SOURCE: "The Character of the Vita Nuova," in Essays on the "Vita Nuova," 1929. Reprinted by Kraus Reprint Corporation, 1965, pp. 163-228.

[In this essay, Shaw, repudiating the generally accepted view that the Vita Nuova is an allegory, proposes an interpretation based on a literal reading of the historical events recounted in the narrative.]

That a boy of nine should fall ecstatically in love will always seem impossible to those who cannot imagine it, and with them argument is superfluous, nor will they be persuaded even by the citation of historically authentic examples. Those, however, whose imagination presents the matter as not impossible may be asked to consider that a love of the particular kind in question is more likely to have its beginnings before the age of fourteen than after. A little boy who, like Dante, may have passed his first years without any intimate acquaintance with girls, and who is, in his innocence, ignorant of the physiological nature of the attraction of sex, may be astonishingly affected by the apparition of a graceful and otherwise charming little girl, who is likely to seem to him an inexplicably dazzling creature. A powerful impression made at such an early age may be preserved and develop in after years, especially if the two never come to know one another well and if the little girl grows to be a gracious young lady, whom the young man is able to see every now and then without ever conversing with her. On the other hand, an infatuation begun after the age of puberty is likely to be soon forgotten for others of the same kind. And when the Beatrice of seventeen, recently married to one of the wealthiest noblemen of the city, beautiful and radiant with the prospects of a happy life, greeted the young man who, as a child, and before he was sent to school, had been a neighbour of hers—greeted him with the friendliness of an old acquaintance—she confirmed the impression she had made as a little child, by substituting for it another fully in harmony with it.

That Dante should, after this event, have been content with being spoken to by her, whenever they met, has also seemed incredible, but only to those who, although amazed at the precociousness of the young lover, still insist on thinking of this as the story of an ordinary love affair. Before the first greeting Beatrice had been the lady of his mind and of his dreams, and the kindly greeting, repeated more than once, heightened the glamour of that peculiar relation to him. If he had had the courage to approach her the spell would have been broken, the peculiarity of the charm would have been obliterated by commonplace conversation. The importance of the lady's salutation was one of the traditional conventions, but it was a convention that was founded on real human experience. The poets were, as a rule, inferior socially to the ladies whom they courted. Let anyone who can, remember the time when he was a presentable and ambitious young man but with no conspicuous social position; let him remember being greeted in public cordially, as an old acquaintance, by a beautiful, wealthy young lady of the highest rank; let him remember how the warm blood rushed through his happy body, flattering the elemental snob that is in every man, fortifying his self-respect and glorifying the gracious person who affected him so "virtuously"; and he will have no difficulty in understanding why the salutation of the lady became important. With Dante, however, the pardonable element of flattery must have been less effective than the realization that this adorable person was the same who, as a little child, had so affected his imagination that he had thought of her as an angel and had often sought occasion to look at her and wonder. She was more glorious now than ever, and she was kind to him.

The impressions made upon Dante by his first meeting with Beatrice and by her greeting him nine years later ought not to seem incredible in themselves, but if we also consider that the Vita Nuova was composed after her death, after Dante's temporary unfaithfulness to her memory, after the "forte imaginazione" ("convincingly imagined event") recorded in chapter thirty-nine, and immediately after the "mirabile visione" ("miraculous vision") mentioned in the last chapter, all reason for doubting the sincerity of the literal account vanishes. For he evidently composed the Vita Nuova under the influence of a flood of recollections which became transfigured in his memory by the new light in which he was reviewing his young life. In this new light all the incidents recollected assumed a predestined continuity, and a consequently heightened significance. He believed that he had been miraculously guided, and that Beatrice had been the guide providentially ordained for him. He had never been well acquainted with her, so that no conflicting material circumstances hampered his imagination as it transfigured her. The wondering admiration with which he remembered looking upon her as a child, the happiness of being greeted by her when she smiled upon him later, were memories that transcended the reality of the events.

