It doesn’t really have much to do with the Divine Comedy besides the title, but it’s still pretty awesome. I thought I’d post it to give it some more love (despite the fact that this blog is extremely underground for now).
Dante (Richard Madden) & Beatrice (Gemma Arterton) - “O lady, you in whom my hope gains strength”
Dante first met the beautiful Beatrice Portinari when he was 9 and she was 8, and fell madly in love with her. Though Dante and Beatrice no doubt exchanged glances in the streets of Florence after their first meeting, they only talked one other time. This was nine years after their first meeting. Dante was no less taken with her than the first time they met. When Beatrice was 21, she married a rich banker, an acquaintance of her dad’s. Three years later in 1290 she died.
After her death Dante fell into deep depression which he resolved by writing poems dedicated to the Beatrice’s memory.
He eventually went onto marry Gemma Donati but it was Beatrice that continued to lend inspiration to his work, the glorious lady of his mind, as he put it in his first book The New Life. Beatrice appeared also as his guide in the Divine Comedy: being the incarnation of beatific and true love, she led him into the Beatific vision in Paradise…