La Vita Nuova is not a very long text, but even considering its limited scope, it is surprisingly easy to summarize briefly. The story commences with the very first meeting between the speaker—or poet (Dante)—and Beatrice. She is almost nine, and he is almost 10. Upon this auspicious if remarkably swift and uneventful introduction, the poet instills in the young girl the vital spirit of existence itself.
They do not see each other again for another nine years. He spots her in the company of two older women, attired in a brilliant white outfit. Terrified as to what might be her reaction upon seeing him again—especially an outcome in which there was no reaction—he is positively intoxicated when she greets him with the greatest of virtue which reaches to the very completion of all grace in the world.
The bulk of what follows this autobiographical recollection of the two brief instances of contact with Beatrice which were to weigh upon his life as the entirety of their physical interaction is a series of visions that her memory seeds within his fertile mind. He recognizes his feelings as love but dares not commit this to verbal incarceration in discourse with others. His love for Beatrice is beyond the language of mere conversation.
The actions occasioned by a distance glimpse leads the poet to consider Beatrice as a screen placed before the truth; his rationale for not discussing her is, in fact, a screen composed of verse written with no intention of publication. She is referred to here as “the screen lady.” One of those is a poem of praise in which Beatrice takes form as sixty of the most beautiful women in an unnamed city; a city from which she eventually has cause to depart. Almost consumed with a kind of paranoia that despite refraining from naming his love, those around him knew full well of his feelings, he somewhat ironically decides that he must write something about her departure in order to keep the screen intact and the hidden truth from being disclosed.
That chance occasion which gave rise to the concept of Beatrice as the “screen lady” involved a certain young gentlewoman whose premature death is referred to as a loss of grace for that city. He witnesses her body lying in state copiously surrounding by inconsolably weeping women. Recalling the incident, he witnessed from afar, he begins to shed tears as well and indulges in a eulogy of sorts through two sonnets. Not long after the death of the gentlewomen, the poet also decides to exit the city, traveling to the same region of the country where he had last heard word of Beatrice having been spotted. Except that his journey stops short of her actual destination. He hears the spirit of love—Amor—sadly inform him that the return of Beatrice will not be any time soon and advises the poet to carry that feeling he has for that which he can never hope to have to another and allow that woman to become his “defense.” Amor then proceeds to actually name the substitute for the poet’s true passion.
Upon his return home, he subsequently begins an active search for the lady named by Amor as his “defense” against never claiming Beatrice as his own true love. He confesses that after a short period, she did indeed proceed to replace his lost love as his “screen” to the point that it became a scandal and lit the fuse of many unfounded rumors; rumors which eventually found their way to Beatrice. And when he next sees her, she passes by without greeting or acknowledgement of even his most basic and essential being. He no longer exists in the eyes of that which he still views as the queen of all virtue.
