Stages of Love, Steps to Hell: Dante's Rime Petrose

Author(s): Bruce Comens

Source: MLN , Jan., 1986, Vol. 101, No. 1, Italian Issue (Jan., 1986), pp. 157-188
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2905521

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 Stages of Love, Steps to Hell:
Dante's Rime Petrose

Bruce Comens

The rime petrose have generally provoked a mixed response from

critics. While most agree in admiring the ingenuity and technical
virtuosity evident in the poems, the content seems to be something
of an embarrassment. The disparity between the ferocity of the
forsaken lover in "Cosi nel mio parlar" and the various celebrations
of love in the Vita Nuova and the Commedia is particularly trouble-
some. Recent critics have conceded more importance to the content
of the poems, with some, such as Enrico Fenzi and Mario Marti,
also arguing that they occupy a position of considerable impor-
tance in Dante's poetic development.l Yet the prevailing attitude

1 Enrico Fenzi, "Le rime per la donna Pietra," Miscellanea di studi danteschi
(Genova: Mario Bozzi, 1966), 229-309; Mario Marti, "Rime realistiche," Nuove letture
dantesche, vol. 8 (Firenze: Felice Le Monnier, 1976), 209-230; see also Peter Bon-
danella, "Arnaut Daniel and Dante's Rime Petrose: A Re-Examination" in Studies
in Philology, 68 (1971), 416-34; and John Freccero, "Medusa: The Letter and the
Spirit" in Yearbook of Italian Studies, 1972, 1-18.
None of the critics sees the poems as an ordered sequence, or recognizes the
irony in Dante's treatment of the narrator, perhaps because Amor is automatically
assumed to be positive. As a result, the relation between meaning and technical
innovation remains rather vague, as, indeed, does the meaning itself.
Thus Fenzi, in particular, identifies many of the themes, motifs and tensions with
which I am concerned, but attributes them to other causes and gives them other
interpretations. He summarizes, "il tema di fondo e pero sempre quello di trovare
una dimensione pifi vera per parlare di se, uno spazio reale dove inventare gesti e
figure, eliminati ormai gli specchi deformanti della sua precedente poesia d'amore
che lo vincolavano a smontare e ricomporre battaglie di pensieri invece di raccontar
cose nuove" (p. 266). I would argue that the rime petrose expand Dante's range by
inversion, but are not "piut vere." In any case Fenzi does not indicate just what the
"cose nuove" are.

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 158 BRUCE COMENS

remains very much that of Dante's editors. In his introduction to

the Rime, Gianfranco Contini observes that our admiration for the
poems should not obscure the fact that their inspiration is radically
fragmentary.2 The most recent editors, Foster and Boyde, contend
that the sole importance of the donna petra is to support the theme
of unrequited love, "and this theme itself has very much the ap-
pearance of a pretext"-a pretext for the construction of four
testaments to the poet's technical mastery.3 Thus, while regarding
the technical novelties as necessary preparations for the Inferno,
critics tend to dismiss the actual content.
This dismissal of what is said contradicts both Dante's habitual
practice and his explicit statement in the Convivio: "la bontade e
ne la sentenza, e la bellezza e ne l'ornamento de le parole; e 'una
e l'altra & con diletto, avvegna che la bontade sia massimamente
dilettosa" (II, xi, 4) ["goodness lies in the meaning, and beauty lies
in the ornament of the words; and both give delight, although
goodness is most delightful"]. While the meaning and the orna-
ment are complementary, he insists that the content is most de-
lightful. In fact, however, this statement implies a greater sepa-
ration of form and content than is evident in Dante's practice. As
J. F. Took argues in his recent study, Dante's poetic goes beyond
the principle of convenientia, or decorum, to a concept of form as
the means of effecting "the process of understanding," wherein

Marti correctly argues that the "asprezza" of "Cosi nel mio parlar" stems not
merely from the Provenpal influence, but "dalla disposizione psicologica sottesa
intera trama linguistica" (p. 228). However, the precise nature of that "disposizione
psicologica" is never specified. Also vague and unhelpful is his appeal to Dante's
"integralismo poetico," which in turn "costituiva specchio ed epifania linguistica del
suo integralismo umano" (p. 228).
2 Gianfranco Contini, "Introduzione" to Dante Alighieri, Rime, ed. Contini (To-
rino: Giulio Einaudi, 1963), p. xxi. Subsequent references given in the text.
3 Kenelm Foster and Patrick Boyde, Dante's Lyric Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon,
1967), II, 258. Subsequent references to the commentary, abbreviated DLP, are
given in the text. I use this edition for Dante's lyrics; other works by Dante are
quoted from the following editions:
II Convivio, ed. Maria Simonelli (Bologna: Casa Editrice Prof. Riccardo Patron,
1966);
The Divine Comedy, 6 vols., ed. Charles S. Singleton (Princeton: University Press,
1970-75);
Vita Nuova, ed. Michele Barbi (Firenze: R. Bemporad & Figlio, 1932); translation
in Dante's Vita Nuova, trans. and with an essay by Mark Musa, (Bloomington: In-
diana University Press, 1973);
De Vulgari Eloquentia, 3rd ed., ed. Aristide Marigo (Firenze: Felice Le Monnier,
1968); translation in Literary Criticism of Dante Alighieri, trans. and ed. Robert S.
Haller (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973).

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 M L N 159

form "constitutes in itself an instrument of spiritual intelligence.

There is for Dante no hiatus between form and substance, between
the means and the object of his activity as a poet. The one is not
introduced to the other, brought to bear in a special moment of
technical deliberation. Rather, it inheres in the act of under-
standing as the principle of its being and intelligibility."4 This gen-
eral esthetic, whereby form is integral to moral and spiritual sig-
nificance, applies as much to the rime petrose as to Dante's other
works. Indeed, within Dante's canon these are the works most sen-
sitive to the interrelation of form and content: to misread one is
to misread both. Accordingly, we must take particular care to read
the poems with a dual, or rather triple focus: on the details of
interpretation, on the structure of each poem, and on the structure
of the poems taken together.
The overall structure is simply stated: I think the four poems
constitute a sequence dramatizing four stages in the development
of sensual love. A general framework for the developmental pro-
cess of love had already been established by the twelfth century
mystic, Richard of St. Victor. That framework, as given in his De
quatuor gradibus violentae caritatis, can be used to guide our under-
standing of the poems as individual works and as an ensemble. I
do not wish to claim a rigid and exclusive correspondence between
Dante's poems and Richard's framework-Dante was entirely ca-
pable of thinking for himself, and of adapting the thought of
others-but Richard's four stages can provide a consistently ac-
curate and highly suggestive template against which to read the
rime petrose for an overall narrative structure. And once that nar-
rative structure is seen, the intimate relation between the poems'
beauty and their "goodness"-between their form and their con-
tent-can be fully appreciated, and the sequence properly located
within Dante's canon.
Although Dante nowhere refers specifically to Richard's treatise,
Charles Singleton, among others, has observed that Richard's
works were "well known" to Dante.5 In the Letter to Can Grande

4J. F. Took, 'L'etterno piacer': Aesthetic Ideas in Dante (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1984), p. 87. Two other remarks are particularly relevant to this paper: "In the
petrose too form affords access to a difficult experience," and "form in Dante is
never free, never-even in moments of experimentation-an end in itself; it
bears instead the responsibility of spiritual elucidation" (pp. 75, 77).
D Charles Singleton, An Essay on the "Vita Nuova" (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1958), p. 90. Subsequent references given in the text.

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 160 BRUCE COMENS

Dante recommends Richard's De Contemplatione (the Benjamin

Major), indicating that he had read at least that work.6 There
Richard deals with various modes and stages of contemplation,
considered as a means for the mind's ascent to God, and does not
discuss earthly desires at all. A passage in Purgatorio XVIII, how-
ever, strongly suggests that Dante had read De quatuor gradibus.
According to that treatise, the first stage of love is the wounding,
when the lover first notices the object; the second is the binding,
when the lover is bound to the object; in the third the object be-
comes unique, the only one capable of satisfying the lover's desire;>
in the fourth, the love becomes infinite and therefore, unless the
object is God, insatiable. The first three stages correspond re-
markably well to the analysis of love Virgil provides for Dante.
First the lover is wounded:

Vostra apprensiva da esser verace

tragge intenzione, e dentro a voi la spiega,
si che l'animo ad essa volger face.

(22-24)

[Your faculty of apprehension draws an image from

a real existence and displays it within you, so
that it makes the mind turn to it].

Next he is bound to the object:

e se, rivolto, inver' di lei si piega,

quel piegare e amor, quell'e natura
che per piacer di novo in voi si lega

(25-27)

[and if, thus turned, the mind inclines toward it,

that inclination is love, that inclination is
nature which is bound in you anew by pleasure].

And finally the object becomes unique:

Poi, come '1 foco movesi in altura

per la sua forma ch'e nata a salire
la dove piu in sua matera dura,
cosi l'animo preso entra in disire,

6 I am assuming that the Letter to Can Grande was indeed written by Dante. Even
if it were not, however, the letter would still indicate that Dante's contemporaries
believed Richard's work to be important to him.
Dante does not recommend the De Contemplatione for its analysis of contempla-
tion, but for its assertion that the mind will forget its revelation, and be unable to
express it verbally in any case.

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 M L N 161

ch'e moto spiritale, e mai non posa

fin che la cosa amata il fa gioire.

(28-33)

[Then, even as fire moves upwards by reason

of its form, being born to ascend thither where it
lasts longest in its matter, so the captive mind
enters into desire, which is a spiritual movement,
and never rests until the thing loved makes it rejoice.]

Virgil does not go on to the fourth stage, but his suggestive con-
clusion does echo Richard's comparison of divine and earthly loves
in De quatuor gradibus. According to Richard, only divine love is
good after the first stage, for earthly loves can lead to damnation.
Virgil says:

Or ti puote apparer quant'e nascosa

la veritate a la gente ch'avvera
ciascun amore in se laudabil cosa;
per6 che forse appar la sua matera
sempre esser buona, ma non ciascun segno
e buono, ancor che buona sia la cera.

(34-39)
[Now it may be apparent to you how far the truth is hidden
from the people who aver that every love is praiseworthy
in itself, because perhaps its matter appears always to be
good: but not every imprint is good, although the wax be
good.]

And after expounding the three stages Virgil himself admits, albeit
in a somewhat different context, that his own vision is limited:
"Quanto ragion qui vede,/ dir ti poss'io" (46-47) ["As far as reason
sees here I can tell you"]. Virgil is limited by reason, which is to
say that he is limited to the human.7 But Dante honors Richard in
Paradiso X as the man who "a considerar fu piui che viro" (132)
["in contemplation was more than man"]. To take this epithet as
vague, hyperbolic praise is to underestimate the precision of
Dante's language. The epithet refers specifically to the advanced
stage of divine love in Richard's treatise: "Sic pene totum plus est
quam humanum quod de Domino presumit, quod pro Domino
agit, quod in Domino vivit" ["All that is more than human: what

7 Hence, too, Virgil's elaborate explanation of the Old Man of Crete in Inf. XIV
elicits little response from Dante, who, being Christian, has superior vision.

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 162 BRUCE COMENS

he hopes of God, what he does for God, how he lives in God"].8

The epithet suggests that Richard is regarded as the highest of the
contemplatives assembled in Paradiso X, and that this is because of
his conception of the fourth stage of divine love. It is, after all, the
fourth stage that Dante himself must have reached in order to
achieve his final vision and then return to write the Commedia.9. It
seems reasonable to assume not only that Dante had read Richard's
treatise, but that his doing so had considerable effect on the poet's
thought. 10
If the Commedia records the stages of the journey on which Dante
was led by divine love, the rime petrose record the path taken by a
merely earthly love, a love that originates and remains in the sen-
sitive faculty. The first stage of this love, I will argue, is presented
in "lo son venuto." Before using Richard's framework as an explicit
guide, however, I will first examine the poem itself in some detail.
Although the contrast between the hot lover and the cold season
was a topos by Dante's time, it is instructive to compare Dante's
poem to its immediate predecessor, Arnaut Daniel's "Can chai la
fueilla.""II In Arnaut's poem the contrast is briefly established and

8 Richard of St. Victor, De quatuorgradibus violentae caritatis, ed. G. Dumeige (Paris:

J. Vrin, 1955), p. 176. Also in J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina, 196, col. 1224b. For
convenience I cite both editions, although I quote only from Dumeige's. I generally
follow the translation in Richard of Saint-Victor: Selected Writings on Contemplation,
trans. and ed. Clare Kirchberger, (New York: Harper and Brothers, n.d.), with
occasional emendations.
9 The significance of Richard's schema for the Commedia is obviously well beyond
my present scope. However, the following formulation of the four stages, from the
end of De quatuor gradibus, is at least suggestive. "In primo itaque gradu, ut dictum
est, animus redit ad seipsum [cf. Inf. I], in secundo ascendit ad Deum [Purgatorio,
but also Inferno], in tertio transit in Deum [Paradiso], in quarto descendit sub se-
metipsum [Par. XXXIII]" (p. 177, 1224c). ["Therefore, as we have said, in the first
degree the soul returns to itself; in the second it ascends to God; in the third it
passes out into God; in the fourth it descends below itself."] And G. Dumeige's own
account of the fourth stage seems almost to have been written with Dante in mind:
"Ensuite configuree au Christ en ses aneantissements, elle se retourne vers ses frnres
'descendant audessous d'elle-meme' pour mener, en ressuscitee, une vie nouvelle"
(p. 107). After the fourth stage, Dante would also be "piii che viro," not through
contemplation but through love.
10 It is also worth recalling here the striking similarity, noted by M. Casella, be-
tween Dante's famous formulation of his poetics in Par. XXIV, 52-54, and a passage
in Richard's De gradibus caritatis (obviously closely related to De quatuor gradibus),
Patrol. Lat. 196, 1195a-b. For a brief account and assessment of the parallel, see
Jean Leclercq, "Ricciardo di San Vittore" in the Enciclopedia Dantesca (Rome: Istituto
dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 1970), IV, pp. 904-5.
11 Bondanella, op. cit., offers a convincing argument against the assumption that
Dante's poem draws directly on Arnaut's, concluding that "the most one can assume
is that both poets work in similar ways within the same tradition" (pp. 419-20).

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 M L N 163

then dropped after the first two stanzas. The desolation of

winter-exemplified by dying vegetation and silent birds-re-
ceives only six lines in the first stanza, and only one in the second.
Winter is little more than an opening gambit, contrasting Arnaut's
celebration of love in the rest of the poem. Nor is there a trace of
the harshness of love, of any cruelty in the lady: "Ges non es croia/
cella cui soi amis" ["She is not at all cruel/ That girl to whom I'm
a friend"].'2 Dante's canzone sustains Arnaut's contrast and greatly
expands the brief mention of a few instances of winter's desolation.
Thus stanza three is devoted to the birds (and beasts) and stanza
four to vegetation, while Dante's fifth stanza transforms Arnaut's
summary statement, "Tot quant es gela" (9) ["Everywhere there is
a freeze"], into a culminating devastation:

Versan le vene le fummifere acque

per 1i vapor che la terra ha nel ventre,
che d'abisso 1i tira suso in alto;
onde cammino al bel giorno mi piacque
che ora e fatto rivo, e sara mentre
che durera del verno il grande assalto;
la terra fa un suol che par di smalto,
e l'acqua morta si converte in vetro
per la freddura che di fuor la serra:
e io de la mia guerra
non son per6 tornato un passo a retro,
ne vo' tornar; che, se '1 martiro e dolce,
la morte de' passare ogni altro dolce.
(77/53-65)
[The springs spew forth fumy waters because the earth
draws the gases that are in its bowels upwards from the
abyss; so that a path that pleased me in fine weather is now
a stream, and so will remain as long as winter's great on-
slaught endures; the earth has formed a crust like rock and
the dead waters turn into glass because of the cold that
locks them in. And yet I have not withdrawn one step from
the struggle, nor will I withdraw; for if suffering be sweet,
death must be sweet above all things.]

As Foster and Boyde remark, "poetically the climax of the canzone

12 LI. 41-2. For Arnaut's poems I use James J. Wilhelm's edition and translation,
The Poetry of Arnaut Daniel (New York: Garland Publishing, 1981). Here Wilhelm
translates "croia" as "crude," but glosses "villainous, base, bad, cruel."

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 164 BRUCE COMENS

is not in the 'wit' of the congedo but in the passion, even the sav-
agery, of the description in the fifth stanza" (DLP, II, 260).
That climactic effect is not merely due to Dante's expansion of
Arnaut's line; it is a product as well of the rigorous logic with which
Dante structures the poem. The gradual descent, stanza by stanza,
from the heavens through the atmosphere to animal life and then
to vegetation leads inexorably to the final point of rest, the earth
itself. Dante has clearly imparted an intellectual order to what was
a suggestion in Arnaut's poem. This sense of intellectual order,
together with a greater interest in man's position in, and response
to, the hierarchy of Creation, is characteristic of Dante, and it is
thus somewhat surprising that there is otherwise so little abstrac-
tion actually present in the canzone-indeed, the rime petrose are
among the least overtly intellectual of Dante's poems. The form of
"lo son venuto" suggests that the poem should have a greater
intellectual content, since the rhyme-scheme of the canzone artic-
ulates the poem into separate sections that usually correspond to
separate stages in the poem's argument. Thus the articulation of
thought in, say, "Donne ch'avete," generally corresponds to its
ABBC;ABBC:CDD,CEE rhyme-scheme. Hence Dante's usual
practice of explaining his poems by discussing their divisions, if it
does not provide an adequate account of the work, at least reveals
the outline of its argument.
By contrast, the scheme of "lo son venuto" (ABC;ABC,C:
DEeD,FF) corresponds only to the shifting perceptions of the
narrator:

lo son venuto al punto de la rota

che l'orizzonte, quando il sol si corca,
ci partorisce il geminato cielo,
e la stella d'amor ci sta remota
per lo raggio lucente che la 'nforca
si di traverso, che le si fa velo;
e quel pianeta che conforta il gelo
si mostra tutto a noi per lo grand'arco
nel qual ciascun di sette fa poca ombra:
e per6 non disgombra
un sol penser d'amore, ond' io son carco,
la mente mia, ch'e piii dura che petra
in tener forte imagine di petra.

