids.]

Thus Shakespeare calls the eyelids “penthouse lids.” Macbeth, a, 1. s, 3.

 

v. 108. As some cliff.]

A lake

That to the fringed bank with myrtle crown’d Her crystal mirror holds.

Milton, P. L. b. iv. 263.

 

v. 118. My view with ease.]

Far and wide his eye commands

For sight no obstacle found here, nor shade, But all sunshine.

Milton, P. l. b. iii. 616.

 

v. 135. Of the great Harry.] The Emperor Henry VII, who died in 1313.

 

v. 141. He.] Pope Clement V. See Canto XXVII. 53.

 

v. 145. Alagna’s priest.] Pope Boniface VIII. Hell, Canto XIX.

 

79.

 

CANTO XXXI

 

v. 6. Bees.] Compare Homer, Iliad, ii. 87. Virg. Aen. I. 430, and Milton, P. L. b. 1. 768.

 

v. 29. Helice.] Callisto, and her son Arcas, changed into the constellations of the Greater Bear and Arctophylax, or Bootes.

See Ovid, Met. l. ii. fab. v. vi.

 

v. 93. Bernard.] St. Bernard, the venerable abbot of Clairvaux, and the great promoter of the second crusade, who died A.D. 1153, in his sixty-third year. His sermons are called by Henault, “chefs~d’oeuvres de sentiment et de force.” Abrege Chron. de l’Hist. de Fr. 1145. They have even been preferred to al1 the productions of the ancients, and the author has been termed the last of the fathers of the church. It is uncertain whether they were not delivered originally in the French tongue.

 

That the part he acts in the present Poem should be assigned to him. appears somewhat remarkable, when we consider that he severely censured the new festival established in honour of the Immaculate Conception of the virgin, and opposed the doctrine itself with the greatest vigour, as it supposed her being honoured with a privilegewhich belonged to Christ Alone Dr.

Maclaine’s Mosheim, v. iii. cent. xii. p. ii. c. 3 - 19.

 

v. 95. Our Veronica ] The holy handkerchief, then preserved at Rome, on which the countenance of our Saviour was supposed to have been imprest.

 

v. 101. Him.] St. Bernard.

 

v. 108. The queen.] The Virgin Mary.

 

v. 119. Oriflamb.] Menage on this word quotes the Roman des Royau

-Iignages of Guillaume Ghyart.

Oriflamme est une banniere

De cendal roujoyant et simple

Sans portraiture d’autre affaire,

 

CANTO XXXII

 

v. 3. She.] Eve.

 

v. 8. Ancestress.] Ruth, the ancestress of David.

 

v. 60. In holy scripture.] Gen. c. xxv. 22.

v. 123. Lucia.] See Hell, Canto II. 97.

 

CANTO XXXIII

 

v. 63. The Sybil’s sentence.] Virg. Aen. iii. 445.

 

v. 89. One moment.] “A moment seems to me more tedious, than five-and-twenty ages would have appeared to the Argonauts, when they had resolved on their expedition.

 

v. 92. Argo’s shadow]

Quae simul ac rostro ventosnm proscidit aequor, Tortaque remigio spumis incanduit unda, Emersere feri candenti e gurgite vultus Aequoreae monstrum Nereides admirantes.

Catullus, De Nupt. Pel. et Thet. 15.

 

v. 109. Three orbs of triple hue, clipt in one bound.] The Trinity.

 

v. 118. That circling.] The second of the circles, “Light of Light,” in which he dimly beheld the mystery of the incarnation.

 

End Paradise.

PREFACE

In the years 1805 and 1806, I published the first part of the following translation, with the text of the original. Since that period, two impressions of the whole of the Divina Commedia, in Italian, have made their appearance in this country. It is not necessary that I should add a third: and I am induced to hope that the Poem, even in the present version of it, may not be without interest for the mere English reader.

 

The translation of the second and third parts, “The Purgatory”

and “The Paradise,” was begun long before the first, and as early as the year 1797; but, owing to many interruptions, not concluded till the summer before last. On a