ch’altro penser non lascia star con nui?”
(Gentil pensero, 5–8)
[The soul says to the heart: “Who can this be
who comes and offers solace for our mind,
and does it have the strength to keep at bay
all other thoughts that might remain with us?”]
The “gentle thought reminding me of you” of the incipit is thus endowed with such power of consolation as to take the place of every other thought. It erases the past. The result of this replacement of the old thoughts by the new is to forget the first love. We recall in this regard the crystal-clear ethical position staked by the verses of L’amaro lagrimar, where oblio of the first love is explicitly condemned: “Voi non dovreste mai, se non per morte,/la vostra donna, ch’è morta, obliare [Unless you die, you should not ever be / forgetful of your lady who has died]” (L’amaro lagrimar, 12–13).
The soul in Gentil pensero poses its question about the power of the thought of the new love without any of the aggression and scorn manifest in the analogous question in the prose. The difference between the soul’s question as posed in the sonnet and the question as posed in the Vita Nuova prose – “Deo, che pensero è questo, che in così vile modo vuole consolare me e non mi lascia quasi altro pensare? [God, what thought is this, which in such a base manner wants to console me and leaves me thinking about almost nothing else?]” (VN XXXVIII.2 [27.2]) – is clear: the power of the consoling thought is not negatively judged in the sonnet. There is no moralizing scorn for the new thought in Gentil pensero, no heaping up of insults such as “in così vile modo vuole consolare me” in the passage above and the slightly later epithet “vilissimo” (VN XXXVIII.4 [27.4]). Gentil pensero does not even take the decisive position against the new thought that we saw in the previous sonnet, L’amaro lagrimar.
Gentil pensero never expresses a negative judgment with regard to the new love. The sestet is dedicated entirely to the heart’s response to the soul’s question. In the second quatrain of the octave the soul asks: “Chi è costui,/che vene a consolar la nostra mente? [Who can this be / who comes and offers solace for our mind?]” (5–6). The response, which runs from lines 9 to 14, corresponds to the section of the Vita Nuova narrative that describes the new love as authentic: “Tu vedi che questo è uno spiramento d’Amore, che ne reca li disiri d’amore dinanzi, ed è mosso da così gentil parte com’è quella de li occhi de la donna che tanto pietosa ci s’hae mostrata [You see that this is a fresh breath of Love, an inspiration that brings the desires of love before us, and arises from a place so gracious as the eyes of the woman who has shown such mercy towards us]” (VN XXXVIII.3 [27.3]). In the prose, the debate is interrupted at this point by the author’s brusque condemnation of the new love. But in the sonnet the words that defend the new love are the final words of the poem. There is no condemnation of the “spiritel novo d’amore / che reca innanzi me li suoi desiri [newborn spirit full of love / that brings to me the sum of its desires]” (10–11). Gentil pensero dedicates its final lines to the donna gentile and finishes by praising her for her compassion.
The praise of the new love highlights the theme that underlies all of this: that of the volatility of the will. Dante after all gave an affirmative reply to Cino’s question “utrum de passione in passionem possit anima transformari [whether the soul can move from one passion to another]” (Ep. 3.2; see the introductory essay on Cavalcando l’altr’ier). This is a topic that never ceased to preoccupy Dante. The last word on the new love described in Gentil pensero as “spiritel novo d’amore” (10) is not provided by the Vita Nuova or Convivio, but by Purgatorio, where Beatrice’s reprimand judges affective novelty with great severity: “Non ti dovea gravar le penne in giuso,/… o pargoletta / o altra novità con sì breve uso [No young girl or other novelty with such brief use should have weighed down your wings]” (Purg. 31.58–60).
54 (B XXXIV; FB 54; VN XXXVIII.8–10 [27.8–10])
Gentil pensero che parla di vui sen vene a dimorar meco sovente, e ragiona d’amor sì dolcemente,
A gentle thought reminding me of you comes frequently to dwell awhile with me and talks of love with such great tenderness
4
che face consentir lo cor in lui. L’anima dice al cor: “Chi è costui, che vene a consolar la nostra mente, ed è la sua vertù tanto possente,
that it compels the heart to yield consent. The soul says to the heart: “Who can this be who comes and offers solace for our mind, and does it have the strength to keep at bay
8
ch’altro penser non lascia star con nui?”
all other thoughts that might remain with us?”
