Dante's Lyric Poetry

by Dante Alighieri

  In the canto of Inferno dedicated to lust, we find instead a situation similar to that of our canzone. The “bufera infernal [che] mena li spirti” (“infernal whirlwind [that] drives the spirits” [Inf. 5.31–2]) echoes the “vento / che non mi meni” of Lo doloroso amor, and the concluding verse, “E caddi come corpo morto cade [and I fell as a dead body falls]” [Inf. 5.142]), recalls “sì ch’io cadrò freddo” of the canzone. Moreover, the first verses of our canzone, “Lo doloroso amor che mi conduce/a·ffin di morte per piacer di quella,” are echoed in Francesca’s celebrated verses: in “mi prese del costui piacer sì forte [seized me with his beauty so strongly]” [Inf. 5.104]) and above all in “Amor condusse noi ad una morte [Love led us to one death]” [Inf. 5.106]), which strips away “doloroso” and “a·ffin” to arrive at the essential building blocks of amore, condurre, and morte. Lo doloroso amor and its companion canzone, E’ m’incresce di me, where these building blocks are also present, served as incubators for an ideology that Dante will reject, but to which he will also give voice through Francesca, whose culminating “Amor condusse noi ad una morte” is imprinted on the opening of Lo doloroso amor syntactically, lexically, and above all ideologically.

  It is curious that this same second strophe of Lo doloroso amor, which will endure in the memory of the later eschatological masterpiece, concludes by introducing into the canzone its own erotic eschatology. Here Dante follows in the footsteps of Giacomo da Lentini (in this way also recalling the canzone La dispietata mente, which dialogues significantly with the Sicilian poet), whose sonnet Io m’aggio posto in core a Dio servire avails itself of the paradiso/viso rhyme and makes it emblematic of the interior struggle of the poet, who feels “diviso” between God (“Io m’aggio posto in core a Dio servire,/com’io potesse gire in paradiso [I’ve set my heart on serving God,/so as to visit Paradise]” [1–2]) and his lady (“Sanza mi donna non vi voria gire,/quella c’à blonda testa e claro viso [I would not go without my love,/whose face is bright and hair light blond]” [5–6]). Using the same paradiso / viso rhyme to indicate the same internal division, Dante openly declares that paradise is worth nothing in comparison with the memory of the sweet face of his lady: “ricordando la gioia del dolce viso/a che nïente pare il paradiso [remembering the joy of her sweet face,/beyond compare of even paradise]” [27–8]).

  And that is not all: the third and last strophe delineates the drama of the lover against a backdrop that is more and more exaggeratedly eschatological and theologized. Here the poet takes up again the dilemma of Giacomo and the courtly world and in the strongest and most explicit manner aligns himself not on the side of God but on that of the lady. “Reflecting on what love has made me feel,” the poet declares that “my soul desires no other happiness”: “Pensando a quel che d’amor ho provato,/l’anima mia non chiede altro diletto” (29–30). Further, the love that he felt in life protects him from fear of the beyond (“né il penar non cura il quale attende [nor will it fear the torment it awaits]” [31]), since when he dies, love will accompany his soul to God. The phrase “l’amor che m’ha sì stretto [the love that’s bound me so to it]” (33), which in the canzone is rhymed with “l’anima mia non chiede altro diletto” (30), constitutes another echo of Lo doloroso amor destined for the fifth canto of Inferno, where we find the proximity of “diletto” not with the past participle of stringere (“stretto”) but with the passato remoto “strinse”: “Noi leggiavamo un giorno per diletto / di Lancialotto come amor lo strinse [We were reading one day, for pleasure, of Lancelot and how Love bound him]” (Inf. 5.127–8).

  In the third strophe, Dante creates a perverse variant of the famous congedo of Guido Guinizzelli’s Al cor gentil rimpaira sempre amore, where the Bolognese poet imagines having to justify his love for his lady before a divine tribunal, declaring: “Tenne d’angel sembianza / che fosse del Tuo regno;/non me fu fallo, s’in lei posi amanza [She had an angelic look,/as if from Your kingdom;/it was no fault in me, if I placed my love in her]” (Al cor gentil, 58–60). Here the theologizing of the amorous discourse serves to elevate the earthly (the “vano amor” of which God accuses the poet) towards the divine and thus to exculpate the poet: it is not a “fault” to love the lady precisely because she belongs to the divine kingdom; indeed, if fault there is, it is God’s, who created women so similar to the angels of his kingdom. But even if Guinizzelli indulges in the daring game of throwing back at the Creator the accusation that was levelled at himself, we still remain in a context in which God – not the lady – is the point of reference.

