on thè Vita Nuova
BY THE end of Chapter II of the Vita nuova, that is, by the end of the first chapter of the narrative proper (for the brief Chapter I is only a preface), all of the motifs significant for the story that is about to unfold step by step, have been introduced. The first word of the opening sentence is “Nine”:
“Nove fiate già appresso lo mio nascimento era tornato lo cielo de la luce quasi a uno medesimo punto, quanto a la sua propia girazione, quando a li miei occhi apparve prima la gloriosa donna de la mia mente, la quale fu chiamata da molti Beatrice li quale non sapeano che si chiamare.”
(Nine times already since my birth the heaven of light had circled back to almost the same point, when there appeared before my eyes the now glorious lady of my mind, who was called Beatrice even by those who did not know what her name was.)
The number 9 will be repeated twice more in the next sentence and appears twenty-two times in all within the Vita nuova. And not only does the reader find in the first sentence a reference to the number 9 of symbolical significance: he also finds an emphasis on mathematical precision that shows up very frequently throughout Dante’s Nevo Life. In this same opening sentence the child Beatrice is presented as already enjoying the veneration of the citizens of Florence, including strangers who did not know her name (but who, nevertheless, were inspired to call her Beatrice: “… la quale fu chiamata da mold Beatrice li quali non sapeano che si chiamare”). And with the words “la gloriosa donna de la mia mente”—the first of two time-shifts in which the figure of the living Beatrice, at a given moment, is described in such a way as to remind us of Beatrice dead—the theme of death is delicately foreshadowed at the beginning of the story. As for the figure of Beatrice, when she is allowed to be seen for the first time, she is dressed in a garment of blood-red color—the same color as her “shroud” will be in the following chapter. In the next three sentences the three main spiriti are introduced: the “vital” (in the heart), the “natural’ (in the liver) and the “animal” (in the brain). They rule the body of the nine-year-old protagonist, and they speak in Latin, as will the god of Love in the chapter that follows (and once again later on). The words of the first spirit describing Beatrice, “Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur michi” (note the masculine form deus), anticipate the first coming of Love, that takes place in the next chapter (“Ego dominus tuus”), and suggest something of the same mood of terror. (In this relationship there is contained an implicit suggestion of the parallel between Beatrice and Love which is made explicit in Chapter XXIV.) The words of the second spirit, “Apparuit iam beatitudo vestra,” suggest rapturous bliss to come (that bliss rhapsodically described in Chapter XI) while, in the words of the third spirit, there is the first of the many references to tears to be found in the Vita nuova. Here it is the spirit of the liver that weeps: “Heu miser, quia frequenter impeditus ero deinceps!” Though this spirit will be mentioned only once again (IV), the reader may gradually come to wonder if the lover’s tears, so frequently recorded in the narrative, are not often strongly influenced physiologically.
It is only after this reference to the organ of digestion that Love is mentioned (“D’allora dico che Amore segnoreggiò la mia anima…”). He is mentioned first of all as a ruler, but we learn immediately that much of his power is derived from the protagonist’s imagination—this faculty of which there will be so many reminders in the form of visions throughout the book. We are also told that Love’s power was restricted by reason; later in the book the relation between Love and reason will become a problem. After this summary of the nine years spent by the lover in the service of Beatrice, before she grants him her first greeting (and in this summary is contained the first suggestion of the godlike in Beatrice: “Ella non parea figliuola d’uomo mortale, ma di deo”), the chapter ends with a refusal to go into further details about his youthful behavior (“… le passioni e atti di tanta gioventudine …”). And Chapter II rings throughout with the sound of “praise of the lady,” as the protagonist’s admiration for Beatrice keeps growing during the nine years after her first appearance.
Thus, this opening chapter prepares for the rest of the book not only in the obvious way of presenting a background situation, an established continuity out of which single events will emerge in time, but also by setting in motion certain forces that will propel the Vita nuova forward—forces with which Dante’s reader will gradually become more and more familiar.
Of the forty-two chapters of the Vita nuova exactly two-thirds contain a poem (two of them contain two poems), a poem which we are expected to believe was inspired by the experience recounted in the prose. The relationship between the experience and the poem may be of two sorts: more than half the time it is the experience itself that is narrated in. verse as, for example, in the sonnet describing the first appearance of Love (III); in such cases the effect made by the poem on the reader of the Vita nuova is “recapitulative,” as if the poem were repeating the prose.1 The rest of the poems deal not with the experience itself but with ideas suggested and emotions inspired by the experience, as in Chapter VIII when the death of a companion of Beatrice prompts the lover to write two poems about death.
In those poems which simply relate the experience itself this experience is seldom an event in the usual sense. It may be a vision (III, IX, XXIII, XXIV), but more often it is a mood, and usually one in which despondency or tension or both predominate (XIII, XV, XVI, XXXV through XXXIX).2 Twice, the experience involves an outer event of which the protagonist is an eyewitness. In Chapter XXVI he describes in his two sonnets Beatrice passing before the people, receiving their veneration; he decides to describe this, we learn from the prose narrative, in order that those who cannot see his lady with the physical eye may somehow share the experience from his description. In Chapter XL the outward event described, which also takes place in the streets of the lover’s city, has meaning only for himself: he sees a group of pilgrims passing down the middle of the city, having come from other places, on their way to Rome; to his bewilderment they show no signs of grief as they pass through the city widowed by Beatrice’s death.
Of the remaining chapters, that is, those in which the theme of the poem is not the event that occasioned its composition, four tell us that the poem represents the fulfillment of a request. The ballata of Chapter XII was written at the suggestion of the god of Love; in the other three, the author of the request will be one (or more) of the lover’s friends: the admirers of his first canzone, who ask him to write a definition of love (XX); the brother of Beatrice who, after her death, indirectly requests a poem about her (XXXII); the two ladies of Chapter XLI who, while they ask the protagonist only to send them some of his already-written poetry, inspire him also to compose a poem especially for them.
Again, the occasion for the poem is the writing of a previous poem. Having written the sonnet of Chapter XX, describing in generic terms the effect on a man of a beautiful woman, the protagonist-lover decides, in Chapter XXI, to continue the theme of love and the gentle heart by limiting the phenomenon of the birth of love to the more extraordinary effect produced by Beatrice. Later, in Chapter XXVII, on re-reading his twin sonnets of praise in Chapter XXVI, that describe the effect of Beatrice on the people of Florence, he finds them defective since nothing was said about her effect on him at the present time. And he begins to write a canzone on this theme. The third case in which a poem leads to a poem also involves disappointment over the previous composition: having written in Chapter XXXIII a poem for Beatrice’s brother, the lover decides in the next chapter that the close relationship between brother and sister calls for a worthier poem, and he writes a canzone of two stanzas.
It could be said that in all three cases it is the protagonist’s thoughts rather than some outward event that provides the occasion for writing the poems. And this is all that can be said of the inspiration of the poem in Chapter XXXIV. On the anniversary of Beatrice’s death the lover sits remembering her and drawing the figure of an angel on “certe tavolette.” He looks up to see a group of men watching him, and speaks the ambiguous words, “Altri era testé meco, però pensava.” After their departure he returns to his sketching, in the midst of which he decides to write an anniversary poem—which, we can only assume, continues the thoughts that came to him as the angel took form under his hand.
With the rest of the poems the occasion is a happening which takes place in society. In Chapter VII, after his first screen-lady has left Florence for a far-away place, the protagonist decides to write a poem expressing grief over her departure. One might call the theme of his poem “loss of a loved one.” And in Chapter VIII this theme is found again, in a tragic sense: both poems in this chapter are poems of mourning for the death of a lovely young lady who had been one of Beatrice’s companions. There will be three more poems of mourning: two in Chapter XXII, occasioned by the death of Beatrice’s father, and in Chapter XXXI, the last canzone, in which the dead Beatrice is mourned.
In addition to the theme of death (loss) there is the theme of mockery. Already in Chapter IV the ravaged appearance of the young lover (whose absorption in Beatrice had been detrimental to his spirito naturale) had aroused the impertinent curiosity of his neighbors. In Chapter XIV the suggestion of mockery introduced earlier takes the form of a public humiliation. Having accompanied a friend of his to a wedding feast where Beatrice is present, the lover collapses at the sight of her; his appearance provokes the derision of the ladies surrounding Beatrice and he sees her laughing with them. The chapter ends with a sonnet written to his lady, reproaching her for her cruelty and appealing to her pity by describing in detail the disastrous effects of her presence on his nervous system. And there are reverberations of this scene of mockery in the two chapters that follow; the lover, still suffering from the shameful memory and wrestling with the problems it raises, writes two more sonnets in which he mainly seeks to explain to his lady the paradoxical effect her desired presence produces in him—making of him the object of her mockery.
The importance of the theme of death, which culminates in the central canzone and lingers to the end, hardly needs to be stressed; as all readers of the Vita nuova know, it is central to an understanding of the work. The theme of mockery does not seem to have attracted the attention of the critics; but as we shall see later, in the final part of this essay, the theme of mockery is also central, and it works on more than one level. The one instance of mockery discussed so far (and there will be a similar scene later on), has been simply society’s punishment for the young lover’s foolishness and morbidity.
The prose that relates the events offers a narrative that is remarkably objective. Never does the author pause to reprove or commend the protagonist; even the descriptions of his emotions are done in a rather detached way. But not always is the author content to be the simple narrator of past events; occasionally the reader hears the author’s voice speaking on a time-level different from that of the narrative. Sometimes, when we hear his voice, the effect is merely that of a tilting upward of the time level, as when he describes Beatrice in her lifetime in such a way as to remind us of her death (in fact, she is introduced to the reader in terms that could apply only to Beatrice dead). More directly, as if in a conversation with his reader, he may explicitly contrast the present with the past: he tells us (III) that the significance of his first sonnet, which no one perceived at the time the poem was written and circulated, is “now” apparent to the least sophisticated. Much more often, however, we are also made aware of Dante’s concerns as author of the Vita nuova: we not only hear him speak on the post-narrative plane, we see him sitting at his desk. In fact, that is precisely where he is when the Vita nuova opens, for it opens with a proem announcing his intentions. Later we see him adding many things to the factual details of the narrative, the most consistent pattern of such “glosses” being that of the divisioni which the author felt necessary to add to most of the poems he includes in his work. Then there are the “essays” represented by Chapter XXV and XXIX in which he treats, respectively, the use of poetic license and the significance of the number 9—and the two brief interpolations in Chapters XXII and XL, the first concerned with the bond that unites a good father and a good child, the second with the terminology appropriate for the various types of pilgrims according to their geographical goals.
As for Dante’s device of divisioni, which were omitted by Boccaccio in his edition of the Vita nuova, and which most readers since then have found tedious and unrewarding, how is his predilection for such analysis to be explained? The divisioni never serve to clear up any difficult points the poem may contain; they do serve, as he himself claims in Chapter XIV, to “open up” (aprire) the poem, but the parts into which it is neatly dissected are almost always obviously given, like the wedges of an orange. It is not enough to compare Dante’s procedure here with the common practice of the Scholastics—for example, Aquinas’ commentaries on Aristotle with their divisions and subdivisions of the original text. In the first place we have, with Aquinas, one writer commenting on another (and a Christian on a Pagan); secondly, the work which Aquinas divides with his prose headings was itself prose. Dante is the first to have applied this scholastic procedure to poetry. He will use this device again in the Convivio, but there it serves a necessary function: it would be impossible for the reader to follow the lengthy allegorical interpretations of the poems without having the poetic material first cut into pieces for him (as a father cuts his child’s meat for him at the table). But there are few interpretations, allegorical or otherwise, contained in the divisioni in the Vita nuova.3
I wonder if, in this work, Dante was not interested in the abstract act of subdividing for subdividing’s sake, and if he might not have had an artistic interest in breaking down a poetic structure into conceptual units. Any poem with fixed rhyme and meter, particularly a sonnet, already offers a rigid system of subdivisions; in breaking this down into conceptual units one is dissecting an artistic compound of a certain tangible form into parts not necessarily given by that form. And a number of the poems in the Vita nuova for which divisioni are offered show a conceptual pattern at variance with the metric pattern, to a greater or lesser degree: Chapters IX, XII, XIII, XXI, XXIII, XXIV, XXXII, XXXVII, XLI.4
In presenting the third and last canzone of the Vita nuova Dante changes the position of the divisioni, letting them now precede the poem instead of follow it. He does this, he says, in order that the canzone may seem to remain more “widowed” after it has come to an end: “—Acciò che questa canzone paia rimanere più vedova dopo lo suo fine….” He will continue to follow this order with the rest of the poems. The reader may wonder why Dante’s artistic instinct had not shown him earlier that the poetic effect of a lyrical composition should be allowed to linger on; to follow the poem immediately by a rational analysis of its parts must tend to kill the effect. But I shall treat this matter later in this essay.
Behind Dante’s fondness for his divisioni may also be his delight in mathematical figures and procedures. What comes to mind immediately is the importance he gives to the number 9 throughout the work and, in Chapter XXIX, his fascination with its divisibility, yielding three as the square root. And one remembers his use of the figure of the circle with its center equidistant from all points on the circumference (XII). There are also indications of his interest in geometrical form that show no concern with symbolical interpretation—for instance, the description of the passage of the pilgrims along a street “la quale è quasi mezzo de la cittade ove nacque e vivette e morìo la gentilissima donna” (XL). This city, which incidentally, the reader is never permitted to visualize, can be, like any other geometrical form, divided into two equal parts. There is a similar, and most effective indication of his interest in sheer geometrical form in Chapter V, where he describes the circumstances that led to the choice of the first screen-lady:
Uno giorno avvenne che questa gentilissima sedea in parte ove s’udiano parole de la regina de la gloria, ed io era in luogo dal quale vedea la mia beatitudine; e nel mezzo di lei e di me per la retta linea sedea una gentile donna di molto piacevole aspetto, la quale mi mirava spesse volte, maravigliandosi del mio squardare, che parea che sopra lei terminasse. Onde molti s’accorsero de lo suo mirare; e in tanto vi fue posto mente, che, partendomi da questo luogo, mi sentìo dicere appresso di me: “Vedi come cotale donna distrugge la persona de costui”; nominandola, io intesi che dicea di colei che mezzo era stata ne la linea retta che movea da la gentilissima Beatrice e terminava ne li occhi miei.
(It happened one day that this most gracious of ladies was sitting in a place where words about the Queen of Glory were being spoken, and I was in a place where I could behold my bliss. Halfway between her and me, in a direct line of vision, sat a gentlewoman of a very pleasing appearance, who glanced at me frequently as if bewildered by my gaze, which appeared to be directed at her. And many began to notice her glances in my direction, and paid close attention to them and, as I left this place, I heard someone near me say: “See what a devastating effect that lady has had on that man.” And, when her name was mentioned, I realized that the lady referred to was the one whose place had been half way along the direct line which extended from the most gracious Beatrice, ending in my eyes.)
So the lady was exactly in the middle of the direct line of vision extending from the lover to the Belovèd! The lover must have had a feeling of fatality. Suddenly there were only three persons in the church, there were only three points on the line. And twice the idea is stressed of a straight line intersected in the middle.
There is further evidence of this mathematical interest to be deduced from the symmetrical distribution of the three canzoni. The first canzone is preceded by ten poems, the last is followed by ten poems, and on each side of the central canzone are four poems giving the schema (the canzoni being indicated by Roman numerals): 10 /I / 4 / II / 4 / III / 10. Moreover, the central grouping containing the mid-canzone offers a section of nine poems; thus, disregarding the distinction between canzone and non-canzone, we find the undifferentiated schema: 10 / 1 / 9 / 1 / 10.5 Surely the first distribution, with its three symmetrically-placed canzoni, was deliberately intended by the poet; and the same is probably true for the second with its central 9.
The discussion of Dante’s mathematical thinking was offered as an explanation of the poet’s particular device of divisioni, the most ambitious of his techniques as “glossator”—that is, as one who makes additions to the factual details of the narrative. But not only does Dante make additions, there are also omissions of what might have been written down (it could perhaps be said that Dante the poet serves to “edit” as well as to “gloss”). Usually, when he confesses an omission he explains his motive; thus, he refuses to discuss in any detail the first nine years of his love for Beatrice (II), because of his immaturity at the time. Much more significant is his refusal to describe the death of Beatrice; for it he offers a three-fold motivation (XXVIII). Several times he announces that he will withhold from us certain of his literary compositions, the writing of which was described in the narrative.6
In his Proem to the Vita nuova, where he presents himself as a scribe copying from his “Book of Memory,” Dante nevertheless makes allowances for omissions of factual detail, when a reference to the significance of an event seems sufficient (he says nothing, however, of his plans to make additions to the events, in the form of glosses or otherwise):7
In quella parte del libro de la mia memoria dinanzi a la quale poco si potrebbe leggere, si trova una rubrica la quale dice: Incipit vita nova. Sotto la quale rubrica io trovo scritte le parole le quali e mio intendimento d’assemplare in questo li-bello, e se non tutte, almeno la loro sentenzia.
