The abandoned soul is the protagonist of the third stanza, where it is depicted as dejected, crying, and disconsolate, in a typically Cavalcantian register: “Innamorata se ne va piangendo / for di questa vita / la sconsolata, che la caccia Amore [Still full of love my soul, disconsolate,/departs this life of ours / with tears of sorrow, driven out by Love]” (29–31). The Cavalcantian tone, melancholic and elegiac, is prolonged for the whole third strophe:
Ristretta s’è entro ’l mezzo del core
con quella vita che rimane spenta
solo in quel punto ch’ella se· n va via,
ed ivi si lamenta
d’Amor che for d’esto mondo la caccia,
e spessamente abraccia
li spiriti che piangon tuttavia,
però che perdon la lor compagnia.
(E’ m’incresce di me, 35–42)
[The soul retreats inside the inner heart
to join what little life remains to fade
the very instant that it takes its leave.
And there it censures Love,
who forces it to leave this world behind,
embracing more than once
the spirits that lament unceasingly
the painful loss of its sweet company.]
In the third stanza we note the recurrence of the verb cacciare, used twice to denote existential exile. Love is portrayed as the hunter, and the soul is literally hunted “out of this life” and “out of this world”: “fora di questa vita / la sconsolata, che la caccia Amore [departs this life of ours / with tears of sorrow, driven out by Love]” (30–1); “ed ivi si lamenta / d’Amor che for d’esto mondo la caccia [and there it censures Love,/who forces it to leave this world behind]” (38–9). If the exilic locutions “fora di questa vita” and “for d’esto mondo” are Cavalcantian, the verb cacciare is not; to the contrary, it imports into the Cavalcantian melancholy a vitality and robustness that are instead very Dantean, and anticipates the idiosyncratically and innovatively Dantean tone of the fourth and fifth stanzas.
The double presence of the verb cacciare in the third stanza of E’ m’incresce di me may have a bearing on the complex drama between Dante and his “primo amico,” Guido Cavalcanti. Maybe when Dante wrote in Purgatorio of the poet who will hunt Guido Guinizzelli and Guido Cavalcanti from the nest – “Così ha tolto l’uno a l’altro Guido / la gloria de la lingua; e forse è nato / chi l’uno e l’altro caccerà del nido [Thus has one Guido taken from the other the glory of our language, and perhaps he is born who will hunt one and the other from the nest]” (Purg. 11.97–9) – he recalled what is plausibly his first use of the verb cacciare, in the youthful Cavalcantian can-zone E’ m’incresce di me.85 Certainly a Love that “hunts” breaks with Cavalcanti, who never uses the verb cacciare in his love poems. Guido uses cacciare only in two correspondence sonnets, one to Guido Orlandi and the other to Dante. In the sonnet I’ vegno ’l giorno a·tte, Guido harshly reproves his friend for “la vil tua vita” and concludes in this way: “Se ’l presente sonetto spesso leggi,/lo spirito noioso che·tti caccia/si partirà dall’anima invilita [If you reread this sonnet several times,/the loathsome spirit persecuting you (literally, that hunts you)/will be dispelled from your degraded soul]” (12–14). Perhaps this rather aggressive use of “caccia” on the part of his friend is what Dante remembered as he penned his own aggressive verses in Purgatorio 11.
E’ m’incresce di me divides into two halves of three strophes each, as the narrative emphasis shifts from the lover to the lady, or, in Contini’s words, “from a subjective, internal point of view” to “an objective, historical point of view” (p. 61). The fourth stanza opens with the imposing figure of the victorious lady who installs herself in the mind of the lover (the word “mente” will be used four times in E’ m’incresce di me, more than in any other of Dante’s poems; here it anticipates the “libro della mente” of the next stanza): “L’imagine di questa donne siede / sù nella mente ancora [The image of this lady still holds sway / within my intellect]” (43–4). Onto the scene erupts a lady-assassin who “raises up her murderous eyes [alza gli occhi micidiali]” (49) and celebrates her absolute dominion with a shout, whose sadistic content is registered through the immediacy of direct discourse: “e grida/sovra colei che piange il suo partire:/‘Vanne, misera, fuor, vattene omai’ [she castigates my soul that weeps for death:/‘Get out of here, you wretch, now go away’]” (49–51).86 The verb gridare, “to scream or shout out,” which Dante uses again in the following verse – “Questo grida il disire [Such words desire speaks]” (52) – could not be less Cavalcantian: literally, given that Cavalcanti never uses it. The same could be said of the adjective micidiale used by Dante for the “occhi micidiali” of the lady, another word that does not appear in the more restricted diction – calmer, more resigned – of Cavalcanti.
