lust, and romance, where it exists, is due to collective impressions of the better side of human nature, focussed for the time on a given individual. That Dante, of all men, was incapable of such feelings, I, for one, wholly decline to believe. It is useless to ignore the fact that here, as generally, the personality of the critic counts for much. If he has culled all his ideas of love from the Poets' love. dry study of books, or if his love has passed easily and rapidly from hoping and dreaming into realisation, satiety, perhaps disillusion; or if, like most of us, he is a dull prosaic creature enamoured of success, then he may well be baffled by the delicate, shy, all-spiritual homage of the Vita Nuova, content to forego its reward. To poets, however, the sentiment is quite intelligible. The following passage from Goethe's Tasso, though it does not refer to Dante, supplies, so far as I can judge, a perfect analysis of his mind and heart as influenced by this early attachment: "Hier ist die Frage nicht von einer Liebe, Uns liebt er nicht-verzeih, dass ich es sage! Auf einen Namen nieder, den wir führen, Und sein Gefühl theilt er uns mit: wir scheinen Den Mann zu lieben, und wir lieben Mit ihm das Höchste, was wir lieben können." The expression "lady of my mind," of which Bartoli makes so much, undoubtedly means "my feminine A personal ideal," but the preceding expressions Beatrice. clearly point to an incarnation of that ideal. Reading the Vita Nuova in this light, the thought of a personal Beatrice forces itself upon us with absolute conviction. Though I can perceive no valid reason for rejecting the Portinari tradition, belief in it is optional; that there was a girl in the case, this, it seems to me, is a downright necessity. Without her, the Vita Nuova loses nine-tenths of its meaning, and of its interest more than nine-tenths. But let us look at the book. The Vita The general character of the work is well described by Boccaccio. "He in the first place, while the tears for the death of his Beatrice were still Nuova. fresh, as nearly as possible in his twentysixth year, put together in a little volume, which he entitled Vita Nuova, certain small works, such as sonnets and canzoni, made by him in rhyme at sundry times before, wondrously beautiful. Over each of them, separately and in order, he wrote the causes that had led him to make them, and, after, he placed the divisions of the foregoing works." The only doubt that can attach to this account respects the last chapters, which, on chronological grounds, appear to have been added later. The bulk of the Vita Nuova was certainly in writing in the spring of 1291. As Boccaccio states, each section has three subsections the historical introduction, the poem itself, and the commentary. According to Signor Casini, who has produced a most valuable edition of the Vita Nuova,1 the whole work is divisible into five parts. The first (chapters i.-xvii.) contains Dante's youthful love, the praise of Beatrice's physical beauty, and the arts he employed to conceal his love from his illwishers (1274-1287). The second (chapters xviii.xxvii.) contains the praise of Beatrice's spiritual beauty, and the presentiment of her early death (1287-90). The third (chapters xxviii.-xxxiv.) includes the whole period of Dante's grief for the death of his mistress (1290-1291). The fourth (chapters xxxv.-xxxviii.) relates the episode of the gentle lady, of whom Dante became enamoured as if to console himself for the loss of Beatrice (1291-1293). And the fifth (chapters xxxix.-xlii.) depicts the struggle between his new love and the memory of the old, and Dante's return to the love and worship of Beatrice. The incidents of the story are few and extremely simple. When Dante was not quite ten years old, Falling in there appeared to him a youthful angel, clad love. in a very noble hue, a lowly and honest red, and girt and adorned as became her tender age, for Beatrice was just nine. The result of this apparition was an immense commotion among the spirits who made their abode in and about Dante's fleshly tabernacle. The Spirit of Life exclaimed with trembling: Ecce Deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi. The Animal Spirit said to the Spirits of Vision: Ap 1 La Vita Nuova di Dante Alighieri, con introduzione, commento, e glossario. Florence, 1890. Sir Theodore Martin's translation will be found useful by English readers. paruit jam beatitudo vestra. And the Natural Spirit cried: Heu miser! quia frequenter impeditus ero deinceps. The reign of Love had begun in Dante's heart. Nine years later, the same youthful angel again appeared, clad this time in a very white hue, and walking between two gentle ladies, her elders. And, by reason of her ineffable courtesy, she greeted him with such effect as to bring all heaven before his eyes ("mi parve allora vedere tutti i termini della beatitudine"), and cause him to see and describe the first of a series of visions. Bartoli Visions has said very happily that the Vita Nuova "proceeds by way of visions," of which there are contained in all seven. Neither Bartoli nor Pio Rajna accepts these visions as actual occurrences; but the truth, perhaps, is not so self-evident as these writers pretend. I recollect the shrewd remark of the old gentleman in the Essays of Elia, who tested the prospects of a poetical aspirant by asking, "Young man, what sort of dreams have you?" A born poet, and absorbed by thoughts of love, Dante may have dreamed dreams, and seen visions, innumerable. If not, he exercised his just prerogative in feigning them. Dante's first sonnet. In the first sonnet Dante tells how Love appeared to him. In his hand he held Dante's heart, and in his arms, asleep and wrapt in a cloth, Dante's lady. Love awoke her and fed her, all humble and fearful, with that glowing heart, and thereafter Dante saw him go away weeping. This sonnet the young poet sent to all the "vassals of Love," the famous troubadours of the time, that they might pass sentence on it. He received many replies (some of them, we know, not too complimentary), and among them was one from Guido Cavalcanti, who answered, "Vedesti al mio parer ogni valore." The allegory does not appeal to modern taste, but its rich symbolism-and this is the important thing-did appeal to the taste of Dante's contemporaries. The last line, as Dante himself points out, was unconscious prophecy. His great It is hardly worth while perhaps to go over, one by one, the "incidents" of the Vita Nuova. They possess, for the most part, a purely subjective interest. It is these visions that are the kernel of the work, and, above all, that great dream of which all have heard, and which inspired in Dante the divine ode, Donna pietosa e di novella etate. The prefatory prose, however, is the quintessence of poetry. dream. "A few days after this, it befel that in a certain part of my person a dolorous infirmity overtook me, whence I suffered continuously most bitter On the ninth day there came to me a thought concerning my lady. And when I had mused of her somewhat, I returned in thought to my own feeble life, and seeing how slight was its duration, whole though it might be, I began to weep within myself at so great misery. And, sighing heavily, I said within myself, 'It must needs be that the most gentle Beatrice do sometime die.' torture. |