n the fifteenth century, under the impact of the
Black Death, a popular theme in art came to be that of the
figure of Death confronting individuals of differing social
ranks, including among their figures that of the Emperor, as
well as that of the Pope, the Cardinal, the Archbishop, the
Marchant, the Scholar, the Poet, the Clown, the Widow, the Wife,
the Maiden, the Child and more. Hans Holbein the Younger's
engravings of these figures of the Dance of Death are especially
famous. However, the theme of Death and the Emperor in the
poetry of fourteenth-century Dante Alighieri, nineteenth-century
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson and
twentieth-century Wallace Stevens is instead the confrontation
of an Emperor, not so much with Death as with a woman; in the
first and second instances, with a widow whose son is murdered
and who demands justice of the Emperor, in the third and fourth
instances, because of Emily Dickinson's misreading of Elizabeth
Barrett Browning and non-reading of Dante, with an Emperor and a
dead woman. Each poet makes use of the theme, yet each has it
undergo a metamorphosis into something new and strange, a
marvelous sea change. The multiple borrowing, in the manner of
the epic, is indicative not of poetic poverty, but of riches.
In Purgatorio
X.73-93, Dante describes a scene sculpted in marble upon the
mountain side which has caused the pilgrims to pause and,
marvelling, to gaze upon it:
There
was storied the high glory of the Roman prince whose worth moved
Gregory to his great victory; Of Trajan the emperor I speak: and
a poor widow was at his bridle in the attitude of tears and
grief.
Round
about him appeared a trampling and throng of horsemen and the
eagles in gold above him moved visibly in the wind. The poor
creature among all these seemed to say: 'Lord, do me vengeance
for my son who is slain, whereby my heart is pierced.'
And he to
answer her: 'Now wait until I return.' And she, like a person
in whom grief is urgent: 'My Lord, if thou do not return?' And
he: 'One who shall be in my place will do it for thee'. And
she: 'What to thee will be another's good deed if thou forget
thine own?'
Wherefore
he: 'Now comfort thee, for needs must I fulfil my duty ere I
stir: justice wills and pity holds me back.
Dante
pretends he uses his art in order to report the art of another.
In fact, the scene he describes was not so much one of sculpture
as one of words. It was a tale famous throughout the Middle
Ages, describing the Christian Pope's prayer, said to have been
granted, for the salvation of the soul of the pagan Emperor who
saw this scene sculpted in the Forum in Rome. Its central
characters are Pope
Gregory,* the Emperor Trajan and the Widow bereft of her
Child. Dante makes use of it to exemplify humility - especially
amongst artists and poets.
It is a
scene that, touching in its majestic humility, affected the
poetry of a Victorian woman, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who in
Aurora Leigh II.966-987 wrote:
Then I said,
'Farewell,
my cousin.'
But
he
touched,
just
touched
my
hatstrings, tied for going (at the door
The
carriage stood to take me), and said low,
His
voice a little unsteady through his smile,
'Siste,
viator'.
'Is
there
time',
I
asked,
'In
these last days of railroads, to stop short
Like
Caesar's chariot (weighing half a ton)
On
the Appian road, for morals?'
'There is time,'
He
answered grave . . .
Amidst
references to modern Victorian railroads Elizabeth refers
obliquely to the episode in Dante's Purgatorio X. But
she has the male character, Romney Leigh, play the role of the
supplicating Widow, Aurora, that of the Emperor, in an
interesting reversal of the sexes, a reversal that is common in
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poetry's use of episodes from male
poetry in the past. Also, she has added to Dante's drama a
setting that is tomb-filled and she makes use of the common
classical epitaph, 'Siste, viator' [Pause, Traveller]. That
landscape of the tomb-lined Appian Way is a quite logical one
for the legend of the Emperor Trajan and the Widow, though the
setting is unstressed in Dante's version. Elizabeth Barrett
Browning brings to her poetry her own familiarity with Italian
landscapes as well as her knowledge of Italian medieval poetry,
superimposing these upon the English setting of a farewell of a
woman writer rejecting her lover for her art.
Emily
Dickinson greatly admired the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett
Browning and treasured a post card of her tomb in Florence's
English Cemetery.
_
The photo to the right
is from before the demolition of the medieval wall, therefore
between 1863 when this monument was put in place and 1869 or
thereafter when the wall was destroyed.
