Dante’s “Vita Nuova” is merely a promise of the Divine Comedy. His greatness consists not in his having made, but in his having kept that promise. You have in this little book a beautiful example of the artistic temperament, and a brilliant statement of the methods of greatness: “Then it came to pass that, walking on a road alongside of which was flowing a very clear stream, so great a desire to say somewhat in verse came upon me, that I began to consider the method I should observe.... Then I say that my tongue spoke as if it moved of its own accord, and said, ‘Ladies that have intelligence of Love.’ These words I laid up in my mind with great joy, thinking to take them for my beginning; wherefore then, having returned to the above-mentioned city, after some days of thought I began a canzone with this beginning.”
Now I do not think that walking along a road by a river and thinking of a girl one loves, and speaking, as if one’s tongue moved of its own accord, a line of verse concerning her is an unusual performance. In fact, given the temperament, it seems a very natural one. I venture to say that no one who has ever written poetry has not done the same. And Dante’s resulting poem is not extraordinary. It certainly could not at the time have suggested by itself its author as a compeer of ὁ ποιήτη. It exemplifies the artistic temperament, and is indicative of it. By it we know Dante to be a poet. Of his greatness as yet we know nothing.
It is fortunate that at the close of this book of his youth this young and intense Italian mentions a vision by which was disclosed to him a secret: “After this sonnet, a wonderful vision appeared to me, in which I saw things which made me resolve to speak no more of this blessed one, until I could more worthily treat of her. And to attain to this, I study to the utmost of my power, as she truly knows. So that, if it shall please him through whom all things live that my life be prolonged for some years, I hope to say of her what was never said of any woman.”
Dante was born a poet, but only after seeing this vision of Beatrice which revealed to him the necessity of artistry did he enter upon his new life of greatness in the middle of the way of which he wrote the Divine Comedy. His method was as simple as truth. He studied to the utmost of his power, as she truly knows. You will remember the creation of the Divine Comedy made him lean for many years.
So Dante, so Shelley; Shelley who is the example par excellence of the genius born to make his life an infancy, and sing his fill, pouring forth his soul in profuse strains of unpremeditated art. For when we read critically Queen Mab, we are forced to admit that it is at best a mediocre creation of little weight in the scales of beauty or of truth. The development to the Prometheus is swift, but it is achieved by the method of industry.
You will remember how Shelley read all day every day, how he read on long walks in the country-places, how he read in London streets walking down Piccadilly, crossing Pall Mall. You will remember how Trelawny describes him in Italy standing all day leaning against the mantelpiece of his living-room, not moving, intensely reading, and not stopping to eat, not even when Trelawny left a plate of food by him, and went out. You will remember how he worked on the Revolt of Islam, leaving Mary, and going off to a little island, and writing all day without food or distraction, undisturbed by the attractions of nature, being part of them, and as them lost in the existence of his art.
Queen Mab was the work of a young untutored artistic mind. The Prometheus, the Cenci, the Defence of Poetry are the creations of a genius. The change is unusual, but not miraculous. His industry was more intense than most, for he accomplished in less than ten years that for which most geniuses require a lifetime. From the stage in 1811 when “Reason is all in all”, and “poetical beauty ought to be subordinated to the inculcated moral” to the stage in 1820 in the “Defence of Poetry” where “There is no want of knowledge respecting what is wisest and best in morals, government and political economy.... But we want the creative faculty to imagine what we know,” and to the contemporaneous Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, where Reason is no longer all in all and “the awful shadow of some unseen power” is
“Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.”
From the early stage to the late there is a long road of intense labor over which Shelley in his mad and impetuous way ran like Pheidippides at top-speed the race of death and immortality.