(In The Book of Memory, in the early part where there is little to be read, there comes a chapter with the rubric: Incipit vita nuova. It is my intention to copy into this little book the words I find written under that heading, if not all of them, at least the essence of their meaning.)
Now in Chapter XXVII, when refusing to discuss the death of Beatrice, Dante offers as his first justification the terms of the Proem (the only time in the book that he sends us back to his preface), and it must have been precisely the final words which I have italicized above that he had in mind. It was the significance of Beatrice’s death that alone mattered, and this significance had already been made evident in Chapter XXIII containing his prophetic vision of her death. What more could be added to the magnificent and terrible picture there offered?8 (It is also natural for the young lover to decide at this point, when faced with the simple, sheer fact of his lady’s death, to be silent and shun rhetoric of his own.) And obviously, these final words of his Proem explain his much less dramatic silence as to the many events that must have taken place in the time-span included in Chapter II. One may also think of Chapter V in which the events of several years are summed up.
But perhaps the final words of the Proem in which Dante claims the right to omit reference to unessential details, cover even more than has been assumed so far. Perhaps they serve, somehow, to explain the shadowy, impalpable world in which the lover seems to move. What does that world contain? There are exactly two references to concrete objects (both times the noun is subordinated by a preposition): the bed on which the lover lies during the illness that produced his prophetic vision of Beatrice’s death, and the “certe tavolette” on which he was drawing figures of angels on the anniversary of Beatrice’s death—probably the same angels he had seen in his macabre vision. As for places, twice the lover is represented as being out-of-doors in Nature: in Chapters IX and XIX (in both scenes only one detail is described and it is the same detail in each: a very clear stream flowing by the side of his path).
Not once is a building described, and only once are we offered a descriptive detail of an interior: the frescoed wall against which the lover was forced to lean for support, having sensed the presence of Beatrice at the wedding feast. We are never given a glimpse of the city of Florence. Its massive medieval architecture has dissolved; its twisted, busy, colorful streets have been reduced to straight lines in space, along which Beatrice or a group of pilgrims passes—the one to receive the worship of the crowds we do not see, the others on their way to worship at a far-off shrine.
Not only is there a dearth of descriptive detail, occasionally we have no idea where we are. One of the liveliest scenes in the Vita nuova is that of Chapter XVIII, when the lover explains to a group of ladies gathered together the new source of happiness he has found, and listens with some shame to the reactions of one of them. But where are these ladies who listen so attentively? Are they outdoors against a backdrop of Nature (they can hardly be on the street), or are they in some Florentine home (like the groups in Chapters VIII and XIV)? Probably we are meant to think of them as being outdoors, given the author’s words “e io passando appresso da loro.”9 And perhaps the same should be deduced for Chapter XXXIV: the lover, surrounded by a group of men who have come uninvited, must have been somewhere outdoors; but we are told only that he was in a place where he was drawing an angel and thinking of Beatrice. In the relative clause, “in parte ne la quale ricordandomi di lei, disegnavo uno angelo … ,” it is as though the activity that he was in the midst of constituted a place.
If Dante has cut out the sensuous details of his environment, all but obliterating the physical world, it must be because this world had no significance for his story. It is also true that, by this negative approach, he has achieved something positive, a suggestion of universality: this city in which a moral drama was unfolding could be any city belonging to any time (and the lover could be any man, or Everyman). In fact, the name of the city, the beautiful evocative name, Firenze, is never mentioned.
As for people who inhabit this nowhere place, the author’s treatment of them is appropriately vague. He never mentions the members of his family with whom he must be living, except for the “donna giovane e gentile” in Chapter XXIII sitting by his bed of delirium, who must have been his sister—as we learn only after she has been sent from the room. (She goes out of the room trailing behind her a relative clause of identification: “… facendo lei partire da me, la quale era meco di propinquissima sanguinitade congiunta.”) In the case of Beatrice’s family we learn only after his death that she had a father. In Chapter XXXII her brother comes into existence in order to make a literary request of the lover, and turns out to be Dante’s closest friend after Cavalcanti.
None of these three persons is even minimally described; there is the same lack of sensory detail in the presentation of characters as in that of places. And this is extraordinary if we think of Chrétien de Troyes before Dante and of Boccaccio soon after him—and of Dante himself as author of the Divine Comedy with its richly sensuous descriptions. Never is a character presented as a figure of flesh and blood in Dante’s Vita nuova, even though by his time, and long before, the art of verbal portraiture had been extensively developed. In fact, of the five single individuals who are brought on stage at a given moment—the protagonist’s sister, the “arnica persona” who takes him to the wedding feast, Beatrice, the first screen-lady and the lady at the window—only the last three receive even minimal description. Beatrice first appears wearing a crimson robe, girdled and trimmed as it should have been (“a la guisa che a la sua giovanissima etade si convenia”); next she appears in purest white. The red of caritas, the white of purity! She is the only one whose clothing is described, and after these two appearances her garments are never again mentioned (except in the visions); in fact, according to the opening words of the first description, Beatrice is not dressed in a garment, she is dressed in a color. And Beatrice does not have a face in the prose narrative of the Vita nuova, as do the other two ladies. The one sitting in church between the young lover and Beatrice was “di molto piacevole aspetto,” and the young lady at the window is described as very beautiful and pale of color, with an expression of great compassion. That Beatrice’s garments alone are described is due to their symbolic significance, and not only the obvious significance of the two colors, red and white: she wears her virtues as a garment, as the poet will tell his reader later, in a sonnet: “Benignamente d’umiltà vestuta.” And if the two other ladies are described in terms of personal physical charm, the meaning of the difference should be obvious.
The other characters that cross the bare stage of the Vita nuova appear in groups, from the pair of older ladies walking on either side of Beatrice, to the masses of Florentine people who flock to see the lady Beatrice pass.10 As the groups appear, the narrator points to them: “molti,” “altri,” “molte donne,” “alcune donne,” “certe donne,” “uomini,” “alquanti peregrini.”
Strikingly different from these colorless, nonindividualizing phrases are those periphrases, equally abstract and nonindividualizing, which offer, however, an essence: the sister of the protagonist and the father and brother of Beatrice, brought so suddenly into existence from nowhere, are presented not by means of the normal words padre, fratello, sorella, with their overtones of warmth, but by analytical designations of relationship. Beatrice’s father is called “colui che era stato genitore di tanta maraviglia quanta si vedea ch’era questa nobilissima Beatrice”;11 Beatrice’s brother and the protagonist’s sister are presented in terms of degree of consanguinity: the former as “tanto distretto di sanguinitade con questa gloriosa, che nullo più presso Fera,” the latter as being “meco di propinquissima sanguinitade congiunta.”
The same device of significant periphrases is used of places: a minor case is that of the church in which the main event of Chapter V takes place. Not only is the church left undescribed but it is not even called a church: in the opening sentence Beatrice is presented as sitting “in parte ove s’udiano parole de la regina de la gloria.” On a larger scale this device is used, and most effectively, in connection with the city of Florence. The first reference to Dante’s birthplace occurs in Chapter VI which contains the apparently insignificant reference to the composition of a serventese including sixty names of beautiful ladies: “… e presi li nomi de sessanta le più belle donne de la cittade ove la mia donna fue posta da Valtissimo sire” In the following chapter Florence is referred to as “la sopradetta cittade”. And in the next six references the same deictic phrase is found: seven echoes, that is, of the first periphrasis that was meant to remind the reader of Beatrice and of her destiny and role in this story. In Chapter XL we read that “alquanti peregrini passavano per una via la quale è quazi mezzo de la cittade ove nacque e vivette e mono la gentilissima donna.” This city has now become the place where Beatrice also died. Thus, in Dante’s treatment of the city of Florence there are two forces at work: on the one hand, in the interest of universality, suppression of all picturesque detail, suppression even of the name itself which might evoke such detail; on the other, the formulation of a periphrasis that offers the true significance of that city for the lover (and therefore for the reader).
It seems clear that Dante’s desire to create for his reader a world in which concrete detail has been reduced to a minimum, a shadowy nameless city peopled by nameless shadows, has some connection with his predilection for mathematical forms and processes. There are times, when places are in question, that the two tendencies coincide: the street along which the pilgrims move, and which the reader is not invited to visualize, is presented as dissecting the city of Florence in two; the house of worship that cannot be seen contains a straight line intersected by three points. This extreme concern with the abstract implies an extreme concern for the spiritual, which means a concern for the essential—which is precisely what Dante was revealing in the last words of the Proemio: “… se non tutte, almeno la loro sentenzia.”
Perhaps the most effective example of such concerns is to be found in the scene describing Beatrice’s greeting. That event which occurred nine years to the day after the lover’s first sight of her, that event without which what does happen could never have happened—takes place in no particular place:
Avvenne che questa mirabile donna apparve a me vestita di colore bianchissimo … ; e passando per una via, volse li occhi verso quella parte ov’ io era molto pauroso, e per la sua ineffabile cortesia, la quale è oggi meritata nel grande secolo, mi salutoe molto virtuosamente tanto che me parve allora vedere tutti li termini de la beatitudine.
(It happened that, on the last one of those days, the miraculous lady appeared dressed in purest white … ; and passing along a certain street, she turned her eyes to where I was standing faint-hearted and, with that indescribable graciousness for which today she is rewarded in the eternal life, she greeted me so marvelously that I seemed at that moment to behold the entire range of possible bliss.)
But what does it matter exactly where Beatrice was that day? What matters is that she is now in Heaven. And the reference to her “indescribable graciousness,” which would seem to lead directly to the announcement of her greeting, is instead followed by a reminder of Beatrice in glory: in the split-second interval between the moment she turns her eyes and the moment of her greeting, we catch a glimpse of Heaven. Also in the description of Beatrice’s first appearance on stage the reader had been reminded of her death by the simple device of using an epithet applicable only to her role after death; the effect was completely static. Here, however, there is movement, and interruption of movement, and movement again: Beatrice alive, Beatrice dead, Beatrice continuing to live.
As the reader will surely remember, there is much more vitality, movement, color in the narration of the visions than in that of the events of the real world of the Vita nuova.12 The most vivid of the visions are those contained in Chapters III and XXIII, both of them prophetic of Beatrice’s death, the first more touched with mystery, the second characterized by more phantasmagoric elements. Thus, the poet does not hesitate to appeal to the senses of his reader when describing a visionary world; and if Dante’s descriptions throughout the Divine Comedy show a colorful technique so at variance with the shadowy outlines of the Vita nuova as a whole, this must be because the Divine Comedy is, throughout, one continuous vision. Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise and the souls that are hopelessly damned, or suffering in hope, or enjoying the beatific vision in those three realms, respectively, are described in greater detail because, being eternal, they are more real than are this world and the souls that temporarily inhabit it. The visions, too, in the Vita nuova are more real than any one of the events in the story proper, for there, as we shall soon see, the protagonist is offered glimpses of eternity.
All of the characters in the Vita nuova were mentioned in the preceding chapter of this essay, with the important exception of one of the three main characters in this love-story: the god of Love, who appears on stage playing an important role in Chapters III, IX, XXI and XXIV. In most of his visits to the lover this being is presented far more vividly than any of the other characters seen by the protagonist—who, for the most part, come through to the reader as shadowy shapes indeed. The first three times Love makes his entrance onto the stage of the Vita nuova, not only are his clothes described but also his gestures and movements; and in all four of his appearances Love’s voice is heard.1 This character, on whom a spotlight is focused, is made to behave in a way that must puzzle any reader. Love speaks Italian sometimes, sometimes Latin, and sometimes he even shifts languages in the midst of a visit. The accouterments of this actor in the scenes in which he plays his different roles vary, being those of a terrifying deity, a shabby traveler or a guardian angel. And so do his moods change, not only from scene to scene but within the same scene: from the radiant happiness of majesty, or the poised tranquility of beatitude, Love will fall into bitter weeping. Or, again, in his relationship toward the lover he may shift from kindly counselor to sublimely haughty lord, to impatient monitor, to chatty conspiratorial advisor. What can be the true significance of this mysterious, protean figure of Love, who four times appears on stage at a given moment to address the lover?2
The god of Love first appears to the lover on the evening after he has received Beatrice’s first greeting and returned home, ecstatic, to fall into a sweet sleep (III). He dreams he sees Love holding a sleeping lady in his arms; the figure speaks to the lover, in Latin, words that are mainly incomprehensible, and then ascends to Heaven. In Chapter IX the protagonist sees the figure of Love walking toward him along a country road; Love offers him practical advice as to maintaining the strate-gem of the screen-lady. In Chapter XII, just as in Chapter III, Love appears to him during his sleep, a sleep into which he has fallen grieving bitterly over the loss of his lady’s greeting. In Chapter XXIV, which immediately follows the prophetic vision of Beatrice’s death, the lover is sitting thoughtful in “a certain place” when he sees Love coming from the direction “where his lady was.” Then Beatrice appears with another lady, and he listens to Love’s comments about them.
Now this last vision is followed by an “essay” (XXV) which begins with an explanation of the author’s treatment of Love; though he mentions only the scene in Chapter XXIV, his words are surely meant to apply to all of the appearances of Love. But anyone familiar with the Vita nuova, who is interested in the significance of the figure of Love, knows that in this chapter he will find no clue to the proper interpretation of this mysterious figure. The chapter treats instead the problem of poetic license, involving particularly the device of personification (a treatment promised us somewhat cryptically in Chapter XII). And it is puzzling that precisely after the last appearance of Love Dante would refer to this figure for no other reason than a rhetorical one. Perhaps there is a more important purpose underyling this chapter, whose threefold structure can be briefly summed up.
First, he admits that, while perfectly aware of Love’s being only an accident in a substance, he has treated it as if it were a substance—in fact, he has attributed to the figure of Love qualities properly human. Rather abruptly he turns to a consideration of the recent phenomenon of poets writing in the vernacular, stating that they should be allowed poetic license equal to that of the poets of antiquity: in particular, the animization or personification of abstract entities. (Curious, that of the many poetic figures recognized by medieval rhetoric, Dante specifies only the concretization of the abstract.) Finally, he illustrates the poetic license in question with quotations from the classical poets.
But he concludes the second part by allowing this poetic license to the vernacular poet only on one condition:
… degno è lo dicitore per rima di fare lo somigliante, ma non sanza ragione alcuna, ma con ragione la quale poi sia possibile d’aprire per prosa.
(… it is fitting that the vernacular poet do the same—not, of course, without some reason, but with a motive that later can be explained in prose.)3
And he repeats this warning toward the end of the chapter:
Però che grande vergogna sarebbe a colui che rimasse cose sotto vesta di figura o di colore rettorico, e poscia, domandato, non sapesse denudare le sue parole da cotale vesta, in guisa che avessero verace intendimento.
(For, if any one should dress his poem in images and rhetorical coloring and then, being asked to strip his poem of such dress in order to reveal its true meaning, would not be able to do so—this would be a veritable cause for shame.)
This warning by the author amounts to a claim that he himself would be capable of offering the “verace intendimento” of the figure of Love, if asked to do so. To the reader who cannot ask the author to do so, these words are frustrating. But I believe they were intended to serve as a challenge to the reader, to inspire in him confidence that the device exploited is not mere ornamentation (as is the case, so the author tells us, with some poets known to him and Cavalcanti): there is indeed a “verace intendimento” which could be unmysteriously explained, and knowing this, the reader of the Vita nuova must try, and hope, to find it. And perhaps the author is also suggesting—this would be most important—that because this significance can be ultimately made clear, no detail of his figurative presentation should be overlooked.4
Of the four visions the first I find the most difficult; the simplest is the last, and with this I shall begin.5 In Chapter XXIV the first words of Love are a joyful command to the lover that he bless the day he became Love’s captive, whereupon the lover, too, is filled with joy. Then he sees the “miraculous Beatrice” coming toward him, preceded by her friend Giovanna, called also Primavera. He hears Love speak portentous words comparing the Lady Giovanna, who comes before Beatrice, with John the Baptist proclaiming the approach of Christ. Love ends by saying: “E chi volesse sottilmente considerare, quella Beatrice chiamarebbe Amor per molta simiglianza che ha meco.” (“Anyone of subtle discernment would call Beatrice Love, because she so greatly resembles me.”) Thus, Love is comparing Beatrice indirectly to Christ and directly to himself.
