Saturday, October 26, 2019
Dante & Beatrice's "Transcendental" Love
The background information on Dante refers to the love that he had for Beatrice as transcendental. Knowing the reality of the situation, this statement takes on a new meaning. The love that Dante had for Beatrice was transcendentally creepy. According to Dante's Vita Nuova, Dante and Beatrice met a grand total of twice. I personally think that it's a little odd to write 42 chapters and a universe-spanning self-insert Christian fanfic about a woman you have met twice. While it is more likely that Dante simply used Beatrice as a sort of medium about which to write his poetry, I personally just think its funnier to imply that Dante was really creepy. Dante and Beatrice were also married to different people the whole time, which isn't great and its also a sin. All in all, Dante's love for Beatrice was odd at best and incredibly unsettling at worst. Thoughts?
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4 comments:
I do agree with you that Dante's love for Beatrice is very creepy. I would argue that Dante's love for Beatrice, which was literally coveting his neighbor's wife, would land him in Purgatory. Also, from a certain perspective, the fact that we all celebrating someone's writing, which was essentially an excuse to creep out on on a girl, is very much weird.
Yeah, Dante is a weird one. But then again she was his muse for writing the Divine Comedy. I agree he probably would go to purgatory since he seems to "repent" but nonetheless he's creepy and probably should rot in hellfire for all eternity.
I agree, Dante was a tad odd. I'd add that making an entire story detailing the specifics of how one thinks sinful or annoying people are tortured in hell forever is odd by itself. Massively influential or not, kinda sounds like an Onision novel where the he's clearly just angry at certain groups of people and is writing them into terrible situations because he doesn't like them. All bark, no bite, potentially.
I also agree that this is fairly creepy, but I feel like we have to remember the era in which Dante lived. Of course, by our standards Dante would be seen as a creep, but back then it would be a very romantic thing. You could maybe consider Dante to be an early early romantic.
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