In 1310 Henry VII of Luxembourg, Holy Roman emperor from 1312 to 1313, entered Italy in an effort to reunite Church and state, restore order, and force various rebellious cities to submit to his authority. His coming caused a great deal of excitement and conflict. Florence generally opposed him, but Dante, who attributed the woes of Florence and all of Italy to the absence of imperial guidance, welcomed Henry as a savior. Dante’s state of great exaltation is documented in three letters that he wrote in 1310 and 1311. However, Henry’s invasion proved fruitless; he met opposition from all sides, including Pope Clement V, who had sent for him in the first place. Just as the situation for Henry and his supporters began to improve, the emperor died near Siena in 1313. With him went Dante’s every hope of restoring himself to an honorable position in his city. Thus in 1314 he took shelter with the Ghibelline captain Can Grande della Scala in Verona.
Dante did not totally abandon his quest to return to his native city. He wrote letters to individual members of the government, attempting to appease those who ruled. He even sent a canzone to the city of Florence, praising her love for justice and asking that she work with her citizens on his behalf. Dante strove to be acceptable to the Florentines, but for many reasons the public associated him with the Ghibellines; no matter how Dante tried to free himself of suspicion, he did not succeed. He also tried to appeal to them on the grounds of his poetic ability, and sought to show that if he had cultivated poetry in the vernacular it was not for lack of skill or study. He was compelled to display his love for learning and his great respect for philosophy and matters having to do with civic education. He therefore composed two treatises (both left incomplete), the De vulgari eloquentia (On Eloquence in the Vernacular) and the Convivio (Banquet), sometime between 1304 and 1307. In them can be seen his longing to reestablish himself in the good graces of his city and to find consolation for his wretchedness in the study of matters useful to man’s well-being and his art. Thus in the ten years or so between the Vita nuova and the Commedia (Divine Comedy), Dante’s studies were essentially of a philosophical and artistic nature. The Convivio is often acknowledged as the key to his philosophical researches, while the De vulgari eloquentia is viewed as the key to his artistic inquiries.
Though he desperately hoped to restore his reputation as a Florentine and resume his life in the city that had turned against him, Dante refused to compromise his principles and turned down more than one opportunity to return to Florence, because such opportunities involved answering the false charges made against him. Such unwillingness to dishonor himself brought him yet another sentence of death, this one extending to his sons as well.
The last years of the poet’s life were spent at Ravenna, where he was offered asylum by Guido Nevella da Polenta, the nephew of the famous Francesca da Rimini, the only woman sinner who actually speaks in the Inferno. These years seem to have been serene ones. In Ravenna he was greatly esteemed, and he enjoyed a very pleasant social life and an eager following of pupils, for he was already well known for his lyrics, and especially the Convivio, Inferno, and Purgatorio. Shortly before his death he was sent by Guido on a mission to Venice. Although Florence still rejected him, other cities very much valued his presence. Dante’s friendship with Can Grande della Scala remained intact, and Dante placed great store in him; it is to him that he dedicated the Paradiso. Ravenna was Dante’s home until his death on September 13 or 14, 1321.
WORKS
The Vita nuova, one of Dante’s earliest works, is a combination of prose and poetry (thirty-one poems accompanied by a prose text). It is one of the first important examples of Italian literary prose and probably the first work of fiction that has come down to us in which the prose serves the purpose not only of offering a continuous narrative but also of explaining the occasion for the composition of each of the poems included. The originality of the Vita nuova consists of the functional relationship between the poetry and the prose.
In recent years the critics of the Divine Comedy have come to see more clearly the necessity of distinguishing between Dante the poet, the historical figure who wrote the poem in his own voice, and Dante the pilgrim, who is the poet’s creation and who moves in a world of the poet’s invention. In the case of the Vita nuova it is more difficult to distinguish between Dante the poet and Dante the lover, because in this book the lover, the protagonist, is himself a poet. More important, however, is the fact that the events of the Vita nuova, unlike those of the Divine Comedy, are surely not to be taken as pure fiction, and the protagonist himself is no fictional character: he is the historical character Dante at an earlier age. But we must attempt, just as we must in the case of any first-person novel, to distinguish between the point of view of the one who has already lived through the experiences recorded and has had time to reflect upon them in retrospect, and the point of view of the one undergoing the experiences at the time. What we have in the Vita nuova is a more mature Dante, reevoking his youthful experiences in a way that points up the folly of his younger self.
Also significant is the chronological relationship between the composition of the poems and that of the prose narrative, which reflects the way in which the author has adapted to a new purpose some of his earlier writings. In general scholars agree that when Dante, sometime between 1292 (that is, two years after the death of Beatrice) and 1300, composed the Vita nuova, most, if not all, of the poems that were to appear in the text had already been written. The architecture of the work, as has been said, consists of selected poems arranged in a certain order, with bridges of prose that serve primarily a narrative function: to describe those events in the life of the protagonist that supposedly inspired the poems included in the text. By giving the poems a narrative background, Dante was able to make their meaning clearer or even to change their original meaning or purpose.
