1—
Early Experiments:
Vita nuova 19

In the second book of the Convivio, writing of the period following Beatrice's death, Dante says:

. . . dico che, come per me fu perduto il primo diletto de la mia anima, de la quale fatto è menzione di sopra, io rimasi di tanta tristizia punto, che conforto non mi valea alcuno. Tuttavia, dopo alquanto tempo, la mia mente, che s'argomentava di sanare, provvide, poiché né il mio, né l'altrui consolare valea, ritornare al modo che alcuno sconsolato avea tenuto a consolarsi; e misimi a leggere quello non conosciuto di molti libro di Boezio, nel quale, cattivo e discacciato, consolato s'avea. E udendo ancora, che Tullio scritto avea un altro libro, nel quale, trattando de l'Amistade, avea toccate parole de la consolazione de Lelio, uomo eccellentissimo, ne la morte di Scipione amico suo, misimi a leggere quello. E avvegna che duro mi fosse ne la prima entrare ne la loro sentenza, finalmente v'entrai tanto entro, quanto l'arte di gramatica ch'io avea e un poco di mio ingegno potea fare; per lo quale ingegno molte cose, quasi come sognando, già vedea, si come ne la Vita nuova si può vedere.
(2.12; Dante 1964 1: 180–182)

Although this passage has sometimes been taken to mean that Dante read the Consolatio and the De amicitia only after the composition of the Vita nuova,^[1] it is now recognized that both texts were major influences on the "little book";^[2] nonetheless, the prevailing view seems still to be that only with the Convivio does Dante's writing reflect any strongly conceptual influence from Boethius or other Neoplatonic writers.^[3] We believe the evidence presented in this chapter will bring some qualification of that view: Dante means that when he first read Boethius he understood many philosophical ideas as if in a dream, and that they can be seen in the Vita nuova.

As Bruno Nardi showed,^[4] beginning with the Convivio Dante's works show a marked influence of Neoplatonic ideas: to mention only the most important, a qualified emanationism related to the Liber de causis and a view of the development of the human embryo and of the "origin

of the human soul," to use Nardi's phrase, close to Albertus's and Siger's and very different from Aquinas's. We do not propose that these ideas already appear in the Vita nuova, of course; rather, the themes and structure of "Donne ch'avete intelletto d'amore," as they emerge from a close examination of the poem and its divisione, seem clearly to derive on the one hand from Boethius's Consolatio, especially "O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas," discussed in the Introduction, and on the other, especially in the emphasis on division itself, from some of the most characteristic ideas of the Greek Christian Neoplatonists—the Pseudo-Dionysius, widely read and commented; Maximus the Confessor, accepted as an auctor; and conceivably Gregory of Nyssa. All three of these had been translated by Johannes Scotus Eriugena. Maximus's glosses on the Pseudo-Dionysius were included in the Pseudo-Dionysian compendia produced in the thirteenth century, as were generous portions of Eriugena's remarkable Periphyseon or De divisione naturae, which included long quotations from all three.^[5] The most important and accessible of the three was of course the Pseudo-Dionysius; Dante could have read his ideas in one of the numerous scholastic commentaries, of which the most interesting are those on the De divinis nominibus.^[6]

Emanationist ideas were available to Dante in many texts, from Proclus's Elementatio to the Liber de causis to Avicenna to Albert (who like many others had supposed the Liber de causis to be by Aristotle). A main peculiarity of the Greek tradition introduced into the West by Eriugena, however, in addition to its insistence on the identity of grammatical/dialectical and metaphysical division,^[7] is the stress placed—similar to Boethius's—on the third member of the triad monê-próodosepistrophê: the movement of the return, both of the cosmos and of the human soul, to their source. In the Pseudo-Dionysius's De divinis nominibus and in Eriugena's De divisione naturae, furthermore, Dante would have found further examples of literary structure consciously fashioned, like "O qui perpetua," on the same triad,^[8] and there can be little doubt that they would have aroused a very lively interest in him.^[9] In any case, there is no question about Dante's knowledge of Boethius, and his reading of the Consolatio may in fact be sufficient to account for Vita nuova 19; more speculative questions will be restricted to the notes.