We can surely assume, whatever the special significance we attribute to the figure of Love that, in each of the four visions in question, he always represents in some way the protagonist’s love for Beatrice. And I suggest that here he represents the lover’s total potential capacity for loving Beatrice as she should be loved: recognizing her Christlike nature which can only be unselfishly adored. This figure, which may be called by the formula “The Greater Aspect” of Dante’s love for Beatrice, we shall see again as we go back to the other visions in the Vita nuova.
But if we turn next to the other imaginazione (IX) among the four scenes, we will find the sharpest of contrasts. The lover himself is in a mood of dejection since he is forced to undertake a journey away from his city and from his lady; and the figure he suddenly sees coming toward him has the form of a pilgrim lightly and poorly clad—he, too, seeming dejected, staring at the ground, occasionally turning his glance toward a beautiful stream, swift and very clear, which flows alongside the path he is traveling. He advises the lover to choose a new screen-lady since the first one has left the city, and he urges him to be as ardently adept in his dissimulation with the second lady as he has been with the first. Surely this figure can only represent the “Lesser Aspect” of the protagonist’s love, the lover’s feelings at the moment, which are untouched by the transcendental. The lover’s emotional state is reflected in the epithet “disbigottito” applied to Love—who appears dressed as a pilgrim, since the lover himself happens to be a pilgrim at the present moment. Moreover, Love is poorly dressed; with this latter detail it is as if the poet would symbolize in Love’s outward appearance the inner misery he himself is experiencing. And we learn that Love is playing the role of the lover’s accomplice in the foolish game of the screen-ladies. The advice he offers, of a practical, even cynical nature, is of the sort to appeal to the childishly scheming lover.
There are two other indications that the Love who figures in this scene is none other than a reflection of the protagonist’s own limited feelings: one concerned with Love’s entrance on stage, the other with his disappearance. Love disappears, not as a person, not as a figure disappears, but as a substance melts. There is nothing left of Love for the lover to see, we are told, because Love has become so much a part of him. The manner of his appearance or, rather, the reason for his appearance also is connected with his being a part of the lover: after speaking of his anguish at leaving Florence and Beatrice, the lover adds, as if it were the most natural thing imaginable: “e pero lo dolcissimo segnore … ne la mia imaginazione apparve come pelle-grino….” The significance of the causal pero is obvious: it was the intensity of his feelings that caused his love to take on form and shape, reflecting his own mood, before his eyes.
In Chapter XII Love appears to the protagonist in his sleep; he sees Love sitting near his bed dressed in the whitest of raiment, deep in thought. After looking for some time at the lover, the figure sighs and says “Fili mi, tempus est ut preter-mictantur simulacra nostra” (“My son, it is time to do away with our false ideals”). The lover notes that Love is weeping, and senses that he is waiting for him to say something. He can only ask: “Segnore della nobilitade, e perché piangi tu?” (“Lord of all virtues, why do you weep?”). He hears the answer:
“Ego tanquam centrum circuii, cui simili modo se habent circumjerentie partes; tu autem non sic.”
(“I am like the center of a circle, equidistant from all points on the circumference; you, however, are not.”)
Finding these words obscure, the lover gathers courage to ask Love to explain them. Love answers, this time in Italian: “Non dimandare più che utile ti sia” (“Do not ask more than is useful to you”).
The figure of the young man sitting dressed in purest white will remind any reader of the young man dressed in a long white garment sitting at the door of Christ’s sepulchre. This suggestion, together with the solemnity of his Latin words, can only mean that, of the two Aspects of Love already discussed, the figure now on the stage of the lover’s mind represents the Greater Aspect, that transcends the lover’s own feelings on this occasion. And Love’s first words of tender reproach are those of a father to a son.
Most critics have seen in Love’s first words announcing the necessity of abandoning “simulacra nostra” a reference to the device of the screen-ladies; and to them the possessive pronoun nostra amounts to a confession of complicity on the part of Love, who had encouraged the protagonist to continue this device. But it is surely impossible to imagine that the noble figure here portrayed could ever have played this puerile role; it is not he but the shabbily dressed pilgrim figure of Chapter IX, the Lesser Aspect, who had done so. And to imagine that this aider-and-abettor of the lover’s game of screen-ladies would suddenly appear like an angel and, addressing him as “Fili mi”, confess that they had both been wrong to play this game, is absurd. As for the possessive adjective nostra I see in this not a true plural but the well-known pedagogic device (“Fili mi”) recorded from antiquity, of replacing the second person singular by the first person plural as if to include the speaker along with the person addressed, the teacher with the pupil. This is a sympathetic and a patronizing device. Thus, assuming that simulacra is an illusion to the screen-ladies, the Greater Aspect would be here reproaching the lover for his weakness (that the Lesser Aspect had encouraged).
But I do not believe that the word simulacra refers specifically to the lover’s use of screen-ladies, though such an allusion may well be included within the referential range of this word. In classical Latin the word simulacrum, in its philosophical application, was used of an imitation as opposed to the original, of an appearance as opposed to what is real. Thus, it could apply to any of the attitudes or actions of the young lover which were only false imitations of what true love for Beatrice should be. And if Love uses the word simulacra at this moment of the lover’s development, while he is plunged in grief because of the loss of Beatrice’s greeting, he must intend it to be a condemnation, particularly, of the superficiality of a love that would seek its happiness in something transient, in a reward that could be arbitrarily bestowed or withdrawn. The greeting of Beatrice had seemed to the young lover to represent the ultimate in bliss (“mi parve allora vedere tutti li termini de la beatitudine”), but it was only a seeming, a simulacrum. Thus, Love’s first words would seek to teach the lover, mourning the destruction of his happiness, the vanity of that happiness itself.
At this point one could hardly expect on the part of the protagonist immediate understanding of the rebuke, and immediate agreement with Love’s suggestion. It would not be unreasonable, however, to expect at least a desire to understand: the lover might have asked his lord to explain what was implied by the word simulacra so that he should know just what it was he should avoid. But if we read carefully from the beginning of the vision, it would seem as if he has not heard the words of admonition:
Avvenne quasi nel mezzo de lo mio dormire che me parve vedere ne la mia camera lungo me sedere uno giovane vestito di bianchissime vestimenta, e pensando molto quanto a la vista sua, mi riguardava là ov’io giacea; e quando m’avea guardato alquanto, pareami che sospirando mi chiamasse, e diceami queste parole: “Fili mi, tempus est ut pretermictantur simulacra nostra.” Allora mi parea che io lo conoscesse, però che mi chiamava cosi come assai fiate ne li miei sonni irìavea già chiamato; e riguardandolo, parvemì che piangesse pietosamente, e parea che attendesse da me alcuna parola; ond’io, assicurandomi, cominciai a parlare così con esso: “Segnore de la nobiltade, e perché piangi tu?”
(About half-way through my sleep I seemed to see in my room a young man sitting near the bed dressed in the whitest of garments and, from his expression, he seemed to be deep in thought, watching me where I lay; after looking at me for some time, he seemed to sigh and to call to me, saying these words: Fili mi, tempus est ut pretermictantur s’miulacra nostra (“My son, it is time to do away with our false ideals.”) Then I seemed to know who he was, for he was calling me in the same way that many times before in my sleep he had called me; and as I watched him, it seemed to me that he was weeping piteously, and he seemed to be waiting for me to say something to him; so, gathering courage, I began to address him, saying: “Lord of all virtues, why do you weep?”)
The lover has heard the first two words, of course: “Fili mi”, for they have served to make him recognize his lord. (Thus, between the vision in Chapter III and this one, there must have been other times when Love appeared to the sleeping lover, addressing him in paternal terms.) He also notes that Love, silent again, is weeping and seems to be waiting for him to speak. And thus encouraged, he speaks—but, for some strange reason, only to inquire about Love’s tears, not to comment on Love’s message, his words of admonition, as would seem to be the normal thing to do. According to what we are offered of the protagonist’s thought processes, he must have taken in only the first two words, missing the message itself: “Tempus est ut….” Once he was sure that it was Love speaking, his attention passed from Love’s words to his tears and to his waiting attitude, and he evidently believed that his puerile question was what Love was waiting to hear. But, of course, if he had understood Love’s admonition, he would not have needed to ask him why he wept.
Love weeps because of the simulacra. Love weeps because the lover had put an exaggerated value on a mere greeting.6 He also weeps because, once this was refused, the lover collapsed utterly and childishly, instead of learning from this experience the obvious lesson—which he was to learn only later, thanks to his Muse (XVIII). If the lover did not understand the reason for Love’s tears, little wonder that he did not understand Love’s enigmatic answer, “Ego tanquam centrum circuli …’’—words which have baffled generations of critics of the Vita nuova.
As for the interpretation of these words that the lover did not understand, surely, given the context, the comparison they offer between Love and the young lover is a comparison between the two kinds of Love that must be distinguished: the lover’s love, though tending toward the center is still on the circumference of the circle (where the simulacra are), while Love, the Greater Love, is, was, and always will be the irradiating center. And not only has Love, with his geometrical metaphor, set the simulacra in perspective, he has, in his self-definition, revealed his divine nature: in defining himself he uses a common Patristic definition of God.7 (And the Paradise will end with the adoration of the perfection of the circle, to the movement of the three circles that are the Trinity and therefore the One.)
After the lover has been told not to ask more about what he obviously does not understand (“Non dimandare più che utile ti sia”) he starts talking about himself. He laments the loss of Beatrice’s greeting and asks for an explanation of it. Love tells him that Beatrice’s rejection was due to the scandalous rumors about his relationship with the second screen-lady. He then proceeds to offer the lover a means of ingratiating himself with Beatrice once more, describing in some detail the kind of poem he should write her, one which would implore her forgiveness and appeal to Love himself as a witness to his loyalty:
Onde, con ciò sia cosa che veracemente sia conosciuto per lei alquanto lo tuo secreto per lunga consuetudine, voglio che tu dichi certe parole per rima ne le quali tu comprendi la forza che io tegno sopra te per lei, e come tu fosti suo tostamente da la tua puerizia; e di ciò chiama testimonio colui che lo sa, e come tu prieghi lui che li le dica: ed io, che son quelli, volentieri le ?ie ragionerò; e per questo sentirà ella la tua volontade, la quale sentendo, conoscerà le parole de li ingannati. Queste parole fa che siano quasi un mezzo, sì che tu non parli a lei immediatamente, che non è degno; e no le mandare in parte, sanza me ove potessero essere intese da lei, ma falle adornare di soave armonia, ne la quale io sarò tutte le volte che farà mestiere.” E dette queste parole, sì disparve, e lo mio sonno fue rotto.
(Since she has really been more or less aware of your secret for quite some time, I want you to write a certain poem, in which you make clear the power I have over you through her, explaining that ever since you were a boy you have belonged to her; and, concerning this, call as witness him who knows, and say that you are begging him to testify on your behalf; and I, who am that witness, will gladly explain it to her, and from this she will understand your true feelings and, understanding them, she will also set the proper value on the words of those people who were mistaken. Let your words themselves be, as it were, an intermediary, whereby you will not be speaking directly to her, for this would not be fitting; and unless these words are accompanied by me, do not send them anywhere she could hear them; also be sure to adorn them with sweet music where I shall be present whenever this is necessary.” Having said these words he disappeared, and my sleep was broken.)
But how can Love speak this way? The white-robed figure, reminiscent of St. Mark’s angelic guard at the tomb of Christ, who at the beginning had been concerned only with trancen-dental values, is now interested in giving practical advice-encouraging the lover, in fact, to seek again the kind of happiness that can only fail, to concern himself again with simulacra? And the elegant speaker of sententious, epigrammatic Latin engages in this long-winded chatter? It is clear that with the introduction of this note of familiarity the atmosphere of deep seriousness, of awesome majesty that surrounded the figure of Love at the beginning has entirely disappeared.
It is, of course, the Lesser Aspect that gives this worldly advice, so easy (alas) for the young lover to understand: in the lover’s mind the god has turned into the Amore of Chapter IX, who is on a plane no higher than that of the lover himself. The last words that we hear the Greater Aspect speak are the peremptory “Non dimandare piu che utile ti sia”— which, however, being in Italian, prepare for the shift to the Lesser Aspect, serving as a hinge on which the two parts of the vision turn. That we have to do now with the Amore of Chapter IX is shown, not only by the tone of Love’s words and the nature of his advice, but also by the fact that in his explanation of Beatrice’s decision, when speaking of the lady chosen as the second screen, he calls her “… la donna la quale io ti nominal nel cammino de li sospiri … ,” thereby identifying himself with the shabby, dejected figure of the pilgrim-Love. And if it is clear from these words that the one who abets the lover in his superficial program of wooing must be the same as the figure in Chapter IX, it should be just as clear that he cannot possibly be the one who appeared on stage saying, “Fili mi, tempus est… There has been a shift of identity. And since such a vision as this is comparable to a dream, in which one figure may easily turn into another, this shift in the lover’s mind needs no psychological justification.
Now that we have recognized the possibility of a shift from the one to the other aspect of Love when this figure appears on stage to speak to the lover, it is only natural to wonder if this will be realized in the next appearance of Love to be considered—that is, the first of the four appearances of Love in the Vita nuova. As the lover is sleeping sweetly, after having received Beatrice’s first greeting, a marvelous vision comes to him in which he sees first a flame-colored cloud, then a figure in the cloud, whose aspect is frightening to look upon, yet expresses the deepest happiness. He speaks to the lover at length, though only a few of his words such as “Ego dominus tuus” are understandable to him. As he speaks, the lover sees that this awesome figure is holding in his arms a sleeping female figure, naked except for a crimson cloth in which she is loosely wrapped.8 Slowly the lover recognizes her as his lady; he also notes that the lordly man (who we know must be Love) holding the lady has in his hand a burning object; and he hears the words “Vide cor tuum.” After some time has passed Love awakens the lady and cunningly forces her to eat of the burning object. This she does, reluctantly. After another passage of time Love’s joy turns to bitterest grief and weeping he folds his arms about the lady and ascends with her toward Heaven. The lover’s anguish at their departure breaks his sleep.
This figure who comes during the first of the last nine hours of the night, in the midst of a cloud the color of flame (suggesting the burning bush in which God appeared to Moses), who speaks in Latin and announces his lordship over the lover, and whose aspect is both radiant and terrifying is, obviously, the Greater Aspect of Love. At the end he ascends to Heaven; thus, the figure who appears with Beatrice and who departs with her must represent the same Aspect. And it must also be this divine being who, in the middle of the episode, says to the lover “Vide cor tuum.” But I believe that in the lines following these words, in the interval of time that elapsed between Love’s last words and the lady’s awakening, there has been a shift from the Greater to the Lesser Aspect. “Vide cor tuum” is followed by E quando elli era stato alquanto, pareami che dis-vegliasse questa che dormía.… After the lady is made to eat the heart reluctantly, there is another pause in the action before the figure of Love, now weeping, will disappear: Appresso ció poco dimorava che la sua letizia si convertía in amarissimo pianto—z pause allowing for a second shift of Aspect, back to the first again. That the author has taken pains twice to indicate a lapse of time must be significant; and that his intention has been to set off this central action, to differentiate it from what precedes and what follows, is highly likely. And these two breaks could serve not only as dividers but to allow time for something to happen during the intervals in which nothing seems to happen.
Beatrice asleep in Love’s arms is Beatrice dead, already in glory, pure spirit. When she is awakened she becomes a woman of flesh and blood, and her nakedness takes on warmth in the imagination. Perfect Love could not desire such a return to the carnal. Perfect Love could not try to force, to seduce the Beloved into an act against her nature, as the figure of Love does here:
E quando elli era stato alquanto, pareami che disvegliasse questa che dormia; e tanto si sforzava per suo ingegno, che le facea mangiare questa cosa che in mano li ardea, la quale ella mangiava dubitosamente.
(And after some time had passed, he seemed to awaken the one who slept, and he forced her cunningly to eat of that burning object in his hand; she ate of it timidly.)
When the figure of Perfect Love returns once more to the lover’s imagination, the figure can only weep. He weeps because the lover’s heart which he had declared to be in his possession (“Vide cor tuum”) has been given over to the Lesser Love, which would make carnal the spiritual and, because of its covetousness, could envisage arousing covetousness in the miraculous Beatrice. It is difficult to understand the attitude of those critics who find sublimity in Love’s gruesome act of forcing the lady to eat the lover’s heart.