  In Lo doloroso amor, Dante inverts the terms, making the lady the point of reference instead. The poet details the situation of his soul, which has – as in Guinizzelli’s congedo – arrived before the divine tribunal: if God does not pardon the soul its sins, it will depart with the punishments it deserves (“e se del suo peccar pace no i rende,/partirassi col tormentar ch’è degna [and should He grant its sin no amnesty,/it will depart with torments that are just]” [35–6]), but in such a way as to not be afraid (“sì·cche non ne paventa [but which it does not dread]” [37]). How can it be that the soul of the poet will not be afraid of the punishments of hell? Because, in another reprise of Giacomo, here the Sicilian topos of the image of the lady painted in the heart of the lover, the poet explains that his soul will be so intent on imagining his lady that it will not feel any pain: “e starà tanto attenta / d’immaginar colei per cui s’è mossa,/che nulla pena averà che ella senta [it will be so intent / on contemplating her who made it leave / that there will be no pain that it might feel]” (38–40).

  In an overturning of the normative hierarchy between Creator and creature, here the poet makes the lady the absolute point of reference of his universe. She is, in fact, “she for whom my soul set off on its course”: the journey of his life, the journey towards the death described by the canzone, the spiritual movement of his soul – all of it is a function of her, defined literally as “colei per cui [l’anima sua] s’è mossa” (39). Intent and concentrated on imagining his lady, the poet will be immunized to the punishments of hell, pains that in fact he will not even feel. The old topos of the guiderdone finds in these verses a new and eschatological vitality: here finally is the true recompense lavished by Love on the faithful! If Love was sparing with him in this life, “ ’n questo mo[n]do” (41), it will instead be generous in the next: “sì·cche se ’n questo mo[n]do i’ l’ho perduto,/Amor nell’altro me ·n darà tributo [and thus if I have lost it in this world,/Love in the other will repay me well]” (41–2).

  The importance of Lo doloroso amor derives in great part from the strong eschato-logical bent of this last strophe, by the underlined contrast between “questo mondo” and “l’altro.” Dante is here experimenting with the same theologized elements, of Guinizzellian heritage, that will make the style of Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore “new.” But, given the sorrowful theme of Lo doloroso amor, these elements here take on a perverse and non-normative colouring.

  The eschatological elements in Lo doloroso amor have a history in Dante’s repertory, one that extends beyond Inferno 5 all the way to the seventh canto of Paradiso, where we find the same combination of the name of Beatrice, first divided “into Be and ice” (“pur per Be e per ice” [Par. 7.14]), and then written whole in verse 16, with the hyperbole of the lover who does not feel the punishments of hell:

  Ma quella reverenza che s’indonna

  di tutto me, pur per Be e per ice,

  mi richinava come l’uom ch’assonna.

  Poco sofferse me cotal Beatrice

  e cominciò, raggiandomi d’un riso

  tal, che nel foco faria l’uom felice. (Par. 7.13–18)

  [But that reverence that lords over all of me, even just with Be and with ice, made me bow like a man falling asleep. Beatrice didn’t leave me in this state for long, and she began to speak, shining on me with the rays of such a smile as would make a man happy in the fire.]

  Here are the vestiges of Lo doloroso amor: the courtly
world invoked in the neologism “s’indonna,” a verb denoting “to lord over someone as feudal mistress or donna” (Par. 7.13); the name made sign by the division into syllables, Be and ice, as though “written,” as stipulated in the words of Lo doloroso amor, “The sweet name that embitters so my heart / each time I see it written down” (15–16); and above all the description of the lady’s laughter, capable of immunizing her lover from the pains of hell: “un riso / tal, che nel foco faria l’uom felice” (Par. 7.17–18).

  Lo doloroso amor is important in reconstructing Dante’s ideological path because its key verse, “Per quella moro c’ha nome Beatrice” (14), is antithetical to the values of the poet Dante became, whose epigraph could well be “Per quella vivo c’ha nome Beatrice”: I live for / because of her whose name is Beatrice. Lo doloroso amor thus executes an ideological oxymoron: it anticipates on the one hand the Beatrician and theologized Vita Nuova and on the other the fatal love of the rime petrose. It is as though the lethal lady of the rime petrose were called not “petra” (stone) but “she who makes happy, she who gives beatitudine.” The extremism of Lo doloroso amor lies in its commingling of elements that will be antithetical in the Dantean universe as ultimately scripted.

