W. Vernon, Paget Toynbe, C.H.
Grandgent, Jefferson B. Fletcher, James Russell Lowell--that Beatrice is
both a real human being and a symbol.
The direct testimony, not to urge the subtle arguments furnished by
internal evidence of Dante's works, as to the reality of Beatrice
Portinari as the beloved of our poet is offered first by Boccaccio who
was acquainted with Dante's daughter Beatrice, a nun who lived near
enough to the poet to get information from the Portinari family.
Certainly Boccaccio did not hesitate when chosen in 1373 by the
Florentines to lecture on Dante, to make the very positive statement
that the boy Dante, "received the image of Beatrice Portinari into his
heart with such affection that from that day forward as long as he lived
it never departed from him." That statement was doubtless made within
the hearing of many relatives and friends of the families concerned, the
Alighieri, the Portinari, the Bardi. "If the statement was false,"
argues Dr. Edward Moore, England's foremost Dantian scholar, "it must
have been so glaring and palpable that its assertion could only have
covered Boccaccio with ridicule." The second authority for the statement
that Beatrice Portinari had a real existence and was the object of
Dante's love is furnished by Dante's own son Pietro, who wrote a
commentary on the Divine Comedy nineteen years after his father's
demise--a commentary in which he declares "because mention is here first
made of Beatrice of whom so much has been said, especially in the third
book of the Paradiso, it is to be premised that there really was a lady
Beatrice by name, greatly distinguished for her beauty and virtues who,
in the time of the author, lived in the city of Florence and who was of
the house of certain Florentine citizens called the Portinari, of whom
the author Dante was a suitor.
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