(1-13)

[I have come to that point on the wheel when the horizon,

once the sun goes down, brings forth the twinned heaven

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 M L N 165

for us; and the star of love is removed from us by the

shining beam which so rides across it as to veil it away; and
the planet that intensifies the cold stands fully revealed to
us along the great arc in which each of the seven casts the
shortest shadow. And yet my mind does not shake off a
single one of the thoughts of love that burden me-my
mind that is harder than stone in strongly retaining an
image of stone.]

What is remarkable in this first stanza, as throughout the canzone,

is the speaker's lack of thought: his perceptions are arranged
simply and paratactically (stressed by the repeated connective "e"),
while the final statement seems a straightforward antithesis. It is
perhaps not so surprising to us as it would have been to Dante's
contemporaries-we are accustomed to an esthetic that eschews
explicit reasoning, and to considering the "rota" merely as a means
of telling the time. The Commedia, however, where Dante, ad-
dressing "amor che '1 ciel governi" ["Love that rulest the heavens"],
speaks of "la rota che tu sempiterni/ desiderato" (Par. I, 74, 76-7)
["the revolution which Thou, by being desired, makest eternal"],
can provide a more appropriate framework. We might compare
the opening of Paradiso X:

Guardando nel suo Figlio con l'Amore

che luno e l'altro etternalmente spira,
lo primo e ineffabile Valore
quanto per mente e per loco si gira
con tant' ordine fe ch'esser non puote
sanza gustar di lui chi ci6 rimira.
Leva dunque, lettore, a l'alte rote
meco la vista, dritto a quella parte
dove l'un moto e l'altro si percuote;
e 1i comincia a vagheggiar ne l'arte
di quel maestro che dentro a se l'ama,
tanto che mai da lei l'occhio non parte.

(1-12)

[Looking upon His Son with the love which the One and
the Other eternally breathe forth, the primal and ineffable
Power made everything that revolves through the mind or
through space with such order that he who contemplates it
cannot but taste of Him. Lift then your sight with me,
reader, to the lofty wheels, straight to that part where the
one motion strikes the other; and amorously there begin
to gaze upon that Master's art who within Himself so loves
it that His eye never turns from it.]

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 166 BRUCE COMENS

Dante is here explicit: divine love lies behind the changing sea-
sons.13 The speaker in "lo son venuto," however, is oblivious to
the true significance of what he sees: his attention is focussed so
exclusively on himself and his love that he interprets signs in purely
material terms. Thus he may be counted among "la maggiore parte
de li uomini," who, according to the Convivio, "vivono secondo
senso e non seconde ragione, a guisa di pargoli; e questi cotali non
conoscono le cose se non semplicemente di fuori, e la loro bontade,
la quale a debito fine e ordinata, non veggiono, per ci6 che hanno
chiusi li occhi de la ragione, li quali passano a veder quello" (I, iv,
3) ["The greater part of men live according to senses rather than
reason, like children; and such know things only from the outside,
and their goodness, which refers to their proper end, they do not
see, because they have closed the eyes of their reason, which pen-
etrate to the sight of that end"]. Dante's dream vision in Purgatorio
XIX also supports this contrast. The dream comes at the coldest
hour of the day,

Ne lora che non pu6 '1 calor diurno

intepidar piu '1 freddo de la luna,
vinto da terra, e talor da Saturno
(1-3)

[At the hour when the day's heat, overcome by Earth

and at times by Saturn, can no more warm the cold of
the moon].

("quel pianeta" of "lo son venuto" [7] is "almost certainly Saturn"

[DLP, II, 260]), and the siren that appears tells Dante that "qual
meco s'ausa,/ rado sen parte; si tutto l'appago" (23-4) ["whosoever
abides with me rarely departs, so wholly do I satisfy him"]. Virgil
and Beatrice together protect Dante from the siren, but the
speaker in the canzone seems oblivious to his danger, and is con-
sequently succumbing to the siren. Indeed, he is so intent on the

13 For a more general statement, see Par. I, 103-8, and also Kenelm Foster on
the "great traditional order-pattern of ends and means: in which the outward exists
for the inward, sense for reason, the sensible for the intelligible, the image for the
idea, what is apparent for the sake of what is relatively concealed.... This pattern
... is not only presupposed by Dante, it forms the living structure of his mind," in
"The Mind in Love: Dante's Philosophy" in Dante: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed.
John Freccero (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965), pp. 48-9. Another way
of putting this is that everything, except God, is a sign of something else, and
ultimately of God. These passages also underscore the moral nature of Dante's
concern with form.

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 M L N 167

attainment of earthly joys that his highest faculty is affected: "la

mente mia, ch'e piu dura che petra" (12) ["my mind that is harder
than stone"]. His burden-"ond'io son carco" (11)-is the burden
of the flesh. This situation is not due solely to unrequited love, for
the very fact that Dante's love in the Vita Nuova is spurned propels
him onward to higher concerns. Moreover, this is not the typical
contrast between burning love and winter, for this stone-like love
is entirely appropriate to the season. Indeed, the speaker almost
seems to acknowledge this himself when he uses the ambiguous
connective, "e pero" (10). Foster and Boyde translate this as "and
yet," indicating opposition, but it could also be "and therefore,"
indicating a causal (or at least consecutive) relation between the
lover's purely materialist perceptions and his state of devastation.'4
Given the speaker's evident predisposition to the earthly, it is
not surprising that his attention shifts dowii from the eternal to
the sublunar world in stanza two. It is worth noting that the par-
enthetic, and ignored, "s'altro non la sturba" (18) ["unless dis-
persed by another wind"] indicates the possibility of different
weather, and hence of a different love. A simile used in the Paradiso
might have been written with this poem in mind, for the "other
wind" of "lo son venuto" is Boreas:

Come rimane splendido e sereno

l'emisperio de l'aere, quando soffia
Borea da quella guancia ond'e piu leno,
per che si purga e risolve la roffia
che pria turbava, si che '1 ciel ne ride
con le bellezze d'ogne sua paroffia;
cosi fec'io, poi che mi provide
la donna mia del suo risponder chiaro,
e come stella in cielo il ver si vide.

(XXVIII, 79-87)
[As the hemisphere of the air remains splendid and serene
when Boreas blows from his milder cheek, whereby the
obscuring mist is cleared and dissolved, so that the heaven

14 Fenzi sees this ambiguity, or tension, throughout the poem: "Cosi mi pare che
quel 'e' per Contini energicamente avversativo che introduce la seconda parte d'ogni
strofe sia in realta alquanto piut mite, e pur conservando indubbiamente quel senso,
abbia una sfumatura di normale correlativo, quasi che Dante a tanti eventi straor-
dinari e reali voglia aggiungerne uno altrettanto reale che si consuma totalmente
in lui" (p. 259). In my reading, this tension indicates precisely the distance between
the speaker and Dante, between the relationship the speaker sees between himself
and his surroundings (opposition), and that which actually exists (correlation).

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168 BRUCE COMENS

smiles to us with the beauties of its every region, so I be-

came after my lady had provided me with her clear answer,
and like a star in heaven the truth was seen.]

But the speaker in "lo son venuto" ignores such possibilities. His
stone-like mind seems to be incapable of prospective, imaginative
thought. 15
The third stanza suggests that the lover is misusing his human
freedom, for even "li animali che son gai/ di lor natura, son d'amor
disciolti" (33-34) ["the beasts that are lusty by nature are released
from love"], while his spirit "piu d'amor porta" (36) ["is more full
of love"]. He is free as the beasts are not, but he surrenders this
freedom to his siren-like donna. Implicit in the remark that she has
"picciol tempo" (39) ["little time"] is her mortality, and this fact
again suggests that the speaker has rejected the eternal in favor of
a purely temporal goal. Thus the concluding lines of stanza four,
e la crudele spina
per6 Amor di cor non la mi tragge;
per ch'io son fermo di portarla sempre
ch'io sar6 in vita, s'io vivesse sempre.
(49-52)

[And yet Love will not draw from my heart his cruel thorn;
so that I am resolved to bear it ever, all life long, though
I were to live for ever.]

are highly ironic, for in contrast to the vegetation, the death of

which the speaker has just observed, man can live forever, provided
that his goal be heavenly rather than earthly joy. But the lover is
indeed "fermo," closed to the real meaning of the world he ob-
serves, and the language he utters. He himself admits that it is his
own decision that is causing his continual, and perhaps eternal,
pain-Amor has not, so far, gained complete control over him.
However, not only does he see but fail to perceive material signs,
he even fails to understand the spiritual significance of his own
words. Like Francesca, he convicts himself by his own choice of
words: Dante provides him with a language loaded with spiritual
(and moral) significance precisely because the lover is so unaware
of the choice he is making.

