Donque m’odite, poi ch’io parlo a posta
d’Amor, a li sospir ponendo sosta.
Noi provamo che ’n questo cieco mondo
ciascun si vive in angosciosa noia,
ché in onne avversità ventura ’l tira.
Beata l’alma che lassa tal fondo
e va nel cielo ov’è compiuta gioia,
gioioso ’l cor for di corrotto e d’ira!
Or donque di che ’l vostro cor sospira,
che rallegrar si de’ del suo migliore?
Ché Dio, nostro signore,
volse di lei, com’avea l’angel detto,
fare il cielo perfetto.
Per nova cosa onne santo la mira,
ed ella sta davanti a la Salute
ed inver lei parla onne Vertute.
Di che vi stringe ’l cor pianto ed angoscia,
che dovresti d’amor sopragioire,
ch’avete in ciel la mente e l’intelletto?
Li vostri spirti trapassar da poscia
per sua vertù nel ciel; tal è ’l disire,
ch’Amor lassù li pinge per diletto.
O omo saggio, perché sì distretto
vi tien così l’affannoso pensero?
Per suo onor vi chero
ch’ a l’egra mente prendiate conforto,
nè aggiate più cor morto
nè figura di morte in vostro aspetto:
perché Dio l’aggia locata fra i soi,
ella tuttora dimora con voi.
Conforto, già, conforto l’Amor chiama,
e Pietà priega “Per Dio, fate resto!”:
or inchinate a sì dolce pregherà.
Spogliatevi di questa vesta grama,
da che voi sete per ragion richesto;
ché l’omo per dolor more a dispera.
Com voi vedresti poi la bella cera
se v’accogliesse morte in disperanza?
Di sì grave pesanza
traete il vostro core omai, per Dio,
che non sia così rio
ver l’alma vostra, che ancora spera
vederla in cielo e star ne le sue braccia:
donque spene di confortar vi piaccia.
Mirate nel piacer dove dimora
la vostra donna ch’è ’n ciel coronata;
ond’è la vostra spene in paradiso,
e tutta santa omai vostr’ innamora,
contemplando nel del mente locata.
Lo core vostro per cui sta diviso,
che pinto tene ’n sè beato viso?
Secondo ch’era qua giù meraviglia,
così là su somiglia,
e tanto più quant’è me’ conosciuta.
Come fu ricevuta
da gli angeli con dolce canto e riso,
gli spiriti vostri rapportato l’hanno,
che spesse volte quel viaggio fanno.
Ella parla di voi con li beati,
e dice loro: “Mentre ched io fui
nel mondo, ricevei onor da lui,
laudando me nei suo’ detti laudati”.
E priega Dio, lo signor verace,
che vi conforti sì come vi piace.
In the first stanza Cino shows his familiarity with the last canzone of the Vita nuova. His reference to the tears that Dante must still be shedding recalls the opening lines “Li occhi dolenti … ,” and the words that he puts into Dante’s mouth, “Già sete in ciel gita …” are taken from the end of the first stanza: “… si n’è gita in ciel subitamente.” In Cino’s second stanza, where he blames the young lover for not rejoicing over Beatrice’s bliss in Heaven, he is reminding him, with the words “Ché Dio …/ volse di lei, come avea l’angel detto,/ fare il cielo perfetto,” of the beginning of the second stanza of the first canzone: “Angelo clama in divino intelletto/e dice. …” The reproach with which Cino opens stanza three (“How can you grieve … ?”) is based on Dante’s new-found ability to travel in spirit to Heaven—obviously an allusion to the last sonnet of the Vita nuova which opens: “Oltre la spera che piu larga gira/passa ’1 sospiro ch’esce del mio core”; and it is in the name of Dante’s honor that he appeals to his friend to take comfort and to erase from his face the image of death. In the next stanza appears a menacing note: such grief as the lover is indulging in leads to desperation and death—and damnation, for if he should die in his state of desperation he could hardly hope to see Beatrice in Heaven. The last stanza of Cino’s poem, with the congedo, sounds a note of joy, as he pictures the bliss of Beatrice and of the angelic beings who have her with them.
In case the reader has occasionally wondered whether my constant carping at the lover’s self-pitying moods is exaggerated, revealing callousness to the sensitivity of a lyrical poet of the duecento, this “sermon,” addressed to the young Dante by his contemporary, and intimate friend, would seem to bear out my criticism.
25. According to Colin Hardie, “Dante and the Tradition of Courtly Love” (in Patterns of Love and Courtesy, 1966, 31-40), the poem that Dante was contemplating writing in Chapter XLII, which would contain words never before said about a lady, was not the Divine Comedy but rather the canzone “Amor, tu vedi ben.”
26. If the distinction between Dante the author and Dante the protagonist is seldom made, even less frequently do we find the suggestion that Dante the author was to any extent critical of the behavior of his protagonist—as Jefferson Fletcher believes (“The ‘True Meaning’ of Dante’s Vita Nuova” Romanic Review, XI, 2, 95-148). Fletcher even recognizes the humor in Chapter XVIII, sensing that the author was making fun of the young lover. However, he believes that the flaws of the protagonist are merely those that are to be expected of “Noble Youth”, and surely does not believe that the protagonist is held up as a warning example.
