From The New Life of Dante Alighieri, translated by Charles Eliot Norton; Houghton, Mifflin and Company; Boston and New York; 1896; pp. 91-106.
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I HAVE not prefixed to my translation a preface or introduction, preferring to let the little book present itself to the reader without help or hindrance. I would have it read as Dante left it. In the essays and notes which follow, I have endeavored to say only what may lead to the appreciation of it, or may remove difficulties in its interpretation. my translation was made when I was a young man, almost forty years ago; I reprint it now, feeling the charm of the original no less in my age than in my youth, and wishing that something of this charm may be felt by those who know the New Life only through my version.
July, 1892.
The New Life is the proper introduction to the Divine Comedy. It is the story of the beginning of the love through which, even in Dante’s youth, heavenly things were revealed to him, and which in the bitterest 94 trials of life, — in disappointment, poverty, and exile, — kept his heart fresh with springs of perpetual solace. It was this love which led him through the hard paths of Philosophy and up the steep ascents of Faith, out of Hell and through Purgatory, to the glories of Paradise and the fulfilment of Hope.
The narrative of the New Life is quaint, embroidered with conceits, deficient in artistic completeness, but it has the simplicity of youth, the charm of sincerity, the freedom of personal confidence; and so long as there are lovers in the world, and so long as lovers are poets, this first and tenderest love-story of modern literature will be read with appreciation and responsive sympathy.
It is the earliest of Dante’s writings, and the most autobiographic of them in form and intention. In it we are brought into intimate personal relations with the poet. He trusts himself to us with full and free confidence; but there is no derogation from becoming manliness in his confession. He draws the picture of a portion of his youth, and displays its secret emotions; but he does so with no morbid self-consciousness and with no affectation. Part of this simplicity is due, undoubtedly, to the character of the times, part to his own youthfulness, part to downright faith in his own genius. It was the fashion for poets to tell of their loves; in following this fashion, he not only gave utterance to genuine feeling, and claimed his rank among the poets, but also fixed a standard by which the ideal expression of love was thereafter measured.
95This first essay of his poetic powers rests on the foundation upon which his later life was built. The figure of Beatrice, which appears veiled under the symbolism and indistinct in the bright halo of the allegory of the Divine Comedy, takes its place in life and on the earth through the New Life as definitely as that of Dante himself. She is no allegorized piece of humanity, no impersonation of attributes, but an actual woman, — beautiful, modest, gentle, with companions only less beautiful than herself, — the most delightful personage in the daily picturesque life of Florence. She is seen smiling and weeping, walking with other fair maidens in the street, praying at the church, merry at festivals, mourning at funerals; and her smiles and tears, her gentleness, her reserve, all the sweet qualities of her life, and the peace of her death, are told of with such tenderness, and purity, and passion, as well as with such truth of poetic imagination, that she remains, and will always remain, the loveliest and most womanly woman of the Middle Ages, — at once absolutely real and truly ideal.
The meaning of the name La Vita Nuova has been the subject of animated discussion among the commentators. Literally The New Life, it has been questioned whether this phrase meant simply early life, or life made new by the first experience and lasting influence of love. The latter interpretation seems the most appropriate to Dante’s turn of mind and to his condition of feeling at the time when the little book appeared. To him it was the record of that life which the presence of Beatrice had made new.
