Customer Reviews

Vita Nuova (Oxford World's Classics)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

La Vita Nuova (c. 1293; The New Life) is the first of two collections of verse that Dante made in his lifetime, the other being the Convivio. Each is a prosimetrum, a work composed of verse and prose. In each case the prose is a device for binding together poems composed over approximately a ten-year period. The Vita Nuova brought together Dante's poetic efforts from before 1283 to about 1292-93; the Convivio, a bulkier and more ambitious work, contains Dante's most important poetic compositions from just prior to 1294 to the time of La Divina Commedia.

The Vita Nuova, which Dante called his libello, or little book, is a remarkable work. It contains 42 brief chapters with commentaries on 25 sonnets, one ballata, and four canzoni; a fifth canzoni is left dramatically interrupted by the death of Beatrice (perhaps Bice Portinari, a woman Dante met and fell in love with in 1274 but who died in 1290). In Beatrice, Dante created one of the most celebrated women in all of literature. In keeping with the changing directions of Dante's thoughts and career, Beatrice underwent enormous changes in his hands--sanctified in the Vita Nuova, demoted in the canzoni (poems) presented again in the Convivio, only to be returned with more profound comprehension in La Divina Commedia as the woman credited with having led Dante away from the "vulgar herd" to Paradise.

The prose commentary provides the frame story, which does not emerge from the poems themselves (it is, of course, conceivable that some were actually written for occasions other than those alleged). The story, however, is simple enough and tells of Dante's first sight of Beatrice when both were nine years of age, her salutation when they were eighteen, Dante's expedients to conceal his love for her, the crisis experienced when Beatrice withholds her greeting, Dante's anguish that she is making light of him, his determination to rise above the anguish and sing only of his lady's virtues, anticipations of her death in that of a young friend, the death of Beatrice's father, and Dante's own premonitory dream, and finally, the death of Beatrice, Dante's mourning, the temptation of the sympathetic donna gentile (a young woman who temporarily replaces Beatrice), Beatrice's final triunph and apotheosis, and, in the last chapter, Dante's determination to write at some later time about Beatrice, "that which has never been written of any woman."

Yet, with all of this apparently autobiographical purpose, the Vita Nuova is strangely impersonal. The circumstances it sets down are markedly devoid of any historical facts or descriptive detail (thus making it pointless to engage in debate as to the exact historical identity of Beatrice). The language of the commentary also adheres to a high level of generality. Names are rarely used...Cavalcanti is referred to three times as Dante's "best friend," Dante's sister is referred to as "she who was joined to me by the closest proximity of blood." On the one hand, Dante suggests the most significant stages of emotional experience, but on the other, he seem to distance his descriptions from strong emotional reactions. The larger structure in which Dante arranged poems written over a ten-year period and the generality of his poetic language are indications of his early and abiding ambition to go beyond the practices of the local poets.

The Italian of the Vita Nuova is Dante's own gorgeous Tuscan dialect, a limpid, ethereal and luminous Italian that seems as though it could have been written yesterday. In chapter XXX of the Vita Nuova, Dante states that it was through Cavalcanti that he wrote his first book in Italian rather than in Latin. In fact, Dante dedicated the Vita Nuova to Cavalcanti--to his best friend (primo amico).

Anyone who can, should definitely read this beautiful book in its original Italian, but those who cannot can still enjoy the beauty of Dante in a good translation. The book isn't as difficult or intimidating as La Divina Commedia and it makes a beautiful introduction to those who love Dante but just want to enjoy a little less of him in the beginning.

Genuine romance and passion is missing from most books, either fiction or nonfiction. As a result, it's hard to come across both in such quantity as there is in "La Vita Nuova" ("The New Life"), the unsung masterpiece of poet Dante Alighieri, author of the classic Divina Comedia.

"La Vita Nuova" is a series of poems and anecdotes centering around the life-changing love of Dante for a young woman named Beatrice. The two first met when they were young children, of about eight. Dante instantly fell in love with her, but didn't really interact with her for several years. Over the years, Dante's almost supernatural love only increased in intensity, and he poured out his feelings (grief, adoration, fear) into several poems and sonnets. During an illness, he has a vision about mortality, himself, and his beloved Beatrice ("One day, inevitably, even your most gracious Beatrice must die"). Beatrice died at the age of twenty-four, and Dante committed himself to the memory of his muse.

