DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61902#0073
TEE MAKERS OF FLORENCE.
51
ardent, impassioned man had done perhaps—who has not?
—things which filled him with bitter shame when he
turned toward the pure and lofty ideal of his youth; bnt
what time was there for thought or consideration amid the
journeys, the high audiences, the discussions and debates
of which a politician and ambassador’s life was full in those
stirring days? But now at last a moment had come for
thought, a religious pause in the common affairs of life. It
is natural at such moments that everything that is purest
and loftiest in the past should be recalled to the touched
and softened soul; and what so likely to return to him as
the exaltation of that great visionary love and grief which
had been the inspiration of his youth? How far he had
strayed from the purity, the high thoughts, the holy and
lofty sorrow of those days? He had lost his way in the
midday of his life, now waking up suddenly to a sense of
all the time he had squandered and all the energies he had
employed in less worthy ways, where was it that he found
himself?
“Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
Che la diritta via era smarrita.”
This is the hypothesis of Balbo, and it seems, in the
absence of other evidence, a reasonable suggestion. Any-
how, whether at Rome during these pilgrimages or at
home in some moment of quiet, it is apparent that about
this time Dante did arrest himself in his career, and find-
ing himself astray from the verace via, set out boldly to
find it again on that marvelous round through hell and
heaven.
For the moment, however, we hear nothing of the
“ Divina Com media.” The tumults of life which swallowed
up the poet on his return from Rome were too noisy and
crowded to leave room for the lower and sweeter notes of
poetry. It becomes apparent afterward that the work
51
ardent, impassioned man had done perhaps—who has not?
—things which filled him with bitter shame when he
turned toward the pure and lofty ideal of his youth; bnt
what time was there for thought or consideration amid the
journeys, the high audiences, the discussions and debates
of which a politician and ambassador’s life was full in those
stirring days? But now at last a moment had come for
thought, a religious pause in the common affairs of life. It
is natural at such moments that everything that is purest
and loftiest in the past should be recalled to the touched
and softened soul; and what so likely to return to him as
the exaltation of that great visionary love and grief which
had been the inspiration of his youth? How far he had
strayed from the purity, the high thoughts, the holy and
lofty sorrow of those days? He had lost his way in the
midday of his life, now waking up suddenly to a sense of
all the time he had squandered and all the energies he had
employed in less worthy ways, where was it that he found
himself?
“Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
Che la diritta via era smarrita.”
This is the hypothesis of Balbo, and it seems, in the
absence of other evidence, a reasonable suggestion. Any-
how, whether at Rome during these pilgrimages or at
home in some moment of quiet, it is apparent that about
this time Dante did arrest himself in his career, and find-
ing himself astray from the verace via, set out boldly to
find it again on that marvelous round through hell and
heaven.
For the moment, however, we hear nothing of the
“ Divina Com media.” The tumults of life which swallowed
up the poet on his return from Rome were too noisy and
crowded to leave room for the lower and sweeter notes of
poetry. It becomes apparent afterward that the work