La Vita Nuova

This was a great, first-person look at Dante's young life and his exposure to Beatrice- who permeated and influenced much of his work. The passion, trembling and careful, that he espouses onto the pages here is without measure in nearly all accounts that I have seen. This is seeing Dante's world through his own eyes and it is quite a portrait indeed. Through reading this, I was able to understand him a little better and that's a great thing when we are dealing with someone with such an important literary stature and importance.

4 stars.

Your sisters bringing messages of gladness;
And you, who are the daughter of my sadness,
Seek out their company, disconsolate.

Lovely structure and I applaud the Florentine when he isn’t burning sinners. 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. He’s got it bad.

I won’t spoil the turn. Extreme emotion appears fairly uniform. That is a treatise all its own. As would be a song cycle from Beatrice’s perspective. The entire project reeks of dislocation, not yearning.

There’s an intriguing aside late in the text regarding the rise of vernacular poetry. It occurred so women could be wooed. Also show more ubiquitous is the number nine, though I fear if you played it backwards it would say turn me on, dead man, turn me on. If that isn’t a plea for Christ, I don’t know what is. I again offer apologies for my apostasy. show less

A wonderful hybrid - part poetry, part prose narrative, part theological treatise, part literary criticism with a fascinating glimpse into the Dante creative process.

Everyone should take the chance to yell at a long-dead Florentine and call him a jackass; my edition is en face, which makes it much more fun, but regardless, I cannot be the only person to read this and boggle. Because, seriously, this is not a relationship, this is not even the relationship of a muse to an artist, this is pure symbolism and abstraction, and I keep getting so angry on Beatrice's behalf -- yes, I am projecting, thank you.

What I think I like best about this little book is the way the young Dante's character comes through – earnest, naive, idealistic. At least two things are happening here: he is describing his unrequited teenage love for Beatrice, and he is becoming a poet. Love and the desire to write about it are timeless, which is why the book still has the power to delight us today, more than seven centuries later. There is a spiritual allegory here as well, in the images of Love as a godlike figure who must be obeyed and the spiritualized Beatrice as an image of the pure virgin goddess/the Virgin Mary – all bound up in the tradition of courtly love. The poems (sonnets and canzoni) are lovely, and, in the Hesperus edition, impressively translated show more by J. G. Nichols. This edition also includes an engaging foreword by the novelist Louis de Bernières, who describes the importance the book had for him when he was himself a teenager, and a very helpful introduction by Nichols, who places the book in the context of the literary traditions of the 13th century. Although there is a certain repetitiveness in the narrative, and Dante's redundant "explanations" of his poems can become tedious, all in all this is a charming book. show less

Arguably the very best book of poetry I will ever read, though that's mostly because I hate poetry and love technical writer stuff. Seriously, the Lord of the Rings is about half as long for me as it was for it's author - I read perhaps two lines of poetry in the entire thing before giving up. Weirdly, the explanations in this one actually made me want to go back and read the poems.

Also awesome from a former-history-major standpoint. If you'd like to know how educated young people in the 13th century thought, it's a must-read.

I particularly appreciated my translator (Penguin Classics edition) - she didn't bother with "thee" and such, and made the whole thing a lot more accessible (and I say this as a girl who prefers her Bible to be the show more King James Version.) show less

თვითონ პოეზიასთან არ მაქვს არგუმენტები - მაინდამაინც ვერ ვერკვევი, მაგრამ აქ რა ლექსებიცაა ნამდვილად შთამბეჭდავად მეჩვენება! პროზაული ნაწილია ჩემთვის სუსტი, თანაც არა ფორმით (მაგარი პოეტი პროზაშიც მაგარია, თან მაინც XIII საუკუნეა ჯერ), არამედ შინაარსით - არ შემიძლია ამდენი შორით show more დაგვა და ღაწვთა ხოკვა, ნერვებს მიშლის :) show less