In the Vita nuova, Dante associates the stages of his development as a poet with the stages of his love for Beatrice. In the second chapter he relates that his debut as a poet circulating a sonnet to other Florentine poets took place because of his mysterious dream of Beatrice in the

arms of the god of love, and that his friendship with his "first friend" (Guido Cavalcanti) dated from Guido's reading and replying to Dante's sonnet.^[10] Similarly, in chapters 18 and 19 he tells how, when Beatrice had denied him her greeting, the turmoil into which he was plunged led eventually, through a conversation with a group of ladies, to his undertaking an altogether new theme in his poems, praise of Beatrice, as opposed to the self-regarding poetry he had composed before. As Charles S. Singleton (1949 55–77) shows, this change of subject, which brings the first major structural articulation of the Vita nuova, is also an important step in the dialectic of the book, which leads, in his phrase, "From Love to Caritas."

The poem in question is the first canzone in the Vita nuova (which is structured symmetrically around the central group of three canzoni), "Donne ch'avete intelletto d'amore." It will be the focus of our attention here, for, as we shall see, Dante was fully justified in regarding it as a major poetic breakthrough. Our approach to the poem will be through the "division" of it that Dante made in the prose of chapter 19. (Text and translation of all of chapter 19 may be found in Appendix 4.)

The "divisions" of the Vita nuova, in which Dante indicates for almost all of the poems their subdivision into parts, are, as Bruno Sandkühler showed, firmly based in the thirteenth-century procedures of commentary on scriptural and philosophical texts, which always proceed by listing topics and indicating the initial phrase of each subdivision.^[11] Nevertheless, Dante's divisions have puzzled many readers, for their function, aside from what today seems a pedantic exactitude, is by no means obvious. We believe, however, that close attention to them, especially to the division Dante makes of" Donne ch'avete," will be illuminating. "Donne ch'avete" emerges, in fact, as a remarkable experiment in Neoplatonic poetic form, anticipating in many ways the structural intensities of the rime petrose.

At the end of chapter 19, after what seems to many readers a tiresomely detailed subdivision of "Donne ch'avete," Dante claims a certain reticence:

Dico bene che, a più aprire lo intendimento di questa canzone, si converrebbe usare di più minute divisioni; ma tuttavia chi non è di tanto ingegno che per queste che son fatte la possa intendere, a me non dispiace se la mi lascia stare, ché certo io temo d'avere a troppi comunicato lo suo intendimento pur per queste divisioni che fatte sono, s'elli avvenisse che molti le potessero audire.
(19.22; Dante 1980 132)

This is one of a number of passages of what might be called "reticent commentary" in the Vita nuova;^[12] the term might even be used to characterize the book as a whole. These passages stress the distinction between the simple and the discerning; they seem to imply the existence of a small initiated elite and to suggest that the book has an esoteric meaning.^[13] There is an obvious contradiction between the circulation of the poems (cf. lines 57–58, and chapter 20, "Appresso che questa canzone fue alquanto divolgata tra le genti . . . [Dante 1980 133]), represented as intended by the poet, and the fear of its being understood that is mentioned here, a contradiction that is never resolved.

In our view, this reticence is meant to whet the interpreter's curiosity. For it is striking that Dante says quite plainly that understanding the poem ("per più aprire lo intendimento di questa canzone") requires dividing it; as the previous sentence says, what is easily understood need not be divided for the reader: "però che questa ultima parte è più lieve a intendere non mi travaglio di più divisioni." In other words, the canzone is not easily understood, and the divisions are a clue to its meaning.^[14] We may further observe at this point that Dante introduces the poem itself with a reference to the importance of its structure, which the division is to explain: "cominciai una canzone con questo cominciamento, ordinata nel modo che si vedrà di sotto ne la sua divisione" (Dante 1980 116–117; emphasis added).

In order to follow the clues Dante has offered, we must look closely at the divisione itself and then take it to the poem. We begin with Dante's assertion that he will divide this canzone "più artificiosamente"—more carefully, more elaborately—than the preceding poems, so that it may be better understood. The prominence given the division of this poem is part of the systematic emphasis the poem receives: it inaugurates the new topic of praise (chapter 18), a major step forward in Dante's development, he says; it is the first canzone in the book; it is prepared by the major incidents of the fainting spell of chapter 16 and the discussion with the ladies of chapter 18; and its composition—at least that of its first line—is credited to some kind of divine inspiration, which Dante says came to him as he was walking beside a clear river.^[15] Considering the care with which Dante has articulated the placing of "Donne ch'avete" in the Vita nuova as a whole, it should not be a surprise that its divisione has some importance as well.

