Dante, La Vita Nuova

1

Dante, La Vita Nuova

The Vita Nuova of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) is many things. It is a story of desire: a passionate account (perhaps true, perhaps invented) of Dante’s love of Beatrice, from their first chance encounter when the poet was nine and she was eight, to her death sixteen years later. It is an anthology of lyric poetry: a collection of Dante’s earliest verse, assembled and annotated to chart his own growth as a writer. It is a treatise on literary criticism: a compendium of medieval theories of form and allegory, authorship and readership, pressed into the service of a new, vernacular self-consciousness. But, most compellingly, it is the announcement of a literary career: a testimony to impulses lyrical and philosophical, erotic and spiritual. Written in the mid 1290’s, it is Dante’s first major literary work.

THE PLOT:

One day in church, the young boy first sees Beatrice and is smitten. He spends his youth preoccupied with her, never speaking directly to her, but contriving chance encounters. Nine years pass from this first sighting, and he sees her on the street in Florence, dressed in white, with two other, older women. She turns and greets him. Joyfully dumbstruck, he goes home and dreams of her. Time passes. Dante pines. Friends worry about his health. Dante himself cannot let on her name or his affections. And so he contrives a so-called “screen love,” modeled on the practices of courtly troubadours and romanciers. He selects another woman as the public object of attention. When this woman leaves Florence, Dante finds another – but he treats her with such obvious attention that, when Beatrice passes him one day, she publically avoids him in the street. Now, shaken to the core, Dante writes a poem for her and continues to reflect in verse on love and loss. He considers a shift in his poetic themes, from anguish to elation, but is blocked. Then, while walking by a stream, he blurts out the beginning of what would become one of his most renowned lyrics: Donne ch’avete intelleto d’amore (“Ladies, you who can understand love”). More poems come. But then Dante learns of Beatrice’s father’s death, and, while he knows he cannot directly approach her with his consolation, her sorrow is in his heart. Soon, Dante himself falls ill and languishes for nine days. Febrile and fearful, he imagines Beatrice dead, and has a nightmare about losing her. On his recovery, he sees her once again, writes more verse about love, but then – without expectation or explanation – she dies. Dante grieves, and his grief provokes some of the most exquisite poetry and prose of the whole work: a poem brilliantly engaging his own anguish with that of her brother; sonnets in response to the sympathy of another woman; poems written to pilgrims passing through Florence who are unaware of Beatrice’s death; and finally, the last sonnet of the work, written for two women of noble birth. Love here, as throughout The Vita Nuova, moves past mere physical desire to embrace the power of the spirit and the vision of salvation. Dante now ends the work, resolving to write no more of Beatrice until he could do so “in a more admirable and a worthier manner.” He looks forward to writing “of her what has never been said of any woman,” and imagines Beatrice looking on the face of Him qui est per omnia secula benedictus (who is blessed forever).

KEY ISSUES, THEMES, AND PASSAGES

Dante develops the alternation of prose and verse from Boethius.

Alternating verse and prose, he creates an anthology of poetry, grounded in a love story and a critical analysis of literary forms.

The act of reading the self becomes central: reading the book of life; reading and rereading his own poetry.

Notice the opening prose section: the key reading of his book of memory; the title of the book (Incipit vita nova); the experience of collecting his previous poems.

The figure of Beatrice: an idealized object of love; but also a poetic muse.

Dante takes the old tropes of idealized women (Lady Philosophy, Monica, the Virgin Mary) and turns them into an object of literary worship: i.e., as muse figure.

Dante participates in a shared, male friendship coterie of poets. Male friendship is defined as a creative, literary act; rather than as a heroic act, or a devotional act. Pay particular attention to the way he describes his fellow poets, especially Guido Cavalcanti.

Dante’s predecessors brought a new idea of love. These poets were called the poets in the stilnovisti (the new style). They argued that love is grounded in an intelligence of mind, not just a feeling of heart; it is a function of understanding, not just experience; it requires brains.

But it also is, in itself, an act of nobility:

Poem XX: Love and the noble heart are but one thing – in a world of young men of civic, urban, commercial birth and experience, nobility must be defined and created. It is not something they are born into. This is key.

Poem XIX is the pivotal poem of the book: it is a canzone, that is an extended series of multiple sonnet units, keyed to defining the stilnovisti notion of love. The opening words of each stanza chart, in microcosm, the world of the VN: Donna, Angelo, Madonna, Amor, Canzone.

In the course of your reading ask yourself: what is the nature of love? What is the nature of language (Latin, Italian)? How do the early poems express desire? How does Dante comment and explain his own poetry in the prose sections of the work?

For Tuesday: Read through section XIX

For Thursday: Finish the work. Some guidelines:

The core of the critical section is Prose XXV: here Dante defines the nature of vernacular verse and its relationship to Latin. He defines the nature of personification and the uses of classical mythological figures. He defines the audience.

In the narrative of the story, Beatrice dies. Prose XXVIII: notice the opening from Jeremiah: the importance of the city. Central to the VN is the idea of transferring the ideals of courtly love, classical virtue, and religious devotion into the commercial city world. Notice how he calls attention to the number 9 in this section.

Prose XXX: the city again, the image of Florence, the new material, the claims of the vernacular.

Poem XXXI: the canzone on the death of Beatrice. Notice the imagery of eyes, tears, heart, talk. The anatomy of love. The nature of mourning and love: this poem is an essay on loss and separation. What is the nature of mourning and how does the poet effectively announce his own literary birth through the elegy of another? This is the core issue in literary history and the core issue for the Book of the Duchess.

How is poetry an art form, a craft? Dante makes this argument throughout the book. If the purpose of the Romance of the Rose was to argue that loving is a craft, that there is an Art of Love (this is Ovid), then Dante argues there is an Art of Poetry (this is Horace).

Note: prose XXXIV: Dante the artist: drawing an angel on some wooden boards. Remember, now the story of Giotto and the circle.

The reappearance of Beatrice at prose XXXIX. The pilgrims through Florence and XL prose and poem; the nature of pilgrimage itself

The final prose XLII: the decision to stop writing; the implication that it will be taken up again; the nature of blessedness and time.