Dante's Lyric Poetry

by Dante Alighieri

  86 It is altogether unusual for the courtly lady to speak, never mind shout, even if it is true that these words could be put in the mouth of Love and are not at all indicative of her subjectivity or inner state. The use of gridare in Dante’s lyrics will be discussed again in the introductory essay to Donne ch’avete.

  87 For a reading of the three autocitations within the Commedia, and for the retroactive revisions to which Amor che nella mente and Voi che ’ntendendo are subjected, see Barolini, Dante’s Poets, chap. 1, “Autocitation and Autobiography.”

  88 There will nonetheless be “relapses” into Cavalcantianism as late as Dante’s last canzone, Amor, da che convien. For the twists and turns of Dante’s path and for his clear ideological divergence from Cavalcanti already in the moral canzone Doglia mi reca, see my essay “Dante and Cavalcanti (On Making Distinctions in Matters of Love),” in Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture, pp. 70–101.

  89 An excellent example of how courtly love has stayed alive in poetry – as it does still in popular songs – is the lyric “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe, which expresses a concept similar to Donne ch’avete, 19–21: “I was a child and she was a child,/In this kingdom by the sea;/But we loved with a love that was more than love –/I and my Annabel Lee;/With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven / Coveted her and me … The angels, not half so happy in heaven,/Went envying her and me …”

  90 The only canzone in the Vita Nuova that has the name “Beatrice” in it is Li occhi dolenti, where it is used twice. The name also appears once in the sonnet Oltra la spera, while the sonnet Deh pellegrini contains the noun “beatrice.” The diminutive “Bice” occurs only in the sonnet Io mi senti’ svegliar, included in the Vita Nuova. In the lyrics not in the Vita Nuova, the name “Beatrice” appears only in Lo doloroso amor.

  91 On Doglia mi reca as the site of Dante’s mature formulation of balanced reason and desire, see my essay “Guittone’s Ora parrà, Dante’s Doglia mi reca, and the Commedia’s Anatomy of Desire,” in Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture, pp. 47–69.

  92 This position is elaborated in my essay “Sotto benda: Gender in the Lyrics of Dante and Guittone d’Arezzo (with an Excursus on Cecco d’Ascoli),” in Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture, pp. 333–59.

  93 Trans. from Robert Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, 7 vols. (Florence: Sansoni, 1965), 7:708–9.

  94 Trans. from Davidsohn, Storia di Firenze, 7:710. For the procession, see Sharon Strocchia, Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), pp. 8–11, who also explains that in the Trecento women began to be excluded from the funeral procession.

  95 The verb rappresentare appears in the lyrics only here and in the canzone Amor che nella mente mi ragiona; for its story in the Commedia, see Barolini, The Undivine Comedy, p. 128.

  96 Another lyric that treats the phenomenology of visions is the sonnet Ciò che m’incontra. For a more developed examination of the rhetorical features that make up Dante’s visionary manner, see chap. 7 of Barolini, The Undivine Comedy, “Nonfalse Errors and the True Dreams of the Evangelist.”

  97 “In light of what will be said of Beatrice’s brother – ‘distretto di sanguinitade con questa gloriosa [a close relation of this glorious woman]’ in 21.1 [XXXII.1], and who is, to put it clearly, her frate [brother] in 22.4 [XXXIII.4] – we are dealing here with a sister of the poet” (Gorni, VN, p. 129).

  98 This feminine consolation brings to mind the Consolatio Philosophiae of Boethius and the consola-tory and Boethian role of Lady Philosophy in the Convivio. Consolare will be discussed further in the introductory essay to Li occhi dolenti with due distinction between consolation from real and embodied sources and consolation from allegorical constructs.

  99 Regarding this verse, commentators note the Cavalcantian use of valore to indicate strength, vigour, as for example in “ho perduto ogni valore [I have lost all strength]” (Poi che di doglia, 4). We recall too the incipit of the sonnet with which Guido responds to the first sonnet of the Vita Nuova: Vedeste, al mio parere, onne valore. Guido’s incipit combines vedere and valore, just as in verse 26 of Donna pietosa: “Che vedestù, che tu non hai valore?”

  100 It is worth remembering, however, that ferire is used for madonna’s eyes in Donne ch’avete: “De li occhi suoi, come ch’ella li mova,/escono spirti d’amore inflammati,/che feron li occhi a qual che allor la guati [Her eyes, wherever she should turn her gaze,/send spirits forth, inflamed with love, that pierce / the eyes of anyone who looks at her]” (51–3).