It would be a hard task to find another book overflowing with such incredible love and passion as "La Vita Nuova"; it's probably the most romantic book I have ever seen. It's brief and only includes one part of Dante's life overall, but it's a truly unique love story. Dante and Beatrice were never romantically involved. In fact, both of them married other people.

But Dante's love for Beatrice shows itself to be more than infatuation or crush, because it never wanes -- in fact, it grows even stronger, including Love manifested as a nobleman in one of Dante's dreams. There is no element of physicality to the passion in "La Vita Nuova"; Dante talks about how beautiful Beatrice is, but that's only a sidenote. (We don't hear of any real details about her) And Dante's grief-stricken state when Beatrice dies (of what, we're never told) leads him to deep changes in his soul, and eventually peace. And though Beatrice died, because of Dante's love for her and her placement in the "Comedia," she has achieved a kind of immortality.

One of the noticeable things about this book is that whenever something significant happens to Dante (good, bad, or neither), he immediately writes a poem about it. Some readers may be tempted to skip over the carefully constructed poems, but they shouldn't. Even if these intrude on the story, they show what Dante was feeling more clearly than his prose.

It's impossible to read this book and come out of it jaded about love or true passion. Not the sort of stuff in pulp romance novels, but love and passion that come straight from the heart and soul, in a unique and unusual love story. A true-life romance of the purest kind.

I first read the Divine Comedy a few years ago and it was an overwhelming experience. Recently I reread it, this time after reading La Vita Nuova, and with that--and a few years experience--it was richer. But after reading this earlier work it was also tempting to think he wrote The Greatest Poem in History because of an unrequited crush. Hmmm, now the real Beatrice is a footnote (albeit a lengthy one) to the life of Italy's Poet. La Vita Nuova will probably seem strange to most modern readers. It's a hushed and idealized appreciation of Dante's great love. The narrative has some sublime moments and a few of the poems are truly great, but it has dull spots too and sometimes seems too much like an exercise. Still, it's Dante and a necessary read for anyone truly interested in the Comedy.

... of the individual, of individual self-consciousness. That's the "sense" -- proprioception -- implied in Dante Alighieri's The New Life, written circa 1293 when the poet was about 25 years old. I know it's a brash assertion, but I take La Vita Nuova to be the founding document of 'modern' literature. Dante himself declared as much in asserting the novelty of writing in 'spoken' language, i.e. Italian, rather than 'written' language, Latin, and scholars have always credited him with initiating Italian as a poetic language. Trouveres and troubadours had been writing their intricate fixed-form lais and ballades, in Provençal and French, for decades previously, but Dante had something more in mind. La Vita Nuova included his youthful sonnets and canzone, replete with formulaic chivalry, in La Vita Nuova, and then he did something revolutionary: he reflected upon himself in the act of creation. Each of the poems is set in a double context of prose, one part analyzing the 'poetics' as such, the mechanics of versifying, and the other depicting the poet's state of mind when he wrote, in the context of the events of his mortal life. That alone was novel enough, I think, to justify regarding La Vita Nuova as 'the birth of the modern'.

Paradoxically, for most people in the 21st C, Dante would be the epitome of Medievalism, the last verbose shudder of the Dark Ages. Well, yes, there's plenty that's quaint in La Vita Nuova, especially in this 1861 translation with its deliberately archaic syntax and vocabulary. Dante's 'defensiveness' about personifying Love -- in the philosophical terms of his time, an 'essence' rather than a 'substance' -- will seem like a moot question to most modern readers, and his obsession with numerology, with the number 9, will perplex us gravely. It may help to know that Dante was far less venerated in the centuries from 1300 to 1600 than in ours, and far less read than Petrarch. It was a shock to his audience when the late 16th C madrigalist Luca Marenzio set sonnets by Dante to the most daringly expressive chromatic music. Dante was never totally forgotten, of course, but it was German and English 19th C Romanticism that elevated him to literary Godhead. This translation, by the appropriately named Dante Gabriel Rossetti, played a large role in the shift in cultural taste in Europe, from the classicism of the Enlightenment to the neo-Medievalism of Rossetti's Pre-Raphaelites and of Richard Wagner. That historical 'hinge' is the only reason I could offer for choosing Rossetti's translation instead of the many more fluent versions that have followed. The Dover Thrift price is attractive, naturally, but Dover also publishes a bilingual "La Vita Nuova" for just a couple bucks more.

