Chapter II — Dante’s Minor Italian Works
1 The “Vita Nuova”
Guido Guinizelli is acknowledged by Dante himself as his master in poetic art and the founder of the great new school of Italian poetry: “The father of me and of the others, my betters, who ever used sweet and gracious rhymes of love” (Purg. xxvi. 97). Guido’s “Canzone of the Gentle Heart”:
Al cor gentil ripara sempre Amore,
“To the gentle heart doth Love ever repair,” the first great Italian lyric of this dolce stil nuovo, set forth an ideal creed of love which Dante made his own, and is the most fitting introduction to the Vita Nuova and the Rime. Love has its proper dwelling in the gentle heart, as light in the sun, for Nature created them simultaneously for each other, and they cannot exist apart. “The fire of Love is caught in gentle heart as virtue in the precious stone, to which no power descends from the star before the sun makes it a gentle thing. After the sun has drawn forth from it all which there is vile, the star gives it power. So the heart which is made by Nature true, pure, and noble, a woman like a star enamours.” But a base nature will extinguish love as water does fire. Unless a man has true gentlehood in his soul, no high birth or ancient lineage will ennoble him. Even as God fills the celestial intelligence with the Beatific Vision of His Essence, so the bella donna inspires him of gentle heart with the perfection of faithful love. Nor need the poet fear to take divine things as similitudes of his love, for such love as this is celestial, and will be accepted in Paradise:
My lady, God shall ask, “What daredst thou?”
(When my soul stands with all her acts reviewed)
“Thou passedst Heaven, into My sight, as now,
To make Me of vain love similitude.
To Me doth praise belong,
And to the Queen of all the realm of grace
Who slayeth fraud and wrong.”
Then may I plead: “As though from Thee he came,
Love wore an angel’s face:
Lord, if I loved her, count it not my shame.”
Rossetti’s Translation.
The poetry of the dolce stil nuovo developed the spiritual conception of love already in germ in the later troubadours, and added an infusion of the new scholastic philosophy, but the real novelty lay in the superiority of Guido Guinizelli as a poet over his predecessors. From Bologna the pre-eminence passed to Florence with Guido Cavalcanti, who took from the other Guido “la gloria de la lingua” (Purg. xi. 98), and developed a complicated poetical psychology which culminates in his famous canzone on the nature of love:
Donna me prega, perch’io voglio dire;
“A lady prays me, therefore I would tell of an accident which is often fierce and is so lofty that it is called Love.” The Vita Nuova, beginning under the influence of Cavalcanti, becomes the supreme development in prose and verse of the doctrine of Guinizelli.
“This glorious poet,” writes Boccaccio, “first, when still weeping for the death of his Beatrice, about in his twenty-sixth year put together in a little volume, which he called the New Life, certain small works, as sonnets and canzoni, made by him in diverse times before and in rhyme, marvellously beautiful; writing at the head of each, severally and in order, the occasions which had moved him to make them, and adding at the end the divisions of each poem. And although, in maturer years, he was much ashamed of having made this little book, nevertheless, when his age is considered, it is very beautiful and pleasing, and especially to the general reader.”
But this spotless lily of books is too delicate a flower in the garden of art to be plucked by the hands of the writer of the Decameron. A greater poet than Boccaccio has said of it: “Throughout the Vita Nuova there is a strain like the first falling murmur which reaches the ear in some remote meadow, and prepares us to look upon the sea.” It is a preparation for the Commedia, inasmuch as it tells us how the divine singer became a poet, and how she crossed his path who was to be his spiritual pilot over that mighty ocean. Boccaccio’s statement, that Dante in maturer years was ashamed of having written this book, is perhaps due to a misunderstanding or confused recollection of a passage about certain canzoni in the Convivio (i. 2). In the Convivio, where he discusses the nature of allegory and interprets the whole of certain later poems in an allegorical sense, Dante suggests no such significance for Beatrice in the Vita Nuova; but, while declaring that the Vita Nuova was written at the entrance of manhood, he seems to contrast it with his more mature work, to which alone he would apply an allegorical interpretation. And he is most emphatic that this is in no way to derogate from the Vita Nuova (Conv. i. 1): “For it is fitting to speak and act differently in one age than in another.”
