Time after time he ordered me to search for where I might glimpse this youthful angel so that in my boyhood I went searching for her often, and observed that her bearing was so dignified and praiseworthy that it can truly be said of her as Homer wrote: “She did not seem the daughter of a mortal man, but rather of a god.” And even though her image, which was constantly with me, was the means by which Love ruled me, it was so dignified in its power that it never allowed Love to govern me without the faithful counsel of reason, in those matters where such guidance was helpful. And trembling it spoke these words: “Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur michi.” * At that time the animal spirit, which dwells in the high chamber to which all the spirits of sensation carry their perceptions, began to marvel, and speaking especially to the spirits of vision it said: “Apparuit iam beatitudo vestra.” † At that time the natural spirit, which dwells where our food is digested, started to cry, and crying it spoke these words: “Heu miser, quia frequenter impeditus ero deinceps!” ‡įrom then on, I swear that Love dominated my soul, which was wedded to him so early, and began to rule me with such confidence and power, by means of the force my imagination lent him, there was no choice but for me to do whatever he wanted. She appeared, dressed in a very stately color, a subdued and dignified crimson, girdled and adorned in a manner that was fitting for her young age.Īt that time, truly, I say, the vital spirit, which dwells in the innermost chamber of the heart, started to tremble so powerfully that its disturbance reached all the way to the slightest of my pulses. She had already been in this life long enough for the heaven of the fixed stars to have moved toward the east a twelfth of a degree since she was born, so that she was at the beginning of her ninth year when she appeared to me, and I saw her when I was almost at the end of my ninth. Nine times, the heaven of the light had returned to where it was at my birth, almost to the very same point of its orbit, when the glorious lady of my mind first appeared before my eyes-she whom many called Beatrice without even knowing that was her name.
In the book of my memory-the part of it before which not much is legible-there is the heading Incipit vita nova. Under this heading I find the words which I intend to copy down in this little book if not all of them, at least their essential meaning.
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