The new light in which he is seeing the incidents he remembers envelops all of them and transforms them without altering them substantially. Let us face the difficulty of the "ladies of the defense," which, I think, constitutes the most reasonable of the objections to the credibility of the story. Dante tells us that, inspired by Love, he twice selected a lady to be the ostensible object of his affection, in order to conceal his love for Beatrice; but we cannot help believing that these ostensible affections were real love affairs which had a value of their own for him. Why do we believe that? Because we are told that the courting of the first lady lasted for "years and months" and we are allowed to read a poem which seems to be a very genuine lamentation over her departure. As for the second lady, Love is represented to us as actually carrying the heart of the poet away from the first lady, who had possessed it, to present it to the second, and we are told that the courting of this second lady was so ardent that Beatrice herself was shocked by it. In other words it is Dante himself who gives us the information which produces the belief in question. It is not that he is vainly trying to conceal the facts: no one can suppose him to be as clumsy an artist as that. He is conveying to us the meaning which the events had for him at the time in question as well as the meaning they have for him at the time of writing, but he is especially concerned that we shall see these events as he is seeing them now.

His first acquaintance with love had been that which a child may have who is endowed with a vivid imagination and a religious up-bringing. It was transformed, after his meeting with Beatrice at the age of eighteen, into a passion more suitable to his age, partly sensuous, although unconsciously so. The fascination of the glorious creature of his mind was accompanied by a yearning for something unknown, a longing which could not be satisfied, both because its object was inaccessible and because the nature of the satisfaction longed for was not apparent. It affected his health and so aroused curiosity in his friends. He would have been anxious to defeat that curiosity even if there had been no convention of secrecy, because his emotion was too chaste and precious to be revealed, and because of natural timidity: he was aware that his was not an ordinary love such as was fashionable. He wrote no poetry about it, except the first enigmatic sonnet which won him the sympathy of a more experienced poet—considered eccentric by the rest—who smiled understandingly and foresaw the tumultuous awakening of the senses, which was sure to bring trouble to this very young and delicate-minded lover.

The lady "of the defence," who appealed directly to his innocent senses, provided his vague longings with an accessible object, and gave him the opportunity to indulge in an ordinary, fashionable love. He became a "regular" lover such as could be understood by those about him. The satisfaction he must have felt on thus becoming "a man of the world" will be realized by all those who have suffered from being considered "odd," from not being "in the swim" with the young men who are their natural companions. His health was restored, he became happy, but although his ideal passion for "the lady of his mind" must, I think, have become less ardent, it was revived from time to time by his meetings with Beatrice, when he would give himself up completely to his earlier dreams, the dreams which could not be realized by the lady he was actually courting. He must have missed the latter when she left the city, but his affection for her was not such that no substitute for it could be found. The next lady "of the defence" was courted with a boldness born of successful experience, and we know the result: the smiling salutation of Beatrice, which had hitherto satisfied the cravings of his better self, was withdrawn, and with it went all the delightful fancies he had cherished as his most precious possession, his mental life of love, which made him superior to others. Before this time he had had no clear understanding of the nature of love, he had only known that there were different kinds, and that the superior kind was beyond the reach of most: he now began to realize that the love he had lost was the only real kind for him, and that the satisfactions he had so easily grasped were mere imitations of it.

Now that he is writing the Vita Nuova he sees that, in these as in all matters, he was guided by a higher power. The other affections were necessary stages of experience: without them he might never have reached his understanding of noble love, which, after the withdrawal of the salutation, appeared to him in an entirely new form. His saying that "Amore" prompted him to assume those disguises of his chief interest is only a figurative way of saying that his amorous inclinations, unstudied hitherto, were operating in a predestined direction. That these love affairs were really disguises of his best love is no doubt true, but his saying that he embraced them for that purpose is only partly true, and is due, no doubt, to his desire to adopt the Provençal conventions of secrecy and the "stalking horse." In the same way he had adopted the other convention of the importance of the lady's salutation although that importance was far from being merely conventional in his case. By adopting these conventions he was able to give an orthodox, traditional coloring, acceptable to his readers, to the otherwise unusual circumstances he was recording.

