Dante's Lyric Poetry: Poems of Youth and of the 'Vita Nuova'

by Dante Alighieri

  In two of the mourning sonnets we find the expression “nostra donna [our lady],” also present in Un dì si venne: in Voi che portate and Voi donne it is the women who appropriate the lady, referring to her as “nostra.” The phrase “nostra donna” thus can indicate different points of view: when spoken by Love (a projection of the narrator) in Donna pietosa and in Un dì si venne, “nostra donna” includes the poet in the association, while the same phrase in the mouth of the women-companions instead suggests his exclusion from rituals of mourning.

  Love is characterized as “dolce fratello [sweet brother]” in Un dì si venne, whose last verse continues the fellowship between the poet and his brother even after the lady’s death: “ché nostra donna muor, dolce fratello [because our lady, brother, lies near death]” (14). The phrase “nostra donna” recalls the sonnet Deh ragioniamo insieme un poco, Amore, in which the journeying poet suggests to a benign Love that they while away the time by talking together about “our lady”: “trattiam di nostra donna omai, signore [let’s speak awhile about our lady, lord]” (4). Deh ragioniamo’s friendly Love hails from more joyful times, and is the forerunner of the Love, still brotherly but no longer smiling, that we find in Un dì si venne.

  The sonnet Cavalcando l’altr’ier, included in Vita Nuova IX (4), has many features in common with Un dì si venne. Both are more narrative than lyrical, and in both the lover encounters a melancholy Love walking along a road: in Cavalcando l’altr’ier Love is “meschino [destitute]” (5), while in Un dì si venne a me Malinconia Love is a “cattivello [poor man]” (12). Interestingly, the poet encounters Love again in Io mi senti’ svegliar dentro a lo core, the sonnet that follows Donna pietosa in Vita Nuova XXIV (15), but there Love is “allegro [cheerful]” (4).

  41 (B LXXII; C 25; FB 41; DR 66)

  Un dì si venne a me Malinconia e disse: “I’ voglio un poco star con teco”; e parve a me che la menasse seco

  Once Melancholy came to me and said “I plan to stay with you a little while”; and it appeared to me she’d brought along

  4

  Dolore ed Ira per suo compagnia. Ed io le dissi: “Pàrtiti, va’ via”; ed ella mi rispose come un greco; e ragionando a grand’agio con meco,

  both Sorrow and Distress for company. I said to her, “Away with you, be gone!” But like a Greek she answered haughtily, and while she spoke to me with perfect ease,

  8

  guardai e vidi Amor che venia

  I looked and saw that Love was drawing near,

  vestito di nuovo d’un drappo nero, e nel suo capo portava un cappello,

  attired in brand-new clothing that was black, and wearing on his head a hat as well,

  11

  e certo lacrimava pur di vero. Ed io li dissi: “Che hai tu, cattivello?” E lui rispose: “Io ho guai e pensero,

  and he was truly weeping real tears. I said to him: “What troubles you, poor man?” And he replied: “I mourn and feel deep pain

  14

  ché nostra donna muor, dolce fratello.”

  because our lady, brother, lies near death.”

  METRE: sonnet ABBA ABBA CDC DCD.

  42 Io mi senti’ svegliar dentro a lo core

  The sonnet Io mi senti’ svegliar dentro a lo core, placed by Dante in chapter XXIV (15) of the Vita Nuova, is among the most obvious examples of texts whose original sense is modified almost beyond recognition by the prose of the libello. The sonnet celebrates Love and the beloved ladies who are named in it: calling the ladies by name is without a doubt the most original aspect of the poem. The content takes the form of a two-part procession: first arrives Love and then in a second installment arrive the two ladies who are celebrated and named by Love. In the first part, which takes place in the octave, the poet sees Love coming from far off, as in Un dì si venne a me Malinconia, but instead of a sad Love full of presentiments about the death of madonna, this Love is happy and triumphant: “e poi vidi venir da lungi Amore / allegro sì, che appena il conoscia,/dicendo: ‘Or pensa pur di farmi onore’ [then I saw Love approaching from afar/(I barely recognized him for his cheer)/who said, while smiling after every word:/‘Now only think how you might honour me’]” (3–5). Then, in the sestet, which corresponds to the second phase of the procession, the poet witnesses the arrival of the two ladies:

  io vidi monna Vanna e monna Bice

  venire inver lo loco là ’v’io era,

  l’una appresso de l’altra maraviglia;

  e sì come la mente mi ridice,

  Amor mi disse: “Quell’è Primavera,

  e quell’ha nome Amor, sì mi somiglia.”

