La Vita Nuova

In La Vita Nuova, Dante expresses his views on romantic love and literary creation, arguing essentially that the two are inextricably bound together. This does not mean that as love goes, so necessarily goes literary creation. To the contrary, Dante seems clearly to be saying at times that the most critical periods in his relationship with Beatrice have produced the most passionate and remarkable poetry. The study will argue that the process whereby Dante comes to understand and experience love in a mature, spiritual and transcendent sense is a process which for him requires the recording of his experiences in poetry which crystallizes those experiences for his vigilant examination. Love for Dante is a means of spiritual and creative awakening.

To a poet of passion such as Dante, what matters is not a "healthy" or "non-dysfunctional" relationship such as might be the goal of couples today, but rather a romantic, passionate, even turbulent relationship--with communication or not, with sex or not. For the sake of both the romantic heart of the poet and the vitality of his poetry, the relationship must run hot and wild. Running hot and wild, however, does not necessarily mean that Dante is finding success in his effort to win Beatrice's love.

As long as the interchange between Dante and Beatrice is driven by strong feelings, negative or positive, the poet's love is increased and he is simultaneously charged to write poetry. In the following lines, Dante shamelessly uses hi

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. The recording of the various phases of romantic love from the age of nine to adulthood is the purpose of the poetry as well as the prose in this work. Dante is not merely putting down the ramblings of a lovesick teenager, but rather wants to map out the gradual, painful and enlightening path to mature love. He includes a prophetic dream which serves as the turning point of this awakening and of the book, another correspondence between romantic love and literary creation. The dream causes him to dwell on the fact that Beatrice and himself will die, that love is therefore doomed, that all life is vanity. However, because he continues to write about what is happening to him, and to reflect at length on what he writes, he is able to transcend this apparent doom and to come to the realization that love is immortal, that Beatrice herself is immortal in that she so intimately represents love itself. The thought of her death, once so horrifying, is, when it actually comes, a culmination of Dante's awakening to the spiritual nature of love: Beatrice has gone to Paradise on high Among the angels in the realm of peace. . . . [What] caused her to die [Is] only virtue and great gentleness. . . . God was moved to wonder . . .

Category: Literature - L