Dante's procedure remains constant throughout this divisione: he first announces into how many subparts he is dividing the portion

under examination; then he describes the content of each subpart; finally he quotes the first words, the incipits, of all but the first subpart (as we shall see, the rather insistent parallels of phrasing are not casual). Dante first divides the poem as a whole into three parts: I, a proem; II, the "intento trattato"; and III, a "serviziale" or "ancella" (the commiato ). Although he does not raise the question of the relation of the three parts to the stanzas of the poem (a point to which we will return), the incipits show that they are related to the stanzas as follows:

I. Proem: stanza 1

II. Intento trattato: stanzas 2–4

III. Ancella: stanza 5

In the division of part I, four subparts are distinguished, but division does not descend below a first level; in the division of part II, however, successive subparts are subdivided. Thus while the divisione of part I suggests paratactic arrangement, that of part II is strongly hypotactic:

II. Intento trattato: stanzas 2–4

A. "che di lei si comprende in cielo": stanza 2

B. "che di lei si comprende in terra": stanzas 3–4

1. "da la parte de la nobilitade de la sua anima": stanza 3

2. "da la parte de la nobilitade del suo corpo": stanza 4

a. "bellezze che sono secondo tutta la persona": stanza 4.1–8

b. "bellezze che sono secondo diterminata parte de la persona": stanza 4.9–14

i. "li occhi, li quali sono principio d'amore": stanza 4.9–12

ii. "la bocca, la quale è fine d'amore": stanza 4.13–14

The division of part II is what will mainly concern us. It has excited some discussion. Early on it was pointed out that stanzas 2 and 3 receive no subdivision;^[16] Leo Spitzer called attention to the fact that in each case it is the second of two parts that is subdivided:

Si constata che nella seconda parte della canzone (che comprende tre strofe) continua a suddividere sempre il secondo membro, di modo che le suddivisioni ulteriori toccano precisamente gli aspetti terreni, corporei, particolari della donna. . . . Le strofe 2a e 3a non sono suddivise, non perché contengono la cosa più importante, ma perché contengono gli as-

petti relativamente generici: con le suddivisioni Dante scende sempre più nei particolari. Si deve tenere presente che il modo di pensare scolastico non rinnegava ciò che era particolare, corporeo, terreno, bensì lo accettava e, partendo da esso, saliva in alto.^[17]

Spitzer's suggestion for the reason behind Dante's procedure had the merit of seeking a conceptual, even philosophical basis, and it is interestingly close to the mark, even though he allowed his complacent generalization about Scholasticism to satisfy his curiosity.^[18] It was Bruno Sandkühler who made explicit the basis of Spitzer's remark: parts are subdivided at levels that are lower and lower on the chain of being and of value (heaven, soul, body, whole, parts),^[19] since in both Platonic and Aristotelian terms the generic is by definition at a higher metaphysical level than the particular. We may add that the subdivided parts themselves naturally become smaller and smaller: part II is three stanzas long; part II. B, two stanzas long; part II.B.2 one stanza long; part II.B.2.b, six lines; part II.B.2. b. ii, two lines.

As Spitzer observed, in his division of part II Dante in each case subdivides only the second member, despite the fact that what is left undivided is in two cases (II.A and II.B.1) an entire stanza. Now we have already mentioned the insistent parallels of phrasing: again and again Dante writes, "Questa seconda parte si divide in due." And as we have seen, Dante suggests at the end of the divisione that "a più aprire lo intendimento di questa canzone, si converrebbe usare di più minute divisioni." To the best of our knowledge, no one has ever taken up Dante's suggestion.^[20] If we were to do so, the divisione itself offers the clue to its completion: di più minute divisioni means more minute divisions not only in the sense of smaller ones, as at first appears, but also in the sense of more of them: più can modify either minute or divisioni. In other words, to complete the division we should follow the procedure Dante has used: he has divided the second parts, we should divide the first parts, and we should do so according to the principles we have seen him follow. Will we find that questa prima parte si divide in due? We will indeed. Let us begin with part II.A (stanza 2):

                      Angelo clama in divino intelletto 
              e dice: "Sire, nel mondo si vede 
              maraviglia ne l'atto che procede 
18          d'un'anima che 'nfin qua su risplende."
                Lo cielo, che non have altro difetto

              che d'aver lei, al suo segnor la chiede,
              e ciascun santo ne grida merzede.
22          Sola Pietà nostra parte difende,
                     che parla Dio, che di madonna intende:
              "Diletti miei, or sofferite in pace
25          che vostra spene sia quanto me piace
                 là 'v'è alcun che perder lei s'attende,
              e che dirà ne lo inferno: O mal nati,
28          io vidi la speranza de' beati."

