Columbia Library columns (v.14(1964Nov-1965May))

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  v.14,no.2(1965:Feb): Page 4  



4                                    Maurice Valency

In this manner, the successive transformations of the lady of
the song reached their apogee and came to an end. There was to
be no more. The most gentle lady had, in all conscience, gone as
far as she could. Since the troubadours themselves had begun at
the top of the scale of perfection, the succeeding degrees could
be but few. But these steps were the most difficult and, to encom¬
pass them, the art of pleasing ladies had to be transformed into a
branch of theology. Out of the perfect lady of the troubadours
was born the angelic lady, Cavalcanti's star, an angel in the flesh.
Beatrice, however, held greater promise. In the Vita Nuova,
Dante's lady shed her fleshly aspect and became pure spirit. It
was then no longer possible to love the beauty of Beatrice in
the flesh; it had to be loved in its spiritual aspect exclusively,
the beauty of a blessed soul in heaven, a pure ideal. The ultimate
step in the idealization of the lady of the song was, accordingly,
her effacement from the earth.

The love of the earthly Beatrice led Dante, as he tells us, to a
life of virtue, humility, and charity, and this simply in anticipa¬
tion of this guerdon, the salutation in which was all his beatitude.
Love had done as much, or almost as much, for the troubadour
lover. But the love of the heavenly Beatrice, the true Beatrice,
led Dante to God. The process which begins with the premoni¬
tion of the death of Beatrice in the Vita Nuova ends only when
in Paradise Beatrice steps aside, and the lover whom she has led
to the Empyrean sees standing in her place the glorious elder who
points the way to the seat of the All-Highest. From this moment
on, Beatrice recedes further and further still from her lover's
eyes until she takes her appointed place in the heavenly rose of
which she forms a part; and her splendor, hitherto dazzling, is
seen to be but a ray of the supreme and eternal light.

MAURICE VALENCY
  v.14,no.2(1965:Feb): Page 4