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 pilot 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 testament already be a beaten(prenominal) figure in ordering to make the point that the Commedia is not offering itself as a single, separate, autonomous work. While I agree with Tamblings claim virtually the need to read the Commedia as a fail of a great work (and the possible ways of doing this are barricadelessVita Nuova a grooming 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. T ambling is, of course, referring to the feature that any genius reading the Commedia who has read the Vita Nuova will recognize Beatricebut the implication is that such a reader will bind more knowledge of her than person 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, luxuriant lies and fainting fits in the arguably vain attempt to make sense of, to undercut 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 unnoted and unwritten, leaving Dante to no... ...tric question to represent all that he has been seeking and the resultant role to be a mathematical or numerical Beatrice. If that is the case, then we capacity be forgiven for suspecting that even if Dante has obtai ned the answer, he himself cannot decipher, let alone transcribe, her. Beatrice has escaped once more 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 orbitual and thus endless motion (the circular turning of the wheel) as come up 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.