  (Io mi senti’ svegliar, 9–14)

  [and saw the ladies Joan and Beatrice

  draw near the place where I was standing then,

  one marvel followed by a second one.

  And as my memory now recollects,

  Love said: “This one is Spring, the other’s name

  is Love, because she so resembles me.]

  The names “monna Vanna” and “monna Bice” are the source of much of the interest in Io mi senti’ svegliar. For De Robertis, “it is curious that, as a nickname, the name of Guido’s lady shows up only through Dante’s testimony” (VN, p. 168), and in fact Guido, i’ vorrei too refers to “monna Vanna” as the lady of Guido Cavalcanti (De Robertis is referring to “Vanna” as a nickname for “Giovanna”). In Guido, i’ vorrei, Beatrice’s name does not appear and Dante’s lady is indicated instead with the paraphrase “quella ch’è sul numer de le trenta [(she) who’s number thirty]” (10). Thus, Io mi senti’ svegliar offers a rare opportunity, always of interest, of seeing Dante’s lady named outside the prose of the Vita Nuova; it offers, moreover, the only use of the name “Bice” in all of Dante’s lyrics (“Bice” is used again only in Par. 7.14). The expression “monna Bice” is a hapax in Dante’s oeuvre. The word “monna” indicates a married woman and is not associated with Beatrice’s name in the Commedia, where the residue of personal and social identity present in the Vita Nuova has diminished further still.

  The prose in chapter XXIV (15) of the Vita Nuova takes the modest sonnet Io mi senti’ svegliar and hypes it almost beyond recognition. According to the prose, the senhal or lyrical code-name of monna Vanna, which is “Primavera” (“Spring”; see “piacente primavera” in Cavalcanti’s ballata, Fresca rosa novella), corresponds to prima verrà or “s / he will come first.” The name of Giovanna Primavera therefore corresponds to that of the Giovanni (John) who “will come first,” which is to say, to that John who will come before Christ: “E se anche vogli considerare lo primo nome suo, tanto è quanto dire ‘prima verrà’, però che lo nome Giovanna è da quello Giovanni lo quale precedette la verace luce, dicendo: ‘Ego vox clamantis in deserto: parate viam Domini’ [And if you also consider her given name, you will see that it is practically the same as saying prima verrà, since her name, Giovanna or Joanna, is derived from that John who preceded the true Light, saying, ‘I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord’]” (VN XXIV.4 [15.4]). The simple, sweet arrival in the sonnet of “monna Vanna e monna Bice,” in that order, “l’una appresso de l’altra maraviglia [one marvel followed by a second one]” (11), becomes, in the prose of the Vita Nuova, the arrival of John the Baptist who prepares the way of Christ.

  Dante here shows that he is a young glossator who, while perhaps a bit heavy-handed, is always astute in singling out in the prose the salient and workable details of a sonnet. Most interesting in Io mi senti’ svegliar is the naming of names, which is developed as a theme in the prose through use of the word “nome” (name): “Quell’è Primavera,/e quell’ha nome Amor, sì mi somiglia [This one is Spring, the other’s name / is Love, because she so resembles me]” (13–14). Establishing naming as a theme of the sonnet permits the author of the libello to focus in the prose on the basic principle “nomina sunt consequentia rerum [names are the consequence of the things named],” announced earlier, in Vita Nuova XIII (6): “con ciò sia cosa che
li nomi seguitino le nominate cose, sì come è scritto: ‘Nomina sunt consequentia rerum’ [given that names follow from the things they name, as it is written: ‘Nomina sunt consequentia rerum’]” (VN XIII.4 [6.4]).

