Dante wrote many poems that are indebted to Guido Cavalcanti, to his tragic style and also to his altogether unique sweetness. But Sì lungiamente is the only poem in which Dante has placed these two Cavalcantian styles, so antithetical – one forte and the other soave – under a single yoke. Uniting a Guido forte and a Guido soave, Dante creates a new Guido, a Guido all his own, This canzone is undoubtedly a great tribute to Guido, but it also shows a Dante who has complete poetic control of his imitatio: he knows how to imitate his primo amico, while simultaneously creating something entirely original and new.
46 (B XXIV; FB 46; VN XXVII.3–5 [18.3–5])
Sì lungiamente m’ha tenuto Amore e costumato a la sua segnoria,
So long a time has Love kept me in tow and made his mastery of me the rule
che sì com’elli m’era forte in pria,
that even though he was at first severe,
4
così mi sta soave ora nel core. Però quando mi tolle sì ’l valore, che li spiriti par che fuggan via, allor sente la frale anima mia
he now reigns in my heart with tenderness. So when he takes my strength away from me, which makes my spirits seem to flee in haste, my feeble soul then feels such sweet delight
8
tanta dolcezza, che ’l viso ne smore, poi prende Amore in me tanta vertute, che fa li miei spiriti gir parlando,
the colour in my face begins to fade, for Love asserts its power in me so much it makes my spirits go about and speak,
11
ed escon for chiamando la donna mia, per darmi più salute. Questo m’avvene ovunque ella mi vede,
and they rush forth to ask my Lady to accord me greater bliss. This happens every time she looks on me,
14
e sì è cosa umil, che nol si crede.
and it’s so sweet that it exceeds belief.
METRE: isolated canzone stanza of fourteen verses (thirteen hendecasyllables and one settenario), with rhyme scheme (featuring internal rhyme) ABBA ABBA (a5)CDdCEE. The fronte is eight verses (4 + 4) and the sirma is six verses.
47 Li occhi dolenti per pietà del core
Li occhi dolenti per pietà del core is the canzone in which Dante announces the death of Beatrice. Let me be clear: this is not the canzone that rehearses presentiments of the death of the beloved (Donna pietosa); this is the canzone that announces her death after it has in fact occurred. Placed in chapter XXXI (20) of the Vita Nuova, where it assumes the position of the fourth canzone of the libello, Li occhi dolenti is composed of five stanzas of fourteen lines each (the same stanza length of the earlier canzoni in the Vita Nuova), plus a congedo. In each stanza, one of the fourteen lines is a settenario, so that Li occhi dolenti occupies a metrical middle ground between Donne ch’avete, whose stanzas have only hendecasyllables, and Donna pietosa, whose stanzas contain two settenari.
“Li occhi dolenti [My eyes, distraught]” of the incipit are the poet-lover’s, who is mourning the death of his lady; his tears are the mark of his bereavement: “Li occhi dolenti per pietà del core / hanno di lagrimar sofferta pena,/sì che per vinti son remasi omai [My eyes, distraught by pity for my heart,/have borne the suffering that weeping brings,/so that, exhausted, they concede defeat]” (1–3). Here the word lagrimar is used, later piangere, recalling the “sociological” and technical use of piangere in the four sonnets of mourning commented on earlier (Voi che portate la sembianza umile, Se’ tu colui c’ hai trattato sovente, Onde venite voi così pensose?, Voi donne, che pietoso atto mostrate).
It is important to emphasize that the convention of the death of the beloved – canonical after Petrarch – becomes important precisely due to its presence in Dante’s lyrics. It is not an Occitan topos nor one of the earliest Italian poetry: it is a Dantean idea, linked to the Vita Nuova, where Dante brings together courtly love and the Augustinian doctrine (expressed in the Confessions after the death of a friend of young Augustine) according to which one ought not to love “a man that must die as though he were not to die [diligendo moriturum ac si non moriturum]” (Conf. 4.8). To impart this lesson, Augustine in the Confessions makes narrative use of death, as Dante will do in the Vita Nuova, where he applies to the system of courtly love the Augustinian idea just cited: it is necessary to learn from the death of the desired object to redirect one’s desire, placing it only in “quello che non mi puote venire meno [that which cannot fail me]” (VN XVIII.4 [10.6]). It follows from this logic that one ought not to love mortal things, since they necessarily “will fail.” It is precisely for this directional error that Beatrice reproaches Dante-pilgrim when they meet in the earthly paradise: “e se ’l sommo piacer sì ti fallio / per la mia morte, qual cosa mortale / dovea poi trarre te nel suo disio? [and if the highest pleasure so failed you with my death, what mortal thing should then have drawn you to desire it?]” (Purg. 31.52–4).
The death of the beloved, without all the Augustinian apparatus, is already in the canzone Li occhi dolenti. A canzone of “Beatrician mourning” (Gorni, p. 176), in other words a lament, Li occhi dolenti is – given the strict connection between planctus and praise – “primarily … a praise-poem” (Foster-Boyde, p. 132). (For the traditional connection between lament/planctus and praise, see the introductory essay to the sonnet Piangete, amanti, poi che piange Amore.)
Li occhi dolenti, a lament-canzone, is explicitly presented as a complement and companion to the canzone Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore, the praise-canzone par excellence. Donne ch’avete already features the desire to have madonna in heaven, a desire expressed unanimously by all the saints of paradise (“Lo cielo, che non have altro difetto / che d’aver lei, al suo segnor la chiede,/e ciascun santo ne grida merzede [Heaven, whose only imperfection is / the lack of her, implores its Lord to ask / for her, and all saints favour this request]” [Donne ch’avete, 19–21]), and then synthesized in the great verse “Madonna è disiata in sommo cielo [My lady is desired in highest heaven]” (Donne ch’avete, 29). In Li occhi dolenti the celestial desire to possess madonna is realized, with the result that the theme of the canzone is limpidly articulated in a verse that is effectively the “response” to Donne ch’avete’s “Ma-donna è disiata in sommo cielo”: “Ita n’è Beatrice in l’alto cielo [Beatrice has gone to heaven on high]” (Li occhi dolenti, 15). Here the death of Beatrice is not only announced but simultaneously classified as an Assumption. Moreover, as De Robertis notes, Beatrice is “named for the first time with her whole name in the lyrics of the Vita Nuova (and similarly at l. 55)” (VN, p. 200): “with her whole name” because the nickname “Bice” occurs in Io mi senti’ svegliar dentro a lo core, and “in the lyrics of the Vita Nuova” because “Beatrice” is named in the canzone Lo doloroso amor, a canzone excluded from the Vita Nuova.
In commenting on Li occhi dolenti in an edition of the rime, I can therefore comfortably refer to “Beatrice,” and not limit myself to generic “madonna”: for the first time, the name “Beatrice” is present in the canzone, not exclusively in the prose of the Vita Nuova. It is strange, from this perspective, that the second canzone of the libello, Donna pietosa e di novella etate, has aroused so much discussion about the possibility that it was written expressly for the Vita Nuova (on the strength of the overlaps between prose and poem), even though Beatrice is not named in it. The double presence in this canzone of the name “Beatrice” suggests that Li occhi dolenti is the ideal candidate for such a discussion.
The explicit references to Donne ch’avete begin right in the first stanza, a stanza that acts as proem, just as in Donne ch’avete. In the proem of Donne ch’avete the poet posits the theme of the speech-act: he addresses the ladies with the intention of “ragionar per isfogar la mente [to speak to alleviate my mind]” (4), and says: “tratterò del suo stato gentile … donne e donzelle amorose, con vui,/ché non è cosa di parlarne altrui [I’ll speak of her nobility … dear ladies, maidens, who know love,/for this is something others should not hear]” (Donne ch’avete, 11, 13–14). The same thematization of speech
is in Li occhi dolenti, as also the verb sfogare: now the poet wants to “sfogar lo dolore [vent my grief]” (4), instead of “isfogar la mente.” Recalling that he had willingly addressed the donne gentili to speak about madonna while she was alive, the poet declares his wish to express his pain only to “a lady with a gentle heart”:
E perché me ricorda ch’io parlai
de la mia donna, mentre che vivia,
donne gentili, volentier con vui,
non voi parlare altrui,
se non a cor gentil che in donna sia;
e dicerò di lei piangendo, pui
che si n’è gita in ciel subitamente,
e ha lasciato Amor meco dolente.
(Li occhi dolenti, 7–14)
[Since I remember how I used to speak
about my lady willingly with you,
my gentle ladies, while she was alive,
I choose to speak to none
except a lady with a gentle heart.
And I shall speak of her while weeping, since
she’s gone away to heaven suddenly
and left Love here with me in misery.]
