of the text, although only occasionally useful to a modern student. While the ragioni, like the poems, go back to the world of chivalry, the divisioni were perhaps suggested by the severe scholastic method of St. Thomas in expounding Aristotle (see note on XXXV, 19). Dante quotes various Latin authors, and the Bible; he also uses Latin phrases apparently of his own composition. Thus the characteristic elements of his early work, while bearing the mark of his personality and of his Italian nationality, result also in large part from a combination of diverse influences: chivalric, classic, religious, scholastic. The title Vita Nuova is generally supposed to mean "youthful life." In fact, the adjective frequently has this meaning, as in the verse which to many critics seems decisive in the matter: Questi fu tal ne la sua vita nova (Purg. XXX, 115). In that verse, however, Dante refers to a period of his life, not to the book. In Conv. IV, 24, he divides human life into four periods, of which adolescenzia includes the first 25 years, and gioventute the years from 25 to 45; but the Vita Nuova starts with his ninth year. It is therefore perfectly possible to take nuova in its natural sense of "new," the sense which occurs first to any reader, as when Dante undertook matera nuova e più nobile che la passata (XVII, 5), or when he called his "new" style dolce stil nuovo (Furg. XXIV, 57). Thus Incipit vita nova refers to his life "renewed" by the domination of love, and made different from what it would otherwise have been. Taken in this way, the title describes the contents of the book far better than the colorless "youthful life," and it is such a title as we should expect Dante to choose. So in describing the breathing of the soul, a new element, into the body, he says (Purg. XXV, 70-74): Lo motor primo a lui si volge lieto It is not altogether fanciful to compare this action with that of love on the gentle heart. At the same time, the possibility is not to be excluded that Dante may have had two meanings of nuovo in mind, as he sometimes did with other words (salute, "salvation" and "salutation," etc.). Two metrical forms were generally used by the early Italian poets-canzone (song or ode) and sonetto (sonnet). The former, derived from the Provençal canso, consists of a series of stanzas identical in metrical structure (number and length of verses, arrangement of rhymes); while the meter of different canzoni varies greatly. The final stanza, which may be shorter than the others, is frequently addressed to the poem itself as an envoi (in Italian, commiato, congedo or tornata). The sonnet was of purely Italian origin, being based on a Sicilian popular song with alternating rhymes. The first sonnet was written by a member of the Sicilian School of court poets, probably the notary Giacomo da Lentino. From the beginning it consisted of a single stanza of fourteen eleven-syllable verses, divided by the arrangement of rhymes, and usually by the sense as well, into two groups of eight and six respectively. During the thirteenth century the form was sometimes modified by the insertion of seven-syllable verses, making what was called a sonetto doppio; the Vita Nuova contains two such, in VII and VIII. This and other variations soon ceased to be used, although in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a coda of three verses was sometimes added. In the earliest sonnets the rhymes in the octave are alternate; the rhyme-scheme ABBA, ABBA was soon introduced, and came to be the usual scheme. The Vita Nuova has 19 sonnets rhyming ABBA, and six rhyming ABAB. The sextet may have two or three rhymes, arranged in a variety of ways. The abundance of rhymes in the Italian language saves the sonnet from the stiffness that it often has in other languages; and its compactness and regularity, with unity of effect, make it particularly adapted for lyric expression. The three long canzoni of the Vita Nuova have stanzas of fourteen verses each; Dante's other canzoni vary greatly in form and in length. The only other metrical form used in the Vita Nuova is the ballata (see note on XII, 52), although Dante mentions the writing of a serventese, which is not preserved (see note on VI, 8).1 It is to be noted that the Italian metrical system is based on the number of syllables in the verse, not on the regular alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables. Contiguous vowels in different words are usually to be counted together as one syllable; in the same word, they sometimes count separately. For instance, at the end of a verse, mia counts as two syllables; in the midst of a verse it may count as one or as two. The verse-forms used in the Vita Nuova, and indeed most common in Italian poetry in general, are the endecasillabo (11 syllables) and the settenario (7 syllables). The principal stress is on the next-to-last syllable: this rule being without exception in the Vita Nuova, although elsewhere it may be on the final syllable, or on the third from the end. The other