OH, LOVE: the great poet, celestial love, and eternal life
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HOW IT ALL BEGAN
B
oth he and she are much better known to us by their first names than by their surnames, though their last names are hardly a secret. And almost everyone called him not by his full name, Durante, but by a familiar diminutive — in our language, that would be something like Durantik, or at best Durantyonok, maybe even Durantyshka… In Italian — Dante.
For Italians, and indeed for the whole world, he is not just the greatest poet of his country and one of the greatest poets of all time but practically the eternal benchmark of talent, poetic beauty, and literary taste. Even today, the list of the twenty best Italian books traditionally ends with his work, written over seven hundred years ago.
Of course, we also know his surname, Alighieri, but it was usually mentioned only in solemn or ceremonial contexts — for example, when the Italian navy was choosing a name for its first dreadnought in history. Such ships were usually named after great kings or legendary generals, but the Italians named their Military Ship Number One «Dante Alighieri» and considered it no less worthy. Note: «Dante Alighieri», not «Durante» — even here using the familiar diminutive. Perhaps it simply means that to all Italians, he is like family?..
The exact date of Dante’s birth is lost; only the year — 1263 — is known. He himself wrote that he was born under the sign of Gemini, which means May or June. And when he was just nine years old, a miracle occurred — he saw eight-year-old Beatrice for the first time.
It happened near the Church of Santa Margherita, just a few steps from his home. Today, there’s a marble plaque there with an inscription to remind tourists exactly where to stand in reverent silence and reflect on love. From that very moment, the old life of the nine-year-old boy ended, and a «New Life» began — La Vita Nuova, as Dante titled his lyrical diary in which he tried to comprehend what had happened to him.
HOW IT ALL CONTINUED
Beatrice, too, had a surname — Portinari. There is enough surviving information about her father, Folco Portinari, a respected and wealthy man, though, fortunately, not a nobleman — in their native Florence, nobles were stripped of all political rights. For serious crimes, the guilty were punished not only in other ways but also by being permanently recorded as nobles so that they could never again be elected to any office.
In any case, Folco Portinari was far more prosperous than Dante’s father, a mediocre lawyer who, due to financial hardship, made ends meet through the disreputable craft of moneylending. Still, they were distant relatives — Beatrice’s third cousin was Dante’s stepmother.
And so, during a city celebration, these distant relatives saw each other — a nine-year-old boy and an eight-year-old girl… What happened afterward is known only from the book. The boy grew older, and his feelings burst into the open. He began writing poetry. Naturally, the poems weren’t directly addressed to Beatrice — for centuries, courtly culture dictated that the beloved’s name be kept secret.
But Dante simply couldn’t keep his talent and emotions in check; the heroine of his work was alive and unmistakably recognizable, even though the poems were formally dedicated not to Beatrice herself but to the one Dante referred to in his book as the «lady of defense» — a common precaution of the time that kept such delicate matters within the bounds of decorum.
Yet luck was not on the lover’s side — his chosen «lady of defense» left the city, and in trying to find a replacement, he made a rather awkward misstep. Rumors began to spread around Florence, and Beatrice, in Dante’s words, «denied me her most sweet greeting, in which all my bliss was contained». In other words, she didn’t say hello.
Many might say: «So what! Not a word about him planning to marry her!» In fact, there isn’t even a hint that the love-struck youth dreamed of anything more improper! He would’ve likely dropped dead of a heart attack the very moment he allowed such a thought to cross his mind! And that seems quite believable — the kinds of things found in today’s teen paperbacks or taught in school sex-ed classes would have, for Dante, constituted a terrifying Original Sin, one a man was forced to commit in horror a few times in life — and only for the sake of producing children.
Not just anytime, but when advised by a physician (to increase the chances of conception) and, of course, an astrologer (so the future baby would have a respectable horoscope). If it worked — don’t even think about it again until planning the next child. If it didn’t — wait for a day both the doctor and astrologer approve. That’s where all the madness of the romantic Middle Ages comes from — either sin and go to hell, or don’t sin and slowly watch your marbles roll off track…
HOW IT ALL ENDED
Dante wasn’t even thinking about it — he simply loved and went mad without any specific goal. He seemed not to believe that anyone could ever truly understand the power and depth of his feelings. Without the slightest embarrassment, he did what most poets avoid and are ashamed of — he pedantically explained to his readers what he meant in each part of his canzoni, sonnets, and ballate (yes, with a t) and where exactly each section ended.
Whether these were real poems if they needed lengthy prose commentary didn’t matter to Dante — he already knew no one could truly understand him, so let them at least pity him. His works began forming what would later be known as the dolce stil nuovo — the «sweet new style» — which would influence not only Italian literature but that of the entire Western world. He praised Beatrice’s virtues, celebrated her noble soul and dignified nature.
Meanwhile, Beatrice quite peacefully and without visible distress married a wealthy banker, Simone de’ Bardi. Dante barely noticed: earthly affairs could not shake his attitude toward Beatrice. To him, she remained the best in the world, «the destroyer of all vice and the queen of virtue» — as he wrote in stark black on white — and no action of hers could alter his endless admiration.
