View all 4 comments. It is a problematic poetic work, and I think it is necessary to know the author, his life, and his environment to appreciate poetry. The 13th century is a period of history that I do not know.
However, it is the century when the literature moves away from Latin writing for the vulgar languages. Dante writes this story following his meeting with Beatrice, with whom he falls head over heels in love. Then she dies. The author alternates songs, sonnets, dialogue, invoke Love, God. In a second part, less It is a problematic poetic work, and I think it is necessary to know the author, his life, and his environment to appreciate poetry.
In a second part, less daring and elegant, Dante composes dialogues. It is a moving collection, despite everything. In the final analysis one experiences only oneself, and our life is no dream but it ought to become one and perhaps will. A part of us functions in the phantasmagoria which we call the everyday world, but another part holds on to memories and ideals which it instinctively knows are infinitely more enduring than these shadows that pass away from moment to moment.
Unresolved issues that have embedded themselves into our psyches like black holes into the fabric of the universe, altering the courses of stars, sucking them in.
Dante embodies this sentiment. His brief glimpse of the lovely young Beatrice in a street one day in mediaeval Florence set his mind alight and never left him even in old age. Nothing is rational. But it was right. It was absolutely good, and right. It was something that God approved of. Dante lost Beatrice, never even had her, but his memory of her remained the single most important influence on his life and art, and I believe that these glimpses of eternity are the only real blessings we have any right to hope for.
They are something solid, worthwhile, good, and pure and abiding, like anchors, like rocks protruding through quicksand or through an avalanche. We are what we yearn for. Isolating that signal is our main task in life, I think. For some it is faint or non-existent, whilst for others like Dante it is deafening View all 9 comments.
La Vita Nuova an unusual book: written in alternating prose and poetry, it is part ode, part autobiography, part literary analysis, part metaphysical exploration. My attempt to brush up on my Italian with this dual-language edition of the book was a bit of a failure. While the language has remained incredibly static over the past years, Dant La Vita Nuova an unusual book: written in alternating prose and poetry, it is part ode, part autobiography, part literary analysis, part metaphysical exploration.
Additionally, his prose style is quite complex, employing long sentences with cascading dependent clauses, and his poetry takes many freedoms with the language, such as inversion of word order and a lot of elided letters, all of which make it difficult to follow.
I would, however, still recommend this dual-language edition to anyone reading La Vita Nuova , even if they have no understanding of Italian. The poems must be read in Italian, even if one relies on the English translations for the meaning. Italian is a language that is made for poetry.
View all 3 comments. A little 13th-century intensity here: " I became so ecstatic that, like a drunken man, I turned away from everyone This is Dante's fi A little 13th-century intensity here: " This is Dante's first published work, written presumably over several years, a mixture of supposedly autobiographical prose and poems he wrote at the time he's covering, in the moment.
He claims these poems were passed around his home of Florence, and so already well known. For a text full of some formal turgid prose, it's surprisingly light and attractive and I found myself fully engaged right at the beginning. And then, as that feeling fades, I remained quite fascinated by the mixture of prose and poetry. It's a beautiful work about love, if the love of a self-obsessed stalker.
Dante, who was married at age 11 and would have begun living with his wife as a couple around age 20, captures here his obsession with the divinely beautiful Beatrice, his neighbor in the close quarters of 13th-century Florence. He falls for her at age nine he was less than a year older then she was , and then much more deeply at age 18, to the point that the sight of her sets him into something of an ecstatic breakdown.
He craves her sight, seeks it out, and then embarrasses himself, once collapsing against a nearby wall. He puts it all down, including conversations with other women who are confused by his obvious obsession, and ask questions he can't really answer. Then captures it again in poetic form.
The lost young Dante claims to be taken over by the god of love, Amore, even has he acknowledges this god is only something created in his mind, a manifestation of his feeling, longing and obsession. Within this state, having said barely a word to his Beatrice, he learns of her death at age 25, the age the real Beatrice died in a Florence epidemic. Dante, who tells us heaven longed for her, goes silent on his initial reaction, then captures his extreme self-pity.
It's both moving and ridiculous. He ends it in a kind of failure, claiming he will try to capture Beatrice again in a better way. I enjoyed this but it was hard to read without wondering about this Dante. Of course, he's a stalker and one imagines a very irritated Beatrice feeling very harassed. And of course, he sounds self-destructive. What would his wife think? She's not mentioned in any of his writing. If you believe R.
