Dante's Lyric Poetry

by Dante Alighieri

  Negli occhi porta is, like Tanto gentile, a sonnet whose “new style” is already perfected. The lady is no longer “likened” in the Guinizzellian manner (“Io voglio del ver la mia donna laudare / ed asembrarli la rosa e lo giglio [I want to truly praise my lady,/liken her to the rose and the lily]” [1–2]), but is fully metaphorized: in the conclusion of Negli occhi porta the lady’s smile is not similar to a miracle but is a miracle (“tant’è novo miracolo e gentile” [14]). However, in Negli occhi porta Dante achieves descriptive results, not performative ones. In Tanto gentile the lady about whom the poet writes “Ella se ·n va, sentendosi laudare,/benignamente d’umiltà vestuta [She moves along attending words of praise,/benignly dressed in true humility]” (5–6) is offered directly to the reader’s sight, with the result that the reader becomes the hypothetical spectator who is encountered in the opening of another praise-sonnet: “Vede perfettamente ogne salute / chi la mia donna fra le donne vede [Whoever sees my lady with her friends / conceives complete perfection perfectly]” (Vede perfettamente, 1–2).

  Tanto gentile hinges on making manifest: the key word, mostrare (to show), occurs at the conclusion of the octave and is immediately repeated at the beginning of the sestet. The lady-miracle come from heaven to earth is a manifestation of the art of the divine maker: “credo che sia una cosa venuta / di cielo in terra a miracol mostrare./Mostrasi sì piacente a chi la mira [I believe she is a creature come / from heaven to earth to show a miracle./She shows such charm to him who looks at her]” (7–9). The art of “mostrare,” of creating a virtual reality with words – the “visibile parlare [visible speech]” of Purg. 10.95 – is Dante’s art par excellence. When in the Commedia Dante meditates on his own art by using ecphrasis, representation of representation, for example with respect to the acrostic that is literally an “artifice” made (according to the fiction) by God himself (Purg. 12.23), he turns to the same verb mostrare that he had used in a similar representative context in the early sonnet Tanto gentile.104

  In Tanto gentile Dante starts right off with the appearance of the lady, in an incipit that is indebted to Cavalcanti’s splendid opening, Chi è questa che vèn, ch’ogn’om la mira. Dante, however, tones down the dramatic quotient, substituting for Guido’s question the simple purity of a declaration. The sonnet reveals an apparition, and the first rhyme word is critical: of pare, Contini writes that “pare is not the equivalent of ‘sembra [it seems],’ nor of ‘appare [it appears],’ but means ‘to appear manifestly, to show oneself in one’s manifestness.’”105 The prose of the Vita Nuova glosses pare with the verb mostrare (a “perfect interpretation,” according to De Robertis, ed. comm., p. 382): “Io dico ch’ella si mostrava sì gentile e sì piena di tutti i piaceri, che quelli che la miravano comprendeano in loro una dolcezza onesta e soave, tanto che ridicere non lo sapeano; né alcuno era lo quale potesse mirare lei, che nel principio nol convenisse sospirare [I tell you that she showed herself so gracious and so lovely that those who gazed on her sensed within themselves a pure and gentle sweetness they could find no words to describe; nor could anyone look at her without having to sigh at once]” (VN XXVI.3 [17.3]). What occurs in the opening of Tanto gentile is postponed to the ending of Negli occhi porta, where the manifestation of madonna – and the verb pare that verbalizes her manifestness – is the culmination of the sonnet: “Quel ch’ella par quand’un poco sorride / non si può dicer né tenere a mente,/tant’è novo miracolo e gentile [What she looks like when she begins to smile / cannot be told or held within the mind,/so rare and noble is this miracle]” (Negli occhi porta, 12–14).