  101 In Mon. 2.2.8, Dante cites Romans 1:20: “Voluntas quidem Dei per se invisibilis est; et invisibilia Dei ‘per ea que facta sunt intellecta conspiciuntur’ [For the will of God in itself is indeed invisible; but the invisible things of God ‘are clearly perceived by being understood through the things he has made’].” The same passage from Romans is cited in Epist. 5.23.

  102 The chapter before Tanto gentile addresses the problem of how a poet may write “d’Amore come se fosse una cosa per sé, e non solamente sustanzia intelligente, ma sì come fosse sustanzia corporale [about Love as if he were a thing-in-itself, and not only as an intelligent substance, but as if he were a corporeal substance]” (VN XXV.1 [16.1]).

  103 Barolini, The Undivine Comedy, p. 150.

  104 See my “Representing What God Presented: The Arachnean Art of the Terrace of Pride,” chap. 6 in Barolini, The Undivine Comedy: “The representational thrust of the reiterated ‘mostrava’ hardly needs underscoring; indeed, it should be noted that the words Dante chooses to build the artificio of Purgatorio 12 reflect the terrace’s visual (vedere) and representational (mostrare) thematics” (p. 127).

  105 “Un sonetto di Dante,” in Un’idea di Dante (Turin: Einaudi, 1976), pp. 23–4. Barbi-Maggini gloss pare as follows: “she appears, she shows herself. Among many examples of parere for apparire (commonly used) we cite one of the most obvious in Dante’s work, Par. 13.91: ‘Ma perché paia ben ciò che non pare [But so that which does not appear may appear well].’ At l.9 he will say ‘mostrasi’ with the same sense” (p. 110).

  106 For gettare sospiri in a grieving context rather than an erotic one, but also with physical connotations, see below, the sonnet Lasso, per forza di molti sospiri.

  107 Another example from the Decameron is at 3.5, where Boccaccio dramatizes the “ex-pression” of the love between Zima and the wife of Francesco Vergellesi through their profondissimi sospiri, sospiretti, and sospiri: “E quinci tacendo, alquante lacrime dietro a profondissimi sospiri mandate per gli occhi fuori … La donna … non poté per ciò alcun sospiretto nascondere … Il Zima … lei riguardando nel viso e veggendo alcun lampeggiare d’occhi di lei verso di lui alcuna volta, e oltre a ciò raccogliendo i sospiri li quali essa non con tutta la forza loro del petto lasciava uscire, alcuna buona speranza prese [And then going silent, he began to heave enormous sighs followed by some tears issuing from his eyes … Although … the lady was silent, she could not hide the little sighs … Zima … looking at her face and seeing her eyes flashing at him at times, and also gathering the sighs that she with all her strength could not but let out from her chest, found some hope]” (Dec. 3.5.16–18).

  108 The angel that flies above Fioretta is described thus: “e sovr’a·llei vidi volare / un angiolel d’amore umìle [and over it (the garland)/I saw an angel full of gentle love]” (Per una ghirlandetta, 6–7).

  109 The five canzoni in the Vita Nuova are Donne ch’avete, Donna pietosa, Sì lungiamente, Li occhi dolenti, and a two-stanza canzone, Quantunque volte, lasso!, mi rimembra.

  110 The other single-stanza canzoni by Dante are Lo meo servente core and Madonna, quel signor che voi portate.

  111 Amor che lungiamente m’hai menato was still present to Dante when he wrote Inferno 5, with its echoes of the verb menare; see my “Dante and Cavalcanti (On Making Distinctions in Matters of Love)” in Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture, esp. pp. 75–7.

  112 Dante is
undoubtedly interested in and registers the existence of a Cavalcantian sweet love. The tendency of critics to forget this aspect of Cavalcanti’s poetry results in various misinterpretations; see my “Dante and Cavalcanti (On Making Distinctions in Matters of Love),” in Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture, p. 101.

  113 De Robertis holds that “la frale anima mia [my feeble soul]”) in line 7 of Sì lungiamente is an “updated variant … of Cavalcanti’s ‘deboletta’” (VN, p. 189).