Jack L.
Capps in Emily Dickinson's Reading, 1836-1886 correctly
notes Emily Dickinson's use of the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett
Browning in her own, Ellen Moers again calling attention to this
borrowing by the one poet from the work of the other. He notes
the above lines from Aurora Leigh as reappearing in
Tie
the Strings to to my Life, My Lord,
Thus,
I am ready to go!
Just
a look to the Horses -
Rapid!
That will do!'
But he
does not notice the likeness to another and most famous poem of
Emily Dickinson:
The
Soul selects her own Society -
Then
- shuts the Door -
To
her divine Majority -
Present
no more -
Unmoved -
she notes the Chariots - pausing
At
her low Gate -
Unmoved
- an Emperor be kneeling
Upon
her Mat -
I've known
her - from an ample nation -
Choose
One -
Then
- close the Valves of her attention -
Like
Stone -
The
first poem picks up from the lines describing Aurora's putting
on her hat and Romney's seeing her go. The second has the
Emperor's chariot stopping on the Appian Way by the stone tomb,
an image derived from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora
Leigh and, through it, Purgatorio X. With each
poet in turn this tale changes, yet is the same. Emily
Dickinson, not reading Dante, is unaware that the Emperor pauses
with the entire Roman army solely because of a Widow's
entreaties, since that aspect is implied but unverbalized in
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's version. Yet Emily Dickinson
similarly has the Emperor pausing on his journey to stop for a
female, in this case, her soul in its tomb. It is of interest
that this incident described by a male poet of the fourteenth
century should have, in turn, inspired two female poets of the
nineteenth century. It is also of interest that Emily Dickinson
should have had Dante's poetry reach her in New England through
that of of Elizabeth Barrett of Browning's written in Italy.
Then the
theme of Death and the Emperor - which in poetry has a different
phylum than it has in art - undergoes yet another metamorphosis
in Wallace Stevens' 'The Emperor of Ice-Cream'. Here once again
there is an Emperor; here once again a woman, though here she is
no longer the maiden of Elizabeth's and Emily's poetry but once
more the widowed crone of Dante's:
Take
from the dresser of deal
Lacking
the three glass knobs, that sheet
On
which she embroidered fantails once
And
spread it so as to cover her face.
If
her horny feet protrude, they come
To
show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let
the light affix its beam.
The
only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Elizabeth
Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson, as Victorian women, were
drawn to an account in which an Emperor paused for the sake of a
woman. If Wallace Stevens in 'The Emperor of Ice-Cream' is
influenced by any of these renditions or by the Holbein theme of
the Dance of Death he does not playfully ennoble it; rather he
denigrates the dead woman, mockingly calling attention to her
poverty, the cheap dresser of deal lacking several glass knobs.
Nevertheless the poem raises a smile to its readers' lips in its
imperial conquest of the fear of death, turning it to a
clownfulness. In the Dance of Death, Death comes for the Clown,
for the Emperor, for the Pope, for the Widow. It comes for the
consumptive Elizabeth, Wife to Robert Browning, in Florence, for
the retiring Emily, Amherst's Maiden and Old Maid, for Dante
Alighieri, unjustly exiled from Florence whose Prior he had
been, and for Wallace Stevens of Hartford, Connecticut. Each in
their poetry knows of this outcome. Each has used poetry to
construct a Dance of Death and Life.
{Quidam quoque de nostris dicunt narratum a Romanis
Sancti Gregorii lacrimis, animam Traiani imperatoris
refrigeratam vel baptizatam, quod est dictu mirabile et
auditu. . . . Nam die quadam transiens per forum Traianum,
quod ab eo opere mirifico constructum dicunt, illud
considerans repperit opus tam elemosinarium eum fecisse
paganum, ut Christiani plus quam pagani esse posse videretur.