  The lady of Tanto gentile is a miracle in act – “maraviglia ne l’atto che procede / d’un’anima che ’nfin qua su risplende [a miracle / in act is seen proceeding from a soul / whose shining light extends as far as here],” in the words of Donne ch’avete (17–18) – and the sonnet wastes no time in making her visible, beginning with the verb parere in the incipit and then moving on to mostrare. Parere appears again in the final tercet (in the version of the Vita Nuova “pare” is also in line 7, where “credo che” becomes “e par che,” bringing the occurrences to three), where there is also the paradigmatic verb sospirare, to sigh: “e par che della suo labbia si mova / un spirito soave pien d’amore / che va dicendo a l’anima: ‘Sospira!’ [And from her countenance there clearly comes / a spirit that is sweet and full of love / which goes before the soul and whispers: ‘Sigh’]” (12–14). The verb sospirare is also used in Negli occhi porta (“e d’ogni suo difetto allor sospira [and then he sighs remembering his faults]” [6]), but it lacks the drama that the use of the imperative “Sospira!” confers at the end of Tanto gentile. The same less performative use of sospirare is found in the final lines of the praise-sonnet Vede perfettamente ogne salute, whose ending seems to be almost a gloss on that of Tanto gentile: “che nessun la si può recare a mente / che non sospiri in dolcezza d’amore [that no one’s able to remember her / who does not sigh from sweetness filled with love]” (Vede perfettamente, 13–14).

  The limpid theatricality of Tanto gentile manifests perfectly in the final imperative, which is the literal expression in direct discourse of the spirit full of love that, moving from the countenance of madonna, communicates directly with the soul of the lover. The imperative encourages the lover to the mutual expression of his love, the cathartic demonstration of his passion through a corresponding sigh. The final imperative is the sigh with which the beloved commands her lover to sigh, the expression with which she commands her lover to express himself. The performative nature of the sonnet is enhanced by the fact that this speech act remains unanswered; to know how the drama finishes, how the lover responds, it is necessary to go behind the scenes – beyond the confines of our sonnet.

  One may also recall that the lover’s sigh – his “gettare sospiri [casting sighs]” – has clear erotic connotations in the courtly tradition,106 as for example in Giacomo da Lentini: “Lo vostr’amor che m’ave / in mare tempestoso,/è sì como la nave / c’a la fortuna getta ogni pesanti,/e campan per lo getto / di loco periglioso;/similemente eo getto / a voi, bella, li mei sospiri e pianti [My love for you, which places me / upon a stormy sea,/is like a ship in peril / that must cast overboard its heavy bulk,/and by that act all hands / escape calamity;/just so I cast to you,/my fair, my sighs and cries of woe]” (Madonna, dir vo voglio, 49–56). The topos, with its erotic connotations, is echoed by Boccaccio: “Anichino gittò un grandissimo sospiro [Anichino heaved an enormous sigh]” (Dec. 7.7.14).107

  The concluding imperative has the effect of opening the sonnet, dilating it like the confidence of the pilgrim, compared to an expanding rose in Paradiso 22: “così m’ha dilatata mia fidanza,/come ’l sol fa la rosa quando aperta [so (your affection) has expanded my confidence, as the sun does to the rose when opened]” (Par. 22.55–6). The expansiveness of Tanto gentile by means of the imperative “Sospira” recalls the expansiveness of the divine sigh in the moment of creation, the becoming manifest of the universe: the moment in which “eternal love opened into new loves” (“s’aperse in nuovi amor l’etterno amor”) (Par. 29.18). The eternal love opens so “that his splendor might, shining back to Him, declare ‘Subsisto’” (“perché suo splendore/potesse, risplendendo, dir: ‘Subsisto’”) (Par. 29.14–15). The divine breath captured in the direct speech of “dir: ‘Subsisto’” in Paradiso 29 is the poetic descendant of the breath of love “che va dicendo a l’anima: ‘Sospira!’” in the last line of Tanto gentile.

  43 (B XXII; FB 43; DR 64; VN XXVI.5–7 [17.5–7])

  First Redaction

  Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare la donna mia quand’ella altrui saluta, ch’ogni lingua divien tremando muta

  My lady shows such grace and dignity whenever greeting those who pass her way that every tongue falls silent, quivering,

  4

  e gli occhi non l’ardiscon di guardare. Ella se ·n va, sentendosi laudare, benignamente d’umiltà vestuta: credo che sia una cosa venuta

  and eyes dare no
t direct their gaze at her. She moves along, attending words of praise, benignly dressed in true humility; and I believe she is a creature come

  8

  di cielo in terra a miracol mostrare.

  from heaven to earth to show a miracle.

