DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61902#0078
56
THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE.
his party to come in triumphant, and all that he had done
to be overturned ; he let anarchy, misery, killings, and
burnings, and destruction resume their sway in the city,
without rushing to its aid. A contrast more striking than
that which is suggested by this strange inaction, and his
previous overweening opinion of his own importance,
could scarcely be found. This makes it less wonderful,
perhaps, and less cruel that the revolution banished him,
and that, as it happened, he never in the many years of life
that yet remained to him entered Florence again.
In this strange way ends the first part of the poet’s
great career. Out of the soft poetic vapors, lovely extrav-
agances, foolishness, and reality of the “ Vita Nuova,”
the young man burst forth splendid into full potency of
life, a power among his fellows, a princely ambassador to
princes, a patriot ruler among his own people, aiming with
genuine force and truth at something better than the past,
at generous and honest public service distinct from party.
Then of a sudden, midway in the path of life, something
arrested the vehement and splendid traveler. He who was
going, to all appearance, so straight and true on his way
to honor, stopped short. Some unseen hand caught at
him, some voice unheard by others called him in the midst
of the crowd. He found himself in a bewildering wood,
where he had lost the true way. This was the great
spiritual event which happened to him before fate came in
to arrest his steps in earnest. Ere ever Guido Cavalcanti
sickened in Serezzana, this sudden pause had occurred in
his existence. Another “ Vita Nuova,” but this time a life
aspra e forte, had begun. The sudden revolution in Flor-
ence was but a formal carrying out by circumstances of the
separation already effected in his heart, the divorce between
him and fortune, between him and power, and his reawaken-
ing to that deeper and grander inspiration that had
hovered over him for years, before absolute misfortune
THE MAKERS OF FLORENCE.
his party to come in triumphant, and all that he had done
to be overturned ; he let anarchy, misery, killings, and
burnings, and destruction resume their sway in the city,
without rushing to its aid. A contrast more striking than
that which is suggested by this strange inaction, and his
previous overweening opinion of his own importance,
could scarcely be found. This makes it less wonderful,
perhaps, and less cruel that the revolution banished him,
and that, as it happened, he never in the many years of life
that yet remained to him entered Florence again.
In this strange way ends the first part of the poet’s
great career. Out of the soft poetic vapors, lovely extrav-
agances, foolishness, and reality of the “ Vita Nuova,”
the young man burst forth splendid into full potency of
life, a power among his fellows, a princely ambassador to
princes, a patriot ruler among his own people, aiming with
genuine force and truth at something better than the past,
at generous and honest public service distinct from party.
Then of a sudden, midway in the path of life, something
arrested the vehement and splendid traveler. He who was
going, to all appearance, so straight and true on his way
to honor, stopped short. Some unseen hand caught at
him, some voice unheard by others called him in the midst
of the crowd. He found himself in a bewildering wood,
where he had lost the true way. This was the great
spiritual event which happened to him before fate came in
to arrest his steps in earnest. Ere ever Guido Cavalcanti
sickened in Serezzana, this sudden pause had occurred in
his existence. Another “ Vita Nuova,” but this time a life
aspra e forte, had begun. The sudden revolution in Flor-
ence was but a formal carrying out by circumstances of the
separation already effected in his heart, the divorce between
him and fortune, between him and power, and his reawaken-
ing to that deeper and grander inspiration that had
hovered over him for years, before absolute misfortune