THE NEW LIFE. (LA VITA NUOVA.)
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Dante Alighieri and Rossetti, Dante Gabriel
This sonnet is not divided, because its own words sufficiently declare it.
Ye pilgrim-folk, advancing pensively
As if in thought of distant things, I pray,
Is your own land indeed so far away—
As by your aspect it would seem to be—
That this our heavy sorrow leaves you free
Though passing through the mournful town midway;
Like unto men that understand to-day
Nothing at all of her great misery?
Yet if ye will but stay, whom I accost,
And listen to my words a little space,
At going ye shall mourn with a loud voice.
It is her Beatrice that she hath lost;
Of whom the least word spoken holds such grace
That men weep hearing it, and have no choice.
A while after these things, two gentle ladies sent unto me, praying that I would bestow upon them certain of these my rhymes. And I (taking into account their worthiness and consideration) resolved that I would write also a new thing, and send it them together with those others, to the end that their wishes might be more honourably fulfilled. Therefore I made a sonnet, which narrates my condition, and which I caused to be conveyed to them, accompanied by the one preceding, and with that other which begins, “Stay now with me and listen to my sighs.” And the new sonnet is, “Beyond the sphere.”
This sonnet comprises five parts. In the first, I tell whither my thought goeth, naming the place by the name of one of its effects. In the second, I say wherefore it goeth up, and who makes it go thus. In the third, I tell what it saw, namely, a lady honoured. And I then call it a “Pilgrim Spirit,” because it goes up spiritually, and like a pilgrim who is out of his known country. In the fourth, I say how the spirit sees her such (that is, in such quality) that I cannot understand her; that is to say, my thought rises into the quality of her in a degree that my intellect cannot comprehend, seeing that our intellect is, towards those blessed souls, like our eyeweak against the sun; and this the Philosopher says in the Second of the Metaphysics. In the fifth, I say that, although I cannot see there whither my thought carries me—that is, to her admirable essence—I at least understand this, namely, that it is a thought of my lady, because I often hear her name therein. And, at the end of this fifth part, I say, “Ladies mine,” to show that they are ladies to whom I speak. The second part begins, “A new perception;” the third, “When it hath reached;” the fourth, “It sees her such;” the fifth, “And yet I know.” It might be divided yet more nicely, and made yet clearer; but this division may pass, and therefore I stay not to divide it further.
Beyond the sphere which spreads to widest space
Now soars the sigh that my heart sends above:
A new perception born of grieving Love
Guideth it upward the untrodden ways.
When it hath reached unto the end, and stays,
It sees a lady round whom splendours move
In homage; till, by the great light thereof
Abashed, the pilgrim spirit stands at gaze.
It sees her such, that when it tells me this
Which it hath seen, I understand it not,
It hath a speech so subtile and so fine.
And yet I know its voice within my thought
Often remembereth me of Beatrice:
So that I understand it, ladies mine.
After writing this sonnet, it was given unto me to behold a very wonderful vision:[32] wherein I saw things which determined me that I would say nothing further of this most blessed one, until such time as I could discourse more worthily concerning her. And to this end I labour all I can; as she well knoweth. Wherefore if it be His pleasure through whom is the life of all things, that my life continue with me a few years, it is my hope that I shall yet write concerning her what hath not before been written of any woman. After the which, may it seem good unto Him who is the Master of Grace, that my spirit should go hence to behold the glory of its lady: to wit, of that blessed Beatrice who now gazeth continually on His countenance qui est per omnia sæcula benedictus.[33] Laus Deo.
THE END.
Source notes
NOTES
1.Gentile. The word means “noble” rather than (in its modern shade of meaning) “gentle.” “Genteel” would sometimes apply, but has ceased to be admissible in serious writing.
2. “Purgatorio,” C. xxx.
3. I must hazard here (to relieve the first page of my translation from a long note) a suggestion as to the meaning of the most puzzling passage in the whole Vita Nuova,—that sentence just at the outset which says, “La gloriosa donna della mia mente, la quale fù chiamata da molti Beatrice, i quali non sapeano che si chiamare.” On this passage all the commentators seem helpless, turning it about and sometimes adopting alterations not to be found in any ancient manuscript of the work. The words mean literally, “The glorious lady of my mind who was called Beatrice by many who knew not how she was called.” This presents the obvious difficulty that the lady’s name really was Beatrice, and that Dante throughout uses that name himself. In the text of my version I have adopted, as a rendering, the one of the various compromises which seemed to give the most beauty to the meaning. 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.
4. “Here beginneth the new life.”
5. In reference to the meaning of the name, “She who confers blessing.” We learn from Boccaccio that this first meeting took place at a May Feast, given in the year 1274 by Folco Portinari, father of Beatrice, who ranked among the principal citizens of Florence: to which feast Dante accompanied his father, Alighiero Alighieri.