Dante intervenes here with notable energy, loading the metaphor of “erranza” with one of the very few similes of the Vita Nuova. The result is a paradigmatic passage in the repertory of Dante’s metaphoric journeys: “come colui che non sa per qual via pigli lo suo cammino, e che vuole andare e non sa onde se ne vada [like someone who doesn’t know which way to take for his journey – who wants to go but doesn’t know where he is headed]” (VN XIII.6 [6.6]).
Another aim of the prose that glosses Tutti li miei penser is to “Cavalcanti-ize” it, to render the poem more Cavalcantian. As has been noted, the poems of this section of the Vita Nuova are part of a Cavalcantian arc that stretches from Cavalcando l’altr’ier in chapter IX (4) to Spesse fiate vegnonmi a la mente in chapter XVI (9), passing through the episode of the gabbo (mocking). In the case of Ballata, i’ voi che tu ritrovi Amore, a poem not in itself particularly Cavalcantian, we saw that the work of the prose is to create a Cavalcantian atmosphere; in the case of Tutti li miei penser parlan d’Amore, which has certain Cavalcantian aspects, the aim of the prose is to reinforce them.
Among the potentially Cavalcantian aspects of Tutti li miei penser parlan d’Amore is the characterization (noted by Foster-Boyde) of the poet’s conflicted thoughts as projections of his own interiority. However, the typically Cavalcantian anxiety of such internal fragmentation is a creation of the Vita Nuova’s prose, which introduces the metaphor of combat and battle, absent from the sonnet. In the prose that precedes Tutti li miei penser, Dante writes “mi cominciaro molti e diversi pensamenti a combattere [several contending thoughts started to fight in me]” (XIII.1 [6.1]); in the prose that follows Tutti li miei penser we even find the very Cavalcantian metaphor of the “battaglia de li diversi pensieri [the battle of various contending thoughts]” (XIV.1 [7.1]). With respect to Cavalcantian language in the sonnet, however, the only notable feature is the verse “tremando di paura che è nel core [by trembling for the fear within my heart]” (8). I thus fully endorse the view of De Robertis, the only one among the Vita Nuova’s commentators who consistently emphasizes the divergence between prose and poetry, that “any allusion by the sonnet to the Cavalcantian poetic experience (only l. 8 suggests it) is the work of the prose” (VN, p. 86).
25 (B X; FB 26; VN XIII.8–9 [6.8–9])
Tutti li miei penser parlan d’Amore; e hanno in lor sì gran varietate, ch’altro mi fa voler sua potestate,
All my thoughts now speak to me of Love, and yet they share such great diversity that one compels me to desire its power,
4
altro folle ragiona il suo valore, altro sperando m’apporta dolzore, altro pianger mi fa spesse fiate; e sol s’accordano in cherer pietate,
another claims its rule is foolishness, another brings delight by means of hope, another oftentimes will make me weep; they find their sole accord in seeking pity,
8
tremando di paura che è nel core.
by trembling for the fear within my heart.
Ond’io non so da qual matera prenda; e vorrei dire, e non so ch’io mi dica:
So I know not from which to take my theme; I’d like to speak, but don’t know what to say:
11
così mi trovo in amorosa erranza! E se con tutti voi fare accordanza, convenemi chiamar la mia nemica,
that’s why I find myself confused by love. If I should wish to harmonize them all, I’d need to call upon my enemy,
14
madonna la Pietà, che mi difenda.
the Lady Pity, to defend my cause.
METRE: sonnet ABBA ABBA CDE EDC.
26 Con l’altre donne mia vista gabbate
First Redaction
In this sonnet, based on the motif, conventional in the Occitan lyric, of the “gabbo” (the act of making fun of, teasing), the poet addresses madonna directly. That lack of screens or mediators is notable; not only does the poet talk to madonna without intermediaries but he does it in a particularly sharp way, expressing himself in the present as if the action he is complaining about were contemporary to the act of writing: “Con l’altre donne mia vista gabbate / e non guardate, donna, onde si mova [With other ladies you deride my looks,/not thinking, lady, how it comes about]” (1–2). The lady who is teasing him with her companions isn’t worried about the fact that she herself is the cause of the change in his face (“mia vista”). A pattern of circular behaviour emerges: the beauty of the woman whom the poet is addressing – “la vostra beltate” (your beauty) (4) – provokes the change in his appearance; his appearance in turn provokes the negative reaction in her and her companions (“altre donne”): “che vi risembro sì figura nova / quando risguardo la vostra beltate [that you should see in me so strange a look / when I regard the beauty you possess]” (3–4).