The fourth stanza of E’ m’incresce di me marks the birth of a new poetics of passion. Moving away from the calm, rational desperation of Cavalcanti, Dante here is inventing the diction and the register of erotic aggression that he will exploit with so much success in the rime petrose and, beyond the rime petrose, in the prose treatises and ultimately in the Commedia: passion and aggression are essential to Dante’s poetics. Dante is as hot and impassioned, even (especially) when dealing with the intellect, as Cavalcanti is detached and cool, even (especially) when dealing with passion. The verb gridare and the adjective micidiale appear together in E’ m’incresce di me and again in the most aggressive of the petrose, Così nel mio parlar, in which the lover struggles with a lady who is “micidiale e latra [murderous and thieving]” (58).
At this point, it might seem that Dante had already accomplished enough in this canzone, but in fact it is the fifth stanza that moves the poet most significantly along his poetic itinerary. The fifth stanza of E’ m’incresce di me is essentially a trial run for the Vita Nuova, in the sense that the lady – this same aggressive, cruel, and lethal lady – will be presented as a being who is special and miraculous in absolute terms, not only within the subjectivity of the lover but objectively and historically. Situating his narration on a stage that now encompasses the whole world, the poet takes an enormous step backward in history in order to return to the day of the birth of his lady and to the effects of this birth on his youthful body. He says that he is able to read these effects “in the book of memory” (“nel libro della mente”):
Lo giorno che costei nel mondo venne,
secondo che si truova
nel libro della mente che vien meno,
la mia persona pargola sostenne
una passïon nova,
tal ch’io rimasi di paura pieno.
(E’ m’incresce di me, 57–62)
[The day on which she came into this world,
according to the book
of memory that falters more and more,
my youthful body was subjected to
a feeling so unknown
I sank into a state of fearfulness.]
Here we see elements of the miraculous and theologized history of the Vita Nuova, still linked syntactically to the Cavalcantian love that provokes fear and death. For instance, in verse 59, the image of the “libro della mente,” which before long will ornament the prose opening of the Vita Nuova, is destabilized by the Cavalcantian faltering of “vien meno” (to fail); similarly, the “passïon nova” that the lover feels is not such as to cause ecstasy, but such that “I sank into a state of fearfulness” (“tal che rimasi di paura pieno”) (61–2). If on the one hand the poem affirms – as does the Vita Nuova – an experience that is absolutely new and different, that can miraculously make itself felt by the childish body of the poet in the moment of her birth, on the other hand it is still about a passion that causes fear and trembling and that carries the soul towards death:
e se ’l libro non erra,
lo spirito maggior tremò sì forte
che parve ben che morte
per lui in questo mondo giunta fosse;
&n
bsp; ma or ne ’ncresce a quei che questo mosse.
(E’ m’incresce di me, 66–70)
[and if this book is right,
the greater spirit trembled with such force
that it became quite clear
that death was just about to claim its life.
But He who did ordain this now repents.]
In the last verse of the fifth stanza, the death of the self awakens pity in the ordainer of these events, God, already invoked in verse 34, where “its Maker hears its plea with sympathy”: “ascolta con pietate il suo Fattore” (34). E’ m’incresce di me thus moves from self-pity in its first verse to God’s pity: Dante’s field has broadened. But she who is born with such cosmic effects in E’ m’incresce di me is not yet endowed with the beneficent qualities of the lady of Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore; to the contrary, in this canzone the intellective faculty of the lover realizes that “its affliction had been born”: “che ’l suo male era nato” (76). We are still dealing with the Beatrice of Lo doloroso amor, of whom the poet wrote “Per quella moro c’ha nome Beatrice.”
The canzoni Lo doloroso amor and E’ m’incresce di me are evidence of an interior drama: they show that the road Dante travelled to arrive at the Beatrice of the Vita Nuova was far from overdetermined. Dante experimented with various formulas, and E’ m’incresce di me was one of these experimentations, a canzone in which the poet combines Cavalcanti’s lethal love with a new erotic aggression all Dante’s own, and then sets the whole drama in a cosmic and supernatural frame. The result is a fascinating ideological aporia: a lady who is miraculous but also Cavalcantian.
32 (B LXVII; C 20; FB 32; DR 10)
E’ m’incresce di me sì duramente, ch’altrettanto di doglia
I feel such deep compassion for myself that pity makes me bear
3
mi reca la pietà quanto ’l martiro, lasso, però che dolorosamente sento contra mia voglia
in equal measure sorrow and great pain, and so excruciatingly, alas, I feel unwillingly
6
raccoglier l’aire del sezzaio sospiro entro ’n quel cor che’ belli occhi feriro quando li aperse Amor co· le sue mani per conducermi al tempo che mi sface.
the final sigh swell up within my heart that those alluring eyes of hers struck hard when Love with his own hands first opened them to lead me to the hour of my demise.
10
Oïmè, quanto piani, soavi e dolci ver’ me si levaro quand’elli incominciaro la morte mia, che tanto mi dispiace,
How gentle and how kind, how tender was the look that they displayed the day they undertook to bring about my death, so painfully,
14
dicendo: “Nostro lume porta pace.”
and said to me: “Our light will bring you peace.”