Now that the four visions have been discussed in the order: 4-3-2-1 (for reasons which should have become rather clear), let us sum up the sequence again in its original order.9 The figure of love capable of representing either the Greater or the Lesser Aspect, appears for the first time in Chapter III at its most dynamic and paradoxical: shifting from the Greater to the Lesser, back to the Greater Aspect again. The sonnet that the lover writes describing the vision with a minimum of detail, he sends to his literary friends challenging them to discover its significance. And in the chapter immediately following we are told that for some time after his vision his digestive system was so upset that his friends were concerned about his haggard appearance. The literary maneuver may be a sign that the meaning of the vision was not clear to the poet-protagonist (not that such a sign is necessary), and the bad health which followed suggests that the memories of it must have tortured him.
In Chapter IX Love appears in abject form as the symbol of the protagonist-lover’s superficial dalliance with the screen-ladies. There are two details in the description of this figure which were passed over in the first discussion of Chapter IX and which are very important for establishing a link with the preceding vision. First, the pilgrim-Love is carrying the lover’s heart in his hand, taking it, he says to the new screen-lady. Now, in Chapter III it is clearly the Greater Love that comes on stage with the young lover’s heart in his possession; but I suggested that in the central episode of this vision the lover had given it over to the Lesser Love—who, in Chapter IX, still has it. The second link with the vision of Chapter III is of a different sort: in the second quatrain of the sonnet (“Caval-cando l’altrier …”)10 following the prose narrative, the figure of Love, who will advise the lover about the second screen-lady, is described as having suffered a change: “Ne la sembianza mi parea meschino,/ come avesse perduto segnoria.” The “segnoria” that has been lost is the majesty of the radiant figure who presented himself to the lover saying, “Ego dominus tuus,” in his first appearance. In the chapter that follows, the lover earnestly puts into practice the god’s advice: the first of two times he will carry out the suggestion of the Lesser Love.
Nine chapters after his first appearance the Greater Love returns to the stage of the Vita nuova, again waking the lover, again speaking Latin. This time there is no vague reference to “molte cose” spoken by Love which the lover did not understand. Apparently he said to him only two things in Latin, then turned to Italian to rebuke him sharply. The peremptory words, with the sudden shift from Latin to Italian, serve a purpose ultimately similar to the “lapses of time” indicated in Chapter III, only that whereas the latter allow for something unexpected to happen, for something to emerge out of the interval of time, the rebuke in Italian comes as a sharp announcement of change already on its way.
The obvious connection between the Lesser Love who will come to dominate the stage in Chapter XII, and the pilgrim-Love of Chapter IX has already been pointed out—a connection insisted on by Love himself (“… la donna la quale io ti nominai nel cammino de li sospiri”). I would add that there is also a connection between this figure in Chapter XII, now giving elaborate instructions as to the means of winning back Beatrice’s favor, and the one in Chapter III who, in the central episode, was intent on seducing Madonna: that Love who forced the lady with all his art to eat the lover’s burning heart.11 And it is the influence of the Lesser Aspect that continues beyond the vision described: in the ballata, concluding the chapter, which the lover dutifully wrote at this figure’s command. And it is surely in order that the influence of the Lesser Love should prolong itself beyond the vision that the poem closing the chapter represents this fulfillment of Love’s worldly advice rather than sets forth a “recapitulative” version of the vision—the only vision of Love’s appearance not described in verse, as was pointed out but not explained in the first part of this essay.
But it becomes clear in the following chapter that the first part of the vision, in which the Greater Love had spoken words the lover did not understand, had also made a strong impression on him. For this chapter is devoted to a “battle of the thoughts” about the nature of love:
Appresso di questa soprascritta visione, avendo già dette le parole che Amore m’avea imposte a dire, mi cominciaro molti e diversi pensamenti a combattere e a tentare, ciascuno quasi indefensibilemente; tra li quali pensamenti quattro mi parea che ingombrassero più lo riposo de la vita. L’uno de li quali era questo: buona è la signoria d’Amor e, però che trae lo intendimento del suo fedele da tutte le vili cose. L’altro era questo: non buona è la signoria d’Amore, però che quanto lo suo fedele più fede li porta, tanto più gravi e dolorosi punti li conviene passare. L’altro era questo: lo nome d’Amore è sì dolce a udire, che impossibile mi pare che la sua propria operazione sia ne le più cose altro che dolce, con ciò sia cosa che li nomi seguitino le nominate cose, sì come è scritto: Nomina sunt consequentia rerum. Lo quarto era questo: la donna per cui Amore ti stringe così, non è come Valtre donne, che leggeramente si muova del suo cuore. E ciascuno mi combattea tanto che mi facea stare quasi come colui che non sa per qual via pigli lo suo cammino, e che vuole andare e non sa onde se ne vada; e se io pensava di volere cercare una comune vìa di costoro, cioè là ove tutti s’accordassero, questa era via molto inimica verso me, cioè di chiamare e di mettermi ne le braccia de la Pietà. E in questo stato dimorando, mi giunse volontade di scriverne parole rimate; e dissine allora questo sonetto, lo quale comincia: Tutti li miei penser.
(After this last vision, when I had already written what Love commanded me to write, many and diverse thoughts began to assail and try me, against which I was defenseless; among these thoughts were four that seemed to disturb most my peace of mind. The first was this: the lordship of Love is good since he keeps the mind of his faithful servant away from all evil things. The next was this: the lordship of Love is not good because the more fidelity his faithful one shows him, the heavier and more painful are the moments he must live through. Another was this: the name of Love is so sweet to hear that it seems impossible to me that the effect itself should be in most things other than sweet, since, as has often been said, names are the consequences of the things they name: Nomina sunt consequentia rerum. The fourth was this: the lady through whom Love makes you suffer so is not like other ladies, whose heart can be easily moved to change its attitude. And each one of these thoughts attacked me so forcefully that it made me feel like one who does not know what direction to take, who wants to start and does not know which way to go. And as for the idea of trying to find a common road for all of them, that is, one where all might come together, this was completely alien to me: namely, appealing to Pity and throwing myself into her arms. While I was in this mood, the desire to write some poetry about it came to me, and so I wrote this sonnet which begins: All my thoughts.)
The problem he is struggling with is basically the eternal theme of the paradoxical nature of love. Still, it can be no coincidence that the only time he concerns himself with this topos is after the vision which contains conflicting aspects of Love. Perhaps the first of the four thoughts that comes to him, which stresses moral values, represents an attempt to think in terms of the Greater Aspect. The second thought, obviously, can apply only to the Lesser Aspect. The third merely describes the familiar oxymoric nature of love, with a touch of scholastic coloring. Whether the last thought is simply the conventional regret that the lady is unyielding, or whether it contains the recognition of the uniqueness of his lady Beatrice, is not too clear. But at least it is undeniable that the lover has been struggling with the problem of the nature of love after a second vision opposing Love’s two natures.
In my treatment of the vision in Chapter XXIV, a number of fine details were left undiscussed, since I was faced with the problem of establishing for the first time the identity of the figure of Love. To understand the full significance of this vision the reader should examine carefully the opening lines of the chapter, that set the stage for Love’s appearance:
Appresso questa vana imaginazione, avvenne uno die che, sedendo io pensoso in alcuna parte, ed io mi sentio cominciare un tremuoto nel cuore, così come se io fosse stato presente a questa donna. Allora dico che mi giunse una imaginazione d’Amore; che mi parve vederlo venire da quella parte ove la mia donna stava, e pareami che lietamente mi dicesse nel cor mio: “Pensa di benedicere lo dì che io ti presi, però che tu lo dei fare.” E certo me parea avere lo cuore sì lieto, che me non parea che fosse lo mio cuore, per la sua nuova condizione. E poco dopo queste parole che lo cuore mi disse con la lingua d’Amore, io vidi venire verso me una gentile donna, la quale era di famosa bieltade, e fue già molto donna di questo primo mio amico.
(After this wild dream I happened one day to be sitting in a certain place deep in thought, when I felt a tremor begin in my heart, as if I were in the presence of my lady. Then a vision of Love came to me, and I seemed to see him coming from that place where my lady dwelt, and he seemed to say joyously from within my heart: “See that you bless the day that I took you captive; it is your duty to do so.” And it truly seemed to me that my heart was happy, so happy that it did not seem to be my heart because of this change. Shortly after my heart had said these words, speaking with the tongue of Love, I saw coming toward me a gentlewoman, noted for her beauty, who had been the much-loved lady of my best friend.)
The “vana imaginazione” mentioned in the opening line is the prophetic vision of Beatrice’s death. That a connection exists between that vision, described in terms suggesting the Crucifixion, and this one in which Beatrice is indirectly compared to Christ, is obvious. In fact, the lover might not have been capable of having this last vision of Love until after having experienced the one prophetic of her death; this is surely suggested by the words of Love himself that describe the significance of the name of Beatrice’s companion, Primavera. He tells the lover:
“Quella prima è nominata Primavera solo per questa venuta d’oggi; ché io mossi lo imponitore del nome a chiamarla così Primavera, cioè ’prima verrà’ lo die che Beatrice si mostrerà dopo la imaginazione del suo fedele.…”
(“The one in front is called Primavera only because of the way she comes today; for I inspired the giver of her name to call her Primavera, meaning ‘she will come first’ (prima verrà) on the day that Beatrice shows herself after the dream of her faithful one….”)
Thus Love had planned this vision in advance, a plan which involved his inspiring one of Giovanna’s friends to give her the nickname Primavera—intending this vision to take place after the vision of Beatrice’s death, after the “vana imaginazione.”
We are also told, in the opening sentence of the chapter, that the lover’s heart began to tremble just before the appearance of Love; the fact that this tremor was of the sort he was accustomed to have when in the presence of his lady, prepares the way for the assimilation of Beatrice to Love at the conclusion of the vision. But this assimilation had already been suggested by degrees: the figure who appears in Chapter III, enveloped in a flame-colored cloud, will reappear in Chapter XII clothed in a garment of purest white; thus, Beatrice’s two colors, red and white, belong to the god of Love.
Finally, there is the remarkable fusion between the god and the lover-protagonist, a fusion that takes place almost immediately: he sees Love only briefly, coming from a certain direction; when he hears him speak, the words of Love come from the lover’s heart. In the three visions preceding that of Chapter XXIV the Lesser Aspect of Love had been represented: Chapter IX was exclusively concerned with this Aspect, while Chapters III and XII contained a shift from the Greater to the Lesser. And in all three cases this Aspect had been taken as being identical with the lover’s feelings at the moment, so far below the level of the Greater Aspect that he could not understand him in the two cases when this being spoke to him. Here, in Chapter XXIV, as we have seen, there is no shift from the Greater to the Lesser; at the same time, however, there is no contrast between the mood of the god and that of the lover-at-the-moment. He has understood him completely, for now the god is speaking from within the lover’s heart. For the first time the lover’s feelings of the moment have been raised to the height of the Greater Aspect.12
And after this high point reached in Chapter XXIV we shall not see the figure of Love again. But surely the young lover does. In that final vision which he withholds from us, which inspired him to stop writing about his love for Beatrice until he could do so more worthily, he must have seen Beatrice in glory; already in Chapter XLI he had caught a glimpse of
… una donna, che receve onore
e luce si, che per lo suo splendore
lo peregrino spirito la mira.
(… a lady held in reverence,
splendid in light, and through her radiance
the pilgrim spirit looks upon her being.)
And if he sees, at the end, the celestial radiance of Beatrice, how could the figure of Love be absent from his imagination—Love who had proclaimed the Christlike nature of Beatrice and her likeness to himself. And this time, too, the lover must have been raised to the level of the Greater Aspect, never again to sink below it.
* * *
In the preceding chapter of this essay, when Dante’s predilection for “mathematical thinking” was discussed, the importance of the number 9 was mentioned, its significance being due to the fact that it is the square of 3 which itself represents the Trinity. Because of the symbolic value of this number and the fact that in Chapter XXIX it is made to explain the miracle of Beatrice, one might have expected to find a pattern of “three’s” in the structure of the Vita nuova. But apart from the three “spiriti” of the lover, mentioned only once, and the three canzoni, devoted to Beatrice at different stages of her apotheo sis (Beatrice desired by Heaven, Beatrice ascending to Heaven, Beatrice in Heaven), there is no suggestion of such patterning.13 This is likely to be particularly surprising to the reader of the Vita nuova who comes to it from the Divine Comedy, where he is invited so often to think in terms of “three” (and always in terza rima). What we do find in the Vita nuova is an overwhelming emphasis on “two.”
Two ladies ask the lover for some of his poetry, toward the close of the book, two ladies at the beginning accompany the eighteen-year-old Beatrice on her first important promenade into the story. In Chapter IX a pilgrim appears, and in Chapter XL, a group of pilgrims. The lover chooses two screen-ladies. There are two persons who are brought on stage to address the lover: one to answer the lover’s question (the friend who takes him to the wedding feast in Chapter XIV), the other to question him (the lady in Chapter XVIII who pins him down about his love)—and in both these chapters the young lover is mocked.
There are two roles for the author of the Vita nuova: scribe and glossator, and there are two Beatrice’s: Beatrice alive and Beatrice dead. Twice we are reminded of the two Beatrice’s when, at a time she is still living in the story, she is referred to in terms that could apply only to Beatrice dead.14 Two colors are mentioned: red and white. Twice in the visions the color red is associated with her; twice the color white is connected with her: once in the story, once in a vision. There are only two concrete objects in the Vita nuova: a bed and some “panels” (certe tavolette) on which the lover is drawing the figures of angels. Twice in the story a stream of water flows alongside the lover’s path.
There are two languages in the Vita nuova. The three “spiriti” speak in Latin as does the god of Love, and Latin is used in quotations from the Bible. There are exactly two quotations from the Bible in the narrative proper, and there are two visions in which Love speaks in Latin. And whether the god of Love is speaking in Italian or Latin, he always makes two speeches to the lover. There are, of course, two styles in the Vita nuova: that of prose and that of poetry. There are two positions for the divisioni: up to Chapter XXXI the divi-sione follows the poem; from this point on it precedes. And there are exactly two periphrases for the city of Florence.
Two chapters of the forty-two are composed of essays; two chapters contain a didactic interpolation; two chapters contain not one but two poems. Two chapters, and only two, contain no reference to Beatrice. There are two chapters in which the protagonist’s liver (“lo spirito naturale”) is mentioned and two chapters containing visions in which his heart, as an object, is mentioned. In one chapter there is a poem with two beginnings, in another a canzone composed of only two stanzas. In two of the visions Love shifts from the greater to the Lesser Aspect.
One must wonder at the meaning, if any, of this apparently completely heterogeneous list. It is surely not to be explained by any Christian symbolic value adhering to the number two; still, within the Vita nuova, this number has its own significance: it must reflect the twofold nature of the God of Love. Does this mean that each of the pairs represents somehow the two Aspects? This is obviously true in one case: the pair mentioned last on our list involves the two shifts from the Greater to the Lesser Aspect. It is also true of the poem with two beginnings in Chapter XXXIV. The lover began the sonnet with a calm and reverent allusion to Beatrice’s soul in Heaven:
Era venuta ne la mente mia
la gentil donna che per suo valore
fu posta da Valtissimo signore
nel ciel de l’umiltate, ov’è Maria.
(Into my mind had come the gracious image
of the lady who, rewarded for her virtue,
was called by His most lofty Majesty
to the calm realm of Heaven where Mary reigns.)
Then he shifts to a new theme, suggesting his own grief over Beatrice’s death, and goes so far as to predicate Love’s grief:
Era venuta ne la mente mia
quella donna gentil cui piange Amore,
entro ’n quel punto che lo suo valore
vi trasse a riguardar quel ch’eo facia.
(Into my mind had come the gracious image
of the lady for whom Love still sheds his tears,
just when you were attracted by her virtue
to come and see what I was doing there.)
There is no question but that here we have a movement from the Greater to the Lesser Aspect, reminding the reader of the dramatic exchange of roles on the part of Love himself in Chapters III and XII. Again, of the two hearts mentioned in Chapters III and IX, the first was in the possession of the Greater Love, the second was carried by the Lesser Love. Also, though this may verge on the pedantic, the double role of the author (narrator, glossator) may be seen as reflecting the same duality: the narrator who records, mainly, the imperfect love of the protagonist, and the glossator who has come to understand what love for Beatrice must be. The most striking pair of oppositions is that of the two quotations from the Bible, both from Lamentations. In Chapter VII the protagonist writes a poem of sham grief beginning with the words, “O voi che per la via d’Amor passate,” telling us in the divisione that it is a modification of Jeremiah’s words: “O vos omnes qui transitis per viam…”. Chapter XXVIII, announcing the death and ascent into glory of Beatrice, begins with the words of the same prophet: “Quomodo sedet sola civitas plena populo!”
