La dispietata mente che pur mira,
“Pitiless memory that still gazes back at the time gone by,” is addressed directly to a woman (in this respect differing from Dante’s other canzoni), who is probably the second lady represented as the poet’s screen. The other:
E ’m’ incresce di me si duramente,
“I grieve for myself so bitterly,” seems to give fuller expression to the first part of the Vita Nuova with an alien note—the image of the little maiden has yielded to that of the woman whose great beauty is the object of unattainable desire. At times a lighter note is struck; Dante is apparently simply supplying words for composers to set to music, or revealing a spirit of playfulness of which there is no trace in the Vita Nuova.[13] Besides sonnets in honour of Beatrice, we have a few relating to other women, and in two ballate even their names are given: Fioretta and Violetta. One delightful sonnet:
Sonar bracchetti e cacciatori aizzare,
“Beagles questing and huntsmen urging on,” reveals the poet taking part in sport and appreciating a jape at his own expense. A number of correspondence sonnets belong to this epoch, a small series addressed to Dante da Maiano (of which no MS. has been preserved) being probably earlier than the first sonnet of the Vita Nuova. A note of pure romance is struck in the charming sonnet to Guido Cavalcanti, in which the younger poet wishes that they two, with Lapo Gianni and their three ladies (Dante’s being the first lady who screened his love), might take a voyage over enchanted seas in Merlin’s magic barque. Several admirable sonnets, now included in this group, were formerly attributed to Cino da Pistoia.[14]
(b) The tenzone with Forese Donati forms a little group apart. Its date is uncertain, but may be plausibly taken as between 1290 and 1296. These sonnets, though not free from bitterness which is perhaps serious, may be regarded as exercises in that style of burlesque and satirical poetry to which even Guido Guinizelli had once paid tribute, and which Rustico di Filippo had made characteristically Florentine.
(c) Next comes a group of poems, connected with the allegory of the Convivio, in which an intellectual ideal is pursued with the passion and wooed in the language of the lover who adores an earthly mistress. “I say and affirm that the lady, of whom I was enamoured after my first love, was the most beautiful and most pure daughter of the Emperor of the Universe, to whom Pythagoras gave the name Philosophy” (Conv. ii. 16). By some, not entirely reconcilable, process the donna gentile, who appears at the end of the Vita Nuova, has become a symbol of Philosophy, and the poet’s love for her a most noble devotion. The canzone:
Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete,
“Ye who by understanding move the third heaven” describing the conflict in Dante’s mind between this new love and the memory of Beatrice, deals again with the matter of one of the sonnets of the Vita Nuova; but the allegory is perhaps an after-thought. It is commented upon in the second treatise of the Convivio and quoted in Canto viii. of the Paradiso. The other poems of this group seem purely allegorical: “By love, in this allegory, is always intended that study which is the application of the enamoured mind to that thing of which it is enamoured” (Conv. ii. 16). At first this service is painful and laborious; and the mystical lady seems a cruel and proud mistress, as she is represented in the “pitiful ballata”: