From The New Life of Dante Alighieri, translated by Charles Eliot Norton; Houghton, Mifflin and Company; Boston and New York; 1896; pp. 129-134.
It is to be observed upon close examination, that the poems of the Vita Nuova are arranged in such order as to suggest an intention on the part of Dante to give his work a symmetrical structure. If the arrangement be accidental, or governed simply by the relation of the poems to the sequence of the events described in the narrative which connects them, it is certainly curious that they happened to fall into such order as to give to the little book a surprising regularity of construction.
The succession of the thirty-one poems of the New Life is as follows:
At first sight no regularity appears in their order, but a little analysis reveals it. The most important poems, not only from their form and length, but also from their substance, are the three canzoni. Now it will be observed that the first canzone is preceded by ten and followed by four minor poems. The second canzone, which is by far the most elaborate poem of the whole, stands alone, holding the central place in the volume. The third canzone is preceded by four and followed by ten minor poems, like the first in inverse order. Thus the arrangement appears as follows:
Here, leaving the central canzone to stand by itself, we have three series of ten poems each. It will be observed 131 further, that the first and the third canzone stand at the same distance from the central poem, and that ten minor poems separate the one from the beginning, the other from the end of the book, and in each instance nine of these poems are sonnets. It is also worth remark, that while the first canzone is followed by four sonnets, and the third is preceded by three sonnets and an imperfect canzone, this imperfect canzone is a single stanza, which has the same number of lines, and the same arrangement of its lines in respect to rhyme, as a sonnet, differing in this respect from the other canzoni. It may be fairly classed as a sonnet, its only difference from one being in the name that Dante has given to it.
The symmetrical construction now appears still more clearly: —
It may be taken as evidence that this regularity of arrangement was intentional that a comparison of the first with the third canzone shows them to be mutually related, one being the balance of the other. The first begins: —
and the last line of its first stanza is, —
In the first stanza of the third there is a distinct reference to these words:
The second stanza of the first canzone relates to the desire which is felt in Heaven for Beatrice. The corresponding stanza of the third declares that it was this desire for her which led to her being taken from the world. The third stanza of the one relates to the operation of her virtues and beauties upon earth; of the other, to the remembrance of them. There is a similarity of expression to be traced throughout.
In the last stanza, technically called the commiato, or dismissal, in which the poem is personified and sent on its way, in the first canzone it is called figliuola d’ amor, in the third, figliuola di tristizia. One was the daughter of love, the other of sorrow; one was the poem recording Beatrice’s life, the other her death. It is thus that one is made to serve as the complement and balance of the other in the structure of the New Life.
It may be possible to trace a similar relation between some of the minor poems of the beginning and the end of the volume; but I have not observed it, if it exists.
The second canzone is, as I have said, the most important 133 poem in the volume, from the force of imagination displayed in it, as well as from its serving to connect the life of Beatrice with her death; and thus it holds, as of right, its central position in relation to the poems which precede and follow it.
But another, not less numerically symmetrical, division of these poems, no longer according to their form, but according to their subject, may be observed by the careful reader. The first ten of them relate to the beginning of Dante’s love, and to his own early experiences as a lover. At their close he says that it seemed to him he had said enough of his own state, and that it behoved him to take up a new theme, and that he thereupon resolved thenceforth to make the praise of his lady his sole theme (cc. xvii., xviii). This theme is the ruling motive of the next ten poems. The last of them is interrupted by the death of Beatrice, and thereafter he takes up, as he again says, a new theme, and the next ten poems are devoted to his affliction, to the episode of the gentle lady, and to his return to his faithful love of Beatrice. One poem, the last, remains. It differs from all the rest; he calls it a new thing. It is the consummation of his experience of love in the vision of his Lady in glory.
It is to be noted as a peculiarity of this final poem, and an indication of its composition at a lager period than those which precede it, that whereas the visions which they report have reference, without exception, to things which the poet had experienced, or seen, or fancied, 134 when awake, thus appearing to be dependent on previous waking excitements, the vision related in this sonnet seems, on the contrary, to have had its origin in no external circumstance, but to be the result of a purely internal condition of feeling. It was a new Intelligence that led his sigh upwards, — a new Intelligence which prepared him for his vision at Easter in 1300.
If a reason be inquired for that might lead Dante thus symmetrically to arrange the poems of this little book in a triple series of ten around a central unit, or in a triple series of ten, followed by a single poem in which he is guided to Heaven by a new Intelligence, it may perhaps be found in the value which he set upon ten as the perfect number; while in the three times repeated series, culminating in a single central or final poem, he may have pleased himself with some fanciful analogy to that three and one on which he dwells in the passage in which he treats of the friendliness of the number nine to Beatrice. At any rate, as he there says, “this is reason which I see for it, and which best pleases me; though perchance a more subtile reason might be seen therein by a more subtile person.”