he endures. Dante declares, in fact, that he first knew love with Beatrice when he first laid eyes on her when they were both nine. He describes this love at first sight in the beginning of the work in lines which reveal a grown man's romantic, poetic descriptions of feelings and observations which at the time must have been quite inarticulate and overwhelming. An essential feature of romantic love to Dante is precisely this passionate sense that a transcendent event has taken place which is like no other in human experience:
The moment I saw her I say in all truth that the vital spirit, which dwells in the utmost depths of the heart, began to tremble so violently that I felt the vibration alarmingly in all my pulses, even the weakest of them (29).
Dante's claims as to the clarity and romantic nature of th
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