The recurrence of the number nine in the dates of events with which Beatrice is concerned is neither incredible nor astonishing. That any number should recur frequently in the dates of anyone's life is a coincidence which has often been noticed, but the nines of Beatrice, which are never mentioned in the verse, are for the most part purposely excogitated by the author, and that without any concealment. Free as he was to use the year, month, day, and hour of any event, it was not difficult for him to find another nine when he was determined to do so. We may smile at his earnestness in discovering these nines, but his motive is obvious enough. The mystical prestige of nine and its square root three was traditional and a matter of common knowledge. However their significance might be interpreted, their association with a series of incidents emphasized the providential character of those incidents, and Dante was already convinced that the events to which he attaches the number nine were really providentially predestined. It did not matter much to him what particular significance might be found in the recurrence of the number, as is shown by his own deprecatory interpretation in chapter twenty-nine, but he desired that recurrence to reflect his own impression that the events were not accidental, and that Beatrice was a miraculous creature.

It would not be fair to ignore the fact that evidence of the allegorical character of the Vita Nuova has been apparent to some in the twenty-fifth chapter. It has been thought that the right of a poet to use the figure of personification is too obvious to justify an elaborate defense of that right, and that Dante is really conveying, in a guarded manner, the information that he is using allegory. It is also argued that, where he says "grande vergogna sarebbe a colui che rimasse sotto vesta di figura o di colore rettorico, e poscia, domandato, non sapesse denudare le sue parole da cotale vesta, in guisa che avessero verace intendimento" [Vita Nuova, xxv, 10], he is speaking of something more than mere figurative, metaphorical language, especially since in the Convivio the "verace intendimento" is declared to be the allegorical meaning of the poems expounded there. It is contended, too, that the examples cited from Virgil, Lucan, Horace and Ovid are taken from authors of scritture which, according to Convivio, 1, i, 2, are to be explained as allegorical, and that therefore their use in Vita Nuova xxv implies that allegory is being discussed although it is not mentioned.

Let us not fall into the common error of taking for granted in the Vita Nuova the theories and opinions set forth in the Convivio. Here in Vita Nuova xxv, the examples referred to are all specific examples of personification, and are cited as instances of the use of "figura o colore rettorico" ("figure or color of rhetoric"). It is more important that the impression of naïveté produced in us by the defense of the right to personify Love is due to a prejudice of ours: the contemporary reader would not receive any such impression. The Italian lyric preceding Dante is full of arguments as to whether Love is a god or not, and as to whether Love subsists by itself apart from the lover or not, as well as of attempts to define love existing in the lover. It was inevitable that, in this youthful work, the author should declare his position with regard to these matters. He foresaw this necessity when, in chapter twelve, he put off the explanation of why he had personified his ballata, until it could be included in the explanation of why he personified love, a matter which needed to be treated at some length. It needed to be treated because it involved the larger question as to the author's views on the nature of love, views which would stamp him as adhering to this or that set of recognized opinions, and here, as Marigo has noted [reference not available], Dante is explaining that he is not averroistic enough to believe that intellectual love can subsist apart from the lover, and not enough of a realist—in the controversy between realists and nominalists—to hold that a universal idea can subsist apart from the substance that individualizes it. His personifying Love, he says, is merely the use of a recognized figure of speech, a practice justified in the vulgar verse by the example of ancient poets in the classical tongue.

