Part 11

We may find, perhaps, a more wonderful proof of his constancy in his stout-hearted resistance to the charms of a beautiful lady who regards him with that intense pity which is akin to love. To her he says:

Never was Pity's semblance, or Love's hue So wondrously in face of lady shown, That tenderly gave ear to Sorrow's moan Or looked on woful eyes, as shows in you.

To this new attraction he is on the point of surrendering, when the vision of Beatrice rises before him, as he first saw her,--robed in crimson, and bright with the angelic beauty of childhood. All other thoughts are put to flight by this, and with renewed faith he devotes himself to the memory of Beatrice, hoping to say of her some day "that which hath never yet been said of any lady."

All who have been lovers--and who has not?--must feel, I think, that the "Vita Nuova" is the romance of a true love. The Beatrice of the "Divina Commedia" is this love, and much more. Dante has had a deep and availing experience of life. Statesman and scholar, he has laid his fiery soul upon the world's great anvil, where Fate, with heavy hammering and fiery blowing, has wrought out of him a stern, sad man, so hunted and exiled that the ways of Imagination alone are open to him. In its domain, he calls around him the majestic shadows of those with whom his life has made him familiar. For him, the way to Heaven lies through Hell and Purgatory. Into these regions, the blessed Beatrice cannot come. She sends, however, the poet shade, who seems to her most fit to be his guide. The classic refinement makes evident to him the vulgarity of sin and the logic of its consequences. He surveys the eternal, hopeless punishment, and passes through the cleansing fires of Purgatory, at whose outer verge, a fair vision comes to bless him. Beatrice, in a mystical car, her beauty at first concealed by a veil of flowers which drop from the hands of attendant angels, speaks to him in tones which move his penitential grief.

The high love of his youth thus appears to him as accusing Conscience, which stands to question him with the offended majesty of a loving mother. Through her rebukes, precious in their bitterness, he attains to that view of his own errors without which it would have been impossible for him to forsake them. It is a real orthodox "repentance and conviction of sin" with which the religious renewal of his life begins. Tormented by this cruel retrospect, the poet is mercifully bathed in the waters of forgetfulness, and then, being made a new creature, regains the society of Beatrice.

Seated at the root of the great Tree of Humanity, she bids him take note of the prophetic vision which symbolizes the history of the church. Of the sanctity of the tree, she thus admonishes him:

This whoso robs, This whoso plucks, with blasphemy of deed Sins against God, who for His use alone Creating, hallowed it.

Dante drinks now of a stream whose sweetness can never satiate, and from that holy wave returns,

Regenerate, Pure, and made apt for mounting to the stars.

It appears to me quite simple and natural that the image of the poet's earthly love, long lost from physical sense, should prompt the awakening of his higher nature, which, obscured, as he confesses, by the disorders of his mortal life, asserts itself with availing authority when Beatrice, the beloved, becomes present to his mind. All progress, all heavenly learning, is thenceforth associated with her. High as he may climb, she always leads him. Where he passes as a stranger, she is at home. Where he poorly guesses, she wholly knows. Nor does he part from her until he has attained the highest point of spiritual vision, where he sees her throned and crowned in immortal glory, and above her, the lovely one of Heaven,--the Virgin Mother of Christ. What he sees after this, he says, cannot be told with mortal tongue.

Here vigor failed the towering fantasy, But yet the will rolled onward, like a wheel, In even motion, by the love impelled That moves the sun in heaven and all the stars.

Two opposite points in great authors give us pleasure; _viz._, the originality of their talent or genius, and the catholicity of their sentiments and interest,--in other words, their likeness and their unlikeness to the average of humanity. We are delighted to find Plato at once so modern and so ancient, his prevision and prophecy needing so little adaptation to make them germane to the wants of our own or of any other time, his grasp of apprehension and comparison so peculiar to himself, so unrivalled by any thinker of any time. In like manner, the mediæval pictures drawn by Dante delight us, and the bold daring of his imagination. At the same time, the perfectly sound and rational common sense of many of his utterances seems familiar from its accordance with the soundest criticism of our own time:--

Florence within her ancient circle set, Remained in sober, modest quietness. Nor chains had she, nor crowns, nor women decked In gay attire, with splendid cincture bound, More to be gazed at than the form itself. Not yet the daughter to the father brought Fear from her birth, the marriage time and dower Not yet departing from their fitting measure. Nor houses had she, void of household life. Sardanapalus had not haply shown The deeds which may be hid by chamber walls. I saw Bellincion Berti go his way With bone and leather belted. From the glass His lady moved, no paint upon her face. I saw the Lords of Norti and del Vecchio content, Their household dames engaged with spool and spindle.

