From the PRELUDE. IT has been said of the Divina Commedia that it is like the Bible in this respect: every man finds within its pages that which answers to his need - the poet sees poetry, the scientific man science, the politician studies the tangled politics of the Middle Ages; even the heretic has been known to discover heresy, and I, a wayfarer in Dante's fair land of Italy - I find in his great poem a marvellous record of travel. Dante is in truth a master guide, and to follow in his steps is a supreme revelation. ...
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From the PRELUDE. IT has been said of the Divina Commedia that it is like the Bible in this respect: every man finds within its pages that which answers to his need - the poet sees poetry, the scientific man science, the politician studies the tangled politics of the Middle Ages; even the heretic has been known to discover heresy, and I, a wayfarer in Dante's fair land of Italy - I find in his great poem a marvellous record of travel. Dante is in truth a master guide, and to follow in his steps is a supreme revelation. As he journeys through the land from city to city, over mountain and plain, across the valleys through marsh and forest, by many a classic river or on the lonely sea-shore, nothing escapes his piercing vision. Equipped with all the learning of his day, dowered with imagination so keen and vivid that it almost attains to second sight, Dante, the ideal pilgrim, passes sedately through a haunted world peopled with the spirits of the great departed - philosophers, emperors, musicians, poets, warriors, and dear dead ladies, some enshrined in purity, others frail as fair, wives and maidens, kings' daughters and holy nuns - meting out stern justice in his book of doom alike to saints and sinners. Yet with these stupendous issues hanging in the balance nothing is too high, nothing too lowly for the poet's loving gaze. With clear precision of insight he describes all the varied incidents of travel, the passing glimpse of bird and beast, all sights and sounds which await him by the wayside; each changing aspect of the heavens above in storm and sunshine, from the first awakening of dawn, when the stars fade away one by one, to the sunset glow and the lonely majesty of night. The daily life of the wanderer is transformed by the poet's magic touch....
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