We must imagine him rereading the love poems of his earlier years and feeling shame for a number of them. He would have come to view Beatrice as she was destined to appear in the Divine Comedy, and indeed as she does appear briefly in the Vita nuova, specifically in that essay (chapter XXIXM) on the miraculous quality of the number nine (the square of the number three, the symbol of the Blessed Trinity)—that is, as an agent of divine salvation.

Having arrived at this point, he would have chosen from among his earlier love poems many that exhibit his younger self at his worst, in order to offer a warning example to other young lovers and especially to other love poets. This would imply on Dante’s part, as he is approaching the midmost part of life (the “ mezzo del cammin di nostra vita” of the Divine Comedy), a criticism of most of the love poetry in Italian literature, for which his century was famous, and also that for which Provençal poetry was famous in the preceding century.

One might even say that the Vita nuova is a cruel book; cruel, that is, in the treatment of the human type represented by the protagonist. In the picture of the lover there is offered a condemnation of the vice of emotional self-indulgence and an exposure of its destructive effects on a man’s integrity. The “tender feelings” that move the lover to hope or despair, to rejoice or to grieve (and perhaps even to enjoy his grief), spring from his vulnerability and instability and self-love; however idealistically inspired, these feelings cannot, except spasmodically, lead him ahead and above as long as he continues to be at their mercy. In short, he must always fall back into the helplessness of his self-centeredness. The man who would realize a man’s destiny must ruthlessly cut out of his heart the canker at its center, the canker that the heart instinctively tends to cultivate. This is, I am convinced, the main message of the Vita nuova. And the consistent, uncompromising indictment it levels has no parallel in the literature of Dante’s time. But of course the Vita nuova offers more than a picture of the misguided lover: there is also the glory of Beatrice and the slowly increasing ability of the lover to understand it, although he must nevertheless confess at the end that he has not truly succeeded.

Both in the treatment of the lover and in that of Beatrice, Dante has gone far beyond what he found at hand in the love poetry of the troubadours and their followers. He has taken up two of their preoccupations (one might almost say obsessions) and developed each of them in a most original way: the lover’s glorification of his own feelings, and his glorification of the beloved. Of the first he has made a caricature. Unlike his friend Guido Cavalcanti, also highly critical of the havoc wrought by the emotions within a man’s soul, who makes of the distraught lover a macabre portrait of doom, Dante has presented his protagonist mainly as an object of derision.

As to the glorification of the lady, all critics of the Vita nuova admit that Dante has carried this idealization to a degree never before reached by any poet, and one that no poet after him will ever quite attempt to reach. However blurred may be the lover’s vision of the gracious, pure, feminine Beatrice, Dante the poet, in chapter XXIX, probes to the essence of her being and presents the coldness of her sublimity. Thus the tender foolishness of the lover is intensified by contrast with the icy perfection of the beloved.

With a few exceptions, Dante’s lyrical poems (and not only those contained in the Vita nuova) are inferior as works of art to those of Cavalcanti and Guinizelli, or, for that matter, to those of Bernart de Ventadorn and Arnaut Daniel. The greatness of the Vita nuova lies not in the poems but in the purpose that Dante made them serve. Certainly the book is the most original form of recantation in medieval literature—a recantation that takes the form of a reenactment, seen from a new perspective, of the sin recanted.

The Convivio, or Banquet, which Dante wrote in Italian sometime between 1304 and 1308, is an unfinished piece of work (it would be difficult to call it a work of art). His purpose in writing it is explained in the opening sentence, which is a quotation from Aristotle’s Metaphysics: “All men by nature desire to know. ” Dante invites his reader to a feast consisting of fourteen courses (only three were completed), of which the “meat” of each is a canzone concerning love and virtue, while the “bread” is the exposition of it. Dante invites to his Banquet all those worthy people who, because of public duties, family responsibilities, and the like, have not been introduced to the science of philosophy. It is the laymen whom Dante invites to his feast, for it is through philosophy, he believes, that they can attain the temporal goal of happiness.

While the Vita nuova is Dante’s monument to his first love, the lady Beatrice, the Convivio is a monument to his “second love, ” the lady Philosophy. That the lady who offers to console Dante a year after the death of Beatrice in the Vita nuova is that same lady Philosophy of the Convivio is revealed in book II, chapter II.

To begin with, then, let me say that the star of Venus had already revolved twice in that circle of hers that makes her appear at evening or in the morning, according to the two different periods, since the passing away of that blessed Beatrice who dwells in heaven with the angels and on earth with my soul, when that gentle lady, of whom I made mention at the end of the Vita nuova, first appeared to my eyes, accompanied by love, and occupied a place in my mind.

What attracted the poet-protagonist to this lady was her offer of consolation. In the Vita nuova his love for the lady at the window lasts for a short time, and he refers to this love as “the adversary of reason” and “most base, ” but in the Convivio he calls this love “most noble. ” It should be remembered, however, that Philosophy in the Vita nuova tries to make the young protagonist forget the fact that he has lost Beatrice —something of this earth (such as Philosophy) cannot replace the love of Beatrice. After the vision in chapter XXXIX of the Vita nuova, after grasping the true significance of his lady, he returns to Beatrice and vows to never again stray. In doing this he is to be thought of not as rejecting Philosophy, but rather as rejecting the ideal of replacing Beatrice with Philosophy. Never in the Convivio does he consider such a replacement.

Here Dante exalts learning and the use of reason to the highest, for only through knowledge can man hope to attain virtue and God. The Convivio seems to be the connecting link between the Vita nuova and the Divine Comedy, since a love that at first has earthly associations turns out to have religious significance. Furthermore, just as Dante praises reason in this work, we know that in the Divine Comedy, reason in the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom is man’s sole guide on earth, except for the intervention of divine grace.

One might say that the Convivio is the philosophical counterpart of the Vita nuova. Even from a quick reading of the canzone that opens book II, “ Voi che ’ ntendendo “ (“You who by understanding”), the reader easily sees that, given the appropriate prose background, it might well have fitted into the Vita nuova.