He himself knows what he is doing and is able to give his reasons, but there are those who imitate others in the use of this and other figures of speech without having any definite ideas as to the meaning and limitations of such figures, and they ought to be ashamed. These are the persons who, he says, write verses dressed in figurative language, but are unable to strip them of their clothing, that is, are unable to distinguish between the figure and the real meaning. The expression "veste di figura o di colore rettorico" ("dressed in a figure or color of rhetoric") is a repetition of the expression "figura o colore rettorico" used before in the same paragraph with regard to the examples of personification: only those who are determined to find a reference to allegory can see it in these words. The Vita Nuova gives us no information whatever as to what the author knew or thought about the use of allegory, but if, as is possible, he was acquainted with the Aquinian doctrine on that subject, he could not be thinking of allegory when he was writing this chapter, for St. Thomas makes it clear that figures like these belong to the literal sense and not to the allegorical: "Per literalem sensum potest aliquid significari dupliciter, scilicet secundum proprietatem locutionis, sicut cum dico: 'homo ridet,' vel secundum similitudinem seu metaphoram sicut cum dico: 'pratum ridet'… et ideo sub sensu literali includitar parabolicus, seu metaphoricus."

There are no good reasons for supposing that the Vita Nuova is an allegory, but there are good reasons for believing that it is not. I will not dwell on the importance of Dante's own description of the book, when comparing it with the Convivio, as youthful and unsophisticated, nor on the conviction which the narrative carries to many readers that the author is saying all that he means and concealing nothing except what would be self-praise. As far as the poems are concerned, they are indeed easily distinguishable, for the most part, from the previous and contemporary lovelyric, because of their greater beauty and originality, but they nevertheless belong to the great stream which originated in southern France and flooded, rather than flowed into, northern France, Italy and Germany. There is no characteristic of Dante's poetry that can be isolated and classified which does not find its counterpart in other poems by Italians, French or Germans, including the religious idealization of the lady and the mystical quality of love for her. Unless all or much of this poetry can be shown to be allegorical, it is improbable that Dante's verses were made with an allegorical intention.

Against the supposition that, in composing the Vita Nuova, Dante undertook to allegorize the contents of the poems is to be set the evidence of the twenty-fifth chapter. In that chapter the author defends his personification of Love, and condemns the unintelligent use of figures of speech. He explains that verse in the vulgar tongue was first devised in order to be understood by ladies, and implies that this is still its purpose, by declaring that it should have no other subject than love because that was its original subject. He refers to the Provençal and the early Italian poets, showing that he considers his own verse as of the same kind essentially as theirs. His desire to be understood by his readers is obvious, he abounds in explanation, but he says no word about allegory in his own verse or that of others, and least of all in the examples of personification that he cites: Love is nothing but love, just as Juno is nothing but the goddess, Aeolus is Aeolus and Rome is Rome. It follows, I think, that Beatrice is nothing but Beatrice, and to me it is inconceivable that the author should explain so much and say nothing about a hidden meaning pervading the whole work, if there were any.

On the other hand there are two little bits of allegory in the Vita Nuova, and these the author explains after drawing our attention to them. The dream described in the first sonnet requires interpretation, and Dante tells us that it is prophetic of the death of Beatrice. It is true that he leaves the other details to us, implying that any good interpretation will do, but there is no concealment; and when he chooses to read a symbolical meaning into the apparition of Beatrice and Giovanna, in chapter twenty-four, he does so plainly and complacently, far-fetched as the interpretation is, since it is childishly based on the name of the second lady.

The prose of the Vita Nuova, besides being a connecting narrative, is an explanation of what the reader may fail to understand in the poems and of much that he could not fail to grasp. It is elaborate with its divisioni, but except in the case of those poems that were not written for Beatrice, but which the poet thinks—or would have us think—were not written without some thought of her; and except for the obscure words "Ego tanquam centrum" which the sequel is expected to make clear, there is no hint of any hidden meaning; and even in the case of these exceptions there is only a presence of concealment: it is learned criticism that has made a mystery of the figure of the circle and its center.

Of the sonnet in chapter fourteen Dante says that the meaning will be clear to all, except perhaps to some who are less experienced servants of Love than himself. To this latter kind of reader it is no use trying to explain why Love is said to destroy all the faculties except those of sight, and why the physical organs of sight—the eyes—are not needed in the presence of the lady. Of eight other poems he says either that they are sufficiently explained by the preceding ragione, which has described the occasion of their writing, or else that there is nothing to explain. If the Vita Nuova contains a connected allegory, the author has buried it so deep in silence that no one but the Archangel will ever rouse it.

