An Anthology of Czechoslovak Literature/The Rose

IT was in May, 1283.

Near the centre of the Via del Corso, which then formed the mid-point of Florence, opposite the house of the baker Folco Portinari, stood a youth of slender build, clad in closely-fitting black attire, such as in thosedays was the customary garb worn by bachelors of arts.

He had been standing there for a long time, and it was clear that he was expecting somebody. The golden springtide sun bathed the street in a sea of radiance, the air, of unusual freshness, did not yet gleam with the deep azure of summer, but there was something remarkably dreamlike in its tender billows, which clung to the pointed roofs of the patrician houses, to the towers and domes of the bewitching city. On high, hovered what seemed to be the singing of invisible birds, from time to time the pleasances and gardens resounded with the solemn rustling of bushy trees, and then again prevailed a dreamy stillness full of unutterable springtide grace and captivating magic. From time to time there glided along the street the brother of some monkish order, with his hands piously crossed upon his breast, with a rosary upon a white cord about his waist; he glided like a shadow which served to intensify the alabaster-tinted wings of the pigeons which flew in whole clusters from the cornice of the Signoria, softly and ​shyly, as if they did not wish to disturb the city plunged in the golden springtide dream of its siesta.

Wrapped in his mantle, the youth stood like a statue, fixedly gazing upon a blossoming rosebush in front of the house. The roses were large and rich in enchanting beauty and dazing fragrance.

At this moment a man, likewise dressed in black, wearing the apparel of a rich patrician, approached along the street with solemn gait and bowed head; in his hand he held a small scroll, which he conned at intervals, smiling to himself the while. At about two paces from the youth he stopped, crossed his hands upon his breas and observed him intently. For some time, the youth did not perceive himself observed, but at last he shook aside his brooding, stretched out his hands and strode up to the new-comer.

“My Guido,” he exclaimed and involuntarily clutched at the scroll which the other had just been reading.

“Not so quickly, Durante,” replied the man addressed as Guido, and elusively he raised the scroll above his head, as if he wished to provoke his friend, “not so quickly.”

“You know I am burning with desire,” urged the youth.

“Of course; lovers always blaze with desire,” remarked Guido deliberately, as if he were quoting.

“You are mocking me.’

Nay, friend, but I do not know whether my answer will content you. My views about love are other than yours and Coni’s———”

“And than those of Dante da Maiano,” added his friend. “I know, I know. But in the name of God, give it here. It is your answer which will interest me ​most of all. Here———” he thrust his hand into his sidepocket, “you have the answer of Dante da Maiano. I am almost offended by the manner in which he speaks about love. So basely, like the level of his soul’s outlook. All the more do I yearn for your answer.” And again he clutched at his friend’s parchment.

But Guido Cavalcanti firmly held the parchment above his head, and with a frowning countenance he declared:

Stay, my Durante, stay. My answer will not content you either. How many of us are faithful in our love, and how differently each one conceives it! Cino with mere caprice, Dante da Maiano with blunted senses, you with glowing heart, and I,—I with cold reason. My highest aim in love is philosophy. That is the sweet master, who rules me: Ecce deus fortior me!—which of us possesses the truth?”

Your answer, your answer, I am aflame with impatience,” exclaimed his friend.

While Guido Cavalcanti was handing his friend the answer to his sonnet, the door of Folco Portinari’s garden opened, and from it departed two elderly matrons of solemn and severe aspect, grey haired, in rich but simple attire. Behind them in the street appeared a girl of slender form, arrayed in the whitest of gowns, with her head slightly bowed, with a delicate touch of pink in her pale translucent face. She stepped between the two matrons, and in their midst she passed along the street.

The two friends stood aside and awaited them with a deep bow of reverence. The two matrons returned the greeting rather haughtily and coldly, but the girl inclined her lovely head deeply, as though beneath the weight of its beauty, and a richer flush tinged her countenance, ​at that moment resembling the most beauteous rose upon the bush which she was just passing. Only for a moment, with the shyness of a doe, did she raise her unfathomably deep eyes of dark blue, and then with deliberate step and bowed head she went on her way between the two matrons.

“So modest is my lady and so dear,” whispered Guido Cavalcanti’s friend, trembling almost with awe and sacred dread.

The older and calmer of the two was likewise moved, and laid his hand upon his friend’s shoulder, sadly repeating the last words of one of his sonnets:

He then hastily turned away into a side street.

Durante Alighieri stood in silence, his gaze fixed upon the heavenly apparition. Behold, yonder at the end of the street, that creatura bella bianco vestita was gliding like a radiant lily between the grey stems of a fading reed. She bore herself like a striding flame, and it seemed as if all the beauty of that springtide scene, all the old-world aspect of the pondering city, all the radiance and lustre, all the fragrance and brightness, were only a frame from which she stepped smilingly, with that delicate flush in her face, with that tenderness in her deep eyes, with that compassion which belong to heavenly and infinite love. At that moment all the bells in the church near by began to chime, and a frightened swarm of white pigeons flew out like a cloud of white roses above her head, vanishing in the grey portal of the cathedral, the stonework of which seemed to quiver in the golden air as she crossed its threshold.

“Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur ​mihi,” whispered Dante Alighieri as in an ecstasy, standing ever in the same spot and fixing his gaze at the end of the street.

“Ah, Messer Durante,” said a voice behind him, “what is the canzone for which you are seeking the final rhyme?”

Thus addressed, he started like one who has been suddenly aroused from sleep. Before him stood the pattern of a complete fop of that period. In his hand he held a large nosegay and he carelessly swung his dagger in the richly ornamented girdle.

Messer Simone, God be with you! In truth, I was seeking no rhyme; it is not my wont, for it comes before I require it, and not singly, believe me.”

“But your pride is well known, you will not admit it. Yet I know that, if need be, you will spend a whole night over a single sonnet.”

“You may be right, but over a sonnet already written.”

“Already written,—truly I do not understand. What is written, is written,—what else remains then? I would rather ponder my whole life over something unwritten.”

“That, too, I can well conceive, Messer Simone. You see our paths lead in different directions.”

You are right,—you are seeking rhymes here, and I have been commissioned to fetch Bice from church and accompany her home; I will just pass for a moment across the square and then I will go to the church doors. That would serve for a canzone, Messer Alighieri.”

You—are commissioned?—And by whom?”

By her, by Bice, daughter of Folco Portinari. The word is now mine, messer trovatore, I am meeting her as a bridegroom, as a bridegroom. Farewell, signor, farewell. When you find that rhyme, think of me.”

​Dante was no longer listening to him. An ocean of gloom engulfed him. He heard a wild roaring, as if the earth had opened. Oh, if it would but consume him. But in its hardness and cruelty it would not. The trees around him rustled solemnly, the roses continued to blossom, the pigeons fluttered as before from the cornices, the air was radiant, glittering and fragrant. Only within him was there an abyss, darkness of night, tumult. He did not know how long he had been standing there, holding the answer of his friend Guido Cavalcanti, still unread, the answer for which he had so yearned.—What of that?—now he had his answer.

Footsteps, voices and laughter interrupted his ponderings. She was returning from the church at the end of the service. Again she walked white and radiant, but no longer between the two matrons, who kept behind; she went in front, and at her side swaggered and strutted Simon de Bardi, who had spoken with him a short while ago. And now his speech was again all jest and mirth, and she was holding his nosegay in her hands with a slight smile; the two matrons walked in a stately manner behind them with feelings of motherly pride. Now they were quite near the poet, and their talk sounded louder and more provocative. Dante wished to slip away, but he had not the strength,—moreover it was too late.

“What happiness to walk with you,” twittered Messer Simon, how shall I live after it!”

“I know not whether it is really so great,” she replied modestly.

“Do you desire proofs?” he asked challengingly.

To be happy when happiness comes,—anyone can do that,” came the sound of her voice, and the poet felt ​how a tear trembled in it, “but in one’s happiness to remember the unhappy,—this is a greater art.”

“I do not understand you, signora. Whom am I to remember?”

At that moment they stood before the house by the bush full of blossoming roses.

“Those who suffer, Signor Bardi,—those who suffer,” she said softly.

Then she plucked the loveliest rose and before Messer Simon was aware of it, she had handed it to the poet with eyes downcast and yet full of grace and endless compassion.

She did not utter a word,—nor he either. They entered the house, and he in the street pressed to his lips the fiery rose richly in blossom, which her eyes had hallowed with a tear of heavenly grace and endless compassion.

And young Dante Alighieri stood a long, long time in the street before the house of Folco Portinari, the baker. He gazed fixedly at the rose, first of all dully, without thoughts, in throes of unutterable grief, later he distinguished its whorls, the petals turning one amid the other in delicate spirals, and his alert, winged spirit descended upon them deeper and deeper, his dark mood worked so potently within him that the rose vanished from his sight, and only the spirals remained, ever waning, whirling, descending into an unknown abyss, dread and sinister. At that moment his brain was haunted by a vision of hell upon the rose, the hell of torments through which he had passed; it gained in shape and aspect and in this rose opened its chasm before him. And meanwhile his tears trickled upon the rose, hot as molten lead, scorching as the downpour of brim​stone upon Sodom and Gomorrha. But also purifying and uplifting. In the reflection of the tears it seemed to him that the fierily blood-red rose blanched in his hands, that it gleamed with a snowy light, and by a twist of the whirlwind in his dream he saw how the rose grew, continually grew to giant dimensions, grew to a radiant rose of the empyrean, where every petal was a saint’s throne, where the centre was a fiery eddy, where abides that love by which all stars are set astir. And near the centre of a petal arose that “creatura bella bianco vestita” and came towards him, holding a wreath of unfading laurel, whose leafage rings through stars and universe like the clamour of multitudes and the tempest of falling waters. Holy, holy, holy,—Hosanna and Alleluja of endless and countless angel choirs.

And pressing the rose to his lips, he divined in his soul the first outlines of his mighty poem which alone helped him to endure treachery of love and native land; and he knew not that past him went a young man, a painter, who seeing him with a rose in his hand and in a state of deep emotion, also stopped to imprint upon his soul the mighty image of him which he might bequeath to coming ages.

And that painter was Giotto.