Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845
Strange as it may appear to superficial observers, Cervantes bears a close analogy, in many particulars, to Homer. Circumstances, and an inherent turn for humour, made him throw his genius into an exquisite ridicule of the manners of chivalry; but the author of Don Quixote had in him the spirit of a great epic poet. His lesser pieces prove it; unequivocal traces of it are to be found in the adventures of the Knight of La Mancha himself. The elevation of mind which, amidst all his aberrations, appears in that erratic character; the incomparable traits of nature with which the work abounds; the faculty of describing events in the most striking way; of painting scenes in a few words; of delineating characters with graphic fidelity, and keeping them up with perfect consistency, which are so conspicuous in Don Quixote, are so many of the most essential qualities of an epic poet. Nor was the ardour of imagination, the romantic disposition, the brilliancy of fancy, the lofty aspirations, the tender heart, which form the more elevated and not less essential part of such a character, wanting in the Spanish novelist.
Sir Walter Scott more nearly resembles Homer than any poet who has sung since the siege of Troy. Not that he has produced any poem which will for a moment bear a comparison with the Iliad— fine as the Lady of the Lake and Marmion are, it would be the height of national partiality to make any such comparison. But, nevertheless, Sir Walter's mind is of the same dimensions as that of Homer. We see in him the same combination of natural sagacity with acquired information; of pictorial eye with dramatic effect; of observation of character with reflection and feeling; of graphic power with poetic fervour; of ardour of imagination with rectitude of principle; of warlike enthusiasm with pacific tenderness, which have rendered the Grecian bard immortal. It is in his novels, however, more than his poetry, that this resemblance appears; the author of Waverley more nearly approaches the blind bard than the author of the Lay. His romances in verse contain some passages which are sublime, many which are beautiful, some pathetic. They are all interesting, and written in the same easy, careless style, interspersed with the most homely and grotesque expressions, which is so well known to all the readers of the Iliad. The battle in Marmion is beyond all question, as Jeffrey long ago remarked, the most Homeric strife which has been sung since the days of Homer. But these passages are few and far between; his poems are filled with numerous and long interludes, written with little art, and apparently no other object but to fill up the pages or eke out the story. It is in prose that the robust strength, the powerful arm, the profound knowledge of the heart, appear; and it is there, accordingly, that he approaches at times so closely to Homer. If we could conceive a poem, in which the storming of Front-de-Bœuf's castle in Ivanhoe— the death of Fergus in Waverley— the storm on the coast, and death scene in the fisher's hut, in the Antiquary— the devoted love in the Bride of Lammermoor— the fervour of the Covenanters in Old Mortality, and the combats of Richard and Saladin in the Talisman, were united together, and intermingled with the incomparable characters, descriptions, and incidents with which these novels abound, they would form an epic poem.
Doubts have sometimes been expressed, as to whether the Iliad and Odyssey are all the production of one man. Never, perhaps, was doubt not merely so ill founded, but so decisively disproved by internal evidence. If ever in human composition the traces of one mind are conspicuous, they are in Homer. His beauties equally with his defects, his variety and uniformity, attest this. Never was an author who had so fertile an imagination for varying of incidents; never was one who expressed them in language in which the same words so constantly recur. This is the invariable characteristic of a great and powerful, but at the same time self-confident and careless mind. It is to be seen in the most remarkable manner in Bacon and Machiavel, and not a little of it may be traced both in the prose and poetical works of Scott. The reason is, that the strength of the mind is thrown into the thought as the main object; the language, as a subordinate matter, is little considered. Expressions capable of energetically expressing the prevailing ideas of the imagination are early formed; but, when this is done, the powerful, careless mind, readily adopts them on all future occasions where they are at all applicable. There is scarcely a great and original thinker in whose writings the same expressions do not very frequently recur, often in exactly the same words. How much this is the case with Homer — with how much discrimination and genius his epithets and expressions were first chosen, and how frequently he repeats them, almost in every page, need be told to none who are acquainted with his writings. That is the most decisive mark at once of genius and identity. Original thinkers fall into repetition of expression, because they are always speaking from one model — their own thoughts. Subordinate writers avoid this fault, because they are speaking from the thoughts of others, and share their variety. It requires as great an effort for the first to introduce difference of expression, as for the last to reach diversity of thought.
