The other three sonnets are similarly “recapitulative.” In the second sonnet he begins to speak in terms of the lady’s beauty, of her pale “color of love and pity” (we may remember the “color of the pearl” attributed to Beatrice in the first canzone). In the third sonnet remorse sets in; he curses his eyes which, we learn for the first time, have ceased to weep and have begun to enjoy what they look upon. He is conscious, that is, of infidelity to Beatrice. But he blames his eyes not only for enjoying the sight of the lady, but also, and perhaps mainly, for having ceased to weep; and he reminds them that when they used to perform their function duly they were able to make all those who looked upon him weep. It is as if he can conceive of salvation from infidelity only in terms of a renewal of morbid self-pity. He warns his eyes that he will continuously remind them of Beatrice—because, as he said in the prose, the pity which he enjoys from the lady herself is inspired only by her regret for Beatrice. In the fourth sonnet he imagines a debate between the heart and the soul. The heart (or desire, as we are told in the prose) welcomes a “gentil pensero” that speaks of the new lady; the soul (or reason) is disturbed by the power of this thought which drives out all others. But the heart has the last word. We may remember that the author, in summing up the first nine years of the lover’s devotion to Beatrice, allows him to claim that reason always ruled his love.
Love for Beatrice had been, for the protagonist, largely a source of self-pity, and this need for pity becomes the source of infidelity. It is as if with love of this self-centered kind it does not matter what direction the love takes; it is as if in his weak moments it was not Beatrice whom he loved. What he sought and what he loved was only a source of emotional self-indulgence. Thus, his infidelity was no more of a sin that had been the hysterical aspects of his fidelity to Beatrice. (That in the Convivio the “lady at the window” will become a symbol of the Lady Philosophy should not concern the reader of the Vita nuova: that Dante feels free to use earlier compositions to suit his purpose at the moment should already be clear.)
The struggle between the rational soul and the desirous heart which seemed to be leading toward the triumph of the heart is brought to a sudden end with the re-establishment of reason: one day his imagination is seized by the figure of Beatrice as he first saw her dressed in her crimson robes. He begins once more to think of her and, remembering her in “the sequence of past times,” his heart, with pain, repents. With the impact of this inner movement through time he is shaken completely free of his recent infatuation, and all his thoughts return to Beatrice. He tells us of his sighs breathing her name; as they issue from his chastened heart they speak of what is the preoccupation of his heart: how she departed from us. With his allegiance to Beatrice sealed, he can weep once more, weep again and again until his eyes are encircled with a purplish color, being thus justly rewarded for their wantonness. And his painful thoughts often induce in him a near-cataleptic state.
The sonnet that follows, we are told, contains the “essence” (sentenza) of what has preceded. The first two quatrains are devoted to a description of his suffering eyes. The tercets, too, speak of pain:
Questi penseri, e li sospir ch’eo gitto,
diventan ne lo cor sì angosciosi
ch’Amor vi tramortisce, sì lien dole;
però ch’elli hanno in lor li dolorosi
quel dolce nome di madonna scritto,
e de la morte sua molte parole.
(These meditations and the sighs I breathe
become so anguishing within the heart
that Love, who dwells there, faints, he is so tortured;
for on those thoughts and sighs of lamentation
the sweet name of my lady is inscribed,
with many words relating to her death.)
The protagonist has been privileged to have a vision of Beatrice which has moved him to sincere repentance. He promises his reader to offer the true signficance of this experience in a sonnet—which, however, is devoted entirely to a description of his own suffering!
