The Apotheosis of Solitude

PART VIII: Primavera

On the very first page of La Vita Nuova, Dante calls Beatrice “la gloriosa donna della mia mente”: ‘the glorious lady of my mind.’ He could, and would, never recover from that first impression.
From that moment, the girl that was Beatrice Portinari would become Beata Beatrix; a near-Marian figure, a demi-goddess whose resplendent effulgence would illuminate almost a thousand years of Western art and literature.
But who was the real Beatrice? What was it about the girl that so captivated and inspired the young Dante to write; not only that remarkable work of juvenilia, but also: some of the greatest poetry in European history?
Or does it really matter?! It doesn’t to us; but, in the end, did it really even matter to Dante himself?!? She had become so deified in his imagination; she had become the glorious lady of his mind: that the only way he could reconcile himself to this impossible image of her, was to beatify her through the power of his art.

But art will not a human heart keep warm;
Safe from the shadows cold…

Forgive me. I promised you a story; one last story about a poet and a lady: not some quasi-philosophical treatise on the nature of art, imagination and reality.

This story, this last story, takes place a few years after the experience of that heart-breaking night in the theatre.
Oddly enough, it also takes place in a theatre. A very different theatre, on a very different night.

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

When our poet; let’s still think of him as Peregrino: was a man of twenty-five, he lived alone in the city. Which city is immaterial; what matters is that he lived modestly within modest means, ate little and lived sparingly. His only extravagance, in an otherwise frugal life, was his occasional attendance at the theatre. He loved the theatre; the quiet anticipation of the audience, the soft light on the red velvet curtain. And when the curtain was drawn back to reveal the stage; he would revel, for a few hours, in the language, the story, the world sculpted in light and movement, muscle and sound.
On one particular and singular night, he’d gone off his usual beaten track to a very small, very old theatre in the cultural quarter to see a new retelling of Oedipus. He had taken his seat some fifteen minutes before curtain, as was his wont. He had perused the programme and was now using it to fan himself on a warm Spring night.

~ Is anyone sitting there?

The question came on the wings of a gentle, resonant voice. It was a woman; standing before the empty seat beside him. The tickets for the performance were not numbered, there was no assigned seating.

The answer was, No.

~ Thanks.

She said as she sat down.
He continued to fan himself with the programme. A few seconds passed, before

~ Ah, that’s nice!

He looked at her, puzzled.

~ The breeze.

He stopped fanning and looked at the programme, saying: It’s about all it’s good for, really.

~ Not very helpful?

Not really, came his reply.

~ I’m sorry about the smell; I’ve just come from a three-hour dance class.

Emboldened by her forwardness in engaging in conversation, he said the first funny thing that occurred to him; he sniffed the air near her ear and said: I can’t smell anything…though I’m suddenly blind in one eye…but I’m sure that’s entirely incidental!!

She chuckled long and deep in her throat. It was a particularly pleasing sound. Several more amiable words passed between them before the curtain rose and the play began.
He had looked forward to this performance since seeing the poster in a shop window some three weeks before; though he’d always admired Aeschylus more than Sophocles.

But now that he was here…

The initial pleas and supplications of the Chorus, the King’s resolve to discover his predecessor’s murderer, the gradual investigation and interviews of the several witnesses, the Queen’s quiet horror at her realisation of her husband’s true identity, the shepherd’s final devastating revelation, the Queen’s suicide, the King’s self-blinding and flight from Thebes: all passed before his eyes unheeded and unseen.

The poet had only eyes for the woman sitting, so improbably, beside him. He stole several glances at her in the hour she spent bathed in the light-spill from the stage. The sweep of her long, golden hair; the elegance of her aquiline nose: the dazzling brilliance of her aquamarine eyes. Her lack of pretension and reticence beguiled him. Her obvious intelligence and curiosity, as gauged from the brief snatches of conversation before the play, intrigued him. Her simple, unashamed beauty enchanted him. For the first time in his life, the poet seemed entirely at his ease in the silent company of a beautiful woman; and she seemed at ease with him.