96But whatever be the true significance of the title, this New Life is full, not only of the youthfulness of its author, but also of the fresh and youthful spirit of the time. Italy, after a long period of childhood, was now becoming possessed of the powers of maturity. Society (to borrow a fine figure from Lamennais), like a river, which, long lost in marshes, had at length regained its channel, after stagnating for centuries, was once more rapidly advancing. Throughout Italy there was a morning freshness, and the thrill and exhilaration of vigorous activity. Her imagination was roused by the revival of ancient and now new learning, by the stories of travellers, by the gains of commerce, by the excitements of religion and the alarms of superstition. She was boastful, jealous, quarrelsome, lavish, magnificent, full of fickleness, — exhibiting on all sides the exuberance, the magnanimity, the folly of youth. After the long winter of the Dark Ages, spring had come in full tide, and the earth was renewing its beauty. And, above all other cities in these days, Florence overflowed with the pride of life. Civil brawls had not yet reduced her to become an easy prey for foreign conquerors or native tyrants. She was famous for wealth, and her spirit had risen with prosperity. Many years before, one of the Provençal Troubadours, writing to his friend in verse, had said: “Friend Gaucelm, if you go to Tuscany, seek a shelter in the noble city of the Florentines, which is named Florence. There all true valor is found; there joy and song and love are perfect and adorned.” And if this was true in the earlier years of the thirteenth century, 97 it was still truer of its close; for much of early simplicity and purity of manners had disappeared before the increasing luxury and the gathered wealth of the city, — so that gayety and song more than ever abounded. “It is to be noted,” says Giovanni Villani, writing of this time, — “it is to be noted that Florence and her citizens were never in a happier condition.” The chroniclers tell of constant festivals and celebrations. “In the year 1283, in the month of June, at the feast of St. John, the city of Florence being in a happy and good state of repose, — a tranquil and peaceable state, excellent for merchants and artificers, — there was formed a company of a thousand men or more, all clothed in white dresses, with a leader called the Lord of Love, who devoted themselves to games and sports and dancing, going through the city with trumpets and other instruments of joy and gladness, and feasting often together. And this court lasted for two months, and was the most noble and famous that ever was held in Florence or in all Tuscany, and many gentleman came to it, and many jongleurs, and all were welcomed and honorably cared for.” Every year, the summer was opened with May and June festivals. Florence was rejoicing in abundance and beauty. Nor was it only in passing gayeties that the cheerful and liberal temper of the people was displayed.
The many great works of Art which were begun and carried on to completion at this time show with what large spirit the whole city was inspired, and under what strong influences of public feeling the early life of Dante was led. Civil liberty and strength were producing their 98 legitimate results. Little republic as she was, Florence was great enough for great undertakings. Never was there such a noble activity within the narrow compass of her walls as from about 1265, when Dante was born, to the end of the century. In these thirty-five years the stout walls and the tall tower of the Bargello were built; the grand foundations of the Palazzo Vecchio and of the vast Duomo were laid, and both in one year; the Baptistery — il mio bel San Giovanni — was adorned with a new covering of marble; the churches of Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce — the finest churches even now in Florence — were begun and carried far on to completion. Each new work was at once the fruit and the seed of glorious energy.
It would be strange, indeed, if the youthful book of one so sensitive to external influences as Dante did not give evidence of sympathy with such pervading emotion. Only at such a period, when strength of sentiment was finding vent in all manner of free expression, was such a book possible. Confidence, frankness, directness in the rendering of personal feeling, are rare, except in conditions of society when the emotional and creative spirit is stronger than the critical.
The most marked characteristic of art at this time and of poetry, as represented by Dante, were an assertion of independence, and a return to nature as the source not only of inspiration but of truth. The established mannerisms and conventional forms which had shackled genius and restrained imagination yielded to the strong impulse of vigorous and natural life, which 99 restored truth of feeling and truth of expression to all the arts, and opened the way to achievements which in spiritual significance and in beauty of design have never since been surpassed.
The Italian poets, before Dante, may be broadly divided into two classes. The first was that of the troubadours, who wrote in the Provençal language, and were hardly to be distinguished from their contemporaries of the South of France. They gave expression in their verses to the ideas of love, gallantry, and valor which formed the base of the complex and artificial system of chivalry, repeating one after the other the same fancies and thoughts in similar formulas, without scope or truth of imagination, with rare display of individual feeling, with little regard for nature. Ingenuity is more characteristic of their poetry than sincerity, subtilty more obvious in it than beauty. The second and later class were poets who wrote in the Italian tongue, but still under the influence of the poetic code which had governed the compositions of their Provençal predecessors. Their poetry is, for the most part, a faded copy of an unsubstantial original, — an echo of sounds originally faint. Truth and poetry were effectually divided. In the latter half of the thirteenth century, however, a few poets appeared whose verses give evidence of some native life, and are enlivened by a freer play of fancy and a greater truthfulness of feeling. Guido Guinicelli, who died in 1276, when Dante was eleven years old, and, a little later, Guido Cavalcanti, 100 and some few others, trusting more than their predecessors to their own inspiration, show themselves as the forerunners of a better day. But as, in painting, Margaritone and Cimabue, standing between the old and the new styles, exhibit rather a vague striving than a fulfilled attainment, so is it with these poets. There is little that is distinctively individual in their sentiment or in the expression of it. Love is still treated mostly as an abstraction, and one poet might adopt another’s love-verses with few changes of form so far as any manifest difference of personal feeling is concerned.