Lewis writing in , and I think most traditional critics, this is a pure and honest autobiographical work of one deeply in love and trying to capture his feelings. Mark Musa , my translator here, felt quite differently in and probably too. He sees Dante as a sophisticated writer, putting on believable and moving fictional story, flavored with decent but limited poetry, but that was carefully designed to undermine itself.
That is, first, don't believe any of this. And second, Dante has read his Ovid. He's not building on the dolce stil novo sweet new style , but undermining it. He's captured himself as a ridiculous, mockable, self-obsessed young man. Musa sums it up this way: " The Vita Nuova is a cruel book. Cruel, that is, in the treatment of the human type represented by the protagonist Dante.
It seems very obvious, and quite something, once he points it out. Lewis maybe lacked the right sense of humor. I should add, on a practical note, that Musa's old book is also very nice in hardcover, and I appreciated that it includes the original Italian of all the poetry. Dante's book, of course, can be read in several ways and leaves itself open to the times and mentality of the reader. And it should probably be read as the reader likes.
Dive in and enjoy the feeling, intensity and tragedy of the text, or sit back and think about the poet's other ways of disarming his readers and critics. Recommended to anyone curious as I think it will reward. A book of poems with commetary for a girl Dante first saw when he was 9, follows the history of the love from that moment until the few months after her death.
Both married someone else neither marriage is mentioned in the story , but Beatrice's impact on him would spark first ideas for his best known book, "The Divine Comedy", which was begun a few years after this book. This book is a mix of story, poems, and commentary on the poems. Many of the poems were written while she was still alive, A book of poems with commetary for a girl Dante first saw when he was 9, follows the history of the love from that moment until the few months after her death.
Many of the poems were written while she was still alive, the first ones begun when he was Some of the poems were sent or given to other people, and Dante belonged to a group of poets, of which Guido Cavalcanti's support and friendship was the most important. I was a bit surprised at how small the age difference between Dante and Beatrice was - less than a year.
Her own feelings towards Dante were of much milder type, but she never responded to him so harshly as to blow his passionate love towards her away. The book is arranged in certain numerical pattern Dante talks about the number 9, in the text , and the explanation of the poems talks about where each part of the poem starts, and what occurs in each part.
Part of the way the explanation happens after the poem, then it changes to happening before the poem. Dante is not shy in expressing what moods he felt during the time: his tears especially occur regularly, especially after her death. Sometimes his moods show so clearly that others find it funny, or alarming, depending on the situation.
The latter type occurs at least in the scene where he is really ill from pleurisy or pneumonia, and his emotions alarm the women caring for her, including his stepsister. By the way, the momet of her death, and reactions right after are skipped; they must've been too emotional to write about not even with a poem. It takes him a while to get back his emotional balance, but the lady in the window looking him sympathetically, which he mentions, and watching a group of pilgrims traveling through the city - Dante mentions three types of pilgrims, including the "romeo", which I found interesting - show him reaching it, and putting writing about Beatrice on pause soon after that, knowing he'd return to her and her memory eventually.
The poems seemed to grow in quality as I read them, and the commentaries etc. It is a quick read, but I think one might also take it slowly, and enjoy each poem, tasting what it was like for him to love such a lovely lady with a life much shorter but with big impact not only on him and those who knew her in real life, but for so many reading about her after, here and in the Divine Comedy. View 2 comments. And often thinking on death Comes to me a desire of it so sweet That it changes the color of my face When the thought of her becomes fixed Pain attacks me from every side That I recover myself through the pain I feel And I become such That shame drives me from the company.
True love is theological. This is the conclusion one reaches while reading this early work of the writer of the Divine Comedy. Dante Alighieri wrote La Vita Nuova at the age of twenty-six, shortly after the death of his beloved Beatrice. On the surface this book is simply a collection of love poetry, displaying all the conventions of courtly love.
Boy meets girl. Boy loves girl. Boy is too overcome with a sense of his own unworthiness to ever speak to girl. Girl dies. The end. However, below the True love is theological. However, below the surface, this book is a profound reflection on the nature of love and of how human love can lead us to Divine Love. Indeed, Dante becomes a servant of Divine Love throughout the book as he meditates on Beatrice and mourns for Beatrice.
