There are no doubt in the _Divina Commedia_ (regarded merely as poetry)
sandy spaces enough both of physics and metaphysics, but with every
deduction Dante remains the first of descriptive as well as moral poets.
His verse is as various as the feeling it conveys; now it has the
terseness and edge of steel, and now palpitates with iridescent softness
like the breast of a dove. In vividness he is without a rival. He drags
back by its tangled locks the unwilling head of some petty traitor of an
Italian provincial town, lets the fire glare on the sullen face for a
moment, and it sears itself into the memory forever. He shows us an angel
glowing with that love of God which makes him a star even amid the glory
of heaven, and the holy shape keeps lifelong watch in our fantasy
constant as a sentinel. He has the skill of conveying impressions
indirectly. In the gloom of hell his bodily presence is revealed by his
stirring something, on the mount of expiation by casting a shadow. Would
he have us feel the brightness of an angel? He makes him whiten afar
through the smoke like a dawn,[254] or, walking straight toward the
setting sun, he finds his eyes suddenly unable to withstand a greater
splendor against which his hand is unavailing to shield him. Even its
reflected light, then, is brighter than the direct ray of the sun.
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