The theory of the good old time, we see, is not a modern invention.

Dante inherits the great heart of chivalry, wise before its time in the uplifting of Woman. The wonderful worship of the Virgin Mother, in which are united the two poles of womanhood, completed the ideal of the Divine Human, and cast a new glory upon the sex. Can we doubt that knight and minstrel found a true inspiration in the lady of their heart? A mere pretence or affection is a poor thing to fight for or to sing for. Men will not imperil their lives for what they know to be a lie.

This newly awakened reverence for woman--shall we call it a race characteristic? It was a golden gift to any race. Plato's deep doctrine that all learning is a reminiscence may avail us in questioning this. The human race does not carry the bulk of its knowledge in its hand. Busy with its tools and toys, it forgets its ancestral heirlooms, and leaves unexplored the legacy of the past. But in some mystical way, the treasures lost from remembrance turn up and come to sight again. In the far Caucasus, from which we came, there were glimpses of this ideal wife and mother.

This history, whether real or imaginary, or both, suggests to me the question whether the love which brings together and binds together men and women can in any way typify the supreme affections of the soul? That it was supposed to do so in mediæval times is certain. The sentimental agonies of troubadours and minstrels make it evident. Even the latest seedy sprout of chivalry, Don Quixote, shows us this. Wishing to start upon a noble errand, the succor of oppressed humanity, his almost first requisite is a "lady of his heart," who, in his case, is a mere lay figure upon which he drapes the fantastic weaving of his imagination.

Another question, like unto the first, is this,--whether the heroic mode of loving is or is not a lost art in our days.

That Plato and Socrates should busy themselves with it, that mystics and philosophers should find such a depth of interest in the attraction which one nature exerts upon another, and that, _per contra_, in our time, this mystical attraction should flatten, or, as singers say, flat out into a decorous observance of rules, assisting a mutual endurance--what does it mean? Is Pan dead, and are the other gods dead with him?

In an age widely, if not deeply, critical, we lose sight of the primitive affections and temperament of our race. Affection's self becomes merged in opinion. We contemplate, we compare, we are not able to covet any but surface distinctions, surface attractions. Even the poets who give us the expression of a lively participation in human instincts are disowned by us. Wordsworth is chosen, and Byron is discarded. We are not too rich with both of them. Inspired Browning--for the man who wrote "Pippa" and "Saul" was inspired--loses himself and his music in the dismal swamp of metaphysical speculation. Just at present, it seems to me that the world has lost one of its noblest leadings; _viz._, the desire for true companionship. Arid love of pleasure, more arid worship of wealth, paralyze those higher powers of the soul which take hold on friendship and on love. To know those only who can advance your personal objects, be these amusement or ambition; to marry at auction, going, going, for so much,--how can we who have but one human life to live so cheat ourselves out of its real rights and privileges?

Is this a pathological symptom in the body social, produced by a surfeit in the direction of inclination? One might think so, since asceticism has no joylessness comparable to that of the blasted _roué_ or utter worldling. In France, where the bent of romantic literature has been the following of inclination,--from George Sand, who consecrates it, down to the latest scrofulous scribbler, who outrages it,--on the banks of this turbid stream of literature, one constantly meets with the apples of Sodom. "There is no other fruit," say the venders. "You cultivate none other," is the fitting reply.

The world of thought is ever full of problems as contradictory of each other as the antinomies of which I just now made a passing mention. The right interpretation of these riddles is of great moment in our spiritual and intellectual life. The ages and æons of human experience tend, on the whole, to a gradual unification of persuasion and conviction on the part of thinking beings, and much that a prophet breathes into a hopeless blank acquires meaning in the light of succeeding centuries.