We wish a principle of division parallel to Dante's "che si comprende di lei nel cielo" / "che si comprende di lei in terra," and it is readily found: the two parts of the stanza treat what is said of her by the angels and the blessed and what is said of her by God, and the second part begins there: Sola Pietà (line 22). In other words, we now have

II. A. Heaven

1. Angels and blessed

2. God

     B. Earth

1. Soul

2. Body

But it is necessary to look more closely at part II.A.1. Can it be subdivided? First one angel is represented as speaking, then heaven, then all the santi, all the inhabitants of heaven—clearly an instance of part versus whole (i.e., Dante's criterion for dividing stanza 4). But if part II.A.1 can be divided thus, what is the point of the division? That is, what is the difference between what the single angel says and what heaven as a whole and all the blessed say? Let us look closely, for at this point the richness of Dante's idea will begin to be apparent.

                        Angelo clama in divino intelletto 
              e dice: "Sire, nel mondo si vede
              maraviglia ne 1'atto che procede
18          d'un'anima che 'nfin qua su risplende."
                 Lo cielo, che non have altro difetto 
              che d'aver lei, al suo segnor la chiede,
              e ciascun santo ne grida merzede.

The single angel says that Beatrice's atto is so resplendent that it shines all the way up to heaven. Heaven as a whole asks God for Beatrice herself. Each of these parts invokes the idea of the completion of a circle of procession and return: Beatrice's atto is the result of her virtues; the use of the term risplende in line 18 is based on the idea that the atto that proceeds from Beatrice is itself a reflection of the special grace God has bestowed on her, a returning of God's light back to him. It is only a partial return of Beatrice, of course. What all of heaven asks is the return to heaven of all of Beatrice. In parts II.A.1.a and II.A.1.b, then, there is an ascent both in the nature of the speakers (first a single angel, then all heaven) and in what is said; in both cases there is the return of what has proceeded from God, but in the first instance it is partial, in the second complete. In other words, the subdivision of this first part of part II.A reveals a rather elaborate enactment of the Neoplatonic principle of procession and return, at several metaphysical levels.

Dante uses the Neoplatonic term procedere both in the poem (17: "l'atto che procede d'un'anima") and in the divisione ("le sue vertudi effettive che de la sua anima procedeano "), and of course we have not done justice to the maraviglia that is asserted of Beatrice: her atto, her vertudi effettive, are marvelous because of their effect in the world, which will be the subject of stanzas 3 and 4. Thus there are two levels at which Dante sees procession and return: from God to Beatrice back to God, and from Beatrice to others back to God (as well as back to Beatrice). That the term procedere is used explicitly only of her virtues, and not of the divine procession, of which her radiance is the reflection, is an instance of the same reticence that governs Dante's division of the poem.^[21]

So far we have discussed only the first half of stanza 2. What of the second half, where God speaks? If the subject of what is said in the first half is heaven's awareness of Beatrice and its desire for her return, in the second half God speaks of his intention that Beatrice remain on earth for a while. The blessed are asked to suffer this decision in peace, for them a consummating telos of acquiescence in God's just will.^[22] These last seven lines of stanza 2 fall into two groups: God's reply has two parts (II.A.2.a and b), the first asking the angels to accept his will, the second concerning alcun (obviously Dante himself), of whom two things are said: (i) that he is on earth and will lose Beatrice and (ii) that he will tell the damned in hell of her. Here the circular pattern of pro-

cession and return is enlarged. The poem ascends to God as speaker (all of part II.A.2), but what God says concerns (a) the postponement of return and (b) further procession, for if the angel's perspective included earth and heaven, God speaks of heaven, earth, and hell. Return is implied in (b) because no doubt Dante will return from hell,^[23] but also because the last line of the stanza (Dante speaking within God's speech within Dante's poem) has heaven mentioned in hell, just as hell is mentioned in heaven, and because Dante will testify in hell that he saw the one awaited (hoped for) in heaven ("la speranza de' beati"), a return to the theme of the desire of the blessed for Beatrice's return.

