Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot

by Frank Kermode

  that it is necessary to have studied the philosophy underlying

  them. It is not necessary to have traced the descent of this theory

  of the soul from Aristotle's De Anima in order to appreciate it as

  poetry. Indeed, if we worry too much about it at first as philosophy we are likely to prevent ourselves from receiving the poetic beauty. It is the philosophy of that world of poetry which we

  have entered.

  But with the XXVIIth canto we have left behind the stage of

  punishment and the stage of dialectic, and approach the state of

  Paradise. The last cantos have the quality of the Paradiso and

  prepare us for it ; they move straight forward, with no detour or

  delay. The three poets, Virgil, Statius, and Dante, pass through

  the wall of flame which separates Purgatory from the Earthly

  Paradise. Virgil dismisses Dante, who henceforth shall proceed

  with a higher guide, saying

  Non aspettar mio dir piu, ne mio cenno.

  Libero, dritto e sano e tuo arbitrio,

  e fallo fora non fare a suo senno:

  per ch'io te sopra te corono e mitrio.

  No more expect my word, or sign. Your Will is free, straight and

  whole, and not to follow its direction would be sin : wherefore I crown

  and mitre you (king and bishop) over yourself.

  i.e. Dante has now arrived at a condition, for the purposes of the

  rest of his journey, which is that of the blessed : for political and

  ecclesiastical organization are only required because of the imperfections of the human will. In the Earthly Paradise Dante encounters a lady named Matilda, whose identity need not at

  first bother us,

  2;z4

  DANTE

  una donna so/etta, che si gia

  cantando ed iscegliendo jior da jiore,

  ond' era pinta tutta Ia sua via.

  A lady alone, who went singing and plucking flower after flower,

  wherewith her path was pied.

  After some conversation, and explanation by Matilda of the

  reason and nature of the place, there follows a 'Divine Pageant'.

  To those who dislike - not what are popularly called pageants -

  but the serious pageants of royalty, of the Church, of military

  funerals - the 'pageantry' which we find here and in the Paradiso

  will be tedious ; and still more to those, if there be any, who are

  unmoved by the splendour of the Revelation of St. John. It

  belongs to the world of what I call the high dream, and the modern

  world seems capable only of the low dream. I arrived at accepting

  it, myself, only with some difficulty. There were at least two

  prejudices, one against Pre-Raphaelite imagery, which was

  natural to one of my generation, and perhaps affects generations

  younger than mine. The other prejudice - which affects this end

  of the Purgatorio and the whole of the Paradiso - is the prejudice

  that poetry not only must be found through suffering but can find

  its material only in suffering. Everything else was cheerfulness,

  optimism, and hopefulness ; and these words stood for a great

  deal of what one hated in the nineteenth century. It took me

  many years to recognize that the states of improvement and

  beatitude which Dante describes are still further from what the

  modern world can conceive as cheerfulness, than are his states of

  damnation. And little things put one off: Rossetti's Blessed

  Damozel, first by my rapture and next by my revolt, held up my

  appreciation of Beatrice by many years.

  We cannot understand fully Canto XXX of the Purgatorio until

  we know the Vita Nuova, which in my opinion should be read

  after the Divine Comedy. But at least we can begin to understand

  how skilfully Dante expresses the recrudescence of an ancient

  passion in a new emotion, in a new situation, which comprehends,

  enlarges, and gives a meaning to it.

  so pra candido vel cinta d' of iva

  donna m' apparve, sotto verde manto,

  vestita di color di fiamma viva.

  E lo spirito mio, che gia cotanto

  tempo era stato che alia sua presenza

  non era di stupor, tremando, affranto,

  225

  A PPREC I AT I ONS OF I N D I V I DY A L AUTHORS

  1 9 1 8- 1 9 3 0

  •

  senza degli occhi aver piu conoscenza,

  per occulta virtu che da lei mosse,

  d' amico am or sentl la gran potenza.

  Tosto che nella vista mi percosse

  1' alta virtu, che gia m' ave a trafitto

  primo ch'io fuor di puerizia fosse,

  volsimi alia sinistra col rispitto

  col quale if [ant olin corre alia mamma,

  quando ha paura 0 quando egli e a.fllitto,

  per dicere a Virgilio: 'Men che dramma

  di sangue m' e rimaso, che non tremi;

  conosco i segni dell' antica fiamma.'

  Olive-crowned over a white veil, a lady appeared to me, clad, under a

  green mantle, in colour of living flame. And my spirit, after so many

  years since trembling in her presence it had been broken with awe,

  without further knowledge by my eyes, felt, through hidden power

  which went out from her, the great strength of the old love. As soon as

  that lofty power struck my sense, which already had transfixed me

  before my adolescence, I turned leftwards with the trust of the little

  child who runs to his mama when he is frightened or distressed, to say

  to Virgil : 'Hardly a drop of blood in my body does not shudder : I

  know the tokens of the ancient flame.'

