To discourage any suspicion of wantonness, I ask my readers to recall what I explained earlier: that my lady’s greeting, which was the act of her mouth, was the aim of all my desires as long as it was available to me.Then, beginning with, “I know, canzone,” I add a stanza that is like a handmaid to the others, one in which I state my wishes for my canzone. In the first I mean to call on Love’s faithful, with those words of the prophet Jeremiah: “O is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? The second says how it seemed that Love spoke to me in my heart, and how he looked. In the first part I say what effects were brought about in the women, that is, in relation to themselves; in the second I say what effects were brought about in them in relation to others; in the third I say how not only in the women but in all people, and not only in her presence but even in recalling her presence, she brought about wondrous effects. And thus past pains don’t dissuade me from trying to see her.” Then, moved by such thoughts, I decided to write something in which, exonerating myself in her eyes for such a reproof, I would also state what happens to me when I am near her. The second begins, “Beauty appears.”The first part is divided into two. The second part begins with, “Already nearly.”Many people responded to this sonnet and gave various interpretations of it. And often, through prolonged crying a reddish color formed around them, the sort of thing which appears because of some martyring agony one is going through. Though the result is a landmark in the development of emotional autobiography (the most important advance since The names of the people in the poem, including Beatrice herself, are employed without use of surnames or any details that would assist readers to identify them among the many people of Florence. And then I composed this sonnet, which opens: “She had just come,” and which has two beginnings, for which reason I will divide it according to both.Now, in terms of the first beginning, this sonnet has three parts. I gave him this canzone and the sonnet transcribed above, telling him that I had done it only for him.The canzone begins, “Whenever,” and has two parts. Aware their questions were malicious, I responded to them—through the will of Love, who commanded me in keeping with reason’s counsel—that Love was the one who had ruled me in that way.

Thinking about it later, I planned to write some verses, since I had a theme worthy of poetry, in which I would put all I had heard these women saying. Then, I tell you, my tongue uttered words almost as if it moved of its own accord, saying: “Women who understand the truth of love.” I made sure to memorize this phrase, overjoyed at the prospect of using it for my beginning.

The first is that I often felt terrible when my memory set my fantasy in motion to imagine what Love was turning me into. The third is that, supposing these two conditions were met, it is not appropriate for me to write about it, since such writing would put me in the position of singing my own praises, a thing which is after all reprehensible, whoever does it: and thus I leave this subject to another commentator.However, since the number nine has occurred many times in the preceding words—clearly not without reason—and since this number clearly had an important place in her departure, something must be said about it, given that it seems to fit the topic. In the first part I say where my thought goes, giving it the name of one of its effects. You see that this is a fresh breath of Love, an inspiration that brings the desires of love before us, and arises from a place so gracious as the eyes of the woman who has shown such mercy toward us.”At which point, having battled like this many times within myself, I again wanted to write a poem about it; and since the battle of thoughts was won by the thoughts that were talking about her, it seemed I ought to address her directly. And I lived that way for several days, wanting to write but afraid to start.It happened that, as I was traveling along a road beside which flowed a brook of clear water, I was seized by an impulse to compose a poem. In the first part I say that this woman was already in my memory; in the second I say what Love was doing to me; in the third I tell the effects of Love. And once this wicked desire had been driven off, all my thoughts turned back to their most gracious Beatrice.I tell you that from then on I started to think about her so intently, with all my shamed heart, that sighs often manifested the fact—sighs which as they came out were almost all saying the words that were being spoken in my heart, that is, the name of that most gracious of women and how she departed from us.