For example, though the beauty of the first canzone in the book, Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore (“Ladies who have intelligence of love”) (chapter XIX), is independent of its position in the work, the poem owes entirely to the preceding narrative its dramatic significance as the proclamation of a totally new attitude adopted by the young poet-lover at this time in the story. This is also true, though from a different point of view, of what is probably the most famous sonnet in the Vita nuova, Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare (“Such sweet decorum and such gentle grace”) (chapter XXVI).
Just how much of the narrative prose is fiction we shall never know. We can never be sure that a given poem actually arose from the circumstances related in the prose preceding it. A few critics believe that all of the events of the narrative reflect biographical truth; most, fortunately, are more skeptical. But it goes without saying that to enjoy reading the Vita nuova we must suspend our skepticism and accept as “true” the events of the narrative. For only by doing so can we perceive the significance that Dante attributed to his poems by placing them where he did. And most critics of the Vita nuova seem to be agreed that in interpreting this work as a piece of literature, in seeking to find its message, the reader must try to forget the biographical fact that any given poem may have been written before Dante could know the use he would make of it later on.
In the opening chapter or preface (for it is so short) of his little book the author states that his purpose is to copy from his “book of memory” only those past experiences that belong to the period beginning his “new life”—a life made new by the poet’s first meeting with Beatrice and the God of Love, who together with the poet-protagonist are the three main characters in the story. And by the end of chapter II all of the motifs that are important for the story that is about to unfold step by step have been introduced.
The first word of the opening sentence is “Nine”: “Nine times already since my birth the heaven of light had circled back to almost the same point, when there appeared before my eyes the now glorious lady of my mind, who was called Beatrice even by those who did not know what her name was. ” The number nine will be repeated twice more in the next sentenc
e (and it will appear another twenty times before the book comes to an end). In this opening sentence the reader not only finds a reference to the number nine of symbolic significance, but he also sees the emphasis on mathematical precision that will appear at frequent intervals throughout the Vita nuova.
In the opening sentence also the child Beatrice is presented as already enjoying the veneration of the people of her city, including strangers who did not know her name. With the words “the now glorious lady of my mind” (the first of two time shifts, in which the figure of the living Beatrice at a given moment is described in such a way as to remind us of Beatrice dead) the theme of death is delicately foreshadowed at the beginning of the story. As for the figure of Beatrice, when she appears for the first time in this chapter she wears a garment of blood-red color—the same color as her shroud will be in the next chapter.
In the next three sentences the three main spirits are introduced: the “vital” (in the heart), the “animal” (in the brain), and the “natural” (in the liver). They rule the body of the nine-year-old protagonist, and they speak in Latin, as will the God of Love in the chapter that follows (and once again later on). The words of the first spirit describing Beatrice anticipate the first coming of Love in the next chapter and suggest something of the same mood of terror. The words of the second spirit suggest rapturous bliss to come (that bliss rhapsodically described in chapter XI), while in the words of the third spirit there is the first of the many references to tears to be found in the Vita nuova. It is the spirit of the liver that weeps. It is only after this reference to the organ of digestion that Love is mentioned. He is mentioned first of all as a ruler, but we learn immediately that much of his power is derived from the protagonist’s imagination—this faculty of which there will be so many reminders in the form of visions throughout the book.
We are also told that Love’s power was restricted by reason, and later in the book the relation between Love and reason becomes an important problem. Two more themes are posited in this beginning chapter, to be woven into the narrative: the godlike nature of Beatrice and the strong “praise of the lady” motif. Both sound throughout the chapter as the protagonist’s admiration for Beatrice keeps growing during the nine years after her first appearance.
Thus the opening chapter prepares for the rest of the book not only in the obvious way of presenting a background situation, an established continuity out of which single events will emerge in time, but also by setting in motion certain forces that will propel the Vita nuova forward—forces with which Dante’s reader will gradually become more and more familiar.
In chapter XLII, the final chapter of the Vita nuova, the poet expresses his dissatisfaction with his work: “After I wrote this sonnet there appeared to me a miraculous vision in which I saw things that made me resolve to say no more about this blesséd one until I should be capable of writing about her in a nobler way. ” As the result of a final vision, which is not revealed to the reader, he decides to stop writing about Beatrice until he can do so more worthily. The preceding vision he had in the course of the story had made him decide to keep on writing; this one made him decide to stop. If the main action of the book is to be seen, as some critics believe, as the development of Dante’s love from his preoccupation with his own feelings to his enjoyment of Beatrice’s excellence and, finally, to his exclusive concern with her heavenly attributes and with spiritual matters, then this action, and the Vita nuova itself, ends in an important sense in failure.
To understand the message of the book, to understand how it succeeds through failure, we must go back in time and imagine the poet Dante, somewhere between the ages of twenty-seven and thirty-five, having already glimpsed the possibility of what was to be his terrible and grandiose masterpiece, the Divine Comedy. We must imagine him rereading the love poems of his earlier years and feeling shame for a number of them. He would have come to view Beatrice as she was destined to appear in the Divine Comedy, and indeed as she does appear briefly in the Vita nuova, specifically in that essay (chapter XXIXM) on the miraculous quality of the number nine (the square of the number three, the symbol of the Blessed Trinity)—that is, as an agent of divine salvation.
Having arrived at this point, he would have chosen from among his earlier love poems many that exhibit his younger self at his worst, in order to offer a warning example to other young lovers and especially to other love poets. This would imply on Dante’s part, as he is approaching the midmost part of life (the “ mezzo del cammin di nostra vita” of the Divine Comedy), a criticism of most of the love poetry in Italian literature, for which his century was famous, and also that for which Provençal poetry was famous in the preceding century.
One might even say that the Vita nuova is a cruel book; cruel, that is, in the treatment of the human type represented by the protagonist. In the picture of the lover there is offered a condemnation of the vice of emotional self-indulgence and an exposure of its destructive effects on a man’s integrity. The “tender feelings” that move the lover to hope or despair, to rejoice or to grieve (and perhaps even to enjoy his grief), spring from his vulnerability and instability and self-love; however idealistically inspired, these feelings cannot, except spasmodically, lead him ahead and above as long as he continues to be at their mercy. In short, he must always fall back into the helplessness of his self-centeredness. The man who would realize a man’s destiny must ruthlessly cut out of his heart the canker at its center, the canker that the heart instinctively tends to cultivate. This is, I am convinced, the main message of the Vita nuova. And the consistent, uncompromising indictment it levels has no parallel in the literature of Dante’s time. But of course the Vita nuova offers more than a picture of the misguided lover: there is also the glory of Beatrice and the slowly increasing ability of the lover to understand it, although he must nevertheless confess at the end that he has not truly succeeded.
Both in the treatment of the lover and in that of Beatrice, Dante has gone far beyond what he found at hand in the love poetry of the troubadours and their followers. He has taken up two of their preoccupations (one might almost say obsessions) and developed each of them in a most original way: the lover’s glorification of his own feelings, and his glorification of the beloved. Of the first he has made a caricature. Unlike his friend Guido Cavalcanti, also highly critical of the havoc wrought by the emotions within a man’s soul, who makes of the distraught lover a macabre portrait of doom, Dante has presented his protagonist mainly as an object of derision.
As to the glorification of the lady, all critics of the Vita nuova admit that Dante has carried this idealization to a degree never before reached by any poet, and one that no poet after him will ever quite attempt to reach. However blurred may be the lover’s vision of the gracious, pure, feminine Beatrice, Dante the poet, in chapter XXIX, probes to the essence of her being and presents the coldness of her sublimity. Thus the tender foolishness of the lover is intensified by contrast with the icy perfection of the beloved.
With a few exceptions, Dante’s lyrical poems (and not only those contained in the Vita nuova) are inferior as works of art to those of Cavalcanti and Guinizelli, or, for that matter, to those of Bernart de Ventadorn and Arnaut Daniel. The greatness of the Vita nuova lies not in the poems but in the purpose that Dante made them serve. Certainly the book is the most original form of recantation in medieval literature—a recantation that takes the form of a reenactment, seen from a new perspective, of the sin recanted.
The Convivio, or Banquet, which Dante wrote in Italian sometime between 1304 and 1308, is an unfinished piece of work (it would be difficult to call it a work of art). His purpose in writing it is explained in the opening sentence, which is a quotation from Aristotle’s Metaphysics: “All men by nature desire to know. ” Dante invites his reader to a feast consisting of fourteen courses (only three were completed), of which the “meat” of each is a canzone concerning love and virtue, while the “bread” is the exposition of it. Dante invites to his Banq
uet all those worthy people who, because of public duties, family responsibilities, and the like, have not been introduced to the science of philosophy. It is the laymen whom Dante invites to his feast, for it is through philosophy, he believes, that they can attain the temporal goal of happiness.
While the Vita nuova is Dante’s monument to his first love, the lady Beatrice, the Convivio is a monument to his “second love, ” the lady Philosophy. That the lady who offers to console Dante a year after the death of Beatrice in the Vita nuova is that same lady Philosophy of the Convivio is revealed in book II, chapter II.
To begin with, then, let me say that the star of Venus had already revolved twice in that circle of hers that makes her appear at evening or in the morning, according to the two different periods, since the passing away of that blessed Beatrice who dwells in heaven with the angels and on earth with my soul, when that gentle lady, of whom I made mention at the end of the Vita nuova, first appeared to my eyes, accompanied by love, and occupied a place in my mind.
What attracted the poet-protagonist to this lady was her offer of consolation. In the Vita nuova his love for the lady at the window lasts for a short time, and he refers to this love as “the adversary of reason” and “most base, ” but in the Convivio he calls this love “most noble. ” It should be remembered, however, that Philosophy in the Vita nuova tries to make the young protagonist forget the fact that he has lost Beatrice —something of this earth (such as Philosophy) cannot replace the love of Beatrice. After the vision in chapter XXXIX of the Vita nuova, after grasping the true significance of his lady, he returns to Beatrice and vows to never again stray. In doing this he is to be thought of not as rejecting Philosophy, but rather as rejecting the ideal of replacing Beatrice with Philosophy. Never in the Convivio does he consider such a replacement.