in order that my poem commend itself to you where it is heard: before you, I forgive that lovely one for having caused my death,
92
che me n’ha colpa e mai non fu pietosa.
who bears all blame and never showed me pity.
METRE: canzone of six stanzas, each composed of fourteen verses (ten hendecasyllables and four settenari), with rhyme scheme AbC AbC CDEdFfEE and congedo with rhyme scheme identical to that of the sirma. The fronte is six verses (3 + 3) and the sirma is eight verses.
33 Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore
Among his own canzoni, Donne ch’avete was Dante’s personal favourite. In two key moments of his writer’s life – in the Vita Nuova and then in the Commedia – Dante cites it and explicitly states that for him it holds a privileged place, and that he assigns it a central role in constructing his identity as poet, in his poetic autobiography. In the linguistic treatise De vulgari eloquentia, where Dante cites several of his own canzoni, Donne ch’avete again holds a prominent position, cited where the canzone genre is defined (2.8) and again as an example of a canzone whose stanzas are composed entirely of hendecasyllables (2.12). In Vita Nuova XIX (10), Donne ch’avete is a canzone-manifesto, which assumes a programmatic function in the libello (a role that is then cemented by the explicit echoes of Donne ch’avete in the canzone on the death of Beatrice, Li occhi dolenti): it has the role of breaking with the past, of ushering in the new, and of alerting readers to all that is new and different in the stil novo with respect to earlier poetics. Composed of five stanzas of fourteen lines each (the fifth functions as a congedo), Donne ch’avete is the first canzone in the Vita Nuova and represents a new beginning, in writing as well as in life, a new beginning that Dante underscores in the prose, emphasizing the canzone’s birth, its “cominciamento”: “Queste parole io ripuosi ne la mente con grande letizia, pensando di prenderle per mio cominciamento; onde poi, ritornato a la sopradetta cittade, pensando alquanti die, cominciai una canzone con questo cominciamento [Then, returning to the above-named city, after thinking about it for several days, I started to compose a canzone with this opening]” (VN XIX.3 [10.14]).
The programmatic, foundational role of Donne ch’avete will be confirmed many years later, when it is precisely this poem that inspires Bonagiunta da Lucca to conjure the label dolce stil novo, sweet new style, in the celebrated encounter of Purgatorio 24. We might say that in the Vita Nuova, where Dante’s stil novo is in fieri, Donne ch’avete “acts,” that is, it actualizes the new style: the canzone actively shows us what is new about the stil novo. In Purgatorio, on the other hand, Donne ch’avete, which in its time had broken with the past, has become the past: it is emblematic of the poetic history that Dante is now writing and codifying, a history that – long since institutionalized in Italian historiography with the purgatorial label – was for Dante distilled in the early canzone.
Dante, a poet in an age when lyrics usually remained uncollected, discovered a foolproof method for conferring upon a single lyric a special value in the economy of his overall work: he understood that he could exercise choice as author-cum-editor-publisher, and that through the act of choosing and reusing he could give a lyric, which was already living a “first life” as an autonomous poem, a “second life” within a macrotext. Thirty-one poems were in this way chosen and assigned to the macro-text of the Vita Nuova, three canzoni to the macrotext of the unfinished Convivio, and the opening lines of three canzoni to the macrotext of the Commedia. The three autocitations allocated to the Commedia all come from other macrotexts, so that the Commedia confers upon them a “third life”: Amor che nella mente mi ragiona, previously the second of the three canzoni of the Convivio, is cited in Purgatorio 2; Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore, from the Vita Nuova, in Purgatorio 24; and Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete, the first of the canzoni of the Convivio, in Paradiso 8. The central poem of this intertextual and autobiographical discourse inscribed in the Commedia, the only one that is not subjected to the slightest criticism or retroactive revision, is the favoured canzone Donne ch’avete.87
When we consider this canzone in the context of Dante’s lyrics, it is important to read it for itself, and not through the lens of Dante’s self-mythologizing, which in this case is a lens of endorsement and a potential magnifying glass. On the other hand, the rhetorical and ideological achievements of this canzone, seen from the perspective of what Dante previously wrote – canzoni such as La dispietata mente, Lo doloroso amor, and E’ m’incresce di me – are real and indisputable: if Dante was searching for a way that would lead him to the Commedia, Donne ch’avete constitutes a fundamental step in getting there. And we can say this without resorting to the Vita Nuova’s prose, but on the basis of the canzone taken in itself.
