The Divine Comedy with Commentary by Cristoforo Landino

There: he possesses the impulse of the sacred seed of the mind. original: "illic: impetū ille ſacre ſemia mētīſ habet."

We can also add that poets alone, contrary to the custom of other writers, invoke divine help because they consider the poet to be divine and not human, proceeding from divine fury From the Latin furor poeticus, referring to a state of inspired divine frenzy or poetic ecstasy, rather than anger.. Both Democritus and Origen and Cicero affirm this; therefore, it is not surprising if poets are the most ancient of writers, since God willed that from the beginning his mysteries should be described to all nations by poets. This, as I said a little earlier, led Aristotle, I believe, to call poets "theologians." But if we investigate the nature of both with diligence, we shall find no small similarity between the poet and the prophet. For this reason, the Latins wanted the word vates A Latin term for a prophetic bard or soothsayer. to be derived from "force of mind," since vehemence and excitement of the mind are common to both. And the Greeks called the poet from the verb poiein, which lies midway between "to create" (which is proper to God when He produces something into being from nothing) and "to make" (which is for men in every art when they compose from matter and form). For although the invention of the poet is not entirely out of nothing, it nevertheless departs from "making" and closely approaches "creating." And the supreme God is the greatest poet, and the world is His poem; and just as God disposes the creature in visible and invisible ways, which is His work in number, measure, and weight—whence the prophet says: God makes all things in number, measure, and weight original: "Deuſ ōnia facit numero meſura & pōdre" — a reference to the Wisdom of Solomon 11:20.—so the poet, with the number of poetic feet, with the measure of short and long syllables, and with the weight of sentences and emotions, constitutes his poem. I will not dwell long on this similarity, but I will add that it was not without reason that the ancients said Apollo and the nine Muses held the protection of poets. By "Apollo," they mean nothing other than the sun of God, which is unique and without plurality, just as in Greek this name "Apollo" signifies "not many." And Macrobius in his Saturnalia, wishing to demonstrate divine singularity and refute plurality, refers all the names of different gods and all their powers to Apollo. Poets are therefore under the protection of Apollo and the nine Muses—that is, the nine angelic choirs. And the supreme God is the giver and father of light; hence He is also called Phoebus because He reflects His light into the empyrean heaven, from which Primum Mobile The "First Moved" sphere in the Ptolemaic universe, which imparts motion to all other celestial spheres. the nine spheres are moved; and by that we understand Jove, and through these the nine Muses. For this reason Virgil learnedly said: From Jove is the beginning, O Muses; all things are full of Jove. original: "A ioue principiū Muſe iouīſ ōnia plēa" Poets, therefore, are from God. They are also from the Primum Mobile—that is, from Jove—and from all the nine spheres which are the Muses, because from them they receive the divine influence.