Again, it may be that one member of the pair will be suggestive of the Lesser Aspect, while the other will be associated with the theme of pure praise of the lady—surely an important step in the direction of the Greater Aspect. Of the two characters whom we hear address the lover, the first one is the friend who took him to that fateful wedding feast in Chapter XIV where his lovesick appearance provokes the derision of the ladies; the second one is the lady in Chapter XVIII whose question to the lover leads to his announcement of the program of praise he pretends to have adopted. As for the two streams which, I suggest, may represent sources of inspiration, it is the Lesser Love who in Chapter IX gazes into the stream, then to offer the lover advice about a second screen-lady; in Chapter XIX it is after the lover looks into the stream that there come to him the words “Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore.”
These are the only pairs in which the relationship between the two members concerns the development of the protagonist. There are a number, however, in which this relationship is meaningful, and in some cases, is of real importance for the story. Mainly, this significance, slight or great, is obvious. Surely the pilgrims of Chapter XL must remind the reader of the pilgrim figure in Chapter IX—whose trivial concerns offer a contrast to those of the pilgrims on their way to Rome, indifferent to things of this world, their thoughts centered on their holy goal. Of greater importance is the duality of “Beatrice alive—Beatrice dead” (reminding the reader of the parallels offered by the life of Saint Alexis and the Song of Roland, in both of which the protagonist’s death confers upon him a new significance and makes of him a source of new inspiration), the importance of this duality being reflected in the two periphrases used for the name of the city of Florence, which is referred to only as the city where Beatrice lived or where she died. And we remember that Beatrice alive is twice described in terms of Beatrice dead. The importance of this duality is also reflected in the shift of position of the divisioni: it is only after Beatrice’s death that the divisione follows the poem (now the reader sees why the author of the Vita nuova chose to postpone this artistic improvement until Chapter XXXI).
As for the two styles in which the Vita nuova is written, prose and poetry, the combination of the two represents a new literary genre in Italian literature. That the only two colors should be colors susceptible of symbolic interpretation and attributed to Beatrice needs no explanation. That the reader’s attention should be called to only two concrete objects is also understandable, but some analysis is required if we would see the relation between the bed in Chapter XXIII and the panels in XXXIV which the lover uses in drawing forms of angels. It was on this bed that the young lover was lying when in his delirium he witnessed the portents of his lady’s death. And it is exactly one year after her death that he is sitting, thinking of her, drawing on these panels; he is surely, on this anniversary, remembering his vision of her death, and perhaps the angels that take form on the “certe tavolette” are those that he saw from his bed of delirium, as they ascended to Heaven.
Still more analysis is required to see the significance of the two ladies at the end of the Vita nuova who make a request for some of the lover’s poems, or the two at the beginning who are with Beatrice when she first greets the protagonist. Why should two (unknown) ladies join in a request for his poetry? and why was Beatrice not accompanied by a group of ladies or by just one lady? As for the scene in which Beatrice makes her first appearance as a young lady, I suggest that the duality, taken first as a minimal indication of plurality, is intended to suggest that entourage of feminine beings without which the figure of the Florentine Beatrice would be unimaginable. And if the duality be interpreted strictly and as subordinated to her own uniqueness, then the two ladies are there so that Beatrice may be associated, visually, with the number 3.
Surely these two ladies are the same as the ones who inspire the poem that closes the Vita nuova: the description of the lover’s spirit gazing with awe at the radiance of Beatrice in glory. These two ladies, who do not appear but merely send word to the young man they once saw receive Beatrice’s first greeting, are now deprived of her company. And he grants their request by choosing two of his poems for them, and exceeds their request by composing a third—it is made clear to the reader that the lover sends two poems plus one; and, in the one, he recreates for them the Beatrice that they and he have lost.
As for the two chapters in which Beatrice is not mentioned, the context supplies the explanation. Chapter XX contains the sonnet “Amore e ’I cor gentil sono una cosa” which treats of love generically, of the “saggia donna” and the effect of her beauty on all men. There is an elegance here in the poet’s discreet omission of any reference to his lady (an omission which he will more than make up for in the next chapter). The lack of any reference to her in Chapter XXXIV has a shameful motivation: the lover has been swept into rapturous infidelity at the sight of the “lady at the window.” But what is most significant, of course, about the negative count of two here illustrated is the positive fact that every other chapter does contain a reference to Beatrice.
Finally, there are pairs whose existence would appear to be a coincidence. What can possibly be the significance of the fact that Chapters VIII and XXVII contain two sonnets, or that in all four visions in which Love appears, he addresses the lover twice? Why are there two mentions of the lover’s liver? Why are there two chapters with essays and two chapters with interpolations? Why does the lover choose two screen-ladies?
It is, of course, possible that only coincidence accounts for this last group of “two’s” but it is more likely that Dante went out of his way to impress “duality” upon the reader’s consciousness-pure duality without any specific significance to detract from the purity. Perhaps there is underlying here something in common with the symbolism underlying the terza rima of the Divine Comedy. The three beasts of Inferno I invite us to think of the major vices, while the three canticles present Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. But the pattern of three lines that continuously recurs as the heart-beat of the poem has no significance except that of “threeness”: the pure symbol of the Trinity. And the purity of duality given by the last group of “two’s” may be a clear reflection of the Great Duality which represents the major theme and underlying movement of the Vita nuova.15
The dual nature of the god of Love was, of course, only a reflection of the potentialities of the young lover’s heart. And the rest of this essay, in fact, will be devoted to a study of his heart: his inner conflicts and spiritual development as a lover. The tendency of the critics is to see this development optimistically, and to fix the turning point of the poet-lover’s progress in his inspired decision to write the canzone “Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore.”
And indeed, according to the prose narrative, Dante wrote this poem as the result of having found a “new matter” for his poetry, of having adopted a new attitude toward his beloved Beatrice—after she refused him her greeting. He comes to realize that, placing his happiness as he had in the ecstasy inspired by her greeting, he had been embracing a false ideal; from now on he would think only of that which could never fail him: the ladv Beatrice’s excellence itself. And his love for her would express itself only in words of praise. This stage is reached in Chapter XVIII, thanks to his meeting with a group of ladies, one of whom proves to be the inspiration for his new program. Properly enough, the first of his poems of praise is addressed to “Donne che avete intelletto d’amore.”1
The story of his love begins in Chapter II: Beatrice makes her first appearance and, by the time the Chapter ends, nine years have passed with the protagonist under the domination of love. The action starts to flow again in Chapter III when the young lover receives Beatrice’s first greeting and, ecstatic, goes home to sleep and to dream that Love appears to him. Soon after this vision his health becomes impaired (IV); his appearance causes concern to his friends and provokes malicious questioning from others who, he deduces, must be jealous of him. In Chapter V a coincidental meeting of glances inspires in the lover the decision to choose a beautiful lady as a screen for his love of Beatrice, and he begins writing poems to the screen-lady, none of which he includes in his little book. After “several years and several months,” the screen-lady leaves Florence (VII) and the lover deliberately decides to write a poem pretending deep grief.2
The thread of the love story is lost in Chapter VIII, which the author devotes to describing the death of a young lady, one of Beatrice’s companions. In Chapter IX he is in the midst of a journey away from Florence. In his sadness over leaving the place where Beatrice is, he imagines that he sees the figure of Love; the god bids him seek a second screen-lady calling her by name. If in Chapter VI the poet has summed up briefly the time spent in service of his first screen-lady, he uses even fewer words in Chapter X to describe his busy wooing of the second. In fact, before the end of the first sentence we begin to learn of the results of his courtship: “… la feci mia difesa tanto, che troppa gente ne ragionava oltre li termini de la cortesia…” In this brief account there is the momentum and impact of three different movements: his overzealous efforts to convince the lady and the world of a love he did not feel, the stirring up of public opinion which hastened from criticism to slander, and finally, the single act which brought both movements to a halt on the fatal day that Beatrice refused her greeting.3 The dynamics of this brief, condensed chapter has no parallel in the Vita nuova. And, as if to suggest the shock received by the lover, there is no mention in this chapter of his emotional reaction to Beatrice’s rejection.4
Nor is his reaction mentioned in the chapter that follows—which goes back in time to describe, in lingering detail and by stages, the blissful effect that his lady’s greeting has had on him for years (the period of anticipation, the moment of the greeting, the aftermath of lingering ecstasy). Now we can read of his past exaltation, knowing already that this is something that he will never experience again: Chapter XI is a reminiscent pause between the sudden cruel blow dealt the lover by his lady and the outburst of his anguished feelings which must have immediately followed it, but which we learn about only in Chapter XII.5 The chapter begins with his tears (it is the first time he weeps because of Beatrice). He goes to a solitary place and, after his sobbing has quieted down somewhat, he closes himself in his room to fall asleep like a little boy crying from a spanking. That this is not the tragic grief of a mature person is shown by the concluding simile: “come un pargoletto batuto lagrimando.”6 While the lover sleeps he has his third vision of Love—as a result of which he will send Beatrice a ballata imploring her mercy (the first poem he has ever written for her), which will have no effect.
In Chapter XIV is described the scene of his humiliation at the wedding feast, which prompts him to write Beatrice a reproachful sonnet. After this public fiasco the lover is seized by a mood of persistent self-questioning (XV): why seek out Beatrice when the sight of her has such a disastrous effect on him and makes of him such a ludicrous figure? He comes to the realization that whenever he calls to mind her beautiful image, he is overwhelmed by a desire to see her, a desire so strong that it obscures his memory of past experiences. He writes her a sonnet describing again his feelings in her presence, and upbraiding her for the cruelty of her mockery which must kill all pity in others. This sonnet receives the most elaborate divisioni so far recorded in the Vita nuova.
In Chapter XVI he continues to wrestle with similar thoughts and writes a sonnet about them, again to Beatrice. But then, realizing the futility of such outpourings, the protagonist decides (XVII) to be silent about his own condition, even if this means he will never write to her again. And, in fact, he never does.
It is clear that up until the point when the poet-lover arrives at this decision his love has been entirely self-centered, and mainly puerile and sickly. After the description in Chapter II of Beatrice’s beauty, which was praised in panegyrical terms, terms even suggestive of her mystery, she has been presented exclusively, in the following chapters, as the stimulus for his emotions: his ecstasy or his despair. The first feeling reaches its culmination in the rhapsodic description of the threefold effect on him of her greeting; the second, in the very bitter chapters telling of the gabbo and its results, which lead to his decision to seek a new theme for his poetry.
The poem, “Donne ch’avete … ,” which is the result of this decision and of the lover’s conversation with the ladies in Chapter XVIII, should be divided, according to its author, into three main parts: I, II—III—IV, V. The canzone has a circular movement: I and V are alike in that they both contain apostrophes—the first addressed to the ladies, the last to the canzone itself. Moreover, in the first stanza there is briefly created a social ambiente of gentility, when the lover promises to talk of Beatrice with the “Donne e donzelle amorose” as his select audience; and in the last stanza there is a return to this ambi-ente, as the poem is instructed to associate, in its journey to the lady, only with courteous folk. Thus, the canzone is framed by a social background.
But in stanza II, immediately, without transition, the ambiente has changed from the social to the celestial: “Angelo clama in divino intelletto.” In the opening line the Divine Intellect suddenly receives the ecstatic exclamation (note the solemnity of the Latinate clama) of an angel who has just perceived the splendor of a radiance emanating from Earth, penetrating Heaven, and has recognized the miracle of Beatrice. Then, all of Heaven shouts for this lady. In the admonitory words of Pity there is briefly adumbrated the figure of the wistful lover—which immediately fades as the stern voice is heard, in the last two lines, of one proclaiming to the damned in Hell that he has beheld the hope of the Blessèd:
e che dirà ne lo inferno: ‘O mal nati,
io vidi la speranze de’ beati’
(and who shall say unto the damned in Hell:
“I have beheld the hope of Heaven’s blest.”)7
The first line of stanza III, offering a gentle transition, is a reminder that, while the figure of Beatrice passes before the people down on earth, these ’ are looking upon one already coveted by Heaven:
Madonna è disiata in sommo cielo.
Or voi di sua virtù farvi savere.
Dico, qual vuol gentil donna parere
vada con lei, che quando va per via,
gitta nei cor villani Amore un gelo,
per che onne lor penserò agghiaccia e pere;
e qual soffrisse di starla a vedere
diverria nobil cosa, o si morria.
E quando trova alcun che degno sia
di veder lei, quei prova sua vertute,
ché li avvien, ciò che li dona, in salute,
e sì l’umilia, ch’ogni offesa oblia.
Ancor l’ha Dio per maggior grazia dato:
che non pò mal finir chi l’ha parlato.
(My lady is desired in highest heaven.
Now let me tell you something of her power.
A lady who aspires to graciousness
should seek her company for, where she goes,
Love drives a killing frost into vile hearts
that freezes and destroys what they are thinking;
should such a one insist on looking at her,
he is changed to something noble or he dies.
And if she finds one worthy to behold her,
that man will feel her power for salvation
when she accords to him her salutation,
which humbles him, till he forgets all wrongs.
God has graced her with an even greater gift:
whoever speaks with her shall speak with Him.)
This is not the first time that Beatrice has been presented as passing through the streets of Florence; but before this it was as if she were observed by only one person, and as if he alone were impressed by her beauty (II) and her greeting (III). Now, Beatrice’s movement forward is witnessed by all the people of Florence, each one of whom is affected by her presence. And here the effect is exclusively on the moral plane: regenerative or punitive according to the merits of the one having the experience of seeing her.
Stanza IV opens with Beatrice receiving the encomium, the superlative encomium of Love (“Dice di lei Amor …”), who is presented as gazing steadily upon her—then uttering a prophecy of her apotheosis. Unlike the first two stanzas of praise (II and III) which represent units, each in its own setting, this stanza (which offers no “setting” for Love) falls into three parts. The four lines following the testimony of Love are devoted to a description, the only one in the Vita nuova, of Beatrice’s carnal beauty, the coloring of her flesh (“color di perle…”)—it was an elegant move to postpone this allusion to the beauty of Beatrice’s body until after having described the beauty of her soul. By an easy transition, by an allusion to her eyes and their effect upon the beholder, Beatrice comes once more to move among the people of Florence. In the last lines it is not her moral effectiveness that is extolled but her capacity for arousing love, as her glance passes through the eyes of him who looks at her, and reaches his heart.8 But, of course, for Beatrice to awaken love is for her to awaken love of virtue.
Of the five lyrical poems concerned with his love that precede the first canzone (XII, XIII, XIV, XV and XVI), all have in common the lover’s need for pity. And all but the ballata, in which he affirms his loyalty to Beatrice (XII), describe his sad and sickly state. But the canzone is devoted entirely to the glorification of Beatrice. If the lover is present at all in this poem it is only as a figure lost in the mass of Beatrice’s admirers, and the reader is never made directly aware, at any point, of the drama of the lover’s feelings. Truly a new note has been sounded in the Vita nuova.
But the note is new also in Italian poetry: nothing quite comparable can be found in any of the love poetry preceding Dante. It is true that Cavalcanti had written three love poems of pure praise, and Guinizelli at least two;9 moreover, one of these latter (“Io voglio del ver …”) offers in the tercets a picture of the moral effects on others of the lady’s perfection. In fact, the last lines of this sonnet evoke the same situation as that of the central stanza of Dante’s first canzone: Guinizelli, too, presents the lady as she passes before others:
Passa per via adorna, e sì gentile
ch’abassa orgoglio a cui dona salute,
e fa ’l de nostra fé se non la crede;
e nolle pò apressare om che sia vile;
ancor ve dirò c’ha maggior vertute:
null’ om pò mal pensar fin che la vede.
(With decorum and such grace she passes by,
and her gift of salutation makes pride bow,
converting non-believers to our faith;
no evil man can come within her bounds;
there is more to tell; even greater powers has she:
no man can have a base thought in her presence.)
But one detail at least is lacking that was found in Dante’s poem, in which Beatrice’s efficacy is presented as not only regenerative but punitive: “E qual soffrisse di starla a vedere/ diverria nobil cosa, o si morria” This suggests, somehow, the Beatrice of Fur gat or y XXX, come to judge her lover.
And surely there is nothing in earlier literature to compare with the second stanza: the scene in Heaven when the radiance emanating from Beatrice is perceived, and the miracle of her nature recognized by all the coelestes—so different from the heavenly scene of recantation that closes Guinizelli’s canzone which Dante admired so much: “Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore.” Finally, in stanza IV is proclaimed Love’s recognition of the Divine plan for Beatrice: “… e fra se stesso giura/che Dio ne ’ntenda di far cosa nuova.” It was of course a topos in medieval love poetry to claim that the lady was created directly by God, from the beginning unique and miraculous, but the “cosa nuova” intended by God in these lines is something still in store for Beatrice. She will become more.
