Evidence: |
'You must be tired of my ugly handwriting - yet your book is so suggestive that one wants to talk about it - the more I read the more I am enchanted by it. - I have been struck however by your mention of Dante - which seems founded entirely on the Inferno - a poem I can only read bits of - the subject being to me so antipatetica but the Purgatorio & Paradiso - the Poet revels in beauty & joy there to the full as much as the horrors below - and some of his verses & even whole Cantos lap one in a gentle sort of Elysium - or carry one into the skies - Can anything be so wondrously poetical as the approach of the boat with souls from earth to Purgatory - Shelley's most favourite passage - the Angels guarding Purgatory from infernal spirits - the whole tone of hope - & the calm enjoyment of Matilda is something quite unearthly in its sweetness - & then the glory of Paradise - I do not rely on my own taste but the following verses appear to me to belong to the highest class of imagination; they occur in the last Canto of the Pardiso after the vision he has of beatitude
-il mio veder fu maggio
Che'l parlar nostro, ch'a tal vista cede.
E cede la memoria al tanto oltraggio
Quale e colui ch soguando vede,
E dopo 'l sogno la passione impressa
Rimane, e l'altro alla menta non riede
Cotal son io, che quassi tutta cessa
Mia visione, e ancor mi distila
Nel cuor lo dolce, che nacque da essa.
Cosi la neve al sole disigilla
Cosi al vento nele foglie lievi
Si perdea la sentenzia di Sibilla -
Will you think me hypercritical about a most beautiful stanza of Keats - It was the sky lark not the nightingale that Ruth heard "amid the alien corn" - the sky lark soars and sings above the shearers perpetually - The nightingale sings at night - in shady places - & never so late in the season - May is her month -
Excuse all this'
[letter to Leigh Hunt] |