Beacon Lights of History, Volume 03, part 2 | Page 9

wrote to her sonnets as the mistress of his
devotion. How could he have written sonnets without an inspiration,
unless he felt sentiments higher than we associate with either boys or
girls? The boy was father of the man. "She appeared to me," says the
poet, "at a festival, dressed in that most noble and honorable color,
scarlet,--girded and ornamented in a manner suitable to her age; and
from that moment love ruled my soul. And after many days had passed,
it happened that, passing through the street, she turned her eyes to the
spot where I stood, and with ineffable courtesy she greeted me; and this
had such an effect on me that it seemed I had reached the furthest limit
of blessedness. I took refuge in the solitude of my chamber; and,
thinking over what had happened to me, I proposed to write a sonnet,
since I had already acquired the art of putting words into rhyme." This,
from his "Vita Nuova," his first work, relating to the "new life" which
this love awoke in his young soul.
Thus, according to Dante's own statement, was the seed of a never-
ending passion planted in his soul,--the small beginning, so
insignificant to cynical eyes, that it would almost seem preposterous to
allude to it; as if this fancy for a little girl in scarlet, and in a boy but
nine years of age, could ripen into anything worthy to be soberly
mentioned by a grave and earnest poet, in the full maturity of his
genius,--worthy to give direction to his lofty intellect, worthy to be the
occasion of the greatest poem the world has seen from Homer to
modern times. Absurd! ridiculous! Great rivers cannot rise from such a
spring; tall trees cannot grow from such a little acorn. Thus reasons the
man who does not take cognizance of the mighty mysteries of human
life. If anything tempted the boy to write sonnets to a little girl, it must
have been the chivalric element in society at that period, when even
boys were required to choose objects of devotion, and to whom they
were to be loyal, and whose honor they were bound to defend. But the
grave poet, in the decline of his life, makes this simple confession, as
the beginning of that sentiment which never afterwards departed from
him, and which inspired him to his grandest efforts.
But this youthful attachment was unfortunate. Beatrice did not return
his passion, and had no conception of its force, and perhaps was not

even worthy to call it forth. She may have been beautiful; she may have
been gifted; she may have been commonplace. It matters little whether
she was intellectual or not, beautiful or not. It was not the flesh and
blood he saw, but the image of beauty and loveliness which his own
mind created. He idealized the girl; she was to him all that he fancied.
But she never encouraged him; she denied his greetings, and even
avoided his society. At last she died, when he was twenty-seven, and
left him--to use his own expression--"to ruminate on death, and envy
whomsoever dies." To console himself, he read Boethius, and religious
philosophy was ever afterwards his favorite study. Nor did serenity
come, so deep were his sentiments, so powerful was his imagination,
until he had formed an exalted purpose to write a poem in her honor,
and worthy of his love. "If it please Him through whom all things
come," said Dante, "that my life be spared, I hope to tell such things of
her as never before have been seen by any one."
Now what inspired so strange a purpose? Was it a Platonic sentiment,
like the love of Petrarch for Laura, or something that we cannot explain,
and yet real,--a mystery of the soul in its deepest cravings and
aspirations? And is love, among mortals generally, based on such a
foundation? Is it flesh and blood we love; is it the intellect; is it the
character; is it the soul; is it what is inherently interesting in woman,
and which everybody can see,--the real virtues of the heart and charms
of physical beauty? Or is it what we fancy in the object of our adoration,
what exists already in our own minds,--the archetypes of eternal ideas
of beauty and grace? And do all men worship these forms of beauty
which the imagination creates? Can any woman, or any man, seen
exactly as they are, incite a love which is kindred to worship? And is
any love worthy to be called love, if it does not inspire emotions which
prompt to self-sacrifice, labor, and lofty ends? Can a woman's smiles
incite to Herculean energies, and drive the willing worshipper to
Aonian heights, unless under these smiles are seen