  114 See Rvf 73, “Così vedess’io fiso [Might I gaze thus fixedly]” (70), in a context whose reach is explicitly metaphysical, as discussed in Barolini, “Petrarch as the Metaphysical Poet Who Is Not Dante: Metaphysical Markers at the Beginning of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Rvf 1–21),” in Petrarch and Dante, ed. Zygmunt Baranski and Theodore Cachey (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 195–225, esp. p. 217. For the visionary phenomenology in Dante, see the introductory essays to Ciò che m’incontra and Donna pietosa, and Barolini, The Undivine Comedy, above all chap. 7, “Nonfalse Errors and the True Dreams of the Evangelist.”

  115 For the idea of “optical illusions” within the Commedia, see The Undivine Comedy, and the examples on pp. 19 and 202.

  116 Confortare is found in the following lyrics not collected in the Vita Nuova: Lo meo servente core; Madonna, quel signor; Onde venite voi; and Io son venuto. Sconfortare appears only in Donna pietosa. The noun conforto appears in the canzoni La dispietata mente; E’ m’incresce di me; Io sento sì d’Amor la gran possanza; and Amor, che movi tua vertù dal cielo.

  117 In the lyrics included in the Vita Nuova the verb consolare occurs in Donna pietosa, Li occhi dolenti, and Gentil pensero; in the other lyrics it occurs in Ne le man vostre (“per tal ch’i’ mora consolato in pace [so I might die consoled in peace]” [13]) and in the great canzone of exile, Tre donne (“consolarsi e dolersi [consoling themselves and grieving]” [74]). In the verse cited from Tre donne we can see how Dante takes both the fundamental terms of Li occhi dolenti – suffering and consolation – and transfers them from a personal and emotional context to a context of universal justice.

  118 For I’ vegno ’l giorno a·tte ’infinite volte as an “anti-consolatory” poem, in antithesis to Cino da Pistoia’s canonic consolatoria, see the introductory essays to Guido, i’ vorrei and Videro gli occhi miei.

  119 For the metaphor of blood relations between lyrics, see the essay on Sonetto, se Meuccio. The metaphor recurs with particular prominence in another series of lyrics connected to the theme of consolatio: the cycle that consists of the canzoni Voi che ’ntendendo and Amor che nella mente, the ballata Voi che savete ragionar d’amore, and the two sonnets Parole mie che per lo mondo siete and O dolci rime che parlando andate. For a discussion of this series of lyrics, see Barolini, Dante’s Poets, pp. 27–9; for the term consolare in Dante’s usage, see Dante’s Poets, pp. 36–7.

  120 Disconsolato is not a common adjective: disconsolati appears in the sonnet that follows Li occhi dolenti in the Vita Nuova, Venite a ’ntender li sospiri miei, and then two times in lyrics not anthologized in the libello, in the canzone E’ m’incresce di me, where “la sconsolata [the disconsolate one]” (31) refers to the lover’s soul, and in the canzone of exile Tre donne, where Love “salutò le germane sconsolate [greeted his disconsolate kin]” (58). Very interesting is the correlation between Li occhi dolenti and Tre donne that emerges from the presence in both of consolare and disconsolato.

  121 Cino’s consolatoria (canzone of consolation), Avegna ched el m’aggia più per tempo, is woven throughout with the word conforto: “per confortar la vostra grave vita [to console your unhappiness]” (3), “vi posso fare di conforto aita [I can help you find comfort]” (12), “che a l’egra mente prendiate conforto [that you take comfort for your ailing mind]” (38), “Conforto già, conforto l’Amor chiama [Comfort, indeed, Love calls for comfort]” (43), “dunque speme di confortar vi piaccia [therefore enjoy the hope of being comforted]” (56), “che vi conforti sì come vi piace [that He console you as you would wish ]” (76, concluding line).

  122 On enjambment and the Paradiso, see “The Sacred Poem Is Forced to Jump: Closure and the Poetics of Enjambment,” chap. 10 in Barolini, The Undivine Comedy.

  123 This brilliant idea of the anniversary poem will be fundamental for Petrarch, who uses it in complex and innovative fashion throughout the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta.

  124 See also the discussion of fuori in the introductory essay to the Cavalcantian canzone E’ m’incresce di me, in particular with respect to verses 29–31: “Innamorata se ne va piangendo/fora di questa vita / la sconsolata, che la caccia Amore [Still full of love my soul, disconsolate,/departs this life of ours / with tears of sorrow, driven out by Love].”

