Francesca da Polenta, beautiful, born in Rimini around 1260 from Guido da Polenta, was forced to marry in 1275 Gianciotto (John) Malatesta from Rimini, who was the opposite of his brother Paul (called, not surprisingly, "the Fair"): rude, ugly, lame. It seems she fell in love with her brother-in-law at their first meeting, when she believed she had to marry him and not Gianciotto. Paul was born around 1247 and was already married to Orabile Beatrice, last heir of the counts of Ghiaggiolo, who gave him two sons. About 1284, the two young people (she was 25, he was around 38) were discovered together and killed by Gianciotto. An anonymous Florentine has it that Paul could not escape from the sword of his brother because he was wearing a knitted garment which got caught; Francesca would have interposed herself between him and her husband, but she was stabbed first, then Paul was killed. A source of the sixteenth century (Vincenzo Carrari, Istoria di Romagna) tells the two young poeple were found asleep in bed together and slain at one stroke. Dante himself had got acquainted with the young man in 1282, when he was captain of the people in Florence: he had been chosen by Pope Martin V, because he was Guelph. On the other hand, Francesca was the aunt of Guido Novello da Polenta, host and patron of Dante in Ravenna.
Presumed Portrait of Francesca, now lost, in the church of Santa Maria in Porto, Ravenna
We have a very similar story in Ferrara, the one of Ugo and Parisina: she was the very young second wife of Niccolo III d'Este, who had instead his eldest son Ugo from his lover Stella d' Tolomei; Ugo, believing that her mother would finally be his father's wife, at first conceived a strong dislike for hisn young stepmother, who was just his own age; Niccolò worked to reconcile the two young poeple, but then they became lovers. Once discovered, they were both sentenced to death and beheaded in the basement of the Tower of the Lions, in the Este Castle. Further confirmation that the lack of freedom in the choice of spouse, imposed for centuries among the upper classes, was fomes of ruins to no end.
The story of the two lovers is fully framed within the courtly love as sketched around 1185 by Andrea Chaplain in his De amore: a love dictated by rules and feudal chivalry, nourished by courtly romances (like the mentioned novel Lancelot; but even the final fainting by Dante could be inspired by those of Tristan in the Round Table) and by Provencal poetry, by a style of musical and refined expression, by noble feelings and great sensitivity; from courtly love and Stilnovo comes the idea that love is born only in a noble heart, from Andrea De Chaplain is taken the paleness of the two lovers (v. 131), as well as the famous love rules set out by the anaphora Love...love...love; such standards are arranged almost in a syllogism to reach the climax of a sovereign, irresistible love; the story of two lovers is told like in a romance, set in the quiet room of a castle, suspended in a timeless charm of ancient and inexorably lost fairy-tale.
But it is a love that can lead to death, to ruin, because, given the society of the time, courtly love was necessarily born as adulterous love. It is no coincidence that Andrew Chaplain conceived the third book of his treatise (later condemned) as a retraction and if Pope Innocent III forbade the reading of the Lancelot. Our loss before the punishment of Paolo and Francesca, as we have seen, is widely shared by Dante, but in retrospect, we can say that the "sinfulness" of courtly love was an inevitable consequence of many other distortions by humans, distortions resulting in physical and psychological violence, especially against the most innocent. Today, perhaps, Dante would insist more on the fact that the ruin of Paolo and Francesca depended above all on others: in fact, Francesca was forced to marriage when she was just around 15 years (the age of my students!). And the marriage of Paul was arranged as well.
Anselm Feuerbach, Paolo and Francesca, 1864But many other forms of violation of freedom, even now, interfere with love choices of many (just think of forms of psychological and physical violence, still widespread): therefore, today many people are so devastated by forms of selfishness and disrespect, that almost no one believes in the myths listed above; but many, deep down, still hope for that. These "myths" express deep and genuine aspirations of the human being and the apparent cynicism of my teacher years ago reflected, probably, the fact that many, too many, in love met above all egoism and were disappointed, injured, sometimes fatally. Then love becomes an aberration, a nightmare. It is often said that "in war and in love, everything is permitted", but a statement like that is monstrous: it transforms love in a war. Nobody ever talks about how love (and the attitude of those around a pair) should be experienced in an ethical manner, with respect, but this is essential, to not transform life into a living hell.
On closer inspection, as it is implicit in Dante, even the dream of eternal love between two human beings, raises the question of the basis of existence, what Blaise Pascal summed up in his famous wager (if you are in doubt, it is better to bet that God exists): either the world is chaos and nonsense, and then true love does not exist, but there is only a patchwork of self-interest and egoism; either, if we want true love, it can exist only because it comes from God and his Love. And we can hope that we humans bring these aspirations into our heart because Someone really wants to accomplish them: and this well beyond our selfishness, indeed, in order to heal us from our selfishness. After all, everyone of us dreams of the great love: and, on this, we put on stake our happiness. That's why Dante toils along the three kingdoms, to get up to Beatrice, then, to see God.After all, this aspiration remains, very strong, even in Paolo and Francesca. Maybe someone will have realized that, in the statue by Rodin, the bodies of the two lovers make up nearly two converging spirals, as if they tended to penetrate each other, but with a point of convergence beyond their heads, in a dimension that goes "beyond" themselves. Maybe, who knows, in the last years of his life, by which time the Inferno circulated around Italy in its final version, Dante asked himself whether it would be more correct to show towards them the same mercy that the poet invokes in Purgatory III for Manfredi, the excommunicated prince. Maybe, at the end of his life, he will have hoped to find them in heaven, or at least in purgatory and, now, from above, he will hope that everyone, finding love, receives evidence that Love really exists and it governs the cosmos. But to match so high an ideal, love must become free from selfishness, virtue, true beauty.
The end of the Song of Songs says (8.5 to 8):as a seal upon your arm;
because strong as death is love,
tenacious as hell is passion:
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a flame of the Lord!
Many waters can not quench love
neither can floods drown it.
If a man would give all the substance of his house
for love, he would not have that contempt.
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