Only when God speaks do we get the full statement of "che si comprende di lei nel cielo," for, appropriately enough, what God says is more comprehensive, embraces not only the present referred to by the angel but also Beatrice's future and beyond, not only heaven and earth but hell as well. Return is implied, but Dante's loss of Beatrice through her death is made parallel to the loss of God, which the souls in hell have suffered through the second death, an idea that stanza 3 will develop further. Stanza 2 ends, then, both with the hope of return and with two ultimate separations or divisions: soul from body (death) and soul from God—two furthest extensions, as it were circumferential points, where the circle of progression and return may seem to break down. Finally, it is worth noting that stanza 2, encompassing the entire cosmos, has the widest range of reference of any stanza of the poem: from the angels chosen as midpoint, stanza 2 looks up to God, down to hell. In sum:

II.A. "che si comprende di lei in cielo"

1. Angels and blessed

a. Angel (part ): Beatrice's atto (part ) returns

b. All (whole ): let Beatrice herself (whole ) return

2. God

a. Acquiesce

i. in my will (general )

ii. that she remain on earth (particular )

b. Dante will

i. lose her (particular )

ii. speak in hell of the hope of the blessed (more general )

The upward movement within II.A.1 and from II.A.1 to II.A.2 is matched by the downward motion within II.A.2 (as in the second parts Dante has outlined). God speaks to what is below him, revealing his will for those who are on earth, including the one who will journey to hell. Beatrice's return from earth to heaven is implied in both II.A.2.a and b, just as Dante's return from hell is implied in II.A.2.b.

From its second stanza, then, "Donne ch'avete intelletto d'amore" makes clear that it is based on the Neoplatonic idea of procession and return and that it mirrors, with all its characteristically Dantesque dramatis personae and its Aristotelianisms, the descent of God's creative power into reality and multiplicity, at each stage enacting in one respect or another the pattern of return as well as of procession. And it needs to be emphasized that Dante's theological precision here is striking; he understands how the Neoplatonic analysis (always based on the model monê-próodos-epistrophê^[24] ) was applied to different metaphysical levels. The descent into particulars observed by Spitzer is associated not just with descent on the metaphysical scale of value, as Sandkühler saw, but with the fundamental principle of Neoplatonic cosmogony: its origin the utterly transcendent One, the cosmos is generated by a descent into increasing differentiation and multiplicity—that is, by metaphysical division.^[25] Dante's explicit divisione refers only to the descent; his not dividing the first part in each case leaves it up to the reader to discover the principle of return that is also built into the structure of the poem. In the Vita nuova as a whole, then, Dante's use of the procedure of division, including the placing of the divisioni (before the death of Beatrice, after the poems; after her death, before the poems), is probably also to be connected with these Neoplatonic ideas and will no doubt richly repay further study.^[26]

Turning now to stanza 3, our first observation is that Beatrice's effect on the world is that of mediating the return of souls to God. She is an instrument, then, of reunification, and the topic of the stanza (part II.B.1), according to Dante's divisione, is precisely her vertudi effettive, her power to change others. After the three initial lines (a link with stanza 2 announcing the new topic), stanza 3 is clearly divided into two parts: Beatrice's effect (1) on cor villani (4–8), and (2) on noble hearts, alcun che degno sia (9–14): once more we find an ascending order. Each of these two parts, again, is subdivided according to a similar principle—brevity of encounter versus stare a vedere and parlarle. Thus:

II.B.1. "che di lei si comprende in terra"

a. Her effect on ignoble hearts

i. Brief encounter: their thoughts die (partial death)

ii. Staying to gaze

a . "diverria nobil cosa" (turn, conversion)

ß. "o si morria" ( full death)

b. Her effect on noble hearts

i. Brief encounter: forgives all (temporary grace, virtù effettiva )

ii. Speaking with her: cannot die badly ( full salvation/return)

She is an agent of reunification—or of an ultimate division. The midpoint of stanza 3, and thus of the entire poem, is of course lines 35–36. The two halves of the poem are bridged by this pair of lines, whose subject is the effect Beatrice has on those cor villani who gaze on her for more than an instant. On the human beings whom the poem is counting as lowest (apart from the damned), Beatrice's effect is a final discrimination, reached after the partial death of line 34. Either they become noble (and therefore begin the ascent of return to the Creator) or they suffer the division of body and soul. And the stanza goes on, always in ascending order within II.B.1.b.ii, to those already worthy; they become even more so, first temporarily, then permanently. The last line of the stanza means, of course, that anyone who has spoken with Beatrice is assured of salvation (just as, one presumes, those cor villani who are not converted to nobility in line 36 die both the first death of the body and the second death of the soul—damnation—which would refer back to the ending of the previous stanza).

