|Mediterranean Review | Vol. 4, No. 1
[June 2011] : 83~143
Homer as a Point of Departure:
Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy*
Laurence K. P. Wong**
Abstract
Contrary to the view-current among certain critics-that it is only decorative,
the epic simile, starting from Homer and carried on by Virgil and Milton,
performs many functions, functions that help to make an epic what it is. In the
development of the epic in general and of the epic simile in particular, Homer,
Virgil, and Milton, three mainstream epic poets, were linked by a similar
tradition and shared close affinities in the way they employed this rhetorical
device. While drawing on the Homer-Virgil tradition, using the epic simile as
Homer, Virgil, and Milton did, Dante in The Divine Comedy took Homer as a
point of departure. This paper discusses what functions Dante’s epic similes
perform, how they differ from those of Homer, Virgil, and Milton, and how they
scale new heights, heights which are beyond the epic similes of the mainstream
epic poets, attaining, as Eliot put it, to “the highest point poetry has ever reached
or ever can reach.”
Keywords: epic simile, the Iliad, the Odyssey, Paradise Lost, The Divine Comedy,
slow-motion sequence, bulk, sublimity, anthropomorphic, ineffable
* This is the full version of a paper presented on August 19, 2010 at the XIXth Congress of
the International Comparative Literature Association held at the Chung-ang University,
Seoul, Korea on August 15-21, 2010. I would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers
for their valuable suggestions during the review process. Needless to say, I am responsible
for any mistakes that remain.
** Professor of Translation, Department of Translation; Associate Dean (Research), Faculty
of Arts; Director, Research Institute for the Humanities; The Chinese University of Hong
Kong, Shatin, N. T., Hong Kong. [email protected]
84 |Mediterranean Review |
Vol. 4, No. 1 [June 2011]
1. Introduction
Before discussing the epic similes in The Divine Comedy in relation to
Homer,1) it is first necessary to address a misconception current even among
critics of standing from whom students of literature seek initial enlightenment, as
can be seen in the following definition of the term epic simile: “An extended
simile elaborated in such detail or such length as to eclipse temporarily the main
action of a narrative work, forming a decorative digression” (Baldick 1990: 71).2)
An epic simile, whether in Homer, Virgil, Milton, or Dante, is “extended,”
“elaborated in […] detail”; very often, it also “eclipse[s] temporarily the main
action of a narrative work,” and can be regarded as a “digression” in that it may
depart from the main story-line for a while; however, the epic similes in the work
of the above poets are anything but “decorative.”
2. Epic Similes in the Mainstream Epic Poets:
Homer, Virgil, and Milton
To illustrate my point, let us look at two similes in a row, both taken from
Book 4 of the Iliad, 3)with which the term epic simile is most closely assoicated:
1) Dante’s masterpiece, originally called the Commedia by the author, later had the word
Divina added to it; it is often referred to by Dante scholars as the Commedia (when it is
discussed in English) or La Divina Commedia, la Divina Commedia, or la Commedia
(when it is discussed in Italian). In English, it is called either the Divine Comedy (by T. S.
Eliot, for example) or The Divine Comedy (by John D. Sinclair, for example). As this
paper is aimed at the general reader, I have adopted the English title, with the definite
article the included as an integral part of it.
2) Such a misconception is not found in Cuddon’s definition of the term: “An extended
simile, in some cases running to fifteen or twenty lines, in which the comparisons made
are elaborated in considerable detail (Cuddon 1992: 293).
3) The Iliad and the Odyssey, the two Greek epics ascribed to Homer, are both great
poetry, but they are not great poetry of exactly the same order, with the former often
taking precedence over the latter in terms of the critical acclaim they receive. Thus some
18 centuries ago, Longinus already drew readers’ attention to the superiority of the Iliad
over the Odyssey: “It was, I imagine, for the same reason that, writing the Iliad in the
heyday of his genius he made the whole piece lively with dramatic action, whereas in the
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 85
{Sl *z ÓJz ¦< "Æ(4"8è B@8L0PX^ 6Ø:" 2"8VFF0l
ÐD<LJz ¦B"FFbJ,D@< -,NbD@L àB@ 64<ZF"<J@lq
B`<Jå :X< J, BDäJ" 6@DbFF,J"4, "LJD §B,4J"
PXDFå Õ0(<b:,<@< :,(V8" $DX:,4, •:NÂ *X Jz –6D"l
6LDJÎ< ¦Î< 6@DLN@ØJ"4, •B@BJb,4 *z 8Îl –P<0<q
ól J`Jz ¦B"FFbJ,D"4 )"<"ä< 6\<L<J@ NV8"((,l
<T8,:XTl B`8,:`<*,q 6X8,L, *¥ @ÍF4< ª6"FJ@l
º(,:`<T<q @Ê *z –88@4 •6¬< ÇF"<, @Û*X 6, N"\0l
J`FF@< 8"Î< ªB,F2"4 §P@<Jz ¦< FJZ2,F4< "Û*Z<,
F4(± *,4*4`J,l F0:V<J@D"lq •:NÂ *¥ BF4
J,bP," B@46\8z §8":B,, J ,Ê:X<@4 ¦FJ4P`T<J@.
IDä,l *z, òl Jz Ð^,l B@8LBV:@<@l •<*DÎl ¦< "Û8±
Odyssey narrative predominates, the characteristic of old age. So in the Odyssey one
may liken Homer to the setting sun; the grandeur remains without the intensity. For no
longer does he preserve the sustained energy of the great Iliad lays, the consistent
sublimity which never sinks into flatness, the flood of moving incidents in quick
succession, the versatile rapidity and actuality, dense with images drawn from real life. It
is rather as though the Ocean had retreated into itself and lay quiet within its own
confines. Henceforth we see the ebbing tide of Homer’s greatness, as he wanders in the
realm of the fabulous and incredible.” (Longinus 1995: 195) (“•BÎ *¥ J−l "ÛJ−l "ÆJ\"l,
@É:"4, J−l :¥< z384V*@l (D"N@:X<0l ¦< •6:± B<,b:"J@l Ó8@< JÎ FT:VJ4@< *D":"J46Î<
ßB,FJZF"J@ 6"Â ¦<"(f<4@<, J−l *¥ z?*LFF,\"l JÎ B8X@< *40(0:"J46`<, ÓB,D Ç*4@<
(ZDTl. Ó2,< ¦< J± z?*LFF,\‘ B"D,46VF"4 J4l —< 6"J"*L@:X<å JÎ< ~?:0D@< º8\å, @â
*\P" J−l FN@*D`J0J@l B"D":X<,4 JÎ :X(,2@l. @Û (D §J4 J@Ãl z384"6@Ãl ¦6,\<@4l
B@4Z:"F4< ÇF@< ¦<J"Ø2" Fæ.,4 JÎ< J`<@<, @Û*z ¦>T:"84F:X<" J àR0 6"Â Ê.Z:"J"
:0*":@Ø 8":$V<@<J", @Û*¥ J¬< BD`PLF4< Ò:@\"< Jä< ¦B"88Z8T< B"2ä<, @Û*¥ JÎ
•(P\FJD@N@< 6"Â B@84J46Î< 6"Â J"Ãl ¦6 J−l •802,\"l N"<J"F\"4l 6"J"B,BL6<T:X<@<,
•88z @Í@< ßB@PTD@Ø<J@l ,Æl ©"LJÎ< zS6,"<@Ø 6"Â B,DÂ J Ç*4" :XJD" º:,D@L:X<@L JÎ
8@4BÎ< N"\<@<J"4 J@Ø :,(X2@Ll •:BfJ4*,l 6•< J@Ãl :L2f*,F4 6"Â •B\FJ@4l B8V<@l.”)
(Longinus 1995: 194) Some 18 centuries later, another critic, E. V. Rieu, whose
English translations of the Odyssey and the Iliad were published in the Penguin Classics
series in 1946 and 1950 respectively, gave the same verdict: “The Greeks looked on the
Iliad as Homer’s major work. It was the Story of Achilles, and not the Wanderings of
Odysseus as might have been expected, that Alexander the Great took with him as a
bedside book on his adventurous campaigns. I myself used not to accept this verdict, and
I felt that many modern readers would agree with me. It was therefore with some
trepidation that I bade farewell to the Odyssey and braced myself for the task of
translating the Iliad, which I had not read through as a whole for twelve years. I soon
began to have very different feelings, and now that I have finished the work I am
completely reassured. The Greeks were right.” (Rieu 1950: vii)
86 |Mediterranean Review |
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:LD\"4 ©FJZ6"F4< •:,8(`:,<"4 (V8" 8,L6`<,
".0P¥l :,:"6LÃ"4 •6@b@LF"4 ÐB" •D<ä<,
ól IDfT< •8"80JÎl •< FJD"JÎ< ,ÛD×< ÏDfD,4q
@Û (D BV<JT< μ,< Ò:Îl 2D`@l @Û*z Ç" (−DLl,
•88 (8äFFz ¦:X:46J@, B@8b680J@4 *z §F"< –<*D,l.
(Iliad, 4. 422-38)
As when on a sounding beach the swell of the sea beats, wave after wave,
before the driving of the West Wind; out on the deep at the first is it
gathered in a crest, but thereafter is broken upon the land and
thundereth aloud, and round about the headlands it swelleth and reareth
its head, and speweth forth the salt brine: even in such wise on that day
did the battalions of the Danaans move, rank after rank, without cease,
into battle; and each captain gave charge to his own men, and the rest
marched on in silence; thou wouldst not have deemed that they that
followed in such multitudes had any voice in their breasts, all silent as
they were through fear of their commanders; and on every man flashed
the inlaid armour wherewith they went clad. But for the Trojans, even as
ewes stand in throngs past counting in the court of a man of much
substance to be milked of their white milk, and bleat without ceasing as
they hear the voices of their lambs: even so arose the clamour of the
Trojans throughout the wide host; for they had not all like speech or one
language, but their tongues were mingled, and they were a folk
summoned from many lands. (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 185)4)
The lines describe the Danaans and the Trojans being urged on respectively
by Athene and Ares before they engage in fierce battle. The first simile (“As
when on a sounding beach […] and on every man flashed the inlaid armour
wherewith they went clad”) compares the Danaans to the swell of the sea; the
second (“even as ewes stand in throngs […] as they hear the voices of their
lambs”) compares the Trojans to ewes waiting to be milked. Both are “extended”
similes “elaborated in […] detail,” “eclips[ing] […] temporarily the main action.”
But they are certainly not “decorative”; on the contrary, they perform various
4) Long quotations from the original Homer (in the Murray edition) are indicated by book
and line numbers; their English translations, by Murray, are indicated by page numbers.
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 87
functions. First, through the masterly deployment of visual and auditory images,
they enable the reader to see “the battalions of the Danaans” in vivid language.
Second, by halting the action for a while, sometimes for quite a long while, they
heighten the work’s suspense, and make its impact overwhelming, very much
like a thunderclap held in check before it is released with irresistible ferocity.
Third, as they slow down the narrative, they have the effect of a slow-motion
sequence, which prolongs and intensifies the climactic moment. Today,
cinema-goers are all familiar with sequences in which a dagger, a spear, or a
bullet travelling at immense speed is slowed down, so that what happens within
one-hundredth or one-thousandth of a second is “stretched out,” as it were, for
the cinema-goer to gaze at and contemplate, so much so that the climax, the
agonizing moment, is artistically magnified. In reading the Iliad and the Odyssey,
we can see that, some three thousand years ago, Homer was already a superb
master of a cinematic technique before cinematography was invented.5) Once he
5) The two Greek epics are “conjecturally dated c. 850 B. C. (Hornstein et al. 1956: 222).
The functions of the epic simile are not, of course, limited to those mentioned above. In
his article entitled “Similes and Delay,” David Marshall has identified other functions:
“the similes in the Iliad tend to work against the epic narrative itself” (233); “[a]s the
Homeric simile unfolds, it acts like a digression; it delays and deviates from the
story-line, holding the dramatic action in suspense while it elaborates its own alternate
narrative time and space […]” (235); [t]hrough potentially endless substitutions, similes
enact a wish to go forward and to stand still at the same time” (236). To heighten the
dramatic effect or the narrative, Homer is here using two similes simultaneously for his
purpose: one for the Danaans, the other for the Trojans. It can be seen, too, that the two
similes are antithetical: the one describing the Danaans is pitted against the one
describing the Trojans, just as the Danaan army is pitted again the Trojan army,
achieving a kind of triple symmetrical effect: on the one hand, one army and one simile
are respectively ranged against another army and another simile; on the other hand, the
external, objective macrocosm (two armies ranged against each other) is mirrored by the
internal, linguistic microcosm (two similes ranged against each other). At the same time,
the similes themselves subtly foreshadow the final outcome of the war: the Danaans, who
are compared to something ferocious and mighty (“the swell of the sea”), are destined to
defeat the Trojans, who are compared to meek and tame animals (‘ewes” waiting “to be
milked”). Structurally, therefore, they are different from two, three, four, or five similes
in a row, one following and reinforcing the other. In 3.1-14 of the Iliad, for example, we
have two similes in which Homer first compares the clamour and cry of the Trojans to
“the clamaour of cranes” (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 117) (“68"((¬(,DV<T<”)
(Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 116), then “the dense dust-cloud” (Murray 1924: The
Iliad, Vol. 1, 117) to a mist shed by the South Wind: “+ÞJz ÐD,@l 6@DLN±F4 ;`J@l
6"JXP,L,< Ï:\P80<” (“Even as when the South Wind sheddeth a mist over the peaks of
88 |Mediterranean Review |
Vol. 4, No. 1 [June 2011]
switches to “+ÞJz…ól –D"…” (Iliad, 3.10-13) (“Even as…even in such
wise…”), “òl J,…ól…” (Iliad, 3.23-27) (“then even as…even so…”), “{Sl *z
ÓJz…ól J`Jz…” (Iliad, 4.422-27) (“As when...even in such wise...”), “ñl *z…ól
J`Jz…” (Iliad, 5.499-502) (“And even as…even so now…”), “?Ë0 *z…J@Ã@l”
(Iliad, 5.864-866) (“Even as…even in such wise…”), “@Í@l *z…ól…” (Iliad,
11.62-64) (“Even as…even so”),6) which are formulas for the epic simile, the
reader immediately knows that the narrative has gone into the slow-motion
mode.
In going through Homer’s epics, particularly the Iliad, one is amazed at the
variety of the poet’s narrative speed. When he chooses to impart momentum to
the story, he can make his story hurtle across the page. Take the opening of the
Iliad, for example:
9−<4< –,4*,, 2,V, A080^V*,T z!P48−@l
@Û8@:X<0<, ¼ :LD\z z!P"4@Ãl –8(,z §206,,
B@88l *z ÆN2\:@Ll RLPl }!^*4 BD@Ä"R,<
ºDfT<, "ÛJ@×l *¥ ©8fD4" J,ØP, 6b<,FF4<
@ÆT<@ÃF\ J, BF4, )4Îl *z ¦J,8,\,J@ $@L8Z,
¦> @â *¬ J BDäJ" *4"FJZJ0< ¦D\F"<J,
z!JD,Ä*0l J, –<"> •<*Dä< 6"Â *Ã@l z!P488,bl. (Iliad, 1.1-7)
The wrath do thou sing, O goddess, of Peleus’ son, Achilles, that baneful
wrath which brought countless woes upon the Achaeans, and sent forth
to Hades many valiant souls of warriors, and made themselves to be a
spoil for dogs and all manner of birds; and thus the will of Zeus was
being brought to fulfilment;-sing thou thereof from the time when at the
first there parted in strife Atreus’ son, king of men, and goodly Achilles.
(Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 3)
Employing the rhetorical device of medias res, Homer plunges the reader
a mountain”) (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 116, 117). The focus of the camera shifts
from one point to another, in this case from the cry of the Trojans to “the dense
dust-cloud,” but the effect is cumulative, as is the case with 2.455-483 of the Iliad,
which will be discussed later in this paper.
6) The English translations of the formulas for the epic similes are Murray’s.
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 89
into the very middle of the story the moment the poems begins; there is no
beating about the bush, no circumlocution; the weighty theme of the epic is
matched by its direct opening and a swiftness of tempo suggestive of a “frontal
attack.”
Immediately after the opening, the story unfolds: Agamemnon had taken the
daughter of Chryses; when Chryses bore with him ransom to beg for her release, he
failed to move Agamemnon and was dishonoured by him; desperate, Chryses
prayed to Apollo for help; in fury, Apollo descended from Olympus to rouse an evil
pestilence among the Greeks. … In just about some forty lines, the story has already
come to a head, and the reader can feel the acceleration of the narrative tempo:
Sl §N"Jz ,ÛP`:,<@l, J@Ø *z §68L, M@Ã$@l z!B`88T<,
$− *¥ 6"Jz ?Û8b:B@4@ 6"DZ<T< PT`:,<@l 6−D,
J`>z ê:@4F4< §PT< •:N0D,NX" J, N"DXJD0<.
§68"(>"< *z –Dz Ï^FJ@Â ¦Bz ê:T< PT@:X<@4@,
"ÛJ@Ø 64<02X<J@l. Ò *z ³^, <L6JÂ ¦@46fl.
ª.,Jz §B,4Jz •BV<,L2, <,ä<, :,J *z ÆÎ< ª06,q
*,4<¬ *¥ 68"((¬ (X<,Jz •D(LDX@4@ $4@Ã@.
@ÛD−"l :¥< BDäJ@< ¦BæP,J@ 6"Â 6b<"l •D(@bl,
"ÛJD §B,4Jz "ÛJ@ÃF4 $X8@l ¦P,B,L6¥l ¦N4,Âl
$V88zq "Æ, *¥ BLD" <,6bT< 6"\@<J@ 2":,4"\. (Iliad, 1.43-52)
So he spake in prayer, and Phoebus Apollo heard him. Down from the
peaks of Olympus he strode, wroth at heart, bearing on his shoulders his
bow and covered quiver. The arrows rattled on the shoulders of the
angry god, as he moved; and his coming was like the night. Then he sate
him down apart from the ships and let fly a shaft: terrible was the twang
of the silver bow. The mules he assailed first and the swift dogs, but
thereafter on the men themselves he let fly his stinging arrows, and
smote; and ever did the pyres of the dead burn thick. (Murray 1924: The
Iliad, Vol. 1, 7)
The narrative proceeds, in the words used by Coleridge of Macbeth, with “a
crowded and breathless rapidity” (Jump 1970: 30).7) Right from the very
7) The words were used when Coleridge, after discussing Hamlet’s character, contrasted
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beginning, the reader is already gripped by suspense; by the time he reaches the
clause “and his coming was like the night” (“Ò *z ³^, <L6JÂ ¦@46fl”), he feels
“oppressed” by the almost palpable weightiness of the half line, and is swept
along by the narrative onslaught. When Homer slows down, switching to epic
similes, he always has clear goals to achieve, not because he has little or nothing
to say, so that he is compelled to resort to padding. Working together with
passages like the above, epic similes, by putting the narrative in slow-motion,
play an important role in modifying and giving variety to the speed of the poem.
The fourth function of the epic simile has to do with its “extendedness”: by
means of extended similes, the poet is able to add weight to the epic, without
which the poem would lose much of its “bulk.” In a poem which is literally of
epic proportions, such elaborate similes are not only justified, but necessary, for
an epic is not a vignette, but a Michelangelo fresco in the Sistine Chapel; as such,
it needs the right amount of epic detail, which can only be supplied by epic
similes.8)
The weightiness of the epic’s narrative arising from the use of epic similes is
most impressive in 2.455-83 of the Iliad, where several similes in a row are
presented. As Agamemnon “[s]traightway […] bade the clear-voiced heralds
summon to battle the long-haired Achaeans” (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1,
83) (“"ÛJ\6" 60Db6,FF4 84(LN2`((@4F4 6X8,LF, / 60DbFF,4< B`8,:`<*, 6VD0
6@:`T<J"lz!P"4@bl”) (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 82), and as Athene
“sped dazzling throughout the host of the Achaeans, urging them to go forth”
(Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 85) (“F×< J± B"4NVFF@LF" *4XFFLJ@ 8"Î<
z!P"4ä< / ÏJDb<@LFz ÆX<"4”) (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol., 1, 84), the soldiers
the tragedy named after the hero with the tragedy of Macbeth: “Hamlet is brave and
careless of death; but he vacillates from sensibility, and procrastinates from thought, and
loses the power of action in the energy of resolve. Thus it is that this tragedy presents a
direct contrast to that of Macbeth; the one proceeds with the utmost slowness, the other
with a crowded and breathless rapidity” (Jump 1970: 30).
8) In this regard, Aristotle had the following to say in his Poetics more than 23 centuries
ago: “In epic, because of its length, the sections take on an apt magnitude […]” (Aristotle
1995: 93) (“¦6,à :¥< (D *4 JÎ :−6@l 8:$V<,4 J :XD0 JÎ BDXB@< :X(,2@l […]”
(Aristotle 1995: 92, 94). The Greek word :X(,2@l means “greatness, magnitude”
(Liddell and Scott 1940: 1089); “magnitude, bulk, size” (Liddell and Scott 1989: 429);
it signifies one of the most important characteristics of epic. And Aristotle’s adjective for
“:X(,2@l” is “BDXB@<” (“apt”), which shows that “magnitude” or “bulk” is what is
expected of epic.
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 91
are first compared to “a consuming fire” (Murray 1924:The Iliad, Vol. 1, 85)
(“BØD •Ä*08@<”) (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 84), then to “the many tribes
of winged fowl” (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 85) (“ÏD<\2T< B,J,0<ä< §2<,"
B@88V”) (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 84), and to “the many tribes of
swarming flies” (Murrary 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 85) (“:L4VT< *4<VT< §2<,"
B@88”) (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 84); the marshalling of the soldiers by
their leaders is compared to “the wide-scattered flocks of goats” (Murray 1924:
The Iliad, Vol. 1, 87) (“"ÆB`84" B8"JXz "Æ(ä<”) (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol.
1, 86) being separated by goatherds; Agamemnon, the lord of all, is compared to
“a bull among the herd” (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 87) (“$@Øl •(X80N4”)
(Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 86). Altogether, there are five epic similes,
constituting what Mueller calls “[t]he most elaborate simile cluster in the Iliad”
(1986: 219).9) By using this simile cluster, Homer has increased tremendously
the weightiness of his narrative, which results not only from each simile alone,
but also from the cumulative effect of the whole cluster.
Sometimes, the cumulative technique can be used to heighten the very
grisly. One of the most blood-curdling examples is found in the Odyssey, when
Homer describes how Odysseus takes revenge on man-eating Polyphemos:
@Ê :¥< :@P8Î< ©8`<J,l ¦8V4<@<, Ï>×< ¦Bz –6Då,
ÏN2"8:è ¦<XD,4F"<q ¦(ã *z ¦NbB,D2,< ¦D,4F2,Âl
*\<,@<, ñl ÓJ, J4l JDLBè *`DL <Z4@< •<¬D
JDLBV<å, @Ê *X Jz §<,D2,< ßB@FF,\@LF4< Ê:V<J4
RV:,<@4 ©6VJ,D2,, JÎ *¥ JDXP,4 ¦::,<¥l "Æ,\.
ól J@Ø ¦< ÏN2"8:è BLD4Z6," :@P8Î< ©8`<J,l
*4<X@:,<, JÎ< *z "Í:" B,D\DD,, 2,D:Î< ¦`<J".
BV<J" *X @Ê $8XN"Dz •:NÂ 6"Â ÏNDb"l ,âF,< •LJ:¬
(8Z<0l 6"4@:X<0l, FN"D"(,Ø<J@ *X @Ê BLDÂ Õ\."4.
ñl *z ÓJz •<¬D P"8P,×l BX8,6L< :X("< ²¥ F6XB"D<@<
9) The following less complex similes in the quotation are not included in the cluster:
“:LD\@4, ÓFF" J, Nb88" 6"Â –<2," (\(<,J"4 òD®”) (2.468) (“numberless, as are the
leaves and the flowers in their season”) (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 85); “}Ð::"J"
6"Â 6,N"8¬< Ç6,8@l )4Â J,DB46,D"b<å, / }!D,^ *¥ .f<0< FJXD<@< *¥ A@F,4*VT<4”
(Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 86) (“his eyes and head like unto Zeus that hurleth the
thunderbolt, his waist like unto Ares, and his breast unto Poseidon”) (Murray 1924: The
Iliad, Vol. 1, 87). They should be regarded as simple, ordinary similes, not epic similes.
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,Æ< à*"J4 RLPDè $VBJ® :,(V8" ÆVP@<J"
N"D:VFFT<q JÎ (D "ÞJ, F4*ZD@L (, 6DVJ@l ¦FJ\<
ól J@Ø F\.z ÏN2"8:Îl ¦8"^<Xå B,DÂ :@P8è. (Odyssey, 9.382-94)
They took the stake of olive-wood, sharp at the point, and thrust it into his
eye, while I, throwing my weight upon it from above, whirled it round, as
when a man bores a ship’s timber with a drill, while those below keep it
spinning with the thong, which they lay hold of by either end, and the drill
runs around unceasingly. Even so we took the fiery-pointed stake and
whirled it around in his eye, and the blood flowed around the heated thing.
And his eyelids wholly and his brows round about did the flame singe as
the eyeball burned, and its roots crackled in the fire. And as when a smith
dips a great axe or an adze in cold water amid loud hissing to temper it –
for therefrom comes the strength of iron – even so did his eye hiss round
the stake of olive-wood. (Murrary 1919: The Odyssey, Vol. 1, 331)
Sure to be banned on the stage or in films, the piercing of the Cyclops’ eye,
its burning, and its blood flowing are depicted with the most graphic details,
details that will fill every reader with horror. As though one graphic simile is not
enough, Homer hurls one after another before the reader’s eyes: “as when a
man bores a ship’s timber with a drill” (“ñl ÓJ, J4l JDLBè *`DL <Z4@< •<¬D /
JDLBV<å”), “And as when a smith dips a great axe or an adze in cold water…”
(“ñl *z ÓJz •<¬D P"8P,×l BX8,6L< :X("< ²¥ F6XB"D<@< / ,Æ< à*"J4 RLPDè
$VBJ®…”). These details, presented in epic similes, are visual, auditory, and
tactile at the same time, and are essential to the narrative; after reading them in
the right context, no reader will say that they are “decorative.”10)
Closely related to the fourth function is the fifth, performed also particuarly
by simile clusters: to achieve a kind of symphonic effect, enabling the listener to
hear the theme played by more than one instrument.
10) In commenting on this passage, Hornstein et al. (1956: 227) have made a salient point
about Homer’s similes: “The similes are never merely decorative but are used to
emphasize an action the poet wishes to make unusually impressive. Sometimes two or
more are presented together, as in the episode of Polyphemus where the whirling of the
burning tree trunk in the giant’s eye is compared to the turning of an auger in a beam,
and the hissing of the eyeball from the heat is likened to the sound of red-hot iron
plunged into water.” This point, going against the view of Baldick (1990: 71), quoted
earlier, is echoed by later ciritcs, some of whom will be mentioned later in this paper.
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 93
In trying to show that “the digressions of the Iliad are not haphazard
accretions,” not “merely ornamental decorations subject to the whims of poet or
his audience,” Austin (1986: 152), in his article entitled “The Functions of
Digressions in the ‘Iliad’,” has made some pertinent remarks that can shed more
light on the functions of the epic simile:
For it is a surprising fact in Homer that where the drama is most intense the
digressions are the longest and the details the fullest. […] The more urgent the
situation, the more expansive the speech and its illustrative paradigm. The two
longest digressions, the story of Meleager in Book 9 and Nestor’s story of the
Pylians and Eleians in Book 11, mark the two most desperate stages in the
deteriorating situations.
……….
[…] The mere mention of an object often has a dramatic force, and the
expanded description of the object lends an even greater emphasis.
Expansions are not ornaments but an essential part of the drama.
……….
Thus we must recognize that behind the apparent parataxis of Homeric
style is a scrupulous dramatic sense which calls attention to a particular
situation or person by the multiplicity of peripheral details. […]
The effect of this style is to put time into slow motion and to create a ritual
out of the moment. (Austin 1986: 158-59)11)
Although Austin is discussing digressions in general, not epic similes in
particular, the argument goes far towards showing how digressions, whether as
epic similes or as other stylistic devices, form an organic and functional part of
Homer’s fresco and are subordinate to the poet’s overall artistic design.
In the next great epic poet, Virgil, one can see the lineage of the epic simile
effectively carried on. Though there are subtle differences between the epic
11) In his article entitled “The Simile,” Martin Mueller (1986: 217), after quoting Austin,
reiterates the same point: “Its [Homeric narrative’s] seeming digressions and endless
descriptions are, like still shots or slow-motion sequences, moments of heightened
suspense. When Pandaros prepares to shoot Menelaos, half a dozen lines are given over
to an account of how he made his bow (4.106-11). The description underscores the
gravity of the broken truce. The elaborate account of Agamemnon’s arming (11.16-45)
signals the opening of the Great Battle. The description of Achilles’ arms, including 130
lines about the shield, pushes the principle to its extreme.”
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similes of Homer’s Iliad and those of Virgil’s Aeneid, respectively a “primary”
and a “secondary” epic in Lewis’s words, 12) the line of descent from the Greek
master to the Roman poet is unmistakable. Take one of the most famous epic
similes in the Aeneid:
Nec minus Aeneas, quamquam tardata sagitta
interdum genua impediunt cursumque recusant,
insequitur trepidique pedem pede fervidus urget:
inclusum veluti si quando flumine nactus
cervum aut puniceae saeptum formidine pennae
venator cursu canis et latratibus instat;
ille autem insidiis et ripa territus alta
mille fugit refugitque vias, at vividus Umber
haeret hians, iam iamque tenet similisque tenenti
increpuit malis morsuque elusus inani est;
tum vero exoritur clamor ripaeque lacusque
responsant circa et caelum tonat omne tumultu. (Aeneid, 12.746-57)
No less Aeneas, though at times his knees, slowed by the arrow wound,
impede him and deny their speed, pursues and hotly presses, foot to
foot, upon his panting foe; as when a hunter hound has caught a stag,
pent in by a stream or hedged about by the terror of crimson feathers,
and, running and barking, presses him close; the stag, in terror of the
snares and high bank, flees to and fro in a thousand ways, but the keen
Umbrian stays close with jaws agape; he almost seizes him, and snaps his
jaws as if he had seized him, and baffled, bites on empty air. Then
indeed a din breaks out; the banks and pools around make answer, and
all heaven thunders with the tumult. (Fairclough 2000: Vol. 1, 353)13)
12) The words “primary” and “secondary” do not imply any “judgements of value,” as has
been pointed out by Lewis himself, “The older critics divided Epic into Primitive and
Artificial, which is unsatisfactory, because no surviving ancient poetry is really primitive
and all poetry is in some sense artificial. I prefer to divide it into Primary Epic and
Secondary Epic-the adjectives being purely chronological and implying no judgements of
value. The secondary here means not ‘the second rate’, but what comes after, and grows
out of, the primary” (Lewis 1960: 13).
