From what the Divine Comedy and the many poems Dante wrote for his Beatrice we can see how the love of the poet is undying for this woman he didn’t even speak to. Dante describes Beatrice as a typical “donna angelicata” (angel-like woman) typical of the period of the Dolce Stilnovo where the woman was seen as the only salvation for the man and also seen as a way for the man to get closer to god, she was seen like a Madonna. After Dante’s death, Giovanni Boccaccio does re-tell the poet’s life and we can observe how his interest for Beatrice was born way back when they were around 10 years old and continued to thrive even after Beatrice got married and died. Dante revisits the figure of Beatrice like an angel in the Divine Comedy, putting her in heaven with San Bernardo di Chiaravalle. If we take as another source the film Dante (came out in 2022) which is hypothetically more or less true were shown how the whole life of the poet is plagued by the memories of Beatrice or nightmares of her dead corpse even when he spends time with his wife, Gemma, he is still thinking about her; this shows how love persists even after death if it's actually pure.
How does the Divine Comedy show Dantes admiration for the woman? It all started with the dream Dante had on the day before Easter where Mary (Madonna, Mother of Jesus) and Beatrice came to him in a dream, what the women said? We don't know but from testimonies by his wife and children we know that he just started writing. At the start of the Divine Comedy Dante talks about how he was lost in this dark forest: “Nel bel mezzo del cammin’ di nostra mi ritrovai per una selva oscura ché la diritta via era smarrita”. The black forest is a symbol for sin, he talks about how he finds himself deep in this forest and he lost the right way home, aka a symbol for a deep crisis in his life where he was stressed out both by religion and love not knowing what to choose and inevitably he falls in a black hole of sinning. After the selva oscura Dante finds himself surrounded by Le Tre Fiere which are three wild animals: a wolf, a lion and a leopard which all indicate three of the capital sins (gluttony, pride and lust), the poet is soon rescued by latin poet Virgil who i personally love for the Eneid. Virgil with Beatrice and San Bernardo are all of the people who will accompany Dante through his trip from Hell to Purgatory to Heaven where he will then meet god. The poet walks through all of the rings of hell and purgatory to then come to the doors of Heaven where he sees this chariot followed by angels and clouds. Dante describes her smell and the way her hair fell perfectly to crown her face, we can see how clearly he was head over heels for this woman, when he sees Beatrice in all of her beauty he suddenly goes in shock recognizing the feeling of the old flame reigniting in his heart.
“Men che dramma di sangue m'è rimaso che non tremi” which roughly translates to “I don’t have left a single drop of blood that isn't shaking” in modern english. Dante describes how strongly it affects him to the woman he has longed for so much in front of him, standing there like a goddess, like a statue sculpted by the angels, how he was trembling just from the harsh feeling of love. As we all know, classical love is more than just sex, at the time it was men who dropped to their knees every time their woman glanced at them; now with the whole submissive woman dominant man dynamic things changed for worse and love got ruined by bigoted beliefs and or society’s repudiate for anything that isn’t heterosexual or that has only two genders. And to believe it was way more common for man and man to love each other in ancient Greece than it was for woman and man.