  And in the dialogue that follows we see the passionate conflict of

  the old feelings with the new ; the effort and triumph of a new

  renunciation, greater than renunciation at the grave, because a

  renunciation of feelings that persist beyond the grave. In a way,

  these cantos are those of the greatest personal intensity in the

  whole poem. In the Paradiso Dante himself, save for the Cacciaguida episode, becomes de- or super-personalized ; and it is in these last cantos of the Purgatorio, rather than in the Paradiso,

  that Beatrice appears most clearly. But the Beatrice theme is

  essential to the understanding of the whole, not because we need

  to know Dante's biography - not, for instance, as the Wesendonck history is supposed to cast light upon Tristan - but because of Dante's philosophy of it. This, however, concerns more our

  examination of the Vita Nuova.

  The Purgatorio is the most difficult because it is the transitional

  canto : the Inferno is one thing, comparatively easy ; the Paradiso

  is another thing, more difficult as a whole than the Purgatorio,

  because more a whole. Once we have got the hang of the kind of

  feeling in it no one part is difficult. The Purgatorio, here and there

  might be called 'dry' : the Paradiso is never dry, it is either

  incomprehensible or intensely exciting. With the exception of the

  226

  DANTE

  episode of Cacciaguida - a pardonable exhibition of family and

  personal pride, because it provides splendid poetry - it is not

  episodic. All the other characters have the best credentials. At

  first, they seem less distinct than the earlier unblessed people ;

  they seem ingeniously varied but fundamentally monotonous

  variations of insipid blessedness. It is a matter of gradual adjustment of our vision
. We have (whether we know it or not) a prejudice against beatitude as material for poetry. The eighteenth

  and nineteenth centuries knew nothing of it; even Shelley, who

  knew Dante well and who towards the end of his life was beginning to profit by it, the one English poet of the nineteenth century who could even have begun to follow those footsteps, was able to

  enounce the proposition that our sweetest songs are those which

  tell of saddest thought. The early work of Dante might confirm

  Shelley ; the Paradiso provides the counterpart, though a different

  counterpart from the philosophy of Browning.

  The Paradiso is not monotonous. It is as various as any poem.

  And take the Comedy as a whole, you can compare it to nothing

  but the entire dramatic work of Shakespeare. The comparison of

  the Vita Nuova with the Sonnets is another, and interesting,

  occupation. Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world

  between them ; there is no third.

  We should begin by thinking of Dante fixing his gaze on

  Beatrice :

  Nel suo aspetto tal dentro mi fei,

  qual si fe' Glauco nel gustar dell' erba,

  che il fe' consorto in mar degli altri dei.

  Trasumanar significar per verba

  non si poria; pero I' esemplo basti

  a cui esperienza grazia serba.

  Gazing on her, so I became within, as did Glaucus, on tasting of the

  grass which made him sea-fellow of the other gods. To transcend

  humanity may not be told in words, wherefore let the instance suffice

  for him for whom that experience is reserved by Grace.

  And as Beatrice says to Dante : ' You make yourself dull with false

  fancy' ; warns him, that here there are divers sorts of blessedness,

  as settled by Providence.

  If this is not enough, Dante is informed by Piccarda (Canto I I I)

  in words which even those who know no Dante know :

  Ia sua voluntate e nostra pace.

  His will is our peace.

  227

  APPREC I ATI ONS O F I N D I V I DUAL AUTHORS

  1 9 1 8- 1 9 3 0

  •

  It is the mystery of the inequality, and o f the indifference o f that

  inequality, in blessedness, of the blessed. It is all the same, and

  yet each degree differs.

  ·

  Shakespeare gives the greatest width of human passion ; Dante

  the greatest altitude and greatest depth. They complement each

  other. It is futile to ask which undertook the more difficult job.

  But certainly the 'difficult passages' in the Paradiso are Dante's

  difficulties rather than ours : his difficulty in making us apprehend

  sensuously the various states and stages of blessedness. Thus the

  long oration of Beatrice upon the Will (Canto IV) is really directed

  at making us feel the reality of the condition of Piccarda ; Dante

  has to educate our senses as he goes along. The insistence

  throughout is upon states of feeling ; the reasoning takes only its

  proper place as a means of reaching these states. We get constantly

  verses like

  Beatrice mi guardo con gli occhi pieni

  di faville d' amor cost' divini,

  che, vinta, mia virtu diede le reni,

  e quasi mi perdei con gli occhi chini.

  Beatrice looked on me with eyes so divine filled with sparks of love,

  that my vanquished power turned away, and I became as lost, with

  downcast eyes.

  The whole difficulty is in admitting that this is something that we

  are meant to feel, not merely decorative verbiage. Dante gives us

  every aid of images, as when

  Come in peschiera, ch' e tranquilla e pura,

  traggonsi i pesci a cio che vien di fuori

  per modo che lo stimin lor pastura;

  sl vid' io ben piu di mille di splendori

  trarsi ver noi, ed in ciascun s'udia:

  Ecco chi crescera li nostri amori.