In previous essays I have attempted to describe the rise of Dante's adult passion for Beatrice, after she had denied him the salutation which was the sign of her favor and had been the source of happiness in the private life of his phantasy. There remains to explain how he ceased to crave the satisfaction of a not unworthy human passion and became content with worshipping his lady. "Content," however, is a poor adjective to apply to a poet who is not conscious of any renunciation, but to whom the solution of his problem has brought ecstatic happiness ("beatitudine") in the triumph of a new understanding of his love and beloved.

In chapter thirteen he describes what he calls in the next chapter the "battaglia de li diversi pensieri," the conflict of thoughts which resulted in a clear view of his own humiliation. He was reduced to the ranks of the many conventional servants of Love who can only cry for mercy, and his lady was not the conventional lady who might ultimately be affected by the constant cry. "Volendo dire d'Amore, non so da qual parte pigli matera, e se la voglio pigliare da tutti, convene che io chiami la mia inimica, madonna la Pietade; e dico 'madonna' quasi per disdegnoso modo di parlare." It was a despicable situation: his love had before been precious for its singularity and it had been secret; now it could no longer be concealed and appeared commonplace as well as hopeless. His humiliation is acutely emphasized by the derision of Beatrice and her friends in the next chapter: he realizes that their view of him is that he is a lover of a well-known kind, hiding under a cloak of sentimentality a desire he is unwilling to confess. Why—he asks himself in chapter fifteen—why does he still seek her presence only to become an object of ridicule? It is because his passion is so powerful that it causes him to forget the rebuffs which have been peculiarly bitter to the proudest poet that ever lived. He has been hoping that his verses will be brought to her attention, as he tells us at the end of the fourteenth chapter, and now he writes one more sonnet—which is to be the last—in which he makes a full confession for her ears. He has four new things to say: "La prima delle quali si e che molte volte io mi dolea, quando la memoria movesse la fantasia a imaginare quale Amore mi facea." He grieves often over the difference between his former feeling for her and the violence of his present passion, which makes him appear contemptible in her eyes. "La seconda si e che Amore spesse volte m'assalia si forte, che 'n me non rimanea altro di vita se non un pensero che parlava di questa donna." Violent as his passion is it is altogether sincere; it leaves alive in him no other thought than of her; it is not a common craving. "La terza si e che quando questa battaglia d'Amore mi pugnava cosi, io mi movea quasi discolorito tutto per vedere questa donna, credendo che mi difendesse la sue veduta da questa battaglia …" It is not only the forgetfulness of previous disappointments, mentioned in the previous sonnet and repeated here, that causes him to seek her presence, but an instinctive confidence that she can protect him from the violence of his passion: he trusts in her for that. "La quarta si e come cotale veduta non solamente non mi difendea, ma finalmente disconfiggea la mia poca vita." But his confidence is unaccountably misplaced, his appeal to her goodness is strangely disappointed.

And now that he has said all he has to say he resolves to write no more. He will preserve his self-respect by remaining silent: the love of a poet who, though in love, is silent, of one who has ceased to sing because he is misunderstood, is bound to be at least respected.

[F]rom the time when, after the vision of chapter twelve, he had begun seriously to enquire into the nature of love, he had compared the views of Cavalcanti and Guinizelli and had inclined to prefer the doctrine of the latter that love is the goodness in the heart of the lover seeking the goodness in the lady. It was inevitable that in pondering over the singularity of his lady and asking himself why his love was unacceptable to her, he should be impressed by the peculiar quality of Guinizelli's lady, who is the educator of her lover, and whose relation to him is like that of God to the angel who moves the sphere. It seems certain that, before the conversation with the ladies of chapter eighteen, Dante had reached the conclusion, at least subconsciously, that the reason why his love was unacceptable to Beatrice was that it was a passion which demanded correspondence and placed her on an equality with him. Beatrice was certainly not inferior to Guinizelli's ideal lady: to offer to her an earthly love would always be futile; to crave correspondence was insulting; to hope for it was ridiculous. Nothing but humble worship was her due, and if he were to write of her again it would have to be not as a suppliant lover but as a worshipper.

