Dante's "Vita Nova"

To “reread” Dante’s first book inevitably involves comparing and contrasting today’s reading to those of the past, to when one first encountered the libello at university, and to those occasions over the years when one has reread it for research or in preparation for teaching Dante, as I have done countless times. Since I first read it more than thirty years ago, the text has itself evolved over time. Indeed, the Vita nova has proved to be perhaps the most mobile of Dante’s works, shifting back and forth in its editorial appearance over the last generation, even changing its title, as new editions and commentaries have appeared. As is well known, this instability is a characteristic that goes back to its earliest manuscript tradition. Even before Boccaccio’s interventions, copyists seem to have been uncertain about what to make of the text. A first thing to reflect upon, therefore, before considering the final three chapters, is how the text has evolved, just as we as readers have evolved, both collectively and individually over time. How is the ending of the Vita nova different from the ending we thought we knew?
What’s new about the Vita nova, now that we seem to have come to some kind of provisional traguardo or finish line, at least in terms of the currently available texts and commentaries? I say provisional because as far as the contemporary editorial presentation of the libello is concerned, the present state of the question of the text and its division into chapters is as mobile and unstable as it ever was. Stefano Carrai, in fact, adopts Guglielmo Gorni’s ordering and the title Vita nova in his edition and commentary, while Donato Pirovano has returned to Michele Barbi’s chaptering and title. In light of the fact that “the manuscript tradition does not support in any way the hypothesis of an original paragraphing of the Vita nuova,” it is hard to dissent from Richard Lansing’s judicious review of the question of the formal structure of the text and his conclusion that the genuine structure of the work “is created by its events, the experiences that the poet relates sequentially, the nature, tenor, and symbolic significance of its episodes.” Perhaps for this reason toggling back and forth between the Gorni and Pirovano editions can be very stimulating from an interpretive point of view. It leads one to reflect, for example, on the nature of the transition between the last movement of the episode of the “donna gentile” and chapters XL-XLII [29-31], the final section of the work under discussion in the tryptic of readings that follows. To what extent does chapter XXXIX [28], mark the end of the “donna gentile” episode and to what extent does it mark the beginning of the final resolution of the book, as Gorni suggested: “La porzione di testo definito dai paragrafi 28-31 è quasi una ‘vita nova’ della vita nova” [the portion of the text demarcated by chapters 28-31 is virtually a “new life” of the new life). In any event, the final chapters are ideal for fostering retrospective and anticipatory reflections; retrospective to the extent that the discussion of these final chapters can illuminate major episodes, images, and themes that have come before; anticipatory to the extent that these same episodes, images, and themes, can be projected into the future, and can have implications for Dante’s works to come, representing a new beginning, “a vita nova of the vita nova.”