The memory of past speech here enters as theme of Li occhi dolenti. Note in these lines the complex temporal game, which embraces past, present, and future in a weave of words and emotions. The poet remembers in the present – “me ricorda [I remember]” – of when he spoke to Beatrice in the past. The density of their past experience together is communicated by the interaction between the past definite tense, which corresponds to the lover, and the imperfect tense, which corresponds to the beloved: “io parlai/de la mia donna, mentre che vivia [I spoke of my lady, while she was alive].” He then declares that, even with all his suffering, he will speak about her in the future: “e dicerò di lei piangendo [And I shall speak of her while weeping].” This lady will be spoken about “piangendo,” that is after her death, as an integral component of mourning her.
The nexus of dire / parlare and piangere / lagrimare evident in the line “e dicerò di lei piangendo [and I shall speak of her while weeping]” (12) will be important in the Commedia: one thinks, for example, of Ugolino’s “parlare e lagrimar vedrai insieme [you will see speaking and weeping together]” (Inf. 33.9). Perhaps the link with the canto of Ugolino is not entirely coincidental. Li occhi dolenti is a meditation on the need to express suffering; as De Robertis comments, “it is the canzone of the manifestations of suffering (and once the eyes can no longer manifest it, words are necessary)” (VN, p. 198). Ugolino does not express his suffering to his sons, neither with tears nor with words: “Io non piangëa, sì dentro impetrai [I did not cry, I was so petrified within]” (Inf. 33.49). He does not obey the requirements for communion and expression that confirm our common humanity, and in Li occhi dolenti Dante denounces whoever does not mourn Beatrice as one who has a heart of stone, using the same metaphor that he will much later put into the mouth of Ugolino (“sì dentro impetrai”): “Chi no la piange, quando ne ragiona,/core ha di pietra sì malvagio e vile,/ch’entrar no i puote spirito benegno [Whoever speaks of her and fails to weep / betrays a heart of stone so vile and base / that no kind spirit penetrates inside]” (32–4).
The first stanza of Li occhi dolenti ends with the declaration that Beatrice has “gone away to heaven” (13–14) and then elaborates in the manner of coblas capfinidas at the beginning of the second stanza: “Ita n’è Beatrice in l’alto cielo,/nel reame ove li angeli hanno pace,/e sta con loro, e voi, donne ha lassate [Beatrice has gone to heaven on high,/the kingdom where the angels dwell in peace;/she lives with them, and leaves you ladies here]” (15–17). As we know from Donne ch’avete, the lady was “desired in highest heaven”: Beatrice did not die from natural causes, as happens to other women (“no la ci tolse qualità di gelo / né di calore, come l’altre face [no property of heat or cold took her / away from us, as it has taken others]” [18–19]), but because of “sua gran benignitate [her great kind-heartedness]” (20), which caused her to be desired in paradise. While in Donne ch’avete the exceptional nature of madonna is a “meraviglia” (marvel) to the angels, now her light causes God himself to marvel, “fé maravigliar l’etterno sire” (23):
ché luce de la sua umilitate
passò li cieli con tanta vertute,
che fé maravigliar l’etterno Sire,
sì che dolce disire
lo giunse di chiamar tanta salute.
(Li occhi dolenti, 21–5)
[because a ray of her humility
traversed the heavens with such radiance
it filled the Everlasting Lord with awe,
so that a sweet desire
moved Him to summon so much worthiness.]
The idea that Beatrice “filled the Everlasting Lord with awe” and then with “a sweet desire/… to summon so much worthiness” is an indication that, as in Donne ch’avete, the young poet is not yet concerned with theological accuracy.
The distancing of Beatrice from the world and from her body – the “bella persona” of line 29, in the same locution used by Francesca in Inferno 5.101 – is reiterated at the beginning of the third stanza, where the phrase “piena di grazia” confirms that Beatrice is not like other women, but comparable to the Virgin, to whom the phrase was originally directed in the form of an angelic greeting: “Partissi de la sua bella persona / piena di grazia l’anima gentile,/ed èssi gloriosa in loco degno [Her tender, noble soul so full of grace / departed from her lovely human form / and lives in glory in a worthy place]” (29–31). Now Dante passes on to the effects of madonna’s singularity, a classic stil novo theme here varied by the unusual fact that the effects are described post mortem and by the emphasis on the base beings who are not capable of accepting the “spirito benegno” (34) of madonna. Far from the Guinizzellian “null’om pò mal pensar fin che la vede [no one can think evil thoughts when seeing her]” (Io voglio del ver la mia donna laudare, 14), Dante here portrays a world that contains not only those who have a heart “di pietra sì malvagio e vile [of stone so vile and base]” (33), but also those whose “cor villan [evil heart]” (35) is such that they cannot “imaginar di lei alquanto [figure forth an image of her]” (36): two categories – one more affective and the other more intellective – of people who are errant with respect to Beatrice’s grace.
