Overhead Poetry

THE CLOSE OF DANTE'S "DIVINA COMMEDIA" ("PARADISO", Canto 33)

St. Bernard Supplicates on Behalf of Dante

"O Virgin Mother, daughter of thy Son!

Life's pinnacle of shadowless sanctity,

Yet, with the lustre of God-union,

Outshining all in chaste humility—

Extreme fore-fixed by the supernal Mind,

Unto such grace rose thy humanity

That the Arch-dreamer who thy form designed

Scorned not to house His own vast self in clay:

For, thy womb's sacred mystery enshrined

The omnific Love by whose untarnished ray

Now flowers this rose-heart of eternal peace!

A beaconing magnificent midday

Art thou to us of saviour charities,

To mortal men hope's ever-living fount!

So great thy power that, save its fulgences

Shed purifying gleam, whoso would mount

Unto this ecstasy might well desire

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Wingless sky-soar! Nor dost thou needful count

Grief's tear, but even ere its soul aspire

Thou minglest with its bitter drop thy bliss.

Whatever bounteous world-upkindling fire

Sparkles below, thy heart-infinities

Hold in full blaze.... Here kneels one that has viewed

All states of spirit from the dire abyss

To heaven's insuperable altitude:

I, who have never craved the rapturous sight

With such flame-voice of zeal for my soul's good

As now for him implores thy faultless light,

Beg answer to this orison: O pierce

The last gloom-vestige of his mortal night

By the miraculous beauty that bestirs

The sleeping god in man with its pure sheen:

Disclose the immeasurable universe

Of ultimate joy, O time-victorious Queen!

Quench the blind hunger of his earth-despair

With flood of glory from the immense Unseen!

Deny him not perfection—lo, in prayer

A myriad saints with Beatrice upraise

Sinless love-splendoured hands that he may share

The vision of inviolable Grace!"

Dante Approaches the Beatific Vision

The Eyes that make all heaven their worshipper

Glowed on the suppliant's mouth and in their rays

Streamed the mute blessing deep prayers draw from her.

Then to the Light which knows no dusk they turned

Full-open, gathering without one blur

What never in a creature's look has burned.

Neighbouring the Vast where the gold laughter stood,

End of each clay-desire in clay unearned,

I ended every hunger in my blood.

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Bernard was signalling up with smiling face

My soul, but to the crowning azurehood

My glance had winged already a long space;

For, that high splendour shapes all Nature new,

One with the Pure that needs no power or praise

Beyond its own white self to keep it true.

Henceforth so large an aureoled surprise.

That words are shut in, memories scarce break through!

As fade dream-pageants from awaking eyes

At the rude touch of clamorous common day,

Even so my spirit loses paradise.

Yet though the enormous rapture rolls away,

A silent sweetness trickles in my heart!

Even thus the snow is in the sun's hot ray

Unsealed or, when the vague breeze blew apart

The sibyl's thin leaves, back to the unknown

Vanished her secrets of sooth-saying art.

O Lustre seated on a reachless throne,

Rejoicing solitary and aloft

In ethers where no thought has ever flown

Out of the bound of earthly hours, enwaft

Once more the primal brilliance to my sight—

Slay my song's discord with Thy glory's shaft,

That I may leave of Thy miraculous light

A deathless sparkle to posterity!

Empower with Thy unconquerable might

The dim voice of my mortal memory

To lift above the minds of future men

The burning banner of Thy victory!

The grace withdraw not which Thou gav'st me when

With superhuman courage I pursued

Thy beckoning blaze of beauty till my ken

Reeled on the verge of dread infinitude!

In the depths divine the myriad universe

Clasped by a giant flame of love I viewed:

All that the wayward winds of time disperse

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Stood luminous there in one ecstatic whole:

Beyond corruption and the taint of tears

Shone the deific destiny of man's soul!

The Crowning Vision of Dante

Stunned by that flash of limitless unity

I felt as though upon my being stole

The weight of one mute moment's lethargy

Heavier than the dead centuries that fall

On the Argo's plunge across the pristine sea....

What flickering earth-lure has tongue to call

The spirit grown wide with this magnificence?

Each longing here attains the rapturous All—

Here life's lost heart of splendour beats immense!

But the deep relish of divinity

How shall my words convey? Its radiance

Leaves my mouth stricken with helpless infancy

Draining in dumb delight its mother's breast.

Not that the Flame rose now more goldenly

(For ever unchanged its high perfections rest),

But my gaze found a growing miracle

No power of human speech could have expressed,

As orb within bright orb unthinkable

From that abyss of tense beatitude

Swam slowly into my wondering sight until

The mystery of heaven's triune mood

In mingling fire and rainbow-beauty shone!

O Light eternal, in self-plenitude

Dwelling exultant, fathomless, unknown

Save to the immaculate infinity

Of luminous omnipotence Thine alone!

'Twas Thy supremest joy Thou showed'st to me,

Thy grace most intimate masked by dazzling awe,

When, fixing on Thy uncurbed brilliancy

My marvelling look, with heart o'erwhelmed I saw

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Thy nameless grandeurs wear the face of Man!

But as in vain without geometric law

An intricate figure one may strive to span,

So the impuissant scrutiny of thought

With which my labouring mind essayed to scan

This mighty secret, fell back dazed, distraught,

Till Thy mercy flashed a beam on its dark eye

And the heart found the ineffable knowledge sought!...

Then vigour failed the towering fantasy;

Yet, like a wheel whose speed no tremble mars.

Desire rushed on—its spur unceasingly

The Love that moves the sun and all the stars.

This poem was composed piecemeal and the last part written first, starting with the line, "What flickering earth-lure has tongue to call." The few lines before it were worked in afterwards. The passage was sent to Sri Aurobindo with the note: "Here is a translation of Dante. I hope it can pass as such in spite of whatever Amal-element has found play within the framework of 'the Awful Florentine'."¹ Sri Aurobindo's comment ran:

"I don't think it can be called a translation, but it is a very fine performance. It is not Dantesque, though there is some subtle element of power contributed by the influence of the original text, the severe cut of the Dantesque and its concentrated essence of force are not there but there is something else which is very fine."

¹ It may be acknowledged that the line-

Then vigour failed the towering fantasy—

for Dante's

All' altafantasia qui manco possa,

has been taken bodily from Carey's 19th -century translation of the complete Divina Commedia in semi-Miltonic blank verse. Carey's expression here seemed impossible to better and so any attempt to be original would have been a betrayal of poetry. We may realise the neces sity of the plagiarism by looking, for instance, at Laurence Binyon's

To the high imagination force now failed

or Barbara Reynolds's

High phantasy lost power and here broke off. (K. D. S.)

The middle portion came next, not exactly as it stands at present but beginning with the line, "As fade dream-pageants from awaking eyes." The seventeen lines preceding this were written years later. On the original piece Sri Aurobindo commented:

"It is again very fine poetry."

The opening section, written last, got the comment:

"It is exceedingly good—one might say, perfect. Dante seems always to inspire you to your best."

Sri Aurobindo wrote to Dilip Kumar Roy about this section: "Amal in his translation of Dante has let himself go in the direction of eloquence more than Dante who is too succinct for eloquence and he has used also a mystical turn of phrase which is not Dante's—yet he has got something of the spirit in the language, something of Dante's concentrated force of expression into his lines."

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