  As in a fishpond still and clear, the fishes draw near to anything that

  falls from without in such a way as to make them think it something to

  eat, so I saw more than a thousand splendours draw towards us, and in

  each was heard : Lo ! here is one that shall increase our loves.

  About the persons whom Dante meets in the several spheres, we

  need only to enquire enough to consider why Dante placed them

  where he did.

  When we have grasped the strict utility of the minor images,

  such as the one given above, or even the simple comparison

  admired by Landor :

  228

  DANTE

  Qpale allodetta che in aere si spazia

  prima cantando, e poi face cmztmta

  dell' ultima dolcezza che Ia sazia,

  Like the lark which soars in the air, first singing, and then ceases,

  content with the last sweetness that sates her,

  we may study with respect the more elaborate imagery, such as

  that of the figure of the Eagle composed by the spirits of the just,

  which extends from Canto XVI II onwards for some space. Such

  figures are not merely antiquated rhetorical devices, but serious

  and practical means of making the spiritual visible. An understanding of the rightness of such imagery is a preparation for apprehending the last and greatest canto, the most tenuous and

  most intense. Nowhere in poetry has experience so remote from

  ordinary experience been expressed so concretely, by a masterly

  use of that imagery of light which is the form of certain types of

  mystical experience.

  Nel suo profondo vidi che s'intema,

  legato con amore in u11 volume,

  cio che per l'universo si squaderna;

  sustanzia ed accidenti, e lor costume,

  quasi conjlati insieme per tal modo,

  che cio ch' io dico e un semplice fume.

  La forma universal di questo nodo

  credo ch' io vidi, perche pizl di largo,

  dicendo questo, mi sento ch' io godo.

  Un pun to solo m' e maggior let argo,

  che venticinque secoli alia impresa,

  che fe' Nettuno ammirar l'ombra d'Argo.

  Within its depths I saw ingathered, bound by love in one mass, the

  scattered leaves of the universe : substance and accidents and their

  relations, as though together fused, so that what I speak of is one simple

  flame. The universal form of this complex I think I saw, because, as I

  say this, more largely I feel myself rejoice. One single moment to me is

  more lethargy than twenty-five centuries upon the enterprise which

  made Neptune wonder at the shadow of the Argo {passing over him).

  One can feel only awe at the power of the master who could thus

  at every moment realize the inapprehensible in visual images.

  And I do not know anywhere in poetry more authentic sign of

  greatness than the power of association which could in the last

  line, when the poet is speaking of the Divine vision, yet introduce

  the Argo passing over the head of wondering Neptune. Such

  229

  APPR E C I A T I ONS O F I N D I V I D UAL AUTHORS

  1 9 1 8- 1 9 3 0

  •

  association i s utterly different from that of Marino speaking in one

  breath of the beauty of the Magdalen and the opulence of Cleopatra (so that you are not quite· sure what adjectives apply to which). It is the real right thing, the power of establishing relations between beauty of the most diverse s
orts ; it is the utmost power of the poet.

  0 quanto e corto il dire, e come fioco

  a/ mio concetto!

  How scant the speech, and how faint, for my conception !

  In writing of the Divine Comedy I have tried to keep to a few

  very simple points of which I am convinced. First that the poetry

  of Dante is the one universal school of style for the writing of

  poetry in any language. There is much, naturally, which can

  profit only those who write Dante's own Tuscan language ; but

  there is no poet in any tongue - not even in Latin or Greek - who

  stands so firmly as a model for all poets. I tried to illustrate his

  universal mastery in the use of images. In the actual writing I

  went so far as to say that he is safer to follow, even for us, than any

  English poet, including Shakespeare. My second point is that

  Dante's 'allegorical' method has great advantages for the writing

  of poetry : it simplifies the diction, and makes clear and precise the

  images. That in good allegory, like Dante's, it is not necessary to

  understand the meaning first to enjoy the poetry, but that our

  enjoyment of the poetry makes us want to understand the meaning. And the third point is that the Divine Comedy is a complete scale of the depths and heights of human emotion ; that the

  Purgatorio and Paradiso are to be read as extensions of the

  ordinarily very limited human range. Every degree of the feeling

  of humanity, from lowest to highest, has, moreover, an intimate

  relation to the next above and below, and all fit together according

  to the logic of sensibility . . . .

  230

  A P P R E C IATI O N S OF I N D I V I D UA L A U T H O R S

  193o--6s

  from BAUDELA I RE

  . . . What is significant about Baudelaire is his theological

  innocence. He is discovering Christianity for himself; he is not

  assuming it as a fashion or weighing social or political reasons, or

  any other accidents. He is beginning, in a way, at the beginning ;

  and, being a discoverer, is not altogether certain what he is

  exploring and to what it leads ; he might almost be said to be

  making again, as one man, the effort of scores of generations. His

  Christianity is rudimentary or embryonic ; at best, he has the

  excesses of a Tertullian (and even Tertullian is not considered

  wholly orthodox and well balanced). His business was not to

  practise Christianity, but - what was much more important for