13) Long quotations from the Aeneid (the Fariclough edition) are indicated by book and line
numbers; their English translations, by Fairclough, are indicated by page numbers.
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 95
For those who are familiar with the Iliad, the hunter-hunted image in the
quotation will immediately ring a bell, as it does with Mueller (1986: 221), who,
in discussing the “content of similes” in the Iliad, has the following words to say:
By far the largest group is made up of hunter-hunted similes. Here we
may further distinguish between a smaller group in which the hunter is
human and a much larger group in which he is an animal. The latter
category is dominated by lion images but also includes birds of prey,
dogs, wolves and, on one occastion, dolphins (21.22). The most
interesting of the hunted animals is the boar because it allows the poet to
represent a strong and aggressive animal in a posture of defence or
counter-attack (11.324, 414, 12.146, 13.471).
In the passage from the Aeneid quoted above, Virgil, taking over Homer’s
hunter-hunted image, compares Aeneas to “a hunter hound,” and Turnus to “a
stag,” a comparison that harks back to the following epic simile from the Iliad, in
which Odysseus is compared to a boar being pressed by the Trojans:
ñl *z ÓJ, 6VBD4@< •:NÂ 6b<,l 2"8,D@\ Jz "Æ.0@Â
F,bT<J"4, Ò *X Jz ,ÉF4 $"2,\0l ¦6 >L8`P@4@
2Z(T< 8,L6Î< Ï*`<J" :,J (<":BJ±F4 (X<LFF4<,
•:NÂ *X Jz •ÄFF@<J"4, ßB"Â *X J, 6`:B@l Ï*`<JT<
(\(<,J"4, @Ê *¥ :X<@LF4< –N"D *,4<`< B,D ¦`<J"q
òl Õ" J`Jz •:Nz z?*LF−" )4Å N\8@< ¦FF,b@<J@
IDä,lq (Iliad, 11.414-20)
And even as hounds and lusty youths press upon a boar on this side and
on that, and he cometh forth from the deep thicket, whetting his white
tusks in his curving jaws, and they charge upon him on either side, and
thereat ariseth the sound of the gnashing of tusks; but forthwith they
abide his onset, how dread soever he be; even so then around Odysseus,
dear to Zeus, did the Trojans press. (Murray 1924: The Ilidad, Vol. 1,
512-13)
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Of all the Homeric similes relating to the hunter-hunted theme, perhaps the
one from which Virgil’s has the most direct descent is found in Book 22 of the
Iliad, where Achilles is pursuing Hector, “not for beast of sacrifice or for bull’s
hide” (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 2, 467) (“@ÛP Ê,DZ^@< @Û*¥ $@,\0<”)
(Iliad, 22.159), but “for the life of horse-taming Hector” (Murray 1924: The
Iliad, Vol. 2, 467) (“•88 B,DÂ RLP−l 2X@< ~+6J@D@l ÊBB@*V:@4@”) (Iliad,
22.161), and where Homer first compares Achilles to “a falcon in the
mountains, swiftest of winged things” (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 2, 465)
(“6\D6@l ÐD,FN4<, ¦8"ND`J"J@l B,J,0<ä<”) (Iliad, 22.139), and Hector to “a
trembling dove” (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 2, 465) (“JDZDT<" BX8,4"<”)
(Iliad, 22.140); then both to “single-hooved horses” (Murray 1924: The Iliad,
Vol. 2, 467) (“:f<LP,l ËBB@4”) (Iliad, 22.162) before the climactic simile
pounces upon the reader:
~+6J@D" *z •FB,DP¥l 68@<XT< §N,Bz é6×l z!P488,bl
ñl *z ÓJ, <,$DÎ< ÐD,FN4 6bT< ¦8VN@4@ *\0J"4,
ÐDF"l ¦> ,Û<−l, *4V Jz –(6," 6"Â *4 $ZFF"lq
JÎ< *z ,Ç BXD J, 8V2®F4 6"J"BJZ>"l ßBÎ 2V:<å,
•88V Jz •<4P<,bT< 2X,4 §:B,*@<, ÐND" 6,< ,àD®q
ól ~+6JTD @Û 8−2, B@*f6," A08,ÄT<". (Iliad, 22.188-93)
But hard upon Hector pressed swift Achilles in ceaseless pursuit. And as
when on the mountains a hound rouseth from his covert the fawn of a
deer and chaseth him through glens and glades, and though he escape
for a time, cowering beneath a thicket, yet doth the hound track him out
and run ever on until he find him; even so Hector escaped not the
swift-footed son of Peleus. (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 2, 469)
Though with distinctively Virgilian touches, the Aeneid simile’s conception,
content, and structure are similar to those of the Iliad one. Like Homer’s epic
simile, Virgil’s also has a defamiliarizing effect; nor is the “digression” for its
own sake; Aeneas’ pursuit of Turnus is made more vivid and dramatic by the
Aeneid simile to the same degree as Achilles’ pursuit of Hector is made more
vivid and dramatic by the Iliad figure. After reading the above Homeric and
Virgilian similes, any critic who thinks that they are decorative must be
appreciating epics not as epics, but as something else.
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 97
Well versed in Greek and Latin literature,14) Milton is a worthy pupil of both
Homer and Virgil. In reading Paradise Lost, one can see everywhere evidence of
the deep influence of Homer and Virgil on the English poet. Let us first look at
the following lines from Paradise Lost, which describe God’s chariot:
Forth rushed with whirlwind sound
The chariot of Paternal Deity,
Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel, undrawn,
Itself instinct with spirit, but convoyed
By four Cherubic shapes. Four faces each
Had wondrous; as with stars, their bodies all
And wings were set with eyes; with eyes the wheels
Of beryl, and careering fires between:
Over their heads a crystal firmament,
Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with pure
Amber, and colors of the show’ry arch.
He in celestial panoply all armed
Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought,
Ascended; at his right hand Victory
Sat eagle-winged, beside him hung his bow
And quiver with three-bolted thunder stored,
And from about him fierce effusion rolled
Of smoke and bickering flame, and sparkles dire.
14) It is common knowledge that Milton himself had written Greek and Latin verse.
However, his Greek is not comparable to his Latin. Thus Douglas Bush reports: “When
faced with the portrait of himself which was to be the frontispiece of his Poems of 1645,
and which had been done by William Marshall, the most popular engraver of the day, the
handsome Milton, with good reason, did not relish it. He wrote this quatrain which the
Greekless Marshall duly inscribed below the portrait. Nemesis in time brought some
censure of Milton’s Greek and also the complaint that the point of the epigram seems to
be rather blunted than sharpened by the last two lines” (Milton 1966: 172). The
quatrain in question, entiled “In Effigiei Eius Sculptorem” (“On the Engraver of His
Portrait”), and its English translation are as follows: “z!:"2,Ã (,(DVN2"4 P,4DÂ JZ<*,
:¥< ,Æ6`<" / M"\0l JVPz –<, BDÎl ,É*@l "ÛJ@NL¥l $8,BT<q / IÎ< *z ¦6JLBTJÎ< @Û6
¦B4(<`<J,l, N\8@4, / ',8J, N"b8@L *LF:\:0:" .T(DVN@L” (“Looking at the original,
you would perhaps say that this likeness was made by an unskilled hand. Since, friends,
you cannot recognize the person represented, laugh at the poor reproduction of a bad
artist.”) (Milton 1966: 172).
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(Paradise Lost, 6.749-66)15)
The lines remind one very much of a similar description in the Iliad:
º :¥< ¦B@4P@:X<0 PDLFV:BL6"l §<JL,< ËBB@Ll
~/D0, BDXF$" 2,V, 2L(VJ0D :,(V8@4@ 5D`<@4@.
~/$0 *z •:Nz ÏPX,FF4 2@äl $V8, 6":Bb8" 6b68",
PV86," Ï6JV6<0:", F4*0DXå –>@<4 •:N\l.
Jä< μ J@4 PDLFX0 ÇJLl –N24J@l, "LJD àB,D2,
PV86,z ¦B\FFTJD" BD@F"D0D`J", 2"Ø:" Æ*XF2"4q
B8−:<"4 *z •D(bD@L ,ÆFÂ B,D\*D@:@4 ":N@JXDT2,<q
*\ND@l *¥ PDLFX@4F4 6"Â •D(LDX@4F4< Ê:F4<
¦<JXJ"J"4, *@4"Â *¥ B,D\*D@:@4 –<JL(Xl ,ÆF4.
J@Ø *z ¦> •D(bD,@l ÕL:Îl BX8,<q "ÛJD ¦Bz –6Då
*−F, PDbF,4@< 6"8Î< .L(`<, ¦< *¥ 8XB"*<"
6V8z §$"8, PDbF,4zq ßBÎ *¥ .L(Î< ³("(,< ~/D0
ËBB@Ll é6bB@*"l :,:"LÃz§D4*@l 6"Â •dJ−l. (Iliad, 5.720-32)
Then Hera, the queenly goddess, daughter of great Cronos, went to and
fro harnessing the horses of golden frontlets, and Hebe quickly put to the
car on either side the curved wheels of bronze, eight-spoked, about the
iron axle-tree. Of these the felloe verily is of gold imperishable, and
thereover are tires of bronze fitted, a marvel to behold; and the naves are
of silver, revolving on this side and on that; and the body is plaited tight
with gold and silver thongs, and two rims there are that run about it.
From the body stood forth the pole of silver, and on the end thereof she
bound the fair golden yoke, and cast thereon the fair golden
breast-straps; and Hera led beneath the yoke the swift-footed horses,
and was eager for strife and the war-cry. (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol.
1, 248-49)
In 5.741 of the Iliad, Athene’s aegis is described as decorated with “Rout”
(“M`$@l”), “Strife” (“}+D4l”), “Valour” (“z!86Z”), “Onset” (“z3T6Z”), and
15) Quotations from Paradise Lost are based on Douglas Bush’s edition of Milton’s Poetical
Works and indicated by book and line numbers.
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 99
“the head of the dread monster, the Gorgon” (“'@D(,\0 6,N"8¬ *,4<@Ã@
B,8fD@L”) (Murray, The Iliad, Vol. 1, 249). From a religious point of view, the
Greek description is different from the English one: while Homer’s is pagan,
drawing on Greek mythology, Milton’s is Christian, drawing on Christian
concepts and allusions: “Paternal Deity,” “four Cherubic shapes,” “Urim.” In
artistic terms, however, they have similar stylistic features: in both of them, the
elaborate details serve to inspire awe and transport the imagination of the reader
from the mortal world to supernatural realms of experiene.
Reading the above descriptions from the Iliad and Paradise Lost, one can
easily trace Milton’s lineage to Homer, either directly from the Greek poet (since
Milton could read classical Greek) or indirectly through Virgil.16) Thus, as
observed by Douglas Bush, starting from 1.374 of Paradise Lost, Milton follows
“the patristic and later tradition that the fallen angels became the gods of the
heathen religions” (Milton 1966: 221), and enumerates the leaders in Hell,
which is a “roll-call of leaders” “akin to that of Aen[eid]. 7.641 f., where the
Italian followers of Turnus who band together against Aeneas are opposing the
will of Providence” (Milton 1966: 221). A brief comparison of the relevant
passages will bear out Bush’s point:
Then were they known to men by various names,
And various idols through the heathen world.
Say, Muse, their names then known, who first, who last,
Roused from the slumber on that fiery couch,
At their great emperor’s call, as next in worth
Came singly where he stood on the bare strand,
While the promiscuous crowd stood yet aloof.
……….
First Moloch, horrid king besmeared with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears…
……….
Next Chemos, th’ óbscene dread of Moab’s sons,
From Aroer to Nebo, and the wild
Of southmost Abarim… (Paradise Lost, 1.374-408)
16) Milton’s lineage will be explained in greater detail in the next footnote.
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Pandite nunc Helicona, deae, cantusque movete,
qui bello exciti reges, quae quemque secutae
complerint campos acies, quibus Itala iam tum
floruerit terra alma viris, quibus arserit armis;
et meministis enim, divae, et memorare potestis;
ad nos vix tenuis famae perlabitur aura.
Primus init bellum Tyrrhenis asper ab oris
contemptor divum Mezentius agminaque armat.
filius huic iuxta Lausus, quo pulchrior alter
non fuit excepto Laurentis corpore Turni;
Lausus, equum domitor debellatorque ferarum,
ducit Agyllina nequiquam ex urbe secutos
mille viros, dignus patriis qui laetior esset
imperiis et cui pater haud Mezentius esset.
Post hos insignem palma per gramina currum
victoresque ostentat equos satus Hercule pulchro
pulcher Aventinus…(Aeneid, 7.641-57)
Now fling Helicon wide open, goddess, and set on foot poetic strains,
telling what kings were roused to war; what embattled hosts followed
each one, filling the plain; with what manhood even then did kindly Italy
bloom; what armed forces kindled her to flame. For you, divine sisters,
have both remembrance and power to relate, while to us is scarce wafted
some scant breath of fame.
First into the war comes the ferocious king from Tuscan coasts,
Mezentius, scorner of the gods, and arrays his bands. At his side stands
his son Lausus, whom none surpassed in beauty of physique save
Laurentine Turnus. Lausus, tamer of horses, vanquisher of beasts, leads
from Agylla’s town a thousand men, that followed him in vain, a son
worthy to be happier in a father’s rule, a father other than Mezentius!
After these, Aventinus, handsome son of handsome Hercules…
(Fairclough 2000: The Aeneid, VII-XII, 47, 49)
When it comes to epic similes, the Homer-Virgil-Milton lineage is even more
unmistakable.17) Take Paradise Lost, 1.767-777, for example:
17) The phrase “Homer-Virgil-Milton” needs a little explanation, since it seems to indicate
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 101
As bees
In springtime, when the sun with Taurus rides,
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive
In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers
Fly to and fro, or on the smoothèd plank,
The suburb of their straw-built citadel,
New rubbed with balm, expatiate and confer
Their state affairs: so thick the airy crowd
Swarmed and were straitened; till the signal giv’n,
Behold a wonder!
The simile, comparing the multitude of fallen angels at Pandemonium to
bees, can be traced directly to Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid:
²ÙJ, §2<," ,ÉF4 :,84FFVT< *4<VT<,
BXJD0l ¦6 (8"NLD−l "Æ, <X@< ¦DP@:,<VT<q
$@JDL*Î< *¥ BXJ@<J"4 ¦Bz –<2,F4< ,Æ"D4<@ÃF4<q
"Ê :X< Jz §<2" 84l B,B@JZ"J"4, "Ê *X J, §<2"q
ól Jä< §2<," B@88 <,ä< –B@ 6"Â 684F4VT<
²^`<@l BD@BVD@42, $"2,\0l ¦FJ4P`T<J@
Æ8"*Î< ,Æl •(@DZ<q (Iliad, 2.87-93)
Even as the tribes of thronging bees go forth from some hollow rock, ever
coming on afresh, and in clusters over the flowers of spring fly in throngs,
that Milton learned from Homer only through Virgil. While it is true that Milton did learn
from Homer through Virgil, very often, he also directly learned from Homer; the
Homer-Virgil-Milton order, therefore, only signifies a historical sequence in the mainstream
tradition of the epic simile. As far as “genealogy” is concerned, a more accurate
representation of Milton’s apprenticeship in the epic simile would move simultaneously
in three different directions: “Homer-Milton,” “Virgil-Milton,” and “Homer-Virgil-Milton.”