  Mostrasi sì piacente a chi la mira, che fier per gli occhi una dolcezza al core

  She shows such charm to him who looks on her that through his eyes a sweetness strikes his heart,

  11

  che ’ntender no·lla può chi no·lla prova; e par che della suo labbia si mova un spirito soave pien d’amore

  which none can know who has not felt it first. And from her countenance is seen to move a spirit that is sweet and full of love

  14

  che va dicendo a l’anima: “Sospira!”

  which goes before the soul and whispers: “Sigh.”

  VN 5. si va – 7. E par che – 8. Da c. – 10. Che dà per

  METRE: sonnet ABBA ABBA CDE EDC.

  44 Vede perfettamente ogne salute

  First Redaction

  The sonnet Vede perfettamente ogne salute accompanies and follows Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare in chapter XXVI (17) of the Vita Nuova, where it too is featured as an example of the praise style. In the case of this sonnet, as with its companion piece, the redaction reproduced here is not that of the Vita Nuova but the earlier redaction as it appears in De Robertis. As compared to Tanto gentile, there are no interesting variants of an ideological nature between the first and second redactions of Vede perfettamente.

  Contini and De Robertis consider Vede perfettamente to be chronologically prior to Tanto gentile on the basis of its “archaic” metrics; in his edition De Robertis prints the “three praise-sonnets” (ed. comm., p. 374) in the following order: Vede perfettamente, Negli occhi porta, Tanto gentile. I follow the order of the Vita Nuova for the texts collected there, preferring to follow a Dantean order when there is one.

  In the brief prose bridge that separates Vede perfettamente from Tanto gentile, Dante explains that the perfection of his lady had praiseworthy effects on many other ladies, and that for this reason he wants to write a sonnet “which describes her effects on others”: “lo quale narra di lei come la sua vertude adoperava ne l’altre” (VN XXVI.9 [17.9]). The ladies glimpsed in the opening of Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore are able to comprehend the nature of this love, and they become in Vede perfettamente not only interlocutors but participants in the miraculous reality of “la mia donna” (2).

  The sonnet begins and ends with the singularity of madonna, a singularity made more emphatic by the plurality of the companion ladies as her backdrop. To see her among her companions is to see complete perfection: “Vede perfettamente ogne salute / chi la mia donna fra le donne vede [Whoever sees my lady with her friends / conceives complete perfection perfectly]” (1–2). This English translation reverses the order of the Italian syntax, which literally declares that “He sees complete perfection perfectly / who sees my lady among her friends.” Thus the Italian foregrounds the stunning vision of perfection in an absolute sense (“ogne salute”) before moving to particularize perfection as the sight of “mia donna fra le donne”; the hyperbolic vision of the lady among other ladies as equal to perfection is secondary to the unmediated and absolute perfection of the sonnet’s remarkable incipit.

  From the stylistic point of view, the adverb “perfettamente” – the only occurrence in Dante’s lyrics of an adverb that, because of its Aristotelian connotations, will be used as many as thirty times in the Convivio – is the most striking aspect of this sonnet. The same adverb will be used in an even more remarkable manner – and again only once – in the Commedia, where its single occurrence marks the end of the journey and the fulfilment of Dante’s desire, its literal perfection (perfectus is the past participle of perficere, to finish, complete): “Acciò che tu assommi / perfettamente … il tuo cammino [So that you may perfectly fulfil … your journey]” (Par. 31.94–5). Taken out of context, the line “Vede perfettamente ogne salute” could well seem to be a line from Paradiso. And, indeed, the adverb “perfettamente” indicates the perfection of what the protagonist sees, but it can also indicate the perfection with which the protagonist sees: after all, this is a protagonist who one day, having arrived in paradise, will see perfectly.

  After the opening, attention moves to the other ladies, explaining that “quelle che vanno con lei son tenute / di bella grazia a Dio render mercede [the ladies in her presence feel obliged / to render thanks to God for his good grace]” (3–4), because they have absorbed some of madonna’s miraculous endowments. In the same manner in which the lady of Tanto gentile is “d’umiltà vestuta [dressed in humility]” (6), so the plural ladies of Vede perfettamente are dressed in nobility, love, and loyalty: “vestute di gentilezza, d’amore e di fede” (7–8).

