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They lie deep in the very structure of human speech, and are narrowly implicated with equally profound nuances in the composition of human thought. The causes which make dolente a solemn word to the Italian ear, and dolent a queer word to the English ear, are causes which have been slowly operating ever since the Italian and the Teuton parted company on their way from Central Asia.
In the "citta dolente" of spinsterhood we often meet, especially in France, with women whose lives are a sacrifice nobly and daily offered to noble sentiments. Some remain proudly faithful to a heart which death tore from them; martyrs of love, they learn the secrets of womanhood only though their souls.
If he have any poetical remembrance of Dante, he may easily imagine he has entered the citta dolente, and he will seem to read on the granite rocks of Baraguan these lines of the Inferno: Noi sem venuti al luogo, ov' i' t'ho detto Che tu vedrai le genti dolorose.
In the "citta dolente" of spinsterhood we often meet, especially in France, with women whose lives are a sacrifice nobly and daily offered to noble sentiments. Some remain proudly faithful to a heart which death tore from them; martyrs of love, they learn the secrets of womanhood only though their souls.
The expression dolent may thus satisfy the student familiar with Italian, because it calls up in his mind, through the medium of its equivalent dolente, the same associations which the latter calls up in the mind of the Italian himself.
The going-away of friends does not make the remainder more precious. It takes so much from them, as there was a common link. A, B, and C make a party. A dies. B not only loses A, but all A's part in C. C loses A's part in B, and so the alphabet sickens by subtraction of interchangeables. I express myself muddily, capite dolente. I have a dulling cold.
Tasso, the author of a well-known metrical history, states distinctly, as you shall see in half a moment, that a tree upon one occasion discoursed with Major General Tancred, "Pur tragge alfin la spada e con gran forza Percuote l' alta pianta. Oh, maraviglia! quasi di tomba, uscir ne sente Un indistinto gemito dolente, Che poi distinto in voci."
Dole and dolent are doubtless the exact counterparts of dolore and dolente, so far as mere etymology can go. But when we consider the effect that is to be produced upon the mind of the reader, wretchedness and despairing are fat better equivalents. The former may compel our intellectual assent, but the latter awaken our emotional sympathy.
The inscription implies that all the world sorrowed at his death: "Orbe dolente Pater ... ruit." He had been previously Bishop of Worcester, and for a time Treasurer of England. He "beautified" five of the windows in the presbytery. He died at Hatfield in 1373, but was buried at Ely. He is said at the time not to have been in holy orders and under twenty-three years of age.
The sieges of Dôle made it very famous in the later middle ages, more especially the long siege under Charles d'Amboise, at the crisis of which that general recommended his soldiers to leave a few of the people for seed, and the old sobriquet la Joyeuse was punningly changed to la Dolente.
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