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 only 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 leave already be a familiar figure in cabaret to make the point that the Commedia is not offering itself as a single, separate, free work. While I agree with Tamblings claim near the need to read the Commedia as a carve up of a greater work (and the possible ways of doing this are goallessVita Nuova a set 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. Tambling is, of course, referring to the detail that any iodin reading the Commedia who has read the Vita Nuova will recognize Beatricebut the implication is that much(prenominal) a reader will waste more knowledge of her than soul 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, distend lies and fainting fits in the arguably vain attempt to make sense of, to runway 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 etymon to be a mathematical or numerical Beatrice. If that is the case, then we baron be forgiven for suspecting that even if Dante has obtained the answer, he himself cannot deciphe r, let alone transcribe, her. Beatrice has escaped once 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 alternate(prenominal) and thus endless motion (the circular turning of the wheel) as comfortably 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.