Dante’s Vita Nuova, New Edition: A Translation and an Essay

by Dante Alighieri

  Why was it a digression from the “subject” to describe the effects of Beatrice’s greeting when anything at all connected with Beatrice would seem to be of the essence of his subject? Because this Chapter XI is a chapter written now by the scribe, written now and in the present tense, as the reader will note, and hence not according to the intention declared in the Proem.

  Chapter XXIX on the number nine is just a digression, too.

  But what the reader will surely note is that Chapter XI is not written in the present tense; describing as it does habitual activity in the past, it is written throughout in the imperfect tense (that is, after the introductory Dico che …).

  In the notes to her translation of the Vita nuova (Penguin Press, 1969) Barbara Reynolds (p. 109) also considers Chapter XI to be a digression. The reason she offers I find equally incomprehensible.

  6. There is only one full-fledged simile in the Vita nuova: that in Chapter XVIII mentioned earlier:

  Allora queste donne comincìaro a parlare tra loro, e sì come talora vedemo cadere l’acqua mischiata di bella neve, così mi parea udire le loro parole uscire mischiate di sospiri.

  We note the conventional structure sì come … così … and the perfect (if chiastic!) paralleling of A and B. Both of these features are lacking in the simile of Chapter XII where, after a reference to his spell of weeping, the protagonist states that he went to his room:

  … e quivi, chiamando misericordia a la donna de la cortesia, e dicendo “Amore, aiuta lo tuo fedele ” m’addormentai come un pargoletto battuto lagrimando.

  Nevertheless, this everyday, yet colorful simile is surely intended to strike the reader’s attention—and to suggest a contrast with the more elaborate simile of Chapter XVIII where the lover, no longer in a childish mood, will be inspired to choose the new theme of praise. The few other partial similes found in the Vita nuova are rather nondescript; only these two stand out, offering, almost, an additional “set of two’s”: the one reflecting the Lesser Aspect, the other the program of praise which, of course, points in the direction of the Greater Aspect. It is fitting that the first should be an imperfect simile.

  7. The majority of scholars see in the last two lines of the second stanza of the first canzone (“E che dirà ne lo inferno: ‘O mal nati, / io vidi la speranza dei beati’ ”) an allusion to the Divine Comedy, of which Dante would already have had some preliminary conception. And it may be noted that the phrase mal nati is used to refer to the damned in Canto V of the Inferno, when they are first presented, undergoing the judgment of Minòs. A number of critics, however, believe these lines to be a reference to the poet’s possible damnation: a similar intimation of damnation, involving a similar memory of his happiness on earth with his lady, is found among the Rime (Lo doloroso amor). Still other scholars have seen in the phrase ne lo inferno merely a reference to the desolation of Florence after the death of Beatrice. The last explanation is not convincing, and the second is preposterous.

  Among those who see in these lines an allusion to Dante’s magnum opus, some believe that the second stanza was added much later. More likely would be the supposition that the entire canzone was written some time after his youthful period.

  8. The picture of the kindling of love in the heart of the beholder, which is contained in the last stanza of the first canzone, differs from the traditional one in that there are involved not only the eyes of the one who beholds the beautiful lady, but also the eyes of the lady herself, from which issue the flaming spirits that strike the eyes of him who looks upon her, and pass to his heart.

  9. Cavalcanti’s poems of praise are the three sonnets:

  I

  Biltà di donna e di saccente core

  e cavalieri armati che sien genti;

  cantar d’augelli e ragionar d’amore;

  adorni legni ’n mar forte correnti;

  aria serena quand’ apar l’albore

  e bianca neve scender senza venti;

  rivera d’acqua e prato d’ogni fiore;

  oro, argento, azzuro ’n ornamenti:

  ciò passa la beliate e la valenza

  de la mia donna e ’l su’ gentil coraggio,

  sì che rasembra vile a che ciò guarda;

  e tanto più d’ogn’ altr’ ha conoscenza,

  quanto lo ciel de la terra è maggio.

  A simil di natura ben non tarda.

