The Number Nine in Vita Nuova by Dante - Essay Example

of the paper: The Number Nine in Vita Nuova by Dante of your school: of the The Number Nine in Vita Nuova by DanteThe influence of Beatrice di Folco Portinari on Dante Alighieri’s works is very visible. In fact mention has to be made of the text named La Vita Nuova that has made it all the more clear. La Vita Nuova was written in the year 1295 and is a collection of courtly love poems in Italian instead of Latin which was the language of the intellectuals during the medieval period.It speaks of unspoken love and that too for woman who he has met only twice in his lifetime.

Beatrice married a banker and Dante married Gemma Donati. The sad demise of his muse all the more made him write this beautiful compilation of poems that made his love for her public but with dignity. La Vita Nuova is mainly concerned with Beatrice’s appearance and how Dante perceives that presence becomes the subject of all these poems in short. This is like any other Dantista which deals with numbers in a different way. Here the number significance of the number nine has been exploited in the best poetic way.

The number nine is a representative of the age when Dante first met Beatrice. She was a year younger to him. There is another meaning to this number which is for nine heavens and this number is the square of three. Number three is an emblem of the Trinity that consists of Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. All this lends this text a purity that comes only with true love that Dante had for Beatrice. References:http://www.jstor.org/pss/40166219http://incanto.biz/2011/06/02/on-cloud-nine/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Vita_Nuova