The Vita Nuova is the most spiritual and ethereal romance of love that exists, but its purity is such as comes, not from innocent simplicity of soul, but from self-repression. In the form of a collection of lyrics connected together by a prose narrative (itself a thing of rare and peculiar beauty), with quaint and curious scholastic divisions and explanations, Dante tells the tale of his love for Beatrice, from his first sight of her in their ninth year to a vision which is the anticipation of her final apotheosis. Although conforming with the poetic conventions of the age, especially in the earlier portions, it is based upon a real love story, however deeply tinged with mysticism and embellished with visionary episodes. The heroine in her loveliness and purity becomes an image upon earth of the Divine Beauty and Goodness; the poet’s love for her is the stepping-stone to love of the Supreme Good. Dante has learned his lesson from Guido Guinizelli, and does not fear to take God Himself as a similitude of his love; Heaven itself requires his lady for its perfection of beatitude (V. N. xix.); she has her precursor in Monna Giovanna, even as St. John came before the True Light (xxiv.); nay, she is a very miracle whose only root is the Blessed Trinity (xxx.).
Here beginneth the “New Life,” Incipit vita nova! We shall probably do well in taking the New Life not as merely meaning the poet’s youth, but as referring to the new life that began with the dawn of love, the regeneration of the soul. Dante’s first meeting with Beatrice at the beginning of her ninth and at the end of his ninth year, when she appeared to him robed in crimson, the colour of love and charity—and her “most sweet salutation” nine years later, when she came dressed all in pure white, the hue of Faith and Purity, between two gentle ladies older than herself—these things may have a certain analogy with the representation of his moral and political conversion, in the vision of the Commedia, as happening in his thirty-fifth year, 1300, the year of Jubilee. We may perhaps surmise that Dante, looking back from this second meeting, from which his love really dates, artistically worked up the recollections of his childhood to correspond with it; just as many years later, when he turned to the composition of the sacred poem, he looked back in his memory to some great spiritual experience when “in the middle of the journey of our life.” And, although Dante’s own words in the Convivio seem absolutely to preclude any possibility of allegorising the figure of Beatrice herself, it is clear that many of the minor episodes in the Vita Nuova must be regarded as symbolical.
After the proem, in which the poet’s intention is set forth, the Vita Nuova falls into three divisions. Each contains ten poems set as gems in a golden prose framework, the end of each part being indicated by a reference to new matter, nuova matera (xvii., xxxi.). The whole book is closed by an epilogue containing one sonnet, una cosa nuova, “a new thing,” with an introductory episode and a visionary sequel. In the first part Dante mainly depicts the effects in himself of Beatrice’s beauty, the loveliness of the belle membra, “the fair members in which I was enclosed” (Purg. xxxi. 50); in the second, the miracles wrought by the splendour of her soul; the third contains his worship of her memory, when “the delight of her fairness, departing from our view, became great spiritual beauty that spreads through heaven a light of love, gives bliss to the Angels, and makes their lofty and subtle intellect wonder” (xxxiv.).
The first part (ii. to xvii.) contains nine of Dante’s earliest sonnets and one ballata, with the story of his youthful love up to a certain point, where, after having passed through a spiritual crisis, he resolves to write upon a new and nobler matter than the past. We have the wondrous effects of Beatrice’s salutation; the introductory sonnet resulting in the friendship with Guido Cavalcanti, to whom the book is dedicated, and who seems to have induced Dante to write in Italian instead of Latin (V. N. xxxi.); his concealment of his love by feigning himself enamoured of two other ladies. Throughout the Vita Nuova, while Beatrice on earth or in heaven is, as it were, the one central figure in the picture, there is a lovely background of girlish faces behind her; just as, in the paintings of many early Italian masters, there is shown in the centre the Madonna and her Divine Babe, while around her all the clouds and sky are full of sweetly smiling cherubs’ heads. There have been students of the book who supposed that, while Beatrice represents the ideal of womanhood, these others are the real Florentine women in whom Dante for a while sought this glorious ideal of his mind; others have endeavoured in one or other of the minor characters of the Vita Nuova to recognise the Matelda of the Earthly Paradise. And there are visions and dreams introduced, in which Love himself appears in visible form, now as a lord of terrible aspect within a cloud of fire with Beatrice in his arms, now by a river-side in the garb of a traveller to bid Dante feign love for another lady, now as a youth clad in very white raiment to console him when Beatrice refuses her salutation. It may be that these two latter episodes mean that Dante was for a time enamoured of some girl whom he afterwards represented as the second lady who shielded his real love from discovery, and that he resolved to turn from it to a nobler worship of Beatrice. The most beautiful sonnet of this group is the fifth:
Cavalcando l’altr’ier per un cammino,
“As I rode the other day along a path, thinking of the journey that was irksome to me,” the journey in question being probably to Bologna (cf. p. 12).
