52.6 Count A. de Bosdari [March 1, 



read them, but I must hasten to the more perfect work of the 

 " Rmie Nuove," where finds its place the celebrated sonnet, in which 

 the poet asks Dante why, when everything he cherished. Church 

 and Empire, has disappeared from the world, he (Carducci) still 

 spends days and nights on these poems, though he has no hope 

 that Beatrice will pray for him, nor that Matilda will wash out his 

 sins ; and the other sonnet, " Giustizia di Poeta," where Dante is 

 represented as punishing with hell all his enemies, and calmly 

 looking down on them from heaven. 



(Carducci, Poesie, pp. 558, 559.) 



I will rapidly point out some satiric passages which seem to 

 be a discordant note in his great veneration for Dante, as where in 

 " Le Nozze " he alludes to the sterile Beatrice, who must give up to 

 " I'immenso intendimento della vita umana." Or where extolling the 

 pagan and serene happiness of the life of Ariosto, he says that the 

 price of his songs was not the favour of the princes, nor an ever- 

 changing popularity, nor " di teologal donna I'amore." In fact the 

 irony and the opposition between what he actually praises and exalts, 

 and what he, for the moment, has ceased to adore, or has never 

 adored at all, is one of the characteristics of Carducci's poetry, and, 

 according to the opinion of a very acute critic Enrico Panzacchi, 

 sometimes spoils his very best inspirations. I could quote to you 

 a good many more fragments in his work, but I think that you will 

 I aore appreciate the reading of two " Ode Barbare," which are in 

 some measure inspired by Dante. The first is entitled " In una 

 chiesa gotica." You remember that I have shown to you how Dante 

 introduced the religious element in the poetry of human love : — 



In the canzoni of that period (he says, and I cannot do better than 

 quoting his prose as a comment to his poetry) there are some stanzas 

 ivhicJi can only have been conceived between the austere columns of the 

 great cathedrals, under the light of a glorious sunset in Ajwil reflected 

 on the 2)ainted church windotrs, and contrasted by the reddish light of 

 the chandlers, tvhereas the smell of the incense wraps up the altar of the 

 Virgin, the organ sounds, and the argentine voices of the women fill the 

 darlc vaidts ivith a melancholic hymn. Then Dante must have seen in 

 an odoriferous cloud, brightened on the white forehecui by the uncertain 

 light of the setting sun and of the wax tapers, the girl of the Fortinaris ; 

 there he must have heard the voice of Iter, knelt doicn, go up to God in 

 a sound of hmientation and desire ; then the time and the space must have 

 faded aicay before his mind, and he must have seen the vision of 

 paradise and inferno .- the paradise which called her, and the inferno 

 ivhich waited for him. 



The second ode barbara, which I am going to read to you, 

 and which will conclude this lecture, is mainly consecrated to the 

 praise of Sirmione. This gem of the peninsulas, full of the 

 memories of Catullus, who used to seat himself on its shores, 