Thus, the lover in returning to Beatrice has returned to the sterile mood of helpless grief over her death. He has come home. The reappearance of Beatrice in his imagination was only a reminder of things past, an invitation to hug to himself once again the familiar feelings of self-pity. He sees his lady not as she has become: Beatrice in glory cherished by Heaven, a vision revealing new truth, inviting to movement forward, but as she was at the age of nine, on the day that set in motion the chain of debilitating emotional experiences. His thoughts, it is true, are not concentrated only upon the figure of the child Beatrice: after her first appearance in his imagination he begins remembering her “in the sequence of past times.” The term “sequence” implies that he re-evokes, in order, all the scenes and all the moods that followed their first meeting (II). And it is quite possible that such a re-evocation moving forward in time to the present might well have afforded him a clearer vision of what his love for Beatrice should have been (it certainly is clear to the reader of the Vita nuova). But the forward movement through time does not extend to the present, it stops short at Beatrice’s death: this, we are told, came to be the sole preoccupation of his heart (“how she departed from us”). He refuses to go beyond her death, to go beyond to the meaning of her death. And because ever since the actual death of Beatrice his attempts to go beyond had been few and brief, the only vision of her that was vouchsafed him was the memory of the earliest past. We have in Chapter XXIX a dreary aria da capo. The protagonist is imprisoned within the limits of beginning and (inorganic) ending.
In Chapter XL of the Vita nuova the lover apparently sees strangers for the first time. The narrow frame of his vision, concentrated upon himself and Beatrice, had been able, at best, to comprehend vague figures of Florentine friends and acquaintances, all of whom in one way or another had been associated with his love for Beatrice. Now he sees a group of pilgrims on their way to Rome passing through the middle of the city “where the most gracious lady was born, lived and died.” They appear to him to be absorbed in their thoughts; they make on him the impression of having come from far away; they are alien, unfamiliar. He is reminded that there are other places in the world besides Florence where one may have his home.21 He realizes also that these thoughtful strangers are not thinking about his suffering or even about the city of Florence suffering from the loss of Beatrice (they are not thinking “Quomodo sedit sola civitas…”); their thoughts must be on their own friends living in distant lands. He has a reaction of defiance: “If I had the opportunity, I could make them weep.” And he decides to write a sonnet addressed to them.
Chapter XL ends with a pedantic note as Dante the “glossator” intervenes to list the three terms applicable to religious pilgrims: peregrini, romei, palmieri. And he offers, as it were, an apology for having applied the term peregrini to those who, being on their way to Rome, should have properly been called romei. If one should read these words without recognizing the intervention of the “glossator,” one would not fail to have a very favorable opinion of the development of the protagonist’s mood. He would seem to be passing, from an attitude of selfish resentment over the pilgrims’ indifference, to a calmer, nobler mood, remembering the sacred goal of their pilgrimage, realizing that they are “pilgrims” not only in the general sense of being far away from home but also in the religious sense of being on their way to worship at a shrine. The protagonist’s first feeling of pique would seem to have given way to the solemn realization that the pilgrims’ spiritual goal is more important than his grief or that of the people of Florence; his provincialism which was like the social reflection of his self-centeredness would have given way to a recognition of new vistas.
But the poem that ends the chapter reveals the falsity of such an interpretation. Just as it is impossible to believe that Chapter XXIX, the “essay” on the number nine, represents the mood of the protagonist in the days following the death of Beatrice—his real mood being reflected in his tear-drenched third
canzone—so we must refuse to attribute the dispassionate attitude revealed in the closing section of the chapter to the young lover who, having watched with surprise and resentment the pilgrims passing through and beyond his city, decides to write a poem in which he could pretend to make them weep (and forget their holy goal), and which, indeed, reveals no other concern.
The contrast between the protagonist of the Vita nuova, with his self-centeredness and provincialism, and the protagonist of the Divine Comedy, to whom the goal of the beatific vision soon comes to be the unique concern, is obvious. And the story of a young Florentine man of letters, moving through familiar streets, will give way to that of the pilgrim, Everyman, moving through the strange (and never before traveled by mortal man) topography of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. Is it only a coincidence that the lover who, as protagonist of the Divine Comedy, will have the role of a pilgrim is first made aware of something alien to his ego by the appearance precisely of dedicated pilgrims?