Gone were the references to salvation and benediction from Beatrice. Either Dante did not experience these things, in which case he was an over-amorous young man writing blasphemies, or he did experience an unusual mystical vision which should not be tainted by connection with a mere human. However, Charles Williams, scholar and friend of C. It was the experience of love that all young men encounter when they meet that one girl for the first time.
It is the experience of courtship, the thrill of passion, the agony of waiting to hear from the beloved again. Dante truly saw that human love is an image of Divine Love, and that through faithfulness in love, we may progress to faithfulness to Love. This is all fleshed out more fully in the Divine Comedy, where the love of Beatrice very literally leads Dante to heaven.
The combination of poetry and prose comes as a welcome suprise and it helps us to better understand what Dante went through and what events inspired him. The biggest obstacle between La Vita Nuova and its readers is the way Dante analyses each poem afterward, explaining their parts and themes. I am not a fan of that either, it takes away some of the intimacy we can see and feel throughout the book.
But it is a book for poets by a poet, so I can forgive that quite easily. And if we take that away, what remains is raw, pure, profound and very human story of a poor soul that will never get the only thing it longs for. We see the way he changes and his love changes. We witness his joy, his guilt, his grief and his seeking of the divine, giving us a new appreciation for Dante's journey in Divina Comedia where he is reunited with Beatrice and she leads him to their Lord.
It isn't perfect, after all it's Dante's first work and we can see him trying out different styles. However, it is exactly what it needs to be, what Dante needed it to be. I didn't see him as great and inspiring as other people see him! Now, with this short book about his one and only love: Beatrice, I enjoyed it a little bit. But I don't think it's as good as I expected - or hoped!
It was a good read. Just good. Not THAT good! Crazy how a 28 year old could have written this, and how you can already see the power of the mind behind the Divine Comedy between these lines. What remains unclear is whether Beatrice was actually a woman in the flesh or not. Everything in this book is SO internalized and abstract. What seems to be lacking is any hint or a tiny detail Crazy. There is a disturbing absence of these details, aside from the color of her dress, that could also easily be purely a symbol.
On the other hand, the numerology and symbolic elements i. The ending of the book is more than epic. View all 5 comments. Who knew a 13th century Italian poet could be so relatable. This short little work is well worth reading if you want to know more about the origins of Dante's love affair with Beatrice - or, more accurately, if you want to read about the edited representation of the origins of his love which Dante presents.
In many ways, this is my least favourite of Dante's works. Although to his contemporaries, Dante's inclusion of commentary upon the poems was revolutionary, to modern eyes, they appear rather trite and self-evident "The first section of the poem appe This short little work is well worth reading if you want to know more about the origins of Dante's love affair with Beatrice - or, more accurately, if you want to read about the edited representation of the origins of his love which Dante presents.
Although to his contemporaries, Dante's inclusion of commentary upon the poems was revolutionary, to modern eyes, they appear rather trite and self-evident "The first section of the poem appears on this line As well as that, I am much less able to sympathise or empathise with Dante's love for Beatrice in this work. Dante's feelings for her seem even more obsessive in this work than in the Commedia. Frankly, by the end of it, I'm kind of urging Beatrice to get the medieval version of a restraining order - and that's not really the reaction you're supposed to get from what is supposedly one of the greatest collections of love poetry of all times.
View 1 comment. It's been awhile since I felt like my own self. The joy of reading is coming back. But still miss my beautiful mom. I'm not saying he was very silly, but one of us was very silly, and it wasn't me. Mar 28, Michael P. No one agrees, but I think this is Dante's greatest work. It seems to be genuinely from the heart, whether it is or not, and so I find it beautiful.
Your sisters bringing messages of gladness; And you, who are the daughter of my sadness, Seek out their company, disconsolate. The spirit and sense data are privileged over reason. Our boy is loopy over Beatrice.
He drools and convulses in her presence. Composure is found afterwards and sonnets composed. Extreme emotion appears fairly uniform. That is a treatise all its own.
As woul Your sisters bringing messages of gladness; And you, who are the daughter of my sadness, Seek out their company, disconsolate. The entire project reeks of dislocation, not yearning.
It occurred so women could be wooed. Also ubiquitous is the number nine, though I fear if you played it backwards it would say turn me on, dead man, turn me on. I again offer apologies for my apostasy. New Life by Dante Alighieri is one of the most elegant short works of poetry and prose in Western literature. This book is around eighty pages, but it is one that inspires the spirit eternally. This work precedes Dante's timeless masterpiece Divine Comedy by over ten years, and if you want a glimpse into that work, but don't have the time to read that lengthy collection now, this work will completely satisfy your needs.
