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Updated: June 13, 2025
His death is a landmark in the spiritual history of Europe. Behind him lies that which, taken with the Divina Commedia, has won for Italy an exaggerated literary reputation. In the thirteenth century there was plenty of poetry hardly inferior to the Lamento of Rinaldo; in the fourteenth comes Petrarch with the curse of mellifluous phrase-making.
Not carrying the weight, not pulsating in its every limb with the power of a broad, deep, involved story, architecturally reared on one foundation, whose parts are all subordinated to a great unity, the "Divina Commedia," as an organic, artistic whole, is inferior to the "Iliad" and "Paradise Lost," and to the Grecian and Shakespearean tragedies.
These examples of error are not of great importance in themselves, and are easily corrected, but they serve to illustrate the great frequency of error in all the early texts of the "Divina Commedia," and the probability that many errors not so readily discovered may still exist in the text, making difficulties where none originally existed.
She had read the pathetic story before, but never comprehended until now the weakness which is the strength of love. Oh, blessed paradox of a woman's heart! And how truly the Commedia, which is justly called Divine, unlocks the secret chambers of the human soul. "Read no more, Pierre," said she, "that book is too terrible in its beauty and in its sadness!
No account of the Commedia will prove sufficient which does not keep in view, first of all, the high moral purpose and deep spirit of faith with which it was written, and then the wide liberty of materials and means which the poet allowed himself in working out his design. Doubtless his writings have a political aspect.
According to the time and its circumstances, it is a Summa Theologiae, or a Divina Commedia, or a Novum Organum, or a Calvin's Institutes, or a Locke On the Understanding, or an Encyclopedia, or a Candide, which sets people thinking more than usual and comparing their thoughts.
However satisfactory this incomplete publication might be to the mere historical investigator, the students of the "Divina Commedia" could not but regret that the complete work had not been printed, and they accordingly welcomed with satisfaction the announcement, a few years since, of the volumes whose title stands at the head of this article, which professed to contain a translation of the whole Comment.
Through Dante's early story, the vestibule by which we are led to the "Divina Commedia," through this "Vita Nuova," there runs a poignancy which has almost more of pain than pleasure. Under an earthly symbol it is the vision of the ideal the unattainable the passion of the soul for what lies beyond its full grasp. In form Dante reproduces the Catholic theology.
After Spanish and Cervantes, Fitzjames turned to Italian and Dante. Dante, too, roused his enthusiasm, and he observes, quaintly enough, that he means to be as familiar with the 'Divina Commedia' as he once was with Bentham two authors rarely brought into contact. Dante conquered him the more effectually by entering over the ruins of Milton.
"Narrow in its scope and resources, it is chiefly remarkable for its limitations for what it has not, rather than what it has. In the first place there are no long poems. There is nothing which even remotely resembles an epic no Iliad or Divina Commedia not even a Nibelungen Lied or Chevy Chase.
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