In Chapter XXI Dante writes again in praise of his lady-more briefly, more simply, limiting himself to the sonnet form: “Ne li occhi porta la mia donna Amore.” In fact, this sonnet is a reworking of the central stanza (also of fourteen lines) of the first canzone: again Beatrice is seen passing before the people who gaze upon her with awe. This is also the theme of the next two poems of praise, both found in Chapter XXVI. The first is Dante’s most famous sonnet, and one of the most famous in world literature:
Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare
la donna mia quand’ella altrui saluta,
ch’ogne lingua deven tremando muta,
e li occhi no l’ardiscon di guardare.
Ella si va, sentendosi laudare,
benignamente d’umilità vestuta;
e par che sia una cosa venuta
dal cielo in terra a mìracol mostrare.
Mostrasi sì piacente a chi la mira,
che dà per li occhi una dolcezza al core,
che ’ntender no la può chi no la prova:
e par che de la sua labbia si mova
un spirito soave pien d’amore,
che va dicendo a l’anima: “Sospira!”
(Such sweet decorum and such gentle grace
attend my lady’s greeting as she moves
that lips can only tremble into silence,
and eyes dare not attempt to gaze at her.
Moving, benignly clothed in humility,
untouched by all the praise along her way,
she seems to be a creature come from Heaven
to earth to manifest a miracle.
Miraculously gracious to behold,
her sweetness reaches, through the eyes, the heart
(who has not felt this cannot understand),
and from her lips it seems there moves a gracious
spirit, so deeply loving that it glides
into the souls of men, whispering: “Sigh!”)
The first quatrain describes a single, crystalized moment (which we must imagine forever repeated), the moment of Beatrice’s greeting, with its immediate electrical effect upon the individual so honored; the second quatrain is all fluidity as the lady, having come from afar, moves ahead in space and time, to the rhythm of ella si va; the apparent break with the tercets is effaced by the fusion of mostrare and Mostrasi. There is a flow of sweetness, that can only be distilled in a “sigh.”—In the second sonnet (“Vede perfettamente onne salute”) the lady is seen not alone but attended by other ladies who, somehow, seem to partake of her perfection: “… ciascuna per lei receve onore.”
In Chapter XXVII we are told that the protagonist, after re-reading the last two sonnets, decides to change his theme, his reason being that he had failed to include in them any reference to himself. And so, finding these poems defective (“pare-ami defettivamente avere parlato”), he begins to write a canzone about the effect of Beatrice upon him. But in Chapter XVIII he had decided that from then on he would choose material for his poems that would be only in praise of his lady (“propuosi di prendere per matera de lo mio parlare sempre mai quello che fosse loda di questa gentilissima”). How can this reversal of position be explained? Perhaps he believed that with the practice gained by writing four poems of selfless adoration he could take up once again a more personal theme without fear of giving way to self-infatuation; that he could describe the effects of his lady’s virtues upon him with the same objectivity he had displayed in describing the reactions of others to his lady’s beauty. Moreover, he indirectly promises his reader that he will have something new to say about his feelings (“quello che al presente tempo adoperava in me”); and indeed, the calm, opening lines of the canzone he was never to finish do suggest a new stage in his feelings:
Sì lungiamente w’ha tenuto Amore
e costumato a la sua segnoria,
che sì com’elli m’era forte in pria,
così mi sta soave ora nel core.
(So long a time has Love kept me a slave
and in his lordship fully seasoned me,
that even though at first I felt him harsh
now tender is his power in my heart.)
At least we are led to expect a poem of happiness and poise. But, in the lines that follow, it becomes evident that the sweetness of which he speaks (“soave … nel core”) is still a sickly sweetness. The first detail offered is the loss of his strength: he speaks of his fainting soul and of the pallor of his face, and twice the disequilibrium of his spiriti is mentioned. But not only does he offer a morbid description of his condition: the picture of the spiriti of sight that are dispossessed by Love has been offered three times before (in the prose of Chapter XI, in the prose and in the poem of Chapter XIV). This repetition gives the impression that he is moved by some mechanical force, and this suggestion of the mechanical is strengthened by the penultimate line with its insistence on the inevitability of this destructive process: “Questo m’avvene ovunque ella mi vede….” And with this fourteen-line stanza ends the poem (interrupted by the death of Beatrice) that was to have been a canzone because, as the protagonist had confidently declared, the short form of the sonnet would not have sufficed to describe the “new” state of his feelings. There is, perhaps, poetic justice in the fact that his abortive attempt to describe his supposed new happiness should take the form of an abortive poem.
It is theoretically possible that, if conditions had allowed the protagonist to finish his unfinished canzone, the total effect would have been quite different from that made by the opening stanza. Perhaps he would have picked up the note of the last line referring to his lady’s “humility” (“… e si e cosa umil, che nol si crede”) in order, finally, to subordinate his own emotional experience to her excellence. But this is not very likely, in the light of the words with which he describes his own judgment of the two preceding sonnets: “seeing … that I had not mentioned anything about the effect she had on me at the present time, I realized that I had spoken insufficiently (‘defettivamente’).” Not only does he decide to write a poem about himself: he reads over two poems in praise of his lady, including the exquisite sonnet “Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare,” and judges them to be defective on the grounds that they contain no mention of himself! And to remedy the situation he decides that, if he would describe his condition adequately, he should write not a sonnet but a poem as lengthy as his first poem of praise, “Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore.” He was able to allow for the overshadowing of his sonnets of praise by a monument to his own feelings. And, in judging defective the sonnets of Chapter XXVI, it is almost as if he were ready to cancel out the last two poems of praise, thus reducing the total achievement of his new program to two poems (the first canzone and the sonnet in Chapter XXI). For our protagonist will never write another poem of praise (that is, one devoted solely to this theme).
The critics, as we know, have considered the protagonist’s decision to limit his love poems to praise of the lady as the turning point of the action of the Vita nuova, the turning point of his spiritual development as a lover. According to some (e.g. Singleton) the lover goes beyond the stage reached in the first canzone; according to others (e.g. De Robertis) there is no higher stage than this reached in the course of the Vita nuova. I know of no critic who speaks of the breakdown of his program of praise. But there was a breakdown!
It may well be that the unfinished canzone which Dante places immediately after the last poem of praise was actually among the earliest poems of his youthful period. But this would not diminish in the least our right to interpret these lines according to their position in the text. For, whenever it was written and whatever may have been its inspiration, the only fact of importance for the reader of the Vita nuova, as I stated in the Preface, is that its author has chosen to place it where he did.10
After Chapter XXVIII, in which Beatrice’s death is announced, it would be impossible to find poems of praise in the conventional sense, but we might have expected that the shock of her death would have inspired in the lover a new kind of praise concerned only with her heavenly attributes (a suggestion of this was already present in the first canzone)11 But instead of a rekindling of his inspiration, there is a calamitous collapse into his early mood of emotional self-indulgence. The four poems that open the period of his life after Beatrice’s death are characterized by the most arrant self-pity: there are five references to sighs, thirteen to tears, and twenty-four to anguish, and there are numerous similar references in the prose that precedes them. The time has come to scrutinize more carefully the poetry of praise contained in the Vita nuova, and also to examine, for the first time in detail, the circumstances responsible for the protagonist’s adoption of his new program.
As for the events leading up to the adoption of this new program of praise, it is in Chapter XVII, as we know, that the lover decides to abandon the theme of morbid self-analysis. But he also announces, anticipating what he will tell us in the following chapter, that he has found the new theme; and the account of his finding it, he promises, will be pleasant to listen to.
The narrative of Chapter XVIII opens with a background of ladies gathered together enjoying each other’s company (with “dilettandosi l’una ne la compagnia de l’altra” we are reminded of the many social scenes in the Decameron). These are ladies who happen to be well aware of the protagonist’s love and of its disastrous effects on him; as he happens to pass by, one of them hails him. The background of ladies forms a tryptic: some laughing together, some watching him, and some talking together. It is one of these who abruptly asks the lover a question: “To what end do you love this lady of yours, if you cannot resist the sight of her?” She insists on an answer (since the goal of such a love must be strange indeed). With this, the three groups of ladies become one, as all wait for the answer. He replies: “Ladies, the end and aim of my love formerly lay in the greeting of this lady, to whom you are perhaps referring, and in this greeting dwelt the bliss which was the end of all my desires. But since it pleased her to deny it to me, my lord, Love, through his grace, has placed all my bliss in something that cannot fail me.” The first response to his sanctimonious remark is a flow of words and sighs from the ladies, which reminds him of the fall of rain mingled with beautiful flakes of snow (and inspires the only complete simile in the Vita nuova; see note 6). But one of the ladies, the one who had first hailed him, is not impressed by his verbosity nor is she put off by his evasiveness. She asks him point-blank in what his bliss now consists. He answers, as briefly: “In those words that praise my lady.” She retorts: “If you are telling us the truth, then those words you wrote her about your feelings must have been composed with other intentions.” And as he leaves the group, he is ashamed and filled with astonishment that he had written as he had.12 It is then that for the first time he decides to choose praise of his lady as his theme—after hearing himself announce that as his program, forced into this announcement by the insistent prodding of the lady. So, this lady whose only purpose has been to taunt him becomes, in spite of herself, the Muse of his new poetry, a Muse, to be sure, quite different from the usual one, who guides the poetic flight of the poet already possessed of his theme. Here his Muse forces him to find a theme.13
But he will not start writing immediately, lacking the boldness to undertake a theme too lofty for his talents, and the chapter ends with his conflicting emotions, his desire to compose and his hesitancy to begin the task. He has still not begun when the next chapter opens. Thinking first in terms of the correct poetic procedure, he decides that his unborn poem can only be addressed to refined ladies. This decided upon, his tongue, he tells us, suddenly moved as if of its own accord and spoke the words “Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore.” Recognizing that this must be the opening line of his poem, he joyfully stored it away in his memory and, after some days of reflection, began to write.
Most critics of the Vita nuova speak of the spontaneity of the composition of Dante’s magnificent first canzone, characteristic of the so-called dolce stil novo.14 But, in the first place, it owes much to pure chance: it is the result of a coincidental meeting (the protagonist himself stresses the fact that he was directed to the ladies as if guided by fortune), and of being pushed into a verbal corner.15 It is also the result of a struggle, the struggle to make good the words forced out of him by an acidulous young lady (one cannot fail to note the untranscen-dental nature of his Muse). And when his tongue is finally inspired to speak, it speaks in terms only of the audience he has chosen: “Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore.” (In a somewhat similar way he chose the audience for whom he would write his first sonnet, this time an audience composed of fellow-poets.) It is only later, after much reflection, that the real substance of his poem came to him. Given the reluctant nature of his inspiration, it is not surprising that he found this inspiration difficult to sustain for long.
It was said earlier that in the first canzone a new note had been sounded, not only in the poetry of the Vita nuova but in Italian poetry. But in the three poems of praise that follow, the “new note” is muted: the sternness of Beatrice’s demeanor in the middle stanza of the first canzone, that seemed to point ahead to the Beatrice of Purgatory, has dissolved.16 Not only do the sonnets offer a more sentimentalized version of the central stanza of the first canzone, there is also suggested, in spite of their high poetic quality, taken singly, a certain staleness of imagination. The poet-lover cannot conceive a new situation in which to present Beatrice: three more times he must show her passing before the people, and the purifying effect of her beauty, of her glance.17
And what he is repeating, of course, is a concept that he has borrowed from Guinizelli (“Io voglio del ver la mia donna laudare”), who himself, to the best of my knowledge, had borrowed it from no one. At least I know of no love poem in Italian literature before Guinizelli, or in Provençal love poetry, where we find such a blend of sensuous and spiritual beauty in the portrait of a lady, together with an account of the galvanizing effect of her qualities—and this against the delicately suggested background of the society in which the lady lives and which she transforms.18 Guinizelli (see note 8) concentrated his invention in the tercets of his sonnet; the quatrains are very different. Metaphor is piled on metaphor as the lady is compared to what she is not: from the sweet-smelling rose and lily to the radiant morning star to the bright colors of nature and of art—all suggesting sensuous beauty. Then, after a transitional line with an intimation of the spiritual (line 8), appears the lady herself, the purity of her beauty in the tercets enhanced by the sensuous background of the quatrains. So, Guinizelli invented the theme “the lady passes,” presented it as the climax of a sonnet, and never returned to it again. Dante borrowed it, magnified it to the full length of a sonnet, and used it four times to praise his lady. In one case, it is true (the central stanza of the first canzone), his adaptation had a power and a sublimity beyond that of its model, but in this one case we have not the climax of an upward movement but a brilliant beginning which is itself the end: there was no further development from this canzone in the Vita nuova. But how could there be one in this little book? That was to be for another, greater book.
In fact, the first canzone is immediately followed by a poem whose theme bears no direct relationship to the main action of the story. It is a generic treatment of the origin of love in the human heart: “Amore e ’l cor gentil sono una cosa.” In the first quatrain the identity of love and the gentle heart is proclaimed and insisted upon; the second speaks of their common origin (both created by Nature in an amorous mood) and of the function served by the heart to provide a home in which love may sleep. The tercets describe the three stages preparatory to the awakening of love in the man’s heart, the last line attributing the same process to feminine psychology. This line (“E simil face in donna omo valente.”) is sheer bathos. And the sonnet as a whole, completely lacking in lyrical inspiration, is weakly imitative: the quatrains are clearly reminiscent of Guinizelli; the tercets could be from any poet from Giacomo da Lentino on—except, perhaps, for the final line.
The lover writes this sonnet, according to the prose explanation that precedes, because a friend, having read “Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore” (which by this time had become well-known), asked him for his definition of love. And the protagonist decided that, after having treated the theme of Beatrice’s excellence, it would be fitting to treat of love in general. We must wonder how anybody who truly appreciated the originality and power of this, one of the greatest canzoni in Italian literature, could suggest that its author return to the stale practice of offering a definition of love. But it is even more surprising that the author of “Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore” should be interested in fulfilling his friend’s request. If he believed that he could revitalize this conventional theme, as Guinizelli had done so magnificently in his famous canzone (“Al cor gentil …”), the reader of the Vita nuova might understand his decision, but in the sonnet which the protagonist wrote, supposedly following his friend’s suggestion, the staleness is unmitigated; the lack of poetic inspiration is obvious. And it suffers painfully from its immediate juxtaposition with the canzone. To this, one cannot object that the poem may well have been one of the young Dante’s earliest poems, for it was the older Dante that decided on such a juxtaposition, just as he decided to give the rather witless motivation for its composition that he did. The author of the Vita nuova chose to place one of the weakest poems he had ever written where he did to indicate a decline of the protagonist’s creative powers after the high point reached in his first canzone. Just how long this diminution of his powers may have lasted is not made specific, but it seems clear that the lover of Beatrice wrote nothing during the time his canzone was becoming known. And it would also seem that he was forced to accept gratefully a theme proposed by a friend, only indirectly related to his new program of praise, in order to start writing again.
It would seem, too, that the effort expended in producing this sonnet-by-request gives our protagonist a new momentum (for a while), even suggesting the way to return to his chosen theme: having described the power of any virtuous and beautiful woman, he tells us (XXI) he is inspired now to describe the far greater power of his own lady. He writes the graceful sonnet “Ne li occhi porta la mia donna amore” to be followed in Chapter XXVI by the exquisite “Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare” and the more modest “Vede perfettamente ogni salute.”
In carefully comparing these sonnets with the first canzone the reader can only feel, as has been said, that there has been a let-down, but, as we have just seen, these sonnets do not follow the canzone immediately. They follow the feeble sonnet written after the great falling away from the canzone, and as a continuation of this sonnet they represent an increase in poetic creativity. The protagonist was, after all, able to move upward for a second time and maintain himself on a relatively high plateau before he fell to the low level of the unfinished canzone (XXVII), in which he returns to the self-pity of the earlier years before embarking on his new program of praise.19
Between Chapters XXI and XXVI, containing the three sonnets of praise, come four more poems: two sonnets on the death of Beatrice’s father (XXII), the canzone describing the lover’s prophetic vision of Beatrice’s death (XXIII), and the sonnet dealing with his last vision of Love. Since none of these is a love poem the question of “praise” versus “self-pity” cannot arise. At the same time, however, it is true that the first two offered the protagonist an excellent opportunity to express indirectly whatever grief he may still have been feeling because of the loss of his lady’s greeting, channeling the main stream of his grief into tributaries, as it were.
In the prose of Chapter XXII we are told that the lover takes up his stand on a street by which most of the ladies who had gone to Beatrice’s home to mourn her father’s death would be likely to return. We watch three groups of ladies pass and hear them speak. The first group speak of Beatrice’s grief, the second of their own (and their words reduce him to tears); the third group turn their attention to the grief-stricken figure of the lover, whom they recognize, covering his face with his hands. They seem to wonder at his tears since he has not been privileged to see Beatrice weep; they also comment on the change he has undergone since they first knew him—we may be reminded of the three groups of ladies in Chapter XVIII. And as, continuing to speak, they leave him behind, he hears the sound of his name mingled with that of Beatrice.