“Noi darem pace al core, a voi diletto” diceano agli occhi miei
“We’ll bring peace to your heart, and joy to you,” her eyes said to my eyes,
17
quei della bella donna alcuna volta; ma poi che sepper di loro intelletto che per forza di lei
the ones my lady used to show at times; but once they knew, by their own reasoning, that through her power my mind
20
m’era la mente già ben tutta tolta, co· le ’nsegne d’Amor dieder la volta; sì che la lor vittorïosa vista poi non si vide pur una fïata:
had been completely torn away from me, they turned and fled beneath Love’s gonfalon, so that the look they had in victory was never to be seen again, not once:
24
ond’è rimasa trista l’anima mia che n’attendea conforto; ed ora quasi morto vede lo core a cui era sposata,
and so my soul now grieves when it expected comfort from their light, and must now look upon my heart near death, to which it once was wed,
28
e partir la conviene innamorata.
and has to take its leave still full of love.
Innamorata se ne va piangendo fora di questa vita
Still full of love my soul, disconsolate, departs this life of ours
31
la sconsolata, che la caccia Amore. Ella si move quinci sì dolendo, ch’anzi la sua partita
with tears of sorrow, driven out by Love. In going forth it suffers so much pain that, just before it leaves,
34
l’ascolta con pietate il suo Fattore. Ristretta s’è entro ’l mezzo del core con quella vita che rimane spenta solo in quel punto ch’ella se ·n va via,
its Maker hears its plea with sympathy. The soul retreats inside the inner heart to join what little life remains to fade the very instant that it takes its leave.
38
ed ivi si lamenta d’Amor che for d’esto mondo la caccia, e spessamente abraccia li spiriti che piangon tuttavia,
And there it censures Love, who forces it to leave this world behind, embracing more than once the spirits that lament unceasingly
42
però che perdon la lor compagnia.
the painful loss of its sweet company.
L’imagine di questa donna siede sù nella mente ancora,
The image of this lady still holds sway within my intellect,
45
là ove la puose quei che fu sua guida; e non le pesa del mal ch’ella vede, anzi vie più bella ora
where it was placed by him who was her guide. But it’s not troubled by the harm it sees, indeed she’s lovelier
48
che mai e vie più lieta par che rida, ed alza gli occhi micidiali, e grida sovra colei che piange il suo partire: “Vanne, misera, fuor, vattene omai!”
than in the past and smiles with greater joy; and as she raises up her murderous eyes, she castigates my soul that weeps for death: “Get out of here, you wretch, now go away!”
52
Questo grida il disire che mi combatte così come suole, avegna che men duole, però che ’l mio sentire è meno assai
Such words desire speaks, assailing me as it has always done, though now the pain is less because my power to feel is less intense
56
ed è più presso al terminar de’ guai.
and is far closer to the end of woe.
Lo giorno che costei nel mondo venne, secondo che si truova
The day on which she came into this world, according to the book
59
nel libro della mente che vien meno, la mia persona pargola sostenne una passïon nova,
of memory that falters more and more, my youthful body was subjected to a feeling so unknown
62
tal ch’io rimasi di paura pieno; ch’a tutte mie virtù fu posto un freno subitamente, sì ch’io caddi in terra per una luce che nel cuor percosse;
I sank into a state of fearfulness; and it arrested all my faculties so suddenly I fell right to the ground, because a light had pierced me in the heart:
66
e se ’l libro non erra, lo spirito maggior tremò sì forte che parve ben che morte per lui in questo mondo giunta fosse;
and if this book is right, the greater spirit trembled with such force that it became quite clear that death was just about to claim its life.
70
ma or ne ’ncresce a quei che questo mosse.
But He who did ordain this now repents.
Quando m’aparve poi la gran biltate che sì mi fa dolere,
When I first saw her wondrous loveliness that brings such pain to me,
73
donne gentili a cui i’ ho parlato, quella virtù c’ha più nobilitate, mirando nel piacere,
dear noble ladies who’ve now heard me speak, the faculty that stands above the rest, while gazing on her face,
76
s’accorse ben che ’l suo male era nato; e conobbe il disio ch’era creato per lo mirare intento ch’ella fece, sì che piangendo disse a l’altre poi:
perceived that its affliction had been born and recognized the yearning brought to life by having gazed on her so steadfastly; and so it told the other f
aculties, in tears:
80
“Qui giugnerà, in vece d’una ch’i’ vidi, la bella figura che già mi fa paura, che sarà donna sopra tutte noi
“In place of her I saw will come the lovely image of that one, which I already fear and who will reign as mistress of us all,
84
tosto che fia piacer degli occhi suoi.”
as soon as it is pleasing to her eyes.”
I’ ho parlato a voi, giovani donne ch’avete gli occhi di bellezze ornati e la mente d’amor vinta e pensosa,
Young ladies, I have spoken now to you, whose eyes hold beauty as an ornament and who are ruled by painful thoughts of love,
88
perché raccomandati vi sian li detti miei ovunque sono; e ’nnanzi a voi perdono la morte mia a quella bella cosa
Dante's Lyric Poetry: Poems of Youth and of the 'Vita Nuova' Page 25