Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER V. BEATRICE. Italian commentators on the Vita Nuova are numerous, but by no means in agreement as to the intention of the author with respect to the character of Beatrice in the narrative. They agree that the Vita Nuova is a necessary preparation for the study of the Divine Comedy. They do not agree in the rendering of what Dante calls the rubric, Incipit Vita Nova, some translating it, "Here begins the new or regenerate" others the "youthful or early life of the poet." They do not agree as to the nature of the narrative, whether it is a real history of persons and events, or whether it is a fiction or allegory, and as such the parent or suggester of the romances which afterwards appeared in various parts of Europe. The elder Rossetti adopted the opinion of some of his predecessors, that Beatrice is an imaginary character, that the Vita Nuova is a treatise on Love, purely intellectual, in the form of an allegory; that Wisdom in its most extended sense, personified under the name of Beatrice, was the object of Dante's love; that by Love he meant Study, in the same way as he confesses he used it in the Convito, where he imagines Philosophy "in fashion like a gentle Lady, nor could I fancy her otherwise than piteous, whereupon so truly did I gaze upon her with ordinary eyes, that scarcely could I turn myself away.... In short time I began so much to feel her sweetness that her love chased away and destroyed all other thoughts in me." In the Vita he also remarks that his love withdrew his thoughts from all meaner things, an idea which is repeated in the second canto of the Inferno: --O Beatrice, why Dost thou not succour him who loved thee so That he, for thee, the vulgar herd did fly? The theory that I am now advocating explains that...