Donne ch’avete, in fact, is extraordinary without an assist from the prose: the substance of the canzone is entirely radical on its own, entirely innovative, entirely theologized. (I prefer to speak of the canzone as “theologized” rather than “theological,” because Dante is endowing his courtly discourse with a theologized patina, not engaging in a careful use of theology.) While there are slight love lyrics in the Vita Nuova that are puffed up by the prose with a metaphysical and theologized meaning that is not intrinsic to them (for example the sonnet Io mi senti’ svegliar dentro a lo core in Vita Nuova XXIV [15]), Donne ch’avete does not belong to this category: its metaphysical claims have no need of the prose because they are intrinsic to the canzone as such. For this very reason there is no rewriting of the canzone’s thematic kernel in the prose frame that introduces Donne ch’avete, as happens in the prose frames to Io mi senti’ svegliar and other poems. In the case of Donne ch’avete the introductory prose aims not to decipher it but to shed light on the circumstances of its creation and above all to announce its absolute newness as a love lyric dictated not by the desire to possess but by the desire to praise: “E però propuosi di prendere per matera de lo mio parlare sempre mai quello che fosse loda di questa gentilissima [So I decided that the subject matter for my poetry from then on would be praise for this most gracious of women]” (VN XVIII.9 [10.11]).
The newness of Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore is already in the incipit, which hails a partnership between reason and love that is fully characteristic of Dante, and which rejects and overturns the Cavalcantian vision according to which love is non-rational: “non razionale, – ma che sente [not rational, – but that feels]” (Donna me prega, 31).88 In the incipit of Donne ch’avete Dante establishes a link between intel-letto and amore – antithetical values in Cavalcanti’s system. It is interesting from this point of view to recall the formal similarity between Donne ch’avete, which opens with a break with Cavalcantian dogma, and Donna me prega, Guido’s canzone-manifesto: both are canzoni made up entirely of hendecasyllables, cited together as examples of that category in De vulgari eloquentia 2.12. Dante does not comment, in the Latin treatise, on another similarity that he would have noticed, and that is that Donna me prega and Donne ch’avete also share the same stanza length of fourteen lines, the length of a sonnet. (The fourteen-line stanza is typical of the canzoni in the Vita Nuova: the length is shared by Donne ch’avete, Donna pietosa, Li occhi dolenti, and Sì lungiamente; only Quantunque volte diverges from this pattern.) These formal similarities highlight the ideological abyss that separates Donne ch’avete from Donna me prega and the fundamental divergence in their visions of the role of desire in human life, a divergence that extends beyond ideology to embrace existential attitude: Cavalcanti parses passion as “not rational” with a cold and rigorous logic, in rationalistic terminology, while Dante sings of the “intellect of love” with a warm, impassioned exuberance that at times verges on illogicality.
The first stanza of Donne ch’avete, which in the prose Dante calls “proemio de le sequenti parole [the proem for the words that follow]” (XIX.5 [10.26]), provides the interpretative key: this canzone dramatizes the word itself, not just any word, but the word that praises the poet’s la
dy. The prose account explains that beatitude resides “In quelle parole che lodano la donna mia [In those words that praise my lady]” (VN XVIII.6 [10.8]). Thus Donne ch’avete, rather than explaining, acts: the canzone is the acting out of “those words that praise my lady.” In an understated, plain style, the poet declares his intention “de la mia donna dire,/non perch’io creda sua laude finire,/ma ragionar per isfogar la mente [to speak to you about my lady,/not that I think I can exhaust her praise,/but rather to alleviate my mind]” (2–4). The following verses continue to focus on the speech act, indicating for example – in what may be a sign of the metaphysical bent that the canzone will assume – a restriction on the group of possible interlocutors: only the “donne e donzelle amorose [ladies, maidens, who know love]” (13) can be his audience, “ché non è cosa da parlarne altrui [for this is something others should not hear]” (14). The less restricted group that the poet addressed in A ciascun’alma presa e gentil core is no longer relevant. The first stanza is laced with a lexicon that insists on the act of speaking: “Io dico” (5), “farei parlando” (8), “E io non vo’ parlar” (9), “ma tratterò del suo stato gentile” (11), “che non è cosa da parlarne altrui” (14). Although the poet’s voice is for now the only one to make itself heard, the first stanza begins to create the sense of a choral world that rotates around madonna.