The influence-influenced relationship is further complicated if our focus shifts from the
epic simile and moves to poetry in general, for Milton was also influenced by Dante, as
can be seen in his prose piece “An Apology for Smectymnuus,” in which he says: “I […]
above them all [meaning Ovid and other love-poets] preferred the two famous renowners
of Beatrice and Laura [meaning Dante and Petrarch] …” (Milton 1966: xxx). In his
Italian poems (Milton 1966: 79-81), especially in the sonnets, the way he wrties about
love reminds one very much the Vita Nuova and The Divine Comedy.
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some here, some there; even so from the ships and huts before the
sea-beach marched forth in companies their many tribes to the place of
gathering. (Murray 2000: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 57)
qualis apes aestate nova per florea rura
exercet sub sole labor, cum gentis adultos
educunt fetus, aut cum liquentia mella
stipant et dulci distendunt nectare cellas,
aut onera accipiunt venientum, aut agmine facto
ignavum fucos pecus a praesepibus arcent;
fervet opus redolentque thymo fragrantia mella. (Aeneid, 1.430-36)
Even as bees in early summer, amid flowery fields, ply their task in
sunshine, when they lead forth the full-grown young to their race, or pack
the fluid honey and strain their cells to bursting with sweet nectar, or
receive the burdens of incomers, or in martial array drive from their
folds the drones, a lazy herd; all aglow is the work and the fragrant honey
is sweet with thyme.
(Fairclough 2000: Eclogues. Georgics. Aeneid I-VI, 293)
The beehive, the bees, and their activities are compared to the fallen angels
holding a meeting (Paradise Lost), to Greek tribes (the Iliad), and to the Tyrians
building a city (the Aeneid); the images as well the technique used are similar.
Going through the epics of Homer, Virgil, and Milton, which constitute what
I would call the mainstream European epic tradition, one can see that the
functions of epic similes, apart from the overall stylistic effect and narrative
purposes mentioned earlier, can be divided roughly into six categories: (1) those
that describe scenes before, during, or after a battle; (2) those that describe the
size, number, movement, appearance, etc. of opposing armies; (3) those that
describe the appearance, spirit, psychology, etc. of individual soldiers before,
during, and after a battle; (4) those that describe the size, imposing appearance,
etc. of weapons, whether at rest or in motion; (5) those that describe the
environment relating to war (the battlefield, the atmosphere, the scenery, etc.);
(6) those that describe the actual fight. In constructing these similes, the epic
poets can draw on nature, animals, or inanimate objects.
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 103
3. Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy and Their
Debt to Homer and Virgil
If Homer, Virgil, and Milton started, carried on, or further developed the
mainstream tradition of the epic simile, then Dante took Homer as a point of
departure and moved in a direction of his own, putting the epic simile to a larger
variety of uses.18) In The Divine Comedy, which is not an epic in the strict sense
of the word but an epic of a personal journey to the Beatific Vision,19) the poet
18) Other epic poets, like Ariosto, may also use similes, but they use or construct them in a
way that differs from that of both the Homer-Virgil-Milton and the Dante school. Going
through Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, one sees practically no epic similes in either the
Homer-Virgil-Milton or the Dante style. Take Stanzas 68 and 69 of Canto 9, for example,
which describe how the Cavalier Anglante skewers six warriors on one lance, leaving
them dying, and then compare the action to the skewering of frogs: “Il cavallier
d’Anglante, ove più spesse / vide le genti e l’arme, abbassò l’asta; / ed uno in quella e
poscia un altro messe, / e un altro e un altro, che sembrar di pasta; / e fin a sei ve
n’infilzò, e li resse / tutti una lancia: e perch’ella non basta / a più capir, lasciò il settimo
fuore / ferito sì, che di quel colpo muore. [Stanza 68] / Non altrimente ne l’estrema arena
/ veggiàn le rane de canali e fosse / dal cauto arcier nei fianchi e ne la schiena, / l’una
vicina all’altra, esser percosse; / né da la freccia, fin che tutta piena / non sia da un capo
all’altro, esser rimosse. / La grave lancia Orlando da sé scaglia, / e con la spada entrò ne
la battaglia. [Stanza 69]” (Ariosto 1974: Vol. 1, 207-208) (“The Cavalier Anglante,
where the row / Of soldiery is thickest, drives his lance. / As if they one and all are made
of dough, / In one and then another he implants / His weapon, till he’s skewered at one
go / No less than six; a seventh, too, he wants / To add, but, as no space for him is found,
/ He has to leave him, dying, on the ground. [Stanza 68] / Just so the skilful archer strings
a line / Of frogs which hide in ditches and canals, / Shooting them through the haunches
and the spine, / Until from notch to tip with animals / His arrow is replete; the paladin, /
Whose expertise such archery recalls, / His fully-burdened lance now flings away / And
plunges, sword in hand, into the fray. [Stanza 69]” (Reynolds 1975: Vol. 1, 305) The
way the simile is constructed is no longer similar to the way the similes of Homer, Virgil,
Milton, and Dante are constructed; the vehicle is more loose, more dispersed, less
closely linked to the tenor; the suspense and tension made possible by such formulas as
“Just as…so…”, “As…so…”, which hold the epic simile tight, keeping the reader
expectant, are no longer there. Perhaps apart from Ariosto’s own conception of the epic,
the ottava rima he employs also explains why the epic simile in the style of Homer,
Virgil, Milton, or Dante is no longer possible; rhyming abababcc, the ottava rima limits
the flexibility of the verse, so that the poet is no longer able to achieve the sweep of the
epic simile in the true sense of the term.
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does draw on the tradition started by Homer and carried on by Virgil.20) In the
Inferno, we can see how he borrowed heavily from the Aeneid – from Book 6 of
the Latin epic in particular – to say nothing of Virgil as Dante’s guide through
Inferno and Purgatory. Take 6.13-18 of the Inferno, for example, which
describe Cerberus:
Cerbero, fiera crudele e diversa,
con tre gole caninamente latra
sopra la gente che quivi è sommersa.
Li occhi ha vermigli, la barba unta e atra,
e ’l ventre largo, e unghiate le mani;
graffia li spiriti, scuoia e disquatra. (Inferno, 6.13-18)
Cerberus, a beast fierce and hideous, with three throats barks like a dog
over the people that are immersed there; he has red eyes, a beard greasy
and black, a great belly, and clawed hands, and he scars and flays and
rends the spirits. (Sinclair, Inferno, 87) 21)
The conception of the beast as well as its description is heavily indebted to
6.417-23 of the Aeneid:
Cerberus haec ingens latratu regna trifauci
personat, adverso recubans immanis in antro.
cui vates, horrere videns iam colla colubris,
melle soporatam et medicatis frugibus offam
obicit. ille fame rabida tria guttura pandens
19) As Cuddon (1992: 288) has pointed out, “The Divina Commedia is a ‘personal’ epic, a
kind of autobiographical and spiritual Aeneid.”
20) As Dante could not read Greek, he could not, of course, have directly taken Homer as his
point of departure. But since the epic simile originated from Homer, the lineage of
Dante’s epic similes can be traced ultimately to the first European epic poet through
Virgil, whom Dante could read in the original, and by whom he was deeply influenced.
For this reason, therefore, one is justified to say that Dante took Homer as a point of
departure.
21) Long quotations from La Divina Commedia (the Società Dantesca Italiana edition, Le
opere di Dante, ed. Barbi et al.) are indicated by canto and line numbers; their English
translations, by Sinclair, are indicated by page numbers.
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 105
corripit obiectam, atque immania terga resolvit
fusus humi totoque ingens extenditur antro.
(Fairclough 2000: Vol.1, 560, 562)
These realms huge Cerberus makes ring with his triple-throated baying,
his monstrous bulk crouching in a cavern opposite. To him, seeing the
snakes now bristling on his necks, the seer flung a morsel drowsy with
honey and drugged meal. He, opening his triple throat in ravenous
hunger, catches it when thrown and, with monstrous frame relaxed, sinks
to earth and stretches his bulk over all the den. (Fairclough 2000: Vol. 1,
561, 63)22)
In the following lines:
L’acqua era buia assai più che persa;
e noi, in compagnia de l’onde bige,
entrammo giù per una via diversa.
In la palude va c’ha nome Stige
questo tristo ruscel, quand’è disceso
al piè de le maligne piagge grige [,] (Inferno, 7.103-108)
[…] the water of the blackest purple, and following its murky waves we
entered the place below by a rough track. This gloomy stream, when it
has reached the foot of the malign grey slopes, enters the marsh which is
called the Styx […] (Sinclair, Inferno, 103, 105)
Dante is alluding to Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid:
6"Â JÎ 6"J,4$`:,<@< GJL(Îl à*TD, Ól J, :X(4FJ@l
~@D6@l *,4<`J"J`l J, BX8,4 :"6VD,FF4 2,@ÃF4….
(Odyssey, 5.185-86)
22) It must be pointed out that, even at this stage, Dante is not being passively influenced by
Virgil, but shows his originality in two respects: first, instead of making Cerberus the
guard of the whole of Hell, as Virgil does, he assigns it only the task of guarding one
circle of Inferno; second, Dante has introduced graphic details which make the beast
more hideous.
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and the down-flowing water of Styx, which is the greatest and most dread
oath for the blessed gods… (Murray 1919: Odyssey, Vol. 1, 183)
olli sic breviter fata est longaeva sacerdos:
“Anchisa generate, deum certissima proles,
Cocyti stagna alta vides Stygiamque paludem,
di cuius iurare timent et fallere numen.”
(Aeneid, 6.321-24)
To him thus briefly spoke the aged priestess: “Anchises’ son, true
offspring of gods, you are looking at the deep pools of Cocytus and the
Stygian marsh, by whose power the gods fear to swear falsely. 23)
(Fairclough 2000: Vol. 1, 555)
Again, in Canto 3, lines 88-93 of the Inferno:
«E tu che se’ costì, anima viva,
partiti da cotesti che son morti».
Ma poi che vide ch’io non mi partiva,
disse: «Per altra via, per altri porti
verrai a piaggia, non qui, per passare:
più lieve legno convien che ti porti»[,] (Inferno, 3.88-93)
‘and thou there that art a living soul, take thyself apart from these that
are dead.’
But when he saw that I did not go, he said: ‘By another way, by other
ports, not here, thou shalt come to the shore and pass. A lighter vessel
must carry thee [,]’ (Sinclair 1971: Purgatorio, 51)
Dante is modelling his Charon on the same character depicted in the Aeneid:
23) Going through the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, and the Inferno, one can also see that
the conception and design of Dante’s Inferno are directly borrowed from Homer and
Virgil, though when it comes to Purgatory and Paradise, Dante is completely on his own,
moving beyond the cosmos of either Homer or Virgil. In this sense, then, the entire
Divine Comedy can be regarded as a work that takes Homer, or, more precisely, Homer’s
hell, as a point of departure, from which Dante moves on to create Purgatory, and, in
particular, Paradise, a level beyond Homer and Virgil.
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 107
“quisquis es, armatus qui nostra ad flumina tendis,
fare age, quid venia, iam istinc, et comprime gressum.
umbrarum hic locus est, Somni Noctisque soporae;
corpora viva nefas Stygia vectare carina.” (Aeneid, 6.388-91)
“Whoever you are who come to our river in arms, tell me, even from there,
why you come, and check your step. This is the land of Shadows, of Sleep
and drowsy Night; living bodies I may not carry in the Stygian boat.”
(Fairclough 2000: Vol. 1, 559, 561)24)
Dante’s debt to Virgil is even more obvious in his narration of Odysseus’
voyage in Canto 26 of the Inferno:
«Noi ci allegrammo, e tosto tornò in pianto;
chè de la nova terra un turbo nacque,
e percosse del legno il primo canto.
Tre volte il fè girar con tutte l’acque;
a la quarta levar la poppa in suso
e la prora ire in giù, com’altrui piacque,
infin che ’l mar fu sopra noi richiuso». (Inferno, 26.136-42)
‘We were filled with gladness, and soon it turned to lamentation, for from
the new land a storm rose and struck the forepart of the ship. Three times
it whirled her round with all the waters, the fourth time lifted the poop
aloft and plunged the prow below, as One willed, until the sea closed
again over us.’ (Sinclair 1971: Inferno, 327)
In the above passage, Ulysses describes how, overwhelmed by a storm on
his voyage to “gain experience of the world and of the vices and the worth of
men” (Sinclair 1971: Inferno, 325) (“a divenir del mondo esperto, / e de li vizi
umani e del valore”) (Inferno, 26.98-99), he was buried in the waves. Lucid and
vigorous, the narrative is almost a direct borrowing from the Aeneid:
Talia iactanti stridens Aquilone procella
velum adversa ferit, fluctusque ad sidera tollit;
24) In borrowing from Virgil, though, Dante has added details of his own. While Virgil’s Charon
says, “living bodies I may not carry in the Stygian boat,” Dante’s Charon gives details as to
what kind of boat living bodies should travel in: “A lighter vessel must carry thee.”
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franguntur remi; tum prora avertit et undis
dat latus; insequitur cumulo praeruptus aquae mons.
hi summo in fluctu pendent; his unda dehiscens
terram inter fluctus aperit; furit aestus harenis.
tris Notus abreptas in saxa latentia torquet
(saxa vocant Itali, mediis quae in fluctibus, Aras,
dorsum immane mari summo), tris Eurus ab alto
in brevia et syrtis urget (miserabile visu)
inliditque vadis atque aggere cingit harenae.
unam, quae Lycios fidumque vehebat Oronten,
ipsius ante oculos ingens a vertice pontus
in puppim ferit; excutitur pronusque magister
volvitur in caput; ast illam ter fluctus ibidem
torquet agens circum et rapidus vorat aequore vertex.
(Aeneid, 1.102-117)
As he flings forth such words, a gust, shrieking from the North, strikes
full on his sail and lifts the waves to heaven. The oars snap, then the prow
swings round and gives the broadside to the waves; down in a heap
comes a sheer mountain of water. Some of the seamen hang upon the
billow’s crest; to others the yawning sea shows ground beneath the
waves; the surges seethe with sand. Three ships the South Wind catches
and hurls on hidden rocks – rocks the Italians call the Altars, rising
amidst the waves, a huge ridge toppling the sea. Three the East forces
from the deep into shallows and sandbanks, a piteous sight, dashes on
shoals and girds with a mound of sand. One, which bore the Lycians and
loyal Orontes, before the eyes of Aeneas a mighty toppling wave strikes
astern. The helmsman is dashed out and hurled head foremost, but the
ship is thrice on the same spot whirled round and round by the wave and
engulfed in the sea’s devouring eddy.
(Fairclough 2000: Vol. 1, 269, 271)
The passage describes how a storm, summoned by Juno through Aeolus,
rises and strikes the ships of Aeneas and his comrades when they, after the
Trojans’ defeat by the Danaans, were travelling at sea to found Italy. The details
are vivid, enabling the reader to see the shape and ferocity of the waves as well
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 109
the way Aeneas’ comrades are tossed about; it is altogether a more gripping
scene than Dante’s; nevertheless, the debt of Dante’s passage to the Aeneid is
unmistakable.
