It is
very apparent that Dante, at first, was not sure of himself, and that he
only gradually discovered the new consciousness which was stirring his
soul; with every chapter the beloved recedes to a greater distance and
becomes more sacred to him.
It is quite in keeping with all this that our knowledge of this girl of
eighteen is very vague and uncertain. Some of Dante's commentators
believe her to have been a figment of his brain, a woman who never
lived, or an allegory of wisdom, virtue, the Church, theology, etc. But
at the death of her father Beatrice again behaves like any other earthly
maiden. There is a grain of truth in every one of these theories, for
Dante was a great scholastic as well as a great poet, and in more
advanced years he felt a need somehow to connect the love of his youth
with the system of the Church; this could be done in an allegorical way
without being inwardly untruthful.
Vague forces, which the lover himself realises as mysterious, run high
in the _Vita Nuova_ and in the poems; the lover has hallucinations in
sleep and sickness.
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