INTRODUCTION

Within a century after the beginning of Italian literature, Dante Alighieri was born in Florence (May, 1265) and died in Ravenna (September 14, 1321). Most of his lyric poems and the Vita Nuova were written before he began to take the active part in politics that resulted in his exile from his native city in 1302; his other works were produced while he was wandering without a home from one part of Italy to another. His stern disapproval of actual conditions was accentuated by his own misfortunes, and in contrast to the miseries of the active life, the peaceful contemplative life seemed to him far more desirable. Yet he never lost faith in the destiny of his country, and of individual men who live virtuously. His guide in seeking peace for himself and for Italy was the Truth Revealed, of which the symbol in his mind was the woman' whom he had adored when they were neighbors in Florence. The Divina Commedia is the glorious fulfilment of the promise made at the end of the Vita Nuova, to write of Beatrice what had never been written of any woman.1

The Vita Nuova, like the Convivio, has its greatest significance as an introduction to the Divina Commedia; yet it is worthy of careful study as an independent work, the earliest monument of literary Italian prose. Since Dante's method of writing changed materially after the composition of the Vita Nuova, it is hazardous to interpret it by means of the works that came later; their constant use of allegory, for instance, does not necessarily indicate that the Vita Nuova is allegorical, or that Beatrice was merely a symbolic or ideal

1 For general information about Dante's life and times, see the Introduction to Grandgent's edition of the Divina Commedia, biographical studies such as those of Dinsmore, Grandgent, Hauvette (in French), Sedgwick, Toynbee, etc., or any history of Italian Literature.

ized creation of the poet's imagination. This problem, fundamental for the interpretation of the Vita Nuova, has long been a subject of controversy. Only a few extremists now deny that Beatrice was a real woman. The questions at issue are in regard to Dante's relation to her, and whether he drew the incidents of the book, as he says, from the "book of his memory," or invented them; also, whether or not it was his purpose by means of these incidents, real or invented, to clothe an allegory with a veil of realism. The somewhat artificial construction of the book as a whole indicates that when he composed it by collecting, arranging, and interpreting certain of his poems, he had an artistic intention which was not in his mind when the separate poems were written. It has indeed been suggested that he wrote some, if not all, of the verse simultaneously with the prose; but there is no convincing evidence for this, nor for the assumption that parts of the prose, particularly the concluding paragraph, were written later than the rest. When understood as a narrative of real events, related in a series of poems written under the conditions specified by Dante himself, and explained by him ✓ later, the Vita Nuova is a psychological document of extraordinary interest as a revelation of the personality of the poet of the Divina Commedia. To the present editor, this seems the only rational method of interpreting the apparently simple but really complex little book. In any case, the exposition must begin with the literal meaning of the text. Many difficulties are readily solved by a knowledge of the literary influences prevalent in the thirteenth century, and by taking account of the development of Dante's point of view during the ten-year period between the writing of the first sonnet and the completion of the prose. When the literal meaning has been mastered, the student who wishes to do so is in a position to investigate other methods of interpretation. The books mentioned in the Bibliography give abundant material for further study.

From Dante's statement that after his first meeting with v Beatrice love ruled his life, it would be absurd to infer that even during his youth he thought of nothing else than his ideal devotion to her. He not only had social, intellectual, and patriotic interests, but paid attention to other ladies and wrote poetry for them. Yet he preserved a vivid remembrance of the impression which the meeting with Beatrice made upon him in his ninth year. The remembrance was real, however much his account of it, written nearly twenty years later, may have been elaborated in the light of subsequent events. His earliest literary production to which he assigned a date, apparently the earliest which he wished to preserve, is the first sonnet of the Vita Nuova, written in his eighteenth year (1283); nothing in the sonnet itself connects it with any particular lady, but we have no reason to doubt that it was inspired by a dream of Beatrice, as Dante states. Other poems followed until some time after the death of Beatrice in June, 1290. It was doubtless in 1292 that he composed the Vita Nuova with poems already at hand, making Beatrice the central figure of his literary work, the inspiration of his spiritual development. It did not seem inconsistent to ascribe to these lyrics a significance which they did not have originally, even connecting with the name of Beatrice poems written for others.