Not so with Dante. The New Life, although retaining many forms and expressions derived from earlier poets, is his, and could be the work of no other. Nor was he unaware of this difference between himself and those that had gone before him, or ignorant of its nature. Describing himself to Buonagiunta da Lucca in Purgatory, he says: —
As Love was the common theme of the verses from which Buonagiunta drew his contrast, the difference between them lay plainly in sincerity of feeling and truth of expression. The following closer upon the dictates of 101 his heart was the distinguishing merit of Dante’s love poetry over all that had preceded it, and most of what has come after it. There are, however, some among his earlier poems in which the “sweet new style” is scarcely heard; and others, of a later period, in which the customary metaphysical and fanciful subtilties of the elder poets are drawn out to an unwonted fineness. These were concessions to a ruling mode, — concessions the more readily made, because in complete harmony with the strong subtilizing and allegorizing tendencies of Dante’s own mind. Still, so far as he adopts the modes of his predecessors in this first book of his, Dante surpasses them all in their own way. He leaves them far behind him, and already sees opening before him new paths which he is to tread alone.
But there is yet another tendency of the times, to which Dante, in his later works, has given the fullest and most characteristic expression, and which exhibits itself curiously in the New Life. Corresponding with the new ardor for the arts, and in sympathy with it, was a newly awakened and generally diffused ardor for learning, especially for the various branches of philosophy. Science was leaving the cloister, in which she had sat in dumb solitude, and coming out into the world. But the limits and divisions of knowledge were not firmly marked out. The relations of learning to truth were not clearly understood. The minds of men were, indeed, quickened by a new sense of freedom, and stimulated by a fresh ardor of imagination. New worlds of undiscovered knowledge loomed vaguely along the 102 horizon. Fancy invaded the domain of philosophy; and the poets disguised the subtleties of metaphysics under the garb of verses of love. To be a proper poet was not only to be a writer of verses, but to be a master of learning. Boccaccio describes Guido Cavalcanti as “one of the best logicians in the world, and a most excellent natural philosopher,” but says nothing of his poetry.
Dante, more than any other man of his time, exhibited in himself the general zeal for knowledge. His genius had two distinct and yet often intermingling parts, — the poetic and the scientific. No learning came amiss to him. He was born a student, as he was born a poet: and had he never written a single poem, he would still have been famous as the most profound scholar of his times. Far as he surpassed his contemporaries in poetry, he was also their superior in his mastery of the knowledge of man and of the world. And this double nature of his genius is plainly shown in many parts of the New Life. A youthful incapacity to draw clearly the line between the part of the student and the part of the poet is manifest in it. The display of his acquisitions is curiously mingled with the narrative of his emotions. This is not to be charged against him as pedantry. His love of learning partook of the nature of passion; his judgment was not yet able, if indeed it ever became able, to establish a strict division between the abstractions of the intellect and the visions of the imagination. And more than this, his early claim of honor as a poet, especially as a poet in the vulgar tongue, 103 was to be justified by his possession and exhibition of the fruits of study.