The reader of Dante must not look for the heart-stirring and animated narrative — the constant interest — the breathless suspense, which hurries us along the rapid current of the Iliad. There are no councils of the gods; no messengers winging their way through the clouds; no combats of chiefs; no cities to storm; no fields to win. It is the infernal regions which the poet, under the guidance of his great leader, Virgil, visits; it is the scene of righteous retribution through which he is led; it is the apportionment of punishment and reward to crime or virtue, in this upper world, that he is doomed to witness. We enter the city of lamentation — we look down the depths of the bottomless pit — we stand at the edge of the burning lake. His survey is not a mere transient visit like that of Ulysses in Homer, or of Æneas in Virgil. He is taken slowly and deliberately through every successive circle of Malebolge; descending down which, like the visitor of the tiers of vaults, one beneath another, in a feudal castle, he finds every species of malefactors, from the chiefs and kings whose heroic lives were stained only by a few deeds of cruelty, to the depraved malefactors whose base course was unrelieved by one ray of virtue. In the very conception of such a poem, is to be found decisive evidence of the mighty change which the human mind had undergone since the expiring lays of poetry were last heard in the ancient world; of the vast revolution of thought and inward conviction which, during a thousand years, in the solitude of the monastery, and under the sway of a spiritual faith, had taken place in the human heart. A gay and poetic mythology no longer amazed the world by its fictions, or charmed it by its imagery. Religion no longer basked in the sunshine of imagination. The awful words of judgment to come had been spoken; and, like Felix, mankind had trembled. Ridiculous legends had ceased to be associated with the shades below — their place had been taken by images of horror. Conscience had resumed its place in the direction of thought. Superstition had lent its awful power to the sanctions of religion. Terror of future punishment had subdued the fiercest passions — internal agony tamed the proudest spirits. It was the picture of a future world — of a world of retribution — conceived under such impressions, that Dante proposed to give; it is that which he has given with such terrible fidelity.
Melancholy was the prevailing characteristic of the great Italian's mind. It was so profound that it penetrated all his thoughts; so intense that it pervaded all his conceptions. Occasionally bright and beautiful ideas flitted across his imagination; visions of bliss, experienced for a moment, and then lost for ever, as if to render more profound the darkness by which they are surrounded. They are given with exquisite beauty; but they shine amidst the gloom like sunbeams struggling through the clouds. He inherited from the dark ages the austerity of the cloister; but he inherited with it the deep feelings and sublime conceptions which its seclusion had generated. His mind was a world within itself. He drew all his conceptions from that inexhaustible source; but he drew them forth so clear and lucid, that they emerged, embodied as it were, in living images. His characters are emblematic of the various passions and views for which different degrees of punishment were reserved in the world to come; but his conception of them was so distinct, his description so vivid, that they stand forth to our gaze in all the agony of their sufferings, like real flesh and blood. We see them — we feel them — we hear their cries — our very flesh creeps at the perception of their sufferings. We stand on the edge of the lake of boiling pitch — we feel the weight of the leaden mantles — we see the snow-like flakes of burning sand — we hear the cries of those who had lost the last earthly consolations, the hope of death: —
"Quivi sospiri, pianti ed alti guai
Risonavan per l' aer senza stelle,
Perch' io al cominciar ne lacrimai.
Diverse lingue, orribili favelle,
Parole di dolore, accenti d' ira,
Voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle
Facevano un tumulto, il qual s' aggira
Sempre 'n quell' aria senza tempo tinta,
Come la rena quando 'l turbo spira.
* * *
Ed io: maestro, che è tanto greve
A lor che lamentar li fa si forte?
Rispose: dicerolti molto breve.
Questi non hanno speranza di morte."
Inferno, c. iii.