  In conclusion, I offer a note on the transmission of Lo doloroso amor. In this most existential of contexts, Lo doloroso amor holds a very particular position: a position of precarious marginality with respect to Dante’s other canzoni. Lo doloroso amor is, as De Robertis notes, “estravagante tra le estravaganti [an outsider among the outsiders]” [Introduzione, vol. 2, p. 756]),84 and in fact the history of its transmission is the history of its absence. This canzone was not a part of the fortunate group of fifteen canzoni copied by Boccaccio, a group destined to be transmitted as a corpus in their Boccaccian order. Excluded from Boccaccio’s collection, Lo doloroso amor was then excluded from the first printed edition of Dante’s lyrics, the Giuntina of 1527. Given its exclusion from what De Robertis calls “la grande tradizione” of Dante’s lyric poems, Lo doloroso amor has had a less privileged transmission than Dante’s other canzoni: “The codices, for this canzone, are not counted in the hundreds as for the others, or in tens, if we make a single witness out of the extremely copied Boccaccian tradition (but a single witness with enormous influence for almost two centuries); rather they are counted on the fingers of one hand” (De Robertis, Introduzione, vol. 2, p. 1152). The absence of Lo doloroso amor from Boccaccio’s canzoni distese has thus contributed to its marginal position, a marginality reified by De Robertis in his recent edition. It is as though Lo doloroso amor were less canonical, less Dante’s canzone than the others.

  It is difficult to repress the suspicion that it is precisely the verse “Per quella moro c’ha nome Beatrice” that created strong doubts in the copyists, Boccaccio included, and in this way damaged the transmission of the canzone that contains it. If that were the case, one could say that in a certain sense the copyists showed themselves to be shrewd readers. They understood – and attempted to eliminate – the challenge posed by Lo doloroso amor to the dominant myth of himself that Dante so ably constructed and passed on to posterity.

  31 (B LXVIII; C 21; FB 25; DR 16)

  Lo doloroso amor che mi conduce a·ffin di morte per piacer di quella

  The painful love that leads me to my end in death – resulting from an act of her

  3

  che lo mio cor solea tener gioioso m’ha tolto e toglie ciascun dì la luce ch’avean li occhi miei di tale stella,

  who used to fill my heart with joyfulness – has robbed and robs me still each day of light my eyes were used to claiming from her star

  6

  che non credea di lei mai star doglioso; e ’l colpo suo, c’ho portato nascoso, omai si scuopre per soperchia pena, la qual nasce del foco che m’ha tratto di gioco,

  such that I thought she’d never make me sad: this wound, which I have kept concealed from view, can now be seen because of my deep pain, engendered by the fire that robbed me of my joy,

  11

  sì·cch’altro mai che male io non aspetto; e ’l viver mio – omai de’ esser poco – fin a la morte mia sospira e dice:

  so that I now expect just pain alone. My life (what little now remains of it) will sigh to me right to my death and say:

  14

  “Per quella moro c’ha nome Beatrice.”

  “I die for her whose name is Beatrice.”

  Quel dolce nome che mi fa il cor agro, tutte fïate ch’i’ lo vedrò scritto

  The sweet name that embitters so my heart each time I see it written down someplace

  17

  mi farà nuovo ogni dolor ch’i’ sento; e della doglia diverrò sì magro della persona, e ’l viso tanto afflitto

  will make the pain I feel renew itself; I think I will become so changed by grief, my body wasted and my face distraught,

  20

  che qual mi vederà n’avrà pavento. E allor non trarrà sì poco vento che non mi meni, sì ch’io cadrò freddo; e per tal verrò morto, e ’l dolor sarà scorto

  that those who see me will recoil in fear. And it will then take but a little breeze to sweep me off so that I fall down dead; and that is how I’ll die, my anguish to escort

  25

  co·ll’anima che se ·n girà sì trista, e sempre mai co·llei starà ricolto ricordando la gioia del dolce viso

  my sullen soul that must now fade away; and it will always keep her company, remembering the joy of her sweet face,

  28

  a che nïente pare il paradiso.

  beyond compare of even paradise.