4. Affinities between Dante’s Epic Similes and
Those of Homer, Virgil, and Milton
In constructing his epic similes, Dante generally follows in the footsteps of
Homer and Virgil. Like his predecessors, he also draws on natural scenery when
he describes how the spirits in Inferno fall to the ground before they are ferried
over the Acheron by Charon:
Come d’autunno si levan le foglie
l’una appresso de l’altra, fin che ’l ramo
vede a la terra tutte le sue spoglie,
similemente il mal seme d’Adamo:
gittansi di quel lito ad una ad una
per cenni come augel per suo richiamo. (Inferno, 3.112-17)
As in autumn the leaves drop off one after the other till the branch sees
all its spoils on the ground, so the wicked seed of Adam fling themselves
from that shore one by one at the signal, as a falcon at its recall. (Sinclair
1971: Inferno, 53)
As Bush (Milton: 219) has pointed out, the simile shares a tradition with
2.468 and 2.800 of the Iliad, with 6.309-10 of the Aeneid, and with 1.299-313
of Paradise Lost:
§FJ"< *z ¦< 8,4:ä<4 E6":"<*D\å •<2,:`,<J4
:LD\@4, ÓFF" J, Nb88" 6"Â –<2," (\(<,J"4 òD®. (Iliad, 2.467-68)
So they took their stand in the flowery mead of Scamander, numberless,
as are the leaves and the flowers in their season. (Murray 1925: The
Iliad, Vol. 2, 85)
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8\0< (D Nb88@4F4< ¦@46`J,l ´ R":V2@4F4<
§DP@<J"4 B,*\@4@ :"P0F`:,<@4 BD@JÂ –FJL. (Iliad, 2.800-801)
for most like to the leaves or the sands are they, as they march over the
plain to fight against the city. (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 109)
“@Ë0 B,D Nb88T< (,<,Z, J@\0 *¥ 6"Â "<*Dä<.
Nb88" J :X< Jz –<,:@l P":V*4l PX,4, –88" *X 2zà80
J08,2`TF" Nb,4, §"D@l *z ¦B4(\(<,J"4 òD0q
ól •<*Dä< (,<,¬ º :¥< Nb,4 º *z •B@8Z(,4.” (Iliad, 6.146-49)
“Even as are the generations of leaves, such are those also of men. As for
the leaves, the wind scattereth some upon the earth, but the forest, as it
burgeons, putteth forth others when the season of spring is come.”
(Murrary 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 273)
huc omnis turba ad ripas effusa ruebat,
matres atque viri, defunctaque corpora vita
magnanimum heroum, pueri innuptaeque puellae
impositique rogis iuvenes ante ora parentum:
quam multa in silvis autumni frigore primo
lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto
quam multae glomerantur aves, ubi frigidus annus
trans pontum fugat et terris immittit apricis. (Aeneid, 6.305-312)
Hither rushed all the throng, streaming to the banks; mothers and men
and bodies of high-souled heroes, their life now done, boys and
unwedded girls, and sons placed on the pyre before their fathers’ eyes;
thick as the leaves of the forest that at autumn’s first frost drop and fall,
and thick as the birds that from the seething deep flock shoreward, when
the chill of the year drives them overseas and sends them into sunny
lands. (Fairclough 2000: Vol. 1, 555)
His legions, angel forms, who lay entranced,
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where th’ Etrurian shades
High over-arched embow’r; or scattered sedge
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 111
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed
Hath vexed the Red Sea coast, whose waves o’erthrew
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry,
While with perfidious hatred they pursued
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore their floating carcasses
And broken chariot wheels; so thick bestrown,
Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood,
Under amazement of their hideous change. (Paradise Lost, 1.301-313) 25)
Structurally, too, Dante’s epic similes share affinities with those of Homer and
Virgil, using the famous epic-simile formulas “Quali…cotali…” (“As…so…”),26)
“Sì come…così…” (“Just as…so…”),27) “Quali…tali…” (“As…such…”),28)
25) To some critics, Milton at times surpasses his masters, as is the case with F. Falconer,
whose affirmation of Milton’s superiority over Homer and Virgil is supported by Ricks:
“But Milton’s Comparison is by far the exactest; for it not only expresses a Multitude, as
the above of Homer and Virgil, but also the Posture and Situation of the Angels. Their
lying confusedly in Heaps, covered with the Lake, is finely represented by this Image of
the Leaves in the Brooks. Moreover, the falling of a Shower of Leaves from the Trees, in
a Storm of Wind, very well represents the Dejection of the Angels from their former
Celestial Mansions; and their faded Splendor wan [IV. 870], is finely expressed by the
paleness and witheredness of the Leaves” (cited by Ricks 1963: 123-24).
26) “Quali colombe dal disio chiamate, / con l’ali alzate e ferme al dolce nido / vegnon per
l’aere dal voler portate; / cotali uscir de la schiera ov’è Dido, / a noi venendo per l’aere
maligno, / sì forte fu l’affettuoso grido.” (Inferno, 5.82-87) (“As doves, summoned by
desire, come with wings poised and motionless to the sweet nest, borne by their will
through the air, so these left the troop where Dido is, coming to us through the malignant
air; such force had my loving call.” (Sinclair: 1971: Inferno, 77)
27) “Sì come i peregrin pensosi fanno, / giugnendo per cammin gente non nota, / che si
volgono ad essa e non restanno, / così di retro a noi, più tosto mota, / venendo e
trapassando ci ammirava / d’anime turba tacita e devota.” (Purgatorio, 23.16-21) (“Just
as travellers absorbed in thought, when they overtake strangers on the road, turn to them
without stopping, so, coming behind us with more speed and passing on, a crowd of
souls, silent and devout, gazed at us with wonder.” (Sinclair 1971: Purgatorio, 297).
28) “Quali per vetri trasparenti e tersi, / o ver per acque nitide e tranquille, / non sì profonde
che i fondi sien persi, / tornan di nostril visi le postille / debili sì, che perla in bianca
fronte / non vien men tosto a le nostre pupille; / tali vid’io più facce a parlar pronte: / per
ch’io dentro a l’error contrario corsi / a quel ch’accese amor tra l’omo e ’l fonte.”
(Paradiso, 3.10-18) (“As through smooth and transparent glass, or through limpid and
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“Quando…Tal…” (“When…Such…”)29) …which are equivalent to Homer’s
“{Ss…ól…” (“As…even in such wise…”), “z/ÙJ,…ól…”(“Even as...even
so…”)… Virgil’s “velut…similes…” (“so…similarly…), “veluti…non aliter…”
(“as…just so…”), “veluti…sic…” (“as…just so…”), “ac velut…sic…” (“And as…
so…”), “qualis…talis…” (“As…just so…”) 30), Milton’s “As…so…”31) in constructing
still water not so deep that the bottom is lost, the outlines of our faces return so faint that
a pearl on a white brow does not come less quickly to our eyes, many such faces I saw,
eager to speak; at which I ran into the opposite error to that which kindled love between
the man and the spring.” (Sinclair 1971: Paradiso, 49).
29) “Quando si parte il gioco de la zara / colui che perde si riman dolente, / repetendo le
volte, e tristo impara: / con l’altro se ne va tutta la gente; / qual va dinanzi, e qual di
dietro il prende, / e qual da lato li si reca a mente: / el non s’arresta, e questo e quello
intende; / a cui porge la man, più non fa pressa; / e così da la calca si difende. / Tal era
io in quella turba spessa, / volgendo a loro, e qua e là, la faccia, / e promettendo mi
sciogliea da essa.” (Purgatorio, 6.1-12) (“When the game of hazard breaks up the loser
is left disconsolate, going over his throws again, and sadly learns his lesson; with the
other all the people go off; one goes in front, one seizes him from behind, another at his
side recalls himself to his memory; he does not stop, but listens to this one and that one;
each to whom he reaches his hand presses on him no longer and so he saves himself from
the throng. Such was I in that dense crowd, turning my face to them this way and that,
and by promsing I got free from them.” (Sinclair 1971: Purgatorio, 81)
30) Sometimes the bipartite formula may have only one part, as is the case with the following
passage from the Aeneid, 11.624-30, which has only the first half, “qualis” (“as”), not
the second half, “talis” (“just so”): “qualis ubi alterno procurrens gurgite pontus / nunc
ruit ad terram scopulosque superiacit unda / spumeus extremamque sinu perfundit
harenam, / nunc rapidus retro atque aestu revoluta resorbens / saxa fugit litusque vado
labente relinquit: / bis Tusci Rutulos egere ad moenia versos, / bis reiecti armis
respectant terga tegentes.” (“as when the ocean, advancing with alternate flood, now
rushes shoreward, dashes over the cliffs in a wave of foam, and drenches the furthest
sands with its swelling curve; now flees in fast retreat and in its wash sucks back rolling
stones, leaving the sands dry as the shallows retreat. Twice the Tuscans drove the routed
Rutulians to the city; twice, repulsed, they glance backwards, as they sling behind them
their protecting shields.” (Fairclough 2000: Vol. 2, 279, 281)
31) “As when a vulture on Imaus bred, / Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds, /
Dislodging from a region scarce of prey / To gorge the flesh of lambs or yeanling kids /
On hills where flocks are fed, flies toward the springs / Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian
streams, / But in his way lights on the barren plains / Of Sericana, where Chineses drive
/ With sails and wind their cany wagons light: / So on this windy sea of land, the Fiend /
Walked up and down alone bent on his prey, / Alone, for other creature in this place, /
Living or lifeless, to be found was none, / None yet; but store hereafter from the earth /
Up hither like aërial vapors flew / Of all things transitory and vain, when sin / With vanity
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 113
his similes.32)
Like the epic similes of Homer, Virgil, and Milton, Dante’s can also produce
had filled the works of men: / Both all things vain, and all who in vain things / Built their
fond hopes of glory or lasting fame, / Or happiness in this or th’ other life; / All who have
their reward on earth, the fruits / Of painful superstition and blind zeal, / Naught seeking
but the praise of men, here find / Fit retribution, empty as their deeds; / All th’
unaccomplished works of Nature’s hand, / Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed, /
Dissolved on earth, fleet hither, and in vain, / Till final dissolution, wander here, / Not in
the neighboring moon, as some have dreamed; / Those argent fields more likely
habitants, / Translated saints, or middle Spirits hold / Betwixt th’ angelical and human
kind.” (Paradise Lost, 3.431-462).
32) Through Dante, these epic-simile formulas were later transplanted into Spanish poetry
through Garcilaso de la Vega. A cursory examination of the Spanish poet’s “Égloga
primera” (“The First Eclogue”), for example, will suffice to show how Dante’s epic
similes have influenced Garcilaso’s in structural and stylistic terms. The following
elaborate simile from the Spanish poem bears an unmistakable Dantesque stamp: “Cual
suele’l ruiseñor con triste canto / quejarse, entre las hojas escondito, / del duro labrador
que cautamente / le despojó su caro y dulce nido / de los tiernos hijuelos entretanto / que
del amado ramo estaba ausente, / y aquel dolor que siente, / con diferencia tanta / por la
dulce garganta, / despide, que a su canto el aire suena, / y la callada noche no refrena /
su lamentable oficio y sus querellas, / trayendo de su pena / el cielo por testigo y las
estrellas, / desta manera suelto yo la rienda / a mi dolor y ansR me quejo en vano / de la
dureza de la muerte airada […]” (Garcilaso de la Vega 2001: 141-42) (“As the
nightingale, hidden among the leaves, is wont to complain with sad song of the harsh
countryman who has cunningly despoiled her dear, sweet nest of its tender fledglings
whilst she was away from her favourite branch; and as she, in so changed a plight,
expresses the grief she feels with her sweet voice; and as the air resounds with her song,
and the silent night does not hold back her doleful dirge and her complaints, but calls on
the skies and the stars to witness her sorrow; even so do I give full rein to my grief, and
thus lament in vain the sternness of proud death.” (Cohen 1956: 168). The suspense
after “Cual” (“As”), made possible by Spanish syntax, which is very similar to Italian
syntax, and the elaborate working out of details are descended directly from Dante. It is
also worth noting that, before this simile, there is another simile, almost as long,
preceding: “Como al partir del sol la sombra crece […] tal es la tenebrosa / noche de tu
partir […]” (Garcilaso 2001: 141) (“As when the sun departs the shadows grow […]
even so is the dark night of your departure […]”) (Cohen 1956: 168). However, it must
be pointed out that Garcilaso’s similes, though structurally and stylistically descended
from Dante and, through Dante, echoing Homer and Virgil, should not be called epic
similes in the strict sense of the term, since they are no longer similes used for epical
purposes. In other words, taking Dante as his point of departure, Garcilaso moved away
from the Dante tradition and put the epic simile to non-epical use, employing it in an
eclogue in the case under discussion.
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the stylistic effects expected of epic similes of the mainstream tradition: they can
create suspense, heighten the climactic moment, put the narrative into slow
motion. … In the Homeric, Virgilian, and Miltonic epics, we have similes that
depict speed, grandeur, and awe; in The Divine Comedy, we have similar
figures, some of which can perform several functions at the same time, as is the
case in the following passage:
Ed ecco qual, sul presso del mattino,
per li grossi vapor Marte rosseggia
giù nel ponente sovra ’l suol marino,
cotal m’apparve, s’ io ancor lo veggia,
un lume per lo mar venir sì ratto,
che ’l mover suo nessun volar pareggia. (Purgatorio, 2.13-18)
and lo, as on the approach of morning Mars glows ruddy through the
thick vapours low in the west over the ocean floor, so appeared to me –
may I see it again! – a light coming so swiftly over the sea that no flight
could match its speed; from which when I had taken my eyes for a
moment to question my Leader I saw it again, grown brighter and larger.
(Sinclair 1971: Purgatorio, 33)
In the Homeric, Virgilian, and Miltonic epic similes, we have sublimity; in
The Divine Comedy – especially in the Paradiso – sublimity is everywhere: in
plain descriptions as well as in similes, as can be seen in the following lines:
Quale per li seren tranquilli e puri
discorre ad ora ad ora subito foco,
movendo li occhi che stavan sicuri,
e pare stella che tramuti loco,
se non che da la parte ond’el s’accende
nulla sen perde, ed esso dura poco;
tale dal corno che ’n destro si stende
a piè di quella croce corse un astro
de la costellazion che lì resplende.
Né si partì la gemma dal suo nastro,
ma per la lista radial trascorse,
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 115
che parve foco dietro ad alabastro. (Paradiso, 15.13-24)
As through the still and cloudless evening sky runs at times a sudden fire,
catching the eyes that were unheeding, and seems a star changing its
place but that from the part where it kindles none is missing and it lasts
but a moment; so from the horn that extends on the right ran to the foot
of that cross a star of the resplendent constellation that is there. And the
gem did not leave its ribbon, but ran across by the radial strip and
seemed fire behind alabaster. (Sinclair 1971: Paradiso, 215)
The passage describes in gripping terms the appearance of Cacciaguida. At
the end of the “Quale…tale…” structure, the simile flows on into plain
description,33) which does not peter out but fully sustains and, indeed,
reinforces the sublimity of the preceding lines.34)
If sublimity is the hallmark of mainstream epics like the Iliad, the Odyssey,
the Aeneid, and Paradise Lost, such a hallmark is equally, if not more, evident in
The Divine Comedy. But apart from this hallmark, the epic similes in The Divine
Comedy have qualities which are rarely, if ever, found in the similes of the
former, and it is these qualities that mark Dante’s point of departure and beyond.
Like the mainstream epics, The Divine Comedy also compares one object or
objects (a thing, an animal, a person, a scene, etc. or things, animals, persons,
scenes, etc.) to another object or objects, etc., enabling the reader to shift his
point of view, more than once if necessary, to look at the tenor: 35)
33) Judged by the standards of epic similes, the lines “Né si partì la gemma dal suo nastro, / ma
per la lista radial trascorse, / che parve foco dietro ad alabastro” can be regarded as plain
description. Upon closer analysis, however, it will be seen that it is a metaphor combined
with a quasi-simile, in which the function of the vehicles for the tenor (Cacciaguida) in the
preceding lines, “foco” (“fire”) and “un astro de la costellazion che lì resplende” (“a star of
the resplendent constellation”), are taken over by “la gemma” (“the gem”), and in which
“parve” in “parve foco” (“seemed fire”) has the force of come (“like”).
