DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61902#0038
16
THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE.
a love so intense and passionate, which yet is expressed
with all the artificial cadences and elaborate harp-twang-
ing of a troubador, is one of the most wonderful things
in literature : only youth could be at once so real and so
unreal, so occupied by the manner’ of expressing its
emotions and yet so genuine in feeling the emotion itself.
Tire form of the strange romance is fictitious to the last
degree. The elaborate sonnet put forth avowedly to a
little quaint, old-world company of answering sonneteers,
the fantastic explanations of every bit of verse, analysis
and resume done by rigidest role of those impassioned
utterances of love, the sole reason, and excuse for which is
their spontaneous outburst straight from the heart—are
all strangely out of harmony with what seems to us now-
adays the straightforwardness of passion. And whether
it was the passion of love, commonly so-called, which
moved Dante toward Beatrice is a question now never
to be solved by the most curious inquiry. It would seem
at least to have been not only one of those “ loves which
never knew an earthly close,” but never to have looked for
or even dreamed of one—rather a passion of sublimated
admiration, that high worship of chivalry for the supremely
fair and distant which elevated and inspired the worshiper
without suggesting any meaner desires than that more hot
and fleshly passion which generally bears the name. To
look at Dante, highest prophet and poet of his country,
and already full of all the awakening thoughts and blossom
of his greatness, thus wandering through the old-world
fields, in which flowers do not grow but are embroidered in
quaint over-richness and imitation of the natural growth ;
in which there is no stir of common life or purpose, but
only one overpowering sentiment which fills all hearts ; in
which only the “Donne die hanno intelletto d’amove,” and
fair sympathizing youths, each with a love like his own,
live, and wander with him through a magical radiance of
THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE.
a love so intense and passionate, which yet is expressed
with all the artificial cadences and elaborate harp-twang-
ing of a troubador, is one of the most wonderful things
in literature : only youth could be at once so real and so
unreal, so occupied by the manner’ of expressing its
emotions and yet so genuine in feeling the emotion itself.
Tire form of the strange romance is fictitious to the last
degree. The elaborate sonnet put forth avowedly to a
little quaint, old-world company of answering sonneteers,
the fantastic explanations of every bit of verse, analysis
and resume done by rigidest role of those impassioned
utterances of love, the sole reason, and excuse for which is
their spontaneous outburst straight from the heart—are
all strangely out of harmony with what seems to us now-
adays the straightforwardness of passion. And whether
it was the passion of love, commonly so-called, which
moved Dante toward Beatrice is a question now never
to be solved by the most curious inquiry. It would seem
at least to have been not only one of those “ loves which
never knew an earthly close,” but never to have looked for
or even dreamed of one—rather a passion of sublimated
admiration, that high worship of chivalry for the supremely
fair and distant which elevated and inspired the worshiper
without suggesting any meaner desires than that more hot
and fleshly passion which generally bears the name. To
look at Dante, highest prophet and poet of his country,
and already full of all the awakening thoughts and blossom
of his greatness, thus wandering through the old-world
fields, in which flowers do not grow but are embroidered in
quaint over-richness and imitation of the natural growth ;
in which there is no stir of common life or purpose, but
only one overpowering sentiment which fills all hearts ; in
which only the “Donne die hanno intelletto d’amove,” and
fair sympathizing youths, each with a love like his own,
live, and wander with him through a magical radiance of