The last poem of the Vita nuova describes the ascent of the lover’s spirit to Heaven:
Oltre la spera che più larga gira
passa ’l sospiro ch’esce del mio core:
intelligenza nova, che l’Amore
piangendo mette in lui, pur su lo tira.
Quand’elli ņ giunto là dove disira,
vede una donna, che riceve onore
e luce sì, che per lo suo splendore
lo peregrino spirito la mira.
Vedela tal, che quando ’l mi ridice,
io no lo intendo, sì parla sottile
al cor dolente che lo fa parlare.
So io che parla di quella gentile,
però che spesso ricorda Beatrice,
sì ch’io lo ’ntendo hen, donne mie care.
(Beyond the sphere that makes the widest round,
passes the sigh arisen from my heart;
a new intelligence that Love in tears
endowed it with is urging it on high.
Once arrived at the place of its desiring,
it sees a lady held in reverence,
splendid in light, and through her radiance
the pilgrim spirit looks upon her being.
But when it tries to tell me what it saw,
I cannot understand the subtle words
it speaks to the sad heart that makes it speak.
I know it tells of that most gracious one,
for I often hear the name of Beatrice.
This much, at least, is clear to me, dear ladies.)22
We see the light of Beatrice shining in Heaven; we see her light, we see the lover’s spirit absorbed in looking at her. In the first canzone the radiance of Beatrice on earth was sending its rays toward Heaven; in the third, the full splendor of her light moved from earth to Heaven; now it is shining steadily into the eyes of a pilgrim spirit. But the glory of the quatrains gives way to the bewilderment and disequilibrium of the tercets. For though this poem describes the ascent of the lover’s spirit to Heaven, this spirit is a sigh born of his longing: the last of the twenty-two sighs that breathe through the Vita nuova23 And though it is drawn above by the force of an “in-telligenza nova,” this “new intelligence” was inspired by Love in tears; when the spirit returns to him with its message from Beatrice, the lover is completely unable to understand it, for it is the grieving heart that listens to it. Moreover, he himself says in the preceding prose that the sonnet he decided to write would be a description of his own condition (“lo quale narra del mio stato”).24 In this sonnet where an old, stale theme still lingers on, the light of Heaven also shines. But the meaning of this brilliance is a mystery to our protagonist, a mystery which will slowly begin to be clear only after the vision in the final chapter (which the poet does not share with his reader), that inspires him to break off the “New Life”:
Appresso questo sonetto apparve a me una mirabile visione, ne la quale io vidi cose che mi fecero proporre di non dire più di questa benedetta infìno a tanto che io potesse più degnamente trattare di lei. E di venire a ciò io studio quanto posso, sì com’ella sae veracemente. Sì che, se piacere sarà di colui a cui tutte le cose vivono, che la mia vita duri per alquanti anni, io spero di dicer di lei quello che mai non fue detto d’alcuna. E poi piaccia a colui che è sire de la cortesia, che la mia anima se ne possa gire a vedere la gloria de la sua donna, cioè di quella benedetta Beatrice, la quale gloriosa-mente mira ne la faccia di colui qui est per omnia sécula benedictus.
(After I wrote this sonnet there came to me a miraculous vision in which I saw things that made me resolve to say no more about this blessed one until I would be capable of writing about her in a nobler way. To achieve this I am striving as hard as I can, and this she truly knows. Accordingly, if it be the pleasure of Him through whom all things live that my life continue for a few more years, I hope to write of her that which has never been written of any other woman. And then may it please the One who is the Lord of graciousness that my soul ascend to behold the glory of its lady, that is, of that blessed Beatrice, who in glory contemplates the countenance of the One qui est per omnia sécula benedictus.)
