Notes on Dante

La Vita Nuova

1. The concept of fore-knowledge plays an important part in La Vita Nuova, as at a relatively early age, Dante is assembling the construction he will use to greater effect in the The Divine Comedy. For one thing, a universe centered on Beatrice.

How does he know at an early age that Beatrice will become the lynch-pin to his masterpiece, so many years prior to writing it? And before all of the travails that found him exiled?

2. Without the idea of medieval Courtly Love, this book would be unfathomable. Dante's emphasis on the importance of a woman's greeting being the be-all/end-all in his life is alien to the 21st century. However, Dante raises the ideal of the unattainable love to all-consuming heights. It becomes the basis of all creation to him.

3. The architectural quality of Dante's writing establishes itself, as if he were building a cathedral, rather than writing a narrative.

4. The self-conscious, self-commenting aspect of this book is entirely absent from the Divine Comedy. Here, much of the narrative is given over to explanations of the structure of the poems he includes and commentary on them. This takes the form of a more scholarly piece of criticism, rather than a tale told in a straightforward way. However, it is both a tale and a non-sequential set of literary observations, wrapped in autobiography. A very complex little book where Divine Comedy is more linear, spacious and open.

5. La Vita Nuova, I thought, does little to prepare one for the magnificence of the Divine Comedy. It's like reading Dubliners in anticipation of Ulysses or Finnegans' Wake. It pokes along, is chaste, spare and subtle. The Divine Comedy beats you over the head, presents you with an overload of surreal action and description.

6. I was unable to locate a dual language La Vita Nuova, unfortunately. Although I don't know Italian, scanning the verse of Dante is instructive, rather than relying on the pale English translation. Dante's language is musical, inventive, masterful in its use of rhyme, alliteration, etc.