The Master of Verona

The correction was, it seems, justified, for the mistake was not mine but your brother Giovanni's, whose understanding of dictation is more lacking than his grasp of hygiene. For the sake of the poem, I am grateful, but you must understand how wary I remain of any tampering with my words. Never do it again. Your loving father, et cetera.

This letter, a few scant lines from a man who was known to fill pages with irrelevant gossip, became Antonia's most prized possession. Wanting to reply immediately, she was wise enough to refrain until she had another literary subject to address.

She hadn't long to wait. A fortnight later, Cecco Angiolieri stole lines from an early work of Dante's to use in his own new poem. Antonia wrote to inform her father, who sent back a furiously scathing diatribe regarding Angiolieri's talent and wit to be published in Florence. This he addressed not to his wife, Gemma, but to Antonia. From that day forward his daughter became his connection to his Florentine publishers.

Over time his letters grew a shade longer, and by the time she was ten he was treating her as equal to his many other correspondents. "I do miss her," he lamented on the eve of Antonia's eleventh birthday, just after the death of her brother Giovanni. In a mournful mood, the poet was referring not to Antonia's mother but to the woman who had possessed his soul from the time he was seven. Beatrice Portinari.

The bringer of blessings has been dead more than two decades, longer than I can fathom having lived. Though she survives in my mind and in my words — much of which was written to be read by her — with each passing day it grows harder to remember her face. I suppose I grow old. My eyes begin to fail me. But to have my innermost eye blinded by time, that is a cruel trick. I know she is a cherished soul in Heaven, but my earth is poorer for the lack of her. Only when I write to her can I feel her presence. And of late I cannot take up my pen to write to her, for I feel she is truly dead.

Antonia's response was simple. It read:

In the future you may address me as Beatrice.

The change this brought to the poet's correspondence was as night to day. From a single sheet, his letters grew to ten or twelve pages on average. From four times a year they appeared almost every fortnight. At the same time all letters to Gemma ceased completely. "Tell their mother that my sons are well," he would often append, the only mention he would make of his wife. No longer curt, there remained discussion of poetry, but suddenly much more. Dante shared every daily event, every idea, everything he thought his beloved Beatrice might wish to know. His letters became long and rambling. Sometimes he seemed to forget which Beatrice he was writing to. But Antonia accepted that. She was fulfilling a function in her father's life. His writing flourished, and she found great joy thinking she might have contributed in some way.

At last her eyes were dry. And she had won her father an excellent deal. With a last superstitious nod to Mars, Antonia resumed her walk. Passing the shops of the Ponte Vecchio, she saw a new sign, freshly hung. A silversmith? On the Ponte Vecchio, where only fruit, nuts, and grain were sold. Antonia deemed it foolish and moved on.

Over the Arno she walked to an interview that promised to be at least as unpleasant as the one with Mosso. But it was their own fault, they hadn't listened! Not when she told them how popular L'Inferno had been in Rome and Verona and Venice and Pisa and even the small bits Dante had shown people in Paris; not when she told them that it would be twice as popular here, in the poet's birthplace, regardless of his political status; and not when she told them they stood to make a killing if only they ordered enough copies to satisfy demand — a demand that would shame both La Roman de la Rose and all those silly Arthurian romances.