Dante's Lyric Poetry: Poems of Youth and of the 'Vita Nuova'

by Dante Alighieri

  8 (B V; FB 10; DR 33; VN VII.3–6 [2.14–17])

  First Redaction

  O voi che per la via d’Amor passate, attendete e guardate

  O you who walk along the path of Love, consider now and say

  s’egli è dolor alcun quanto ’l mio grave,

  if there be any grief as deep as mine;

  e prego sol che d’udir mi soffriate

  I only ask you listen patiently

  e poscia immaginate

  and then see for yourselves

  6

  s’i’ son d’ogni tormento ostale e chiave;

  if I’m not key and keeper of all pain.

  ch’Amor, non già per mia poca bontate, ma per sua nobiltate,

  For Love, though not because of my slight worth, but through his charity

  mi puose in vita sì dolce soave, ch’i’ mi sentia dir dietro spesse fiate:

  has made my life so pleasant and so sweet that many times I hear it said of me:

  “Dio, per qual dignitate

  “Good Lord, what worthiness

  12

  questi così legiadro lo cor have?”

  confers upon this one so glad a heart?”

  Or ho perduta tutta mia baldanza che m’avenia d’amoroso tesoro, ond’io pover dimoro

  Now I have lost my sense of confidence which came to me from love’s own treasury, and so I find myself

  16

  in guisa che di dir mi vèn dottanza; ma io, volendo far come coloro che per vergogna celan lor mancanza, di fuor mostro allegranza

  in penury, and feel afraid to write. But seeking now to do as others do, who out of shame conceal their deficit, I mimic happiness

  20

  e dentro da lo cor mi struggo e ploro.

  while deep inside my heart I grieve and weep.

  VN 4. ch(e) audir mi sofferiate – 5. E poi – 7. Amor – 9. dolce e soave – 11. Deh ß (Gorni) – 12. Così leggiadro questi – 14. Che si movea – 17. Sì che volendo

  METRE: sonetto rinterzato of twenty lines (cf. Se Lippo amico and Morte villana, but here the rhymes are all alternating) with rhyme scheme AaBAaB AaBAaB CDdC DCcD, with a base fourteen-hendecasyllable scheme of ABAB ABAB CDC DCD.

  9 Piangete, amanti, poi che piange Amore

  The sonnets Piangete, amanti and Morte villana are in the same chapter (VIII [3]) of the Vita Nuova, where the prose is presented as occasioned by the death of a young woman who had been sometimes in Beatrice’s company. The sonnet is a planctus: the word “Piangete” initiates the poem and the incipit then repeats the word piangere, subsequently reinforced by “plorare” (to cry) (2) and by “lamentare” (to lament) (10). The two poems placed together in Vita Nuova VIII (3) are thus closely related to each other: the expression “villana Morte” that Dante uses at line 5 of Piangete, amanti becomes the incipit of the following poem, Morte villana.

  The lament for the death of a deceased person of high social standing is dear to Occitan poetry, which boasts a genre – the planh – specifically for this purpose. Very often the lament for the death of a noble lord is tied, in the Occitan planh, to the lament for the collapse of a world of courtesy and virtue viewed as embodied in the dead person. If we consider an exemplar of Occitan planh that Dante most likely knew, the dirge for Blacatz by the poet Sordello (whose shade we encounter in the sixth canto of Purgatorio), we see how smoothly Sordello transitions from weeping in the first strophe – the first word of his planh is “Planher,” as in our sonnet the first word is “Piangete” – to praising the virtues of the one who has passed away:

  Planher vuelh en Blacatz en aquest leugier so,

  ab cor trist e marrit; et ai en be razo,

  qu’en luy ai mescabat senhor et amic bo,

  e quar tug l’ayp valent en sa mort perdut so. (1–4; Boni ed.)

  [I want to mourn for Lord Blacatz in this light song,

  with sadness in my grieving heart; and I’ve good cause,

  since I have lost in him a worthy lord and friend,

  and with his death all virtuousness is gone.]