The actors took their curtain call to the usual, polite applause; he hadn’t even realised that the play was over.
In the general hubbub as the audience rose, as one, and began to put on their coats and meander out of the auditorium; the woman leaned in close to the poet’s ear and said,

~I’ve learned a valuable lesson tonight…never marry a man young enough to be your son.

He laughed.
Or a woman old enough to be your mother, was his rejoinder.
She laughed.
They walked out of the theatre together, into the now chilly Spring night.

~ Would you like a lift?

The question came so suddenly and unexpectedly that he was stunned for almost five heartbeats, before:

I…wouldn’t want to take you out of your way.

~ You won’t.

But…you have no idea where I live!

She slipped her hand into his coat pocket and laced her fingers between his.

~ It doesn’t matter.

I see. Okay so, he managed to get out over the sound of his increasing heartbeat.

She took him home.
He invited her in. They sat and talked all night. They talked about their lives; her name was Vera, though her given name was Primavera, an inheritance from her Italian-born mother. They talked about the theatre; about plays they’d seen and loved, about plays they could see together. They talked about poetry and about the sad and tragic lives of their favourite poets. They talked about music and discovered that they had much in common.
Weeks passed. They walked and talked together often. They went to the theatre together often. They were happy and made love together often.
In the mornings, he would wash and shave naked before the mirror in his single room, as Vera lay naked on his bed smiling her secret smile. A smile inviting him to deeper secrets, as yet unknown to the world.

I see. Okay so.

Wait! No. I can’t. I can’t do it.
As I write these words, two daemons of the ancient world sit in the room with me. Erato, the Lady of Loveliness, Muse of love poetry; and Melpomene, the Singer, Muse of tragedy.
Erato sits at my elbow, smiling sweetly as she leans on my pen and whispers the most delightful and enchanting verses in my ear.
In the farthest, darkest corner of the room, sits Melpomene. She sings from the shadows. Intently. Accusingly. Her song is less enchanting…but more compelling. It’s also much closer to the truth.

It is Melpomene’s song which I must transcribe for you here and now.

The poet did not accept the lift.
He did not take the beautiful Primavera home. He did not write a happy and heart-warming love story with her within the confines of their shared lives. Despite the delightful and enchanting verses of Erato, not all stories are love stories. And not all poets can make the world rhyme.
He did not…

I did not.

Let us go back to the theatre. Not all the way back; just to the door of the theatre after the performance.

We had walked out of the theatre together amidst the throng, eyes and words only for one another. When we reached the door, she asked her startling question.

~ Would you like a lift?

The question came so suddenly and unexpectedly that I was stunned for almost five heartbeats, before:

Oh! No, thank you. I wouldn’t want to take you out of your way.

~ I see. Okay so.

She seemed crestfallen and a little hurt.

~ Well…maybe we’ll meet here again, some night?!

As she said this, she pointed back into the foyer of the theatre.
My head was spinning now. It felt as though I’d been about to pluck an inviting apple from a low-lying branch, but had tripped and fallen face first in the mud at the last second. I answered, Um…yeah…sure. My earlier confidence had now deserted me in the chill of the night air.

~ Goodnight then.

Goodnight.

She turned and, even before she was out of my sight, she was gone.
I turned to look at the now darkened door of the theatre and knew for certain that I would never cross the threshold of this place ever again. I knew it.
The bright, nascent kernel of an accusatory question took root and then grew rapidly and exponentially in my mind.
What have you just done?! What have you just done?!

Words are the things we use to fill the spaces between us. In the intervening years, since that terrible self-defeating night, I have endeavoured to fashion my word-walls into cathedrals. Temples in honour of Melpomene…and occasionally Erato.
Melpomene sings to me from the shadows as they lengthen and darken in my shrinking world. Sometimes, when I’m out for one of my walks, Erato will tug at my elbow, point out a pretty girl in the street, and a sonnet will begin to form in my mind. Erato has a particular love for the sonnets.

I don’t mind, so much. The Muses are wonderful, if demanding, company. They have deepened me. They have deepened my life.
As the great dramatist and writer, Samuel Beckett, once said: The only possible spiritual development (for an artist) is in the sense of depth. The artistic tendency is not expansive, but a contraction. And art is the apotheosis of solitude.

The End.