DIVINE FURY

I did not judge it right to omit what the ancient philosophers—especially Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Heraclitus, and particularly the divine Plato—understood regarding the divine fury of poets. These, as Hermes Trismegistus had previously written, affirmed that our souls, before they descend into bodies, contemplate in God—as in a mirror—the wisdom, justice, harmony, and beauty of the divine nature. Afterward, having descended into bodies where they previously fed on ambrosia and nectar—that is, on the knowledge of God and on joy—and then being submerged in the river Lethe The river of forgetfulness in Greek mythology., they fall into total oblivion. They cannot return to heaven unless they first regain such knowledge. Nor can they do this without justice and religion; and by justice they mean all moral virtues and the active life, and by religion the intellectual virtues and the contemplative life. These virtues Plato calls "two wings" with which we can fly back to heaven. Whence in the Phaedrus he writes that only the minds of philosophers recover these wings, because they, in meditation, subtract themselves from the body, and remembering God, they rise toward God. Such abstraction they call "fury," and this is divided into four parts. Nor can we remember divine things except through some images of earthly things, which are like shadows of the former, and we can comprehend them with bodily senses. This is also confirmed by the teacher of the Gentiles, Paul, and Dionysius the Areopagite, saying that the invisible things of God are seen by us through those things that are made visible here. Therefore, human wisdom is an image of divine wisdom; and the music of our instruments is an image of divine harmony; and similarly, the beauty of a well-proportioned and sweetly colored body represents to us, in some part, divine beauty. But it is not my purpose at present to speak of the other furies. Through the ears of the body, therefore, the soul receives musical numbers and consonances, by which images it is stirred with a more vehement spirit to consider the celestial harmony. This harmony, as Plato holds, is of two kinds: one consists in the eternal mind of God, the other in the order and celestial motions from which a marvelous concert is born. Before entering the body, the soul enjoyed both. But afterward, enclosed in such a troublesome prison, it hears through the sense of hearing not the divine harmony, but that which exists among men; and because it is an image of the celestial, the soul desires to recover its wings to fly to heaven and return to the divine harmony. Nevertheless, it still hungers for this music which it hears with its ears; nor is it a wonder, for whoever desires a thing is also delighted to have its image. Our soul thus strives to imitate this; but such imitation is of two kinds. For there are some who delight in the concert of the voice and musical instruments, and these are the common or trivial musicians; others are of more grave judgment and express the innermost meanings of their minds with measured verses. And these are the ones who, stirred by a divine spirit, can write the gravest and most meaningful verses. This is called "poetry" by Plato, which not only delights the ears with the sweetness of the voice like that common music, but, as I said, serves deep, secret, and divine meanings, and feeds the mind with celestial ambrosia. And they hold that this divine fury, as we said when treating the poetic art, proceeds from the Muses. Therefore, whoever tries to become a poet without this divine fury labors in vain. But I return to the praises of the poetic faculty.

THAT THE ORIGIN OF POETS IS ANCIENT

Because in antiquity there is a great interval of time, it is likely that among the first men, in whom some religion was excited and awakened, they placed their talent in the praises of God and in their prayers, and used industry to compose more elegant orations, reducing words to a certain order and connecting them with determined numbers and feet. As we see in Orpheus, who for no other reason they say was able with his lyre to stop rivers, move woods, and mitigate wild beasts, except because with the sweetness of his verses he could repress the impetus and fury of many who, trusting in their bodily strength, struck down and trampled all others; and others who were of desperate mind, or stupid, or senseless, he led to a rational and civil life. Amphion, with the sweet sound of the lyre, forced the stones to join together and form the walls of Thebes. This demonstrates nothing else but that he reduced men—who were wandering and dispersed through the woods and caves—into a group and congregation to live in common. Similarly, we interpret that Amphion with his lyre moved the stones to join together and make the Theban walls because, with the sweetness of his verses, he brought together men who lived in solitude, wandering through the nearby mountains without laws or customs, and by softening their hardness, he composed them into a civil life. I will not tire myself at present investigating what we see Plutarch has diligently established in his book on music: who among the Greeks was the first inventor of verses, and in what age the lyric, heroic, and elegiac verses were found; for it is difficult in such a variety of opinions to pronounce the truth. And we see such artistry was celebrated much earlier in Syria and in Egypt than in Greece. For among the Hebrews—a people who, as they affirm and we believe, are most ancient—King David wrote his psalms in verse. Nor is it that we cannot number him among the ancients, for he lived in the times when Codrus reigned in Athens, more than 400 years before the building of Rome. But we also know that Solomon his son, and Deuteronomy, and the song of Isaiah are written in verse, as Jerome The OCR reads "sapho," likely a misreading of "Ieronimo" (Jerome) or similar, as Landino frequently cites Jerome on Hebrew meter. and Origen, most grave authors, affirm. But in more ancient centuries was Moses, a man marvelous both for military discipline and for learning, who liberated the Egyptians from the Ethiopians and the Hebrews from the Egyptians. And according to Eupolemus, a Greek writer, because he was the inventor of letters, he was called Mercury Trismegistus by the Egyptians. He, as appears in his writings, was a poet of no small renown. A man so ancient that when he led the people of Israel out of Egypt, Cecrops reigned in Athens. And all the excellent things done in Greece are after the times of Cecrops. But even before Moses was Job the Idumean, who was nearly three ages after Israel; he wrote his consolation in elegiac verses. But it is time now to return from such distant regions to our mother Italy and to Latium, where although Livius Andronicus was the first who...