  It is worth noting this characteristic of the Occitan planh – the transition from death to praise – in order to better appreciate the presence of the theme of praise in Piangete, amanti. In Dante’s sonnet there is an explicit cause-effect relationship between death and praise. The poet reproves Death because Death destroys that which is praiseworthy on earth: “ha miso il suo crudele adoperare,/guastando ciò che al mondo è da laudare [carried out her work / to cruel effect within a noble heart,/destroying that which should be praised on earth]” (6–7). Having made the required adjustments from illustrious lord to noble lady, we see here the typical development of a planh with its transition from weeping to praise. Dante here emphasizes the theme of praise by means of a word that is especially dear to him: “laudare” (7).

  In the Vita Nuova praise will be decoupled from lamentation, and will become the basis of Dante’s new Beatrician poetics and of what he will call “the style of her praise”: “lo stilo de la sua loda” (XXVI.4 [17.4]).

  However, the separation of lamentation and praise is far from absolute and the old link between the two is reaffirmed in the Vita Nuova through the various deaths that punctuate the plot, culminating in Beatrice’s death. In addition, Dante uses the Vita Nuova’s prose as an occasion for theorizing the link between praise and awareness of the mortality of the object of praise. In the epiphany by which he learns that Love “ha posto tutta la mia beatitudine in quello che non mi puote venire meno [has placed all my beatitude in that which cannot fail me]” (VN XVIII.4 [10.6]), Dante comes to understand that he has to search for his happiness not in the object of praise but in the words that praise the object: “in quelle parole che lodano la donna mia [in those words that praise my lady]” (VN XVIII.6–7 [10.8–9]). The poetry of praise is that which will not fail him, which will not die. In this way Dante preserves and renews the old link between lamentation and praise, making his praise a means for avoiding future lamentation.

  The Occitan link between lamentation and praise will find its full new, Beatrician expression in the great canzone Li occhi dolenti per pietà del core, written both to lament Beatrice’s death and to praise her life: not only her earthly life but her new life, in paradise, which can never fail him – “che non mi puote venire meno.”

  Another notable feature of Piangete, amanti is the play on “forma vera [true form]” and “morta imagine [dead image],” an early signpost of Dante’s long meditation on representation, on what he views as the poet’s trade. In Piangete, amanti the poet imagines seeing Amore “lamentare in forma vera / sovra la morta imagine avvenente [in real form / lamenting over her dead lovely image]” (10–11); in other words, Love, “in forma vera,” laments the “morta imagine” of the lady. Barbi cites, with regard to Love appearing “in forma vera,” the “visible” Love in Cino’s Vedete, donne, bella creatura: “ch’io veggio Amor visibil che l’adora [I see Love, visible, adoring her]” (13). We recall that in the Vita Nuova Dante claims that a poet can talk to inanimate things and can make inanimate things talk among each other.30 In Piangete, amanti Dante plays with the categories that he later theorizes in the libello: the inanimate thing, Love, is presented “in true form” (“in person,” “visible”) over the body of the dead woman who is, because she is dead, only an “image” of what she was. The objective is to probe the boundaries between animate and inanimate, or better, between true and not-true, exchanging the categories and rendering true the not-true and vice versa: instead of being “accidente in sostanza [an accident in a substance]” (as Love will be defined in VN XXV.1 [16.1]), Love here is visible and animated and it is the woman, a true substance, who becomes no longer true but inanimate “image” of her self.

  Both the discussion of the link between lamentation and praise and the discussion of the boundaries between true and not-true are fundamental for Dante and show us how Piangete, amanti earned its place in the Vita Nuova: chapter XXV (16) of the libello affirms tha
t the role of poet is that of crossing the boundaries between animate and inanimate, between true and not-true. This is the enterprise that the Commedia will call Ulyssean, and it is the enterprise for which the young poet, juxtaposing “forma vera” and “morta imagine,” is already preparing. Nor should one forget that Petrarch is thinking of this sonnet and of the same issue when he concludes Movesi il vecchierel canuto et biancho (Rvf 16) with the line “la disiata vostra forma vera [your desired true form].”

