The name is absent

Dante and the Renaissance 215
—these were enduring Italian traits, and belong exclusively
neither to the Middle Ages nor to the Renaissance. But the
philosophy of life—ascetic or naturalistic—separates two
worlds. Boccaccio and his followers made “il gran rifiuto” ;
Dante did not.

He belonged, therefore, to the epoch of St. Francis,
St. Dominic, and St. Thomas Aquinas, not to that of
Valla and Rabelais. Does this mean that he is out of touch
with modern thought? Carducci implied as much when he
said: “He brought back with him the keys of the other
world, and cast them into the abyss of the past; no one has
ever found them again.”¹ Yet it is Dante, and not Boc-
caccio, Petrarch, or Ariosto, that young Italy has adopted
for her hero. His creed may no longer be our creed, his
thought may have become alien to us; but his art stands
changeless, and his ideal unshaken: the free will of man
ardently fighting God’s battle. And after all, it seems a
trifle vain to tag upon him a medieval or a Renaissance
label : he is human, that is all. The whims of diplomacy
have parceled out the foothills of Mont Blanc among
France, Italy, and Switzerland; but when we gaze at the
giant, man-made boundaries are soon forgotten.

Albert L. Guerard.

¹ “Egli discese di paradise portando seco Ie chiavi dell’ altro mondo e Ie
gettô nell’ abisso del passato: niuno Ie ha piiɪ ritrovate.”—G. Carducci₁
“Dello Svolgimento della Letteratura Nazionale,” Discorso Terzo₁ V.

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