DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61902#0089
THE MAKERS OH FLORENCE.
67
of terror and suffering—the crash, the plunge, the wild
dismay, the fantastic horror come true. Must not the
exile, straining his eager ears outside, have heard some
echo of the great outcry? and felt with characteristic
pride and scorn that nothing less than some unconscious
reverberation from the visionary world which he alone
had revealed could have conjured up this extraordinary
scene?
Pope Benedetto and his paciero failed, as all popes and
peacemakers had failed before them; and so did every
other effort made by the exiles. For three years from the
date of his banishment Dante struggled with and for his
party in the attempt to get back again to his home, in
vain; but he was not the man to fall hopelessly into that
miserable role of conspirator, which is the very curse of
political exile; and by this time it is evident he had begun
to feel the disgust of a higher nature for the crowd of
common factionists with whom he found himself mixed up.
He had already learned by experience how difficult was
the art of getting back from banishment—“quanto quest’
artepesa,” as Farinata had warned him in the “Inferno”—
and now his mind seems to have been brought to the
point indicated in the indignant outburst which he puts
by way of prophecy into the mouth of his own ancestor
Cacciaguida:
“ That which shall hardest weigh upon thy mind
Shall be the hateful company and vile
With which confounded thou thyself shalt find. ,
Which all, ungrateful, empty, vain, with guile,
Shall turn against thee, though not thou but they
Ruined their ark of refuge; rude and vile
The actions of their baseness shall convey
Proof to thy mind, that of thyself to make
Thy only party is the better way.”
It was after the failure of the first three attempts, by
67
of terror and suffering—the crash, the plunge, the wild
dismay, the fantastic horror come true. Must not the
exile, straining his eager ears outside, have heard some
echo of the great outcry? and felt with characteristic
pride and scorn that nothing less than some unconscious
reverberation from the visionary world which he alone
had revealed could have conjured up this extraordinary
scene?
Pope Benedetto and his paciero failed, as all popes and
peacemakers had failed before them; and so did every
other effort made by the exiles. For three years from the
date of his banishment Dante struggled with and for his
party in the attempt to get back again to his home, in
vain; but he was not the man to fall hopelessly into that
miserable role of conspirator, which is the very curse of
political exile; and by this time it is evident he had begun
to feel the disgust of a higher nature for the crowd of
common factionists with whom he found himself mixed up.
He had already learned by experience how difficult was
the art of getting back from banishment—“quanto quest’
artepesa,” as Farinata had warned him in the “Inferno”—
and now his mind seems to have been brought to the
point indicated in the indignant outburst which he puts
by way of prophecy into the mouth of his own ancestor
Cacciaguida:
“ That which shall hardest weigh upon thy mind
Shall be the hateful company and vile
With which confounded thou thyself shalt find. ,
Which all, ungrateful, empty, vain, with guile,
Shall turn against thee, though not thou but they
Ruined their ark of refuge; rude and vile
The actions of their baseness shall convey
Proof to thy mind, that of thyself to make
Thy only party is the better way.”
It was after the failure of the first three attempts, by