Dante & Beatrice

Dante sees Beatrice at Ponte Santa Trinita by Henry Holiday. Dante first met Beatrice when he was nine and she eight years old. He fell in love with her instantly. This (pictured) meeting, when Beatrice was seventeen, was, according to Dante, the second and last time they met. Beatrice died seven years later. It is speculated that there is numerological symbolism in these events, the number nine being [Link removed - login to see] as the time between meetings and Dante's fondness of the trinity number.

What Dante, and others since, demonstrated is that the love itself is the thing, not the person to which we attach it. That makes the feeling entirely ours to do with as we choose without the influence of others. It cannot be parlayed. It cannot be taken from us. It cannot die without our choice. It remains in the realm of the perfect ideal for as long as we wish it to, so treasure it.

A translation of La Vita Nuova is [Link removed - login to see].

Joyfully Amor seemed to me to hold
my heart in his hand, and held in his arms
my lady wrapped in a cloth sleeping.
Then he woke her, and that burning heart
he fed to her reverently, she fearing,
afterwards he went not to be seen weeping.

...

Amor, indeed not for my slight worth
but through his nobility
placed me in a life so sweet and gentle,
that often I would hear it said behind me:
‘God, for what virtue
does this heart own so much delight?’

— for Alicia[Link removed - login to see]