At the start of the second stanza, this world changes vertiginously. From the “donne e donzelle amorose” (13), the poet shifts without warning to a celestial scene, and in place of the plain, modest trattare of the poet we hear the resounding angelic clamare: “Angelo clama in divino intelletto / e dice [An angel clamours in the mind of God,/and says]” (15–16). The world stage on which the lady of Donne ch’avete is projected is vast, and the chorus that rises “with respect to her” (“a respetto a lei” [12]) is truly cosmic. The leap from the first stanza to the second is immense.
The canzone performs this immense leap in such a way, however, as to maximize thematic coherence: Donne ch’avete remains a poetic text dedicated to the act of speech and specifically to the act of praising madonna. Although the angel communicates “in divino intelletto,” that is, directly in the divine mind without the medium of words (De vulgari eloquentia teaches that human beings require language because we cannot enter into others’ minds as angels can: “Nec per spiritualem speculationem, ut angelum, alterum alterum introire contingit [Nor is it given to us to enter into each other’s minds by means of spiritual reflection, as the angels do]” [DVE 1.3.1]), what the angel has to “say” is recorded by the poet in human words in the form of direct address. Still more impressive is the fact that God speaks – “che parla Dio” (23) – and that his words too are reported by the poet, also given as direct address. The chorality of Donne ch’avete expands and rises to the point that it encompasses the divine word.
It is not the first time an angel is heard speaking in Dante’s lyrics: in Per una ghirlandetta the poet invents “an angel full of gentle love” (7) who sings “Whoever looks on me / will praise my noble lord” (9–10). This delicate (“sottile”) voice of the diminutive angel (“angiolel”) of Per una ghirlandetta, who speaks with lexical and syntactic simplicity, contrasts with the majestic presence of the non-diminutive angel who “clamours” in Donne ch’avete and whose form of linguistic expression is much more complex: “Sire, nel mondo si vede / maraviglia ne l’atto che procede / d’un’anima che ’nfin qua su risplende [My Lord, on earth a miracle / in act is seen proceeding from a soul / whose shining light extends as far as here]” (16–18). In De Robertis’ gloss, madonna is defined by the angel as a “miracle (in the etymological sense of a marvelous thing or effect) in act, incarnate” (VN, p. 120).
The notion that madonna is a miracle is presented against a background that is impressively vertical: the splendour of her soul down in the world “extends as far as here” (“ ’nfin qua su risplende” [18]). The cosmic background anticipates the “corte del cielo [court of heaven]” of Inferno 2; the canzone features not three beatified women talking among each other but the discourse of angels, saints, and God himself. The conceits that originate with this strange mixture of courtly love and Christianity are mostly, in Foster-Boyde’s words, “theologically absurd” (p. 100), as in fact it is theologically absurd that “Heaven, whose only imperfection is / the lack of her, implores its Lord to ask / for her, and all saints favour this request”: “Lo cielo, che non have altro difetto / che d’aver lei, al suo segnor la chiede,/e ciascun santo ne grida merzede” (19–21).89 We witness here not theological accuracy but rather a manifest wish on the part of the young poet to theologize courtly discourse: a wish already evident, though expressed differently, in the canzoni Lo doloroso amor and E’ m’incresce di me.
A cosmic chorus of voices rises with the express purpose of praising madonna, and among the verbs of speech is gridare, used for the saints in paradise who “cry out” for the grace of having madonna among them, in the verse just quoted: “e ciascun santo ne grida merzede” (21). De Robertis notes that “Grida responds to clama in line 15” (VN, p. 120). These “clamorous” verbs are part of the chorality of this canzone, of the mise-en-scène of the voices – from God’s voice to Love’s voice, from the angel’s voice to the poet’s voice – that arise to proclaim the absolute newness of madonna, a courtly lady of whom it can be said that “My lady is desired in highest heaven”: “Madonna è disiata in sommo cielo” (29). It is also interesting to note how the theologizing context legitimizes the use of a verb, gridare, that in a purely courtly context functions in an entirely different manner: we saw how the unusual use of gridare in the canzone E’ m’incresce di me belongs to a new lexicon of erotic aggression that will later lead to the rime petrose. The sort of shout that occurs in Donne ch’avete is, rather, the salvific clamour that we will see again in Donna pietosa, where all the angels “gridavan tutti: Osanna [were crying out Hosanna]” (61).
