Название: Dante: His Times and His Work
Автор: Arthur John Butler
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Зарубежная классика
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“It was summer time, the month of May, when the days are warm, and long, and clear, and the nights still and serene. Nicolete lay one night on her bed, and saw the moon shine clear through a window, yea, and heard the nightingale sing in the garden, so she minded her of Aucassin, her lover, whom she loved so well” (Lang’s translation).
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Lud = song; semlokest = seemliest; he = she; in hire baundoun = at her command.
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It seems proper to say that this chapter was written, and at least some of it printed, before Mr. Oscar Browning’s interesting volume,
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It may not be out of place here to correct the vulgar error that “Guelf” is in any sense the surname of our Royal family. The house of Brunswick is no doubt lineally descended from these Welfs of Bavaria; but it has been a reigning house since a period long antecedent to the existence (among Teutonic peoples) of family or surnames, and there is no reason for assigning to the Queen the Christian name of one of her ancestors more than another – “Guelf” more than “George.”
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Hallam considers that hostility to the Empire was the motive principle of the Guelf party in Lombardy; attachment to the Church in Tuscany.
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Observe that the Bondelmonti were comparatively newcomers. They had originally belonged to Valdigreve, and had only lived in Florence for some eighty years at the date of this event. Hence they were looked upon as upstarts, and not properly speaking, nobles at all. See
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Possibly “by the Uberti lot.”
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Villani,
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The name
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They seem to have acted on the principle of filling their own pockets, rather than of maintaining order; and are placed by Dante among the hypocrites, in the sixth pit of Malebolge (
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It may be noted that the name is undoubtedly Teutonic. The suggested derivations from
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Doubts have even been thrown on Dante’s friendship with this young King. To these we can only reply that, if it is not implied by
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The conclusion of his account is picturesque enough to deserve reproduction. “The news of the said victory came to Florence the very day and hour when it took place; for the Lords Priors having after dinner gone to sleep and rest, by reason of the anxiety and watching of the past night, suddenly came a knock at the door of the chamber, with a cry, ‘Rise up, for the Aretines are discomfited;’ and when they were risen, and the door opened, they found no man, and their servants without had heard nothing. Whence it was held a great and notable marvel, seeing that before any person came from the host with the news, it was towards the hour of vespers.”
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We find close resemblances between Dante and the founder of German mysticism. Not only in similes and illustrations, such as the tailor and his cloth, the needle and the loadstone, the flow of water to the sea, the gravitation of weights to the centre; or in such phrases as Eckhart’s “nature possesses nothing swifter than the heaven,” or his use of