At the conclusion of the _Vita Nuova_, Beatrice is a divine being, devoid of all emotion--enthroned in Heaven; in the _Comedy_ she becomes her lover's saviour and redeemer, and through him a helper of all humanity. The love of the youth had found no response in the heart of the Florentine maiden, but the soul of the glorified woman was inspired by love of him. She trembles for him, and when Mary's messenger admonishes her: "Why doest thou not help him who has loved thee so much?" she sends Virgil to him as a guide and finally herself leads her redeemed lover to God. Now she responds to his love; she has even wept for him. This ultimately fulfilled, but always chastely hidden longing for love in return, gives the woman-worship of Dante a peculiarly noble charm. At the end of his journey through life he prays to her, who has again disappeared from his sight, and his last confession is: "Into a free man thou transform'st a slave."
Love's greatest miracle has been made manifest in him; it has transfigured and purified him, and made of the slave of the world and its desires, a personality--the fundamental motif of love.
There is a close connection between the metaphysical love of Dante and Goethe's confession in the last scene of _Faust_, which reveals the poet's deepest conviction, his final judgment of life. The confessions of both poets are identical to the smallest detail. The _Divine Comedy_ represents the journey of humanity through the kingdoms of the world in a manner unique and representative, applicable alike to all men, in the sense of the Catholic Middle Ages. The fundamental idea of _Faust_ is again the desire of man to find the right way through the world. Here also the journey through life is intended to be typical; it is undertaken five hundred years later; the scene is laid for the most part on the surface of the earth, but the ultimate goal of the wayfarer is Heaven. Hell, instead of being a subterraneous region, is embodied in a presence, accompanying and tempting man; modern man has no faithful guide; he must himself seek the way which to the man of the Middle Ages was clearly indicated in the Bible. The love of his youth (which in the case of Dante fills a book in itself) is merely an episode at the beginning of the tragedy--the lover wanders through all the kingdoms of the world, finally to return home to the beloved.