The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno. Dante Alighieri
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and powerful Bardi; and her father was so wealthy that after providing for his children he could endow a hospital in Florence. The marriage was doubtless arranged as a matter of family convenience, due regard being had to her dower and her husband’s fortune; and we may assume that when Dante, too, was married later on, his wife was found for him by the good offices of his friends.[40] Our manners as regards these things are not those of the Italy of the thirteenth century. It may safely be said that Dante never dreamed of Beatrice for his wife; that the expectation of wedding her would have sealed his lips from uttering to the world any word of his love; and that she would have lost something in his esteem if, out of love for him, she had refused the man her father chose for her.
We must not seek in the Vita Nuova what it does not profess to give. There was a real Beatrice Portinari, to a careless glance perhaps not differing much from other Florentine ladies of her age and condition; but her we do not find in Dante’s pages. These are devoted to a record of the dreams and visions, the new thoughts and feelings of which she was the occasion or the object. He worshipped at a distance, and in a single glance found reward enough for months of adoration; he read all heaven into a smile. So high strung is the narrative, that did we come on any hint of loving dalliance it would jar with all the rest She is always at a distance from him, less a woman than an angel.
In all this there is certainly as much of reticence as of exaggeration. When he comes to speak of her death he uses a phrase on which it would seem as if too little value had been set. He cannot dwell on the circumstances of her departure, he says, without being his own panegyrist. Taken along with some other expressions in the Vita Nuova, and the tone of her words to him when they meet in the Earthly Paradise, we may gather from this that not only was she aware of his long devotion, but that, ere she died, he had been given to understand how highly she rated it. And on the occasion of her death, one described as being her nearest relative by blood and, after Cavalcanti, Dante’s chief friend—her brother, no doubt—came to him and begged him to write something concerning her. It would be strange indeed if they had never looked frankly into one another’s faces; and yet, for anything that is directly told in the Vita Nuova, they never did.
The chief value of the Vita Nuova is therefore psychological. It is a mine of materials illustrative of the author’s mental and emotional development, but as regards historical details it is wanting in fulness and precision. Yet, even in such a sketch of Dante’s life as this tries to be, it is necessary to dwell on the turning-points of the narrative contained in the Vita Nuova; the reader always remembering that on one side Dante says more than the fact that so he may glorify his love, and less on another that he may not fail in consideration for Beatrice. She is first a maiden whom no public breath is to disturb in her virgin calm; and afterwards a chaste wife, whose lover is as jealous of her reputation as any husband could be. The youthful lover had begun by propounding the riddle of his love so obscurely that even by his fellow-poets it had been found insoluble, adepts though they themselves were in the art of smothering a thought. Then, though all his longing is for Beatrice, lest she become the subject of common talk he feigns that he is in love first with one lady and then with another.[41] He even pushes his deceit so far that she rebukes him for his fickleness to one of his sham loves by denying him the customary salutation when they meet—this salutation being the only sign of friendship she has ever shown. It is already some few years since the first sonnet was written. Now, in a ballad containing a more direct avowal of his love than he has yet ventured on,[42] he protests that it was always Beatrice his heart was busy with, and that to her, though his eyes may have seemed to wander, his affection was always true. In the very next poem we find him as if debating with himself whether he shall persevere. He weighs the ennobling influence of a pure love and the sweetness it gives to life, against the pains and self-denial to which it condemns its servant. Here, he tells us in his commentary, he was like a traveller who has come to where the ways divide. His only means of escape—and he feels it is a poor one—is to throw himself into the arms of Pity.
From internal evidence it seems reasonably certain that the marriage of Beatrice fell at the time when he describes himself as standing at the parting of the ways. Before that he has been careful to write of his love in terms so general as to be understood only by those in possession of the key. Now he makes direct mention of her, and seeks to be in her company; and he even leads us to infer that it was owing to his poems that she became a well-known personage in the streets of Florence. Immediately after the sonnet in which he has recourse to Pity, he tells how he was led by a friend into the house of a lady, married only that day, whom they find surrounded by her lady friends, met to celebrate her home-coming after marriage. It was the fashion for young gentlemen to offer their services at such a feast. On this occasion Dante for one can give no help. A sudden trembling seizes him; he leans for support against the painted wall of the chamber; then, lifting his eyes to see if the ladies have remarked his plight, he is troubled at beholding Beatrice among them, with a smile on her lips, as, leaning towards her, they mock at her lover’s weakness. To his friend, who, as he leads him from the chamber, asks what ails him, he replies: ‘My feet have reached that point beyond which if they pass they can never return.’ It was only matrons that gathered round a bride at her home-coming; Beatrice was therefore by this time a married woman. That she was but newly married we may infer from Dante’s confusion on finding her there.[43] His secret has now been discovered, and he must either renounce his love, or, as he is at length free to do, Beatrice being married, declare it openly, and spend his life in loyal devotion to her as the mistress of his imagination and of his heart.[44]
But how is he to pursue his devotion to her, and make use of his new privilege of freer intercourse, when the very sight of her so unmans him? He writes three sonnets explaining what may seem pusillanimity in him, and resolves to write no more. Now comes the most fruitful episode in the history. Questioned by a bevy of fair ladies what is the end of a love like his, that cannot even face the object of its desire, he answers that his happiness lies in the words by which he shows forth the praises of his mistress. He has now discovered that his passion is its own reward. In other words, he has succeeded in spiritualising his love; although to a careless reader it might seem in little need of passing through the process. Then, soon after, as he walks by a crystal brook, he is inspired with the words which begin the noblest poem he had yet produced,[45] and that as the author of which he is hailed by a fellow-poet in Purgatory. It is the first to glorify Beatrice as one in whom Heaven is more concerned than Earth; and in it, too, he anticipates his journey through the other world. She dies,[46] and we are surprised to find that within a year of her death he wavers in his allegiance to her memory. A fair face, expressing a tender compassion, looks down on him from a window as he goes nursing his great sorrow; and he loves the owner of the face because she pities him. But seeing Beatrice in a vision he is restored, and the closing sonnet tells how his whole desire goes forth to her, and how his spirit is borne above the highest sphere to behold her receiving honour, and shedding radiance on all around her. The narrative closes with a reference to a vision which he does not recount, but which incites him to severe study in order that he may learn to write of her as she deserves. And the last sentence of the Vita Nuova expresses a hope—a hope which would be arrogant coming after anything less perfect than the Vita Nuova—that, concerning her, he shall yet say things never said before of any woman. Thus the poet’s earliest work contains an earnest of the latest, and his morning makes one day with his evening.
The narrative of the Vita Nuova is fluent and graceful, in this contrasting strongly with the analytical arguments attached to the various poems. Dante treats his readers as if they were able to catch the meaning of the most recondite allegory, and yet were ignorant of the alphabet of literary form. And, as is the case with other poets of the time, the free movement of his fancy is often hampered by the necessity he felt of expressing himself in the language of the popular