La Vita Nuova: The New Life

La Vita Nuova - Dante Alighieri. A translation into English by A. S. Kline. Published with illustrations by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Composed around 1294, in Italian, the Vita Nuova tells the story of Dante's encounters with and love for Beatrice, culminating in her early death and its effect upon him. Utilising and developing the conventions of Courtly Love, in a mixture of prose and verse, Dante deepens the emotional content of the genre, while pointing the way towards the intellectual and spiritual journey of the Divine Comedy. Indeed the final section of the Vita Nuova contains his commitment to the writing of the greater work, in which Beatrice comes to represent Divine Philosophy, guiding the poet through Paradise towards ultimate truth, and embodying in her earthly and transcendental form the beauty and love which emanate from it.

In the Vita Nuova Dante's own emotional reactions are made the inner subject of the work, in a groundbreaking manner which foreshadows the Commedia's intensity, and the personal nature of the poet's quest, not merely to seek for meaning but to attain it spiritually.

Published by Poetry in Translation.