In search of BeatriceBy Rachele Dini
In search of Beatrice
“Se quanto infino a qui di lei si dice
fosse conchiuso tutto in una loda,
poco sarebbe a fornir questa vice.
La bellezza ch’io vidi si trasmoda
non pur di lá da noi, ma certo io credo
che solo il suo fattor tutta la goda”
(Paradiso, XXX)
In Dante and Difference, Jeremy Tambling asserts that “Beatrice is throughout dealt with in the Commedia with the assumption that she will already be a familiar figure” in order to make the point that the Commedia “is not offering itself as a single, separate, autonomous work”. While I agree with Tambling’s claim about the need to read the Commedia as a part of a greater work (and the possible ways of doing this are endless—Vita Nuova a preparation for the Commedia, Commedia as “sequel” to Vita Nuova, etc) there is something inherently flawed with the first part of his statement: the idea of Beatrice as “familiar” figure. For Beatrice is actually anything but familiar. Tambling is, of course, referring to the fact that anyone reading the Commedia who has read the Vita Nuova will recognize Beatrice—but the implication is that such a reader will have more knowledge of her than someone reading Dante for the first time. In actual fact, the opposite is the case. In the Vita Nuova , we have accompanied Dante in his breathless chase through visions and painstaking re-writings, elaborate lies and fainting fits in the arguably vain attempt to make sense of, to track or write down a woman who has always managed to be the proverbial two steps ahead. By the opening lines of the Inferno, Beatrice is only familiar in her unfamiliarity: we know her as the one who escaped the Vita Nuova unmarked and unwritten, leaving Dante to “non dire più di questa benedetta infino a tanto che io potesse più degnamente trattare di lei”, in hopes that one day he will be able to “dicer di lei quello che mai non fue detto d'alcuna.” Furthermore, this unfamiliarity and intangibility is essential—indeed, vital—to both the Vita Nuova and the Commedia. Beatrice serves as an excuse for Dante’s quest—a justification for being lost, a reason to write, a goal to reach, a focal point. And in order to sustain this sort of search for over twenty years, in order for the quest to continue from the initial “libello” all the way through the Commedia and arguably beyond, she must perforce evade categorization: she must be Florentine woman, object of love and lust, emblem of the unattainable, Christ-figure and muse and, at the same time, none of these. To be Beatrice is to slip untouched through the fetters of classification. No wonder, then, that twenty years and ninety canti after the Vita Nuova, we find Dante again leaving off writing about her: “ma or convien che mio seguir desista piú dietro a sua bellezza, poetando, come all’ultimo suo ciascun artista” (Paradiso XXX, 31). It is also significant that he follows this with “lascio a maggior bando che quel della mia tuba” (34): after demonstrating how impossible it is to fully express Beatrice, he draws particular attention to the inadequacy of his writing. This is a constant throughout both Vita Nuova and Commedia: the inability to write goes hand in hand with the failure to reach Beatrice; where Dante is unable to follow her it is because language falls short. Hence the continuous struggle to find the perfect expression, the right turn of phrase, the image that will capture an idea: for every time language succeeds in capturing an image, we are that much closer to capturing Beatrice. This, of course, is inherently problematic in the Vita Nuova, where Dante is not only endeavouring to find the right form, justify using the Vernacular, explain the content of his sonnets, explicate his dreams and express his devotion: he is also obliged to keep this devotion concealed. He has to find the words, catch up with the subject the words are to “grasp”, and then find a way of using his newly-minted language to simultaneously conceal his subject and reveal his feelings about her.(And then of course she dies, and he literally go to hell and back to get her again.) The enormity of such a task is expressed in chapter 15: “E pero’ propuosi di prendere per matera de lo mio parlare sempre mai quello che fosse loda di questa gentilissima: e pensando molto a cio’, pareami avere impresa troppo alta matera quanto a me, sí che non ardia di cominciare; e cosí dimorai alquanti dí con disiderio di dire e con paura di cominciare”. (This paralysis occurs again in the opening of Paradiso IV, when Dante likens his indecision between speech and silence to “Intra due cibi, distanti e moventi/d’un modo, prima si morría di fame,/che liber’uomo l’un recasse ai denti”).
In “Approaching the Vita Nuova,” Robert Pogue Harrison talks about Beatrice’s grace embodying the “revelation of some prospect that lies ahead, in which case the possibility of salvation remains open”, implying that Beatrice serves as a vessel towards salvation, a sort of guiding light or proof of eventual salvation. I would modify this statement and say that to pursue Beatrice means to believe that there is salvation, and that as long as she is in front of us, we can be sure that salvation lies ahead: but she must evade our grasp in order for pursuit to be possible. It is the movement towards her that gives meaning to entering the selva oscura, the possibility of writing (or, in our case, reading) about her again that make the next sixty canti worthwhile about her that makes trudging through the next sixty canti worthwhile. It is knowing that, even upon meeting her again in Purgatorio XXX and being led by her through the Paradiso, she will continue to shake off our clinging hands, provoking us into self-improvement, picking up the pace, climbing on, that gives the Paradiso its momentum. Why else would there be a Paradiso? One might have left off “tosto nella vista [gli] percosse l’alta virtú che giá [gli] avea trafitto prima ch[e essi] fuor di puerizia foss” (Purg XXX, 40): it is the fact that she will still not be ours that provides the reason to continue.
The ultimate proof that this unattainability is “giusta” lies in the last lines of the Commedia. Dante is asking a mathematical question (as he tends to do when reason eludes him, giving a number, a measurement, or a mathematical or geometric label to something in order to reassure himself that he has not lost his grip, that he still has some semblance of control): “veder volea come si convenne l’imago al cerchio e come s’indova”. His wish is granted and although “non eran da ció le proprie penne” he is illuminated. It is in this moment that we, the readers, are left behind: for ostensibly “all’alta fantasia [which in the Convito, according to Sinclair, is defined as “the power by which the intellect represents what it sees”—ie, we might say, the ability to express or write] qui mancó possa”—in other words, it is impossible to depict the knowledge he has attained. After making this flimsy excuse, he lets himself be capovolto by his “disio e l’velle”, a state which he crucially depicts as one of movement. What is significant about this final passage is precisely the fact that the reader is dropped or mollato so abrubtly, for it immediately gives rise to a number of questions, the most obvious being what is the answer to Dante’s question, but just as importantly, why is it that speech eludes him so suddenly? After all, he has struggled with words throughout—why this complete abandon? Let us take Dante’s geometric question to represent all that he has been seeking and the solution to be a mathematical or numerical Beatrice. If that is the case, then we might be forgiven for suspecting that even if Dante has obtained the answer, he himself cannot decipher, let alone transcribe, her. Beatrice has escaped again and the chase continues, in a motion that is described at one and the same time with the verb “volgeva” (think volgere, capovolgere—winding, turning on its head, ie both without end and dizzying and disorientating) and as a “rota ch’igualmente é mossa”, an image that brings to mind both a cyclical and thus endless motion (the circular turning of the wheel) as well as a movement forward (the wheel as transportation). “L’amor che move il sole e l’altra stelle” spurs Dante himself on, mystified by that which he cannot reach, seeking to write the ever-elusive Beatrice.
© Rachele Dini |