  9 (B VI; FB 11; VN VIII.4–6 [3.4–6])

  Piangete, amanti, poi che piange Amore, udendo qual cagion lui fa plorare. Amor sente a Pietà donne chiamare,

  Weep, all lovers, weep, since Love now weeps, as you now hear the reason for his tears. Love listens on as ladies plead for Pity, with bitter sorrow flowing from their eyes, for savage Death has carried out her work to cruel effect within a noble heart, destroying that which should be praised on earth as well as honour in a noble lady.

  4

  mostrando amaro duol per li occhi fore, perché villana Morte in gentil core ha miso il suo crudele adoperare, guastando ciò che al mondo è da laudare

  Hear what great honour Love has paid to her, for I did see him in real form lamenting over her dead lovely image; and often he would look up heavenward, where her kind soul already had a home, which once had been a woman of great charm.

  8

  in gentil donna sovra de l’onore.

  Audite quanto Amor le fece orranza, ch’io ’l vidi lamentare in forma vera

  11

  sovra la morta imagine avvenente; e riguardava ver lo ciel sovente, ove l’alma gentil già locata era,

  14

  che donna fu di sì gaia sembianza.

  METRE: sonnet ABBA ABBA CDE EDC.

  10 Morte villana, di pietà nemica

  In this sonetto rinterzato many of the same motifs that we found in the two preceding poems come together again; the three poems form a compact group within the Vita Nuova. Morte villana, placed in Vita Nuova VIII (3), shares with O voi che per la via d’Amor passate (Vita Nuova VII [2]) both the metrical form of a sonetto rinterzato and the typically courtly lexicon. Symptomatic, from this point of view, is the presence in both poems of the noun leggiadria/adjective leggiadro. In O voi che per la via the “legiadro cor” of the courtly lover is destroyed when he loses his love, while in Morte villana “leggiadria” – the courtly virtue par excellence – is destroyed by death, the same “morte villana [savage death]” to which the poet addresses his lament and to whom he then directs his accusation: “distrutta hai l’amorosa leggiadria [you have destroyed the grace that love creates]” (16).

  The subject of Morte villana is the savagery of death that has abducted from the world a young woman who embodies “ciò ch’è in donna da pregiar vertute [what in woman is revered as worth]” (14). It is therefore the same argument as that of Piangete, amanti, the sonnet with which it shares chapter VIII (3) of the libello and which directly anticipates the incipit of its companion-sonnet in the “villana Morte” of its fifth verse.

  Morte villana uses the moment of grieving over a dead person who is the incarnation of every virtue in order to create the same link between lamentation and praise that we noted in Piangete, amanti. Again, with a move formerly seen in the Occitan planh, death is an occasion to celebrate the gifts of a person who becomes emblematic of the whole courtly world: “Dal secolo hai partita cortesia / e ciò ch’è in donna da pregiar vertute:/in gaia gioventute / distrutta hai l’amorosa leggiadria [You have deprived this world of courtesy / and what in woman is revered as worth:/in cheerful youthfulness / you have destroyed the grace that love creates]” (13–16).

  Although they treat the same subjects, Piangete, amanti and Morte villana arrive at notably different results. Morte villana is a less innovative and more conventional poem than Piangete, amanti. Barbi notes among its antecedents the canzone Morte, perché m’hai fatta sì gran guerra by Giacomino Pugliese, which has the line “Villana Morte, che non ha’ pietanza [Savage Death, who has no pity]” (5). The metrical form of Morte villana betrays its Guittonian pedigree, and indeed the Guittonianism of Morte villana is more emphatic than that of the other two sonetti rinterzati that we have discussed (Se Lippo amico, O voi che per la via).