Both of the poems in Chapter XXII are full of tears. In the first, where the lover pretends to address the grieving ladies who have come from the scene of Beatrice’s grief, it is her tears and theirs that are described; in the last line only is there a reference to the feelings of the protagonist touched by the ladies’ grief:
lo veggio li occhi vostri c’hanno pianto
e veggiovi tornar sì sfigurate,
che ’l cor mi triema di vederne tanto.
(I see your eyes, I see how they have wept,
and how you come retreating all undone;
my heart is touched and shaken at the sight.)
But the reader is made aware of the vicarious pleasure the lover is experiencing as he dwells at length on the mourners’ expressions of grief. In the second sonnet, in which he pretends that the ladies returning from Beatrice address him, the first two quatrains are devoted to his own grief:
Se’ tu colui c’hai trattato sovente
di nostra donna, sol parlando a nui?
Tu risomigli a la voce ben lui,
ma la figura ne par d’altra gente.
E perché piangi tu sì coralmente,
che fai di te pietà venire altrui?
Vedestù pianger lei, che tu non pui
punto celar la dolorosa mente?
(Are you the one that often spoke to us
about our lady, and to us alone?
Your tone of voice, indeed, resembles his,
but in your face we find another look.
Why do you weep so bitterly? Pity
would melt the heart of anyone who sees you.
Have you seen her weep, too, and now cannot
conceal from us the sorrow in your heart?)
It is true that these words are put into the mouths of the ladies; the poet-lover does not speak in his own voice to describe his grief. But what he has done instead makes us even more aware of his self-centeredness: he has offered us a picture of himself as seen by others, he has made of himself a theatrical figure of grief—a grief which supposedly has so ravaged his features as to make him all but unrecognizable. Not only does his sorrow over Beatrice’s father as it is portrayed here strike the reader as excessive: one must also wonder why, in this account of the protagonist’s experience as a lover, two poems have been inspired by the father’s death. One can only conclude that the occasion offered him the excuse to treat a favorite theme without directly expressing his own feelings. (Ultimately the two poems are artistically justified: concerned as they are with the theme “death of a loved one,” they serve to anticipate the canzone that immediately follows, containing the lover’s vision of Beatrice’s death.20)
After learning of his lady’s death, which seems to take place between chapters XXVII and XXVIII, somewhere outside of the world of the Vita nuova, the protagonist writes three chapters without a poem. In the first he announces with composure the calling to glory of Beatrice, and enumerates the reasons for not discussing this event; in the second he offers a brief treatise on the significance of the number nine and its relationship to Beatrice; in the third he tells us of having written to the “great of the land” about the desolation of Florence after Beatrice’s death.
These three chapters following the death of Beatrice constitute the most arid portion of the Vita nuova. No reader can fail to notice the chill of this opening part of the final section of Dante’s Book of Memory, and the contrast it offers to the poem that has just preceded. Has the shock of Beatrice’s death numbed the protagonist’s feelings (if not his memory)? Or has he, feeling shame over the self-pitying mood in which he was caught by the news of her death, resolved to banish all thoughts about his own condition? To one who reads carefully the opening lines of Chapter XXX the first suggestion is patently false; the second is closer to the truth.
Poi che fue partita da questo secolo, rimase tutta la sopra-detta cittade quasi vedova dispogliata da ogni dignitade; onde io, ancora lagrimando in questa desolata citade …
(After she had departed from this world, the aforementioned city was left as if a widow, stripped of all dignity, and I, still weeping in this barren city….)
Evidently, ever since the moment that the lover heard about Beatrice’s death he has been weeping, forcing himself, while he wept, to think beyond his tears; he wrote his Latin letter “ancora lagrimando.” Because of this ancora we can reread Chapter XXVIII with more sympathy, and with admiration for the task which he had stoically imposed upon himself in what were perhaps his moments of deepest grief.
Up to the “ancora lagrimando” of Chapter XXX the lover had been able since the death of his lady to completely hide his tears from us; and after this passing, almost casual, reference to his anguish he is able to continue the chapter imperturbably to its pedantic end. But in Chapter XXXI his self-control breaks down completely. In the tear-drenched narrative of this chapter, redolent of emotional decay, the poet-lover announces the inspiration of what will turn out to be his third and last canzone: since his eyes are too wept-out to relieve his feelings, he hopes this relief may be obtained by writing a sad poem about Beatrice and the destructive effects on him of his grief. And in order that the melancholy effect of his poem might linger on, unchecked by the usual divisione, he decides to get it out of the way before the poem begins.
The first stanza opens with a reference to his grieving eyes that wish to weep, continues with an evocation of the ladies with whom he used to speak of Beatrice alive, and ends with the announcement that his theme will be the ascension of Beatrice’s soul to Heaven. The second stanza, fittingly enough, is concerned with his lady in glory. The third stanza follows without a break as if to invite the reader to continue to meditate on the theme of Beatrice in glory. But then come the harsh lines:
Chi no la piange quando ne ragiona,
core ha di pietra si malvagio e vile
ch’entrar no i puote spirito benegno.
(Who speaks of her and does not speak in tears
has a vile heart, insensitive as stone
which never can be visited by love.)
And, after more flagellation of the wicked hearts that do not weep for Beatrice, the stanza ends with the tears and moans of the pure-hearted who must of necessity weep. From this suggestion of a potentially universal grief, the poet returns, in stanza IV, to the theme of his personal anguish, and to this theme he devotes entirely the last two stanzas, ending with an appeal to Beatrice for mercy. The last word of the stanza is merzede, so reminiscent of the lover’s earlier attitude.
The first of the three canzoni contained an anticipation of the death of Beatrice: in the second stanza was powerfully described the eagerness of Heaven to call her: excited by the splendor of her radiance that has penetrated Heaven from Earth, the angels recognized the miracle of Beatrice. Now, time has passed and Heaven has its wish: Beatrice has ascended to where the beam of her radiance had preceded her. Here in the third canzone, the theme of which is announced as the ascent of Beatrice to Heaven, the poet-lover has the opportunity (in fact, his choice of theme was a direct challenge to his powers) to offer a climactic treatment of Beatrice in glory, the realization of Heaven’s wish. But the potential sublimity of the theme he has chosen not only does not inspire him to transcend his personal grief in the two final stanzas: even in the single stanza devoted to his theme he can only repeat, much less powerfully, with much less conviction, the theme of the second stanza of his first canzone. Compare with that picture of Heaven’s eagerness to receive Beatrice, the picture offered in the third canzone of the fulfillment of Heaven’s wish:
Ita n’è Beatrice in alto cielo,
nel reame ove li angeli hanno pace,
e sta con loro, e voi, donne, ha lassate:
no la ci tolse qualità di gelo
né di calore, come l’altre face,
ma solo fue sua gran benignitate;
ché luce de la sua umilitate
passò li cieli con tanta vertute,
che fè maravigliar l’etterno sire,
sì che dolce disire
lo giunse di chiamar tanta salute;
e fella di qua giù a sé venire,
perché vedea ch’esta vita noiosa
non era degna di sì gentil cosa.
(Beatrice has gone home to highest Heaven,
into the peaceful realm where angels live;
she is with them; she has left you, ladies, here.
No quality of heat or cold took her
away from us, as is the fate of others;
it was her great unselfishness alone.
For the pure light of her humility
shone through the heavens with such radiance,
it even made the Lord Eternal marvel;
and then a sweet desire
moved Him to summon up such blessedness;
and from down here He had her come to Him,
because He knew this wretched life on earth
did not deserve to have her gracious presence.)
To state seriously that Beatrice died because of her virtues and not because of the extremes of the climate of Florence is to show lack of poetic inspiration. And this statement is followed by a rather flat summary of the situation so gloriously described in the first canzone; the last three lines simply bring the reader up to date. This poem, because of the opportunity which was offered by its theme but not exploited, surely exposes the inadequacy of the poet-lover’s inspiration.
The poem that follows this canzone, “Venite ad intender li sospiri miei,” was written, so Dante tells us in the prose, at the request of Beatrice’s brother. The poem speaks of the lover’s tears, of his sighs calling upon his lady, of his grief that leads to a desire for death. The following poem (representing the first two stanzas of a canzone), also written for the brother, begins with the same dreary tone: “Quantunque volte, lasso, mi rimembra.” This continues into the second stanza—which ends, however, on a quite different note:
perché ’l piacere de la sua bieltate,
partendo sé da la nostra veduta,
divenne spiritai bellezza grande,
che per lo cielo spande
luce d’amor, che li angeli saluta,
e lo intelletto loro alto, sottile
face maravigliar, sì v’è gentile.
(This is because the beauty of her grace,
withdrawing from the sight of men forever,
became transformed to beauty of the soul,
diffusing through the heavens
a light of love that greets the angels there,
moving their subtle, lofty intellects
to marvel at this miracle of grace.)
In the last five lines we have the picture of Beatrice radiant in Heaven that the poet-lover was not able to achieve in the third canzone.
Perhaps encouraged by this slight success he begins a sonnet continuing the same theme in the same tone:
Era venuta ne la mente mia
la gentil donna che per suo valore
fu posta da l’altissimo signore
nel ciel de l’umilitate, ov’è Maria.
(Into my mind had come the gracious image
of the lady who, rewarded for her virtue,
was called by His most lofty Majesty
to the calm realm of Heaven where Mary reigns.)
But this is the ill-fated sonnet with two beginnings, the second of which cancels out the first:
Secondo cominciamento
Era venuta ne la mente mia
quella donna gentil cui piange Amore,
entro ’n quel punto che lo suo valore
vi trasse a riguardar quel ch’eo facia.
Amor, che ne la mente la sentia,
s’era svegliato nel destrutto core,
e diceva a’ sospiri: “Andate fore;”
per che ciascun dolente si partia.
Piangendo uscivan for de lo mio petto
con una voce che sovente mena
le lagrime dogliose a li occhi tristi.
Ma quei che n’uscian for con maggior pena,
venian dicendo: “Oi nobile intelletto,
oggi fa l’anno che nel del salisti.”
Second beginning
Into my mind had come the gracious image
of the lady for whom Love still sheds his tears,
just when you were attracted by her virtue
to come and see what I was doing there.
Love, who perceived her presence in my mind,
and was aroused within my ravaged heart,
commanded all my sighs: “Go forth from here!”
And each one started on his grieving way.
Lamenting, they came pouring from my heart,
together in a single voice (that often
brings painful tears to my melancholy eyes);
but those escaping with the greatest pain
were saying: “This day, O intellect sublime,
completes a year since you rose heavenward.”)
The glimpse of Heaven offered by the first is eclipsed by a picture of Love in tears. And it is clearly not the first beginning but the second which sets the tone for the rest of this sad sonnet, which stresses not only the lover’s grief but its destructive effect on his psyche—a sonnet written to commemorate the first anniversary of Beatrice’s ascent to Heaven.
This bicipitous confession of failure is followed immediately by the poems describing his infidelity to Beatrice: the next five chapters with their five sonnets will tell of the lover’s infatuation with “the lady at the window” and his recovery therefrom. In Chapter XXXV he catches sight of a lady looking down at him from her window, observing his sad attitude with an expression of pity. Though he turns away in order to hide his abject state, he tells himself as he leaves that there must be perfect love in the heart of such a compassionate lady. A sudden glance at a stranger’s face, a sudden welling up of tears, results in the immediate conviction that the pity he has seen must be a warrant of the noblest kind of love! At least, however, he confesses for the first time to self-pity as a weakness from which all men may suffer: “…quando li miseri veggiono di loro compassione altrui, piu tosto si muovono a lagrimare, quasi come di se stessi avendo pietade…” He retells this event in the first of the four sonnets concerned with his new love.
The other three sonnets are similarly “recapitulative.” In the second sonnet he begins to speak in terms of the lady’s beauty, of her pale “color of love and pity” (we may remember the “color of the pearl” attributed to Beatrice in the first canzone). In the third sonnet remorse sets in; he curses his eyes which, we learn for the first time, have ceased to weep and have begun to enjoy what they look upon. He is conscious, that is, of infidelity to Beatrice. But he blames his eyes not only for enjoying the sight of the lady, but also, and perhaps mainly, for having ceased to weep; and he reminds them that when they used to perform their function duly they were able to make all those who looked upon him weep. It is as if he can conceive of salvation from infidelity only in terms of a renewal of morbid self-pity. He warns his eyes that he will continuously remind them of Beatrice—because, as he said in the prose, the pity which he enjoys from the lady herself is inspired only by her regret for Beatrice. In the fourth sonnet he imagines a debate between the heart and the soul. The heart (or desire, as we are told in the prose) welcomes a “gentil pensero” that speaks of the new lady; the soul (or reason) is disturbed by the power of this thought which drives out all others. But the heart has the last word. We may remember that the author, in summing up the first nine years of the lover’s devotion to Beatrice, allows him to claim that reason always ruled his love.
Love for Beatrice had been, for the protagonist, largely a source of self-pity, and this need for pity becomes the source of infidelity. It is as if with love of this self-centered kind it does not matter what direction the love takes; it is as if in his weak moments it was not Beatrice whom he loved. What he sought and what he loved was only a source of emotional self-indulgence. Thus, his infidelity was no more of a sin that had been the hysterical aspects of his fidelity to Beatrice. (That in the Convivio the “lady at the window” will become a symbol of the Lady Philosophy should not concern the reader of the Vita nuova: that Dante feels free to use earlier compositions to suit his purpose at the moment should already be clear.)
The struggle between the rational soul and the desirous heart which seemed to be leading toward the triumph of the heart is brought to a sudden end with the re-establishment of reason: one day his imagination is seized by the figure of Beatrice as he first saw her dressed in her crimson robes. He begins once more to think of her and, remembering her in “the sequence of past times,” his heart, with pain, repents. With the impact of this inner movement through time he is shaken completely free of his recent infatuation, and all his thoughts return to Beatrice. He tells us of his sighs breathing her name; as they issue from his chastened heart they speak of what is the preoccupation of his heart: how she departed from us. With his allegiance to Beatrice sealed, he can weep once more, weep again and again until his eyes are encircled with a purplish color, being thus justly rewarded for their wantonness. And his painful thoughts often induce in him a near-cataleptic state.
The sonnet that follows, we are told, contains the “essence” (sentenza) of what has preceded. The first two quatrains are devoted to a description of his suffering eyes. The tercets, too, speak of pain:
Questi penseri, e li sospir ch’eo gitto,
diventan ne lo cor sì angosciosi
ch’Amor vi tramortisce, sì lien dole;
però ch’elli hanno in lor li dolorosi
quel dolce nome di madonna scritto,
e de la morte sua molte parole.
(These meditations and the sighs I breathe
become so anguishing within the heart
that Love, who dwells there, faints, he is so tortured;
for on those thoughts and sighs of lamentation
the sweet name of my lady is inscribed,
with many words relating to her death.)
The protagonist has been privileged to have a vision of Beatrice which has moved him to sincere repentance. He promises his reader to offer the true signficance of this experience in a sonnet—which, however, is devoted entirely to a description of his own suffering!
Thus, the lover in returning to Beatrice has returned to the sterile mood of helpless grief over her death. He has come home. The reappearance of Beatrice in his imagination was only a reminder of things past, an invitation to hug to himself once again the familiar feelings of self-pity. He sees his lady not as she has become: Beatrice in glory cherished by Heaven, a vision revealing new truth, inviting to movement forward, but as she was at the age of nine, on the day that set in motion the chain of debilitating emotional experiences. His thoughts, it is true, are not concentrated only upon the figure of the child Beatrice: after her first appearance in his imagination he begins remembering her “in the sequence of past times.” The term “sequence” implies that he re-evokes, in order, all the scenes and all the moods that followed their first meeting (II). And it is quite possible that such a re-evocation moving forward in time to the present might well have afforded him a clearer vision of what his love for Beatrice should have been (it certainly is clear to the reader of the Vita nuova). But the forward movement through time does not extend to the present, it stops short at Beatrice’s death: this, we are told, came to be the sole preoccupation of his heart (“how she departed from us”). He refuses to go beyond her death, to go beyond to the meaning of her death. And because ever since the actual death of Beatrice his attempts to go beyond had been few and brief, the only vision of her that was vouchsafed him was the memory of the earliest past. We have in Chapter XXIX a dreary aria da capo. The protagonist is imprisoned within the limits of beginning and (inorganic) ending.