This part is not wanting in the “burning tears” which Leonardo Bruni finds such a stumbling-block in Boccaccio’s narrative. Its lyrics show the influence of Guido Cavalcanti, particularly in the personification of the faculties of the soul as spiriti, and in the somewhat extravagant metaphors with which Dante depicts his torment in love. But a complete change comes. The mysterious episode of Dante’s agony at a wedding feast, where Beatrice mocks him, marks a crisis in his new life. Io tenni li piedi in quella parte de la vita di là da la quale non si puote ire più per intendimento di ritornare, “I have set my feet on that part of life beyond the which one can go no further with intention of returning.” He crushes the more personal element out of his love, and will be content to worship her from afar; he has sufficiently made manifest his own condition, even if he should ever after abstain from addressing her. “It behoved me to take up a new matter and one nobler than the past.”
This matera nuova e più nobile che la passata is the subject of the second part of the Vita Nuova (xviii. to xxviii.). The poet’s youthful love has become spiritual adoration for a living personification of all beauty and nobleness. Since Beatrice denies him her salutation, Love has placed all his beatitude in those words that praise his lady: so he tells the lady of very sweet speech, donna di motto leggiadro parlare, who questions him concerning this love, and whose rebuke marks the turning-point of the whole book. And, for the first time, the supreme poet is revealed in the great canzone:
Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore,
“Ladies that have understanding of love,” uniting earth and heaven in glorification of her who was the giver of blessing. Here the apotheosis of womanhood, sketched by Guido Guinizelli, is developed with mystical fullness, and there is even perhaps a hint of some future work in honour of Beatrice that will deal with the world beyond the grave. The two sonnets that follow are a kind of supplement; the first:
Amore e ’l cor gentil sono una cosa,
“Love and the gentle heart are one same thing,” gives a definition of love, elaborating the Guinizellian doctrine; the second:
Ne li occhi porta la mia donna Amore,
“Within her eyes my lady carries Love,” pursues the conception further, to represent Beatrice herself as the creatrix of the divine gift of gentilezza by which the heart is capable of noble love. Two sonnets on the death of Beatrice’s father lead up to a veritable lyrical masterpiece, the canzone:
Donna pietosa e di novella etate,
“A lady pitiful and of tender age,” the anticipatory vision of Beatrice’s death—the “Dante’s Dream” of Rossetti’s famous picture. The following sonnet, in which Beatrice and Cavalcanti’s lady, Primavera or Giovanna, appear together, is the only place in the Vita Nuova where Dante calls her whom he loved by the name by which she was actually known—“Bice.” Love now no longer appears weeping, but speaks joyfully in the poet’s heart. All that was personal in Dante’s worship seems to have passed away with his earlier lamentations; his love has become a transcendental rapture, an ecstasy of self-annihilation. This part of the book culminates in the two sonnets:
Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare,
“So noble and so pure seems my lady,” in which a similar sonnet of Guinizelli’s is easily surpassed, and Vede perfettamente onne salute,
“He seeth perfectly all bliss, who beholds my lady among the ladies”; sonnets which are flawless gems of mediaeval poetry. Then abruptly, in the composition of a canzone which should have shown how Love by means of Beatrice regenerated his soul, the pen falls from his hand: Beatrice has been called by God to Himself, to be glorious under the banner of Mary, “How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people!”
Some falling off may be detected here and there in the third part of the Vita Nuova (xxix. to xli.), which includes the prose and poetry connected with Beatrice’s death, the love for the lady who takes pity upon the poet’s grief, his repentance and return to Beatrice’s memory. A stately canzone:
Li occhi dolenti per pietà del core,
“The eyes that grieve for pity of the heart,” is a companion piece to the opening canzone of the second part; the poet now speaks of Beatrice’s death in the same form and to the same love-illumined ladies to whom he had formerly sung her praises. More beautiful are the closing lines of the shorter canzone, written for Dante’s second friend, who was apparently Beatrice’s brother. After the charming episode of the poet drawing an Angel on her anniversary, the “gentle lady, young and very fair,” inspires him with four sonnets; and his incipient love for her is dispelled by a “strong imagination,” a vision of Beatrice as he had first seen her in her crimson raiment of childhood. The bitterness of Dante’s repentance is a foretaste of the confession upon Lethe’s bank in the Purgatorio. The pilgrims pass through the city on their way to Rome, “in that season when many folk go to see that blessed likeness which Jesus Christ left us as exemplar of His most beauteous face, which my lady sees in glory” (V. N. xli.); and this third part closes with the sonnet in which Dante calls upon the pilgrims to tarry a little, till they have heard how the city lies desolate for the loss of Beatrice.