  Pensando a quel che d’amor ho provato, l’anima mia non chiede altro diletto,

  Reflecting on what love has made me feel, my soul desires no other happiness,

  31

  né il penar non cura il quale attende; ché poi che ’l corpo sarà consumato se n’anderà l’amor che m’ha sì stretto

  nor will it fear the torment it awaits; for once my body has been turned to dust, the love that’s bound me so to it will rise

  34

  co·llei a Quel ch’ogni ragione intende; e se del suo peccar pace no i rende, partirassi col tormentar ch’è degna, sì·cche non ne paventa, e starà tanto attenta

  aloft to Him who comprehends all things; and should He grant its sin no amnesty, it will depart with torments that are just, but which it does not dread; it will be so intent

  39

  d’inmaginar colei per cui s’è mossa, che nulla pena averà che ella senta: sì·cche se ’n questo mo[n]do i’ l’ho perduto,

  on contemplating her who made it leave that there will be no pain that it might feel: and thus if I have lost it in this world,

  42

  Amor nell’altro me ·n darà tributo.

  Love in the other will repay me well.

  Morte, che·ffai piacere a questa donna, per pietà, innanzi che·ttu mi discigli, va’ da·llei, fatti dire

  Death, you who implement this lady’s will, for pity’s sake, before you ruin me, go up to her and ask

  perché m’avien che la luce di quegli

  why is it that the light of those fair eyes

  47

  che mi fan tristo mi sia così tolta. Se per altrui ella fosse ricolta, fa’ ·lmi sentire, e trarra’mi d’errore,

  that sadden me has been withdrawn this way. If someone else instead receives this light, end my illusion now by telling me,

  50

  e assai finirò con men dolore.

  so I can suffer death less painfully.

  METRE: canzone of three stanzas, each composed of fourteen verses (twelve hendecasyllables and two settenari), with rhyme scheme ABC ABC CXddYDEE and congedo of eight verses, XAyABBCC. The fronte is six verses (3 + 3) and the sirma is eight verses. X and Y indicate verses that do not rhyme: verses 8 and 11 of each stanza, as well as two verses in the congedo.

  32 E’ m’incresce di me sì duramente

  Whether or not as a result of its scandalous thematic content, Lo
doloroso amor experienced an anomalous reception: it was not included by Boccaccio in his group of fifteen heavily anthologized canzoni. In the case of E’ m’incresce di me, such marginalization did not occur, but this canzone – also sorrowful, also theologized; if anything, even more theologized, with features that approach the Vita Nuova – joins its fellow in its ability to provoke scholarly anxiety. Such anxiety was expressed in the futile querelle on the identity of the murderous lady of E’ m’incresce di me, and in the prolonged refusal, documented by Barbi (pp. 244–56), to concede the obvious: that this lady too is Beatrice. All because E’ m’incresce di me does not contain a verse, like “Per quella moro c’ha nome Beatrice [I die for her whose name is Beatrice]” [Lo doloroso amor, 14]), which renders the identity of the lethal lady undeniable.

  Exegetes have nonetheless concurred with Barbi’s formulation according to which, like Lo doloroso amor, E’ m’incresce di me “should be placed in the period of strong love, of painful love, a love represented in the Vita Nuova only by the four sonnets of chapters XIII–XVI” (Barbi-Maggini, p. 256).

  E’ m’incresce di me begins in a strongly Cavalcantian key, delineating the self-pity that the lover feels for himself because of the death inflicted on him by his lady’s eyes, eyes that will be protagonists throughout the canzone. In this primordial moment of the drama, they are “belli occhi [alluring eyes]” (7) that seem “piani,/soavi e dolci [gentle, kind and tender]” (10–11), but later they will be “occhi micidiali [murderous eyes]” (49), and in the last stanza her dominion will be sealed by a gaze bestowed by those same eyes: “che sarà donna sopra tutte noi / tosto che fia piacer degli occhi suoi [who will reign as mistress of us all,/as soon as it is pleasing to her eyes]” (83–4). If in the first stanza her eyes “undertook / to bring about my death” (“incominciaro / la morte mia” [12–13]), in the second they leave him for dead on the battlefield that is love. From the moment that the lady’s eyes take in their victory “di loro intelletto [by their own reasoning]” (18) – thus demonstrating an “intelletto d’amore” of a very different order from that possessed by the ladies of Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore! – they depart with the banners of Love, with the result that “my soul now grieves / when it expected comfort”: “è rimasa trista / l’anima mia che n’attendea conforto” (24–5).