Free Dante Alighieri by Paget Toynbee

severally and in order, he wrote the occasions which had moved him to compose them; and below he added the divisions of each poem. And although in his riper years he was much ashamed of having written this little book, yet, if his age be considered, it is very beautiful and delightful, especially to unlearned folk.” 12
    Â Â Â Â  “The
New Life
” writes Professor Norton, 13 “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 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.
    Â Â Â Â  “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.
    Â Â Â Â  “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 hisconfessions. 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 to be measured.
    Â Â Â Â  “This 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.
    Â Â Â Â  “The meaning of the name
La Vita Nuova
has been the subject of animated discussion. Literally
The New Life
, it has been questioned whether this phrase meantsimply 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.”
    Â Â Â Â  The
Vita Nuova
, which was dedicated to Dante’s earliest friend Guido Cavalcanti (§ 31, 11. 22-3),