The love
experience of Lord Byron, Victor Hugo, and Canova the sculptor, when
they too were only children is a matter of history. This statement we
shall the more readily accept if we recall the dictum of Pascal: "The
passions are great in proportion as the intelligence is great. In a
great soul everything is great." In the light of that principle we must
say that if Dante's love attachment in early life runs counter to the
experience of mankind, he is, even as a boy, exceptional in the power of
imagination and peculiarly sensitive to heart impressions.
His experience as a nine year old boy loving with a depth of increasing
emotion a girl with whom there probably had never been any
communication except a mere greeting, a love reverential, persisting,
even after her marriage to another, continuing through the married life
of the poet himself, a love, the story of which is celebrated in
matchless verse,--all that is so unique a thing that critics have been
led to deny the very existence of Beatrice or to see in the story an
allegory which may be interpreted in various ways.
Some critics see in Beatrice only the ideal of womanhood; others make
her an allegory of conflicting things. Francesco Perez holds that
Beatrice is only the figure of Active Intelligence, while Dante Gabriel
Rossetti advances the fantastic theory that she is the symbol of the
Roman Empire, and love--the anagram of Roma--on Dante's part is only
devotion to the imperial cause.
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