DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61902#0039
THE MAHERS OF FLORENCE.
17
light which is neither of the night nor of the day ; himself
clad in quaintly imagined garments of the troubadour,
passing the hours in song, occupied with nothing but
Beatrice, except (and with this perhaps even more than
with Beatrice) how to set the young lovely verses in which
he celebrates her—is the strangest sight. This moonstruck
mystical young lover, is this he who out of the confusion
and dark problems of life could find no nearer way than
that tremendous round he made through hell and heaven?
He had leisure enough in those “ beaiix jours quand iletait
si malheureux; ” leisure to weep his young eyes dim, and
fill his listening world with echoes of his lady’s name, or
rather of her sweetness and beauty and excellence above all
praise ; how to look at her made a man good and pure, how
shame and evil fled before her mild eyes, how her gesture
of salutation was enough to transport a soul to paradise,
and how heaven and earth grew dim with sympathy
when she shed a tear. Not Laura herself was worshiped
in such superlative sort, for Petrarch was not young, nor
had he that superb simplicity of self-consciousness, that
intense individuality, which could thus make itself the
center of a whole world, coloring and shaping it into
accord with his ruling mood.
The whole phantasmagoria is at the same time so true
that Florence herself, in that ancient form she then wore,
rises before us, not like any city the world ever saw, yet
with a dream-reality which no one can doubt ; and we
become spectators at those strange assemblies where
Beatrice’s lover went to have sight of her, and seeing her
afar off, amid the circle of ladies round, was rapt into a
mystic heaven of delight, or even swooned with longing to
approach her or fear of tier displeasure, yet never ventured
upon a word to her so far as he dares say ; or stand witli
him by the doors, and hear the ladies speak who come and
go from visiting her in her sorrow, till our hearts are wrung
17
light which is neither of the night nor of the day ; himself
clad in quaintly imagined garments of the troubadour,
passing the hours in song, occupied with nothing but
Beatrice, except (and with this perhaps even more than
with Beatrice) how to set the young lovely verses in which
he celebrates her—is the strangest sight. This moonstruck
mystical young lover, is this he who out of the confusion
and dark problems of life could find no nearer way than
that tremendous round he made through hell and heaven?
He had leisure enough in those “ beaiix jours quand iletait
si malheureux; ” leisure to weep his young eyes dim, and
fill his listening world with echoes of his lady’s name, or
rather of her sweetness and beauty and excellence above all
praise ; how to look at her made a man good and pure, how
shame and evil fled before her mild eyes, how her gesture
of salutation was enough to transport a soul to paradise,
and how heaven and earth grew dim with sympathy
when she shed a tear. Not Laura herself was worshiped
in such superlative sort, for Petrarch was not young, nor
had he that superb simplicity of self-consciousness, that
intense individuality, which could thus make itself the
center of a whole world, coloring and shaping it into
accord with his ruling mood.
The whole phantasmagoria is at the same time so true
that Florence herself, in that ancient form she then wore,
rises before us, not like any city the world ever saw, yet
with a dream-reality which no one can doubt ; and we
become spectators at those strange assemblies where
Beatrice’s lover went to have sight of her, and seeing her
afar off, amid the circle of ladies round, was rapt into a
mystic heaven of delight, or even swooned with longing to
approach her or fear of tier displeasure, yet never ventured
upon a word to her so far as he dares say ; or stand witli
him by the doors, and hear the ladies speak who come and
go from visiting her in her sorrow, till our hearts are wrung