酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

Heroes and Hero Worship-Part13_Thomas Carlyle(1795-1881)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页
answers, with fixed stern pride: "If I cannot return without calling

myself guilty, I will never return, _nunquam revertar_."



For Dante there was now no home in this world. He wandered from patron to

patron, from place to place; proving, in his own bitter words, "How hard is



the path, _Come e duro calle_." The wretched are not cheerful company.

Dante, poor and banished, with his proud earnest nature, with his moody



humors, was not a man to conciliate men. Petrarch reports of him that

being at Can della Scala's court, and blamed one day for his gloom and



taciturnity, he answered in no courtier-like way. Della Scala stood among

his courtiers, with mimes and buffoons (_nebulones ac histriones_) making



him heartily merry; when turning to Dante, he said: "Is it not strange,

now, that this poor fool should make himself so entertaining; while you, a



wise man, sit there day after day, and have nothing to amuse us with at

all?" Dante answered bitterly: "No, not strange; your Highness is to



recollect the Proverb, _Like to Like_;"--given the amuser, the amusee must

also be given! Such a man, with his proud silent ways, with his sarcasms



and sorrows, was not made to succeed at court. By degrees, it came to be

evident to him that he had no longer any resting-place, or hope of benefit,



in this earth. The earthly world had cast him forth, to wander, wander; no

living heart to love him now; for his sore miseries there was no solace



here.

The deeper naturally would the Eternal World impress itself on him; that



awful reality over which, after all, this Time-world, with its Florences

and banishments, only flutters as an unreal shadow. Florence thou shalt



never see: but Hell and Purgatory and Heaven thou shalt surely see! What

is Florence, Can della Scala, and the World and Life altogether? ETERNITY:



thither, of a truth, not elsewhither, art thou and all things bound! The

great soul of Dante, homeless on earth, made its home more and more in that



awful other world. Naturally his thoughts brooded on that, as on the one

fact important for him. Bodied or bodiless, it is the one fact important



for all men:--but to Dante, in that age, it was bodied in fixed certainty

of scientific shape; he no more doubted of that _Malebolge_ Pool, that it



all lay there with its gloomy circles, with its _alti guai_, and that he

himself should see it, than we doubt that we should see Constantinople if



we went thither. Dante's heart, long filled with this, brooding over it in

speechless thought and awe, bursts forth at length into "mystic



unfathomable song; " and this his _Divine Comedy_, the most remarkable of

all modern Books, is the result.



It must have been a great solacement to Dante, and was, as we can see, a

proud thought for him at times, That he, here in exile, could do this work;



that no Florence, nor no man or men, could hinder him from doing it, or

even much help him in doing it. He knew too, partly, that it was great;



the greatest a man could do. "If thou follow thy star, _Se tu segui tua

stella_,"--so could the Hero, in his forsakenness, in his extreme need,



still say to himself: "Follow thou thy star, thou shalt not fail of a

glorious haven!" The labor of writing, we find, and indeed could know



otherwise, was great and painful for him; he says, This Book, "which has

made me lean for many years." Ah yes, it was won, all of it, with pain and



sore toil,--not in sport, but in grim earnest. His Book, as indeed most

good Books are, has been written, in many senses, with his heart's blood.



It is his whole history, this Book. He died after finishing it; not yet

very old, at the age of fifty-six;--broken-hearted rather, as is said. He



lies buried in his death-city Ravenna: _Hic claudor Dantes patriis

extorris ab oris_. The Florentines begged back his body, in a century



after; the Ravenna people would not give it. "Here am I Dante laid, shut

out from my native shores."



I said, Dante's Poem was a Song: it is Tieck who calls it "a mystic

unfathomable Song;" and such is literally the character of it. Coleridge






文章总共2页
文章标签:名著  

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号