In Chapter XL of the Vita nuova the lover apparently sees strangers for the first time. The narrow frame of his vision, concentrated upon himself and Beatrice, had been able, at best, to comprehend vague figures of Florentine friends and acquaintances, all of whom in one way or another had been associated with his love for Beatrice. Now he sees a group of pilgrims on their way to Rome passing through the middle of the city “where the most gracious lady was born, lived and died.” They appear to him to be absorbed in their thoughts; they make on him the impression of having come from far away; they are alien, unfamiliar. He is reminded that there are other places in the world besides Florence where one may have his home.21 He realizes also that these thoughtful strangers are not thinking about his suffering or even about the city of Florence suffering from the loss of Beatrice (they are not thinking “Quomodo sedit sola civitas…”); their thoughts must be on their own friends living in distant lands. He has a reaction of defiance: “If I had the opportunity, I could make them weep.” And he decides to write a sonnet addressed to them.
Chapter XL ends with a pedantic note as Dante the “glossator” intervenes to list the three terms applicable to religious pilgrims: peregrini, romei, palmieri. And he offers, as it were, an apology for having applied the term peregrini to those who, being on their way to Rome, should have properly been called romei. If one should read these words without recognizing the intervention of the “glossator,” one would not fail to have a very favorable opinion of the development of the protagonist’s mood. He would seem to be passing, from an attitude of selfish resentment over the pilgrims’ indifference, to a calmer, nobler mood, remembering the sacred goal of their pilgrimage, realizing that they are “pilgrims” not only in the general sense of being far away from home but also in the religious sense of being on their way to worship at a shrine. The protagonist’s first feeling of pique would seem to have given way to the solemn realization that the pilgrims’ spiritual goal is more important than his grief or that of the people of Florence; his provincialism which was like the social reflection of his self-centeredness would have given way to a recognition of new vistas.
But the poem that ends the chapter reveals the falsity of such an interpretation. Just as it is impossible to believe that Chapter XXIX, the “essay” on the number nine, represents the mood of the protagonist in the days following the death of Beatrice—his real mood being reflected in his tear-drenched third canzone—so we must refuse to attribute the dispassionate attitude revealed in the closing section of the chapter to the young lover who, having watched with surprise and resentment the pilgrims passing through and beyond his city, decides to write a poem in which he could pretend to make them weep (and forget their holy goal), and which, indeed, reveals no other concern.
The contrast between the protagonist of the Vita nuova, with his self-centeredness and provincialism, and the protagonist of the Divine Comedy, to whom the goal of the beatific vision soon comes to be the unique concern, is obvious. And the story of a young Florentine man of letters, moving through familiar streets, will give way to that of the pilgrim, Everyman, moving through the strange (and never before traveled by mortal man) topography of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. Is it only a coincidence that the lover who, as protagonist of the Divine Comedy, will have the role of a pilgrim is first made aware of something alien to his ego by the appearance precisely of dedicated pilgrims?
The last poem of the Vita nuova describes the ascent of the lover’s spirit to Heaven:
Oltre la spera che più larga gira
passa ’l sospiro ch’esce del mio core:
intelligenza nova, che l’Amore
piangendo mette in lui, pur su lo tira.
Quand’elli ņ giunto là dove disira,
vede una donna, che riceve onore
e luce sì, che per lo suo splendore
lo peregrino spirito la mira.
Vedela tal, che quando ’l mi ridice,
io no lo intendo, sì parla sottile
al cor dolente che lo fa parlare.
So io che parla di quella gentile,
però che spesso ricorda Beatrice,
sì ch’io lo ’ntendo hen, donne mie care.
(Beyond the sphere that makes the widest round,
passes the sigh arisen from my heart;
a new intelligence that Love in tears
endowed it with is urging it on high.
Once arrived at the place of its desiring,
it sees a lady held in reverence,
splendid in light, and through her radiance
the pilgrim spirit looks upon her being.
But when it tries to tell me what it saw,
I cannot understand the subtle words
it speaks to the sad heart that makes it speak.
I know it tells of that most gracious one,
for I often hear the name of Beatrice.
This much, at least, is clear to me, dear ladies.)22
We see the light of Beatrice shining in Heaven; we see her light, we see the lover’s spirit absorbed in looking at her. In the first canzone the radiance of Beatrice on earth was sending its rays toward Heaven; in the third, the full splendor of her light moved from earth to Heaven; now it is shining steadily into the eyes of a pilgrim spirit. But the glory of the quatrains gives way to the bewilderment and disequilibrium of the tercets. For though this poem describes the ascent of the lover’s spirit to Heaven, this spirit is a sigh born of his longing: the last of the twenty-two sighs that breathe through the Vita nuova23 And though it is drawn above by the force of an “in-telligenza nova,” this “new intelligence” was inspired by Love in tears; when the spirit returns to him with its message from Beatrice, the lover is completely unable to understand it, for it is the grieving heart that listens to it. Moreover, he himself says in the preceding prose that the sonnet he decided to write would be a description of his own condition (“lo quale narra del mio stato”).24 In this sonnet where an old, stale theme still lingers on, the light of Heaven also shines. But the meaning of this brilliance is a mystery to our protagonist, a mystery which will slowly begin to be clear only after the vision in the final chapter (which the poet does not share with his reader), that inspires him to break off the “New Life”:
Appresso questo sonetto apparve a me una mirabile visione, ne la quale io vidi cose che mi fecero proporre di non dire più di questa benedetta infìno a tanto che io potesse più degnamente trattare di lei. E di venire a ciò io studio quanto posso, sì com’ella sae veracemente. Sì che, se piacere sarà di colui a cui tutte le cose vivono, che la mia vita duri per alquanti anni, io spero di dicer di lei quello che mai non fue detto d’alcuna. E poi piaccia a colui che è sire de la cortesia, che la mia anima se ne possa gire a vedere la gloria de la sua donna, cioè di quella benedetta Beatrice, la quale gloriosa-mente mira ne la faccia di colui qui est per omnia sécula benedictus.
(After I wrote this sonnet there came to me a miraculous vision in which I saw things that made me resolve to say no more about this blessed one until I would be capable of writing about her in a nobler way. To achieve this I am striving as hard as I can, and this she truly knows. Accordingly, if it be the pleasure of Him through whom all things live that my life continue for a few more years, I hope to write of her that which has never been written of any other woman. And then may it please the One who is the Lord of graciousness that my soul ascend to behold the glory of its lady, that is, of that blessed Beatrice, who in glory contemplates the countenance of the One qui est per omnia sécula benedictus.)
Thus, in the final chapter of the Vita nuova Dante the Poet expresses his dissatisfaction with his protagonist, or, rather, he allows the protagonist to express his dissatisfaction with himself. As the result of a vision, which is not revealed to us, he decides to stop writing about Beatrice until he can do so more worthily.25 The preceding visions that have come to him have made him decide to write; this one makes him decide to stop writing. Like the Convivio, then, the Vita nuova is an unfinished book. Unlike the Convivio, however, the Vita nuova is left unfinished for a positive, artistic purpose, and the decision to break off is announced as an event, the final event in the story itself. And, indeed, insofar as the action of the Vita nuova is to be seen as the development of the young Dante’s love from preoccupation with his own feelings to enjoyment of Beatrice’s excellence, in the direction of an exclusive concern with her heavenly attributes and with heavenly matters, then this action ends, in an important sense, in failure and in the recognition of failure.
* * *
In the first chapter of this essay was discussed the dual role of Dante the author of the Vita nuova: narrator and glossator-editor. But it is necessary to distinguish not only between these two auctorial roles but also between the author himself and the protagonist. In recent years the critics of the Divine Comedy have come to see more clearly the folly of confusing Dante the poet, the historical figure who wrote the poem and who occasionally speaks to the reader from out the poem in his own voice—and Dante the pilgrim, who is the poet’s creation and who moves in a world entirely of the poet’s invention. It has been some time since any critic has pointed to the prostrate figure of the pilgrim in Canto V of the Inferno, swooning in pity over Francesca’s fate, as evidence that Dante himself, the poet-theologian who conceived and elaborated the grandiose plan of the Divine Comedy, was moved by tender compassion for the character he sent to Hell.
In the case of the Vita nuova, too, it is necessary to distinguish between the protagonist and the author, even if, in this text, the protagonist is himself a historical figure, and the world in which he moves is not purely fictitious. We must attempt to distinguish between the point of view of the youthful Dante who is the protagonist of the Vita nuova, and the point of view of the more mature Dante who is the narrator; that is, the critic must proceed as he would in the case of any first-person autobiographical novel. He cannot take for granted that the point of view of the character undergoing various experiences in the past (the young lover swooning against the wall at the wedding feast in Chapter XIV of the Vita nuova) will be the same as that of his later self, who writes about the experiences in question some time after having lived through them, reflecting upon them in retrospect from a new perspective. How can we know just what the attitude was of the author of the Vita nuova, since, as has been said, he does not explicitly pass judgment on the protagonist’s actions? Must it not be assumed that his would be the attitude not only of any mature person but also of one who knew that he was going to write a divine comedy?
What I have actually been trying to show is the fact that the more mature Dante is re-evoking his youthful experiences in a way to point up the folly, or the ignorance, of his younger self. We must imagine the poet, between the age of twenty-seven and thirty-five, as having already glimpsed the possibility of what was to be his terrible and grandiose masterpiece; we must imagine him rereading the love poems of his earlier years—a number of them, surely, with embarrassment. He would also have come to see Beatrice, too, as she was destined to appear in the Divine Comedy, and indeed, as she does appear briefly in the Vita nuova: in that essay (XXIX) on the miraculous quality of the number 9, which is the square of the number 3, that is of the Trinity, and which is Beatrice herself. Having arrived at this point, he would have chosen, then, several of his earlier love poems, including many that exhibit his younger self at his worst, in order to offer a warning example to other young lovers and especially to other love-poets. For, that some of the poems in the Vita nuova do represent the lover at his hysterical worst will become clear to anyone who reads through Dante’s Rime. Though some of the poems in that collection reveal the lover’s preoccupation with his own feelings and an insistence on the suffering he is enduring (attitudes characteristic of the love poetry of the time), in none of them is to be found the easy, puerile overflowing of grief that characterizes so many poems of the Vita nuova, or the desperate appeal, explicit or implicit, to the pity of others. And references to tears are almost entirely absent from the Rime.
That the exposure of Dante the protagonist was a constant (if not the only) preoccupation of Dante, the author of the Vita nuova, I am convinced. For if the picture the author presents of his youthful self had been offered for the reader’s sympathy, the Vita nuova would have to be judged a very silly book indeed. And if other Dante scholars have arrived at a more idealistic, optimistic interpretation of the protagonist’s development as a lover, I should say that there are two reasons for this. On the one hand, they have failed to distinguish clearly between the two Dantes: because, for example, in Chapter XXIX the true essence of Beatrice is clearly presented, many critics seem to have assumed that her true nature was perceived by the lover himself immediately after her death.26 But the poems that follow all show that this could not possibly have been the case. Secondly, the critics have simply not read closely enough to catch the numerous indications of the lover’s weaknesses and confusion that should be evident from the above analysis. It is understandable, given the confusion as to the two Dante’s, attributing to the protagonist-lover, as they do, the clairvoyance of Dante the author, that the critics would tend to underestimate the significance of the many clear-cut demonstrations of failure: the failure of the protagonist to dominate his need for self-pity. What contempt Augustine, either as saint or as the lover he had been, would have felt for Dante’s lover in the Vita nuova!
The Vita nuova is a cruel book. Cruel, that is, in the treatment of the human type represented by the protagonist. In the picture of the lover there is offered a condemnation of the vice of emotional self-indulgence and an exposure of its destructive effects on a man’s integrity.27 The “tender feelings” that move the lover to hope or to despair, to rejoice or to grieve (and perhaps to enjoy his grief), spring from his vulnerability and self-love; however idealistically inspired, these feelings cannot, except spasmodically, lead him ahead and above: as long as he continues to be at their mercy, he must always fall back into the helplessness of his self-centeredness. The sensitive man who would realize a man’s destiny must ruthlessly cut out of his heart the canker at its center, the canker that the heart instinctively tends to cultivate.28
This is, I am convinced, the main, though not the only, message of the Vita nuova. And the consistent, uncompromising indictment it levels has no parallel in the literature of Dante’s time—unless it be that baffling literary phenomenon which is the Roman de la Rose.29 Of course, the Vita nuova offers more than a picture of the misguided lover: there is also the glory of Beatrice, and the slowly-increasing ability of the lover to understand it—who must confess at the end, however, that he has not truly understood it.
Both in the treatment of the lover and in that of Beatrice, Dante has gone far beyond what he found at hand in the love poetry of the Troubadours and of their followers. He has taken up two of their preoccupations (one might almost say obsessions) and developed each of them in a most original way: the lover’s glorification of his own feelings, and his glorification of the Beloved. Of the first he has made a caricature. Unlike his friend Cavalcanti, also highly critical of the havoc wrought by the emotions within a man’s soul, who tends to make of his distraught lover a macabre portrait of doom, Dante has presented his protagonist again and again as a purely ridiculous figure, and more than once we have seen him mocked in society—the main scene being that of the wedding feast when the lover suffers a complete collapse in the presence of his lady. Such physiological manifestations of passion are familiar to us, of course, from the Troubadour love lyrics or the precepts of Andreas Capellanus (for instance, every lover regularly turns pale in the presence of his belovèd). What Dante has done with this conventional material is to stage it (we hear the lover’s sobs, we see him stagger, we feel the pain in the left breast spreading as he falls back against the wall for support)—as indeed had been done before him by Chrétien de Troyes and the author of the Énéas. Their intention is obviously comic, as we well may assume that Dante’s was.
In my analysis of Chapter II of the Vita nuova I stated that all the important themes to be developed in the book are already suggested in this opening chapter. A few pages later, in treating the thematic relationship between the narrative and the poems, I had occasion to mention the importance of the theme of mockery which, I suggested, works on more than one level. The attentive reader must have wondered why, if this theme were so important, nothing was said of it in the analysis of the chapter which opens the story. This was a deliberate omission on my part: I felt that to introduce the idea of Dante’s mockery of his younger self at the very beginning of my essay would win little credence from the reader. But surely Dante the author of the Vita nuova was smiling when he introduced into this chapter the three spiriti (a triad which never appears again) who choose to express in solemn Latin their reaction to the sight of Beatrice—the climax being reached in the weeping lament of the “natural spirit” (the spirit of digestion!): Heu miser, quia frequenter impeditus ero deinceps!30 According to one critic the Latin of the spiriti serves to establish a kind of transcendental level: in a sense, the words are “oracular.”31 What the third “oracle” is prophesying, of course, is the succession of spells of indigestion which will afflict the young lover throughout the course of his new life. So at the very beginning of the Vita nuova the author has given a most important hint (which was surely not lost on the medieval reader) as to the light in which so many of the protagonist’s actions should be viewed.
As to the conventional theme of “glorification of the lady,” all critics of the Vita nuova will admit that Dante carried his idealization to a point never reached before by any poet—and which no poet after him would ever quite attempt to reach. However blurred the lover’s vision may be of the gracious, pure, feminine Beatrice—Dante the Poet, in Chapter XXIX, probes to the essence of her being and presents the coldness of her sublimity, the coldness, the sublimity, of the square of the number 3. Thus, the (tender) foolishness of the lover is intensified by contrast with the (icy) perfection of the Beloved.32 Her nature was destined to inspire not tender sentiments, and surely not weak tears, but only the stern resolution to strive for spiritual growth. (Tears the divine Beatrice could approve, but these should be only tears of deep contrition, as she herself will tell the Pilgrim in the Divine Comedy, when she first addresses him on top of the Mountain of Purgatory: the Pilgrim, overcome by the appearance of Beatrice, trembling as he had years before at his sudden awareness of the presence of Beatrice at the wedding feast, turns to Virgil for comfort as “il fantolin corre alia mamma / quando ha paura o quand’ elli e affiitto” and, finding him gone, begins to weep. Beatrice, knowing the bitter tears of contrition he must shed—after confessing his failure to learn the meaning of her death, and before being washed in the waters of Lethe—rebukes him sternly for his childish tears: “Dante, perché Virgilio se ne vada / non pianger anco, non piangere ancora,/ ché pianger ti convien per altra spada.”)
With a few exceptions, Dante’s lyrical poems (and not only those contained in the Vita nuova) are not superior as works of art, in themselves, to those of Cavalcanti and Guinizelli—or of Bernard de Ventadorn and Arnault Daniel. The greatness of the Vita nuova lies, not in the poems included by their author in the work, but in the purpose which he forced them to serve. Certainly it represents the most original form of recantation in medieval literature—a recantation that takes the form of a reenactment, from a new perspective, of the sin recanted.