Near the end of the book, Dante mentions dreadful omens of Beatrice’s death. He wrote this after she had already died, so all those omens seem rather suspect — human minds are very good at retrofitting events to match a known outcome. We’ve all been there… But Beatrice did, in fact, die in 1290, at the age of just 25 — likely from complications during childbirth.
Dante saw fatal symbolism in the date of her death — the number nine, the age at which he met Beatrice, appears frequently in his book as sacred and not always pleasant. And so ends La Vita Nuova, the theme exhausted, the book closing with the promise that he will one day say of Beatrice something no one has ever said of any woman.
And then he lives on, as if the great woman of his life had never died. He marries Gemma Donati — a match arranged since childhood — a young lady from a wealthier and more influential family than his own. They have children and raise a family. Dante, meanwhile, dives headlong into politics, becoming a White Guelph (don’t worry too much about what that means — in short, he opposed both the emperor and the Pope, much like the entire Soviet people). He even attained the position of Prior of the Order and the Word in his native Florence — roughly equivalent to the Minister of Internal Affairs, like Beria — God have mercy…
But the White Guelphs lost, and the victorious Black Guelphs sentenced citizen Durante Alighieri to administrative punishment for missteps in office — to be burned at the stake. To the great joy of world literature and to his own salvation, Dante managed to flee — to his great personal misfortune — forever.
Dante remained an exile throughout the entire period of writing his famous Comedy, which was soon after dubbed Divine by another Italian genius, Giovanni Boccaccio — and the epithet stuck, remarkably fitting. Both hell and paradise in Dante’s vision contain nine circles — the sacred nine from La Vita Nuova making one last appearance. Purgatory, however, has seven circles, matching the number of deadly sins — Dante couldn’t very well change that, could he?
Through hell, Dante is guided by Virgil: a pagan may be barred from heaven, but hell — no problem. With Virgil’s help, Dante described the Inferno so vividly that people whispered his dark complexion came from the flames of hell. Few disagreed — for Dante’s contemporaries, hell was far more real than, say, China. After all, who had actually seen China besides Marco Polo and his brothers Niccolò and Maffeo? Just three men — and your average Italian had next to no chance of repeating their journey. But as for the chances of being cast into hell — everyone had more than enough and would gladly sell most of them cheap to any fool willing to buy. If only one could be found…
So who, if not Virgil, leads Dante out of Purgatory and into Paradise? It’s perfectly clear — Beatrice, of course. Who else but the beloved woman could possibly lead a soul into heaven?
HOW IT WILL NEVER END
It rarely happens, but The Divine Comedy brought Dante fame during his lifetime. Fame so great that the very Florence which had cursed him softened and offered him amnesty — if only he would admit to having been guilty of something. Anything at all: jaywalking across the Ponte Vecchio, drinking wine straight from the bottle in the Baptistery of San Giovanni — just repent, say you’ve reflected and won’t do it again, thank you, dear Signoria, for our happy childhood, peace, love, chewing gum! The great poet indignantly rejected this phony «mercy» with the words: «Your pardon is not worth this humiliation. My shelter and my shield are my honor. Can I not behold the sky and stars from anywhere?»
And so Dante died in exile, in Ravenna. Eight years after his death, Cardinal Bertrand du Pouget would burn his books at the stake «for heresy», and yet later, when the stature of his poetry grew beyond imagining, an official request came from Florence to hand over the poet’s remains — as if to say, «We changed our minds about burning him; at least let the sinner’s bones rest in his native soil».
The people of Ravenna scornfully refused. But Florence wasn’t done — through their acquaintance, Pope Leo X, a Florentine himself, they secured a decree demanding the transfer of Dante’s remains back home. One could not deny the Pope, so Dante’s tomb was opened… and the sarcophagus was empty! It wasn’t until 1865 that a wooden coffin was discovered in the Church of San Francesco, bearing an inscription stating that Dante rested there. From his skull, his face was reconstructed — it resembled surviving portraits, though the nose was less hooked.
A beautiful story — but it raises questions. Was Madonna Beatrice Portinari really the walking perfection Dante claimed she was? She definitely wasn’t invented — there are documents. But in his entire life, Dante only exchanged a few brief words with her — could he have misjudged her character?
What if she had actually been quarrelsome, dull, petty, dim-witted, snarky, weepy, or scatterbrained — then what? Well, nothing. Dante kept his promise. Beatrice became not just a real woman but the embodiment of Love — the very Love «that moves the sun and the other stars».
Maybe it’s for the best that people today have become more sober and objective. But then again, no one nowadays seems able to write a Divine Comedy… And we certainly lack the capacity to see in a woman the kind of miracle Dante saw in Beatrice — and by we, I mean us men; the women aren’t to blame. Someone might say that Dante, who fell so deeply in love with a girl he never even held hands with, must’ve been some kind of lunatic — I’d agree, but I’d also ask: who cares about normal people, except maybe their close relatives?
And yet lunatics like Dante create The Divine Comedy and grant their Beatrices not only a New Life, Vita Nuova, but a hundred times more precious Vita Aeterna. Eternal Life.
What is this Vita Aeterna? Maybe it’s what made my wife suddenly burst into tears for no reason at all at Beatrice’s tomb in Florence and why I began comforting her — even though I had a lump in my own throat. And now, as I write this — that lump rises again…
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