Dante was also of marvellous
capacity and the most tenacious memory." Various anecdotes of him are
related by Boccaccio, Sacchetti, and others, none of them verisimilar,
and some of them at least fifteen centuries old when revamped. Most of
them are neither _veri_ nor _ben trovati_. One clear glimpse we get of
him from the _Ottimo Comento_, the author of which says:[38] "I, the
writer, heard Dante say that never a rhyme had led him to say other than
he would, but that many a time and oft (_molte e spesse volte_) he had
made words say for him what they were not wont to express for other
poets." That is the only sincere glimpse we get of the living, breathing,
word-compelling Dante.
Looked at outwardly, the life of Dante seems to have been an utter and
disastrous failure. What its inward satisfactions must have been, we,
with the _Paradiso_ open before us, can form some faint conception. To
him, longing with an intensity which only the word _Dantesque_ will
express to realize an ideal upon earth, and continually baffled and
misunderstood, the far greater part of his mature life must have been
labor and sorrow. We can see how essential all that sad experience was to
him, can understand why all the fairy stories hide the luck in the ugly
black casket; but to him, then and there, how seemed it?
Thou shalt relinquish everything of thee,
Beloved most dearly; this that arrow is
Shot from the bow of exile first of all;
And thou shalt prove how salt a savor hath
The bread of others, and how hard a path
To climb and to descend the stranger's stairs![39]
_Come sa di sale!_ Who never wet his bread with tears, says Goethe, knows
ye not, ye heavenly powers! Our nineteenth century made an idol of the
noble lord who broke his heart in verse once every six months, but the
fourteenth was lucky enough to produce and not to make an idol of that
rarest earthly phenomenon, a man of genius who could hold heartbreak at
bay for twenty years, and would not let himself die till he had done his
task.
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