15 I should stress here that I do not see such passages as Dante's attempts at
retrospective criticism, or interpretation, of the earlier work. His cosmos was always
theological (see n. 13 above).

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 M L N 169

The lover gradually draws toward the fate of mere matter. The
fifth and culminating stanza (quoted in full above) underscores
this movement, yet there persists even here the possibility of a new
life:

onde cammino al bel giorno mi piacque

che ora e fatto rivo, e sarA mentre
che durerA del verno ii grande assalto.
(56-58)

[a path that pleased me in fine weather is now a stream,

and so will remain as long as winter's great onslaught
endures].

The world will be renewed, but this sufferer is still oblivious to the
promise that such renewal represents. The final lines of this stanza
provide an inversion of Christian martyrdom that is worthy of the
Inferno, the lover refusing to withdraw from his "guerra" because
"se '1 martiro e dolce,/ la morte de' passare ogni altro dolce."'6 But
martyrdom for God is sweet because it leads to life; martyrdom
for an earthly desire is merely death. Clearly, in a theological
cosmos, the only hope this man has is that his rational faculty may
reassert itself and control his sensitive faculty, that he may realize
that his love is leading him in the wrong direction.
In this context, the development presented in the congedo is a
disappointment:
Canzone, or che sarA di me ne l'altro
dolce tempo novello, quando piove
amore in terra da tutti li cieli,
quando per questi geli
amore e solo in me, e non altrove?
Saranne quello ch'e d'un uom di marmo,
se in pargoletta fia per core un marmo.
(66-72)
[My song, what will become of me in that other, that sweet
young season when love pours down to the earth from all
the heavens; if love, amid all this cold, is found only in me
and nowhere else? It will be with me as with a man of
marble, if a girl keeps a heart of marble.]

16 LI. 64-5. The martial imagery Dante employs has several predecessors, in-
cluding Guinizelli's "Lo vostro bel saluto." However, Dante's imagery in the rime
petrose is considerably more violent, and is used to a different effect: in Guinizelli
the imagery stresses the depth of the poet's love, and its sincerity; in the rime petrose
it shows the ferocity and vulgarity of the speaker's love.

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 170 BRUCE COMENS

The lover indulges in poetic exaggeration, as lovers are wont to

do in the lyrics of Courtly Love. But Dante's language invites us
to read "l'altro/ dolce tempo novello" in terms of the Last Judge-
ment, "quando piove/ amore in terra da tutti li cieli."'7 If he con-
tinues on his present course, this lover will indeed suffer the fate
of an "uom di marmo" when love rains down on all those who do
not willfully shut themselves off from the divine. That it is willful
and not merely the inevitable result of unrequited love has already
been indicated, but two further points may make this aspect more
readily apparent. The shift from "donna di petra" to "uom di
marmo" indicates a shift from a natural condition (as perceived by
the lover) to an artificial one, from stone to statue. It is the lover
who will have fashioned himself into an "uom di marmo."18 And
the Vita Nuova shows us that there exists another possibility. There
the lover is concerned with himself until Beatrice refuses to greet
him. At that time, as he explains to other ladies in chapter XVIII,
he changed the object of his desire: "Madonne, lo fine del mio
amore fue gia' lo saluto di questa donna, forse di cui voi intendete,
e in quello dimorava la beatitudine, che era fine di tutti li miei
desiderii. Ma poi che le piacque di negarlo a me, lo mio segnore
Amore, la sua merzede, ha posto tutta la mia beatitudine in quello
che non mi puote venire meno" (XVIII, 4) ["Ladies, the goal of
my love once consisted in receiving the greeting of this lady to
whom you are, perhaps, referring, and in this greeting rested the
bliss which was the goal of all my desires. But since it pleased her
to deny it to me, my lord, Love, through his grace, has placed all
my bliss in something that cannot fail me"]. He now places his
beatitude "in quelle parole che lodano la donna mia" (XVIII, 6)
["in those words that praise my lady"], the first instance of which
is the canzone, "Donne ch'avete." Dante also remarks in the Convivio
that "d'amor parlando, pit bello ne piui profittabile sermone non

17 It is the generality of reference that invites this reading: the expression "amor
piove" is generally used in close connection to a specific lady. (See Peter Dronke,
Medieval Latin and the Rise of the European Love-Lyric, 2nd ed. [Oxford: Clarendon,
1968], I, 155-58.) I suspect that "dolce tempo novello" also alludes to the dolce stil
nuovo, implicating that movement in the rime petrose's critique of sensuality and
earthly love.
18 According to the Convivio, a lover necessarily resembles the loved object: "E
questo unire e quello che noi dicemo amore, per lo quale si pu6 conoscere quale e
dentro l'anima, veggendo di fuori quelli che ama" (III, ii, 9) ["And this is the union
we call love, according to which one can know what is inside the soul by seeing
what it loves outside"]. Presumably he would come to resemble the object as he
perceives it.

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 M L N 171

era che quello nel quale se commendava la persona che s'amava"

(III, i, 4) ["in speaking of love, there is no more profitable nor
beautiful discourse than that which praises the beloved"]. This shift
in the object protects the poet from the dangers of cupidity and
self-absorption, but the lover in "lo son venuto" has clearly not
taken this route, for his lady exists only as the unattained object
of his desire, not as a donna gentile. It is this self-absorption, then,
that prohibits him from using his love to transcend the earthly.
"lo son venuto" indicates the narrator's basic situation and
briefly predicts his fate; it remains to the other rime petrose to ex-
plore the various stages on the way to that fate. If we turn now to
Richard's De quatuor gradibus, we will find it a remarkably accurate
guide to those stages. Richard tells us that in the first stage the
lover "desiderio ardet, fervet affectu, estuat, anhelat, profunde
ingemiscens et longa suspiria trahens.... Hic tamen gradus inter-
polationem recipit.... Sed iterum post modicam interpolationem,
estuans ardor ferventior redit, animumque jam fractum acrius in-
cendit et vehementius urit. Sepe itaque recedens semperque seipso
major rediens paulatim animum emollit, viresque effringit atque
exhaurit, donec plene animum sibi subigat atque substernat, ju-
gique sui memoria totum occupet, totum implicet, totum obliget,
ita ut hoc ei excidere aut aliud cogitare non possit, etjam de primo
gradu ad secundum transit" (p. 131, 1209c-d) ["He burns with
desire, his affections are stirred, he is in fever and gasps, sighing
deeply and drawing long breaths.... This degree sometimes af-
fords respite.... But after a short interval they burn again, greater
heat supervenes and the broken spirit is once more set on fire and
burns more fiercely. Thus the fever of love, often waning but
always returning more acutely, gradually weakens the spirit, wears
down and exhausts the strength until it completely conquers the
soul and lays it low. It occupies the soul wholly with thoughts about
itself, engrosses and controls it wholly so that it cannot tear itself
away or consider anything else and so it passes from the first to
the second degree"]. "lo son venuto" presents the lover pro-
gressing through the first stage to the very edge of the second.
Each stanza shows him turning from his surroundings back to his
love, with the ardor returning more violently each time he does
so. Richard continues his account with the lover's chances of es-
cape: "Primi itaque gradus impetum in pravis desideriis non resis-
tendo sed declinando, non tam reluctando quam fugiendo, re-
pellere debemus et possumus" (p. 133, 1210b) ["Therefore we
are able and we ought to repel the urge towards evil desires in the

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172 BRUCE COMENS

first degree, not so much by resistance as by turning away, not

reluctantly, but by flight"]. In Dante's poem the lover attempts to
combat this stage, not by shunning and fleeing, but by resisting

e per6 non disgombra

un sol penser d'amore, ond'io son carco,
la mente mia ...

(10-12)

[And yet my mind does not shake off a single one of the
thoughts of love that burden me]

-and by struggling-

e io de la mia guerra
non son per6 tornato un passo a retro,
ne vo' tornar ...

(62-4)

[And yet I have not withdrawn one step froni the

struggle, nor will I withdraw.]

