Florentines Both

Socialist, atheist, revolutionary—Christian, Catholic, defender of tradition—from Papini, the man of paradox, but true Florentine withal, we were bound to hear sooner or later, something new on the subject of the great Florentine poet. This Giovanni Papini has now given in his Dante Vivo}The subdued light of conventional criticism is hardly to be expected from Papini. His volcanic mind erupts, leaving sometimes his thought buried in the cinders, but when it comes to the surface it is at least original, and holds, if it fails to convince.By way of parenthesis it is not so extraordinary as it at first appears that Papini came eventually into the Church: a man who had taught himself everything, who had run his head as a battering ram into every form of thought and philosophy, who had tasted the bitterness of human insufficiency, what possible way was open to such a one, but to stoop and enter the lowly portal that leads to peace. But this is only by the way.In his criticism of Dante, Papini often purposely leaves us in the dark, he is apt to lose all sense of proportion and to overshoot the mark. Then at the moment when we begin to chafe against his methods, he pulls us up by his own shrewd common sense, or else infects us with his own admiration for the poet. It is his aim to depict the man rather than the poet, but the poet often carries him away. The man Dante is his subject, a subject for which he has personal interest and sympathy. Dante with his unparalelled daring appeals to this daring modem Florentine.