" And he replies: "Ladies, the end and aim of my love is but the
salutation of that lady; therein I find that beatitude which is the goal
of my desire. And now that it has pleased her to deny me her salutation,
my whole happiness is contained in that which can never perish." And the
women: "Tell us, then, wherein lies such happiness?" "In the words that
praise my lady" (that is to say in the emotion which is an end in itself
and in its artistic expression). The lover never exchanged a word with
her; had he done so, attempting to establish a reciprocal relationship,
Beatrice, bereft of his idealising love, would have had to descend from
her pedestal and show herself a girl like all the rest. Not until after
her deification has become an established fact, does Beatrice (in the
beginning of the _Divine Comedy_) remember her lover and come to save
him. In one of his poems Dante says that not every woman could inspire
such a love, but only a woman of peculiar nobility of character.
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