The Library Annex

Though her image, which was always present in my mind, incited Love to dominate me, its influence was so noble that it never allowed Love to guide me without the faithful counsel of reason, in everything in which such counsel was useful to hear.

In La Vita Nuova, Dante fuses together thoughtful structure and sentimental pondering. He incites pathetic wrestling matches between his youthful awkwardness and budding intellect finding that only when he weds that intellect with experience will he truly find knowledge. The short treatise reads like a lesson manual; a collection of lectures similarly framed with the empirical prowess of patterns – as if objectifying the heart to academic rigor. And yet this marriage nourishes his own growth if not the growth of the academic subject.

Is La Vita Nuova about Beatrice? Love? Poetry? Or Dante? One can easily argue for Poetry, as each chapter describes the inspiration behind the later sonnets. The prose quite literally read like speeches in a lecture hall to students embarking on their journey towards knowledge via the mastering of poetic craft. However, one might say that Beatrice obviously takes center stage since no other concept comes to light without her. Or can they take this a step further and credit Love as Dante’s subject? One can also argue how Dante wrote La Vita Nuova about himself. Through its autobiographical nature and episodes of intimate insight into Dante’s mind and heart, we better understand the maturing nature of he who would write The Divine Comedy and its concepts of fusion between Love and knowledge.

Abandoning the exclusive nature of the question, readers may embrace all possibilities and therein discover the quality of human knowledge and experience in a little book about a young man’s juvenile crush and obsession with a young woman and his own learning.

I have never fallen in love with poetry. I do understand how the grace of poetry lies in its ability to speak the unspoken. The medium can articulate that which, to know, may only be experienced. And yet he explains his poetry in prose. The juxtaposition occurs in nearly every chapter. With or without intention, Dante appears to compare and contrast the two forms. Can prose achieve the same outcomes as poetry? Which communicates and which explores? If we try and compare prose to poetry, already understanding its inherent contrasts in form and language, it most resembles poetry by means of articulating an idea or inspiring an idea through parable, anecdote or story. While poetry may suit itself better to describing the idea outright, prose does so by describing a scene which can inspire the idea into the readers’ mind.. In this sense, for poetry, the writer and their word choices play a vital role in the readers’ conception of that idea. Therefore, the distance between the reader and the idea is occupied by the writer, who, while standing between, practices his craft to expose the idea of which they block. A prose writer, perhaps, has an easier time of simply getting out of the way.

Dante favors outline, structure and categorization. He intermingles this scholarly approach with visions and philosophy. From detailing questions and thoughts to breaking down sections of each sonnet, he transforms the conceptual into the measurable. The book as a whole has three parts: the first, infatuation in so far as Beatrice effects Dante; the second, praise from Dante as he attempts to glorify her as an entity unto herself gracing the world with her presence; and third, lamentation for her death. And yet, what would come next for Dante in subsequent parts? He, along with Love itself, endures. Beatrice stands high in the heavens as the epitome of worthiness in Love itself; no longer only for Dante but for the world. She has transformed and transcended her connection with Dante and in so doing has rendered Dante himself transcendent in his craft and understanding. He can now marry experience and intellect – imbued with new life.



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