Moreover, the mind of Dante was of a quality which led him to unite learning with poetry in a manner peculiar to himself. He was essentially a mystic. The obscure and hidden side of things was not less present to his imagination than the visible and plain. The range of human capacity in the comprehension of the spiritual world was not then marked by as numerous boundary-stones of failure as now define the way. Impossibilities were sought for with the same confident hope as realities. The alchemists and astrologers believed in the attainment of results as tangible and real as the gains which travellers brought back from the marvellous and still unachieved East. The mystical properties of numbers, the influence of the stars, the powers of cordials and elixirs, the virtues of precious stones, were received as established facts, and opened long vistas of discovery before the student’s eyes. A ring of mystery surrounded the familiar world, and outside the known lands of the earth lay a region unknown except to the fancy, from which strange gales blew and strange clouds floated up. Curiosity and inquiry were stimulated and made earnest by wonder. Wild and fanciful speculations formed the basis of serious and patient studies. Dante, partaking to the full in the eager spirit of the times, sharing all the ardor of the pursuit of knowledge, and with a spiritual insight which led him into regions of mystery where no others ventured, naturally associated the knowledge which opened 104 the way for him with the poetic imagination which cast light upon it. To him science was but the handmaid of poetry.
Much learning has been expended in the attempt to show that the doctrine of Love, which is displayed in the New Life, is derived, more or less directly, from the philosophy of Plato. A certain Platonic form of expression, often covering ideas very far removed from those of Plato, was common to the earlier, colder, and less truthful poets. Some strains of such Platonism, derived from the poems of his predecessors, are perhaps to be found in this first book of Dante’s. But there is nothing to show that he had intentionally adopted the teachings of the ancient philosopher. It may well, indeed, be doubted if, at the time of its composition, he had read any of Plato’s works. Such Platonism as exists in the New Life was of that unconscious kind which is shared by every youth of thoughtful nature and sensitive temperament, who makes of his beloved a type and image of divine beauty, and who through the loveliness of the creature is led up to the perfection of the Creator.
The essential qualities of the New Life, those which afford direct illustration of Dante’s character, as distinguished from such as may be called youthful, or merely literary, or biographical, correspond in striking measure with those of the Divine Comedy. The earthly Beatrice is exalted to the heavenly in the later poem; but the entire purity and intensity of feeling with which she is reverently regarded in the Divine Comedy are scarcely less characteristic of the earlier work. The imagination 105 which makes the unseen seen, and the unreal real, belongs alike to the one and to the other. In his love for the living Beatrice Dante had already foretasted the joys of the eternal world. Her beauty, her grace, her goodness, her gentleness, had even upon earth seemed to him divinely excellent, — types of divine realities. His imagination had beheld a miracle in her. And so when he exalts her in the Divine Comedy, — her who had been a simple Florentine maiden, — when by virtue of his personal faith he sets her in glory above the Saints, near to the Most Holy Virgin herself, and represents her as the favored one of the Almighty, — he is but carrying out the fervent conceptions of his New Life to their required and true conclusions. In this was Dante’s poetic power fully displayed, and in this was the depth, purity, and consistency of his nature revealed, that without incongruity, without any jar of the most delicate harmonies of feeling, he could transform his earthly to a heavenly Love, and make the story of his youth the only fit introduction to a poem “whose subject was man,” and whose scene was laid in the terrors and the glories of the eternal world.
The New Life is chiefly occupied with a series of visions; the Divine Comedy is one long vision. The sympathy with the spirit and impulses of the time, which in the first reveals the youthful impressibility of the poet, in the last discloses itself in maturer forms, in more personal expressions. In the the New Life it is a sympathy mastering the natural spirit; in the Divine Comedy the sympathy is controlled by the force of 106 established character. The change is that from him who follows to him who commands. It is the privilege of men of genius, not only to give more than others to the world, but also to receive more from it. Through sympathy with the life of nature and of man they enter into possession of themselves. Sympathy, in its full comprehensiveness, is the proof and measure of the strongest individuality. By as much as Dante or Shakespeare entered into and learnt of the hearts of men, by so much was his own nature strengthened and made peculiarly his own. The New Life shows the first stages of that sympathetic genius, and gives the first, yet clear indications of that profound intelligence, which find their full manifestation in the Divine Comedy.