DANTE AND WILLIAM BLAKE
Excerpt
Now am I come where many a plaining voice
Smites on mine ear. Into a place I came
Where light was silent all. Bellowing there groan’d
A noise, as of a sea in tempest torn
By warring winds. The stormy blast of Hell
With restless fury drives the spirits on,
Whirl’d round and dash’d amain with sore annoy.
When they arrive before the ruinous sweep,
There shrieks are heard, there lamentations, moans,
And blasphemies ’gainst the good Power in Heaven.
I understood, that to this torment sad
The carnal sinners are condemn’d, in whom
Reason by lust is sway’d. As, in large troops
And multitudinous, when winter reigns,
The starlings on their wings are borne abroad;
Now am I come where many a plaining voice
Smites on mine ear. Into a place I came
Where light was silent all. Bellowing there groan’d
A noise, as of a sea in tempest torn
By warring winds. The stormy blast of Hell
With restless fury drives the spirits on,
Whirl’d round and dash’d amain with sore annoy.
When they arrive before the ruinous sweep,
There shrieks are heard, there lamentations, moans,
And blasphemies ’gainst the good Power in Heaven.
I understood, that to this torment sad
The carnal sinners are condemn’d, in whom
Reason by lust is sway’d. As, in large troops
And multitudinous, when winter reigns,
The starlings on their wings are borne abroad;
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) - Italian - A major European poet of the middle ages.
The Divine Comedy - an epic and philosophical poem in the vernacular language, accessible to the layman (which he was himself) and the academic, looks at the mystical and religious from a philosophical, questioning perspective and describes a journey through three places, or states of mind. Hell (Inferno) Purgatory (Purgatorio) Paradise ( Paradiso) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dante/ William Blake (1757 - 1827) - Self-taught, British painter, poet and printmaker - influenced by the French and American revolutions, living at the time of The Age of Enlightenment he is regard as great artist by some, dismissed by others but signalled the rise of the the Romantic movement and has influence many artist since his death in relative obscurity. William Blake was commissioned to illustrate Dante's Divine Comedy near the end of his life. he had completed 102 by the time of his death. http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/robbins-enlightenment.shtml http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/work.xq?workid=but812&java=no |
Iseult read all of Dante and in The End of Romance herself and Yeats discuss the nature of translation around their readings in English and italian, of one of the cantons of Dante's Inferno.
Iseult was under the instruction of Yeats from an early age. her thought she had great promise as a poet, had an original voice. it is Yeats who would have introduced her to Blake and Dante and influenced her love of the passionate moral dilemmas explored in the works. Dante Alighieri (!265- 1321) - "the chief imagination of Christendom" WB YEATS - a quote from Ego Dominus Tuus ( I Am Your Lord) by WB Yeats 1917 - The Wild Swans at Coole - Collection - The title of the poem comes from Dante's La Vita Nuova (The New Life) William Blake was an early inspiration of Yeats. He worked with Edwin Ellis on a book about Blake which examined Blake's system of mystical references and structures and which put Blake's writing in context and made its meaning more understandable. This was in the period around 1889 when Yeats also first met Maud Gonne and became a member of The Golden Dawn. occult group, which Maud had joined a year earlier. Blake remained one of Yeats' many influences. Ego Dominus Tuus 1917 - WB Yeats - Excerpt A dialogue between the realistic and idealistic side of the one man - Ille an Hic (latin for "THIS" man and "THAT" man) http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2188&context=cq Ille. By the help of an image I call to my own opposite, summon all That I have handled least,least looked upon. Hic. And I would find myself and not an image. Ille. That is our modern hope and by its light We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind And lost the old nonchalance of the hand; Whether we have chosen chisel, pen or brush We are but critics, or but half create, Timid, entangled, empty and abashed Lacking the countenance of our friends. Hic. And yet The chief imagination of Christendom Dante Alighieri, so utterly found himself That he has made that hollow face of his More plain to the mind’s eye than any face But that of Christ. Ille. And did he find himself, Or was the hunger that had made it hollow A hunger for the apple on the bough Most out of reach? and is that spectral image The man that Lapo and that Guido knew? I think he fashioned from his opposite An image that might have been a stony face, Staring upon a bedouin’s horse-hair roof From doored and windowed cliff, or half upturned Among the coarse grass and the camel dung. He set his chisel to the hardest stone. Being mocked by Guido for his lecherous life, Derided and deriding, driven out To climb that stair and eat that bitter bread, He found the unpersuadable justice, he found The most exalted lady loved by a man. |