The Portable Dante (2 page)

During all of this time Dante’s passion for study had continued unabated. His vision had been broadened by the reading of Boethius and Cicero. The dissemination of Aristotle’s works on physical and metaphysical subjects brought recognition of the need to harmonize the ideas of the great guide of human reason with the truths and teachings of the faith. Dante, by now a grown man, was attracted to many of the new schools and universities that were operating under the tutelage of the new religious orders. Among the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians were many eminent teachers and scholars. In this brisk intellectual environment of around 1290 Dante applied his energies to philosophy with such fervor that “in a short time, perhaps thirty months, ” he began “to be so keenly aware of her sweetness that the love of her drove away and destroyed every other thought” (
Convivio
II. 2.7). Dante read so much, it seems, that his eyes were weakened considerably because of it. Among Christian scholars and theologians, he certainly read Saint Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Saint Augustine, Hugh and Richard of Saint Victor, Saint Bonaventura, Saint Bernard, and Peter Lombard. In the area of history he took up Livy and Paulus Orosius, among others. Evidence of this extensive course of study found its way into his poetry as he became interested in the glorification of philosophy as mistress of the mind. Dante also treated questions of moral philosophy, such as nobility and courtship, in a number of beautifully composed
canzoni,
or odes. Nevertheless, in spite of this ardent
pursuit of philosophical matters he retained his view of love as the most important force behind noble actions and lofty endeavors. To his appreciation of the Latin poets he added an admiration for the Provençal troubadours, and this encouraged him to attempt new poetic techniques that would serve him well in his later writings.

Along with his spiritual and intellectual activities Dante engaged in civic enterprises as well. In 1289 he had fought on the Guelf side at the battle of Campaldino. In 1295 he began an active public life, and within a few years he became an important figure in Florentine politics. He had joined the Guild of Physicians and Apothecaries in order to participate in government (except for certain offices, government was closed to those without guild affiliation), and there is evidence that he served as a member of the People’s Council of the Commune of Florence (1295), on the Council for Election of the Priors of the City (1295), and on the Council of the Hundred (1296), a body that dealt with finance and other important civic matters.

This was a time of political ferment and instability. Between 1215 and 1278 the Guelfs and Ghibellines of Florence had engaged in a bitter struggle for power, with numerous reversals of fortune for both sides, countless plots and conspiracies, and frequent expulsion orders issued against whoever was on the losing side. The Guelfs finally prevailed. Around 1300, however, there occurred a split in the Guelf party into two very hostile factions: the Blacks and the Whites. The Blacks, staunch Guelfs, remained in control of the commune. The Whites eventually associated themselves with the Ghibellines. Dante, meanwhile, fought to preserve the independence of Florence, and repeatedly opposed the schemes of Pope Boniface VIII, who wanted to place Florence and all of Tuscany under the control of the Church. Boniface attempted to take advantage of the unrest in the city and undermine his opponents by promising protection to those who displayed some sympathy with his cause. He met with firm opposition from the six priors (magistrates) of Florence, of whom Dante was one, in the summer of 1300. To show his displeasure Boniface moved to excommunicate the members of the priorate. Dante was spared this fate only because his term of office was soon due to expire. Obviously, none of this served to improve Dante’s opinion of the pontiff. He made no secret of his opposition to the pope’s ambitious policy; he regarded Boniface as an enemy of peace.

In 1301 Boniface summoned Charles of Valois and his army to Italy in an attempt to neutralize anti-Church forces in Florence. It was at this time, as Charles approached the city, that Dante was sent as one of three envoys on behalf of the commune to
the pope, in order to request a change in papal policy toward the city and to protest the intrigues of the Blacks. After the initial talks the other envoys were dismissed, but Dante was retained. During his absence Charles of Valois entered Florence, and the Blacks staged a revolution and gained complete control of the commune. Dante found himself sentenced to exile on trumped-up charges of graft, embezzlement, opposition to the pope and his forces, disturbance of the peace of Florence, and a number of other transgressions. Dante always felt that his difficulties had been brought on by the trickery of Boniface, and this only aggravated his already pronounced hatred for the pontiff and his methods. When Dante failed to appear to answer the charges against him, and when he did not pay the fine levied against him for his “crimes, ” a second sentence was imposed: should he ever return to the commune, he would be seized and burned alive. There is no evidence that Dante saw his beloved Florence again.