  125 For example, line 3 of the first redaction, “entro quell’ora che lo suo valore,” becomes “entro ’n quel punto che lo suo valore” in the Vita Nuova redaction.

  126 For the motives of Dante’s revisionism, and for a discussion of the texts dedicated to the donna gentile in their entirety, see my Dante’s Poets, chap. 1, above all the section titled “Textual History” (pp. 14–31).

  127 The attempt to reconcile the temporal indications of the Vita Nuova concerning the donna gentile with those of the Convivio is a vexata quaestio: “alquanto tempo” seems to suggest a period of time not too long after the anniversary of Beatrice’s death, 8 June 1291, so Barbi-Maggini suggest for the date of the composition of Videro gli occhi miei “some months after June 1291” (p. 137). In the Convivio Dante offers a complex astronomical periphrasis to calculate the time passed since Beatrice’s death (8 June 1290) until the time when he first sees the donna gentile: “quando quella gentile donna [di] cui feci menzione nella fine della Vita Nuova, parve primamente, accompagnata d’Amore, alli occhi miei e prese luogo alcuno nella mia mente [when that gentle lady, of whom I made mention at the end of the New Life, first appeared before my eyes, accompanied by Love, and took a place within my mind]” (Conv. 2.2.1). The total of 1,168 days (three years and two months) passed since Beatrice’s death according to the periphrasis of the Convivio brings us to a date after 21 August 1293, that is, to a date that is too late and implausible for the composition of the donna gentile poems for many reasons. For an exposition of the debate and the entire chronology of the poems for the donna gentile, see Foster-Boyde, 2:341–62.

  128 In the Vita Nuova Dante substitutes “partian” in “che si partian le lagrime dal core” (10) with “movean” (“che si movean le lagrime dal core”), achieving a result that is less pronouncedly Cavalcantian.

  129 Only in Spesse fiate and Videro gli occhi miei do we find the adjective oscura / o in the Vita Nuova (it is interesting that both these early uses feature the noun “qualità”); the Vita Nuova prose features single uses of oscuramente, oscurare, and oscuritate. Dante will use the noun oscuritate in one canzone (Amor, che movi) and the adjective oscura / o in the two late canzoni Doglia mi reca and Amor, da che convien, neither time modifying vita.

  130 “Ovid, in the Ars amandi (1.729), very famous and much studied in the Middle Ages, had said: ‘Palleat omnis amans; hic est color aptus amanti [May every lover be pale; this is the right color for lovers]’; and also Horace, Carmina, 3.10: ‘nec tinctus viola pallor amantium [nor the violet pallor of lovers]’ (from which Petrarch 224: ‘S’un pallor di viola e d’amor tinto [If a pallor tinted with violet and with love]’” (Barbi-Maggini, pp. 138–9).

  131 Both uses occur in the chapter on making poetry: “onde, se alcuna figura o colore rettorico è conceduto a li poete, conceduto è a li rimatori [So, if some figure or rhetorical colour is allowed to lettered poets, it is also allowed to those who write rhymes in the vernacular]” (VN XXV.7 [16.7]); “però che grande vergogna sarebbe a colui che rimasse cose sotto vesta di figura o di colore rettorico, e poscia, domandato, non sapesse denudare le sue parole da cotale vesta [for it would be shameful for one who wrote poetry dressed up with figures or rhetorical colour not to know how to strip h
is words of such dress]” (VN XXV.10 [16.10]).

  132 On Francesca’s gendered attributes, see my “Dante and Francesca da Rimini: Realpolitik, Romance, Gender,” rpt. in Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture, pp. 304–32. I had not yet realized the importance of the gender paradigm in Color d’amore when I wrote “Dante and Cavalcanti (On Making Distinctions in Matters of Love)” (also rpt. in Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture).

  133 In earlier times there were no psychologists with labels, but there was little coddling of sentiment, and the imperative to move on was stronger and more pervasive than today. Here is the definition of “complicated grief” on the Mayo Clinic website (http://www.mayoclinic.com / health / complicated-grief / DS01023):

  Losing a loved one is one of the most distressing and, unfortunately, common experiences people face. Most people experiencing normal grief and bereavement have a period of sorrow, numbness, and even guilt and anger. Gradually these feelings ease, and it’s possible to accept loss and move forward.