Contrary to what happens to hearts of stone and to minds lacking in imaginative capacity, for those who are instead capable of imagining her as she was, “quale ella fue” (42), in her ontological fullness – “chi vede nel pensero alcuna volta / quale ella fue, e com’ella n’è tolta [who see at times in thought / her essence and how she was torn from us]” (41–2) – the loss is unassuageable. Such a person literally “strips his soul of all consolation”: “d’onne consolar l’anima spoglia” (40). The poet of Li occhi dolenti belongs to the category of those who cannot be consoled. Perhaps one might say that ça va sans dire, but Dante wants to say it, thus thematizing the failure of consolatio, and the fourth stanza personalizes this theme, recounting the devastating effects of Beatrice’s death on her poet: “Dannomi angoscia li sospiri forte,/quando ’l pensero ne la mente grave / mi reca quella che m’ha ’l cor diviso [My sighing makes me grieve convulsively / when thinking brings back to my weary mind / the thought of her who’s cleaved my heart in two]” (43–5). From one who generically “sees in thought” (41) both Beatrice’s worth and the significance of her death there is a shift to the particular “pensero” that “brings back to my weary mind / the thought of her who’s cleaved my heart in two” (45). This thought is so endowed with imaginative and life-giving power that it is able to bring his lady back to his mind, awakening in him “un disio tanto soave,/che mi tramuta lo color nel viso [so sweet a longing / that all the colour in my face is lost]” (47–8). The “dolce disire” (24) of God and the “disio tanto soave” (47) of the poet converge in the figure of Beatrice.
The imaginative – even visionary – power of the poet is an important theme of Li occhi dolenti, only a little less conspicuous than i
n the visionary canzone par excellence, Donna pietosa. In verses 49–51 – “E quando ’l maginar mi ven ben fiso,/giugnemi tanta pena d’ogne parte,/ch’io mi riscuoto per dolor ch’i’ sento [And when my thought is wholly fixed on her,/from every side I’m so assailed by grief / that I’m brought back by all the pain I feel]” – Dante delineates a phenomenology of visionary seeing that will provide lexical solutions for the Commedia (and not only: Petrarch too will follow in using “fiso” in mystical and visionary contexts).114 Dante will use “fiso” in the Commedia to indicate the intensity of seeing (for example, “Troppo fiso” in Purg. 32.9). Likewise, the formula “mi riscuoto” in line 51, glossed by De Robertis “I come back to myself, I come back to reality” (VN, p. 204), will be used in the Commedia for significant awakenings, with respect to the pilgrim as he negotiates a visionary transition (“Ruppemi l’alto sonno ne la testa / un greve truono, sì ch’io mi riscossi/come persona ch’è per forza desta [Heavy thunder broke the deep sleep in my head, so that I came back to myself like someone awakened by force]” [Inf. 4.1–3]) and with respect to Achilles in simile in the dream sequence of Purgatorio 9 (“Non altrimenti Achille si riscosse,/li occhi svegliati rivolgendo in giro [Not other than how Achilles came back to himself, his wakened eyes looking around]” [Purg. 9.34–5]).
The vivifying power of imagination pervades the end of the fourth stanza, where the verbs insistently in the present and the question addressed in direct speech by the lover to his dead lady give a strong sense of the presence and immediacy of Beatrice: “Poscia piangendo, sol nel mio lamento/chiamo Beatrice, e dico: ‘Or se’ tu morta?’;/e mentre ch’io la chiamo, me conforta [Then weeping, all alone in my lament,/I call to Beatrice: ‘Are you now dead?’/And while I call on her she comforts me]” (54–6).
I have frequently noted the importance for Dante of direct discourse, which he uses to cross the boundaries between the imagined and the real, and in this case literally between life and death. The poet speaks directly, in the climactic expression of his suffering, to his lady, asking her, as if she were alive, “Are you now dead?”: “Or se’ tu morta?” (55). The conceptual paradox of this question is genial. Its form – not only direct discourse but the fact of its being a question, a locution that requires an interlocutor, as well as the literal and temporal meaning of the pleonastic particle “or” (“now”) – battles and almost overwhelms its substance: it is not possible for Beatrice to be dead, if one can talk to her! The poet’s question “makes her alive,” in what we might call an “optical illusion” created by words.115 And yet what it is that he asks her is if she is dead.
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