In 1302, shortly after his banishment, Dante conspired with his fellow exiles, most of them Whites, to regain admission to Florence. However, disapproving of their machinations and possibly in danger of his life because of their violence, he abandoned them and set off on his own to lead the life of an exiled courtier. It appears that he first took refuge with the Scala family at Verona. He is believed to have visited the university at Bologna, where he had been known since 1287. This visit probably occurred after the death in 1304 of his generous patron, Bartolommeo della Scala. It is generally thought that Dante traveled extensively in Italy, particularly in the north. He may have been in Padua in 1306. During that same year he appeared in Lunigiana with the Malaspina family, and it was probably then that he went to the mountains of Casentino, on the upper Arno. It is also thought that he went to Paris sometime between 1307 and 1309.

In 1310 Henry VII of Luxembourg, Holy Roman emperor from 1312 to 1313, entered Italy in an effort to reunite Church and state, restore order, and force various rebellious cities to submit to his authority. His coming caused a great deal of excitement and conflict. Florence generally opposed him, but Dante, who attributed the woes of Florence and all of Italy to the absence of imperial guidance, welcomed Henry as a savior. Dante’s state of great exaltation is documented in three letters that he wrote in 1310 and 1311. However, Henry’s invasion proved fruitless; he met opposition from all sides, including Pope Clement V, who had sent for him in the first place. Just as the situation for Henry
and his supporters began to improve, the emperor died near Siena in 1313. With him went Dante’s every hope of restoring himself to an honorable position in his city. Thus in 1314 he took shelter with the Ghibelline captain Can Grande della Scala in Verona.

Dante did not totally abandon his quest to return to his native city. He wrote letters to individual members of the government, attempting to appease those who ruled. He even sent a
canzone
to the city of Florence, praising her love for justice and asking that she work with her citizens on his behalf. Dante strove to be acceptable to the Florentines, but for many reasons the public associated him with the Ghibellines; no matter how Dante tried to free himself of suspicion, he did not succeed. He also tried to appeal to them on the grounds of his poetic ability, and sought to show that if he had cultivated poetry in the vernacular it was not for lack of skill or study. He was compelled to display his love for learning and his great respect for philosophy and matters having to do with civic education. He therefore composed two treatises (both left incomplete), the
De vulgari eloquentia
(
On Eloquence in the Vernacular
) and the
Convivio
(
Banquet
), sometime between 1304 and 1307. In them can be seen his longing to reestablish himself in the good graces of his city and to find consolation for his wretchedness in the study of matters useful to man’s well-being and his art. Thus in the ten years or so between the
Vita nuova
and the
Commedia
(
Divine Comedy
), Dante’s studies were essentially of a philosophical and artistic nature. The
Convivio
is often acknowledged as the key to his philosophical researches, while the
De vulgari eloquentia
is viewed as the key to his artistic inquiries.

Though he desperately hoped to restore his reputation as a Florentine and resume his life in the city that had turned against him, Dante refused to compromise his principles and turned down more than one opportunity to return to Florence, because such opportunities involved answering the false charges made against him. Such unwillingness to dishonor himself brought him yet another sentence of death, this one extending to his sons as well.