  Commenting on Morte villana “as an example of a particular style, a particular rhetoric, a particular flavor,” De Robertis lists the stylistic points that reveal the Guittonian style: “We note, in these opening lines – along with the typical figures of amplificatio, of apostrophe (which basically conditions the entire composition), and of expolitio – the solemnity of the images (ll.1–2, and cf. l.7); the accumulation, highlighted by the artificial inversions (the main clause down at l.6), of definitions (ll.1–3, all the way to the etymological pun in l.9); and, at least in the quatrains, the series of rhymed couplets” (VN, 58–9). Glossing the flagrant etymological pun that Dante employs in line 9 (“lo tuo fallar d’onni torto tortoso [your fault in every wrongful act of wrong],” De Robertis notes that this trope is “frequent in Guittone” and that it is here “complicated by Dante” in such a way that we end up having a “Dante more Guittonian than Guittone!” (VN, 60).

  It is also noteworthy, as Gorni points out, that a taste for this trope will return in the Commedia, where we find it in uses such as “selva selvaggia” (Inf. 1.5) and “più volte vòlto” (Inf. 1.36). This style, outdated when we encounter it in the Vita Nuova, is one that Dante will eventually renew and reuse.

  10 (B VII; FB 12; VN VIII.8–11 [3.8–11])

  Morte villana, di pietà nemica,

  Savage death, compassion’s enemy,

  di dolor madre antica,

  ancient mother of grief,

  giudicio incontastabile gravoso, poi che hai data matera al cor doglioso ond’io vado pensoso,

  sentence unappealable, severe, since you have given to a grieving heart a cause for being sad,

  6

  di te blasmar la lingua s’affatica. E s’io di grazia ti voi far mendica, convenesi ch’eo dica

  my tongue exhausts itself condemning you. And if I want to strip you of all worth, I need to specify

  lo tuo fallar d’onni torto tortoso, non però ch’a la gente sia nascoso, ma per farne cruccioso

  the wrongfulness of every wrong of yours, though not because this is unknown to most, but rather to incense

  12

  chi d’amor per innanzi si notrica.

  whoever takes his nourishment from love.

  Dal secolo hai partita cortesia e ciò ch’è in donna da pregiar vertute: in gaia gioventute

  You have deprived this world of courtesy and what in woman is revered as worth: in cheerful youthfulness

  16

  distrutta hai l’amorosa leggiadria. Più non voi discovrir qual donna sia che per le propietà sue canosciute. Chi non merta salute

  you have destroyed the grace that love creates. I won’t disclose here who this lady is except to note her well known qualities. Those undeserving of salvation

  20

  non speri mai d’aver sua compagnia.

  should never hope to join her company.

  METRE: sonetto rinterzato of twenty lines with rhyme scheme AaBBbA AaBBbA CDdC CDdC, with a base fourteen-hendecasyllable scheme of ABBA ABBA CDC CDC; cf. Se Lippo amico and O voi che per la via.

  11 La dispietata mente che pur mira

  If we take the canzone Donne ch’avete as gauge of Dante’s full stil novo, both from a stylistic point of view (exclusion of all obvious virtuosity, in order to achieve a paradoxical rhetoric of hyperbole that is not showily hyperbolic, of hyperbole that is somehow purified and plain) and from a thematic point of view (nothing is required of the lady, who is simply praised), the canzone La dispietata mente can easily be placed in a period that precedes the stil novo. La dispietata mente not only addresses the lady, asking her for her greeting, but it does so with a certain urgency: “sappiate che l’attender io non posso,/ch’i’ sono al fine della mia possanza [please understa
nd I can no longer wait,/for I have reached the limit of my strength]” (29–30). Contini judges it as an early work, “interwoven with ‘feudal’ and unoriginal motifs” (p. 26). While sharing his judgment of the relative youthfulness of this canzone, I do not agree that it lacks originality or interest.

  As in the single-stanza canzone Lo meo servente core, the theme is the optimistic experience of the absence of the beloved. The woman in La dispietata mente is legible, and the signs are hope-inducing: “ché ciascun che vi mira, in veritate / di fuor conosce che dentro è pietate [for everyone who looks at you, in truth,/will outwardly perceive that pity lies inside]” (51–2). As in Lo meo servente core, here too we find a Dante bent on using Sicilian motifs and styles, identifiable above all with Giacomo da Lentini, and on mastering a fluid and limpid style that is the antithesis of the Guittonian mode (as in the sonnets exchanged with Dante da Maiano).