blog post 13

Dante’s poem Vita Nuova contains the aspect of courtly love from the Troubadours. Especially the poems written by Bernart de Ventadorn describes perfection of a woman who he loves. The power that woman effects on both poets by love is so strong that their poems are filled with praises. From Bernart de Ventadorn’s poem You’ve Asked, My Lord, for Song, he expresses how he is helpless and powerless in front of his lover. For instance, “while she invests my mind,/ I’d never hear at all./ so subtly does she snare/ the heart out of my breast” (Ventadorn 83) illustrates that whatever she does to him, his “best part’s still there” (83). He also expresses how small he can be infront of his love one that “the one thing you might do/ is give me one sweet glance/ if sometime you’ve the chance” (85). He is surely overwhelmed by his lover and expresses that he is delight to get both pain and joy from the love. He also shows that all he needs is the woman that he love as he says “Unless my lady might/ Receive me in that place/ she lies in” (85) meaning that he has gave up on control over his love and relies on her.

           Dante also expresses the perfection of a woman who he is in love. He is explaining that even the Heaven is imperfect as “Heaven, that lacks its full perfection only/ in lacking her, asks for her of its Lord” (Dante 36). Because for him, she is the perfection and because she is alive which means that heaven is missing her, heaven cannot be perfect. Therefore, he concludes that “My lady is desired in highes heaven” (36). He has expressed his love by analyzing his lady so powerful that “Love drives a killing frost into vile hearts that freezes and destroys their every thought;/ and dare a thought remain to look at her/ it has to change to good or else must die” (36).

           Both Ventadorn and Dante illustrates their aspects of love as a courtly love by praising their beloved ones as a powerful and perfect. They both have expressed their love so strong that they are helpless in front of their woman and that they are in a lower level compared to their love.