In Donne ch’avete even God speaks, in a move inherited from Guinizzelli (whose God speaks in the congedo of Al cor gentil) that the mature Dante will reject. God does not speak in the Commedia, suggesting that Dante upon reflection grasped that this is a narrative move from which there is little to gain and much to lose (compare Tasso, who has God speak in his epic Gerusalemme liberata). But he does speak in Donne ch’avete, where Dante assigns him direct discourse within his direct discourse. God, speaking in direct discourse, makes reference to what will be said about the lady in hell, which he cites verbatim, also in direct discourse:
che parla Dio, che di madonna intende:
“Diletti miei, or sofferite in pace
che vostra spene sia quanto me piace
là ’v’è alcun che perder lei s’attende,
e che dirà ne lo inferno: O mal nati,
io vidi la speranza de’ beati.”
(Donne ch’avete, 24–8)
[so God, referring to my lady, says:
“Beloveds, accept with patience that the one
you wish for must, as long as I desire,
remain below with someone who foresees
her loss and who will say in Hell: ‘Lost souls,
I have beheld the hope of all the blessed.’”]
The “words that praise my lady” of which we learned in VN XVIII.6 (10.8) thus encompass the words expressed by one hypothetical damned soul to other damned (“I have beheld the hope of the blessed”), words cited by God “who speaks” to his saints: a vertical line of praise for madonna stretches from hell (“lo inferno”) (27) to the highest heaven (“sommo cielo”) (29), from one end of the universe to the other.
These themes will culminate in Paradiso: when Dante writes of Beatrice, “Se quanto infino a qui di lei si dice / fosse conchiuso tutto in una loda [If all said of her up to here were encapsulated in one hymn of praise]” (Par. 30.16–17), he is evoking a lexical journey that stretches back in time to the first praise-poems; and when he writes that Beatrice’s beauty is such “che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda [that only her
maker may enjoy it all]” (Par. 30.21), he is returning to the mise-en-scène of Donne ch’avete.
The reference to the damned soul “ne lo inferno” in line 27 should not be taken literally. This is a hyperbole that provides another way to gauge the internal contradictions and the exuberant theological immaturity of this canzone (a lover of madonna could not find himself in hell if, in fact, “one who’s spoken with her can’t be damned” [42]). A similar hyperbolic flourish may be found in the third stanza of Lo doloroso amor, where the lover imagines himself damned but free from suffering because he is protected by the image of Beatrice (there the lady is explicitly named “Beatrice,” a name that is not present in Donne ch’avete, which is why I limit myself to referring generically to madonna).90 In Lo doloroso amor the eschatological hyperbole functions as a violent declaration of extreme passion; in Donne ch’avete it functions as an extreme eulogy.
The literally “culminating” point to which all the eulogies of the second stanza of Donne ch’avete lead is the first line of stanza three: “Madonna è disiata in sommo cielo [My lady is desired in highest heaven]” (29). From this “sommo cielo” or highest peak the canzone descends to earth. In the words of the sonnet Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare, it descends “da cielo in terra a miracol mostrare [from heaven to earth to show a miracle]” (8), as confirmed by the Vita Nuova prose: “Poscia quando dico: Angelo clama, comincio a trattare di questa donna. E dividesi questa parte in due: ne la prima dico che di lei si comprende in cielo; ne la seconda dico che di lei si comprende in terra, quivi: Madonna è disiata [Then when I say: An angel speaking, I begin to talk directly about my lady. This section has two parts: in the first I describe how she is perceived in heaven; in the second I describe how she is perceived on earth, beginning with, My lady is desired]” (VN XIX.17 [10.28]).
And in fact the third stanza of Donne ch’avete is less radical than the preceding stanzas, following in the footsteps of the Guinizzellian sonnet Io voglio del ver la mia donna laudare in listing the prodigious and virtuous effects of the lady: “or voi di sua virtù farvi savere [now let me tell you of her qualities]” (30). What follows is the most conventionally laudatory part of Donne ch’avete, where we find explicit echoes not only of the earlier tradition but also of Dante’s own praise-sonnets in which the lady passes “per via” and exercises her salvific influence:
Dante's Lyric Poetry: Poems of Youth and of the 'Vita Nuova' Page 26