Here are the words to Vide Cor Meum from the soundtrack as best as I can tell. The lyrics come from Dante's La Vita Nuova. The song was written by Patrick Cassidy, a brilliant Irish composer. (For more on Patrick Cassidy, visit the Official Patrick Cassidy web site.)

A reader asked me what the words meant, so I thought I'd copy my reply here.

The words to Vide Cor Meum were taken from Dante's La Vita Nuova (The New Life) where Dante describes his first forays into poetry. Vide Cor Meum is concerned with the first sonnet where Dante describes a vision he had and asks for help in interpreting it. As Dante tells it, when he was 9, he became quite smitten with a little girl he called Beatrice. He only saw her in passing but was soon obsessed with her. Nine years later, he sees her again. This time she says hello and Love overwhelms poor Dante. He goes back to his room and "thinking of her, sweet sleep overcame" him. Then he sees the vision of Love holding a woman (Beatrice) who is wrapped in a veil. Love says, "I am your master." In one of Love's hands there is a heart on fire and he says to Dante, "Vide cor tuum: See your heart". Then Love wakes Beatrice and feeds Dante's burning heart to her which she reluctantly eats. Love, then, becomes very sad and takes Beatrice with him up toward heaven.

Dante never tells us what it means. In fact, the sonnet asks for possible interpretations. One such interpretation was recorded by Dante's good friend Cavalcanti who suggested that falling in love was, on the lady's part, a sad event and perhaps a prelude to her death.

Both Dante and Beatrice married other people and Beatrice died at the age of 24. Dante wrote La Vita Nuova about 2 years later. It was right about at that time when Dante was becoming interested in philosophy and politics. One theory suggests that Beatrice might have been a symbol of some secret Florentine political society but I don't know enough about that to make any sense of it. What makes the most sense to me now is that Beatrice was Dante's muse.

For more on Dante's First Sonnet, see Dante Alighieri on the Web.

The phrase, "Weeping, I saw him then depart from me," is from the translation in the book (and the movie), Hannibal, so are the words "trembling" and "obediently". I used these translations because I wanted to relate the song to the part in the movie where Hannibal and Allegra recite Dante's first sonnet from La Vita Nuova. Personally, I wouldn't translate "Appreso gir lo..." that way because the word "weeping" would seem to modify "I" when it is Love who is weeping (piangendo). Paventare is "to fear" but "trembling" certainly gets the idea across. Umilmente is more accurately "humbly" but I like "obediently" too.

I studied Italian prior to my trip to Florence but I didn't know Italian well enough to translate these lyrics by sight. I had help from my trusty electronic English-Italian Language Teacher, by ECTACO, Inc. It was a great help to me in Florence and I still use it now and then when I peruse La Nazione. It talks too!

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