Naturally we think that a writer who was so positively confident and
boastful of his powers must have been given to pride and Dante indeed
plainly indicates to us that he was guilty of this. But it was pride,
we think, that was honorable and not a vice, a pride of which a lesser
light, Lacordaire says, "By the grace of God, I abhor mediocrity." In
the dark wood Dante represents the Lion (Pride) as preventing him from
ascending the mountain--"He seemed to be coming to me with head upreared
and with such raging hunger, that the air appeared to be in fear of
him." (Inf., I, 43.)
And that the poet's trepidation was justified he later makes known
(Purg. XI, 136) when he expresses the fear that for pride he may be
eternally punished. Perhaps it was because Dante recognized the pride of
his learning, of his ancestry, of his associations with distinguished
personages as his besetting sin that he exercised his skill as a master
in showing us profound imagery representing the characteristics of
pride. Carved out of the mountain in the first circle of a terrace of
Purgatory are scenes illustrative of humility. While looking on these
scenes, which seem to live and speak in their beautiful and compelling
reality, the poet turns and sees approaching the forms of the proud.
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