Beatrice in Dante Alighieris Divine Comedy and the Vita Nuova Essay

Beatrice in Dante Alighieris Divine Comedy and the Vita NuovaSe quanto infino a qui di lei si dicefosse conchiuso tutto in una loda,poco sarebbe a fornir questa vice.La bellezza chio vidi si trasmodanon pur di l da noi, ma certo io credoche 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 play off with Tamblings claim about the need to read the Commedia as a part of a greater work (and the possible ways of doing this are perpetualVita 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 scarcely familiar. Tambling is, of course , referring to the fact that anyone reading the Commedia who has read the Vita Nuova will recognize Beatricebut the implication is that such a reader will have more knowledge of her than psyche 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 2 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 no... ...tric question to encounter 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, capovolgerewinding, turning on its head, ie both without end and dizzying and disorientating) and as a rota chigualmente 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). Lamor che move il sole e laltra stelle spurs Dante himself on, mystified by that which he cannot reach, seeking to write the ever-elusive Beatrice.