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A little 13th-century intensity here:

"...she turned her eyes to where I was standing faint-hearted and, with that indescribable graciousness for which she is rewarded in the eternal life, she greeted me so miraculously that I seemed at that moment to behold the entire range of possible bliss. ... I became so ecstatic that, like a drunken man, I turned away from everyone ..."

After this image, Dante tells us his 18-year-old self runs off to his bedroom and...well, has a vision. This is Dante's first published work, written presumably over several years, a mixture of supposedly autobiographical prose and poems he wrote at the time he's covering, in the moment. He claims these poems were passed around his home of Florence, and so already well known. For a text full of some formal turgid prose, it's surprisingly light and attractive and I found myself fully engaged right at the beginning. And then, as that feeling fades, I remained quite fascinated by the mixture of prose and poetry. It's a beautiful work about love, if the love of a self-obsessed stalker.

Dante, who was married at age 11 and would have begun living with his wife as a couple around age 20, captures here his obsession with the divinely beautiful Beatrice, his neighbor in the close quarters of 13th-century Florence. He falls for her at age nine (he was less than a year older then she was), and then much more deeply at age 18, to the point that the sight of her sets him into something of an ecstatic breakdown. He craves her sight, seeks it out, and then embarrasses himself, once collapsing against a nearby wall. He puts it all down, including conversations with other women who are confused by his obvious obsession, and ask questions he can't really answer. Then captures it again in poetic form.

"O voi che per la via d'Amor passate,
attendete e guardate
s'elli è dolore alcun, quanto 'l mio, grave;

O ye who travel on the road of Love, pause here and look about for any man whose grief surpasses mine."

The ladies' questions leave him stuck in a conundrum, finally giving voice to his feeling in a canto that begins famously, "Donne ch'avete intelletto d'amore,", or roughly he addresses "Ladies who have intelligence of love". The lost young Dante claims to be taken over by the god of love, Amore, even has he acknowledges this god is only something created in his mind, a manifestation of his feeling, longing and obsession. Within this state, having said barely a word to his Beatrice, he learns of her death at age 25, the age the real Beatrice died in a Florence epidemic. Dante, who tells us heaven longed for her, goes silent on his initial reaction, then captures his extreme self-pity. It's both moving and ridiculous. He ends it in a kind of failure, claiming he will try to capture Beatrice again in a better way. "there came to me a miraculous vision in which I saw things that made me resolve to say no more about this blessèd one until I would be capable of writing about her in a nobler way." He will make good on this.

I enjoyed this but it was hard to read without wondering about this Dante. Of course, he's a stalker and one imagines a very irritated Beatrice feeling very harassed. And of course, he sounds self-destructive. What would his wife think? (She's not mentioned in any of his writing). If you believe R.W.B. Lewis writing in 2001, and I think most traditional critics, this is a pure and honest autobiographical work of one deeply in love and trying to capture his feelings. Mark Musa, my translator here, felt quite differently in 1973 (and probably 1957 too). He sees Dante as a sophisticated writer, putting on believable and moving fictional story, flavored with decent but limited poetry, but that was carefully designed to undermine itself. That is, first, don't believe any of this. And second, Dante has read his Ovid. He's not building on the dolce stil novo (sweet new style), but undermining it. He's captured himself as a ridiculous, mockable, self-obsessed young man. Musa sums it up this way:

"The Vita Nuova is a cruel book. Cruel, that is, in the treatment of the human type represented by the protagonist (Dante). In the picture of the lover there is offered a condemnation of the vice of emotional self-indulgence and an exposure of its destructive effects on a man‘s integrity."

Musa, if you buy into him, writes an excellent essay and picks up on a humor and complexity. It seems very obvious, and quite something, once he points it out. (Lewis maybe lacked the right sense of humor). I should add, on a practical note, that Musa's old book is also very nice in hardcover, and I appreciated that it includes the original Italian of all the poetry.

Dante's book, of course, can be read in several ways and leaves itself open to the times and mentality of the reader. And it should probably be read as the reader likes. Dive in and enjoy the feeling, intensity and tragedy of the text, or sit back and think about the poet's other ways of disarming his readers and critics. Recommended to anyone curious as I think it will reward.

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52. Dante's 'Vita Nuova' : A Translation and an Essay by Mark Musa
published: 1293 ?
translation, essays: 1957 & 1973
format: 214 page hardcover
acquired: Library
read: Oct 20 � Nov 1
time reading: 11 hr 14 min, 3.2 min/page
rating: 4