  II

  Avete ’n vo’ li fior’ e la verdura

  e ciò che luce od è bello a vedere;

  risplende più che sol vostra figura:

  chi vo’ non vede, ma’ non pò valere.

  In questo mondo non ha creatura

  sì piena di bieltà né di piacere;

  e chi d’amor si teme, lu’ assicura

  vostro bel vis’ tanto ’n sé volere.

  Le donne che vi fanno compagnia

  assa’ mi piaccion per lo vostro amore;

  ed i’ le prego per lor cortesia

  che qual più può più vi faccia onore

  ed aggia cara vostra segnoria,

  perché di tutte siete la migliore.

  III

  Chi è questa che vèn, ch’ogn’om la mira,

  che fa tremar di chiaritate l’âre

  e mena seco Amor, sì che parlare

  null’ omo potè, ma ciascun sospira?

  O deo, che sembra quando li occhi gira,

  dical’ Amor, ch’i’ nol savria contare:

  cotanto d’umilità donna mi pare,

  ch’ogn’altra ver’ di lei i’ la chiam’ ira.

  Non si poria contar la sua piagenza,

  ch’a le’ s’inchin’ ogni gentil vertute,

  e la beliate per sua dea la mostra.

  Non fu sì alta già la mente nostra

  e non si pose ’n noi tanta salute,

  che propiamente n’aviàn canoscenza.

  With Guinizelli we find the two sonnets:

  I

  lo voglio del ver la mia donna laudare

  ed asembrali la rosa e lo giglio:

  più che stella dìana splende e pare,

  e ciò ch’è lassù bello a lei somiglio.

  Verde river’ a lei rasembro e l’âre,

  tutti color di fior’, giano e vermiglio,

  oro ed azzurro e ricche gioi per dare:

  medesmo Amor per lei rafina meglio.

  Passa per via adorna, e sì gentile

  ch’abassa orgolio a cui dona salute,

  e fa ’l de nostra fé se non la crede;

  e no lle pò appressare om che sia vile;

  ancor ve dirò c’ha maggior vertute:

  null’ om pò mal pensar fin che la vede.

  II

  Gentil donzella, di pregio nomata,

  degna di laude e di tutto onore,

  ché par de voi non fu ancora nata

  né sì compiuta di tutto valore,

  pare che ’n voi dimori onne fìata

  la deìtà de l’alto deo d’amore;

  de tutto compimento siete ornata

  [e] d’adornezze e di tutto bellore:

  ché ’l vostro viso dà sì gran lumera

  che non è donna ch’aggia in sé beliate

  ch’a voi davante non s’ascuri in cera;

  per voi tutte bellezze so’ afinate,

  e ciascun fior fiorisce in sua manera

  lo giorno quando vo’ vi dimostrate.

  10. In interpreting the unfinished canzone as evidence of the breakdown of the lover’s program of praise, because of its position immediately following the poems of praise, I admitted that, actually, it might have been composed much earlier. But how could we account for the existence of an earlier poem of just one stanza (though fourteen lines in length, it does not have the usual form of the sonnet)? Perhaps the young Dante had begun a canzone that was interrupted by some other event than the one he gives as reason for his failure to conclude it. Or he may have attempted the experiment of a one-stanza canzone: Chapter XXXIII contains a canzone of two stanzas. This may remind
us of the sonnet with two beginnings in Chapter XXXIV: there, the normal limits of the genre have been extended; in Chapter XXXIII they have been reduced. The last two cases, at least, must reflect Dante’s delight in experimenting with breaking the rules of the metrical game. Such experiments (slightly reminiscent of the Provençal descort) do not appear in any other poems of Dante outside the Vita nuova.

  11. In Chapter XXX, discussing the letter written to the princes of the land about the desolation of Florence caused by Beatrice’s death, Dante refers, in passing, to the poems that will follow as his “new material”:

  Poi che fue partita da questo secolo … io … scrissi a lì principi de la terra alquanto de la sua condizione, pigliando quello cominciamento di Geremia profeta che dice: Quo-modo sedet sola civitas. E questo dico, acciò che altri non si maravigli perchè io rabbia allegato di sopra [i.e. Chapter XXVIII] quasi come entrata de la nuova materia che appresso vene.