Genuine romance and passion is missing from most books, either fiction or nonfiction, and I don't think I've ever come across both in such quantity as there is in "La Vita Nuova" ("The New Life"), the unsung masterpiece of poet Dante Alighieri, author of the classic Divina Comedia.

"La Vita Nuova" is a series of poems and anecdotes centering around the life-changing love of Dante for a young woman named Beatrice. The two first met when they were young children, of about eight. Dante instantly fell in love with her, but didn't really interact with her for several years. Over the years, Dante's almost supernatural love only increased in intensity, and he poured out his feelings (grief, adoration, fear) into several poems and sonnets. During an illness, he has a vision about mortality, himself, and his beloved Beatrice ("One day, inevitably, even your most gracious Beatrice must die"). Beatrice died at the age of twenty-four, and Dante committed himself to the memory of his muse.

It would be a hard task to find another book overflowing with such incredible love and passion as "La Vita Nuova"; it's probably the most romantic book I have ever seen. It's brief and only includes one part of Dante's life overall, but it's a truly unique love story. Dante and Beatrice were never romantically involved. In fact, both of them married other people.

But Dante's love for Beatrice shows itself to be more than infatuation or crush, because it never wanes -- in fact, it grows even stronger, including Love manifested as a nobleman in one of Dante's dreams. There is no element of physicality to the passion in "La Vita Nuova"; Dante talks about how beautiful Beatrice is, but that's only a sidenote. (We don't hear of any real details about her) And Dante's grief-stricken state when Beatrice dies (of what, we're never told) leads him to deep changes in his soul, and eventually peace. And though Beatrice died, because of Dante's love for her and her placement in the "Comedia," she has achieved a kind of immortality.

One of the noticeable things about this book is that whenever something significant happens to Dante (good, bad, or neither), he immediately writes a poem about it. Some readers may be tempted to skip over the carefully constructed poems, but they shouldn't. Even if these intrude on the story, they show what Dante was feeling more clearly than his prose.

It's impossible to read this book and come out of it jaded about love or true passion. Not the sort of stuff in pulp romance novels, but love and passion that come straight from the heart and soul, in a unique and unusual love story. Every true romantic should read this book.

This is a beautiful collection of poetry inspired by Beatrice, the great love of Dante's life, even though she barely even knew him and they were never together romantically, not even as childhood sweethearts. It's also mixed in with autobiographical remembrances. Dante and Beatrice first happened to see one another when they were nine and eight years old, respectively, and didn't cross paths again for nine more years, but Dante always remembered how stunningly beautiful this girl was. Every single time he saw this woman from their second meeting on (in church, on the street, by his house, wherever else she was) he was even more and more inflamed by love for this beautiful otherworldly creature, and so began writing the poetry which comprises much of this slim but poignant volume. Dante was so madly in love that he prefaced each poem or sonnet by explaining in detail what every bit of them meant, if it's broken down into sections by theme, everything that would let him gush on and on about his beloved one even more. One of the sonnets tells about a terrifying dream/premonition Dante had about a year before Beatrice died on 8 June 1290, in the prime of her life, a dream which was so strong, real, and terrifying that he was actually brought to tears and asked by one of Beatrice's friends whatever the matter was with him. He said he'd had a horrifying vision that his lady had died, but didn't provide her name and so let Beatrice's friend believe it was some other woman he was madly passionately head over heels in love with. Shortly after Beatrice really did die, one of her brothers visited Dante asking him to write some poetry for a certain death that recently occurred. The man has disguised himself and not told Dante the details about the death in question, but he knows that this is one of Beatrice's five brothers, and that Beatrice is the dead person in question whom he's being asked to immortalise in poetry. Because he doesn't want anyone to get the wrong impression about his feelings for Beatrice, Dante goes through three poems in the quest for creating just the right one.

