Treatise One: The Invitation (Chapters 1–13)

As the Philosopher says at the beginning of his First Philosophy, all men by nature desire to know. The reason is that every thing, moved by a providence of its first nature, inclines to its own perfection; and since knowledge is the proper perfection of our soul, in which lies our final happiness, we are all naturally subject to the desire for it.

"The Philosopher" is Aristotle; the "First Philosophy" is his Metaphysics*, which opens with these words.*

Yet many are deprived of this most noble perfection, by various causes, within a man and outside him. Within: a defect of the body, whose organs are not well disposed to receive anything; or a vice of the soul, which follows evil pleasures, and is so deceived that it holds all things cheap. Outside: the cares of family and civic life, which rightly keep the greater part of men occupied, so that they cannot have the leisure of speculation; or the place where a man is born, far from any school or learned company. So that few remain who can come to the possession of what all desire; and countless are those who are hindered, and live always starved of this food.

O blessed are those few who sit at that table where the bread of angels is eaten! and wretched those who share the food of sheep! I have not sat at that blessed table; but, having fled the pasture of the common herd, at the feet of those who sit there I gather up what falls from them; and I know the miserable life of those I have left behind me; and, moved to pity, not forgetting myself, I have kept something back for the wretched, which I have shown to their eyes some time ago, and have made them more desirous of it.

So now I mean to make a general banquet of what I have shown them, and of the bread that is needed with such meat, without which it could not be eaten by them. The meat of this banquet will be served in fourteen ways — that is, fourteen canzoni, of love and of virtue, which without this bread had some shadow of obscurity, so that to many their beauty was more pleasing than their goodness. But this bread — this commentary — will be the light which will make every colour of their meaning appear.

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I must first defend myself against two charges. One is that it is not fitting for a man to speak of himself. That is true, except for two causes: when one could not otherwise avoid great infamy and danger, as Boethius spoke of himself in his Consolation, to defend himself against perpetual infamy in his exile; and when great profit comes to others by way of teaching, as Saint Augustine did in his Confessions. Both reasons move me. I fear the infamy of having been subject to so great a passion as one who reads these canzoni may think ruled me; and that infamy ceases, if I show that not passion but virtue was the moving cause. And I intend to show the true meaning of them, which some cannot see unless I tell it, because it is hidden under the figure of allegory.

And I must speak, too, because of my exile:

Ah, if it had pleased the Disposer of the universe that the cause of my excuse had never been! For neither would others have sinned against me, nor I suffered pain unjustly — the pain, I say, of exile and of poverty. Since it pleased the citizens of the most beautiful and most famous daughter of Rome, Florence, to cast me out from her sweet bosom — in which I was born and nourished up to the summit of my life, and in which, with their good leave, I desire with all my heart to rest my weary mind, and finish the time that is given me — through almost all the regions to which this language extends, a pilgrim, almost a beggar, I have gone, showing against my will the wound of fortune, which is often unjustly imputed to the wounded. Truly I have been a ship without sail and without rudder, carried to different ports and harbours and shores by the dry wind that blows from painful poverty; and I have appeared before the eyes of many who, perhaps through some report, had imagined me in another form; in whose sight not only did my person become cheap, but every work of mine, done and to be done, was held of less account.

So I must give my work a little more gravity, so that it may have more authority — and that is why I write this commentary in a weightier style.

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The other charge is that I have written my commentary in the common Italian tongue, and not in Latin, the language of learning. I have three reasons. First, from fitness: the canzoni are in Italian, and a servant should be suited to his master; a Latin commentary would be a lord, not a servant, of Italian poems. Second, from generosity: a Latin commentary would profit only the few learned men — and of them, many of the learned in our day study not for wisdom but for money and for offices; while an Italian one will serve the many: the princes, barons, knights and many other noble folk, not only men but women, who have this language and not Latin. Third, from the natural love of my own tongue: I love it, because it is nearest to me, and the most united with me; because it brought my parents together, who spoke it; because it was the way in which I first entered into knowledge, for through it I learned Latin. It has been my benefactor; and I want to show its excellence, which in rhyme is hidden by the ornaments of rhyme and verse, but which in prose will appear in its own beauty, plain and unadorned.

And so this commentary will be like a loaf of barley bread, by which thousands will be filled, and of which I shall still have baskets full left over. "This shall be the new light, the new sun, which shall rise where the old sets, and shall give light to those who are in darkness and in shadow because of the old sun, which does not shine for them."

The "old sun" is Latin; the "new sun" is the Italian vernacular, which Dante foresees replacing it as the language of thought.