4 The “Eclogae”
Belonging, like the tenth Epistle, to that closing period of Dante’s life when he was engaged on the Paradiso, are two delightful pastoral poems in Latin hexameters. Here, too, we owe much to the piety of Boccaccio. The earliest and most authoritative of the five manuscripts is again in his handwriting, in the Zibaldone Boccaccesco (where the poems are accompanied by explanatory notes), in the Laurentian Library.
Giovanni del Virgilio, a young lecturer and a poet, had written to Dante from Bologna a letter in Latin verse, expressing his profound admiration for the singer of the Commedia, but respectfully remonstrating with him for writing in Italian, and suggesting some stirring contemporary subjects as worthy matters for his muse: the death of Henry VII., the battle of Montecatini, a victory of Can Grande over the Paduans, the struggle by sea and land between King Robert of Naples and the Visconti for the possession of Genoa. The reference to this last event shows that the letter cannot have been written before July 1318, while a passage towards the close clearly indicates the early part of the following year. It further contains a pressing invitation to come and take the laurel crown at Bologna, or, at least, to answer the letter, “if it vex thee not, to have read first the feeble numbers which the rash goose cackles to the clear-voiced swan.”
Dante’s first Eclogue is the answer. Adopting the pastoral style, he himself and his companion Dino Perini (whom Boccaccio afterwards knew) appear as shepherds, Tityrus and Meliboeus, discussing the invitation from Mopsus. It was probably written in the spring or early summer of 1319. In a medley of generous praise and kindly banter, Dante declines to visit Bologna, “that knows not the gods,” and still hopes to receive the poet’s crown at Florence. When the Paradiso is finished, then will it be time to think of ivy and laurel; and in the meanwhile, to convert Mopsus from his errors with respect to vernacular poetry, he will send him ten measures of milk fresh from the best-loved ewe of all his flock—ten cantos from the Paradiso, which evidently are not yet published, since the sheep is yet unmilked.
Mopsus in his answer expresses the intense admiration with which he and his fellow Arcadians have heard this song, and adopts the same style. Condoling with Dante on his unjust exile, he foresees his return home and reunion with Phyllis, who may perhaps be Gemma or (as Carducci suggested) an impersonification of Florence. But, in the meanwhile, pastoral pleasures and an enthusiastic welcome await him at Bologna, if Iolas (Guido da Polenta) will let him go. A reference to “Phrygian Muso” enables us to fix approximately the date; towards the beginning of September, 1319, Albertino Mussato, the Paduan poet and patriot, was at Bologna, endeavouring to get aid from the Guelf communes for his native city against Can Grande. Dante could hardly have with consistency accepted the invitation.
The writer of the notes on the Laurentian manuscript, whether Boccaccio himself or another, commenting upon a poem sent by Giovanni del Virgilio to Albertino Mussato, states that Dante delayed a year before answering this Eclogue, and that his reply was forwarded after his death by his son. His second Eclogue is in narrative form, and professes to be no more than the report by the writer of a conversation between Dante and his friends which is overheard by Guido da Polenta. A new associate of the poet’s last days is introduced to us: the shepherd Alphesiboeus, who is identified with Fiducio de’ Milotti of Certaldo, a distinguished physician resident at Ravenna. The tone is the same as that of the other Eclogue. Ravenna becomes the pastures of Pelorus, while Bologna is the Cyclops’ cave, to which Dante still refuses to go, for fear of Polyphemus, whose atrocities in the past are recorded.26 And the crown expected now is, perhaps, no longer one which any earthly city can give: “For this illustrious head already the Pruner is hastening to award an everlasting garland.”
These two Eclogues are of priceless value. Nowhere else is such a comparatively bright picture of Dante’s closing days given us. The genuine and hearty laughter which greets Giovanni’s two letters, the generous tone of the supreme singer towards the young scholar poet, the kindly joking at the expense of Dino, make delightful reading and show us quite another side of Dante’s character. Giovanni’s first letter implies that the earlier parts of the Commedia had not only been published, but had acquired a certain popularity. From Dante’s first Eclogue it follows that, by 1319, both Inferno and Purgatorio were completed, and that the Paradiso was in preparation: “When the bodies that flow round the world, and they that dwell among the stars, shall be shown forth in my song, even as the lower realms, then shall I delight to crown my head with ivy and with laurel.” And after this the passage in the second Eclogue, written apparently in 1321, however we interpret it, has the same pathos and sanctity as Petrarch’s note on the last line of his Triumph of Eternity, or the abrupt ending of Shelley’s Triumph of Life:
Hoc illustre caput, cui iam frondator in alta
virgine perpetuas festinat cernere frondes.27