  Dante may have believed at this point that he would be able to write poems of deeper praise for Beatrice; or, as many of the commentators seem to believe, he may have used the expression nuova materia to refer to the replacement of the theme of praise by that of grief over Beatrice’s death.

  12. When in Chapter XVII the protagonist decided to write no more poems concerned with the state of his feelings, he did not speak of being ashamed of what he had written. It is rather as if he were exhausted by the emotional tension that had gone into the writing of his last four sonnets, and had come to realize the futility of continuing along the same lines. But in Chapter XVIII, after he had been forced to announce his new theme and had been reminded by the lady of the difference between this and his earlier theme, he knew shame for the first time.

  13. Chapter XVIII, describing the lover’s meeting with his sarcastic Muse, offers a second scene of mockery to be found in the Vita nuova. The first event (the scene at the wedding feast) had also inspired him to write a poem, but it was one of a very different nature: the whimpering sonnet rebuking Beatrice, “Con 1’ altre donne mia vista gabbate.”

  14. The critics who stress the spontaneous inspiration of the opening line of the first canzone (XIX), as if forgetting about the poetic straits in which the protagonist had previously found himself (XVIII), are probably thinking in terms of another book—remembering the conversation between Bonagi-unta and the pilgrim in Purgatory XXIV. Having recognized the visitor to his terrace as the author of “Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore,” Bonagiunta elicits from him the famous definition of his manner of poetic composition (“lo mi son un che …”) which, supposedly, stresses its artlessness (an artlessness which critics have, in turn, ascribed to the whole so-called school of the dolce stilnovisti; but see my article “Le ali di Dante… ,” Convivium XXXIV [1966], 361-368).

  15. The coincidences involved in Dante’s inspiration to compose his poems of praise have been seen by Luigi Pietrobono (Saggi danteschi [Torino, 1954], p. 9 seq.), and by Fausto Montanari (Vesperienza poetica di Dante [Florence, 1968], pp. 74-5). Both seem to believe that his inspiration was ultimately willed by God; Montanari, however, is at the same time capable of seeing, in the conversation between the lover and the ladies, a verbal contest such as was apparently characteristic of courtly conversation.

  16. It might be said that the sternness of Beatrice’s figure in the mid-stanza of the first canzone has already begun to be dissolved in stanza IV, which describes her effect on the beholder only in terms of the love she inspires; the stanza ends with an appeal to the ladies to whom his poem is addressed. And the last stanza, as we know, brings us back into the atmosphere of courtly society with which the canzone opens (the author seems to return to this atmosphere with a sense of relief). Surely the first and last stanzas offer an incongruous framework for the poem whose essence lies in the three central stanzas—of a sublimity never to be attained again in the Vita nuova.

  17. Within the repetitious sonnets of praise we may also note a development away from the awesome. Whereas the first sonnet (like the first canzone) presents Beatrice as moving in unlimited space, passing as it were before mankind, in the last two we are forced by the preceding prose section to think of a Florentine background, as Dante insists on the local truth of the citizens’ veneration for Beatrice—they rush to see her pass.

  18. The first of the Troubadours, William of Aquitaine, offers, in the central stanzas (IV, V) of the canso “Mout jau-zens me prenc en amar”, an unforgetable picture of his lady’s ability to transform all who come in contact with her:

  Totz joys li deu humiliar,

  e tota ricor obezir

  mi dons, per son belh aculhir,

  e deu son belh plazent esguar;

  e deu horn mais cent ans durar

  qui·l joy de s’amor pot sazir.

  Per son joy pot malautz sanar,

  e per sa ira sas morir

  e savis horn enfolezir

  e belhs hom sa beutat mudar

  e·l plus cortes vilanejar

  e totz vilas encortezir.

  Hers, surely, is a superhuman power. But inserted between the first and last lines of stanza V is a picture of capricious, even sinister forces at work. The same lady who can heal and ennoble a man may also exert on him the power of Circe.