Thus, in the final chapter of the Vita nuova Dante the Poet expresses his dissatisfaction with his protagonist, or, rather, he allows the protagonist to express his dissatisfaction with himself. As the result of a vision, which is not revealed to us, he decides to stop writing about Beatrice until he can do so more worthily.25 The preceding visions that have come to him have made him decide to write; this one makes him decide to stop writing. Like the Convivio, then, the Vita nuova is an unfinished book. Unlike the Convivio, however, the Vita nuova is left unfinished for a positive, artistic purpose, and the decision to break off is announced as an event, the final event in the story itself. And, indeed, insofar as the action of the Vita nuova is to be seen as the development of the young Dante’s love from preoccupation with his own feelings to enjoyment of Beatrice’s excellence, in the direction of an exclusive concern with her heavenly attributes and with heavenly matters, then this action ends, in an important sense, in failure and in the recognition of failure.
* * *
In the first chapter of this essay was discussed the dual role of Dante the author of the Vita nuova: narrator and glossator-editor. But it is necessary to distinguish not only between these two auctorial roles but also between the author himself and the protagonist. In recent years the critics of the Divine Comedy have come to see more clearly the folly of confusing Dante the poet, the historical figure who wrote the poem and who occasionally speaks to the reader from out the poem in his own voice—and Dante the pilgrim, who is the poet’s creation and who moves in a world entirely of the poet’s invention. It has been some time since any critic has pointed to the prostrate figure of the pilgrim in Canto V of the Inferno, swooning in pity over Francesca’s fate, as evidence that Dante himself, the poet-theologian who conceived and elaborated the grandiose plan of the Divine Comedy, was moved by tender compassion for the character he sent to Hell.
In the case of the Vita nuova, too, it is necessary to distinguish between the protagonist and the author, even if, in this text, the protagonist is himself a historical figure, and the world in which he moves is not purely fictitious. We must attempt to distinguish between the point of view of the youthful Dante who is the protagonist of the Vita nuova, and the point of view of the more mature Dante who is the narrator; that is, the critic must proceed as he would in the case of any first-person autobiographical novel. He cannot take for granted that the point of view of the character undergoing various experiences in the past (the young lover swooning against the wall at the wedding feast in Chapter XIV of the Vita nuova) will be the same as that of his later self, who writes about the experiences in question some time after having lived through them, reflecting upon them in retrospect from a new perspective. How can we know just what the attitude was of the author of the Vita nuova, since, as has been said, he does not explicitly pass judgment on the protagonist’s actions? Must it not be assumed
that his would be the attitude not only of any mature person but also of one who knew that he was going to write a divine comedy?
What I have actually been trying to show is the fact that the more mature Dante is re-evoking his youthful experiences in a way to point up the folly, or the ignorance, of his younger self. We must imagine the poet, between the age of twenty-seven and thirty-five, as having already glimpsed the possibility of what was to be his terrible and grandiose masterpiece; we must imagine him rereading the love poems of his earlier years—a number of them, surely, with embarrassment. He would also have come to see Beatrice, too, as she was destined to appear in the Divine Comedy, and indeed, as she does appear briefly in the Vita nuova: in that essay (XXIX) on the miraculous quality of the number 9, which is the square of the number 3, that is of the Trinity, and which is Beatrice herself. Having arrived at this point, he would have chosen, then, several of his earlier love poems, including many that exhibit his younger self at his worst, in order to offer a warning example to other young lovers and especially to other love-poets. For, that some of the poems in the Vita nuova do represent the lover at his hysterical worst will become clear to anyone who reads through Dante’s Rime. Though some of the poems in that collection reveal the lover’s preoccupation with his own feelings and an insistence on the suffering he is enduring (attitudes characteristic of the love poetry of the time), in none of them is to be found the easy, puerile overflowing of grief that characterizes so many poems of the Vita nuova, or the desperate appeal, explicit or implicit, to the pity of others. And references to tears are almost entirely absent from the Rime.
Dante’s Vita Nuova, New Edition: A Translation and an Essay Page 17