Fertur namque contra hostes exercitum ducens propere
pugnaturus, unius ad eum voce vidue misericorditer mollitus,
substetisse totius imperator orbis. Ait enim illa: 'Domne
Traiane, hic sunt homines qui filium meum occidearunt,
nolentes mihi rationem reddere'. Cui, 'cum rediero', inquit,
'dicito mihi, et faciam eos tibi rationem reddere'. At illa:
'Domine, ait, si inde non venies, nemo me adiuvet'. Tunc iam
concite reos, in eam fecit coram se in armis suis subaratam ei
pecuniam componere quem debearunt. Hoc igitur sanctus
inveniens Gregorius, id esse agnovit quod legimus; 'Iudicare
pupillo et defendite viduam et venite et arguite me dicit
Dominus'. Unde per eum quem in se habuit Christum loquentem ad
refrigerium anime eius quid implendo nesciebat, ingrediens ad
sanctam Petrum solita direxit lacrimarum fluenta, usque, dum
promeruit sibi divinitus revelatum fuisse exauditum, atque ut
numquam de altero illud presumpsisset pagano.
And here we narrate somewhat of the
tears of Roman Saint Gregory restoring the soul of the Emperor
Trajan and baptizing it, which is marvelous to say and hear. . .
. Now one day when he was going through Trajan's Forum . . . he
thought about the work of mercy the pagan had performed, which
seemed to him more Christian than pagan. For as he was leading
his army forth to fight against the enemy, he was softened by
the voice of a widow pleading for mercy, halting the Emperor of
the whole world. For she said, 'Lord Trajan, here are men who
have killed my son, who will not render me justice'. He replied,
'When I return, speak to me, and I will render justice to you'.
And she, 'Lord, and if you do not return, there is none to help
me'. Then he acquiesced to the judgement, and from the midst of
the bronze armour put together the money that was owed. Thus, St
Gregory concluded, he who had not known the passage, Judge the
orphan and defend the widow and come and reason together, said
the Lord (Isaiah 1.16-17), had done it. And weeping, he entered
St Peter's . . .
Dante
uses this episode in Purgatorio X, showing the scene
sculpted upon the marble wall of the gallery beside the
Annunciation to Mary. Botticelli and many other artists
illuminated the scene from Dante's text. Langland uses the
figure of Trajan as the virtuous pagan in Piers Plowman.
The Pearl Poet, in St Erkenwald, combines this
story with others from Bede's History of the English Church
and People and Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the
Kings of Britain, to create a similar one whose setting is
St Paul's Cathedral in London. Thus a monk or
nun at Whitby, writing this tale in the eighth century,
influenced further writings, in Europe and in America, from
the fourteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Most
important, he, or she, is Bede's predecessor and thus a source
for the History of the English Church and People, as
well as a source for Dante Alighieri's Divina Commedia.
He or she helped shape the histories of not one but two
nations.
Elizabeth
Barrett Browning. Aurora
Leigh and Other Poems. Edited, John
Robert Glorney Bolton and Julia Bolton
Holloway. Harmondsworth: Penguin
Classics, 1995. xx + 517 pp. ISBN
0-14-043412-7
IN STOCK Oh Bella Libertą! Le Poesie di Elizabeth Barrett Browning. A cura di Rita Severi e Julia Bolton Holloway. Firenze: Le Lettere, 2022. 290 pp.
To donate to the restoration by Roma of Florence's formerly abandoned English Cemetery and to its Library click on our Aureo Anello Associazione's PayPal button: THANKYOU!
n the fifteenth century, under the impact of the
Black Death, a popular theme in art came to be that of the
figure of Death confronting individuals of differing social
ranks, including among their figures that of the Emperor, as
well as that of the Pope, the Cardinal, the Archbishop, the
Marchant, the Scholar, the Poet, the Clown, the Widow, the Wife,
the Maiden, the Child and more. Hans Holbein the Younger's
engravings of these figures of the Dance of Death are especially
famous. However, the theme of Death and the Emperor in the
poetry of fourteenth-century Dante Alighieri, nineteenth-century
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Emily Dickinson and
twentieth-century Wallace Stevens is instead the confrontation
of an Emperor, not so much with Death as with a woman; in the
first and second instances, with a widow whose son is murdered
and who demands justice of the Emperor, in the third and fourth
instances, because of Emily Dickinson's misreading of Elizabeth
Barrett Browning and non-reading of Dante, with an Emperor and a
dead woman. Each poet makes use of the theme, yet each has it
undergo a metamorphosis into something new and strange, a
marvelous sea change. The multiple borrowing, in the manner of
the epic, is indicative not of poetic poverty, but of riches.
_ 
IN STOCK
IN STOCK