Ei le risponde: “Oi anima pensosa, questi è uno spiritel novo d’amore,
The heart replies to her: “O troubled soul, this is a newborn spirit full of love
11
che reca innanzi me li suoi desiri; e la sua vita, e tutto ‘l suo valore, mosse de li occhi di quella pietosa
that brings to me the sum of its desires; both its existence and the might it wields came from the caring eyes of her
14
che si turbava de’ nostri martìri.”
who felt such sorrow for our suffering.”
METRE: sonnet ABBA ABBA CDE DCE.
55 Lasso, per forza di molti sospiri
First Redaction
The sonnet Lasso, per forza di molti sospiri was placed by Dante in Vita Nuova XXXIX (28), where it signals the end of the donna gentile episode. A vision of Beatrice, in which he sees her wearing the same crimson clothes in which she first appeared, puts the poet again on the dritta via. After the vision, Dante’s heart repents the “desire by which it so basely had let itself be seized for a number of days against the constancy of reason” (“desiderio a cui sì vilmente s’avea lasciato possedere alquanti die contra la costanzia de la ragione”) (VN XXXIX.2 [28.2]) and reconverts to Beatrice: “e discacciato questo cotale malvagio desiderio, sì si rivolsero tutti li miei pensamenti a la loro gentilissima Beatrice [and once this wicked desire had been driven off, all my thoughts turned back to their most gracious Beatrice]” (VN XXXIX.2 [28.2]).
The prose narrative of the Vita Nuova presents the sonnet Lasso, per forza as a seal and guarantee of the poet’s (re)conversion to Beatrice,137 a material sign that the love for the donna gentile – a “wicked desire and vain temptation” – is now completely “distrutto [wiped out]” (VN XXXIX.6 [28.6]). The adjective vano in the phrase “vana tentazione” is loaded with moralism (vain things are empty, lacking in foundation and content, and therefore not worthy of our attention), and is connected to the only explicitly moralistic sonnet of this group, L’amaro lagrimar, in which the noun vanità is used to condemn the poet’s eyes: “La vostra vanità mi fa pensare,/e spaventami sì, ch’io temo forte / del viso d’una donna che vi mira [Your lack of constancy distresses me / and is so shocking that I greatly dread / the face of her who often looks at you]” (9–11). In the prose of chapter XXXIX (28), vano will be echoed by the verb based on it, vaneggiare, where it will be alliteratively associated with the verb vergognare (to feel shame), in a copula that will remain in Petrarch’s memory:138 “e dissi ‘lasso’ in quanto mi vergognava di ciò, che li miei occhi aveano così vaneggiato [and I said ‘alas’ because I was ashamed that my eyes had gone off on an empty digression]” (VN XXXIX.6 [28.6]).
The young Dante is depicted as suffering from a strong sense of shame, a sentiment that finds expression in his lyrics but most of all in his prose, in both the Vita Nuova and Convivio. In the Vita Nuova there are nine occurrences in which the protagonist experiences shame, of which six occur in the prose (and it is here that the use of the verb vergognare appears). The narrative frequently creates situations that provoke shame: the episode of the gabbo, the episode of the ladies who ask Dante to explain the nature of his love for Beatrice, the episode in which Dante is ashamed of having said the name of Beatrice while he was delirious, the episode of the donna gentile. Even the craft of writing poetry create
s occasions for feeling ashamed in the world of the young Dante: “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 his words of such dress]” (VN XXV.10 [16.10]).
Present in Dante’s lyrics on nine occasions are either the noun vergogna or the adjective vergognoso. The feeling of shame refers to the writing self in five of the nine poems in which those words appear (O voi che per la via, Sonar bracchetti, Donna pietosa, Li occhi dolenti, and Tre donne, where it refers to Love),139 but Lasso, per forza is not one of these. There is no shame in the sonnet Lasso, per forza. It is the prose of the Vita Nuova that interprets the word “lasso” in terms of shame, insisting that “I said alas because I was ashamed” (“dissi ‘lasso’ in quanto mi vergognava di ciò”) (VN XXXIX.6 [28.6]).
As De Robertis notes, “The sonnet [Lasso, per forza] says nothing that was not said before the rising up of the ‘vain temptation’; and in reality it could be placed among the other lyrics on the death of Beatrice, and is probably one of them” (VN, p. 235).140 There is nothing, in other words, inherent to the sonnet itself that leads us to think in terms of the drama of temptation and seduction described by the prose of the Vita Nuova; it is a simple sonnet of lament and suffering. In this case, therefore, the manipulations of the prose are particularly explicit, as indicated by the fact that Dante himself provides the gloss to the opening exclamation “Lasso,” telling us that it indicates shame. Recognizing that the reader of Lasso, per forza would not come to the idea of shame without his help, Dante openly sets about glossing not only the general sense of the sonnet but word by word.