This great problem of love continues to be full of contradictory aspects to those who would explore it. We distinguish between divine love and human love, but have yet to decide whether Love absolute is divine or human; for this deity is known to us from all time in two opposite shapes,--as a destructive and as a constructive god. He unmakes the man, he unmakes the woman, sucks up precious years of human life like a sponge, sets Troy ablaze, maddens harmless Io with a stinging gad-fly.

On the other hand, where Love is not, nothing is. Luxurious Solomon praises a dinner of herbs enriched by his presence. All poetry, all doctrine, is founded upon human affection assumed as essential to life, nay, as life itself; for when love of life and its objects exists not, the vital flame flickers feebly, and expires early. In ethics, social and religious, what contradictions do we encounter under this head! From all inordinate and sinful affections, good Lord, deliver us! is a good prayer. But how shall we treat the case when there are no affections at all? We might add a clause to our litany,--From lovelessness and all manner of indifference, good Lord, deliver us! What more direful sentence than to say that a person has no heart? What sin more severely punished than any extravagant action of this same heart?

These wonders of lofty sentiment and high imagination are precious subjects of study. The construction of a great poem, of which the interest is at once intense, various, and sustained, seems to us a work more appropriate to other days than to our own. I remember in my youth a fluent critic who was fond of saying that if Milton had lived in this day of the world, he would not have thought of writing an epic poem. To which another of the same stripe would reply: "If he did write such a poem in these days, nobody would read it." I wonder how long the frisky impatience of our youth will think it worth while to follow even Homer in his long narratives.

More than this sustained power of the imagination, does the heroic in sentiment seem to decrease and to be wanting among us. Those lofty views of human affection and relation which we find in the great poets seem almost foreign to the civilization of to-day. I find in modern scepticism this same impatience of weighty thoughts. He who believes only in the phenomenal universe does not follow a conviction. A fatal indolence of mind prevents him from following any lead which threatens fatigue and difficult labor. Instead of a temple for the Divine, our man of to-day builds a commodious house for himself,--at best, a club-house for his set or circle. And the worst of it is, that he teaches his son to do the same thing.

The social change which I notice to-day as a decline in attachments simply personal is partly the result of a political change which I, for one, cannot deplore. The idea of the state and of society as bodies in which each individual has a direct interest gives to men and women of to-day an enlarged sphere of action and of instruction. The absolutely universal coincidence of the real advantage of the individual with that of the community, always true in itself, and neither now nor at any time fully comprehended, gives the fundamental tone to thought and education to-day. The result is a tendency to generality, to publicity, and a neglect of those relations into which external power and influence do not enter. The action of mind upon mind, of character upon character, outside of public life, is intense, intimate, insensible. Temperament is most valued nowadays for its effect upon multitudes. We wish to be recognized as moving in a wide and exalted sphere. The belle in the ball-room is glad to have it reported that the Prince of Wales admires her. The lady who should grace a lady's sphere pines for the stage and the footlights. Actions and appearances are calculated to be seen of men.

I say no harm of this tendency, which has enfranchised me and many others from the cruel fetters of a narrow and personal judgment. It is safe and happy to have the public for a final court of appeal, and to be able, when an issue is misjudged or distorted, to call upon its great heart to say where the right is, and where the wrong. But let us, in our panorama of wide activities, keep with all the more care these pictures of spirits that have been so finely touched within the limits of Nature's deepest reserve and modesty. This mediæval did not go to dancing-school nor to Harvard College. He could not talk of the fellows and the girls. But from his early childhood, he holds fast the tender remembrance of a beautiful and gracious face. The thought of it, and of the high type of woman which it images, is to him more fruitful of joy and satisfaction than the amusements of youth or the gaieties of the great world. Death removes this beloved object from his sight, but not from his thoughts. Years pass. His genius reaches its sublime maturity. He becomes acquainted with camps and courts, with the learning and the world of his day. But when, with all his powers, he would build a perfect monument to Truth, he takes her perfect measure from the hand of his child-love. The world keeps that work, and will keep it while literature shall last. It has many a subtle passage, many a wonderful picture, but at its height, crowned with all names divine, he has written, as worthy to be remembered with these, the name of Beatrice.

PRINTED AT THE EVERETT PRESS BOSTON MASS.

End of Project Gutenberg's Is Polite Society Polite?, by Julia Ward Howe