"Here sighs, with lamentations and loud moans,
Resounded through the air pierced by no star,
That e'en I wept at entering. Various tongues,
Horrible languages, outcries of woe,
Accents of anger, voices deep and hoarse,
With hands together smote that swell'd the sounds,
Made up a tumult, that for ever whirls
Round through that air with solid darkness stain'd,
Like to the sand that in the whirlwind flies.
* * *
I then: Master! What doth aggrieve them thus,
That they lament so loud? He straight replied:
That will I tell thee briefly. These of death
No hope may entertain."
Cary's Dante, Inferno, c. iii.
Here is Dante portrayed to the life in the very outset. What a collection of awful images in a few lines! Loud lamentations, hideous cries, mingled with the sound of clasped hands, beneath a starless sky; and the terrible answer, as the cause of this suffering, "These have not the hope of death."
The very first lines of the Inferno, when the gates of Hell were approached, and the inscription over them appeared, paints the dismal character of the poem, and yet mingled with the sense of divine love and justice with which the author was penetrated.
"Per me si va nella città dolente;
Per me si va nell' eterno dolore;
Per me si va tra la perduta gente:
Giustizia mosse 'l mio alto Fattore;
Fecemi la divina Potestate,
La somma Sapienza e 'l primo Amore.
Dinanzi a me non fur cose create,
Se non eterne; ed io eterno duro:
Lasciate ogni speranza voi che 'ntrate."
Inferno, c. iii.
"Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric moved:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here."
Cary's Dante, Inferno, c. iii.
Dante had much more profound feelings than Homer, and therefore he has painted deep mysteries of the human heart with greater force and fidelity. The more advanced age of the world, the influence of spiritual faith, the awful anticipation of judgment to come, the inmost feelings which, during long centuries of seclusion, had been drawn forth in the cloister, the protracted sufferings of the dark ages, had laid bare the human heart. Its sufferings, its terrors, its hopes, its joys, had become as household words. The Italian poet shared, as all do, in the ideas and images of his age, and to these he added many which were entirely his own. He painted the inward man, and painted him from his own feelings, not the observation of others. That is the grand distinction between him and Homer; and that it is which has given him, in the delineation of mind, his great superiority. The Grecian bard was an incomparable observer; he had an inexhaustible imagination for fiction, as well as a graphic eye for the delineation of real life; but he had not a deep or feeling heart. He did not know it, like Dante and Shakspeare, from his own suffering. He painted the external symptoms of passion and emotion with the hand of a master; but he did not reach the inward spring of feeling. He lets us into his characters by their speeches, their gestures, their actions, and keeps up their consistency with admirable fidelity; but he does not, by a word, an expression, or an epithet, admit us into the inmost folds of the heart. None can do so but such as themselves feel warmly and profoundly, and paint passion, emotion, or suffering from their own experience, not the observation of others. Dante has acquired his colossal fame from the matchless force with which he has portrayed the wildest passions, the deepest feelings, the most intense sufferings of the heart. He is the refuge of all those who labour and are heavy laden — of all who feel profoundly or have suffered deeply. His verses are in the mouth of all who are torn by passion, gnawed by remorse, or tormented by apprehension; and how many are they in this scene of woe!
A distinguished modern critic2 has said, that he who would now become a great poet must first become a little child. There is no doubt he is right. The seen and unseen fetters of civilization; the multitude of old ideas afloat in the world; the innumerable worn-out channels into which new ones are ever apt to flow; the general clamour with which critics, nursed amidst such fetters, receive any attempts at breaking them; the prevalence, in a wealthy and highly civilized age, of worldly or selfish ideas; the common approximation of characters by perpetual intercourse, as of coins, by continual rubbing in passing from man to man, have taken away all freshness and originality from ideas. The learned, the polished, the highly educated, can hardly escape the fetters which former greatness throws over the soul. Milton could not avoid them: half the images in his poems are taken from Homer, Virgil, and Dante; and who dare hope for emancipation when Milton was enthralled? The mechanical arts increase in perfection as society advances. Science ever takes its renewed flights from the platform which former efforts have erected. Industry, guided by experience, in successive ages, brings to the highest point all the contrivances and inventions which minister to the comfort or elegances of life. But it is otherwise with genius. It sinks in the progress of society, as much as science and the arts rise. The country of Homer and Æschylus sank for a thousand years into the torpor of the Byzantine empire. Originality perishes amidst acquisition. Freshness of conception is its life: like the flame, it burns fierce and clear in the first gales of a pure atmosphere; but languishes and dies in that polluted by many breaths.