If however we take the sonnet out of the Vita Nuova and read it apart from the machinations of the prose, the opening “Lasso” functions not as a sign of shame but as the expression of a suffering so elemental and primal that it remains in a preverbal state: a state of tears, of struggling to find a rational outlet in words. As the Barbi-Maggini commentary puts it: “The poem begins with a moan and continues in a tired tone, as of one who has exhausted himself by weeping and now speaks woefully” (p. 144).
The only possible link between this sonnet and the poems written for a new love later considered shameful is the observation that the poet’s eyes “non hanno valore / di riguardar persona che gli miri [lack the strength / to glance at anyone who looks at them]” (3–4). The incapacity of the poet’s eyes to “glance at anyone who looks at them,” although a simple declaration of their extreme weariness and weakness, dovetails with the story of the donna gentile, whose charming pity was expressed and reciprocated through mutual glances. In the condition in which the lover finds himself in Lasso, per forza, the new love dramatized in Videro gli occhi miei and Color d’amore could not have occurred, since it was awakened by means of exchanged looks: the compassionate glance of the lady and the responding glance of the lover. Lasso, per forza’s denial of the lover’s ability to participate in such a visual dance functions, in the context of the Vita Nuova, as an implicit reproof of the seduction through gaze in which the poet participated in the preceding chapters. The eyes that were so ready to let themselves be seduced in Videro gli occhi miei now “lament so much that Love / encircles them with crowns of suffering” (“piangon sì, ch’Amore / li cerchia di corona di martiri”) (7–8).
There is an almost physical, primitive quality to the suffering in Lasso, per forza: from the violence of that “forza di molti sospiri [weight of many sighs]” (1) by which “gli occhi son vinti [my eyes are overcome]” (3), to the purple colour denoted by the “corona di martiri [crowns of suffering]” (8) that circle the eyes (and that for De Robertis evoke the “language of Christian martyrology” [VN, p. 236]). The sestet continues to create the sense of an intense internal pressure, suffocating and unbearable. Of the lines “Questi pensieri e li sospir’ ch’io gitto / diventan nello cor tanto angosciosi [These thoughts, together with the sighs I heave,/become so harrowing within my heart]” (9–10), Barbi-Maggini write: “Inside the heart the thoughts and sighs that want to break through produce a sense of heavy anguish, of an even physical oppression” (p. 145). For the topos gittare sospiri (to heave sighs) in the courtly tradition, and for its obvious erotic connotations, see the introductory essay to Tanto gentile; here the topos is present in its suffering rather than erotic variant, but its physical nature is the same.
The last tercet of Lasso, per forza continues with the lover’s thoughts and sighs, but introduces a new image, less primal, that of writing: “egli hanno in sé, gli dolorosi,/quel dolce nome di mia donna scritto / e de la morte sua molte parole [for they, the ones that suffer, have inscribed / within themselves my lady’s tender name,/and many words relating to her death]” (12–14). These verses recall the canzone Lo doloroso amor, whose programmatic adjective, “doloroso,” is echoed in the sighs that are so emphatically “dolorosi” (12), and which too contains the inscription of madonna’s name, there on the lover’s heart, as here on his sighs: “Quel dolce nome che mi fa il cor agro,/tutte fiate ch’i’ lo vedrò scritto / mi farà nuovo ogni dolor ch’i’ sento [The sweet name that embitters so my heart / each time I see it written down someplace / will make the pain I feel renew itself]” (Lo doloroso amor, 15–17).
However, Lo doloroso amor contains the name “Beatrice”141 (“Per quella moro c’ha nome Beatrice [I die for her whose name is Beatrice]” [14]), not present in Lasso, per forza. Most important, the death lamented in Lo doloroso amor is the Cavalcantian, metaphoric, “death” of the lover-poet, while the death lamented in Lasso, per forza is the Dantean death – historical, real – of madonna. Whatever her name, she is truly, corporeally, dead, and therefore the sonnet’s sighs are spokesmen of “her” – not “my” – death: “e de la morte sua molte parole [and many words relating to her death]” (14).