In the epilogue (xlii., xliii.), in answer to the request of two of those noble ladies who throng the ways of Dante’s mystical city of youth and love as God’s Angels guard the terraces of the Mount of Purgation, Dante writes the last sonnet of the book; wherein a “new intelligence,” born of Love, guides the pilgrim spirit beyond the spheres into the Empyrean to behold the blessedness of Beatrice. It is an anticipation of the spiritual ascent of the Divina Commedia, which is confirmed in the famous passage which closes the “new life” of Love:
“After this sonnet there appeared unto me a wonderful vision: wherein I saw things which made me purpose to say no more of this blessed one, until such time as I could discourse more worthily concerning her. And to attain to that I labour all I can, even as she knoweth verily. Wherefore if it shall be His pleasure, through whom is the life of all things, that my life continue for some years, I hope that I shall yet utter concerning her what hath never been said of any woman. And then may it seem good unto Him, who is the Lord of courtesy, that my soul may go hence to behold the glory of its lady: to wit, of that blessed Beatrice who gazeth gloriously upon the countenance of Him who is blessed throughout all ages.”10
From the mention of the pilgrimage, and this wonderful vision, it has been sometimes supposed that the closing chapters of the Vita Nuova were written in 1300. It seems, however, almost certain that there is no reference whatever to the year of Jubilee in the first case. When Dante’s positive statement in the Convivio, that he wrote the Vita Nuova at the entrance of manhood (gioventute being the twenty years from twenty-five to forty-five, Conv. iv. 24), is compared with the internal evidence of the book itself, the most probable date for its completion would be between 1291 and 1293. It should, however, be borne in mind that, while there is documentary evidence that some of the single poems were in circulation before 1300, none of the extant manuscripts of the whole work can be assigned to a date much earlier than the middle of the fourteenth century. It is, therefore, not inconceivable that the reference to the vision may be associated with the spiritual experience of 1300 and slightly later than the rest of the book.11
The form of the Vita Nuova, the setting of the lyrics in a prose narrative and commentary, is one that Dante may well have invented for himself. If he had models before his eyes, they were probably, on the one hand, the razos or prose explanations which accompanied the poems of the troubadours, and, on the other, the commentaries of St. Thomas Aquinas on the works of Aristotle, which Dante imitates in his divisions and analyses of the various poems. His quotations show that he had already studied astronomy, and made some rudimentary acquaintance with Aristotle and with the four chief Latin poets; the section in which he speaks of the latter, touching upon the relations between classical and vernacular poetry (xxv.), suggests the germ of the De Vulgari Eloquentia. The close of the book implies that he regarded lack of scientific and literary equipment as keeping him from the immediate fulfilment of the greater work that he had even then conceived for the glory of Beatrice.
In the Convivio, where all else is allegorical, Beatrice is still simply his first love, lo primo amore (ii. 16). Even when allegorically interpreting the canzone which describes how another lady took her place in his heart, after her death, as referring to Philosophy, there is no hint of any allegory about quella viva Beatrice beata, “that blessed Beatrice, who lives in heaven with the Angels and on earth with my soul” (Conv. ii. 2). When about to plunge more deeply into allegorical explanations, he ends what he has to say concerning her by a digression upon the immortality of the soul (Conv. ii. 9): “I so believe, so affirm, and so am certain that I shall pass after this to another better life, there where that glorious lady lives, of whom my soul was enamoured.”
Those critics who question the reality of the story of the Vita Nuova, or find it difficult to accept without an allegorical or idealistic interpretation, are best answered in Dante’s own words: Questo dubbio è impossibile a solvere a chi non fosse in simile grado fedele d’Amore; e a coloro che vi sono è manifesto ciò che solverebbe le dubitose parole; “This difficulty is impossible to solve for anyone who is not in similar grade faithful unto Love; and to those who are so, that is manifest which would solve the dubious words” (V. N. xiv.).