  The idea of affixing a name that “follows from the thing it names,” precisely as theorized in Vita Nuova XIII (6), is faithfully executed in the prose treatment of “monna Vanna,” where Dante uses the phrase imporre il nome a qualcuno (to give a name to someone). We learn that “per la sua bieltade, secondo che altri crede, imposto l’era nome Primavera [she was given the name Primavera because of her beauty, as others believe]” (VN XXIV.3 [15.3]). Love explains that he moved Guido, “lo imponitore del nome” – literally, “the giver of her name” – to give his lady this name in order to indicate the role of Giovanna in relation to Beatrice: “ché io mossi lo imponitore del nome a chiamarla così Primavera, cioè prima verrà lo die che Beatrice si mosterrà dopo la imaginazione del suo fedele [I moved the one who gave her that name to call her Primavera, that is, prima verrà, she will come first the day that Beatrice appears, after the imaginings of her faithful one]” (VN XXIV.4 [15.4]).

  The strange game of temporal inversion on which the construction of the Vita Nuova is based – a game based on maintaining that the poems were written not before the prose, as in fact was the case, but afterwards, to fix the moment described by the prose – generates many disorienting moments, but few more disquieting than this. The “imponitore del nome,” Guido Cavalcanti, is “unaware of the true meaning of the name that he himself gave” (Gorni, VN, p. 142), a name that, moreover, he did not really give her, since Vanna / Giovanna “is a name that never recurs in Guido’s lyrics” (Gorni, VN, p. 142). In a further disquieting move, right after having presented the analogy between Giovanna and the Baptist and between Beatrice and Christ – an analogy that clearly suggests that in the poetic sphere too there will be a hierarchy and that the poet of “monna Vanna” preceded and prepared the way for the greater poet of “monna Bice” – Dante tells us that he wrote Io mi senti’ svegliar “to my first friend,” Guido Cavalcanti: “Onde io poi, ripensando, propuosi di scrivere per rima a lo mio primo amico [Whereupon, thinking things over, I planned to write a poem to my best friend]” (VN XXIV.6 [15.6]).

  The true “imposer of names,” on everyone and everything – Dante – here says that he wrote to his best friend as if Guido were still the one who reigned supreme, in both poetry and love, as if he were still “primo” in the sense of “most important,” rather than “primo” in the (new, just imposed) sense of “eclipsed.” Dante writes as if Guido were still the Guido of Guido, i’ vorrei, the friend of the poetic season that includes the sonnet Io mi senti’ svegliar dentro a lo core, instead of the Guido he has fashioned through the Vita Nuova prose. In the elaborate analogy between Giovanna and John and between Beatrice and Christ imposed on the sonnet by the prose, Guido has been demoted from “first” to “second”; his position is preparatory, proleptic, passé. It is the position of the one who, in Purgatorio 11, will be chased 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).

  42 (B XXI; FB 42; VN XXIV.7–9 [15.7–9])

  Io mi senti’ svegliar dentro a lo core un spirito amoroso che dormia: e poi vidi venir da lungi Amore

  I felt a spirit of love begin to stir within my heart, where it was fast asleep; then I saw Love approaching from afar

  4

  allegro sì, che appena il conoscia, dicendo: “Or pensa pur di farmi onore”; e ’n ciascuna parola sua ridia. E poco stando meco il mio segnore,

  (I barely recognized him for his cheer) who said, while smiling after every word: “Now only think how you might honour me.” And while my Lord remained with me a while,

  8

  guardando in quella parte onde venia,

  I turned my eyes to see from where he’d come

  io vidi monna Vanna e monna Bice venire inver lo loco là ’v’io era,

  and saw the ladies Joan and Beatrice draw near the place where I was standing then,

  11

  l’una appresso de l’altra maraviglia; e sì come la mente mi ridice, Amor mi disse: “Quell’è Primavera,

  one marvel followed by a second one. And as my memory now recollects, Love said: “This one is Spring, the other’s name

  14

  e quell’ha nome Amor, sì mi somiglia.”

  is Love, because she so resembles me.”

  METRE: sonnet ABAB ABAB CDE CDE.

  43 Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare

  First Redaction

  The sonnet Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare is among the most celebrated and anthologized in Italian literature. It was inserted into chapter XXVI (17) of the Vita Nuova, where it exemplifies the resumption of the stilo de la sua loda, the style that Dante will later call the dolce stil novo, dedicated to the praise of madonna’s virtuous and miraculous effects. In this chapter of the libello Dante returns to the theme of praise – developed earlier, in the great canzone Donne ch’avete and in the sonnet Negli occhi porta la mia donna Amore – but then put aside in order to concentrate on the theme of death and existential entropy. Now Dante explicitly declares his wish to “resume the style I had praised her with”: “Queste e più mirabili cose da lei procedeano virtuosamente: onde io pensando a ciò, volendo ripigliare lo stilo de la sua loda, propuosi di dicere parole, ne le quali io dessi ad intendere de le sue mirabili ed eccellenti operazioni [These and other marvelous things proceeded from her by means of her power; so that I, thinking about all this and wishing to resume the style I had praised her with, planned to compose a poem in which I would describe some of the wondrous and excellent effects she brought about]” (VN XXVI.4 [17.4]).

