"DANTE WITHOUT TEARS?"

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19150, 5 November 1927, Page 21

"DANTE WITHOUT TEARS?"

| TO THE EDITOB OF THE PBES3. Sir, —The special article in Saturday's PbbS3 is most interesting; but it is not surprising that ordinary mortals should find it hard to understand Dante, evea with all the external help they can get, for he was a' natural product of the Inquisition, and was labouring under the terrible influence of his time. The Troubadours had been struggling to transform the fundamental tradition of romantio love to the tender passion of Petrarca, a canon of the Church, a personage of the highost gravity and respectability, who celebrated in a lengthy series of songs aud sonnets his soul, real or fictitious, pour une i'emme. Gordello, before the "sweet new style" was fully developed, startled his contemporary fellow bards with the extravagance of his refinement and they had the bad taste to make merry over it. It is of particular interest to trace the causes which brought about the change in Provence before the terror-stricken poets scattered to foreign lands, and to note the complete transformation by the time the "Divine Comedy" was written. Dante's Beatrice, leading him through the seven spheres while she lectures him on theology ? is most intriguing. The changes which are illustrated in the early development of European literature were not so much changes in sentiment as changes in literary treatment and conventions, and everyone should study them closely, for their effects are still working in our own time. —Yours, etc., D. MENZIES, Menzies Bay, November 3rd.