V

The first ten poems, sometimes felicitous in expression, are on the whole conventional. Then come ten more, devoted, as Dante says, to a more noble subject the praise of Beatrice v without regard to her attitude toward the poet. Her death interrupts the course of Dante's devotion to the living woman; in spite of a temporary aberration, his style becomes more and more spiritualized. Ten more poems lead to a final sonnet (the thirty-first poem), in which the poet's thought follows Beatrice to Paradise. Thus the book, symmetrically arranged, represents Dante's soul in its progress, under the influence of Beatrice, toward an understanding of the eternal values

of life. Not on this account, however, does it lack sincerity as a recital of personal emotion. The sentiments which inspired the poems in the first place gain rather than lose when Dante discusses their psychological origin. If he had not really loved, he would not have made Beatrice into the symbol that she becomes in the Divina Commedia.

When he composed the Vita Nuova, Dante had not progressed very far in his study of philosophy and of classic Latin literature. The chief literary influence at the time was that of the Troubadour poetry, which he knew both in the original language, Provençal, and in Italian imitations. This influence was very strong on the earliest Italian poetry, written in the third decade of the thirteenth century at the court of the Emperor Frederick II by a group of poets known as the Sicilian School. Not only the metrical forms and the conventional literary devices of the Troubadours, but also their social ideals were familiar in Italy. Their poems are the lyric expression of chivalry, which grew out of the feudal system of society. Marriages among the aristocracy were arranged without regard to personal preference, and chivalric love regularly had as its object a married woman. The attitude of humble adoration adopted by the Troubadours originated in the relation between the typical professional poet and his noble patroness. The Sicilians, and the poets who followed them in central Italy in the second half of the century, continued the tradition in spite of the fact that it was founded on a social condition which was foreign to Italy. Thus there was nothing incongruous, from the contemporary point of view, in Dante's writing amorous lyrics about Beatrice even after she became the wife of another.

With the system of chivalric love there came to be combined a religious element, very evident in the Vita Nuova. Idealization of the lady for her angelic qualities replaced the conventional humility based on social inferiority. This tendency was marked in the poems of Guido Guinizelli of Bologna, who introduced

the doctrine that the lady by her influence called love into action where it was potentially present-namely, in a gentle heart. The Troubadours had, it is true, distinguished between courtly and churlish love (in Italian, cortese or gentile, as opposed to villano); but the idea that nobility of heart was an essential condition, was new. Guinizelli's doctrines, expressed with a certain freshness of poetic style, greatly impressed Dante; under this influence he began what he called the "sweet new style,” with the canzone which opens the second group of ten poems in the Vita Nuova. In the Purgatorio he intimated that the essential element of the new style was in following the dictation of Amore; by this name he meant a personification not merely of individual feeling and inclination, but of the whole system of chivalric love, as interpreted by the new school of poets. An increase of sincerity and of poetic power was, therefore, not the only element of novelty. Meanwhile, the use of the Italian language by successive generations of poets was making it a fit medium for the loftiest poetry. In the Convivio and the De Vulgari Eloquentia Dante defended the use of Italian as opposed to Latin; his arguments are eloquent, but his example was far more potent than his theory.

Not only in substance, but in form and in many literary artifices, the Vita Nuova shows the influence of Provençal V poetry. When he wrote the Convivio, which is also formed of alternating prose and verse, Dante was familiar with at least one other instance of the type-the De Consolatione Philosophiæ of Boethius. But in composing the Vita Nuova he followed the example of certain Provençal manuscripts which relate the biography of a Troubadour by means of a commentary on his poems. He even uses the word ragione in the technical sense of the corresponding Provençal word razo, for the prose expositions. In addition to the ragioni, the prose of the Vita Nuova includes for most of the poems an analysis of their structure, called divisione. Some editors print the divisioni in different type, or omit them altogether; but they are an integral part