Identifier: savoy02symo (find matches)
Title: The Savoy
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Symons, Arthur, 1865-1945 Beardsley, Aubrey, 1872-1898
Subjects: English literature Literature, Modern Art
Publisher: London, L. Smithers
Contributing Library: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Lyrasis Members and Sloan Foundation

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ng one another captive in great nets ; menwho sought their food among the green leaves of the Tree of Life condemnednone but the unimaginative and the idle, and those who forget that evenlove and death and old age are an imaginative art. In these opposing kingdoms is the explanation of the petulant sayings hewrote on the margins of the great sketch-book, and of those others, still morepetulant, which Crabb Robinson has treasured in his diary. The sayings aboutthe forgiveness of sins have no need of further explanation, and are in contrastwith the attitude of that excellent commentator, Herr Hettinger, who, thoughDante swooned from pity at the tale of Francesca, will only sympathize withher to a certain extent, being taken in a theological net. It seems as ifDante, Blake wrote, supposes God was something superior to the Father ofJesus ; for if he gives rain to the evil and the good, and his sun to the just andthe unjust, he can never have builded Dantes Hell, nor the Hell of the Bible,
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BLAKES ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE DIVINE COMEDY 29 as our parsons explain it. It must have been framed by the dark spirit itself,and so I understand it. And again, Whatever task is of vengeance andwhatever is against forgiveness of sin is not of the Father but of Satan, theaccuser, the father of Hell. And again, and this time to Crabb Robinson, Dante saw devils where I saw none. I see good only. I have neverknown a very bad man who had not something very good about him.This forgiveness was not the forgiveness of the theologian who has received acommandment from afar off; but of the mystical artist-legislator who believeshe has been taught, in a mystical vision, that the imagination is the man him-self, and believes he has discovered in the practice of his art, that without aperfect sympathy there is no perfect imagination, and therefore no perfect life.At another moment he called Dante, an atheist, a mere politician busiedabout this world, as Milton was, till, in his old age, he returned to

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