It was the resurrection of the human mind, after the seclusion and solitary reflection of the middle ages, which gave this vein of original ideas to Dante, as their first wakening had given to Homer. Thought was not extinct; the human mind was not dormant during the dark ages; far from it — it never, in some respects, was more active. It was the first collision of their deep and lonely meditations with the works of the great ancient poets, which occasioned the prodigy. Universally it will be found to be the same. After the first flights of genius have been taken, it is by the collision of subsequent thought with it that the divine spark is again elicited. The meeting of two great minds is necessary to beget fresh ideas, as that of two clouds is to bring forth lightning, or the collision of flint and steel to produce fire. Johnson said he could not get new ideas till he had read. He was right; though it is not one in a thousand who strikes out original thoughts from studying the works of others. The great sage did not read to imbibe the opinions of others, but to engender new ones for himself; he did not study to imitate, but to create. It was the same with Dante; it is the same with every really great man. His was the first powerful and original mind which, fraught with the profound and gloomy ideas nourished in seclusion during the middle ages, came into contact with the brilliant imagery, touching pathos, and harmonious language of the ancients. Hence his astonishing greatness. He almost worshipped Virgil, he speaks of him as a species of god; he mentions Homer as the first of poets. But he did not copy either the one or the other; he scarcely imitated them. He strove to rival their brevity and beauty of expression; but he did so in giving vent to new ideas, in painting new images, in awakening new emotions. The Inferno is as original as the Iliad; incomparably more so than the Æneid. The offspring of originality with originality is a new and noble creation; of originality with mediocrity, a spurious and degraded imitation.
Dante paints the spirits of all the generations of men, each in their circle undergoing their allotted punishment; expiating by suffering the sins of an upper world. Virgil gave a glimpse, as it were, into that scene of retribution; Minos and Rhadamanthus passing judgment on the successive spirits brought before them; the flames of Tartarus, the rock of Sisyphus, the wheel of Ixion, the vulture gnawing Prometheus. But with Homer and Virgil, the descent into the infernal regions was a brief episode; with Dante it was the whole poem. Immense was the effort of imagination requisite to give variety to such a subject, to prevent the mind from experiencing weariness amidst the eternal recurrence of crime and punishment. But the genius of Dante was equal to the task. His fancy was prodigious; his invention boundless; his imagination inexhaustible. Fenced in, as he was, within narrow and gloomy limits by the nature of his subject, his creative spirit equals that of Homer himself. He has given birth to as many new ideas in the Inferno and the Paradiso, as the Grecian bard in the Iliad and Odyssey.
Though he had reflected so much and so deeply on the human heart, and was so perfect a master of all the anatomy of mental suffering, Dante's mind was essentially descriptive. He was a great painter as well as a profound thinker; he clothed deep feeling in the garb of the senses; he conceived a vast brood of new ideas, he arrayed them in a surprising manner in flesh and blood. He is ever clear and definite, at least in the Inferno. He exhibits in every canto of that wonderful poem a fresh image, but it is a clear one, of horror or anguish, which leaves nothing to the imagination to add or conceive. His ideal characters are real persons; they are present to our senses; we feel their flesh, see the quivering of their limbs, hear their lamentations, and feel a thrill of joy at their felicity. In the Paradiso he is more vague and general, and thence its acknowledged inferiority to the Inferno. But the images of horror are much more powerful than those of happiness; and it is they which have entranced the world. "It is easier," says Madame de Staël, "to convey ideas of suffering than those of happiness; for the former are too well known to every heart, the latter only to a few."
