Commentary Purg XXX 115-117

It seems obvious to most readers today that the phrase vita nova refers, if in its Latin form, to Dante's first prosimetrum, the thirty-one poems collected with prose commentary known as The New Life.  And it seemed so to at least one very early commentator, the Ottimo (DDP Ottimo.Purg.XXX.Nota).  However, here is the commentary of Benvenuto da Imola to this passage (DDP Benvenuto.Purg.XXX.109-117): 'This man, i.e., Dante, was such in his new life, i.e., in his boyhood; others, however, refer to his treatise De vita nova, which he composed in his youth.  But it is surely ridiculous to do so, seeing that the author was ashamed of it in his maturity.'  Benvenuto's enthusiastic pre-humanist reading of the Comedy will only accept an allegorical, theologized Beatrice who bears no resemblance to the mortal girl of the early work.  Thus does he fail to grasp the central pretext of the entire poem, and surely of this extended scene in the garden of Eden.  What seems most notable, perhaps, is the power of Benvenuto's opinion.  None of the other early commentators who follow him mentions the book as being referred to here.  It is only with Venturi (DDP Venturi.Purg.XXX.115) that we hear that it may also be referred to; this over-cautious estimate will be found in several others, such as Portirelli (DDP Portirelli.Purg.XXX.109-117), Mestica (DDP Mestica.Purg.XXX.115), and Del Lungo (DDP Dellungo.Purg.XXX.115-116).  It was, however, only Scartazzini -- as is so often the case -- who really tried to examine the issue frontally.  His solution (DDP Scartazzini.Purg.XXX.115] was to argue that the literal sense of 'new life' was 'youth,' but that the phrase referred to the regeneration of Dante's virtue by agency of Beatrice.  One may feel it necessary to quibble with this estimate, since Dante first felt the power of Beatrice's goodness when he was just days from turning nine years old, and thus the traditional reading 'boyhood' (more disturbing to such as Scartazzini than 'youth') is correct.  Scartazzini, however, is uncompromising and probably convincing in sensing that the reference is to the libello as well.  How could it be otherwise?  One can see in this dispute, which continues in muffled form even today, an outline of the way commentators influence the readings of other commentators, and thus eventually teachers, and finally students.  Benvenuto's opinions are respected (and surely they should be, as he is clearly one of the most acute students of the poem), but sometimes slavishly.  Similarly, Scartazzini's insistent judgments, frequently overstated and often too assured, are avoided by later commentators, for perhaps a series of reasons.  Scartazzini was not only a German Swiss and a Protestant, but a Protestant clergyman.  And perhaps most annoying of all to an Italian reader, he loved to belittle his adversaries and thought little or nothing of most of his Italian colleagues.  One result of this, as a certain amount of consultation of the Dartmouth Dante Project will affirm, is that Scartazzini's tendentious and flawed but nonetheless great commentary (1900), reflecting the entries that were composed for his one-man Enciclopedia dantesca (published in Milano in 1896 and 1899, and then reissued in 1905, edited by Fiammazzo), is both pillaged and avoided in silence by many of those who came after him.  For all his acerbity -- even nastiness -- his work deserves much more attention than it generally receives.

      One finds, even among recent commentators, a certain desire to avoid committing oneself to what seems completely obvious: the phrase vita nova cannot help but call to mind, in this context, the work that records Beatrice's lasting impact on Dante, first in his 'new life' (when they were both children, a time to which Dante refers in [Purg XXX 42]: 'before I had outgrown my childhood') and then later on, as recorded in the book called 'The New Life.'