What was it that enabled Dante not so much to be reconciled to this new relation between him and Beatrice as to embrace it with joy? He was grieving not only over the loss of her favor but over the change in his own feeling for her; he remembered with grief the wonder of his early experiences when her salutation used to kindle in him the "fiamma di caritade" that exalted him above himself. The thought that when all claims upon her were removed she might be as much to him as she had ever been was grateful and comforting. Another thought, which may have come to him with startling effect, as great ideas often do, was also born of his recollections. Her early and glorious apparition; the good influence coming from her which had enveloped his youth and protected him from vice and triviality; the fact that this powerful influence had been exercised by means of occasional momentary meetings, a smile and a word of greeting; was not all this miraculous? Might she not have been born on Earth to be his guardian angel, might he not have been resisting the will of Providence by entreating her for love of an inferior though innocent kind? If so she might still be far more to him than she had ever been before. This thought, which is a natural concomitant of Guinizelli's view both of Love and of the Lady, was of a kind to fire the imagination of the poet. What made it even dazzlingly attractive was the implication it carried of something else, something which Dante never dared, in this book, to declare openly: the implication that he himself was a predestined being, the object of a special providence. After all the humiliation which he had suffered, an idea such as this, even if only entertained as possible, would more than rehabilitate that self-respect that was so dear to him. He would never again need to cry for pity: "Madonna la Pietà," that conventional hypocrite, might go hide her head.

That Dante came to be convinced of the truth of these ideas is certain, but it is not clear whether his conversion to them was complete before his interview with the ladies of chapter eighteen, or whether that interview served to precipitate conclusions which were already in solution in his mind. The ladies are sympathetic and curious. They know much about Dante; they know that Beatrice is his beloved; they have witnessed many of his sconfitte ("defeats"). He had not been able to conceal his passion as he had his early mystical devotion to her. Their interest in his case must have brought home to him the danger he had not quite avoided of becoming one of the many lovers who furnish an interesting subject for social conversation. He is anxious to persuade them that he is not a dejected lover in need of sympathy. On the contrary he is beato, but his happiness comes from a different source now that his lady is no longer kind. And when they press him to know whence comes this happiness, it may be the necessity of finding an answer that prompts him to utter the conclusion to which his reflections have been leading him. His beatitudine, he says, consists in the praise of his lady. But when his questioner is quick to point out that this doubtful beatitudine has not yet found expression in his verse, he has nothing to say. As he retreats from their presence he is glad that he has had the wit to answer right, but he wishes he had already justified his assertion, and he is thinking of nothing but the "nuova matera" ("new subject") to which he is committed. After much hesitation and thought there comes forth the joyful song of magnificent praise which his conversion has made possible, the song which declares that Beatrice is allowed to remain on earth for the protection of one who will sing her praise in hell if he happen to be among the lost. The spontaneous beauty of the poem, the first words of which were uttered as if the poet's tongue had been "per se stessa mossa" ("moved by itself") testify to the vividness of his new intuition.

Needless to say a conversion like this would only have been possible for one to whom the life of the imagination was as real as the life of material circumstance, nor would it have been possible for anyone who had not, like Dante, been accustomed from childhood to think and feel religiously.

When the poem had become "alquanto divolgata tra le genti" the new inspiration did not pass unnoticed. Dante was requested to state explicitly his views on the nature of love, and he complied in the sonnet that endorses the theory of Guinizelli, and then followed it with another in which the singularity of Beatrice is triumphantly affirmed. She is not to be associated as an equal with other gentle ladies, she can make capable of love even those who are born incapable, and all those who come within her influence share it with Dante to some extent. She, like the Virgin Mary, is elevated above all the rest, without pride and inspiring no jealousy.

