"
It is hardly to be supposed that the nine year old lover noted with
minute care in his diary, his first meeting of Beatrice Portinari but as
he looked back on the event years later he saw that the vision had been
the the greatest crisis in his mental, moral and spiritual history. The
story begins in the first page of the New Life. A real living child
familiarly called Bice, the diminutive for Beatrice, enamoured Dante
with a real, genuine love. "After that meeting," says the poet, "I in my
boyhood often went seeking her and saw her of such noble and
praiseworthy deportment that truly of her might be said the word of the
poet Homer: 'She seems not the daughter of mortal man but of God.'" Nine
years passed and the child, now a maiden, "blooming in her beauty's
spring, saluted me with such virtue that it seemed to me that I saw all
the bounds of bliss. Since it was the first time her words came to my
ears I took in such sweetness that, as it were intoxicated, I turned
away from the folk and betaking myself to the solitude of my own
chamber I sat myself down to think of this most courteous lady."
A little later the wrapt expression of his loving eyes as he looks at
Beatrice attracts the attention of others and to misdirect them, he
feigns love for the lady he calls the screen of truth and writes verses
in her honor.
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