At the very end of the intento trattato—at the end of stanza 4, in the particularized praise of Beatrice's body—we descend, according to the divisione, from eyes to mouth. This is a puzzling passage, for it really does not seem possible, without the gloss, to take the last three lines of the stanza as referring to the mouth,^[27] and it is striking that this is the only second subpart in the whole division of part II for which Dante does not provide the incipit. In any case, here at the end of the body of the poem we have, according to the gloss, the collocation of beginning (eyes) and end (mouth), the latter identified with Beatrice's greeting. The love her eyes awaken constitutes the turning of the soul toward the

goal: saluto/salute (cf. lines 41–42). Alpha and Omega: at the furthest point of his division of the poem, Dante again refers to the entire circle of procession and return.

The end of love has been referred to in the first part of the stanza, though in a larger sense:

Poi la reguarda e fra se stesso giura 
che Dio ne 'ntenda  di far cosa nova.

God's purpose, the end of his creation of Beatrice, then, is some miracle, some novo, naturally involving the return to him of some portion of his creation.^[28] The term intendere is an important one in the entire context of chapter 19. It has a considerable range of meanings, from perceive to understand to mean to intend (referring to purpose). Here it clearly refers to God's purpose. When used of God in stanza 2, however, its meaning is less clear cut: "che parla Dio, e di madonna intende" (23), which has as its most obvious meaning "God speaks, referring to Beatrice"; in the light of the parallel construction in line 53, the term here implies that God has a purpose for Beatrice, an idea that is of course clear from the rest of what he says. We shall return to the related terms intento and intendimento, used both of the poet and of the poem, below.^[29]

Now the function claimed for Beatrice in "Donne ch'avete" (and in the Vita nuova as a whole) derives from the Christian Neoplatonic conception of man as the midpoint of creation, the summing up of the rest of creation, and at the midpoint between heaven and earth, partaking of both and for that reason uniquely capable of mediating between them, of reconciling them.^[30] The rest of creation was created to serve man and suffered in his fall; its salvation depended on that of man. Man's fall necessitated the further mediation between the divine and the human, effected by Christ, who was thought of as the only perfect realization of the mediating function of mankind as well. Christ's sacrificial death is matched in importance by the metaphysical reunification he was thought to carry out.^[31]

Charles Singleton established that the Vita nuova as a whole is governed by the analogy between Beatrice and Christ. His analysis (1949 esp. 18–24) dwelled particularly on the parallels established in chapter 23 (at the center of the book) between Dante's dream of Beatrice's death and the Gospel accounts of Christ's death. The idea of Beatrice's mediating the return of souls-—in chiave neo-platonica, as we have tracked it

in "Donne ch'avete"—is of course inseparable from the analogy drawn between her death and Christ's. Her death is referred to repeatedly in "Donne ch'avete": implicitly in the desire of the blessed for her return and in the prediction of Dante's losing her, explicitly in the term cosa mortale.^[32] And in the central stanza of the poem, literal death is mentioned three times: "Madonna è disiata in sommo cielo" refers to Beatrice's death, "diverria nobil cosa o si morria" to the death of the ignoble, and "non pò mal finir chi l'ha parlato" to that of the ennobled. In its symmetrical arrangement with death at the center, "Donne ch'avete" answers to the overall pattern of the Vita nuova. Furthermore, in the order Beatrice-ignoble-noble we observe the pattern of descent and return that dominates the entire poem.

We just discussed the use of the term intendere of God. The same term is used of the reader's understanding of the poem, and closely related terms, intento and intendimento, refer to the subject and meaning of the poem. As we saw, the term as applied to God refers both to purpose and to reference. It is clear that the intendimento of the poem is an analog of God's intention. Translating into terms appropriate to poems, we may say that for Dante poems have meaning because they are made to an end, a purpose. How does "Donne ch'avete" define its own purpose?

According to both the poem and the divisione, the poem is the fruit of the poet's pensare. It is the child ( figliuola ) of the poet's thought, and we may again look to the center of the poem to note the effect the sight of Beatrice has specifically on thought: for the unworthy, the effect is a negative one—"onne 10r pensiero agghiaccia e pere"; for the worthy, it is the opposite of freezing—being set afire, "spirti d'amore inflammati" reach the heart. According to stanza 1, this fire is in the mind: he writes, "per isfogar la mente." Now the poem is addressed to "Donne ch'avete intelletto d'amore," and the prominence of the term intelletto in the first line is repeated in the first line of the next stanza: "Angelo clama in divino intelletto." This is an emphatic collocation. The status of intellect as such is at stake in the poem, as is its relation to love. It is worth noting that the first line, in addition to its usual gloss "ladies who have understanding of love," means also "ladies who have understanding from Love," in whom Love has awakened intellect. Obviously, there is a close relation among the terms intendere, intelletto, and intelligenza—for the grasping of the grand pattern of the procession of the world from God

and its return to him, and of Beatrice's part in it, is the work of the intellect, of the intellect fired by love:

       Oltre la spera che più larga gira 
passa 'l sospiro ch'esce del mio core; 
intelligenza nova, che l'Amore 
piangendo mette in lui, pur su lo tira. 
           (41.1–4)

"Donne ch'avete," then, is a reflection back to Beatrice of the radiance, the divine fire, that has emanated from her, and this pattern of procession and return is an analog of the procession and return of Beatrice's own atto described in stanza 2. As Beatrice's radiance is a reflection of God's radiance and ultimately returns to him (both directly and reflected from those whom she affects), so the poem (the atto that proceeds from the poet) is a reflection of Beatrice's light and returns to her by way of the intermediaries it will find. This is the subject of the commiato:

"Insegnatemi gir, ch'io son mandata 
a quella di cui laude so adornata" . . . 
      non restare ove sia gente villana: 
ingegnati, se puoi, d'esser palese 
solo con donne o con omo cortese, 
   che ti merranno là per via tostana . . .

Dante's poem will also return to God. In this way the final stanza is a coherent fulfillment of the circular pattern of the rest of the poem.

It needs to be emphasized that the discovery in "Donne ch'avete" of a structure based on the principles of procession and return is not the imposition of some arbitrary pattern. The questions we have taken to the first parts were determined by the method followed by Dante himself in his division of the second parts. Furthermore, the consistency in the first parts (as, following Dante, we have subdivided them) of the ascent from the first to the second subdivision (as opposed to descent from the first part to the second part in Dante's division) is impressive, much too great to be the result of anything but conscious planning. We believe we have clearly established that the relation between the poem and the divisione is extremely close, that the divisione is no merely adventitious addition. That the Vita nuova reflects some of the major philosophical ideas in the Consolatio is, furthermore, no more than Dante suggests in Convivio 2.12, and it would be only natural to expect him to have responded intensely to—and with an effort to emulate—

Boethius's poems. It is well known that "O qui perpetua" remained a key text for him.^[33]

And the points of analogy between "Donne ch'avete" and Boethius's "O qui perpetua" are numerous. Both poems have as their subject the circle of procession and return, and both have a structure closely based on this pattern. Within the intento trattato of "Donne ch'avete" we begin in heaven and rise to God, as in Boethius's poem we begin with God. The theoria of each poem then descends into the created universe, but while Boethius's imitation of the ascent proceeds from the elements up through soul and intellect, Dante follows a descending order but at each degree enacts in some way the phase of return (in this, particularly, seeming to reveal the influence of the Greek fathers). Both poems involve two types of return, Boethius's more obviously than Dante's: the active return of souls to God and the fact that the stability of the world is itself a result of its "rest in motion"; but while Boethius focuses on the World-Soul, Dante uses the example of Beatrice's radiance. Both poems juxtapose ends and beginnings (though this is trner of Dante's comment on Beatrice's eyes and mouth in the divisione than of the poem itself);^[34] both poems stress the divine intellect (in Boethius, explicitly the repository of the forms of things); and both have as a fundamental theme the ascent of the intellect toward a vision of the relation of the cosmos to its maker, an ascent motivated by intense yearning.

Dante's division of part II always into two parts obscures the obvious symmetry of its structure (and that of the entire poem) by stanzas:

Stanza 1. Proem

Stanza 2. Heaven

Stanza 3. Soul

Stanza 4. Body

Stanza 5. Commiato

And here, in addition to the fact that the entire structure of the poem is built on the circle of procession and return, is a particularly conspicuous analogy with Boethius's poem—in both, the principle of soul occupies the central, mediating portion of the poem,^[35] and the exactly central lines state a major turning and division: in "O qui perpetua," the division of the World-Soul into the two motions of the Same and the Other; in Dante's poem, the effect of Beatrice's virtues in discriminating worthy and unworthy and in converting souls. In both poems, soul

is the middle principle of three levels of creation, between intellect (the angels) and body. Appropriately to Dante's more explicitly Christian approach to the theme of mediation, the principle of soul at the midpoint of "Donne ch'avete" (Beatrice's soul, not the World-Soul) includes the principles of both life and death—explicitly, the death of the ignoble, but associated through its central position in the poem with the death that holds the center of the Vita nuova as a whole.^[36]