Of course, he is trying to conquer the lady, not his love, and his
failure to escape is thus doubly ensured. He therefore moves into
the second stage, with its attendant doom: "In desideriis spirital-
ibus quanto major tanto et melior; in desideriis carnalibus quanto
est major tanto et pejor.... In humanis sane affectibus primus
potest esse bonus, secundus absque dubio est malus.... Cum enim
mentem insolubiliter obligaverit, dum eam in aliam sollicitudinem
transire non sinit, sepe et providendorum curam et disponen-
dorum providentiam tollit" (pp. 145-7; 1214a-b) ["In spiritual de-
sires the greater the degree of love, the better; in fleshly desires
the greater, the worse.... In human affections the first degree
may be good but the second is certainly bad . .. For when it fastens
the mind indissolubly by not allowing it to move over to other
concerns it often takes away a man's attention and his foresight
from providing and disposing things suitably"]. The second stage
is evil because it marks the point where the spirit is fully subjugated
to fleshly desires-that is, the first stage admits the possibility of
a transformation into the divine, such as that explored in the Vita
Nuova, but the second does not. As we have noted, Richard calls
the first stage the wounding (recall the "crudele spina" [49] of
Dante's canzone); the second is the binding: "Primum enim gradum
diximus qui vulnerat, secundum qui ligat. Nonne vere et absque
ulla contradictione, animus ligatus est quando hoc unum oblivisci
aut aliud meditari non potest?... Hoc dormiens sompniat, hoc

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 MLN 173

vigilans omni hora retractat.... secundi autem gradus vehementia

omnino non valet, nec reluctando superari, nec fugiendo declinari"
(pp. 131-3, 1209d-1210c) ["For we said the first degree was
wounding love and the second binding love. For the soul is surely
and undoubtedly bound when it cannot forget this one thing or
think about anything else ... It dreams of love when sleeping and
waking it thinks of it all the time .... in the second degree the
passion cannot in any way be overcome either by opposition or by
flight"]. The irrational obsession that marks the second stage of
love is rendered in Dante's "Al poco giorno."
It may at first seem that the sestina was the obvious form for
such a theme, but a glance at Arnaut Daniel's "Lo ferm voler,"
Dante's model, indicates that it was Dante and not Arnaut who
perceived and then realized the potential of the sestina. Arnaut's
poem, to be sure, is somewhat overwrought, but this-if we do
not attribute it to the difficulties of the form and to the style of
trobar clus-seems to stem more from the lover's excitement than
from an obsession. Arnaut's choice of parole-rima (intra, ongla, arma,
verga, oncle, and cambra) allows considerable latitude in the devel-
opment of his theme, a latitude that is increased even more by his
use of rime equivoche. In contrast, Dante's parole-rima retain the same
meaning throughout the poem, and the words themselves (ombra,
colli, erba, verde, petra, and donna) essentially limit the poet to the
landscape, the lady and himself. It would appear that Dante delib-
erately and purposefully restricted his means to an even greater
extent than did Arnaut. His intellectual awareness of the possibil-
ities and limits of various forms, together with his sense of the
intimate relation between form and spiritual significance, would
have enabled him to seize upon the particular virtu' of a form and
utilize it to its full potential. Foster and Boyde miss the point some-
what in remarking, "the form in itself renders an obsession, and
although pre-existent and pre-determined it is most apt to
D[ante]'s theme: but it does of course impose a crippling restraint
on expression" (DLP, II, 266). Dante deliberately increases the
"crippling restraint" of the pre-existent form in order to render
the speaker's crippled reason.19
The result, as Contini says, is that "l'immobilita' e piui forte" than
in "Jo son venuto" (Rime, p. 157) ["the immobility is more pro-
nounced"]. Since the rhyme scheme does not articulate the stanzas

19 Dante's ability to overcome even greater obstacles in "Amor, tu vedi ben" (as
Foster and Boyde themselves acknowledge, DLP, II, 269) would also indicate that
the absence of logical progression in "Al poco giorno" is intentional.

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174 BRUCE COMENS

into sections, a rational structure would seem out of place here;

indeed, there is not even a logical development from stanza to
stanza, as Contini again observes: "da stanza a stanza il collega-
mento e alogico, appena tematico" (Rime, p. 157) ["from stanza to
stanza the movement is alogical, scarcely thematic"]. Thus in the
first stanza the narrator places himself in the dead of winter (also
showing the continuity between "Jo son venuto" and "Al poco
giorno"), while in the second he speaks of his lady in spring. These
alogical shifts are used to represent the second stage of love, when
the spirit is bound and unable to forget its sole object of desire. In
such bondage thought is no longer projective, but is bound by
memory, and memory itself consists only of discrete events and
objects.
The vivid simile in the third stanza refers specifically to the lov-
er's bondage,

Quand'ella ha in testa una ghirlanda d'erba,

trae de la mente nostra ogn'altra donna;
perch6 si mischia ii crespo giallo e '1 verde
si bel, ch'Amor hi viene a stare a l'ombra,
che m'ha serrato intra piccioli colli
piii forte assai che la calcina petra.

(78/13-18)

[When she wears on her head a garland of grass she takes

every other woman from our mind; for the curling yellow
and the green mingle so beautifully that Love comes to dwell
in their shadow, Love who has locked me between small hills
more tightly than cement locks stone.]

In the fourth stanza we are told of the violence of the lady's beauty
and of the lover's futile attempt to flee her:

La sua bellezza ha piut vertut che petra,

e '1 colpo suo non pu6 sanar per erba;
ch'io son fuggito per piani e per colli,
per potere scampar da cotal donna;
e dal suo lume non mi pu6 far ombra
poggio ne muro mai ne fronda verde.
(19-24)

[Her beauty has more power than stone, nor can her blows
be healed by grass: and I have fled over plains and hills
to escape, if possible, from such a woman; but from her
light I can find no shadow under mountain or wall or
green bough.]

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 M L N 175

The congedo reiterates his inability to (or lack of interest in) escape:

Quandunque i colli fanno piu nera ombra,

sotto un bel verde la giovane donna
la fa sparer, com'uom petra sott'erba.

(37-9)
[Whenever the hills cast darkest shadow this young woman
makes it disappear beneath a fair green, as one makes stone
disappear under grass.]

As Richard says, it is impossible to conquer or to flee in the second

stage. This lover may attempt on occasion to flee, but he does not
attempt to conquer his desire; he instead-such is his folly
wishes still to conquer the lady:

ond'io iho chesta in un bel prato d'erba

innamorata com'anco fu donna,
e chiuso intorno d'altissimi colli.

(28-30)

[hence I have desired her in a fair grass field-as much

in love as ever a woman was-enclosed by great hills.]

The sensuality present here, as elsewhere in the poem, betrays the

speaker's entrapment in earthly desires. There can be no mistaking
this love for that which ennobles. The sestina thus renders a kind
of madness-not the folha of the Provencal lyric, but that of a man
who allows his rational faculty to be disrupted by a single obsessive
desire originating in his sensitive faculty.
The third stage of love, according to Richard, occurs when the
object of desire becomes unique: "Unum amat, unum diligit, unum
sitit, unum concupiscit. Ad ipsum anhelat, in ipsum suspirat, ex
ipso inardescit, in ipso requiescit. Solum est in quo reficitur, solum
ex quo satiatur. Nichil dulcescit, nichil sapit nisi hoc uno condiatur.
Quicquid ultro se offerat, quicquid sponte occurrat, cito rejicitur,
subito conculcatur quod suo affectui non militat vel ejusmodi de-
siderio non deserviat. Sed quis hujus affectus tyrannidem digne
describat?" (pp. 135-7, 121 la-b) ["The soul loves one and is de-
voted to one, it thirsts for and desires the one, it clings to one,
sighs for him, is kindled by him, rests in him. In him alone is it
re-created and satisfied. There is no sweetness nor taste except for
him only. Whatever offers itself beyond this, whatever may by
chance present itself, is quickly rejected and immediately despised,
if it does not foster this love nor serve this desire. Who can worthily

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 176 BRUCE COMENS

describe the tyranny of this state?"] This third stage informs

Dante's "Amor, tu vedi ben." The claim of singularity would cer-
tainly go some way toward accounting for the poem's form, which
is unique, as Dante stresses in the congedo:

Canzone, io porto ne la mente donna

tal, che, con tutto ch'ella mi sia petra,
mi da baldanza, ond'ogni uom mi par freddo:
si ch'io ardisco a far per questo freddo
la novitA che per tua forma luce,
che non fu mai pensata in alcun tempo.

(79/61-6)

[Song, I bear in my mind a lady such that, though she is a

stone to me, she gives me such boldness that all men to me
seem cold; so that I dare to create for this cold object the
novelty that is alight through your form, a thing never con-
ceived before at any time.]