If madonna knew the effect that she has on him, Pity would not remain hostile: “Se·llo saveste, non poria Pietate / più ver di me tener l’usata prova [Were you to know this, Pity would not have / the power to treat me as it’s wont to do]” (5–6; in Tutti li miei penser parlan d’Amore too, there is a personification of “la mia nemica,/madonna la Pietà [my enemy,/the Lady Pity]” [13–14]). The transition from the descriptive to the analytical, indicated by the hypothetical sentence (“Se·llo saveste, non poria Pietate …”), gives new retrospective force to the opening of this sonnet, where the exceptional use of the present tense amounts to an attack on madonna.
The first part of Con l’altre donne mia vista gabbate is unusual in its expressive vigour and for a form of direct address to madonna that is not at all the deferential address of Dante to Beatrice in the Commedia. At the end of the octave the sonnet goes in a different direction: Love appears (“ch’Amor, quando sì presso a voi mi trova,/prende baldezza e tanta sicurtate [for Love, in finding me so close to you,/becomes so brazen and so confident]” [7–8]), and after his arrival the sonnet takes a notable stylistic turn, becoming a catalogue of Cavalcantian motifs and features. In a very Cavalcantian manner, the lover’s vital “spirits” enter the scene, spirits that Love, already frightened, wounds, kills, and drives away: “che fiere tra i miei spiriti paurosi / e qual ancide e qual pinge di fore [he takes my frightened spirits by assault,/and some he slays, and others he drives out]” (9–10). The lover, literally “transfigured” (he was already a “figura nova” in line 3) because of the slaughter of his spirits brought about by Love, has changed so much in his appearance that he is no longer himself: “ond’io mi cangio in figura d’altrui [thus I take on the look of someone else]” (12). However, his mutation does not keep him from hearing the lamentations of his exiled, tormented spirits: “ma non sì ch’io non senta bene allore / li guai de li scacciati tormentosi [but not so much that I don’t hear full well / the torment of those spirits he drove out]” (13–14). With the manifestly Cavalcantian line “li guai de li scacciati tormentosi” the sonnet ends.
In the case of Con l’altre donne mia vista gabbate, an authentically Cavalcantian sonnet, there is not the discrepancy between prose and poem that we saw in the cases of the two preceding poems. (I follow De Robertis, as always, in printing the redaction prior to that of the Vita Nuova when such a redaction exists.) The prose frame of Vita Nuova XIV (7) elaborates the Cavalcantian themes of the sonnet. Free of the burden of having to create a Cavalcantian ambience absent from the poem, the prose glosses and adds density to those aspects of the sonnet that are especially important from the point of view of the libello.
An element of the sonnet that is emphasized and elaborated in the prose is the expression “figura nova,” particularly meaningful in a text entitled Vita Nuova, which is glossed with the spiritually and metaphysically significant words “trasfigurazione” and “trasfiguramento”: “accorgendosi de la mia trasfigurazione [noticing my transfiguration]” (VN XIV.7 [7.7]); “la cagione del mio trasfiguramento [the cause of my transfiguration]” (VN XIV.10 [7.10]). Meanings that are only adumbrated in the sonnet’s “figura nova” (but we should not forget that the word novo is always important in Dante’
s usage) become manifest with the word “trasfigurazione,” whose prefix, tras, leads directly to the trasumanar of Paradiso. Similarly, the prose suggests a wider metaphysical context in which to situate the Cavalcantian love-death, in itself a death that is exquisitely lyrical and absolute. By contrast, the prose of the Vita Nuova invokes a death that is not absolute, a death that leads to resurrection: “resurressiti li morti spiriti miei [my dead spirits now resurrected]” (VN XIV.8 [7.8]). This is a death that already foreshadows a possibility not considered in Cavalcanti’s system: a death that is transfiguration, metamorphosis, and rebirth of the soul in a “figura nova.”
