DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61902#0116
96
TSE MAKERS OK FLORENCE.
If lie were to be crowned at all, it should be, he says,
within the solemn walls of San Giovanni itself, that
“ bel San Giovanni” which he had never ceased to love,
and where it had been suggested to him, wronged and
guiltless, that he should offer himself as apenitent. “Thy
Guido,” this correspondent wrote, “ would take no harm
though thou didst leave Ravenna and that fair Pineta
which girdles her on the Adriatic.” In similar strain
Dante replies—“ Sweet would it be to decorate my head
with the crown of laurel in Bologna, but sweeter still in
my own country, if ever I return there, hiding my white
hairs beneath the leaves all this in Latin verse not too
melodious, not like the immortal terza rima which was
volgare, too poor a medium for poets to interchange civilities
in. To find the poet, so near the end of his career, still
indulging in such a vision, is a singular and touching
evidence of the pertinacity of the imagination and hope ;
or was it perhaps that Dante only evaded the solemn
foolery of a poetical coronation by this half-satirical, half-
sad, postponement of it until so unlikely a moment ? This,
however is not probable, for the age had not found out
any folly in such ceremonials ; and Boccaccio even, with
quaint solemnity and shallowness, attributes Dante’s pre-
ference of poetry over philosophy to the fact that the
“glorious and unusual honor of the coronation with
laurel” belonged to the art of song alone!—strangest
misinterpretation, perhaps, of the mode of expression
most congenial to genius which ever sympathetic bystander
gave.
The poet’s life in Ravenna has altogether a softened,
calmed religious twilight about it. He had wandered far
and wide—solitary, finding no rest for his feet—by great
cities and by lonely places ; now embracing, now proudly
turning his back upon some capricious protector; now
knocking at a convent gate faraway among the silent hills ;
TSE MAKERS OK FLORENCE.
If lie were to be crowned at all, it should be, he says,
within the solemn walls of San Giovanni itself, that
“ bel San Giovanni” which he had never ceased to love,
and where it had been suggested to him, wronged and
guiltless, that he should offer himself as apenitent. “Thy
Guido,” this correspondent wrote, “ would take no harm
though thou didst leave Ravenna and that fair Pineta
which girdles her on the Adriatic.” In similar strain
Dante replies—“ Sweet would it be to decorate my head
with the crown of laurel in Bologna, but sweeter still in
my own country, if ever I return there, hiding my white
hairs beneath the leaves all this in Latin verse not too
melodious, not like the immortal terza rima which was
volgare, too poor a medium for poets to interchange civilities
in. To find the poet, so near the end of his career, still
indulging in such a vision, is a singular and touching
evidence of the pertinacity of the imagination and hope ;
or was it perhaps that Dante only evaded the solemn
foolery of a poetical coronation by this half-satirical, half-
sad, postponement of it until so unlikely a moment ? This,
however is not probable, for the age had not found out
any folly in such ceremonials ; and Boccaccio even, with
quaint solemnity and shallowness, attributes Dante’s pre-
ference of poetry over philosophy to the fact that the
“glorious and unusual honor of the coronation with
laurel” belonged to the art of song alone!—strangest
misinterpretation, perhaps, of the mode of expression
most congenial to genius which ever sympathetic bystander
gave.
The poet’s life in Ravenna has altogether a softened,
calmed religious twilight about it. He had wandered far
and wide—solitary, finding no rest for his feet—by great
cities and by lonely places ; now embracing, now proudly
turning his back upon some capricious protector; now
knocking at a convent gate faraway among the silent hills ;