As Richard indicates, one may not be able to describe this third

stage adequately, but perhaps it can be presented by means of a
new form, "che non fu mai pensata in alcun tempo."
Dante is rather defensive when he refers to this poem in Book
II of De Vulgari Eloquentia:20 "Tria ergo sunt que circa rithimorum
positionem potiri dedecet aulice poetantem: nimia scilicet eiusdem
rithimi repercussio, nisi forte novum aliquid atque intentatum artis
hoc sibi preroget" (II, xiii, 12) ["There are three things having to
do with the possible placement of rhymes which are unsuitable for
a poet of the courtly style. The first is excessive repetition of the
same rhyme, except perhaps when he means to claim by it the
honor of doing something new and untried in the art"]. Foster and
Boyde take this statement in a purely technical sense, remarking
that "such rhyme repetition would normally be excessive, but as a
trial of strength [i.e., as a test of technical mastery] it was justified"
(DLP, II, 272). But this interpretation would allow any poet to do
whatever he wished, since any departure from the rules may claim
novelty. Since Dante's express purpose in his treatise was to estab-
lish the rules of vernacular poetry, this complete freedom is surely
not what he intended. Moreover, he speaks earlier in De Vulgari
Eloquentia of the need for embellishments to be appropriate: "Et

20 Cf. Marti, p. 227: "Nel De Vulgari Eloquentia Dante giudica da lontano lespe-
rienza tecnica delle petrose; e quel giudizio sembra in certo modo ondeggiante ed
ambiguo." Since the various techniques of the petrose are used to portray a departure
from the correct path, Dante's defensiveness is perhaps understandable: even the
bad of the Inferno is justified only by the good that follows (Inf. I, 7-9).

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 M L N 177

ubi dicitur quod quilibet suos versus exornare debet in quantum

potest, verum esse testamur; sed nec bovem epiphyatum nec bal-
teatum suem dicemus ornatum, immo potius deturpatum ridemus
illum; est enim exornatio alicuius convenientis additio" (II, i, 9)
["And as for the statement that everyone ought to embellish his
verses to the extent of his ability, I affirm its truth. But we do not
say that a decked-out cow or a garlanded pig have been embel-
lished: we rather laugh at them, considering them vulgarized; for
embellishment is the addition of something appropriate"]. Al-
though Dante is here speaking of what dialect the writer should
use, his argument can clearly be applied to his statement on rhyme,
for he is throughout Book II concerned with convenientia, with the
proper relation of form and style to content.21 "Doing something
new and untried in the art," then, would apply to both the dis-
position of rhymes and the content. The novel content justifies-
indeed, necessitates-the novel form.
This relationship is acknowledged by the congedo itself: it is the
lady who gives the speaker such boldness that he dares to create
his unique poem. Although this claim is almost commonplace, a
less extreme version being used by Arnaut at the end of "Can chai
la fueilla," I think the statement should here be given more weight
as an indication of the speaker's actual situation. Earlier in "Amor,
tu vedi ben" he does indeed stress that his lady is unique. It is first
suggested by "d'ogne crudelita' si fece donna" (79/6; note that she
has now become an inverted madonna) ["she became lady of all
cruelty"], and is then firmly established, at considerable length, in
stanza four:

In lei s'accoglie d'ogni bielta luce;

cosi di tutta crudeltate il freddo
le corre al core, ove non va tua luce:
per che ne li occhi si bella mi luce
quando la miro, ch'io la veggio in petra,
e po' in ogni altro ov'io volga mia luce.
Da li occhi suo mi ven la dolce luce
che mi fa non caler d'ogn'altra donna:
cosi foss'ella piut pietosa donna
ver me, che chiamo di notte e di luce,
solo per lei servire, e luogo e tempo!
Ne per altro disio viver gran tempo.
(37-48)

21 Took takes Dante's statement in its most general sense: "Form should confirn,
the quality of substance, otherwise it is aesthetically meretricious" (p. 35).

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178 BRUCE COMENS

[The light of all beauty is gathered in her, and so too the

cold of all cruelty runs to her heart where your light does
not reach. And therefore she is alight in my eyes with such
beauty when I look at her, that I see her in stone and
everywhere I then turn my light. From her eyes comes the
sweet light which makes me heedless of every other lady:
would that she were a more merciful lady towards me who
beg in the night and in the light only place and time to
serve her: and for nothing else do I desire to live for a
long time.]

Given a theological background, the last line is shocking, and so

the lover's hope for a rather paltry enlightenment after the Last
Judgement, "quando vedro se mai fu bella donna/ nel mondo come
questa acerba donna" (59-60) ["when I shall see whether there was
ever in the world a lady so beautiful as this cruel lady"], is an
instance of extreme irony. He has, after all, just invoked love as
the "vertui che se' prima che tempo,/ prima che moto o che sensibil
luce" (49-50) ["Power that exists before time, before motion or
corporeal light"]. This may at first glance seem a typically Dan-
tesque invocation of Amor, but in context it should be clear that this
love is a perversion of that divine love "che move il sole e l'altre
stelle" (Par. XXXIII, 145) ["that moves the sun and the other
stars"], the love that uplifts and ennobles. As is well known, Paolo
and Francesca, in Inferno V, provide eloquent testimony to the fate
of those who become entrapped in a "successful" sensual love. Even
in Hell Francesca persists in misreading (or in following too rigidly)
the tenets of Guinizelli's programmatic canzone (Inf. V, 100ff.). But
Dante's great moral canzone, "Doglia mi reca," in its distinction
between love and virtue, makes the point more explicitly:

Servo non di signor, ma di vil servo

si fa chi da cotal serva si scosta.
Vedete quanto costa,
se ragionate luno e laltro danno,
a chi da lei si svia:
questo servo signor tant'e protervo,
che gli occhi ch'a la mente lume fanno
chiusi per lui si stanno,
si che gir ne convene a colui posta,
ch'adocchia pur follia.

(83/43-52)
[Slave of a base slave, not of a lord, he becomes who de-
parts from such a handmaid. If you reckon up the double

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 M L N 179

loss you'll see what it costs him who strays from her. That
slave-lord is so arrogant that the eyes which illuminate the
mind remain closed because of him, so that we are forced
to walk at the whim of him who keeps his eyes fixed only
on folly.]

Paolo and Francesca demonstrate the truth of this tenet in a suc-

cessful love, the lover in the rime petrose in an unsuccessful love.
The "Segnor" he appeals to in "Amor, tu vedi ben" (25) is none
other than the "vil servo" of "Doglia mi reca."
Any protestation, like Francesca's, that Amor is too powerful to
be withstood is mere rationalization. Again, "Doglia mi reca" is
explicit:

Colpa e de la ragion che nol gastiga.

Se vol dire 'I' son presa',
ah com poca difesa
mostra segnore a cui servo sormonta!

(95-8)

[It's reason's fault for not correcting this: and if reason

says 'I am captive'- oh, how paltry a defence a master puts
up, who is overpowered by a slave!]

Although Dante's view here seems to conflict with that of Richard

of St. Victor-who, it will be remembered, believed that reason is
powerless against love as soon as the second stage is reached-this
contradiction is only apparent. In the first stage of love the rational
faculty is still operative, and can be used to protect the lover. The
stage is nevertheless very dangerous, as Dante remarks in the Con-
vivio: "E per la natura quarta, de li animali, cioe sensitiva, hae
l'uomo altro amore, per lo quale ama secondo la sensibile appar-
enza, si come bestia; e questo amore ne l'uomo massimamente ha
mestiere di rettore per la sua soperchievole operazione ne lo diletto
massimamente del gusto e del tatto" (III, iii, 10) ["And as for the
fourth nature, of the animals, that is the sensitive, man has another
love, through which he loves according to sensible appearance,-like
a beast; and this love has greatest need of a ruler because of its
overmastering operation in the delights of taste and touch."] If the
rational faculty does not control this love, the second stage is
reached, wherein love, as Cavalcanti says in "Donna me prega,"

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 180 BRUCE COMENS

for di salute giudicar mantene,

ch6 la 'ntenzione per ragione vale:
discerne male in cui e vizio amico.22

[deprives judgement of well-being, for now desire takes

the place of reason: whoever is a friend of vice judges
poorly.]

In Dante's dramatic rendering of this stage in "Al poco giorno,"

the subjugation of reason is initiated by a disruption, a disruption
that is made evident by the "alogical, scarcely thematic" connection
between one stanza and the next. But if reason is now inoperative,
a man can still be reasonable-as Richard puts it, we can still free
ourselves by means of works of mercy and obedience: "Cum ergo
temptationem non possumus vel virtute repellere vel prudentia
declinare, debemus per misericordie et obedientie opera nos ipsos
redimere et a servitutis jugo eripere" (p. 135, 1210c) ["When we
are unable to resist temptation either by virtue or to turn it away
by foresight, we should ransom ourselves by works of mercy and
obedience and tear ourselves free from this yoke of bondage"].
That is, man's intellectus (the higher "understanding") is still func-
tional even if his ratio ("reason") has been disrupted. When Dante
speaks of ragion in "Doglia mi reca" he is using a general term for
both intellectus and ratio. Thus, if the lover in "Al poco giorno" and
"Amor, tu vedi ben" would only open his eyes he would still be
capable of perceiving the truth.
Of course, being too obsessed suddenly to perceive his true sit-
uation, he does no such thing. It is interesting, however, to note
the resurgence of ratio in "Amor, tu vedi ben." Foster and Boyde
appropriately refer to the poem as a canzone-sestina, and remark
that although "the obstacles to intelligible expression are thus re-
doubled with respect to the sestina, . . . from the logical-rhetorical
point of view D[ante] overcomes them even more successfully than
in Al poco giorno" (DLP, II, 269). The ABA,ACA;ADD;AEE rhyme-
scheme, by articulating the poem into the traditional canzone di-
visions, leads one to expect more logical thought; Dante also uses
rime equivoche here to increase the possible range of expression.
Furthermore, the parole-rime in "Amor, tu vedi ben" are more ab-
stract than those in "Al poco giorno": freddo, luce and tempo replace
ombra, verde, erba and colli.23 I have already shown that the sestina

22 Guido Cavalcanti, "Donna me prega" in Poeti del duecento, ed. Gianfranco Con-
tini (Milano: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1960), II, 526.
23 Leslie Fiedler makes this observation in No! In Thunder (Boston: Beacon Press,
1960), p. 29.