It is not astonishing that she should be endowed with miraculous powers. The conversion I have been describing is a religious conversion and implies faith in miracles. Guinizelli's ideal lady is also gifted with supernatural powers, and this gentle creature who has been placed upon earth for a special divine purpose is quite naturally a miracle worker, but her miracles are of a spiritual kind unknown to herself: she is unconscious of her mission, she goes her way thinking herself no better than her fellows, radiant with heavenly beauty.

Only her adoring poet knows but does not dare to say openly why she is here on earth. He knows that when her mission is accomplished she will return to her home in heaven. The stanza of chapter twenty-seven with its peaceful, joyful contentment is a sign to the reader that her mission is fulfilled, and she is gone.

The "nuova materia che appresso viene" ("the new subject which is approaching") is the logical sequel to that which had begun with "Donne che avete." Beatrice, who had been entrusted with a holy mission on Earth such as makes it not unnatural to speak of her with words that suggest a comparison with Christ and the Virgin Mary, has now gone to gladden the angels and saints who had besought God for her presence. The mourning of the poet is shot through with gleams of light descending from her: "sol nel mio lamento Chiamo Beatrice, e dico: 'or se' tu morta?' E mentre ch'io la chiamo, me conforta." "Ma qual ch'io sia la mia donna il si vede, E io ne spero ancor da lei mercede." The difference in the "nuova materia" is that now Beatrice knows that she was Dante's guardian angel on earth and that she is his saint in heaven, whereas while she pursued her way on earth she was unconscious of her mission. Direct communication with her was impossible while she lived, but now it is possible through ecstatic vision. She comforts him, she watches over him and rescues him from the temptation of the donna gentile: she draws him to her. It is impossible for him to imagine her now that she is pure spirit; the sighs which rise to her and seek her "beyond the heaven that widest whirls" bring back only the dimmest understanding of her new condition, but he still holds her by the womanhood she still preserves: he knows that she is still guarding and guiding him. Perhaps he gazed upon her without let in the "mirabile visione."

She is still a woman, she has never become a symbol of anything. It is true that Dante says of her: "No la ci tolse qualita di gelo/Ne di calore, come l'altre face", but that is a figure of speech which he would have known how to "denudare … in guisa che [avesse] verace intendimento". In the canzone "Quantunque volte" he says plainly that his lady was overtaken by the cruelty of death, and almost the last words of the Vita Nuova are: "io spero di dicer di lei quello che mai non fue detto d'alcuna," where "alcuna" can mean nothing but "alcuna donna".

By the "character" of the Vita Nuova I mean the purpose of the author as it is executed in the book. That purpose can be understood clearly in the light of the "moment" of the work. It was when he had been rescued from a worldly affection which threatened to defeat the protecting influence of his saint in heaven, that, full of contrition for his ingratitude, he wrote the Vita Nuova as a confession of his indebtedness to Beatrice. This no doubt was part of his purpose, but there was more.

The "forte imaginazione" of chapter XXXIX recalls him to Beatrice by presenting her to his memory as he first saw her when she was a child; the sonnet "Oltre la spera" of chapter XLI (XLII) is an attempt to contemplate her as she is now, a saint in heaven; the intervening chapter, XL (XLI), dwells on the desolation caused by her death when she was an adult woman. These chapters, with the last, which mentions the "mirabile visione," correspond to the "moment" of the Vita Nuova.

His thoughts at this time, concentrated upon Beatrice, travel from the memory of her as a child, through the recollection of her life and death, to the vision of her as a saint. He is reading, rapidly but absorbed, the book of his memory from which he is to transcribe the contents of the libello. He sees himself bewildered at the first apparition, but cherishing the memory of it; permanently enthralled by the kindly salutation; adoring the image in his memory and living a double life; desperate over the loss of his lady's kindness; passionately and hopelessly in love; struggling to reconcile his experience with the known theories of love; realizing at last the exceptional character of Beatrice, and the astonishing dignity of her relation to him; blissfully happy in the new understanding of the lady and his love for her; crushed by her sudden death; lured, after a time, into forgetfulness of her by the affectionate sympathy of a living woman.

