The New Life · Dante Alighieri
_INTRODUCTION._
The _Vita Nuova_ (the Autobiography or Autopsychology of Dante’s youth till about his twenty-seventh year) is already well known to many in the original, or by means of essays and of English versions partial or entire. It is therefore, and on all accounts, unnecessary to say much more of the work here than it says for itself. Wedded to its exquisite and intimate beauties are personal peculiarities which excite wonder and conjecture, best replied to in the words which Beatrice herself is made to utter in the _Commedia_: “Questi _fù tal_ nella sua vita nuova.”[2] Thus then young Dante _was_. All that seemed possible to be done here for the work was to translate it in as free and clear a form as was consistent with fidelity to its meaning; and to ease it, as far as possible, from notes and encumbrances. [2] “Purgatorio,” C. xxx. It may be noted here how necessary a knowledge of the _Vita Nuova_ is to the full comprehension of the part borne by Beatrice in the _Commedia_. Moreover, it is only from the perusal of its earliest and then undivulged self-communings that we can divine the whole bitterness of wrong to such a soul as Dante’s, its poignant sense of abandonment, or its deep and jealous refuge in memory. Above all, it is here that we find the first manifestations of that wisdom of obedience, that natural breath of duty, which afterwards, in the _Commedia_, lifted up a mighty voice for warning and testimony. Throughout the _Vita Nuova_ there is a strain like the first falling murmur which reaches the ear in some remote meadow, and prepares us to look upon the sea.
“I’ve seen the troops out of Caprona go On terms, affrighted thus, when on the spot They found themselves with foemen compass’d so.” (CAYLEY’S _Translation_.) A word should be said here of the title of Dante’s autobiography. The adjective _Nuovo_, _nuova_, or _Novello_, _novella_, literally _New_, is often used by Dante and other early writers in the sense of _young_. This has induced some editors of the _Vita Nuova_ to explain the title as meaning _Early Life_. I should be glad on some accounts to adopt this supposition, as everything is a gain which increases clearness to the modern reader; but on consideration I think the more mystical interpretation of the words, as _New Life_ (in reference to that revulsion of his being which Dante so minutely describes as having occurred simultaneously with his first sight of Beatrice), appears the primary one, and therefore the most necessary to be given in a translation. The probability may be that both were meant, but this I cannot convey.[3]
But it occurs to me that a less irrational escape out of the difficulty than any I have seen suggested may possibly be found by linking this passage with the close of the sonnet at page 104 of the _Vita Nuova_, beginning, “I felt a spirit of love begin to stir,” in the last line of which sonnet Love is made to assert that the name of Beatrice is _Love_. Dante appears to have dwelt on this fancy with some pleasure, from what is said in an earlier sonnet (page 39) about “Love in his proper form” (by which Beatrice seems to be meant) bending over a dead lady. And it is in connection with the sonnet where the name of Beatrice is said to be Love, that Dante, as if to show us that the Love he speaks of is only his own emotion, enters into an argument as to Love being merely an accident in substance,—in other words, “Amore e il cor gentil son una cosa.” This conjecture may be pronounced extravagant; but the _Vita Nuova_, when examined, proves so full of intricate and fantastic analogies, even in the mere arrangement of its parts, (much more than appears on any but the closest scrutiny,) that it seems admissible to suggest even a whimsical solution of a difficulty which remains unconquered. Or to have recourse to the much more welcome means of solution afforded by simple inherent beauty: may not the meaning be merely that any person looking on so noble and lovely a creation, without knowledge of her name, must have spontaneously called her Beatrice,—_i.e._, the giver of blessing? This would be analogous by antithesis to the translation I have adopted in my text.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.