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 M L N 181

is "alogical" because the lover's ratio is disrupted and over-powered

by the desire arising from his sensitive faculty. Here the battle is
over: the desire has gained control, and thus the rational faculty,
no longer besieged, can return to normal, though now in a sub-
servient position. It is as if the lover had passed into madness and
then emerged on some other side, into an inverted cosmos.24 In
addition to corresponding to the perception of the lady as the
unique object of desire, the hybrid form of the poem reflects the
fact that this renewed ratio is controlled by desire: the canzone bears
the stamp of the sestina, form here taking on a symbolic aspect.
Hence the lover can use his reason to arrive, in the fifth stanza, at
the same solution that Richard of St. Victor described: "Sub hoc
necessitatis articulo, nullum aliud remedii genus invenio quam ad
divinam clementiam respicere ejusque misericordiam implorare.
Si omnino languidus es, si manus et pedes liberos non habes, certe
adhuc linguam habes et labia movere potes. Si ergo tue industrie
nullus evadendi locus relictus est, clama ad eum qui omnia potest"
(p. 139, 121ld-1212a) ["I can find no other remedy in this state
of misery but to look to the divine clemency and implore His
mercy. If you are sick, if your hands and feet are not free, you
still have a tongue and can move your lips. If there is no way of
escape left which you can actively pursue, call upon Him who is
able to do all things"]. The lover reaches the same conclusion, but
his cry for help is doomed. At first, he could be invoking God's
mercy:

Per6, vertui che se' prima che tempo,

prima che moto o che sensibil luce,
incresciati di me, cho si mal tempo
(79/49-51)

[Therefore, 0 Power that exists before time, before mo-

tion or corporeal light, have pity on me whose time is so
wretched]

What follows, however, condemns him:

entrale in core omai, che ben n'e tempo,

si che per te se n'esca fuor lo freddo
che non mi lascia aver, com'altri, tempo

(52-54)

24 Hence also the "parziale ritorno ad un discorso d'amore piu tradizionale" noted
by Fenzi, p. 264.

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 182 BRUCE COMENS

[enter her heart at last, for it is high time, so that by your

agency the cold may come out of it which does not permit
me to have, as others do, my allotted time.]

He does not want his heart to be improved, but his lady's to be

corrupted: instead of begging for God's mercy, he implores the
god of his desire to give him satisfaction.
The initial "cosi" of "Cosi nel mio parlar" indicates that reason,
although still subordinate to desire (as we shall see), is now fully
recovered. It also marks this poem as the inevitable conclusion to
this obsessive love: all that has preceded necessarily leads to this
powerful canzone. A recent translator has observed that "this, the
last and greatest of the four rime petrose, has a propulsive movement
the others . . . unquestionably lack."25 That propulsive movement
stems from the lover's single-minded-and eminently rational-
pursuit of the only goal that his ratio can now see: revenge. After
describing his situation and to some extent recapitulating the ear-
lier rime petrose, he begins the fifth stanza with another emphatic
"cosi" that stresses his lust for revenge:

Cosi vedess'io lui fender per mezzo

lo core a la crudele che '1 mio squatra!
poi non mi sarebb'atra
la morte, ov'io per sua bellezza corro

(80/53-6)
[Would that I could see him split the heart of the cruel
woman who cuts mine to pieces! For then that death
would not seem black to me, to which her beauty drives
me.]

At this point he would probably enjoy the fate of Ugolino in Inferno

XXXIII.
The lover's situation, largely an intensification of that presented
in the preceding poems, corresponds to Richard's description of
the fourth and final stage of love. Richard begins with the love
itself: "Hic gradus, quia humane possibilitatis metas semel excessit,
crescendi, ut ceteri, terminum nescit, quia semper invenit quod
adhuc concupiscere possit. Quicquid agat, quicquid sibi fiat, desi-
derium ardentis anime non satiat" (pp. 139-41, 1212c) ["This de-
gree, in that it has once passed beyond the bounds of human
power, is unlike others unlimited in its expansion, for it always

25 Patrick S. Diehl, Dante's "Rime" (Princeton: University Press, 1979), p. 254.

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 M L N 183

finds something which it can still desire. Whatever it may do or

whatever may be done to it, does not satisfy the desire of the ardent
soul"]. He then shifts to the lover: "Quid, queso, est quod cor
hominis profundius penetret, acerbius cruciet, vehementius ex-
agitet? ... Morbus irremediabilis et omnino desperabilis, ubi
semper et remedium queritur et nusquam invenitur, immo quic-
quid presumitur ad remedium salutis, vertitur in augmentum fu-
roris. Hic est ille gradus, ut diximus, qui defectum adducit et de
remedio jam desperare facit. Et sicut desperatus eger qui quasi
premortuis membris jacet, jam ulterius quid agat vel ab alio ex-
spectare debeat non habet" (p. 141, 1212d) ["What is there, I ask,
that could penetrate a man's heart more deeply, crucify it more
cruelly, agitate it more wildly?... An incurable and wholly des-
perate sickness, in which a remedy is for ever being sought and
never found, in which indeed, whatever is considered remedial to
health turns into an increase of the raging sickness. This is the
degree which brings about complete decline and despair of re-
covery. And the patient is like a man desperately ill who lies with
his limbs as it were half dead and there is nothing more that he
can do, or hope for from the help of another"]. This utter deso-
lation and despair is presented even more graphically in the third
and fourth stanzas of Dante's canzone. In the third, the lover is
struck to the ground by Amor, and when he cries for mercy, he
receives no remedy: Amor "d'ogni merz6 par messo al niego" (39)
["shows himself set against all mercy"]. Indeed, the prayer for
mercy only seems to increase the ferocity of the attack in stanza
four:

Egli alza ad ora ad or la mano, a sfida

la debole mia vita, esto perverso,
che disteso a riverso
mi tiene in terra d'ogni guizzo stanco:
allor mi surgon ne la mente strida;
e '1 sangue, ch'e per le vene disperso,
fuggendo corre verso
lo cor, che '1 chiama; ond'io rimango bianco.
Elli mi fiede sotto il braccio manco
si forte, che '1 dolor nel cor rimbalza:
allor dico: 'S'elli alza
un'altra volta, Morte m'avra chiuso
prima che '1 colpo sia disceso giuso.'
(80/40-52)

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184 BRUCE COMENS

[Again and again he raises his hand threatening my weak-

ened life, this evil one who pins me to the ground, flat on
my back, and too exhausted to move. Then shrieks arise in
my mind, and the blood that was dispersed through my veins
runs fleeing back to the heart that summons it, so that I am
left white. He strikes me under the left arm so violently that
the pain rebounds through my heart. Then I say: 'If he lifts
his hand again, death will have locked me in before the blow
descends.']

It is in this desperate situation that the lover turns to revenge in

stanza five, beginning with his savage wish: "Cosi vedess'io lui
fender per mezzo/ lo core a la crudele che '1 mio squatra!" (53-4)
["Would that I could see him split the heart of the cruel woman
who cuts mine to pieces!"] Again, Richard provides an explanation
of this apparently sudden shift to hatred: since nothing, at this
stage, can satisfy the lover's desire, the intense love shifts to an
intense hate. In fact, the two emotions can exist simultaneously:
"Hinc fit illud quod sepe in quibusdam vidimus, ut quo se prius
ardentius diligere videbantur, eo se postmodum vehementiori odio
persequerentur. Immo, quod magis mirum est, sepe sub uno eo-
demque tempore sic odiunt ut tamen per desiderium estuare non
desinant et sic diligunt ut tamen velut ex odio persequi non desis-
tant" (p. 143, 1213b) ["Hence arises what we have often seen in
some people, namely that the more ardently they seem to love one
another at first, the more they persecute each other afterwards
with passionate hatred. Indeed, and this is even more astounding,
at one and the same time they hate and yet do not cease to burn
with desire for each other, and love in such a way that they do not
desist from persecuting each other by hatred"]. This shift would
of course be much more likely to occur when love is unrequited,
as in "Cosi nel mio parlar." The simultaneity of love and hatred
leads to the violent eroticism of the sixth stanza of the canzone:

S'io avessi le belle trecce prese,

che fatte son per me scudiscio e ferza,
pigliandole anzi terza,
con esse passerei vespero e squille:
e non sarei pietoso ne cortese,
anzi farei com'orso quando scherza;
e se Amor me ne sferza,
io mi vendicherei di piut di mille.
Ancor ne li occhi, ond'escon le faville
che m'infiammano il cor, ch'io porto anciso,

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 M L N 185

guarderei presso e fiso,

per vendicar lo fuggir che mi face;
e poi le renderei con amor pace.