It is the perfect starting point into the beautiful world of classical Itali New Life by Dante Alighieri is one of the most elegant short works of poetry and prose in Western literature. It is the perfect starting point into the beautiful world of classical Italian literature. This is one of the best books I've read in my life and I strongly recommend it to all. How do you define love? In Vita Nuova, Dante writes of his first love Beatrice, who he meets when they're both just nine years old.
Their encounter makes the youth Dante wonder what love really is. Introspective and candid, Dante's verses and prose take us from his feelings of bliss during his encounters with Beatrice, to his grief-stricken condition following Beatrice's early demise at the age of twenty-four.
Called his libello little book , Vita Nuova deals with both Dante's meditations on lo How do you define love? Called his libello little book , Vita Nuova deals with both Dante's meditations on love as well as his poetic growth and search for voice. Upfront, I am not a poet, and Dante wrote the book for poets about poetry his own. How do I know? So I am not the target audience.
In the slim volume of La Vita Nuova , Dante takes the innovative step of assembling his love poetry and then commenting on it, to reveal meaning, structure, and inspiration. His love is mute, however, and never goes beyond public greetings in passing. The first such greeting only occurs nine years later, when her first words to him cause him rapturous joy. Barbara explains: Her greeting filled him with intense joy and he withdrew to his apartment to think about her.
Falling asleep he had the dream which is the subject of his first sonnet. It works so well that Beatrice snubs him, throwing Dante into the depths of despair we are talking about a grown man here.
All the while he is writing her love poems, without identifying her. He sees her one last time before she dies, unexpectedly, at age Several years later, while still bereft, he sees a beautiful young woman from an open window looking upon him compassionately. The tears well up in his eyes. He sees in her compassion a noble sort of love and, over several such encounters, writes several sonnets to her, until a feeling of betrayal towards the deceased Beatrice causes him to stop. As Reynolds explains:.
The effect of this vision was to bring on fresh fits of weeping so that his eyes became tinged with dark red patches; but the crisis, it seems, was over. I first read La Vita Nuova many years ago, when in love with an Italian girl, and identified her with Beatrice, myself with Dante.
I was still in my Romanticism phase, which extended from college through my drama-filled early adult years, when emotionalism and individualism were my main muses for artistic creation. I now bring a more jaundiced eye to such matters, and see Dante as the precursor to a long and unfortunate Western trend, the worship of people. The second, buried in the Notes on the Text, was that Beatrice was also married at an unknown date. Both details were sufficient to shock me — in these days when so little shocks — the knowledge that Dante was married and writing to a married woman coloring the entire text.
What, then, could be the inspiration for such an adulterous love, at the very core and outset of the Western tradition of adulation, especially of women? When one remembers that Bibles were not allowed in the hands of laymen or nobles , and remained the exclusive domain of Catholic priests until the Reformation, the extolling of such unbiblical love is perhaps more understandable. In a long and revealing prose passage [XXV, pp.
Throughout, Dante describes how sighing and crying were constant fruits of his love for Beatrice. As for the former, he generalizes his reactions to others:. I was left in such distress that my eyes were bathed in tears, and I hid my eyes in my hands again and again.
I would have hidden myself away at once as soon as my tears began to flow, but I hoped to hear more about my lady. Women, generally, are far more attractive than men. XXIV , La nuova corrente nasce nell'ambiente universitario di Bologna ed ha nell'emiliano Guido Guinizzelli il suo primo esponente ; tuttavia, presto il fulcro di questa nuova esperienza si sposta in quella Firenze che, tra Duecento e Trecento, sta vivendo gli anni di maggiore fervore sociale, economico ed intellettuale.
Lo stilnovismo si pone , a livello culturale, in un rapporto dialettico con la tradizione poetica precedente : per un verso ne riprende i temi soliti, per l'altro li rielabora attraverso gli schemi interpretativi della filosofia aristotelica e scolastica. Come nella poesia tradizionale amore e gentilezza sono messi in relazione, ma nella poetica stilnovista diventano strumenti di perfezionamento interiore: l'amore, in particolare, colpisce i sensi dell'innamorato producendo un'esperienza quasi mistica che ne accresce il grado di consapevolezza e sapienza.
V - XII.
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