  19. There is a logical justification of a sort for the poet’s following up the sonnets of praise in Chapters XXI and XXVI with a poem about his own feelings; this would be in line with a comparable modification of theme begun in Chapter XXI. There he had shifted from the generic description of the effect of any lady’s beauty on any man (described in Chapter XX) to the effect of the beauty of the particular individual Beatrice on whoever might observe her, and, in Chapter XXVI, on the citizens of Florence; to shift now to her effect on him, personally, represents a similar narrowing of focus.

  But it is not only the choice of theme but the sickly treatment of it that mars the poem.

  20. Dante’s vision of the death of Beatrice with details suggestive of the Crucifixion is the dramatic high point of the Vita nuova. This vision was induced by a severe illness that had overtaken him; his physical condition leads him to think of his own mortality, which in turn brings him to the realization that one day Beatrice too must die. And he seems to see the faces of ladies wild with wrath and hear them chant “You are going to die!” He hears laments of mourning uttered by strange dishevelled women, and then begins to witness the dreadful portents of Beatrice’s death. But it is difficult to see just what this magnificent evocation of phantasmagoric images reveals of the stage reached in the spiritual progress of the protagonist. On the one hand the Christ-like nature of Beatrice is suggested (in the macabre details presented): on the other the poem is the product of illness, morbidity and delirium.

  Shaw in his Essays … devotes almost all of Chapter V to this vision, being mainly interested in a comparison between the narrative and the poem that follows. I cannot accept all the details of Shaw’s treatment, and I should say that his approach is vitiated from the start by his conviction that the narrative was intended as a commentary on and a retouching of the poem written sometime earlier (in fact, he suggests it was written exactly one year earlier).

  The most unacceptable of his proposals is his interpretation of line 13 of the third stanza of the canzone: “visi di donne m’apparver crucciati”. He sees in this line a reference (for which there is no exact parallel in the prose) to women who are jealous of Beatrice. Not only is there no indication in all of the Vita nuova that such a jealousy existed, but in the last sonnet of praise (XXVI) such a possibility is excluded:

  E sua bieltate è di tanta virtute,

  che nulla invidia a l’altre ne procede,

  anzi le face andar seco vestute

  di gentilezza, d’amore e di fede;

  La vista sua fa ogni cosa umile.

  21. Twice (IX and XIX) we learn of Dante’s departure from Florence, but the place to which he goes is not mentioned. It is as if he conceives of travel to another place in terms only of absence
from Florence. The other places themselves do not exist as such.

  22. The last poem in the Vita nuova is addressed, as we learn only in the last line, to “my dear ladies.” The line ends—that is, the poetry of the Vita nuova ends—with the words donne mie care. Are these the same ladies to whom he addressed his first canzone, “Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore”—or do the words refer merely to the two “donne gentili” who had asked him to send them some of his poetry at the beginning of the chapter?

  23. There are exactly twenty-two sighs mentioned in the Vita nuova: eleven in the prose and eleven in the poetry. But could this sigh of XLI, which has become a spirit capable of ascending to Heaven (no longer reminding us, that is, of the sickly spiritelli of the first part of the book) be a further spiritualization of the sigh which Beatrice’s presence invited from those who looked upon her in the famous sonnet of Chapter XXVI? Surely this was a sigh of pure aspiration, untouched by selfish sentimentality.

  24. The lover’s inability to accept with composure the death of Beatrice, when he had shown in the first canzone how eagerly she was desired in Heaven, is criticized sternly, tenderly, and with a touch of humor in a poem written for him by his friend, Cino da Pistoia:

  Avvegna ched el m’aggia più per tempo

  per voi richesto Pietate e Amore

  per confortar la vostra grave vita,

  non è ancor sì trapassato il tempo

  che ’l mio sermon non trovi il vostro core

  piangendo star con l’anima smarrita,

  fra sè dicendo: “Già sete in ciel gita,

  beata gioia, com chiamava il nome!

  Lasso me! quando e come

  veder vi potrò io visibilmente?”

  sì ch’ancora a presente

  vi posso fare di conforto aita.