stresses in the verse are not arranged in any determined order, so that the rhythm varies according to the effect desired by the poet. An attentive examination shows that the thirty-one poems of the Vita Nuova, while ostensibly arranged chronologically, not only fall into groups of ten, as already noted, but form a symmetrical design. This fact was first noticed by Gabriele Rossetti about 1836; but it attracted little attention until independently discovered by Charles Eliot Norton, who published an account of it with his translation of the Vita Nuova in 1859, again in 1867 and, with additions, in 1892. The symmetry is altogether too remarkable to be, as is maintained by some able scholars, the result of chance. In the center of the design are three canzoni, which in actual number of lines as well 1 See F. Flamini, Notizia storica dei Versi e Metri Italiani; and two important articles, by E. H. Wilkins, The Derivation of the Canzone, "Modern Philology," XII, 527, and The Invention of the Sonnet, ib., XIII, 463 (1915). as in content, are written on a more elaborate scale than the other 28 poems; these include 23 regular sonnets, two sonetti doppi, one ballata, one canzone of two 13-line stanzas, one single stanza of 14 lines which closely resembles a sonnet. Canzone I is preceded by ten short poems, all but one of them sonnets; Canz. III is followed by ten short poems, all but one of them sonnets; between Canz. I and Canz. II are four sonnets; between Canz. II and Canz. III are three sonnets and a single stanza which closely resembles a sonnet. Thus we have the arrangement graphically represented in this way: IO short poems (9 of them sonnets) Canz. I 4 short poems (all sonnets) Canz. II 4 short poems (3 sonnets, I almost a sonnet) 10 short poems (9 of them sonnets) Furthermore, the three canzoni are related to each other in phraseology and in subject as well as in their position in the book. It does not appear that this symmetrical arrangement was intended by Dante as anything more than a formal embellishment of a sort that he afterwards employed frequently in the Divina Commedia. Once decided upon, it was doubtless one element governing the choice, among the poems already composed, of those to be included in the Vita Nuova.1 Thus the selection and the symmetrical arrangement of the poems are in accordance with a definite scheme, and in the 1 For the history of this subject and discussion of other aspects not touched upon here, see the essay in Norton's translation of the V. N., two articles by K. McKenzie cited in the Bibliography, Federzoni's edition of the V. N., and Labusquette, Les Béatrices. The only serious argument on the other side-unfortunately accepted by some critics without any examination of the evidence is that of M. Scherillo, La forma architettonica della Vita Nuova, originally published in the Giornale Dantesco in 1901, and reprinted with important additions in his editions of the V. N. prose a unity of interpretation is imposed upon them in spite of their original diversity of significance. Moreover, the narrative has many conventional elements, of which the most obvious are: the visions; the personifications, especially of love; the combination of religious and amorous emotions; the adoration of the lady as a superior being, and the trembling and fainting of the lover in her presence; the application to her of a poetic name, and the effort to conceal her identity; the sending of a sonnet to other poets, asking for the solution of a problem; the symbolism of the number nine; the use of astronomical circumlocutions to indicate times and seasons. The vision was a familiar literary device, used sometimes for a complete work, sometimes as an incident. In the Vita Nuova it is not an ordinary dream, but a conscious evocation adapted to produce a desired effect. The personifications are justified by Dante (XXV) on the ground that to writers of verse in Italian the same poetic license should be allowed as to Latin poets. The contrast of this defense of the vulgar (spoken) language with the picturesque scene in Purgatorio, XXIV, shows the broadening of Dante's imagination as well as the growth of the literary sense of his readers. Many modern critics, especially the very young, are inclined to ridicule the self-effacement, timidity, tears and fainting-spells described in the Vita Nuova. A more sympathetic insight into the character of Dante-sensitive, gentle, diffident, idealistic, highly emotional-and into the literary influences under which he wrote, appreciates the fundamental psychological truth of his descriptions of these phenomena, however conventional some elements of them may be. If in some cases the desire to conform to the traditions of a literary school evoked the emotion, no disrespect to Dante's poetic genius is involved in pointing it out, and the emotion was not on that account less real. The impression made upon him at nine years of age by a little girl of eight, and the visions of III and IX, are no more "incredible" than this |