34) The sublimity of the quotation arises largely from the visualizations, about whose stylistic
effects Logninus made a perceptive remark some 18 centuries ago: “Weight, grandeur, and
urgency in writing are very largely produced, dear friend, by the use of ‘visualizations’”
(Longinus 1995: 215) (“}?(6@L 6"Â :,("80(@D\"l 6"Â •(ä<@l ¦BÂ J@bJ@4l, ì <,"<\",
6"Â "Ê N"<J"F\"4 B"D"F6,L"FJ46fJ"J"4q”) (Longinus 1995: 214).
35) The words tenor and vehicle are usually used of metaphor. In the metaphor “He is a
lion,” “He” (subject) is the tenor, and lion is the vehicle. According to Flexner et al., the
tenor is “the subject of a metaphor, as ‘she’ in ‘She is a rose’ (1956); the vehicle is “the
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E come li stornei ne portan l’ali
nel freddo tempo a schiera larga e piena,
così quel fiato li spiriti mali:
di qua, di là, di giù, di su li mena;
nulla speranza li conforta mai,
non che di posa, ma di minor pena.
E come i gru van cantando lor lai,
faccendo in aere di sé lunga riga,
così vidi venir, traendo guai,
ombre portate da la detta briga:
per ch’i’ dissi: «Maestro, chi son quelle
genti che l’aura nera sì gastiga?»(Inferno, 5.40-51)
As in the cold season their wings bear the starlings along in a broad,
dense flock, so does that blast the wicked spirits. Hither, thither,
downward, upward, it drives them; no hope ever comforts them, not to
say of rest, but of less pain. And as the cranes go chanting their lays,
making of themselves a long line in the air, so I saw approach with longdrawn wailings shades borne on these battling winds, so that I said:
“Master, who are these people whom the black air so scourges?”
(Sinclair 1971: Inferno, 75)
In the above passage, Dante compares “the wicked spirits” (“li spiriti mali”)
to two kinds of birds, first to starlings being borne along by Hell’s blast, then,
when Dante wants to shift the reader’s perspective, to cranes that “go chanting
their lays”. This kind of simile is the staple of epic similes in Homer, Virgil, and
Milton, the most outstanding being Homer’s simile clusters in Book 2, lines
455-83 of the Iliad, in which the poet keeps shifting the perspective, comparing
the Achaens first to “a consuming fire,” then to “the many tribes of winged fowl,
wild geese or cranes or long-necked swans on the Asian mead,” then to “the
many tribes of swarming flies that buzz to and fro throughout the herdsman’s
farmstead in the season of spring,” and then to “the wide-scattered flocks of
thing or idea to which the subject of a metaphor is compared, as ‘rose’ in ‘she is a rose’ ”
(2109). As a simile is a figure very much like a metaphor, except that it uses such words
as “like” to link up the subject and “the thing or idea to which the subject […] is
compared,” the two rhetorical terms are here also applied to similes.
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 117
goats” being separated by goatherds. Finally, he compares Agamemnon to “a
bull among the herd” (Murray 1924: Iliad, Vol. 1, 85, 87). By shifting the
perspective again and again, Homer succeeds in defamiliarizing what the reader
is already familiar with, thereby sharpening his perception, enabling him to look
at the tenor from a new point of view, and enriching his experience of the scene
being described. By virtue of the images of the starling, the crane, etc., Dante’s
similes perform the same functions.
5. Differences between Dante’s Epic Similes and
Those of Homer, Virgil, and Milton
The above similarity should not, however, obscure two major differences
between the similes of Homer, Virgil, and Milton on the one hand and those of
Dante on the other. In the first place, as The Divine Comedy is an epic about an
individual’s journey to the Beatific Vision, the similes of Dante, unlike those of
Homer, Virgil, and Milton, are not generally related to war. For this reason, the
tenor of the figure can be widely different. Whereas the tenor in Homer’s,
Virgil’s, or Milton’s simile is generally related to war, for example, a warrior, an
army, a battle formation, a weapon at rest or in motion, or a battle, Dante’s tenor
can be many things else. It can be the souls in Purgatory compared to people
crowding round the bearer of an olive-branch to hear the news:
E come a messaggier che porta ulivo
tragge la gente per udir novelle,
e di calcar nessun si mostra schivo,
così al viso mio a’affisar quelle
anime fortunate tutte quante,
quasi obliando d’ire a farsi belle. (Purgatorio, 2.70-75
and as to a messenger who bears an olive-branch the people crowd to
hear the news and no one heeds the crush, so every one of these
fortunate souls fixed his eyes on my face, as if forgetting to go and make
them fair. (Sinclair 1971: Purgatorio, 37)
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It can be Dante the narrator moving on in Purgatorio “through the foul and
bitter air” like “a blind man” that “goes behind his guide”:
Sì come cieco va dietro a sua guida
per non smarrirsi e per non dar di cozzo
in cosa che ’l molesti, o forse ancida;
m’andava io per l’aere amaro e sozzo
ascoltando il mio duca che diceva
pur: «Guarda che da me tu non sia mozzo». (Purgatorio, 16.10-15)
Just as a blind man goes behind his guide that he may not stray or knock
against what might injure or perhaps kill him, so I went through the foul
and bitter air listening to my Leader, who kept saying: ‘See that thou art
not cut off from me.’ (Sinclair 1971: Purgatorio, 209)
It can be a tree being revived:
Come le nostre piante, quando casca
giù la gran luce mischiata con quella
che raggia dietro a la celeste lasca,
turgide fansi, e poi si rinovella
di suo color ciascuna, pria che ’l sole
giunga li suoi corsier sotto altra stella;
men che di rose e più che di viole
colore aprendo, s’ innovò la pianta,
che prima avea le ramora sì sole [;] (Purgatorio, 32.52-60)
As our plants, when the great light falls on them mingled with that which
shines behind the celestial Carp, begin to swell and then each is renewed
in its own colour before the sun yokes his steeds under other stars, so,
showing colour less than of the rose and more than of the violet, the tree
was renewed which before had its branches so bare [;] (Sinclair 1971:
Purgatorio, 421)
the blinding light that radiates from an angel:
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 119
Come quando da l’acqua o da lo specchio
salta lo raggio a l’opposita parte,
salendo su per lo modo parecchio
a quel che scende, e tanto si diparte
dal cader de la pietra in igual tratta,
sì come mostra esperienza e arte;
così mi parve da luce rifratta
quivi dinanzi a me esser percosso;
per ch’a fuggir la mia vista fu ratta [;] (Purgatorio, 15.16-24)
As when from water or mirror the beam leaps the opposite way, rising at
the same angle as it descends, and at an equal length departs as much
from the fall of the stone, as is shown by science and experiment, so it
seemed to me I was struck by light reflected there before me, so that my
sight was quick to flee [;] (Sinclair 1971: Purgatorio, 197).
a character trait (stubbornness in the following case):
Come al nome di Tisbe aperse il ciglio
Piramo in su la morte, e reguardolla,
allor che ’l gelso diventò vermiglio;
così, la mia durezza fatta solla,
mi volsi al savio duca, udendo il nome
che ne la mente sempre mi rampolla [;] (Puragorio, 27.37-42)
As at the name of Thisbe Pyramus lifted his eyelids at the point of death
and gazed at her, at the time when the mulberry became red, so, my
stubbornness softened, I turned to the wise Leader, hearing the name
that ever springs up in my mind [;] (Sinclair 1971: Purgatorio, 353)
the facial expression of one whose emotional equilibrium is disturbed:
Com’a l’annunzio di dogliosi danni
si turba il viso di colui ch’ascolta,
da qual che parte il periglio l’assanni,
così vid’io l’altr’anima che volta
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stava a udir turbarsi e farsi trista,
poi ch’ebbe la parola a sé raccolta [;] (Purgatorio, 14.67-72)
As at the announcement of grievous ills the face of one listening is
troubled, from whatever quarter the danger assail him, so I saw the other
soul, which had turned to hear, become troubled and downcast when it
had taken in these words [;] (Sinclair 1971: Purgatorio, 186-87)
or Beatrice’s look compared to light breaking sleep:
E come a lume acuto si disonna
per lo spirto visivo che ricorre
a lo splendor che va di gonna in gonna,
e lo svegliato ciò che vede aborre,
sì nescia è la subita vigilia
fin che la stimativa non soccorre;
così de li occhi miei ogni quisquilia
fugò Beatrice col raggio de’ suoi,
che rifulgea da più di mille milia:
onde mei che dinanzi vidi poi […] (Paradiso, 26.70-79)
And as sleep is broken by a piercing light when the visual spirit runs to
meet the brightness that passes through film after film, and the awakened
man shrinks from what he sees, so unaware is his sudden waking till
judgement comes to his help, – thus Beatrice chased every mote from my
eyes with the radiance of her own which shone more than a thousand
miles, so that I saw then better than before. (Sinclair 1971: Paradiso, 377)
When Dante wants to present in highly visual terms the souls who have hope
of salvation, he can focus on meekness:
Come quando, cogliendo biada o loglio,
li colombi adunati a la pastura,
queti, sanza mostrar l’usato orgoglio,
se cosa appare ond’elli abbian paura,
subitamente lasciano star esca,
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 121
perch’assaliti son da maggior cura;
così vid’io quella masnada fresca
lasciar lo canto, e gire inver la costa,
com’uom che va, né sa dove riesca:
né la nostra partita fu men tosta. (Purgatorio, 2.124-133)
As when doves collected at their feeding, picking up wheat or tares,
quiet, without their usual show of pride, if something appears that
frightens them suddenly leave their food lying, because they are assailed
with a greater care; so I saw that new troop leave the song and go towards
the slope, like those who go they know not where; nor was our departure
in less haste. (Sinclair 1971: Purgatorio, 39)
At times, even abstractions can be used as a tenor. Thus, when Dante’s is on
the point of speaking, his state of mind is compared to a “little stork” that “lifts its
wing with desire to fly”:
E quale il cicognin che leva l’ala
per voglia de volare, e non s’attenta
d’abbandonar lo nido, e giù la cala;
tal era io con voglia accesa e spenta
di dimandar, venendo infino a l’atto
che fa colui ch’a dicer s’argomenta. (Purgatorio, 25.10-15)
And as the little stork lifts its wing with desire to fly and does not venture
to leave the nest and drops it again, such was I with the desire to question
kindled and quenched, going as far as the movement of one that
prepares to speak. (Sinclair 1971: Purgatorio, 325)
The vehicle, too, can be highly unconventional, differing widely from those
found in the similes of the mainstream epics. This is especially true of cases
where Dante wants to move an already familiar scene to a different plane of
perception, thereby lifting it out of the ordinary and giving it a touch of the
otherworldly, of ethereal beauty and tenderness. A case in point is the simile that
describes Dante bursting into tears when rebuked by Beatrice and then
comforted by the angels:
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Sì come neve tra le vive travi
per lo dosso d’Itlalia si congela,
soffiata e stretta dalli venti schiavi,
poi, liquefatta, in se stessa trapela,
pur che la terra che perde ombra spiri,
sì che par foco fonder la candela;
così fui sanza lacrime e sospiri
anzi ’l cantar di quei che notan sempre
dietro alle note de li etterni giri;
ma poi ch’intesi ne le dolci tempre
lor compatire a me, più che se detto
avesser: «Donna, perché sì lo stempre?»,
lo gel che m’era intorno al cor ristretto
spirito e acqua fessi, e con angoscia
de la bocca e de li occhi uscì del petto.
(Purgaotrio, 30.85-99)
Even as the snow among the living beams along the back of Italy freezes,
blown and packed by the Slavonian winds, then, dissolved, drips into itself
if only the land that loses shadow breathes, so that it seems fire melting a
candle; so was I without tears or sighs before the singing of those who keep
ever in tune with the notes of the eternal spheres, but when I heard in the
sweet harmonies their compassion on me, more than if they had said:
‘Lady, why dost thou so shame him?’, the ice that was bound about my
heart turned to breath and water and with anguish came forth from my
breast by mouth and eyes. (Sinclair 1971: Purgagtorio, 397)
Hornstein et al. were certainly right when they made the following remark
about Homer: “He takes his comparisons from all the experiences of life: the
evening star and the snow storm; lions and eagles and flies; women wrangling in
the streets and a little girl clinging to her mother’s dress” (1956: 227). But from
the similes quoted above as well as from many others which cannot be quoted
within the limited space of this paper, we can see that what is true of Homer is
even more true of Dante.
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 123
6. The New Frontiers of Dante’s Epic Similes
While the experience conveyed by the similes of Homer, Virgil, and Milton
is normally perceptible or apprehensible to the reader even without the similes,
that conveyed by Dante’s similes can go further: it can be experience that is very
often difficult to perceive or apprehend – and indeed inapprehensible without
the similes, for what Dante wants to put across can be the mysterious, the mystic,
or even the ineffable.36) When The Divine Comedy is, to borrow a phrase from
Eliot, “[taking] the highest flights,”37) Dante often aspires to transport the reader
far beyond the normal frontiers of perception or apprehension. Eliot made a
salient point in this regard when, in his famous essay entitled “Dante,” he
commented on Canto 33, lines 85-96 of the Paradiso, “One can feel only awe at
the power of the master who could thus at every moment realize the
inapprehensible in visual images” (Eliot 1951: 267-68). Going on to discuss the
Comedy in the same essay, he added:
And the third point is that the Divine Comedy is a complete scale of the
depths and heights of human emotion; that the Purgatorio and Paradiso
are to be read as extensions of the ordinarily very limited human range.
Every degree of the feeling of humanity, from lowest to highest, has,
moreover, an intimate relation to the next above and below, and all fit
together according to the logic of sensibility” (Eliot 1951: 268-69).
In his comments, Eliot has identified two aspects which determine the
extraordinary functions performed by Dante’s epic similes, functions which
differ fundamentally from those performed by the epic similes of Homer, Virgil,
and Milton: “to realize the inapprehensible in visual images” and to depict the
“complete scale of the depths and heights of human emotion,” particularly the
36) In entitling his essay on Dante “In Unknowability as Love: The Theology of Dante’s
Commedia” (Montemaggi and Treherne 2010: 60-94), Montemaggi has, with the word
“Unknowability,” also accurately highlighted the formidability the poet’s subject.
37) In his famous essay entitled “Poetry and Drama,” Eliot has the following to say about his
conception of poetic drama: “It is indeed necessary for any long poem, if it is to escape
monotony, to be able to say homely things without bathos, as well as to take the highest
flights without sounding exaggerated. And it is still more important in a play, especially if
it is concerned with contemporary life.” See Eliot 1957: 74.
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“extensions of the ordinarily very limited human range.” To be sure, the epic
similes in the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, and Paradise Lost also, to a large
extent, perform the function of “[realizing] the inapprehensible in visual
images,” for, without the many epic similes in these poems, the reader would not
be able to apprehend in vivid terms the supernatural worlds described by these
epics. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that, in the epic similes of Homer,
Virgil, and Milton, the tenor is generally apprehensible; the similes only serve to
carry the reader to a different vantage point, where he can look at the tenor
afresh. Thus, in 4.422-32 of the Iliad quoted above, when “the battalions of the
Danaans” are compared to “the swell of the sea” “on a sounding beach,” the
reader can imagine in advance what a battalion moving “rank after rank, without
cease, into battle” is like; the simile only sharpens the perception by a
defamiliarizing process. Or, to take the argument a step further, the reader, if he
is imaginative enough or has read epics before, can supply an image very close
to that supplied by Homer. Similarly, in the case of 12.746-57 of the Aeneid,
also quoted above, in which Aeneas, the pursuer, is compared to “a hunter
hound,” and Turnus, the pursued, to a “stag,” the reader can also visualize the
pursuit even without the simile. Again, in 1.604-611 of Paradise Lost:
Cruel his eye, but cast
Signs of remorse and passion to behold
The fellows of his crime, the followers rather
(Far other once beheld in bliss), condemned
For ever now to have their lot in pain,
Millions of Spirits for his fault amerced
Of heav’n, and from eternal splendors flung
For his revolt, yet faithful how they stood,
Their glory withered: as when heaven’s fire
Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines,
With singèd top their stately growth though bare
Stands on the blasted heath [,] (Paradise Lost, 1.604-15)
before the vehicle of the simile is given,38) the reader can imagine, though
38) This epic simile does not follow the “Just as… so…” formula commonly found in Homer
and Virgil; the fallen angels “condemned […] to have their lot in pain” constitute the
tenor; the vehicle, preceded by “as,” comes after the tenor, not before it.
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 125
not in concrete detail, what the fallen state can be like; with the simile given, the
fallen state is apprehended by the reader in more vivid language. Like those of
Homer and Virgil quoted above, the simile is not absolutely essential for the
perception of the scene or situation.
Not so with Dante. Compared with Homer, Virgil, and Milton, the author of
The Divine Comedy is more ambitious; like the three mainstream epic poets,
Dante also deals, particularly in the Inferno, with the apprehensible. But since
“[t]he waters [he] take[s] were never sailed before” (Sinclair 1971: Paradiso,
33), 39)he has set himself the task of pushing back the frontiers of perception,
presenting states, emotions, and scenes beyond the normal human imagination,
concerned with, in Eliot’s words, “extensions of the ordinarily very limited
human range.” Take 32.31-36 of the Inferno, which describe “the suffering
shades” being punished in Hell:
E come a gracidar si sta la rana
col muso fuor de l’acqua, quando sogna
di spigolar sovente la villana;
livide, insin là dove appar vergogna
eran l’ombre dolenti ne la ghiaccia,
mettendo i denti in nota di cicogna. (Inferno, 32.31-36)
And as the frog sits with its muzzle out of the water to croak when the
peasant-girl dreams often of her gleaning, so, livid up to where the flush
of shame appears, the suffering shades were in the ice, setting their teeth
39) In Canto 2 of the Paradiso, Dante addresses his readers in the following words: “O voi
che siete in piccioletta barca, / disiderosi d’ascoltar, seguiti / dietro al mio legno che
cantando varca, / tornate a riveder li vostri liti: / non vi mettete in pelago, ché, forse, /
perdendo me rimarreste smarriti. / L’acqua ch’io prendo già mai non si corse: / Minerva
spira, e conducemi Apollo, / e nove Muse mi dimostran l’Orse.” (Paradiso, 2.1-9) (“O ye
who in a little bark, eager to listen, have followed behind my ship that singing makes her
way, turn back to see your shores again; do not put forth on the deep, for, perhaps, losing
me, you would be left bewildered. The waters I take were never sailed before. Minerva
breathes, Apollo pilots me, and the nine Muses show me the Bears.” (Sinclair 1971:
Paradiso, 33) In these lines, Dante is emphasizing that he is sailing into uncharted
waters, waters into which other poets have never sailed before. It is natural, therefore,
that his epic similes should perform certain functions which the epic similes of other
poets have not performed before.
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to the note of the stork. (Sinclair 1971: Inferno, 397)
Without the simile, the reader would not be able to imagine, much less
visualize, what form the punishment would take.
In the Purgatorio, the epic similes perform this function with a much higher
frequency. First, take 3.79-87 of this cantica, for example:
Come le pecorelle escon del chiuso
a una, a due, a tre, e l’altre stanno
timidette atterrando l’occhio e ’l muso;
e ciò che fa la prima, e l’altre fanno,
addossandosi a lei, s’ella s’arresta,
semplici e quete, e lo ’mperché non sanno;
sì vid’io muovere a venir la testa
di quella mandra fortunata allotta,
pudica in faccia e ne l’andare onesta. (Purgatorio, 3.79-87)
As the sheep come forth from the fold by one and two and three and the
rest stand timid, bending eyes and muzzle to the ground, and what the
first does the rest do, pressing up behind it if it stops, simple and quiet,
and do not know why; so I saw start then to come forward the leaders of
that fortunate flock, modest in looks and dignified in bearing. (Sinclair
1971: Purgatorio, 49)
The passage describes how a group of blessed souls come up to Dante and
Virgil. Before the simile is presented in full, the reader has no way of visualizing
what their coming will be like.
Again, in the following passage, which has already been quoted to illustrate
one of the formulas used by Dante in constructing epic similes, and which
describes how the souls in Purgatory ask Dante to relay a message to their
relatives, so that prayers by way of intercession can be said for them, the reader
has no way of envisaging what the souls’ behaviour will be like until he see the
whole simile:
Quando si parte il gioco de la zara,
colui che perde si riman dolente,
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 127
repetendo le volte, e tristo impara:
con l’altro se ne va tutta la gente;
qual va dinanzi, e qual di dietro il prende,
e qual da lato li si reca a mente:
el non s’arresta, e questo e quello intende;
a cui porge la man, piu non fa pressa;
e così da la calca si difende.
Tal era io in quella turba spessa,
volgendo a loro, e qua e là, la faccia,
e promettendo mi sciogliea da essa[,]
(Purgatorio, 6.1-12)
When the game of hazard breaks up the loser is left disconsolate, going
over his throws again, and sadly learns his lesson; with the other all the
people go off; one goes in front, one seizes him from behind, another at
his side recalls himself to his memory; he does not stop, but listens to this
one and that one; each to whom he reaches his hand presses on him no
longer and so he saves himself from the throng. Such was I in that dense
crowd, turning my face to them this way and that, and by promising I got
free from them [,] (Sinclair 1971: Purgatorio, 81) 40)
In commenting on a simile in Canto 15 of the Inferno, Eliot, also in “Dante,”
has made the following observation about the poetics of Dante and that of
Shakespeare:
There is a well-known comparison or simile in the great XVth canto of the
Inferno, which Matthew Arnold singled out, rightly, for high praise; which is
characteristic of the way in which Dante employs these figures. He is speaking of
the crowd in Hell who peered at him and his guide under a dim light:
e sì ver noi aguzzevan le ciglia,
40) It is also worth noting that, here, Dante is drawing on a very unepic-like scene (a game of
hazard) in constructing his vehicle, a scene unlikely to be used by Virgil or Milton. With
a similar taste for the mundane, though, Homer could well have “descended” to the
same level, since he can compare “Ajax to an Ass pelted away with Stones by some
Children, Ulysses to a Pudding, the Council-board of Priam to Grashoppers” (Ricks
1963: 123).
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come vecchio sartor fa nella cruna.
and sharpened their vision (knitted their brows) at us, like an old tailor
peering at the eye of his needle.
The purpose of this type of simile is solely to make us see more definitely
the scene which Dante has put before us in the preceding lines.41)
she looks like sleep,
As she would catch another Antony
In her strong toil of grace.
The image of Shakespeare’s is much more complicated than Dante’s,
and more complicated than it looks. It has the grammatical form of a kind
of simile (the ‘as if’ form), but of course ‘catch in her toil’ is a metaphor.
But whereas the simile of Dante is merely to make you see more clearly
how the people looked, and is explanatory, the figure of Shakespeare is
expansive rather than intensive; its purpose is to add to what you see
(either on the stage or in your imagination) […] It is more elusive, and it
is less possible to convey without close knowledge of the English
language. Between men who could make such inventions as these there
can be no question of greater or less. But as the whole poem of Dante is,
if you like, one vast metaphor, there is hardly any place for metaphor in
the detail of it. (Eliot 1951: 243-44)
In the above quotation, what is most relevant to the present discussion is the
phrase “to make us see more definitely the scene which Dante has put before
41) The whole passage relevant to Eliot’s discussion is as follows: “Già eravam da la selva
rimossi / tanto, ch’i’ non avrei visto dov’era, / perch’io in dietro rivolto mi fossi, / quando
incontrammo d’anime una schiera / che venian lungo l’argine, e ciascuna / ci riguardava
come suol da sera / guardare uno altro sotto nuova luna; / e sì ver noi aguzzavan le ciglia
/ come ’l vecchio sartor fa ne la cruna.” (Inferno, 15.13-21) (“Already we had got so far
from the wood that I should not have seen where it was if I had turned backward, when
we met a troop of souls who were coming alongside the bank, and each looked at us as
men look at one another under a new moon at dusk, and they puckered their brows on us
like an old tailor on the eye of his needle.”) (Sinclair 1971: Inferno, 193). Eliot’s
“aguzzevan” (for “aguzzavan” (infinitive aguzzare, meaning “rendere aguzzo, appuntire”
[to make sharp, to point] (Cusatelli 1980: 53)) is probably a misprint.
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 129
us.” What Dante puts before the reader can be a scene, a persona or personae,
an object, an emotion, a colour, and so on. In the quotations from the Inferno
and the Purgatorio, it is the personae that the similes make us see more
definitely. In the following lines from the Paradiso, which describe the Sphere of
the Moon, it is the scene as well as its colour and sense of touch that the similes
fasten on:
Perev’a me che nube ne coprisse
lucida, spessa, solida e pulita,
quasi adamante, che lo sol ferisse.
Per entro sé l’etterna margarita
ne ricevette, com’acqua recepe
raggio di luce permanendo unita.
S’io era corpo, e qui non si concepe
com’una dimensione altra patio,
ch’esser convien se corpo in corpo repe,
accender ne dovria più il disio
di veder quella essenza in che si vede
come nostra natura e Dio s’unio. (Paradiso, 2.31-42)
It seemed to me that a cloud covered us, shining, dense, solid and
smooth, like a diamond that is smitten by the sun; the eternal pearl
received us into itself, as water receives a ray of light and remains
unbroken. If I was body – and here we cannot conceive how one bulk
admitted another, which must be if body enters into body – it should the
more kindle our desire to see His being in whom is seen how our nature
was joined to God. (Sinclair 1971: Paradiso, 35)
Here, the similes (“like a diamond that is smitten by the sun”; “the eternal
pearl received us into itself, as water receives a ray of light and remains
unbroken”) are more than making us “see more definitely” what the poet “has put
before us”; they are, again in Eliot’s words, “[realizing] the inapprehensible in
visual [and tactile] images” (Eliot 1951: 267-68), for, unlike Homer, Virgil, or
even Milton, Dante is conveying highly abstract, philosophical, and theological
ideas in the concrete language of poetry. I say “even Milton” because, although
Milton in Paradise Lost also deals with a Christian theme, just as Dante in The
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Divine Comedy does, trying to make his readers apprehend the inapprehensible,
he is less adequate than Dante to the almost superhuman task, the task of bodying
forth in words ideas which are beyond words. Compared with the epic similes of
Homer, Virgil, and Milton, the above example also appears more complicated; it
consists of more than one figure, and the nature of the figures is not easy to
determine. Thus, while the clause “It seemed to me that” (“Parev’a me che”)
appears to be the language of plain description, it also partakes of the qualities of
the language of a simile, sharing the functions of such words as “like” (“com[e]”)
and “as” (“com[e]”). While “like a diamond that is smitten by the sun” (“quasi
adamante che lo sol ferisse”) is clearly a simile, the clause “the eternal pearl
received us into itself” (“Per entro sé l’etterna margarita / ne ricevette”) is a
metaphor, which is followed by a simile: “as water receives a ray of light and
remains unbroken” (“com’acqua recepe / raggio di luce permanendo unita”). In
this quotation, then, we see Dante moving away from Homer and Virgil in terms
not only of the content of his epic similes, but also of their structure and nature.
In appreciating Dante’s capacity for realizing the inapprehensible, it will be
most instructive to compare Dante’s treatment of God – and His Son-in The
Divine Comedy with Milton’s treatment of God – and His Son-in Paradise Lost,
since, unlike the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid, which deal with pagan gods,
the two works by Dante and Milton concern themselves with God in the Christian
faith. In Paradise Lost, God and His Son are anthropomorphic, very much like
Zeus and Athene in the Iliad, as can be seen in Book 6 of Paradise Lost, in
which Milton describes how God the Father sends Messiah his Son to defeat
Satan and the other fallen angels after Michael and Gabriel have failed to do so,
since “Equal in their creation they [the warring parties] were formed” (Paradise
Lost, 6.690):
“Go then, thou mightiest in thy Father’s might,
Ascend my chariot, guide the rapid wheels
That shake heav’n’s basis, bring forth all my war,
My bow and thunder, my almighty arms
Gird on, and sword upon thy puissant thigh;
Pursue these sons of darkness, drive them out
From all heav’n’s bounds into the utter deep;
There let them learn, as likes them, to despise
God and Messiah his anointed King.” (Paradise Lost, 6.710-18)
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 131
Forth rushed with whirlwind sound
The chariot of Paternal Deity,
Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel, undrawn,
Itself instinct with spirit, but convoyed
By four Cherubic shapes. Four faces each
Had wondrous; as with stars, their bodies all
And wings were set with eyes; with eyes the wheels
Of beryl, and careering fires between:
Over their heads a crystal firmament,
Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with pure
Amber, and colors of the show’ry arch.
He in celestial panoply all armed
Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought,
Ascended; at his right hand Victory
Sat eagle-winged, beside him hung his bow
And quiver with three-bolted thunder stored,
And from about him fierce effusion rolled
Of smoke and bickering flame, and sparkles dire.
(Paradise Lost, 6.749-66)
Describing God and Messiah like a human king and his prince, the above
quotations bear a close resemblance to the following passage from the Iliad, in
which Athene and Hera prepare for war:
"ÛJD z!20<"\0 6@bD0 )4Îl "Æ(4`P@4@
BXB8@< :¥< 6"JXP,L,< ©"<Î< B"JDÎl ¦Bz @Ü*,4
B@46\8@<, Ó< Õz "ÛJ¬ B@4ZF"J@ 6"Â 6V:, P,DF\<,
º *¥ P4Jä<z ¦<*ØF" )4Îl <,N,80(,DXJ"@
J,bP,F4< ¦l B`8,:@< 2TDZFF,J@ *"6DL`,<J".
¦l *z ÐP," N8`(," B@FÂ $ZF,J@, 8V.,J@ *z §(P@l
$D42× :X(" FJ4$"D`<, Jè *V:<0F4 FJ\P"l •<*Dä<
ºDfT<, J@ÃF\< J, 6@JXFF,J"4 Ï$D4:@BVJD0.
~/D0 *¥ :VFJ4(4 2@äl ¦B,:"\,Jz –Dz ËBB@Llq
"ÛJ`:"J"4 *¥ Bb8"4 :b6@< @ÛD"<@Ø, Ÿl §P@< ƒSD"4,
J±l ¦B4JXJD"BJ"4 :X("l @ÛD"<Îl ?Ü8L:B`l J,,
²:¥< •<"68Ã<"4 BL64<Î< <XN@l ²*z ¦B42,Ã<"4.