The melancholy tone which pervades Dante's writings was doubtless, in a great measure, owing to the misfortunes of his life; and to them we are also indebted for many of the most caustic and powerful of his verses — perhaps for the design of the Inferno itself. He took vengeance on the generation which had persecuted and exiled him, by exhibiting its leaders suffering in the torments of hell. In his long seclusion, chiefly in the monastery of Santa Croce di Fonte Avellana, a wild and solitary retreat in the territory of Gubbio, and in a tower belonging to the Conte Falcucci, in the same district, his immortal work was written. The mortifications he underwent during this long and dismal exile are thus described by himself: — "Wandering over almost every part in which our language extends, I have gone about like a mendicant; showing against my will the wound with which fortune has smitten me, and which is often falsely imputed to the demerit of him by whom it is endured. I have been, indeed, a vessel without sail or steerage, carried about to divers ports, and roads, and shores, by the dry wind that springs out of sad poverty."
In the third circle of hell, Dante sees those who are punished by the plague of burning sand falling perpetually on them. Their torments are thus described —
"Supin giaceva in terra alcuna gente;
Alcuna si sedea tutta raccolta;
Ed altra andava continuamente.
Quella che giva intorno era più molta;
E quella men che giaceva al tormento;
Ma più al duolo avea la lingua sciolta.
Sovra tutto 'l sabbion d'un cader lento
Piovean di fuoco dilatate falde,
Come di neve in alpe senza vento.
Quali Alessandro in quelle parti calde
D' India vide sovra lo suo stuolo
Fiamme cadere infino a terra salde."
Inferno, c. xiv.
"Of naked spirits many a flock I saw,
All weeping piteously, to different laws
Subjected: for on earth some lay supine,
Some crouching close were seated, others paced
Incessantly around; the latter tribe
More numerous, those fewer who beneath
The torment lay, but louder in their grief.
O'er all the sand fell slowly wafting down
Dilated flakes of fire, as flakes of snow
On Alpine summit, when the wind is hush'd.
As, in the torrid Indian clime, the son
Of Ammon saw, upon his warrior band
Descending, solid flames, that to the ground
Came down."
Cary's Dante, c. xiv.
The first appearance of Malebolge is described in these striking lines —
"Luogo è in Inferno, detto Malebolge,
Tutto di pietra e di color ferrigno,
Come la cerchia che d'intorno il volge.
Nel dritto mezzo del campo maligno
Vaneggia un pozzo assai largo e profondo,
Di cui suo luogo conterà l' ordigno.
Quel cinghio che rimane adunque è tondo
Tra 'l pozzo e 'l piè dell' alta ripa dura,
E ha distinto in dieci valli al fondo."
Inferno, c. xviii.
"There is a place within the depths of hell
Call'd Malebolge, all of rock dark-stain'd
With hue ferruginous, e'en as the steep
That round it circling winds. Right in the midst
Of that abominable region yawns
A spacious gulf profound, whereof the frame
Due time shall tell. The circle, that remains,
Throughout its round, between the gulf and base
Of the high craggy banks, successive forms
Ten bastions, in its hollow bottom raised."
Cary's Dante, c. xviii.
This is the outward appearance of Malebolge, the worst place of punishment in hell. It had many frightful abysses; what follows is the picture of the first: —
"Ristemmo per veder l'altra fessura
Di Malebolge e gli altri pianti vani:
E vidila mirabilmente oscura.
Quale nell' arzana de' Veneziani
Bolle l' inverno la tenace pece,
A rimpalmar li legni lor non sani —
* * *
Tal non per fuoco ma per divina arte,
Bollia laggiuso una pegola spessa,
Che 'nviscava la ripa d'ogni parte.
I' vedea lei, ma non vedeva in essa
Ma che le bolle che 'l bollor levava,
E gonfiar tutta e riseder compressa.
* * *
E vidi dietro a noi un diavol nero
Correndo su per lo scoglio venire.
Ahi quant' egli era nell' aspetto fiero!
E quanto mi parea nell' atto acerbo,
Con l' ali aperte e sovre i piè leggiero!
L' omero suo ch' era acuto e superbo
Carcava un peccator con ambo l'anche,
Ed ei tenea de' piè ghermito il nerbo.