  The version of Tanto gentile reproduced here, however, is the first redaction, not the version in the Vita Nuova, whose refinements of the earlier redaction contribute towards underscoring the gains of the new style. Whereas in the preliminary version Dante writes “credo che sia una cosa venuta / di cielo in terra a miracol mostrare [I believe she is a creature come / from heaven to earth to show a miracle]” (7–8), in the final version he substitutes “e par che” for “credo che,” reusing the verb parere from the incipit and eliminating any possible element “of participation and personal appropriation” (De Robertis, VN, p. 182). Similarly, the verb ferire in “che fier [ferisce] per gli occhi” (that strikes through the eyes) (10), which for De Robertis constitutes a “clear residue of the language and representation of suffering love” (VN, p. 183), is eliminated in the final redaction and corrected into “che dà per lì occhi” (that gives through the eyes).100

  The feature that distinguishes Tanto gentile from the many other sonnets that harken back to the Guinizzellian model and that share the same essential theme of madonna’s nobility and virtue is above all its capacity to make manifest, its theatricality: instead of describing the lady and her miraculous nobility, Tanto gentile manages to show her nobility in action, to make it visible. The theatricality of Tanto gentile is all the more difficult to grasp because it is not at all obvious or melodramatic; in fact, the sonnet is so rigorously limpid that Dante himself refuses to muddy it through glossing and subdivision: “Questo sonetto è sì piano ad intendere, per quello che narrato è dinanzi, che non abbisogna d’alcuna divisione [This sonnet is so simple, because of what is said before it, there is no need to divide it up]” (VN XXVI.8 [17.8]).

  If we were to assign a more theological term to the poetics of Tanto gentile, we could say that it deploys a sacramental art, bearing in mind the technical sense of “sacrament” as a visible sign of inward grace. A synonym for sacramental art could be art of manifestation, of making the invisible visible, as in the divine manifestation described in Romans 1:19–20, in a passage cited by Dante in the Monarchia and the Fift
h Epistle: “quia quod notum est Dei, manifestum est in illis. Deus enim illis manifestavit. Invisibilia enim ipsius, a creatura mundi, per ea quae facta sunt, intel-lecta, conspiciuntur [because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made].”101 This art of “making manifest” is of special importance to a poet who theorizes making the invisible visible as early as the Vita Nuova,102 and is of course critical for the Commedia. We can say of Tanto gentile that “the lady’s miraculously sacramental presence sets a precedent for the Commedia.”103

  To better understand how Dante creates the epiphanic effect of Tanto gentile, it is useful to compare it to Negli occhi porta la mia donna Amore, a sonnet with which it shares stil novo motifs, lexicon, and the fundamental stilnovist situation of the lady who passes by, gives her salution, and so creates a new moral reality. The two sonnets have in common a subtle mesh of delicately transposed elements. Take, for example, the adjective gentile, which in the incipit of Tanto gentile is applied not to the reality altered by her, as in Negli occhi porta’s “si fa gentil ciò ch’ella mira [renders noble all she looks upon]” [2]), but rather to the lady herself (“Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare [My lady shows such grace and dignity]”). Another example is the verb mirare, which plays etymologically with the noun miracolo (miracle): while in Negli occhi porta her gaze is directed at others, in Tanto gentile the gaze of others is directed at her. The verb mirare therefore is transferred to those who gaze at her and to the sweetness they feel – “Mostrasi sì piacente a chi la mira,/che fier per gli occhi una dolcezza al core [She shows such charm to who looks on her / that through his eyes a sweetness strikes his heart]” (Tanto gentile, 9–10) – a sweetness that in Negli occhi porta is instead elicited by her speech: “Ogni dolcezza, ogni pensiero umìle / nasce nel core a chi parlar la sente [All sweetness and all humble thoughts are born / within the heart of those who hear her speak]” (Negli occhi porta, 9–10).