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J± Õ" *4z "ÛJVT< 6,<JD0<,6X"l §P@< ËBB@Ll. (Iliad, 8.384-96)
but Athene, daughter of Zeus that beareth the aegis, let fall upon her
father’s floor her soft robe, richly broidered, that herself had wrought
and her hands had fashioned, and put on her the tunic of Zeus the
cloud-gatherer, and arrayed her in armour for tearful war. Then she
stepped upon the flaming car and grasped her spear, heavy and huge
and strong, wherewith she vanquisheth the ranks of men, of warriors with
whom she is wroth, she the daughter of the mighty sire. And Hera swiftly
touched the horses with the lash, and self-bidden groaned upon their
hinges the gates of heaven, which the Hours had in their keeping, to
whom are entrusted great heaven and Olympus, whether to throw open
the thick cloud or shut it to. There through the gate they drave their
horses patient of the goad. (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 367)
The conception of the son / daughter driving his / her father’s chariot is
common to both passages. What is the most obvious debt of Milton’s description
of the chariot to Homer is the line “Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel,
undrawn,” which harks back to Homer’s “flaming car” (“ÐP," N8`(,"”). At the
same time, Milton’s description of the “four Cherubic shapes” and of “Victory”
also reminds one of 5.738-42 of the Iliad, which describe Athene’s aegis as
having Rout, Strife, Valour, Onset, and the Gorgon set in it:
•:NÂ *z –Dz ê:@4F4< $V8,Jz "Æ(\*" 2LFF"<`,FF"<
*,4<Z<, ¼< B,DÂ :¥< BV<J® M`$@l ¦FJ,NV<TJ"4,
¦< *z }+D4l, ¦< *z z!86Z, ¦< *¥ 6DL`,FF" z3T6Z,
¦< *X J, '@D(,\0 6,N"8¬ *,4<@Ã@ B,8fD@L,
*,4<Z J, F:,D*<Z J,, )4Îl JXD"l "Æ(4`P@4@. (Iliad, 5.738-42)
About her shoulders she flung the tasselled aegis, fraught with terror, all
about which Rout is set as a crown, and therein is Strife, therein Valour,
and therein Onset, that maketh the blood run cold, and therein is the
head of the dread monster, the Gorgon, dread and awful, a portent of
Zeus that beareth the aegis. (Murray 1924: The Iliad, Vol. 1, 249)
Being anthropomorphic, Milton’s God speaks like a man, even with man’s
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 133
vanity and boastfulness, as can be seen in his words to His Son, the Filial
Godhead:
“ ‘My overshadowing Spirit and might with thee
I send along; ride forth, and bid the deep
With appointed bounds be heav’n and earth;
Boundless the deep, because I am who fill
Infinitude, nor vacuous the space.
Though I uncircumscribed myself retire,
And put not forth my goodness, which is free
To act or not, necessity and chance
Approach not me, and what I will is fate.’ ” (Paradise Lost, 7.165-73)
To tone down the anthropomorphic nature of his God, Milton has followed
the “Divine Boast” with an apology:
“So spake th’ Almighty, and to what he spake
His Word, the Filial Godhead, gave effect.
Immediate are the acts of God, more swift
Than time or motion, but to human ears
Cannot without process of speech be told,
So told as earthly notion can receive.” (Paradise Lost, 7.174-79)
These lines, spoken by Raphael in his account of how God created heaven
and earth, certainly help to reduce God’s anthropomorphism somewhat, but,
still, once the ineffable is conveyed to the reader in human language, it becomes
less ineffable, reminding one of Homer’s Zeus, especially when the Greek god
boastfully speaks to Hera and Athene of his prowess in the presence of the other
gods in Olympus, warning the two goddesses not to disobey him:
BV<JTl, @Í@< ¦:`< (, :X<@l 6"Â P,ÃD,l –"BJ@4,
@Û6 –< :, JDXR,4"< ÓF@4 2,@\ ,ÆFz ¦< z?8b:Bå.
FNä^< *¥ BD\< B,D JD`:@l §88"$, N"\*4:" (LÃ",
BDÂ< B`8,:`< J, Æ*,Ã< B@8X:@4` J, :XD:,D" §D(".
(Iliad, 8.450-53)
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Come what will, seeing I have such might and hands irresistible, all the
gods that are in Olympus could not turn me; and for you twain, trembling
gat hold of your glorious limbs or ever ye had sight of war and the grim
deeds of war. (Murray 1924: Iliad, vol. 1, 371-72)
Compared with the above quotation, Milton’s description is more aweinspiring, and more readily evokes the sublime, which is characteristic of epics.
Nevertheless, once God is humanized, the ineffable loses its ineffability. As a
matter of fact, the task of presenting God is a Catch 22: to present God, you have
to describe Him; once you describe Him, you are no longer presenting God, for
God is unpresentable. So far, to my knowledge, of all human attempts in the
history of literarure at such a presentation, including the Old Testament, The
Divine Comedy is the most successful: while describing God, Dante has
succeeded in describing the indescribable; yet, even though the indescribable is
described, it still retains its supreme mysteriousness, or, to use the language of
paradox, its indescribability; while seeing God and feeling God’s presence, the
reader is made to feel that His presence is infinitely far away, and that, in looking
at God, he is peeping into infinitude:
Ne la profonda e chiara sussistenza
de l’alto lume parvermi tre giri
di tre colori e d’una contenenza;
e l’un da l’altro come iri da iri
parea reflesso, e ’l terzo parea foco
che quinci e quindi igualmente si spiri. (Paradiso, 33.115-20)
In the profound and clear ground of the lofty light appeared to me three
circles of three colours and of the same extent, and the one seemed
reflected by the other as rainbow by rainbow, and the third seemed fire
breathed forth equally from the one and the other. (Sinclair 1971:
Paradiso, 485)
In these lines, God is presented almost as symbols, devoid of anthropomorphism;
yet He can be seen in visual terms: in motion, mysterious, unfathomable, and,
even though described, remaining indescribable. For story-telling purposes,
Homer’s Zeus or Milton’s Christian God is certainly more interesting, appealing
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 135
more widely to the populace; but if we look for a description which has come
closest to God, no other description has ever attained to the level of the above
quotation. This is perhaps why Eliot has the following to say about the last canto
of the Paradiso:
If anyone is repelled by the last canto of the Inferno, I can only ask him
to wait until he has read and lived for years with the last canto of the
Paradiso, which is to my thinking the highest point that poetry has ever
reached or ever can reach […] (Eliot 1951: 251)
Eliot is right, for who is more worthy of the above praise than the poet who
succeeds in presenting God, the infinitely ineffable, infinitely mysterious, and
infinitely unfathomable?
In trying to achieve the almost unachievable, to cope with his Catch-22
situation, Dante has to use epic similes in ways foreign to non-Christian Homer
and Virgil, ways which are not useful to Milton because of his anthropomorphic
approach:
Qual è colui che somniando vede,
che dopo il sogno la passione impressa
rimane, e l’altro a la mente non riede,
cotal son io, ché quasi tutta cessa
mia visione, ed ancor mi distilla
nel core il dolce che nacque da essa.
Così la neve al sol si disigilla;
così al vento ne le foglie levi
si perdea la sentenza di Sibilla. (Paradiso, 33.58-66)
Like him that sees in a dream and after the dream the passion wrought
by it remains and the rest returns not to his mind, such am I; for my
vision almost wholly fades, and still there drops within my heart the
sweetness that was born of it. Thus the snow loses it imprint in the sun;
thus in the wind on the light leaves the Sibyl’s oracle was lost. (Sinclair
1971: Paradiso, 481)
Gradually approaching the ultimate human experience, the experience of
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seeing the Beatific Vision, Dante, with superb mastery, steadily builds up the
climax, makes his theoretically incommunicable joy communicable, thereby
enabling the reader to share it. To add emphasis to his description, he uses one
“cotal” (“such”) and two “così’s” (“thus,” “thus”), very much in the same way as
Homer does in his simile cluster in 2.455-83 of the Iliad, when he describes the
Achaean army, using a series of “z/ÙJ,’s” or “²ÙJ,’s” (“Even as’s”) and “òl’s”
(“even so’s” or “so’s”) with telling cumulative effect. Rising from one climax to
another, Dante reinforces the similes with an apostrophe, showing that his
similes can interact with other rhetorical devices and thereby increase twofold,
threefold… the force of his description:
O somma luce che tanto ti levi
da’ concetti mortali, a la mia mente
ripresta un poco di quel che parevi,
e fa la lingua mia tanto possente,
ch’una favilla sol de la tua gloria
possa lasciare a la futura gente;
ché, per tornare alquanto a mia memoria
e per sonare un poco in questi versi,
più si conceperà di tua vittoria. (Paradiso, 33.67-75)
O Light Supreme that art so far exalted above mortal conceiving, grant to
my mind again a little of what thou appearedst and give my tongue such
power that it may leave but a gleam of thy glory to the people yet to come;
for by returning somewhat to my memory and by sounding a little in
these lines the better conceived will be thy victory. (Sinclair 1971:
Paradiso, 482-83)
At this point, Dante has reached the most challenging moment of his entire
career as a poet, the moment so well defined by Sinclair:
Nowhere else does Dante attain to the greatness of the last canto of the
Paradiso, and in it more than any other it must be remembered that a
canto is a song. Here his reach most exceeds his grasp, and nothing in all
his work better demonstrates the consistency of his imagination and the
integrity of his genius. In the culmination of his story he reports his
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 137
experience with such intensity of conviction, in a mood so docile and so
uplifted, and in terms so significant of a vision at once cosmic and
profoundly personal, that we are persuaded and sustained to the end.
(Sinclair 1971: Paradiso, 487)42)
At the pinnalce of human experience, Dante’s imaginative power is put to
the utmost test; though “his reach most exceeds his grasp,” he is able to call forth
all his abilities as a poet, and rises to the supreme challenge as best he can, first
using an interjection (“Oh”) and then an apostrophe to emphasize the height of
his emotional state:
Oh quanto è corto il dire e come fioco
al mio concetto! e questo, a quel ch’i’ vidi,
è tanto, che non basta a dicer ‘poco’.
O luce etterna che sola in te sidi,
sola t’intendi, e da te intelletta
e intendente te ami e arridi! (Paradiso, 33.121-26)
O how scant is speech and how feeble to my conception! and this, to what
I saw, is such that it is not enough to call it little. O Light Eternal, that alone
abidest in Thyself, alone knowest Thyself, and, known to Thyself and
knowing, lovest and smilest on Thyself! (Sinclair 1971: Paradiso, 485)
Then he proceeds to depict the Holy Trinity direct, the ultimate challenge to
any poet:
Quella circulazion che sì concetta
pareva in te come lume reflesso,
da li occhi miei alquanto circunspetta,
42) Dante’s awareness of his “impossible mission” is, of course, repeated by the poet himself
again and again in the Paradiso, so much so that it has prompted Jacoff to say: “The
Paradiso oscillates between statements of its daring originality and confessions of its
impossibility, of the ineffability of its vision and of the inadequacies of language to render
it. The simultaneous sense of victory and defeat within which the poem comes into being
contributes to its paradoxical effects, generating the haunting pathos that subtends the
poem’s astonishing accomplishment” (Jacoff 2007: 124).
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dentro da sé, del suo colore stesso,
mi parve pinta de la nostra effige;
per che ’l mio viso in lei tutto era messo. (Paradiso, 33.127-32)
That circling which, thus begotten, appeared in Thee as reflected light,
when my eyes dwelt on it for a time, seemed to me, within it and in its
own colour, painted with our likeness, for which my sight was wholly
given to it. (Sinclair 1971: Paradiso, 485)
Finally, at the pinnacle of pinnacles, he enlists the support of another simile
to present the supreme moment of his experience and the most profound
mystery of the Christian faith:
Qual è ’l geometra che tutto s’affige
per misurar lo cerchio, e non ritrova,
pensando, quel principio ond’elli indige,
tal era io a quella vista nova:
veder volea come si convenne
l’imago al cerchio e come vi s’indova;
ma non eran da ciò le proprie penne:
se non che la mia mente fu percossa
da un fulgore in che sua voglia venne. (Paradiso, 33.133-41)
Like the geometer who sets all his mind to the squaring of the circle and
for all his thinking does not discover the principle he needs, such was I at
that strange sight. I wished to see how the image was fitted to the circle
and how it has its place there; but my own wings were not sufficient for
that, had not my mind been smitten by a flash wherein came its wish.
(Sinclair 1971: Paradiso, 33.485)
The function of this simile is not only to convey to the reader in concrete
terms how impossible it is to apprehend the Holy Trinity through human
reasoning, and how the attainment of the ultimate understanding has to depend
on faith, but also to prepare him for the conclusion of the entire Divine Comedy,
“the highest point that poetry has ever reached or ever can reach”:
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 139
A l’alta fantasia qui mancò possa;
ma già volgeva il mio disio e il velle,
sì come rota ch’igualmente è mossa,
l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle. (Paradiso, 33. 142-45)
Here power failed the high phantasy; but now my desire and will, like a
wheel that spins with even motion, were revolved by the Love that moves
the sun and the other stars. (Sinclair 1971: Paradiso, 485)
7. Conclusion
In praising Four Quartets, Helen Gardner has the following to say about Eliot
and Dante:
When we read Four Quartets we are left finally not with the thought of ‘the
transitory Being who beheld this vision’, nor with the thought of the vision itself,
but with the poem, beautiful, satisfying, self-contained, self-organized, complete.
His master in this is not an English poet, but the greatest of European poets of
vision: Dante. Although the range and scope of The Divine Comedy forbid us to
make a comparison, yet there is a sense in which Mr Eliot can without
impropriety be named with Dante. He too has found a ‘dolce stil nuovo’, and the
origin of that style he could explain in Dante’s words:
Io mi son un che, quando
amor mi spira, noto, ed a quel modo
che ditta dentro, vo significando. (Gardner 1949: 185-86)
By the turn of the last millennium, Eliot was elected the greatest poet of the
twentieth century; yet, his stature is still not sufficient to enable Gardner to make
a comparison of his Four Quartets with The Divine Comedy; it is clear, then, what
“altitude” and “depth”43) – again using Eliot’s words – Dante’s poem, particularly
43) In “Dante,” Eliot has the following words to say about Dante and Shakespeare:
“Shakespeare gives the greatest width of human passion; Dante the greatest altitude and
greatest depth. They complement each other. It is futile to ask which undertook the more
difficult job. But certainly the ‘difficult passages’ in the Paradiso are Dante’s difficulties
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Vol. 4, No. 1 [June 2011]
its last canto, particularly the conclusion that culminates in the “Qual..tal..” epic
simile (Paradiso, 133-41) and in the arguably greatest concluding lines
(Paradiso, 33.142-45) of all poetry. The height thus reached is not only beyond
Eliot, but also beyond Homer, Virgil, and Milton. Taking Homer as a point of
departure, Dante had moved to frontiers beyond Homer and Virgil, which
Milton, coming after him, would also find to be beyond his reach. In following
and then departing from the Homeric tradition, Dante had broadened the gamut
of the epic simile, using it to portray what Homer, Virgil, and Milton were not
able to portray, conveying the most tender, most complex of feelings, and the
most profound, most mysterious of human experiences, reaching into the
ineffable. Inspired by Homer and taking him as a point of departure, Dante has
put the epic simile to many more new uses in The Divine Comedy, some of which
Homer would not have dreamt of. In literary theory, the epic simile is also called
the Homeric simile. In the light of the many new functions of the epic similes in
The Divine Comedy, which are beyond Homer, Virgil, and Milton, one is
certainly justified to postulate a new class of epic similes: the Dantesque similes.
rather than ours: his difficulty in making us apprehend sensuously the various states and
stages of blessedness” (Eliot 1951: 265).
|Laurence K. P. Wong| Homer as a Point of Departure: Epic Similes in The Divine Comedy | 141
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