26 (B XI; FB 27; DR 52; VN XIV.11–12 [7.11–12])
First Redaction
Con l’altre donne mia vista gabbate e non guardate, donna, onde si mova che vi risembro sì figura nova
With other ladies you deride my looks, not thinking, lady, how it comes about that you should see in me so strange a look
4
quando risguardo la vostra beltate. Se·llo saveste, non poria Pietate più ver di me tener l’usata prova, ch’Amor, quando sì presso a voi mi trova,
when I regard the beauty you possess. Were you to know this, Pity would not have the power to treat me as it’s wont to do, for Love, in finding me so close to you,
8
prende baldezza e tanta sicurtate
becomes so brazen and so confident
che fiere tra i miei spiriti paurosi e qual ancide e qual pinge di fore,
he takes my frightened spirits by assault, and some he slays, and others he drives out,
11
sì che solo rimane a veder voi: ond’io mi cangio in figura d’altrui; ma non sì ch’io non senta bene allore
so he alone remains to look at you. Thus I take on the look of someone else, but not so much that I don’t hear full well
14
li guai de li scacciati tormentosi.
the torment of those spirits he drove out.
VN 2. non pensate – 3. Ch’io vi rasembri – 4. riguardo – 6. Tener più contra me – 8. baldanza – 10. quale a.
METRE: sonnet ABBA ABBA CDE EDC.
27 Ciò che m’incontra, nella mente more
First Redaction
This sonnet, placed by Dante in Vita Nuova XV (8) but here printed in the earlier redaction put forward by De Robertis, is at the centre of the Cavalcantian section of the libello. The motif of the gabbo, dominant in Con l’altre donne mia vista gabbate, is here taken up again in a minor key: thus “ ’l vostro gabbo” at line 12. The dominant motif is now the erotic death of the courtly lyric: thus, “il vostro gabbo ancide [your mocking slays].” De Robertis comments that the verb “more” (dies) of the incipit, “which is, in any case, a Cavalcantian trademark, inaugurates the main thematic thrust of the whole sonnet” (VN, p. 99).
The poet returns here to the effect brought about by the sight of his lady. It is a paradoxical effect, making him desire that which is fatal for him, as summed up in the concluding line of the sonnet: “degli occhi, c’hanno di lor morte voglia [within my eyes that wish themselves to die]” (14). The lines that precede this longed-for death – note the strong antithesis created by the two nouns “death” and “desire” joined in the final position (“morte voglia”) – offer a close examination of the modalities of such a death and of the concept that death brought about by desire is desireable and desired.
In this essay I will draw attention to the provenance of these modalities, which has received little critical attention. I will show that much of the description of the “death” experienced by the lover of Ciò che m’incontra comes from the mystical tradition and that therefore we see here in this very youthful composition – a sonnet that exists in a pre–Vita Nuova redaction – a very early engagement with mysticism on Dante’s part.
When the lover is about to see his lady, the occurrences of his life vanish from his memory: “Ciò che m’incontra, nella mente more / quando vegno a veder voi, bella gioia [What comes to pass dies in my memory / when I am in your company, my joy]” (1–2). As in mystical experiences, so in this experience the protagonist exits the flux of normal space-time events: “ciò che m’incontra” – literally, “that which meets me” – is a phrase that encompasses all events and happenings in the course of quotidian living, all the things that “encounter” us as we go along the path of life. The outer world disappears, what happens to the lover “dies” in his memory, giving him the freedom to exist fully in the interior space created by Love. We see here too the simultaneous presence of erotic and mystical modalities: on the one hand the opening of Ciò che m’incontra plunges us into the midst of mystical experience, while on the other hand the two opening lines conclude with the courtly senhal used by Guit-tone d’Arezzo for his lady, “bella gioia” (lovely jewel or joy).
The sense found in this sonnet of the inwardness of mystical experience, of its estrangement from the things of the world, of alienation from that which happens to us, will later be articulated in Purgatorio, in the context of the ecstatic visions in cantos 15 and 17. This purgatorial narratio of “visione / estatica” (Purg. 15.85–6) provides us with a key to Dante’s phenomenology of mystical experience.74 Here Dante explains that after the vision “l’anima mia tornò di fori / a le cose che son fuor di lei vere [my soul came back to the things that are real outside it]” (Purg. 15.115–16), clearly indicating the existence of various dimensions of reality: the dimension of things that are true within the soul and the dimension of things that are true outside it, “fuor di lei vere.”