55 (B XXXV; FB 55; DR 73; VN XXXIX.8–10 [28.8–10])
First Redaction
Lasso, per forza di molti sospiri che nascon de’ pensier’ che son nel core gli occhi son vinti, e non hanno valore
Alas, beneath the weight of many sighs that spring from thoughts residing in my heart, my eyes are overcome and lack the strength
4
di riguardar persona che gli miri; e fatti son che paion duo disiri di lagrimare e di mostrar dolore, e spesse volte piangon sì, ch’Amore
to glance at anyone who looks at them; they bear the image of my two desires, of shedding tears and manifesting pain, and often they lament so much that Love
8
li cerchia di corona di martiri.
encircles them with crowns of suffering.
Questi pensieri e li sospir’ ch’io gitto diventan nello cor tanto angosciosi
These thoughts, together with the sighs I heave, become so harrowing within my heart
11
ch’Amor ne tramortisce, si glie ·n dole; però ch’egli hanno in sé, gli dolorosi, quel dolce nome di mia donna scritto
that Love, because he suffers so, must faint; for they, the ones that suffer, have inscribed within themselves my lady’s tender name,
14
e de la morte sua molte parole.
and many words relating to her death.
VN 8. li ’ncerchia – 10. Diventan ne lo cor sì a. – 11. Amor vi tramortisce – 12. in lor li – 13. di madonna
METRE: sonnet ABBA ABBA CDE DCE.
56 Deh pellegrini che pensosi andate
First Redaction
This sonnet, reproduced here in the redaction prior to the one in the Vita Nuova, was placed by Dante in chapter XL (29) of the libello, where it signals the turn towards the book’s conclusion. The prose explains that the poet, now reconsecrated to Beatrice, sees pilgrims passing through Florence, “pensosi [absorbed in thought]” but not in tears, and deduces that they are coming from far away – otherwise they would be sad and weeping over the death of B
eatrice: “Poi dicea fra me medesimo: ‘Io so che s’elli fossero di propinquo paese, in alcuna vista parrebbero turbati passando per lo mezzo de la dolorosa cittade’ [Then I said to myself: ‘I’m sure that if they were from a country nearby something in their bearing would appear disturbed as they passed through the middle of the suffering city’]” (VN XL.3 [29.3]). Committed to transmitting the story of Beatrice, Dante imagines the words he would say to these pilgrims if he could communicate with them, words that would make them weep: “direi parole le quali farebbero piangere chiunque le intendesse [I would say things to them that would make anyone who heard them cry]” (VN XL.4 [29.4]). Unlike the situation that obtains with respect to Lasso, per forza, where the prose has the aim of rewriting the sonnet, the prose of chapter XL (29) elaborates what we read in Deh pellegrini but does not rewrite it. In this case the prose adds historical and sociological depth (the various types of pilgrims, etc.), but does not alter the basic situation described in the sonnet.
We may recall that in the sonnet of mourning, Voi che portate la sembianza umile, the poet communicates in the poem what he would have wanted to ask the grieving ladies if he had been allowed to speak to them. The situation is analogous to that of Deh pellegrini: in both sonnets the poet uses imagination and poetry to overcome the social distance that impedes communication. But the analogy also serves to underscore the contrast between a sonnet like Voi che portate, courtly and set in a local environment (the ladies are Florentine), and one like Deh pellegrini, which aims to leave the courtly world and the local environment behind.
In Deh pellegrini we see a young Dante who, although still a lyrical, courtly poet, is eager to project himself outside his early environment in order to interact and communicate in a less restrictive social context. He wants to find a wider public, and the pilgrims who, also according to the sonnet, come from far away – “da·ssì lontana gente” (3) – meet his demand for enlargement and expansion. We need only compare Deh pellegrini che pensosi andate with O voi che per la via d’Amor passate (also preserved in a redaction previous to that of the Vita Nuova, later placed in Vita Nuova VII [2]), to grasp the difference between those who pass along “the path of love [la via d’Amor]” and the pilgrims who proceed “through / the middle of our city wrought with grief” (“per lo suo mezzo la città dolente”) (6). From the courtly “via d’Amore” we have reached the much more historicized “città dolente” – a phrase that Dante will reuse in the famous words on the gate of hell, “Per me si va ne la città dolente [Through me the way into the suffering city]” (Inf. 3.1).142 The suffering Florence of Deh pellegrini is an image that also resonates with the words of the Lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah, cited in the Vita Nuova, about a different suffering city: “Quomodo sedet sola civitas plena populo! [How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people!]” (VN XXVIII.1 [19.1]).