Vita Nuova (XX) ~ Dante Alighieri

Beatrice Addressing
by Dante William Blake


Vita nuova (XX, 1-8)

(1) After this canzone had become rather well known, one of my friends who had heard it was moved to ask me to write about the nature of Love, having perhaps, from reading my poem, acquired more confidence in me than I deserved.

(2) So, thinking that after my treatment of the previous theme it would be good to treat the theme of Love and, feeling that I owed this to my friend, I decided to compose a poem dealing with Love. And I wrote this sonnet, which begins: Love and the gracious heart.

(3) Love and the gracious heart are a single thing, as Guinizelli tells us in his poem: one can no more be without the other than can the reasoning mind without its reason.

(4) Nature, when in a loving mood, creates them: Love to be king, the heart to be his home, a place for Love to rest while he is sleeping, perhaps for just a while, or for much longer.

(5) And then the beauty of a virtuous lady appears, to please the eyes, and in the heart desire for the pleasing thing is born; and this desire may linger in the heart until Love's spirit is aroused from sleep. A man of worth has the same effect on ladies.

(6) This sonnet is divided into two parts. In the first I speak of Love as a potential force; in the second I speak of him as potentiality realized in action. The second part begins: And then the beauty.

(7) The first part is again divided into two: first, I tell in what kind of substance this potentiality resides; secondly, I tell how this substance and this potentiality are brought into being, and how the one is related to the other as matter is to form.

 (8) The second subdivision begins: Nature, when. Then when I say: And then the beauty, I explain how this potentiality is realized in action: first, how it is realized in a man, then how it is realized in a lady, beginning: A man of worth.

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