The Banquet · Dante Alighieri
ON THE DATE OF THE CONVITO
It is natural to suppose that Dante's death at Ravenna in 1321 caused the Convito, a work of his latter years, to be left unfinished. But there are arguments that have been especially dwelt upon by writers who regard the Convito as a work begun before the conception of the Divine Comedy, and dropped when the Poet's mind became intent upon that masterpiece. One argument is that the Divine Comedy is nowhere mentioned or alluded to in the Convito. But as the place designed for the Convito is midway between the Vita Nuova, which preceded it, and the Divine Comedy, which was to follow, references to the poem which was not yet before the reader would have been a fault in art. Another argument is drawn from the fourteenth chapter of the Second Treatise, where (on page 84 in this volume) the shadow in the Moon is ascribed to "the rarity of its body, in which the rays of the Sun can find no end wherefrom to strike back again as in the other parts." In the second canto of the Purgatorio, Beatrice opposes that opinion, whence it may be inferred that Dante had learnt better, and he speaks of this again in a later canto (the twenty-second) as a former opinion. This leads to an inference that the Second Treatise was written before 1300.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.