The truth is, that it was only as a poet that Dante was great and
original (glory enough, surely, to have not more than two competitors),
and in matters of science, as did all his contemporaries, sought the
guiding hand of Aristotle like a child. Dante is assumed by many to have
been a Platonist, but this is not true, in the strict sense of the word.
Like all men of great imagination, he was an idealist, and so far a
Platonist, as Shakespeare might be proved to have been by his sonnets.
But Dante's direct acquaintance with Plato may be reckoned at zero, and
we consider it as having strongly influenced his artistic development for
the better, that transcendentalist as he was by nature, so much so as to
be in danger of lapsing into an Oriental mysticism, his habits of thought
should have been made precise and his genius disciplined by a mind so
severely logical as that of Aristotle. This does not conflict with what
we believe to be equally true, that the Platonizing commentaries on his
poem, like that of Landino, are the most satisfactory. Beside the prose
already mentioned, we have a small collection of Dante's letters, the
recovery of the larger number of which we owe to Professor Witte. They
are all interesting, some of them especially so, as illustrating the
prophetic character with which Dante invested himself.
Pages:
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49