“The eyes that grieve for pity of the heart,” is a companion piece to the opening canzone of the second part; the poet now speaks of Beatrice’s death in the same form and to the same love-illumined ladies to whom he had formerly sung her praises. More beautiful are the closing lines of the shorter canzone, written for Dante’s second friend, who was apparently Beatrice’s brother. After the charming episode of the poet drawing an Angel on her anniversary, the “gentle lady, young and very fair,” inspires him with four sonnets; and his incipient love for her is dispelled by a “strong imagination,” a vision of Beatrice as he had first seen her in her crimson raiment of childhood. The bitterness of Dante’s repentance is a foretaste of the confession upon Lethe’s bank in the Purgatorio. The pilgrims pass through the city on their way to Rome, “in that season when many folk go to see that blessed likeness which Jesus Christ left us as exemplar of His most beauteous face, which my lady sees in glory” (V. N. xli.); and this third part closes with the sonnet in which Dante calls upon the pilgrims to tarry a little, till they have heard how the city lies desolate for the loss of Beatrice.
In the epilogue (xlii., xliii.), in answer to the request of two of those noble ladies who throng the ways of Dante’s mystical city of youth and love as God’s Angels guard the terraces of the Mount of Purgation, Dante writes the last sonnet of the book; wherein a “new intelligence,” born of Love, guides the pilgrim spirit beyond the spheres into the Empyrean to behold the blessedness of Beatrice. It is an anticipation of the spiritual ascent of the Divina Commedia, which is confirmed in the famous passage which closes the “new life” of Love:
“After this sonnet there appeared unto me a wonderful vision: wherein I saw things which made me purpose to say no more of this blessed one, until such time as I could discourse more worthily concerning her. And to attain to that I labour all I can, even as she knoweth verily. Wherefore if it shall be His pleasure, through whom is the life of all things, that my life continue for some years, I hope that I shall yet utter concerning her what hath never been said of any woman. And then may it seem good unto Him, who is the Lord of courtesy, that my soul may go hence to behold the glory of its lady: to wit, of that blessed Beatrice who gazeth gloriously upon the countenance of Him who is blessed throughout all ages.”[10]
From the mention of the pilgrimage, and this wonderful vision, it has been sometimes supposed that the closing chapters of the Vita Nuova were written in 1300. It seems, however, almost certain that there is no reference whatever to the year of Jubilee in the first case. When Dante’s positive statement in the Convivio, that he wrote the Vita Nuova at the entrance of manhood (gioventute being the twenty years from twenty-five to forty-five, Conv. iv. 24), is compared with the internal evidence of the book itself, the most probable date for its completion would be between 1291 and 1293. It should, however, be borne in mind that, while there is documentary evidence that some of the single poems were in circulation before 1300, none of the extant manuscripts of the whole work can be assigned to a date much earlier than the middle of the fourteenth century. It is, therefore, not inconceivable that the reference to the vision may be associated with the spiritual experience of 1300 and slightly later than the rest of the book.[11]
The form of the Vita Nuova, the setting of the lyrics in a prose narrative and commentary, is one that Dante may well have invented for himself. If he had models before his eyes, they were probably, on the one hand, the razos or prose explanations which accompanied the poems of the troubadours, and, on the other, the commentaries of St. Thomas Aquinas on the works of Aristotle, which Dante imitates in his divisions and analyses of the various poems. His quotations show that he had already studied astronomy, and made some rudimentary acquaintance with Aristotle and with the four chief Latin poets; the section in which he speaks of the latter, touching upon the relations between classical and vernacular poetry (xxv.), suggests the germ of the De Vulgari Eloquentia. The close of the book implies that he regarded lack of scientific and literary equipment as keeping him from the immediate fulfilment of the greater work that he had even then conceived for the glory of Beatrice.
In the Convivio, where all else is allegorical, Beatrice is still simply his first love, lo primo amore (ii. 16). Even when allegorically interpreting the canzone which describes how another lady took her place in his heart, after her death, as referring to Philosophy, there is no hint of any allegory about quella viva Beatrice beata, “that blessed Beatrice, who lives in heaven with the Angels and on earth with my soul” (Conv. ii. 2). When about to plunge more deeply into allegorical explanations, he ends what he has to say concerning her by a digression upon the immortality of the soul (Conv. ii. 9): “I so believe, so affirm, and so am certain that I shall pass after this to another better life, there where that glorious lady lives, of whom my soul was enamoured.”
Those critics who question the reality of the story of the Vita Nuova, or find it difficult to accept without an allegorical or idealistic interpretation, are best answered in Dante’s own words: Questo dubbio è impossibile a solvere a chi non fosse in simile grado fedele d’Amore; e a coloro che vi sono è manifesto ciò che solverebbe le dubitose parole; “This difficulty is impossible to solve for anyone who is not in similar grade faithful unto Love; and to those who are so, that is manifest which would solve the dubious words” (V. N. xiv.).
2. The “Rime”
The Rime—for which the more modern title, Canzoniere, has sometimes been substituted—comprise all Dante’s lyrical poems, together with others that are more doubtfully attributed to him. In the Vita Nuova were inserted three canzoni, two shorter poems in the canzone mould, one ballata, twenty-five sonnets (including two double sonnets). The “testo critico” of the Rime, edited by Michele Barbi for the sexcentenary Dante, in addition to these accepts as authentic sixteen canzoni (the sestina is merely a special form of canzone), five ballate, thirty-four sonnets, and two stanzas. Dante himself regards the canzone as the noblest form of poetry (V. E. ii. 3), and he expounded three of his canzoni in the Convivio. From the middle of the fourteenth century onwards, a large number of MSS. give these three and twelve others (fifteen in all) as a connected whole in a certain definite order, frequently with a special rubric in Latin or Italian prefixed to each; this order and these rubrics are due to Boccaccio.[12] It has been more difficult to distinguish between the certainly genuine and the doubtful pieces among the ballate and sonnets, and the authenticity of some of those now included by Barbi in the canon is still more or less open to question. The Rime, on the whole, are the most unequal of Dante’s works; a few of the sonnets, particularly some of the earlier ones and those in answer to other poets, have but slight poetic merit, while several of the later canzoni rank among the world’s noblest lyrics. In the sexcentenary edition the arrangement of the lyrics is tentatively chronological, with subsidiary groupings according to subject-matter. While following the same general scheme, I slightly modify the arrangement, as certain poems regarded by Barbi as “rime d’amore” appear to me to be more probably allegorical.
(a) A first group belongs to the epoch of the Vita Nuova. Conspicuous among them are two canzoni. One: