3 After the Death of Beatrice
Philosophic Refuge.—It is not easy to get a very definite idea of Dante’s private life during the next ten years. With the completion of the Vita Nuova, shortly after Beatrice’s death, an epoch closes in his life, as in his work. From the Convivio it would appear that in his sorrow Dante took refuge in the study of the De Consolatione Philosophiae of Boëthius and Cicero’s De Amicitia; that he frequented “the schools of the religious and the disputations of philosophers,” where he became deeply enamoured of Philosophy. Cino da Pistoia addressed to him an exceedingly beautiful canzone, consoling him for the loss of Beatrice, bidding him take comfort in the contemplation of her glory among the saints and angels of Paradise, where she is praying to God for her lover’s peace. This poem is quoted years later by Dante himself in the second book of the De Vulgari Eloquentia (ii. 6), where he couples it with his own canzone—
Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona,
“Love that in my mind discourses to me,” with which Casella consoles the penitent spirits upon the shore of Purgatory: “The amorous chant which was wont to quiet all my desires.”
Aberrations.—It would seem, however, that neither the memory of Beatrice nor his philosophical devotion kept Dante from falling into what he afterwards came to regard as a morally unworthy life. Tanto giù cadde, “so low he fell” (Purg. xxx. 136). It is almost impossible to hold, as Witte and Scartazzini would have us do, that the poignant reproaches which Beatrice addresses to Dante, when he meets her on Lethe’s banks, are connected mainly with intellectual errors, with culpable neglect of Theology or speculative wanderings from revealed truth, for there are but scanty, if any, traces of this in the poet’s writings at any period of his career. The dark wood in which he wandered, led by the world and the flesh, was that of sensual passion and moral aberration for a while from the light of reason and the virtue which is the “ordering of love.”
Friendship with Forese Donati.—Dante was evidently intimate with the great Donati family, whose houses were in the same district of the city. Corso di Simone Donati, a turbulent and ambitious spirit, had done heroically at Campaldino, and was now intent upon having his own way in the state. A close and familiar friendship united Dante with Corso’s brother Forese, a sensual man of pleasure. Six sonnets interchanged between these two friends, though now only in part intelligible, do little credit to either. “If thou recall to mind,” Dante says to Forese in the sixth terrace of Purgatory, “what thou wast with me and I was with thee, the present memory will still be grievous” (Purg. xxiii, 115). Forese died in July 1296; the author of the Ottimo Commento, who wrote about 1334, and professes to have known the divine poet, tells us that Dante induced his friend when on his death-bed to repent and receive the last sacraments. Another sonnet of Dante’s shows him in friendly correspondence with Brunetto (Betto) Brunelleschi, a noble who later played a sinister part in the factions and, like Corso Donati, met a violent death.
Loves, Marriage, and Debts.—Several very striking canzoni, written for a lady whom Dante represents under various stony images, and whose name may possibly have been Pietra, are frequently assigned to this period of the poet’s life, but may perhaps have been written in the early days of his exile. From other lyrics and sonnets we dimly discern that several women may have crossed Dante’s life now and later, of whom nothing can be known. Dante married Gemma di Manetto Donati, a distant kinswoman of Corso and Forese. In the Paradiso (xvi. 119) he refers with complacency to his wife’s ancestor, Ubertino Donati, Manetto’s great-grandfather, whose family pride scorned any alliance with the Adimari. According to Boccaccio, the marriage took place some time after the death of Beatrice, and it was certainly not later than 1297; but there is documentary evidence that Gemma’s dowry was settled in 1277, which points to an early betrothal. The union has generally been supposed—on somewhat inadequate grounds—to have been an unhappy one. Gemma bore Dante two sons, Jacopo and Pietro, and either one or two daughters. Boccaccio’s statement, that she did not share the poet’s exile, is usually accepted; she was living in Florence after his death, and died there after 1332.2 During the following years, between 1297 and 1300, Dante was contracting debts (Durante di Scolaio degli Abati and Manetto Donati being among his sureties), which altogether amounted to a very large sum, but which were cleared off from the poet’s estate after his death.