The last years of the poet’s life were spent at Ravenna, where he was offered asylum by Guido Nevella da Polenta, the nephew of the famous Francesca da Rimini, the only woman sinner who actually speaks in the
Inferno.
These years seem to have been serene ones. In Ravenna he was greatly esteemed, and he enjoyed a very pleasant social life and an eager following of pupils, for he was already well known for his lyrics, and especially the
Convivio, Inferno,
and
Purgatorio.
Shortly before his
death he was sent by Guido on a mission to Venice. Although Florence still rejected him, other cities very much valued his presence. Dante’s friendship with Can Grande della Scala remained intact, and Dante placed great store in him; it is to him that he dedicated the
Paradiso.
Ravenna was Dante’s home until his death on September 13 or 14, 1321.

The
Vita nuova,
one of Dante’s earliest works, is a combination of prose and poetry (thirty-one poems accompanied by a prose text). It is one of the first important examples of Italian literary prose and probably the first work of fiction that has come down to us in which the prose serves the purpose not only of offering a continuous narrative but also of explaining the occasion for the composition of each of the poems included. The originality of the
Vita nuova
consists of the functional relationship between the poetry and the prose.

In recent years the critics of the
Divine Comedy
have come to see more clearly the necessity of distinguishing between Dante the poet, the historical figure who wrote the poem in his own voice, and Dante the pilgrim, who is the poet’s creation and who moves in a world of the poet’s invention. In the case of the
Vita nuova
it is more difficult to distinguish between Dante the poet and Dante the lover, because in this book the lover, the protagonist, is himself a poet. More important, however, is the fact that the events of the
Vita nuova,
unlike those of the
Divine Comedy,
are surely not to be taken as pure fiction, and the protagonist himself is no fictional character: he is the historical character Dante at an earlier age. But we must attempt, just as we must in the case of any first-person novel, to distinguish between the point of view of the one who has already lived through the experiences recorded and has had time to reflect upon them in retrospect, and the point of view of the one undergoing the experiences at the time. What we have in the
Vita nuova
is a more mature Dante, reevoking his youthful experiences in a way that points up the folly of his younger self.

Also significant is the chronological relationship between the composition of the poems and that of the prose narrative, which reflects the way in which the author has adapted to a new purpose some of his earlier writings. In general scholars agree that when Dante, sometime
between 1292 (that is, two years after the death of Beatrice) and 1300, composed the
Vita nuova,
most, if not all, of the poems that were to appear in the text had already been written. The architecture of the work, as has been said, consists of selected poems arranged in a certain order, with bridges of prose that serve primarily a narrative function: to describe those events in the life of the protagonist that supposedly inspired the poems included in the text. By giving the poems a narrative background, Dante was able to make their meaning clearer or even to change their original meaning or purpose.

For example, though the beauty of the first
canzone
in the book,
Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore
(“Ladies who have intelligence of love”) (
chapter XIX
), is independent of its position in the work, the poem owes entirely to the preceding narrative its dramatic significance as the proclamation of a totally new attitude adopted by the young poet-lover at this time in the story. This is also true, though from a different point of view, of what is probably the most famous sonnet in the
Vita nuova, Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare
(“Such sweet decorum and such gentle grace”) (
chapter XXVI
).

Just how much of the narrative prose is fiction we shall never know. We can never be sure that a given poem actually arose from the circumstances related in the prose preceding it. A few critics believe that all of the events of the narrative reflect biographical truth; most, fortunately, are more skeptical. But it goes without saying that to enjoy reading the
Vita nuova
we must suspend our skepticism and accept as “true” the events of the narrative. For only by doing so can we perceive the significance that Dante attributed to his poems by placing them where he did. And most critics of the
Vita nuova
seem to be agreed that in interpreting this work as a piece of literature, in seeking to find its message, the reader must try to forget the biographical fact that any given poem may have been written before Dante could know the use he would make of it later on.

In the opening chapter or preface (for it is so short) of his little book the author states that his purpose is to copy from his “book of memory” only those past experiences that belong to the period beginning his “new life”—a life made new by the poet’s first meeting with Beatrice and the God of Love, who together with the poet-protagonist are the three main characters in the story. And by the end of
chapter II
all of the motifs that are important for the story that is about to unfold step by step have been introduced.