(66-78)

[Once I'd taken in my hand the fair locks which have become
my whip and lash, seizing them before terce I'd pass through
vespers with them and the evening bell: and I'd not show
pity or courtesy, 0 no, I'd be like a bear at play. And though
Love whips me with them now, I would take my revenge
more than a thousandfold. Still more, I'd gaze into those
eyes whence come the sparks that inflame my heart which
is dead within me; I'd gaze into them close and fixedly, to
revenge myself on her for fleeing from me as she does: and
then with love I would make our peace.]

This may be love, but it is clearly not courtly.26 And in the con-
cluding congedo the lover returns to revenge (although his desire
is still evident), the poem itself becoming the vehicle of that re-
venge:

Canzon, vattene dritto a quella donna

che m'ha ferito il core e che m'invola
quello ond'io ho piii gola,
e dAlle per lo cor d'una saetta:
che bell'onor s'acquista in far vendetta.
(79-83)

[Song, go straight to that woman who has wounded my heart

and robs me of what I most hunger for, and drive an arrow
through her heart; for great honour is gained through
taking revenge.]

Peter Dronke argues that with this congedo the poem "can become
the arrow thrust in the woman's heart, the one thing that may
shatter her defences and lay bare to her the secret feelings that
she had been afraid to face...."27 But given the clear develop-
ment found in the rime petrose it seems unlikely that such amatory
success, even if it were what the lover hopes for, is possible. There

26 Significant in this respect is the lover's disdainful mention of the supposed

effects of Courtly Love: "non sarei pietoso n6 cortese" (70). Dante includes these
terms here, at the end of the sequence, to show just how far the tenets of the dolce
stil nuovo can lead the lover astray, even from the expected (and in a Christian
context, suspect) path of Courtly Love.
27 Peter Dronke, The Medieval Lyric, 2nd ed. (London: Cambridge Press, 1977),
p. 166. Subsequent references given in the text.

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 186 BRUCE COMENS

is no evidence whatsover that the lady has "secret feelings" that

she has "been afraid to face." In fact, the lady only exists in these
poems as the object of the lover's obsessive desire; we know nothing
at all about her, although we may assume that the lover's view of
her is distorted. Thus in his final remark, that if the poem "touches
her to the quick, it will be both revenge and honourable victory, a
triumph of love" (p. 166), Dronke is missing the irony (if not sar-
casm) of "bell'onor s'acquista in far vendetta." Dante's final plea in
"Tre donne" to be allowed to return to Florence makes just the
opposite point: "camera di perdon savio uom non serra,/ ch6 '1
perdonare e bel vincer di guerra" (81/106-7) ["a wise man will not
lock the chamber of forgiveness; for to forgive is fine victory in
war"]. Granted that this statement occurs in a context quite dif-
ferent from "Cosi nel mio parlar," the final line of the latter poem
is nevertheless precisely what we would expect to hear in the In-
ferno. Richard remarks of the fourth stage, "quid hoc aliud quam
quedam forma future dampnationis esse videtur, ubi semper tran-
situr de calore ignium ad frigora nivium et de frigore nivium ad
calores ignium?" (p. 147, 1214c) ["what else can this be but a
symbol of future damnation, where one passes forever from the
heat of the fires to the cold of snow and from the cold of snow to
the heat of fires?] What the congedo does is to show the final per-
version of reason under the influence of earthly desires, at the
same time that it transforms the wish for revenge into an act,
which, together with the lover's absolute obsession with a material
goal, ensures his damnation. Even the lover, although unable to
save himself, seems to realize something of his fate when he refers
to Amor not as "Segnor" but as "esto perverso" (41) ["this evil one"],
and also when he speaks of his "caldo borro" (60; cf. "burrato" in
Inf. XII, 10 and XVI, 114). The latter reference-"perch6 non
latra/ per me, com'io per lei, nel caldo borro? (59-60) ["why does
she not howl for me in the hot gorge, as I do for her?"]-indicates
that all he can now wish for is that his donna will also suffer his
fate. The lady, however, would seem to have done precisely what
Dante advises in "Doglia mi reca:"

Disvelato v'ho, donne, in alcun membro

la vilta de la gente che vi mira,
perche laggiate in ira.
(83/127-9)

[Ladies, I have partly laid bare to you the baseness of the

men who admire you, that you may hold them in con-
tempt.]

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 M L N 187

It is the lover's own distorted, sensual view of her that has brought
him so low, for when the beloved is perceived as an angelic creature
the lover may be ennobled, but when she is seen as the lady "d'ogne
crudelita" (79/6) the opposite occurs. Thus we can still consider
the congedo of "Cosi nel mio parlar" to mark the triumph of love
"chiamando amore appetito di fera!" (83/143) ["provided one gives
the name 'love' to bestial appetite!"].28
In their depiction of a misguided lover's downward path to hell,
the rime petrose complement the upward movement of the Com-
media. The inspiration of the sequence is not, as Contini would
have it, fragmentary, but is on the contrary thoroughly unified.
Nor are the poems mere technical exercises, preparations for the
technical mastery displayed in the Inferno. They constitute Dante's
first attempt at an objective narrative wherein the speaker is im-
plicitly judged both by what he says and by the manner in which
he says it; they are also Dante's first sustained critique of any aspect
of love. The difficulty with the sequence lies in the lack of an
explicit basis for interpretation, such as those provided by the
prose of the Vita Nuova (which, by means of its different time
frame, assures us that the lover is on the correct path), and by the
vision of Paradiso XXXIII (which enables us to judge Paolo and
Francesca correctly). Still, the need for a framework may reflect
merely our own lack of a totalizing perspective. Singleton argues
that even the Vita Nuova requires in us "some sense of that larger
world which was standing around it at birth" (p. 5). That larger
world is, of course, Christianity, specifically "the belief that there
is nothing which so much matters in this world as the salvation
(salus) of the soul-and that through Christ only is true salvation
possible" (p. 5). Without this awareness, says Singleton, the Vita
Nuova itself would fall apart.29 Thus, while Contini is correct in

28 This canzone is also often seen as a triumph of realism in Dante's poetry (by,
for example, Marti and Fenzi, who remarks "il sangue e proprio sangue, il cuore
non e che il cuore" [p. 267]). As I indicate above in n. 1, I think this "realism" is
to a great extent merely the inverse of the "idealism" of the Vita Nuova. In any
case, it should now be clear that the poem represents not a triumph of realism but
the doom attending materialism.
29 This need for an interpretive Archimedean point is not confined to works in
a Christian context. In a discussion of Freud's readings of Jensen's Gradiva and
Hoffmann's Sandmann, Fredric Jameson remarks, "We have here ... narratives
which formally require the final term of a norm (maturity, psychic health, the cure)
towards which to steer their itineraries, whether catastrophic or providential; of
that ultimate norm itself, however, the narrative can have nothing to say, as it is
not a realm, but rather only an organizational device or term limit" (in "Imaginary
and Symbolic in Lacan: Marxism, Psychoanalytic Criticism, and the Problem of the

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 188 BRUCE COMENS

observing that our interpretive recourse to the Commedia is due to

the rime petrose's "mancanza d'una piena autosufficienza" (p. xxi)
["lack of full self-sufficiency"], this dependence in reality only
means that the Commedia provides the most convenient and most
pertinent formulation of Dante's world.30 The very fact that the
lover in the rime petrose speaks in recognizable forms demonstrates
his participation in a greater order, the order that implicitly judges
him, while the unusual, even unnatural cast of those forms indi-
cates that judgement will be negative. And although some of
Dante's other lyrics, owing to their explicit intellectual and moral
content, appear more self-sufficient, the rime petrose are likely to
have a more immediate impact on the reader. Dante's concentra-
tion on the sensitive faculty of the soul makes the poems a pow-
erfully emotional sequence.

SUNY at Buffalo

Subject," Yale French Studies 55/56 [1977], repr. in Literature and Psychoanalysis: The
Question of Reading: Otherwise, ed. Shoshana Felman [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1982], p. 372).
30 And even the Commedia, despite its vast scope and appearance of self-suffi-
ciency, requires a final reference point, the mystical reality of Dante's vision of God,
to ensure its legitimacy and validity.

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