Page:Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti.djvu/24

 similarities of phrasing in Purgatory, xxviii., and one of the lives of the saint. We know that Matilda in some way corresponds to or balances John the Baptist. Dante is undoubtedly reminded of his similar equation in the Vita Nuova and shows it in his Tu mi fai remembrar, dove e qual era

Proserpina, nel tempo che perdette

La madre lei, ed ella primavera.” Dante’s commentators, in their endless search for exact correspondences, seem never to suspect him of poetical innuendo, of calling into the spectrum of the reader’s mind associated things which formno exact allegory. So far as the personal Matilda is concerned, the great Countess of Tuscany has some claims, and we have nothing to show that Giovanna was dead at the time of the vision.

As to the actual identity of Guido’s lady–granting her to have been one and not several; no one has been rash enough to suggest that il nostro Guido was in love with his own wife, to whom he had been wedded or betrothed at sixteen. True, it would have been contrary to the laws of chivalric love, but Guido was not one to be bound by a convention if the whim had taken him otherwise. Such explanation might give us one more reason, which were superfluous, for the respect paid to Farinata (Inferno, x.). The discussion of such details and theories is futile, except in so far as it may serve