The action of the poem begins on Good Friday of the year 1300, at which time
Dante, who was born in 1265, had reached the middle of the Scriptual
threescore years and ten. It ends on the first Sunday after Easter, making in
all ten days.
The dark forest of human life, with its passions, vices, and perplexities of
all kinds; politically the state of Florence with its fractions Guelf and
Ghibelline. Dante, Convito, IV. 25, says:
"Thus the adolescent, who enters
into the erroneous forest of this life, would not know how to keep the right
way if he were not guided by his elders."
Brunetto Latini, Tesoretto, II. 75: --
"Pensando a capo chino
Perdei il gran cammino,
E tenni alla traversa
D'una selva diversa."
Spenser, Faerie Queene, Iv. ii. 45: --
"Seeking adventures in the salvage wood."
Bunyan, in his Pilgrim's Progress, which is a kind of Divine Comedy in prose,
says: "I beheld then that they all went on till they came to the foot of the hill Difficulty..... But the narrow way lay right up the hill, and the name of the going up the side of the hill is called Difficulty.... They went then till they came to the Delectable Mountains, which mountains belong to the Lord of that hill of which we have spoken before."
Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress: --
"But now in this valley of Humiliation poor
Christian was hard put to it; for he had gone but a little way before he spied
a foul fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon. Then
did Christian begin to be afraid, and to cast in his mind whether to go back
or stand his ground. ...Now at the end of this valley was another, called the
valley of the Shadow of Death; and Christian must needs go through it, because
the way to the Celestial City lay through the midst of it."
The sun, with all its symbolical meanings. This is the morning of Good Friday. In the Ptolemaic system the sun was one of the planets.
The deep mountain tarn of his heart, dark with its own depth, and the shadows hanging over it.
Jeremiah ii. 6:
"That led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and of pits, through a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt." In his note upon this passage Mr. Wright quotes Spenser's lines, Faerie Queene, I. v. 31, --"there creature never passed That back returned without heavenly grace."
Climbing the hillside slowly, so that he rests longest on the foot that is lowest.
Jeremiah v. 6:
"Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, a wolf of the evening shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities: every one that goeth out thence shall be torn in pieces."
Wordly Pleasure; and politically Florence, with its factions of Bianchi and Neri.
Più volte volto. Dante delights in a play upon words as much as Shakespeare.
The stars of Aries. Some philosophers and fathers think the world was created in Spring.
Ambition; and politically the royal house of France.
Some editions read temesse, others tremesse.
Avarice; and politically the Court of Rome, or temporal power of the Popes.
Dante as a Ghibelline and Imperialist is in opposition to the Guelfs, Pope Boniface VIII., and the King of France, Philip the Fair, and is banished from Florence, out of the sunshine, and into "the dry wind that blows from dolorous poverty." Cato speaks of the "silent moon" in De Re Rustica, XXIV., Evehito luna silenti; and XL., Vites inseri luna silenti. Also Pliny, XVI. 39, has Silens luna; and Milton, in Samson Agonistes, "Silent as the moon."
The long neglect of classic studies in Italy before Dante's time.
Born under Julius Caesar, but too late to grow up to manhood during his Imperial reign. He florished later under Augustus.
In this passage Dante but expresses the universal veneration felt for Virgil during the Middle Ages, and especially in Italy. Petrarch's copy of Virgil is still preserved in the Ambrosian Library at Milan; and at the beginning of it he has recorded in a Latin note the time of his first meeting with Laura, and the date of her death, which, he says, "I write in this book, rather than elsewhere, because it comes often under my eye." In the popular imagination Virgil became a mythical personage and a mighty magician. See the story of Virgilius in Thom's Early Prose Romances, II. Dante selects him for his guide, as symbolizing human science or Philosophy. "I say and affirm," he remarks, Convito, V. 16, "that the lady with whom I became enamored after my first love was the most beautiful and modest daughter of the Emperor of the Universe, to whom Pythagoras gave the name of Philosophy."
Dante seems to have been already conscious of the fame which his Vita Nuova and Canzoni had given him.
The greyhound is Can Grande della Scala, Lord of Verona, Imperial Vicar, Ghibelline, and friend of Dante. Verona is between Feltro in the Marca Trivigiana, and Montefeltro in Romagna. Boccaccio, Decameron, I. 7, speaks of him as "one of the most notable and magnificant lords that had been known in Italy, since the Emperor Frederick the Second." To him Dante dedicated the Paradiso. Some commentators think the Veltro is not Can Grande, but Ugguccione della Faggiola. See Troya, Del Veltro Allegorico di Dante.
The plains of Italy, in contradistinction to the mountains; the humilemque Italiam of Virgil, @@AEneid, III. 522: "And now the stars being chased away, blushing Aurora appeared, when far off we espy the hills obscure, and lowly Italy."
I give preference to the reading, Di quegli antichi spiriti dolenti.
Beatrice.