The originality of the Vita nuova consists of the functional relationship between the poetry and the prose.

In recent years the critics of the Divine Comedy have come to see more clearly the necessity of distinguishing between Dante the poet, the historical figure who wrote the poem in his own voice, and Dante the pilgrim, who is the poet’s creation and who moves in a world of the poet’s invention. In the case of the Vita nuova it is more difficult to distinguish between Dante the poet and Dante the lover, because in this book the lover, the protagonist, is himself a poet. More important, however, is the fact that the events of the Vita nuova, unlike those of the Divine Comedy, are surely not to be taken as pure fiction, and the protagonist himself is no fictional character: he is the historical character Dante at an earlier age. But we must attempt, just as we must in the case of any first-person novel, to distinguish between the point of view of the one who has already lived through the experiences recorded and has had time to reflect upon them in retrospect, and the point of view of the one undergoing the experiences at the time. What we have in the Vita nuova is a more mature Dante, reevoking his youthful experiences in a way that points up the folly of his younger self.

Also significant is the chronological relationship between the composition of the poems and that of the prose narrative, which reflects the way in which the author has adapted to a new purpose some of his earlier writings. In general scholars agree that when Dante, sometime between 1292 (that is, two years after the death of Beatrice) and 1300, composed the Vita nuova, most, if not all, of the poems that were to appear in the text had already been written. The architecture of the work, as has been said, consists of selected poems arranged in a certain order, with bridges of prose that serve primarily a narrative function: to describe those events in the life of the protagonist that supposedly inspired the poems included in the text. By giving the poems a narrative background, Dante was able to make their meaning clearer or even to change their original meaning or purpose.

For example, though the beauty of the first canzone in the book, Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore (“Ladies who have intelligence of love”) (chapter XIX), is independent of its position in the work, the poem owes entirely to the preceding narrative its dramatic significance as the proclamation of a totally new attitude adopted by the young poet-lover at this time in the story. This is also true, though from a different point of view, of what is probably the most famous sonnet in the Vita nuova, Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare (“Such sweet decorum and such gentle grace”) (chapter XXVI).

Just how much of the narrative prose is fiction we shall never know. We can never be sure that a given poem actually arose from the circumstances related in the prose preceding it. A few critics believe that all of the events of the narrative reflect biographical truth; most, fortunately, are more skeptical. But it goes without saying that to enjoy reading the Vita nuova we must suspend our skepticism and accept as “true” the events of the narrative. For only by doing so can we perceive the significance that Dante attributed to his poems by placing them where he did. And most critics of the Vita nuova seem to be agreed that in interpreting this work as a piece of literature, in seeking to find its message, the reader must try to forget the biographical fact that any given poem may have been written before Dante could know the use he would make of it later on.

In the opening chapter or preface (for it is so short) of his little book the author states that his purpose is to copy from his “book of memory” only those past experiences that belong to the period beginning his “new life”—a life made new by the poet’s first meeting with Beatrice and the God of Love, who together with the poet-protagonist are the three main characters in the story. And by the end of chapter II all of the motifs that are important for the story that is about to unfold step by step have been introduced.

The first word of the opening sentence is “Nine”: “Nine times already since my birth the heaven of light had circled back to almost the same point, when there appeared before my eyes the now glorious lady of my mind, who was called Beatrice even by those who did not know what her name was. ” The number nine will be repeated twice more in the next sentence (and it will appear another twenty times before the book comes to an end). In this opening sentence the reader not only finds a reference to the number nine of symbolic significance, but he also sees the emphasis on mathematical precision that will appear at frequent intervals throughout the Vita nuova.

In the opening sentence also the child Beatrice is presented as already enjoying the veneration of the people of her city, including strangers who did not know her name. With the words “the now glorious lady of my mind” (the first of two time shifts, in which the figure of the living Beatrice at a given moment is described in such a way as to remind us of Beatrice dead) the theme of death is delicately foreshadowed at the beginning of the story. As for the figure of Beatrice, when she appears for the first time in this chapter she wears a garment of blood-red color—the same color as her shroud will be in the next chapter.

In the next three sentences the three main spirits are introduced: the “vital” (in the heart), the “animal” (in the brain), and the “natural” (in the liver). They rule the body of the nine-year-old protagonist, and they speak in Latin, as will the God of Love in the chapter that follows (and once again later on). The words of the first spirit describing Beatrice anticipate the first coming of Love in the next chapter and suggest something of the same mood of terror. The words of the second spirit suggest rapturous bliss to come (that bliss rhapsodically described in chapter XI), while in the words of the third spirit there is the first of the many references to tears to be found in the Vita nuova. It is the spirit of the liver that weeps. It is only after this reference to the organ of digestion that Love is mentioned. He is mentioned first of all as a ruler, but we learn immediately that much of his power is derived from the protagonist’s imagination—this faculty of which there will be so many reminders in the form of visions throughout the book.

We are also told that Love’s power was restricted by reason, and later in the book the relation between Love and reason becomes an important problem. Two more themes are posited in this beginning chapter, to be woven into the narrative: the godlike nature of Beatrice and the strong “praise of the lady” motif. Both sound throughout the chapter as the protagonist’s admiration for Beatrice keeps growing during the nine years after her first appearance.

Thus the opening chapter prepares for the rest of the book not only in the obvious way of presenting a background situation, an established continuity out of which single events will emerge in time, but also by setting in motion certain forces that will propel the Vita nuova forward—forces with which Dante’s reader will gradually become more and more familiar.

In chapter XLII, the final chapter of the Vita nuova, the poet expresses his dissatisfaction with his work: “After I wrote this sonnet there appeared to me a miraculous vision in which I saw things that made me resolve to say no more about this blesséd one until I should be capable of writing about her in a nobler way. ” As the result of a final vision, which is not revealed to the reader, he decides to stop writing about Beatrice until he can do so more worthily. The preceding vision he had in the course of the story had made him decide to keep on writing; this one made him decide to stop. If the main action of the book is to be seen, as some critics believe, as the development of Dante’s love from his preoccupation with his own feelings to his enjoyment of Beatrice’s excellence and, finally, to his exclusive concern with her heavenly attributes and with spiritual matters, then this action, and the Vita nuova itself, ends in an important sense in failure.

To understand the message of the book, to understand how it succeeds through failure, we must go back in time and imagine the poet Dante, somewhere between the ages of twenty-seven and thirty-five, having already glimpsed the possibility of what was to be his terrible and grandiose masterpiece, the Divine Comedy.