We believe it is plausible that Dante's adaptation of the pattern of processio/ reditus must have been based on direct knowledge of Neoplatonic texts in addition to Boethius (though exactly which it is difficult to determine). He had certainly grasped some fundamental notions, such as the identity between logical/grammatical and metaphysical categories characteristic of Neoplatonism. In the Vita nuova, what Dante seems to have taken from his Neoplatonic readings is focused on the procession and return of God's radiance in relation to souls and on the nature of logic—aspects, in other words, that could be most readily assimilated to the fundamental Christological patterns of the book—rather than on the more properly metaphysical cycle of procession and return in the cosmos itself (though he clearly alludes to the latter by using the technical term procedere in his divisione of "Donne ch'avete"). Although he uses "O qui perpetua" as a partial model for "Donne ch'avete," his canzone—like the Vita nuova as a whole—avoids the cosmological as such. Later, Dante was to evolve a synthesis of Neoplatonic emanationism and Christian creationism parallel in certain respects to the eclecticism of Boethius's own Christian philosophy. In this regard we can see in this first experiment a continuity with some later tendencies, especially that of eschewing the notion of the World-Soul.^[37]

Several other questions arise at this point. The first concerns the relation between the poem and its divisione, and is closely related to the question of when "Donne ch'avete" was composed. Was the divisione written at the time of the first collection of poems into a book, as presumably most of the prose of the Vita nuova was? If so, was the poem revised then so as to fit it more closely to the divisione? Or is it more reasonable to believe that both the poem and the divisione were revised sometime later? Certain passages in the Vita nuova, of course, are most easily explained on the hypothesis of a later revision, such as the concluding promise to write of Beatrice "what has never been said of any woman," as well as lines 42–43 of "Donne ch'avete." It might seem that

the Neoplatonic ideas in "Donne ch'avete" and its divisione, too, could only be the result of later revision.

This notion, however, is held in little favor today, largely because no sign of a later revision appears in the manuscript tradition.^[38] We believe the most reasonable view to be that "Donne ch'avete" and its divisione, more or less as we have them, were integral to the first version of the Vita nuova. There are several grounds for this view, in addition to the argument from the manuscript tradition. One is the integral relation of the structure of "Donne ch'avete" to that of the Vita nuova as a whole.^[39] Another is the fact that in the period immediately following the Vita nuova Dante avoided in his poetry the Neoplatonic pattern of procession and return, which suggests that the experiment of "Donne ch'avete" (and that of the rest of the book, which really needs to be examined in greater depth along the lines of this discussion) was confined to the first period of composition of the Vita nuova and was felt by Dante, during the more intensive philosophical studies reflected in the Convivio, to be insufficiently grounded. In particular, he may well have seen that the thorny issue of emanationism required further study and reflection. This would help explain the passage in Book 2 of the Convivio with which we opened this chapter.^[40]

The evidence we have presented here is also relevant to the question of when Dante began thinking of a poem along the lines of the Commedia. For that work is dominated by the pattern of return, and the Paradiso becomes increasingly Neoplatonic as Dante approaches the source of all procession; indeed, the Commedia is coherent with the poetic procedures of "Donne ch'avete" as well as of the petrose, as we try to show in Chapter 6. Although it would not make much sense to suppose that Dante already had the Commedia specifically in mind when he wrote "Donne ch'avete," his demonstrated debt to Boethius in that poem and the intensity of his experimental grounding of the structure of a poem in a philosophical concept make it very likely that he had already begun to meditate on the possibilities of the idea of return as the basis of a long poem. This is to our minds the simplest and likeliest explanation of the conclusion of the Vita nuova and, perhaps, of lines 42–43 of "Donne ch'avete."

In any case, "Donne ch'avete intelletto d'amore" is an extremely ambitious poem which Dante had every right to consider a major turning point in his development, as chapters 18 and 19 assert it to be. It is en-

tirely characteristic of the dialectic of the Vita nuova, furthermore, that the theme of praise, represented in chapter 18 as adopted almost in aporia, turns out to involve the lover in larger and larger issues. The poem may be a "giovane soave e piana," but she is a "figliuola d'amore," a daughter of the cosmic principle of love: her youthful beauty masks a great intellectual toughness and daring.