Dante and his literary significance

Dante

The phrase "love and the gentle heart" was first used by Italian poet Dante Alighieri in his epic Inferno. Several hundred years later, London-born Dante Gabriel Rossetti pays homage to his predecessor in the sonnet named by its first line: "Love and the gentle heart." Rosetti's 1861 poem is therefore a romantic-era version of the classic Italian Petrarchian sonnet. In accordance with the theme, tone, and structure of the style, Rossetti's sonnet opens with a direct reference Canto V of the Inferno, which reads "Love, that on gentle heart doth swiftly seize, / Seized this man for the person beautiful." Like most Romantic-era works, "Love and the gentle heart" hearkens to an earlier age and is filled with sentimentality. The poem ascribes to the metric rule of iambic pentameter and uses a typical ABBA-CDDC-XYZXYZ rhyme scheme. Although Dante's sonnet does not contain any in-depth symbolism, the poet's diction creates a compelling verse. Like all true Petrarchian sonnets, "Love and the gentle heart" contains fourteen lines, broken into an octet and sestet. These two parts differ thematically and structurally. The octet, the poem's first eight lines, describes the nature of love, which the narrator describes as being one with the "gentle heart." The sestet introduces a twist, which shifts the tone of the poem from one of gentleness and "slumbering" to one of yearning, desire, and longing. The final two lines of the sestet, which are not couplets as they would be in a Shakespearean poem, recall the "dreaming" and eternal nature of true love.

Choosing the Petrarchian form over the Shakespearean was for Rossetti absolutely no accident. Dante Rossetti was a painter as well as a poet and his Italian father was "obsessed with the works of Dante," (Mondragon). The sonnet form he uses is a tribute to both Petrarch and Dante Alighieri, who were Italian poets. Moreover, in evoking Petrarch and Alighieri, Dante Rossetti evokes the mystical nature of medieval literature, which fascinated the Romantics far more than did the Renaissance works of Shakespeare. Although Shakespeare wrote with equal intensity and passion about the subject of romantic love, the medieval era held more of a fascination for Romantic artists and poets like Dante Rossetti.

Romance is concerned with union and unity, and Rossetti's poem begins with the line: "Love and the gentle heart are one thing." Next, Rossetti invokes Alighieri in line two: "...just as the poet says in his verse." The third and fourth lines of the poem use a teasingly sardonic analogy to emphasize the poet's main point. "...each from the other one as well divorced / as reason from the mind's reasoning." The use of the word "divorce" serves as a double entendre, referring both to two ordinary objects being rendered as well as to two persons dissolving their marital vows. As divorce is the exact opposite from union, the poet creates some dynamic tension through the use of phrases like "one thing" and "the other one" in conjunction with the word "divorce." The repetition of the word "one" in lines one and three acts as a unifying devise in this initial stanza. Similarly, the last line of stanza one contains another word repetition: "reason" and "reasoning." The poet could have easily selected a synonym for either "reason" or "reasoning." Rossetti's choice implies a conscious use of word repetition that parallels the repetition of the word "one." The repetition helps emphasize the poem's central themes. Finally, the concept of reason differs greatly from the concept of love." Love and reason are in fact often in direct opposition to one another. Rossetti cleverly selected the concept of reason as an analogy for love. The irony of love being compared to reason mirrors the contrast between love and divorce in this first stanza.

The second stanza of "Love and the gentle heart" takes the theme one step further, as the narrator personifies and anthropomorphizes love: "Nature craves love, and then creates love king, / and makes the heart a palace where he'll stay..." By claiming that "nature craves love," the narrator implies that love is but a natural expression of life. Rossetti suggests that love should be respected as a natural force. Nature trumps humanity; humanity is always subject to the laws of nature. Nature and natural forces were especially poignant for the Romantic poet. Especially when faced with impending industrialization, the Romantic poet glamorized the raw forces of unbridled nature. The poet also portrays love as the ruler of a human being, as the "king" whose palace is the heart. By directly comparing love to a king, Rossetti comments on love's supremacy. Moreover, whereas in stanza one Rossetti used a clever analogy to describe the nature of love, in stanza two the poet uses a strong metaphor to describe nature's relationship to love.

The narrator claims that King love will remain in the palace of the heart "perhaps a shorter or longer day," denoting that love has a will of its own. The human being does not reign over his or her heart, but vice-versa. Love will do as it will. The last line of the second stanza: "...breathing quietly, gently slumbering," again personifies and anthropomorphizes love clearly. The word "gently" hearkens back to the first line of the poem and therefore its central theme: that "love and the gentle heart are one thing." Lines seven and eight of the sonnet also contain unique verbal parallels. For example, in line seven the poet uses the words "shorter" and "longer" together. The words "shorter" and "longer" are opposites, tying in with the theme of opposites that was emphasized in the first stanza. The words "shorter" and "longer" are also the same type of comparative adjective forms. In line eight, the poet sandwiches two adverbs ending in -ly (quietly, gently) between two progressive verb forms ending in -ing: "...breathing" and "slumbering." Such grammatical devises anchor the sonnet, an already structured poetic form, at key points.

The sestet of "Love and the gentle heart" commences with the transitional word "then": "Then beauty in a virtuous woman's face / makes the eyes yearn, and strikes the heart..." The narrator here introduces a conflict into the theme of love: the yearning, the desire, the wandering eye, mind, or heart. A "virtuous woman" or a "virtuous man" suggests a virgin, but not necessarily an actual sexual virgin. Rather, the term "virtuous" suggests something which is endowed with spiritual beauty and alluring attractiveness. Even while true love likes "gently slumbering" within the palace of the heart, the fresh face of a new man or woman can make the eyes wander and make the heart ache with yearning. The following two lines continue the theme of temptation and the arousal of sexual desire: "...so that the eyes' desire's reborn again, / and often, rooting there with longing, stays." Rossetti does not seem to be hinting that being attracted to new people damages true love. However, the entire third stanza is devoid of the word "love," a significant omission.

Desire is not love; it is ancillary to it. Desire is a flash of energy, a spark that "strikes the heart." The poet employs active voice throughout the entire sonnet, engaging the reader fully in the theme and subject matter. Strong verbs like "craves," and "makes" are peppered generously throughout an otherwise abstract poem. The third stanza of "Love and the gentle heart" is the least gentle of them all; here the poet infuses his lines with passionate and mystical imagery. Words like "reborn" and "virtuous" also spiritualize the subject matter of the sonnet.