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Voltaire called the "Inferno" revolting, the "Purgatorio" dull, and the "Paradiso" unreadable. The reason is because they are not rightly attuned for the acceptance of the great truths which the poem teaches, and because they look at it from a wholly mistaken standpoint.
Even if the clouds are grey, and the winds howl without, we might still read Dante's 'Paradiso' and Petrarca's 'Sonnets, as we used to do at the Villa Venturi." "Yes," said Elizabeth, gently, "we might. But here I shall not have time." "Why not? Why should you sacrifice yourself for others in the way you do? It is not right."
Dante would seem to have loved it best in the morning; out of it he conjures his Paradiso Terrestre in the twenty-eighth canto of the Purgatorio: "Through that celestial forest, whose thick shade With lively greenness the new-springing day Attemper'd, eager now to roam, and search Its limits round, forthwith I left the bank; Along the champain leisurely my way Pursuing, o'er the ground, that on all sides Delicious odour breathed.
The Paradiso, a kind of inarticulate music to me, is the redeeming side of the Inferno; the Inferno without it were untrue. All three make up the true Unseen World, as figured in the Christianity of the Middle Ages; a thing forever memorable, forever true in the essence of it, to all men.
The following pensee of La Bruyere applies to the second half of Amiel's criticism of the French mind: "If you wish to travel in the Inferno or the Paradiso you must take other guides," etc.
Here is another short passage in a different key, the opening of the last canto of the "Paradiso": Maid-mother, daughter of thy Son, Meek, yet above all things create, Fair aim of the Eternal one, 'Tis thou who so our human state Ennobledst, that its Maker deigned Himself his creature's son to be. This flower, in th' endless peace, was gained Through kindling of God's love in thee.
"D'you remember that day in London when I burst in upon your solitude with Dante, and was actually jealous of the 'Paradiso'?" "Yes," she said, smiling. "But you forgave me, or I shouldn't be here now." He gave her his cup for some more tea. "You can't imagine how absolutely wonderful it is to me to be here after what I've been through."
"And then we came forth to behold again the Stars;" and who came from his ascent through purifying Purgatory with Rifatto si, come piante novelle Rinnovellate di novella fronda, Puro e disposto a salire alle stelle "So made anew, like young plants in spring with fresh foliage, I was pure and disposed to come forth among the Stars;" and who must end his Paradiso and his life-work announcing
Then suddenly there came into her mind the words in the "Paradiso" which she had been dreaming over in London on the foggy day when Dion had asked her to marry him. The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence from warm love and living hope which conquereth the Divine will. It was strange that the words should come to her just then. She could not think why they came.
This is admirable, full of the true poetic glow, which would have been utterly quenched if some Romanic equivalent of dolore had been used instead of our good Saxon sorrow. So, too, the "Paradiso," Canto I., line 100: "Whereupon she, after a pitying sigh, Her eyes directed toward me with that look A mother casts on a delirious child." Yet admirable as it is, I am not quite sure that Dr.
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