  The first tercet continues the theme established in the octave, attributing to the plural companion ladies the same Guinizzellian miraculous effects possessed by madonna: “La sua vista face ogni cosa umìle,/e non fa sola lei parer piacente,/ma ciascuna per lei riceve onore [The sight of her makes every being kind:/her look not only makes her beautiful,/but through her every lady gains esteem]” (9–11). The second tercet returns to the theme of praising the singular lady, and incorporates many elements of Tanto gentile (including the first two words). In effect, the final tercet of Vede perfettamente offers a resume of Tanto gentile, and the last line is a less theatrical, less vivid version of the famous “Sospira”: “Ed è negli atti suoi tanto gentile / che nessun la si può recare a mente / che non sospiri in dolcezza d’amore [And in her bearing she’s so full of grace / that no one’s able to remember her / who does not sigh from sweetness filled with love]” (12–14).

  The originality of Vede perfettamente, besides its Paradiso-like incipit, lies above all in its delineation of a group of companions for the beloved. Critics have proposed the idea of a “chorus of praise” (De Robertis, VN, p. 185); for Contini “the choral background of the ladies on which she is singled out as queen, as the foundation of their honor and source of their beauty” is part of the stilnovist ideology whereby “the entire experience of the stilnovist poet is depersonalized, transferred to a universal order” (Rime, Introduction, p. xiv).

  Foster-Boyde’s commentary is more alert to the presence of a social reality in Vede perfettamente: a social reality that has been filtered and abstracted but is not entirely suppressed (p. 126). The English critics note that the women of that period, even in a sophisticated city like Florence, were less free than today and therefore depended on other women for most of their social life. Continuing along this line of historical contextualization, we note the attention paid to the interactions among women in the lines “sua biltate è di tanta virtute / che nulla invidia all’altre ne procede [her beauty is so powerful / in others envy’s never born of it]” (5–6). These verses elicited the following essentializing comment from Barbi-Maggini: “The poet states this as a wondrous thing, since it is rare that envy is lacking between women with regard to their beauty” (p. 112).

  As I have noted frequently in this commentary, Dante’s lyrics preserve traces of lived experience in Duecento Florence, experience that is highly distilled but yet perceptible. In sonnets such as Guido, i’ vorrei che tu e Lapo ed io, Amore e monna Lagia e Guido ed io, Volgete gli occhi, and Sonar bracchetti we can catch glimpses of the social life of long-ago brigate of male friends. The sonnet Vede perfettamente adds the distaff side to the “sociology of the brigata” that we are extrapolating from Dante’s lyrics, offering the highly stylized vision of a brigata of women. A female brigata appears as well in the incipit to Di donne io vidi una gentil schiera. These women are attending to more pleasurable activities than those which unite the women in the sonnets Voi che portate la sembianza umile and Se’ tu colui c’ hai trattato sovente, which describe the rites of mourning. Mourning and healing are traditional female tasks, and a group of women is seen also in the canzone Donna pietosa, surroundin
g the sickbed of the poet.

  In the Decameron Boccaccio describes two all-female brigate, both in contexts of recreation and pleasure: “la brigata delle donne di Catella [the brigata of ladies with Catella],” by whom Ricciardo Minutolo was received (Dec. 3.6.9); the “brigata di belle giovani donne e ornate [brigata of lovely adorned young ladies]” that enchants the son of Filippo Balducci. Just as in the Vita Nuova, these young ladies “da un paio di nozze venieno [were coming back from a couple of weddings]” (Introduction to Day 4, 20).

  In Vede perfettamente we see Florentine women gathered together, not for a civic obligation such as funeral ceremonies or to assist the sick, but for their own delight and amusement.

  44 (B XXIII; FB 44; DR 62; VN XXVI.10–13 [17.10–13])

  First Redaction

  Vede perfettamente ogne salute chi la mia donna fra le donne vede: quelle che vanno con lei son tenute

  Whoever sees my lady with her friends conceives complete perfection perfectly: the ladies in her presence feel obliged

  4

  di bella grazia a Dio render mercede, ché sua biltate è di tanta virtute che nulla invidia all’altre ne procede, anzi le face andar seco vestute

  to render thanks to God for his good grace, because her beauty is so powerful in others envy’s never born of it; instead, it makes them bear her qualities