27. It was stated earlier in reference to Canto V of the Inferno that it would be absurd to imagine that the agonizing pity which the Pilgrim felt for Francesca reflected the attitude of Dante the Poet. I would go further and say that the presentation of the Pilgrim in this canto amounts to an indictment of his emotional self-indulgence: when, swooning in pity over Francesca’s fate, he falls unconscious to the floor of Hell, his collapse symbolizes the sin of subjecting reason to emotion—which was ultimately the sin of the Lustful (cf. the chapter “A Lesson in Lust” in my forthcoming book of Dante studies). It is true that the weakness shown by the Pilgrim here is that of excessive pity for another person, whereas in the Vita nuova it was self-pity in which the lover indulged; but the uncontrollable, uncritical sympathy that the Pilgrim lavished upon Francesca was the same kind of sympathy that the protagonist of the Vita nuova had craved for himself. Granted this parallel between the lover throughout the Vita nuova and the Pilgrim in his first encounter with the Damned, it could be said, stretching a point or two, that the Inferno begins with a recapitulation of the Vita nuova—just as the Vita nuova ends with an anticipation of the Divine Comedy.
28. To speak of the lover’s weakness as a canker, as a disease, is of course to present it positively as a thing in itself, as a destructive force. But this weakness can also be seen from a negative point of view: as a great lack, as the result of a great emptiness. The protagonist of the Vita nuova lived in a vacuum; except for his feelings, and except for Beatrice as their stimulus, nothing else existed in his world. I have spoken of the shadowy, nameless city in which he lived, peopled by nameless shadows. His city, which not only is never named but also is never described, did not exist for him—nor did its history, its political concerns, its culture. The people there did not exist for him, or the problems they may have had. He had no neighbors. Given this inner lack of all selfless concerns, he could never have overcome his sentimentality by struggling within himself. The emptiness of which this sentimentality was a result had to be filled by other things; only by becoming aware of the plenitude of creation could he ever see Beatrice as she truly was.
To become aware of the vastness, and the order, of the cosmos will be granted to the Pilgrim in his journey through the
realms of the After Life. He will meet with sinners of every stripe, and with heroes, sages and saints; he will be instructed in astronomy, and enter into the Empyrean. The plan of salvation will be explained to him, and he will be given a classification of the variety of sins and of virtues. He will ponder the relationship between Free Will and Predestination; he will learn about Divine Justice and justice on earth, and the relationship that should exist between the Church and the Empire; he will follow through the ages the history of the Church and of the Empire. He will learn at last what Love is, in terms of the Cosmos, and will be able to see Beatrice plain at the summit of the Mountain of Purgatory, before he ascends with her to Paradise, and to the final vision of the Triune God.
To go from the Vita nuova through the Divine Comedy is to progress from the inter nos to the extra nos to the super nos of St. Bonaventure.
29. Alan M. F. Gunn (The Mirror of Love) believes that the Roman de la Rose offers a glorification of the lover’s quest for the Rose. More recent critics, however, such as D. W. Robertson, Rosamund Tuve, and J. B. Fleming believe that Jean de Meung is pitilessly indicting the hero. Further corroboration of this opinion will be offered in a forthcoming article by Anna Granville Hatcher, based primarily on a close analysis of the last thousand lines, in which she shows how the literary technique of Jean de Meung (an aspect of the work mainly neglected by the three critics just mentioned) is brought into play to drive home his indictment of the hero—an indictment far crueler than that of the Vita nuova.
30. Leo Spitzer (“Bemerkungen zu Dantes ‘Vita nuova’,’’ Travaux du Séminaire de Philologie Romane I, 162-208, Istam-boul, 1937) in a brief discussion of the Latinity of the speeches of the three spiriti, notes (p. 174) that the first two speak in relatively correct Latin, while the third (the spirit governing the digestive system) is guilty of several barbarisms: e.g. Heu miser for Heu me miserum. He assumes, as something obvious, that the crude Latin was deliberately attributed to the least spiritual of the spiriti for comic effect.
31. See Singleton “The Use of Latin in the Vita nuova” MLN, 1946, pp. 108-112. He quotes Spitzer’s article mainly because of the latter’s remarks on the Latin used in Chapter XII; he mentions Spitzer’s remarks about the Latin in Chapter II, but he is politely hesitant about accepting Spitzer’s lighthearted interpretation.
32. That the lover had great difficulty in grasping the sublimity of Beatrice’s nature (as the number 9) is humanly quite understandable. Guinizelli who, in his famous canzone “Al cor gentil … ,” had compared the efficacy of a lovely lady to the efficacy of God the Creator, allows himself in the last stanza to be sternly rebuked by God. Thereby, he is confessing good-naturedly (for surely the polite apology he offers to God is humorously self-deprecatory) that he had been exaggerating the perfection of a lovely lady all along. Dante, however, will not allow the lover to cease struggling to understand the divine in Beatrice, and he rewards him for this effort in the final vision that the reader of the Vita nuova is not allowed to see.
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