* * *
Laggiù il buttò e per lo scoglio duro
Si volse, e mai non fu mastino sciolto
Con tanta fretta a seguitar lo furo.
Quei s' attuffò e tornò su convolto;
Ma i demon che del ponte avean coverchio
Gridar: qui non ha luogo il Santo Volto.
Qui si nuota altramenti che nel Serchio:
Però se tu non vuoi de' nostri graffi,
Non far sovra la pegola soverchio.
Poi l' addentar con più di cento raffi,
Disser: coverto convien che qui balli,
Si che se puoi nascosamente accaffi."
Inferno, c. xxi.
" — To the summit reaching, stood
To view another gap, within the round
Of Malebolge, other bootless pangs.
Marvellous darkness shadow'd o'er the place.
In the Venetians' arsenal as boils
Through wintry months tenacious pitch, to smear
Their unsound vessels in the wintry clime.
* * *
So, not by force of fire but art divine,
Boil'd here a glutinous thick mass, that round
Limed all the shore beneath. I that beheld,
But therein not distinguish'd, save the bubbles
Raised by the boiling, and one mighty swell
Heave, and by turns subsiding fall.
* * *
Behind me I beheld a devil black,
That running up, advanced along the rock.
Ah! what fierce cruelty his look bespake.
In act how bitter did he seem, with wings
Buoyant outstretch'd, and feet of nimblest tread.
His shoulder, proudly eminent and sharp,
Was with a sinner charged; by either haunch
He held him, the foot's sinew griping fast.
* * *
Him dashing down, o'er the rough rock he turn'd;
Nor ever after thief a mastiff loosed
Sped with like eager haste. That other sank,
And forthwith writhing to the surface rose.
But those dark demons, shrouded by the bridge,
Cried — Here the hallow'd visage saves not: here
Is other swimming than in Serchio's wave,
Wherefore, if thou desire we rend thee not,
Take heed thou mount not o'er the pitch. This said,
They grappled him with more than hundred hooks,
And shouted — Cover'd thou must sport thee here;
So, if thou canst, in secret mayst thou filch."
Cary's Dante, c. xxi.
Fraught as his imagination was with gloomy ideas, with images of horror, it is the fidelity of his descriptions, the minute reality of his pictures, which gives them their terrible power. He knew well what it is that penetrates the soul. His images of horror in the infernal regions were all founded on those familiar to every one in the upper world; it was from the caldron of boiling pitch in the arsenal of Venice that he took his idea of one of the pits of Malebolge. But what a picture does he there exhibit! The writhing sinner plunged headlong into the boiling waves, rising to the surface, and a hundred demons, mocking his sufferings, and with outstretched hooks tearing his flesh till he dived again beneath the liquid fire! It is the reality of the scene, the images familiar yet magnified in horror, which constitutes its power: we stand by; our flesh creeps as it would at witnessing an auto-da-fè of Castile, or on beholding a victim perishing under the knout in Russia.
Michael Angelo was, in one sense, the painter of the Old Testament, as his bold and aspiring genius arrived rather at delineating the events of warfare, passion, or suffering, chronicled in the records of the Jews, than the scenes of love, affection, and benevolence, depicted in the gospels. But his mind was not formed merely on the events recorded in antiquity: it is no world doubtful of the immortality of the soul which he depicts. He is rather the personification in painting of the soul of Dante. His imagination was evidently fraught with the conceptions of the Inferno. The expression of mind beams forth in all his works. Vehement passion, stern resolve, undaunted valour, sainted devotion, infant innocence, alternately occupied his pencil. It is hard to say in which he was greatest. In all his works we see marks of the genius of antiquity meeting the might of modern times: the imagery of mythology blended with the aspirations of Christianity. We see it in the dome of St Peter's, we see it in the statue of Moses. Grecian sculpture was the realization in form of the conceptions of Homer; Italian painting the representation on canvass of the revelations of the gospel, which Dante clothed in the garb of poetry. Future ages should ever strive to equal, but can never hope to excel them.