Convinced again, and now more than ever, by the loving intervention of the saint who watches over him from above, acknowledging that he is her special charge, communing with him and offering herself to him in the spirit; convinced that in all his life of love he has been miraculously led; weeping over his own past ignorance, he is drawn gropingly upward to meet his Beatrice, by the new knowledge ("intelligenza nova") that has enabled him to read his own story. And then comes the vision that is too marvellous to describe.

The story which Dante has thus been enabled to read aright is to be told: it is too important to be withheld. It is punctuated with incidents which have been the occasion of poems. The author is a poet of love, and the expression of his love has always been in verse, as is only proper. The poems, then, arranged in the proper order, should tell the story of his love, but would they? Dante well knows that they would not. Some of them are too conventional to express clearly anything important. Others refer too definitely to extraneous circumstances which would distract the readers' attention from the proper subject. More important still: most of them were written without the knowledge the poet now has of the significance of the events concerned. The poems, then, must be carefully selected, and those chosen to make up the book must be interpreted, whenever it is necessary, so as to remove too material suggestions that jar with the religious atmosphere which the story has in the mind of the author, and so as to imply the significance which he now sees in the incidents. Whether the idea of connecting the poems by narrative and explanatory prose was derived from Boethius, Raimbaut d'Aurenga, or the biographer of Bertran de Born, or from no one at all, it was at any rate necessary for Dante's purpose.

His chief purpose is to so tell the story of his astonishing experience that the stages by which he was led to understand the miraculous power of his lady, and to have for her a finer kind of love than had hitherto been conceived, should be apparent to the reader. In this way he was giving a better answer than had hitherto been imagined—and perhaps he thought it was a final answer—to the question so often asked and answered before: What is fine love? The "alquanti grossi" who had first sung of love in verse had only played with the question; even his friend Cavalcanti had reached a false conclusion, in spite of his zeal for scientific truth, and since the Vita Nuova is dedicated to him it may be that he was the reader whom Dante chiefly had in mind. It was Guido Guinizelli who had had the right intuition when he vindicated, although hesitatingly, the right of fine sexual love to be compared to the worship of God. Dante was now proving by his own experience that love may be not only good and truly ennobling but even holy, stronger than death, and blessed by God, the "sire de la cortesia" to whom the poet's last words confidently appeal.

Dante's theory of love is here in its infancy. No other than fine sexual love is considered. Sensual love is ignored and so is the love of knowledge for its own sake. This fine sexual love is not yet identified with the love for God, still less is there any hint of the essential unity of all love. The doctrine of Guinizelli is restated and the manner in which potential love is aroused to actuality is clearly defined, otherwise there is no doctrine but only illustration in the experience of the author. And yet there can be no doubt that here we have the seed out of which will grow Dante's great theory of love which is already elaborate in the Convivio and the Monarchia and is the backbone of the Commedia; for Beatrice is, while on earth, the unconscious means of grace to Dante; she is "in altissimo grado di bontade", and love for her implies the love of goodness. Nevertheless it should be clearly understood that this book is not a miniature Commedia any more than it is a Pilgrim's Progress. It is not a story of salvation from sin and of rescue from its consequences. The episode of the Donna Gentile, at the end of the book, is the only instance of what might be called a temporary lapse from grace. Otherwise, if the purpose of the book had been similar to that of the Commedia, we should have seen Dante, after the death of Beatrice, and especially at the end of the story, turning to God in grateful adoration; but in the last chapters as elsewhere there is no word of gratitude to God, the thoughts of the poet are concentrated upon his Beatrice, the memories of her and the yearning to be with her: the last words of the book as the first are about Beatrice, and Dante's love for Beatrice is the only subject of the whole work.

The Vita Nuova is the story of how Dante, the poet of Love, singled out by an inscrutable Providence, was led by Beatrice, a lady endowed for his sake with miraculous powers for good, to free himself first from the conventional superficiality of other poets of love, and then from the serious naturalism of still other poets, and to experience a finer because holier kind of sexual love than had hitherto been dreamt of.