While in the fifteenth canto of Purgatorio Dante portrays the moment in which the soul returns to the things that exist outside of it, re-entering the flux of everyday life, in the sonnet Ciò che m’incontra he portrays the opposite moment, marked by the fading out of external things, which “die” to the lover upon experiencing the “vision” of madonna (“quando vegno a veder voi, bella gioia”). The encounter with madonna cancels what the lover encounters outside himself and provokes the beginning of a “mystical” experience, in the sense of an experience during which the soul leaves the quotidian flux and enters a different dimension of reality.
In Ciò che m’incontra, when the lover is near his lady (“e quando vi son presso [when I stand near you]” [3]), he hears Love advising him, using – significantly – direct address: “sento Amore / che dice: ‘Fuggi, se ’l morir t’è noia’ [I hear Love say:/‘Flee now, if you disdain the thought of death’]” (3–4). The use of direct address is typical of Cavalcanti’s interior dialogic dramas; later it will mark the ecstatic visions in Purgatorio, and, in general, Dante’s mystical style, where direct address confers immediacy and intensity on visionary experience. Direct address, employed by Dante as a means for crossing boundary lines between various dimensions of the real, is a rhetorical constant of his mystical-visionary style; in his early work we encounter it again in the prophetic and visionary account of the death of madonna in Vita Nuova XXIII (14). The origins of this staple harken back to Ciò che m’incontra.
I should add that the Cavalcantian contribution to Dante’s mystical style is yet to be explored. For the contaminatio in Dante’s writing between lyrical / erotic / Cavalcantian modes and mystical / theological modes, one need think only of piovere in Cavalcanti’s use – “E’ piove/gioco d’amore in noi [Amorous delight / rains down on us]” (Era in penser d’amor, 3–4) – and in Dante’s: “Poi piovve dentro all’alta fantasia / un crucifisso [Then rained down within the high fantasy one crucified]” (Purg. 17.25–6). In the case of Ciò che m’incontra, the words expressed in direct address by Love – “Fuggi, se ’l morir t’è noia” – pursue the theme of lyrical death in a Cavalcantian key.75
The sonnet accurately delineates the phenomenology of a mystical transport, from the pallid face to the listless body that starts to faint and leans wherever: “Lo viso mostra lo color del core / che tramortendo ovunque pò s’appoia [My face reveals the colour of my heart,/which, swooning, seeks whatever help it
can]” (5–6). The image of a staggering man is then reinforced by what follows. His heart’s tremours have inebriated the poet, to the point that he thinks he hears the stones of the wall on which he is leaning start to assail him, saying “Moia moia” (note the direct address): “e per l’ebrïetà del gran tremore / le pietre par che dican: ‘Moia, moia!’ [and as I tremble in this drunken state / the stones appear to shout out: ‘Die! Die!’]” (7–8). Inebriation as a sign of mystical raptus is found in Jacopone da Todi, who describes Christ with the words “Come ebrio per lo mondo spesso andavi [You often went through the world as though drunk]” (Amor de caritate, 203). After the experience of the first group of ecstatic visions in Purgatorio, Dante says that he walks “a guisa di cui vino o sonno piega [as one whom wine or sleep bends over]” (Purg. 15.123).
Among the notable textual links that connect this sonnet to the mystical section of the end of Purgatorio 15, I would include the vision of Saint Stephen during his martyrdom: “Poi vidi genti accese in foco d’ira / con pietre un giovinetto an-cider, forte / gridando a sé pur ‘Martira, martira!’ [Then I saw people stirred up in fiery rage killing a young man with stones, shouting loudly to each other repeatedly ‘Kill, kill!’]” (Purg. 15.106–8). This terzina describes a young man who is killed “with stones” by people “shouting” – in direct address – “Martira, martira!”: the line in Purgatorio “gridando a sé pur: ‘Martira, martira!’” recalls the rocks that shout “Moia, moia” in the redaction of Ciò che m’incontra that we read in the Vita Nuova. The Vita Nuova redaction of the sonnet includes the brilliant substitution of gridare, to shout (“le pietre par che gridin: ‘Moia, moia’”) for dire, to say (“le pietre par che dican: ‘Moia, moia!’”), and thus anticipates even more directly the lines in Purgatorio that describe the vision of Saint Stephen’s martyrdom.76