DUDLEY HALL LIBRARY

THE POWER OF DANTE

LECTURE I

FAITH

WHY am I here to-day, lecturing about a man who died some six hundred years ago? Why are other lecturers, to-day and wellnigh every day, discoursing of the same man, so long departed, and why are people listening to them, in so many different lands? Why does the press pour forth, year after year, such a flood of books and articles on Dante that it would require a specialist's whole time merely to keep track of them? Why does one man of letters bring out a volume on references to Dante in English literature, while another writes a thick tome on Dante in France? Why, during the last century, have so many eminent men in various walks of life-not only the poet, the scholar, the critic, but the priest, the jurist, the king-been drawn irresistibly to devote their best energies to the increase or the diffusion of knowledge of this same ancient Florentine? Why to pass from proofs obvious and tangible to testimony at once more intimate and more significant do so many thousands of men and women at this very day, many of them

dwellers in lands far remote from Italy, many of them nearly ignorant even of Dante's tongue, still find in his writings a spell which binds them ever closer, a solace which comforts when all other consolation fails? What, in other words, is the source of Dante's enduring power? What has given him such a mighty hold on humanity, a grip that time seems only to strengthen? To answer in some part these questions is the purpose of this series of lectures.

Dante is not a recent discovery. His power began while he was still alive, and has lasted ever since. To be sure, it was somewhat obscured for several centuries, but it was never lost; and for the last hundred or hundred and fifty years it has waxed almost continuously. Commentaries on the Divine Comedy began appearing almost before the poem was finished, and every few years thereafter saw a new one. Within half a century or so of the poet's death a Dante professorship was established in Florence, and its first incumbent was no less a personage than Boccaccio. Petrarch complained that all sorts of ignorant people were continually reciting passages of the Divine Comedy, as even illiterate Italians do still.

Now, all the admirers of Dante are not attracted by the same things. Our poet was a manysided genius, who has a message for nearly everyone. In his own time I believe he was most admired at least by the educated class - for qualities that are now, in the judgment of the general run of readers, among the less attractive.