After the sad untimely death of Beatrice, Dante was visited by another beautiful woman who cheered him up and inspired him to write poetry again, this time for her and not for Beatrice, but very soon after this occurs he feels upset and ashamed of himself because he let another woman be his muse. The last chapter of this book contains the genesis of the idea that would eventually lead to the writing of Dante's longest and most greatest work, the Divine Comedy. Dante wanted to write a much much longer poem celebrating his great love for her and how beautiful Beatrice was, immortalising her for all time even though they were never husband and wife, lovers, or even sweethearts. It's true there's a fine line between love and obsession, but in this case whichever of the two it might have been doesn't matter, since the end result was a beautiful timeless work of art.

It's hard not to assign 5 stars to this early work of the author of the Divine Comedy. In any serious Dante course, a professor will usually pick the Vita Nuovo as an introduction to Dante's work. The work is not at all intimidating -- rather, it's quite accessible to the modern reader. Dante, in his youth, writes a series of love tributes to Beatrice, his ultimate guide in the Divine Comedy. Anyone who is contemplating reading the Divine Comedy should start here and read this first as mandatory background to the Commedia. Dante rules!

"Educated people," say scholars, especially classical scholars who devote themselves to classical literature, "must read classics." Vita Nuova, one of Dante's earliest works, is such a classic. Yet while reading the classics clearly improves the reader's mind, no scholar would argue that reader must agree with what the author writes. Plato and Aristotle, the two great philosophers, are an example. The two have diametrically opposed worldviews and it is impossible to agree with both of them, except when a reader selects ideas from each; in which case these philosophers would say that the reader accepts the view of neither of them.
Dante, like all people, is searching for meaning in his life. He finds "all my bliss in Beatrice." He tells how his meeting with the metaphorical Beatrice, who later reappears in his Divine Comedy as his guide, and the Lord of Love changed his life. "Whatever happened before his `new life,'" writes the translator in his introduction, "is of no importance here."
This Dante notion is reminiscent of people who convert religions or who are "born again." But is this true? Should we accept the author's and translator's view? Does the past have no impact upon future life and thinking when a person converts? Or, do the past and new notions exist side by side, with the past exerting itself continually, creating a constant struggle. This is a question for readers to address while they read this fine book.

I received this book when I was half-way through the Divine Comedy because that book was so good, but based on other opinions, I braced myself with the belief that this book would not be as good. Well, I read it in three days, after I finished the Divine Comedy, and there were so many great things about this story. Simply the fact that it gave some background information on the Divine Comedy was great enough, but the lyrical prose that surrounded Dante's 31 poems was stellar in addition to the great poetry. It was not only that, because this story was something I could relate to, except for the part when Beatrice dies. The reason behind this is that, even 700 years ago, gossip was still a large part of a person's experience as a child, which is something I think all of us have experienced at some time in our lives. This happens primarily in the first half of the book and reminds me of myself when I was a few years younger, as I am 18 years old, which is why it would have been great to read when I was 16, and which is why I recommend it especially for younger readers.

***Notes on Edition***
I was a little put off at first by the fact that the translator has the summary of the book at the beginning, meaning that if you read it, you cannot really find out what happens as you read it. However, after finishing the book, I found that it was actually helpful to understand the story better, as well as to trace the thematic elements through the book, such as the importance of the number 9, and the structure of the book. It then allowed me to refer back to it if I thought I might have missed something, which I would not have noticed otherwise. Plus, the translator, Musa, has provided notes at the end for parts of the story that might be alluding to historical insights, but I did not really understand that some of the notes were just a translation into the vernacular Italian. Nevertheless, it was still a great edition. However, one criticism that I do have was the fact that Mark Musa did not translate it in a fashion that mirrored how Dante had written it, which I had become accustomed to after reading Ciardi's translation of the Divine Comedy, but this is a small complaint that should not hinder your purchase of this wonderful story, no matter what translator you choose!

Anyone who has read Dante's legendary "Divine Comedy" will know of his passion for a woman named Beatrice, who was his tour guide through heaven.

But that is only the tip of the iceberg, as "La Vita Nuova (The New Life)" shows in detail. This exquisite little book describes Dante's passion for Beatrice, and the emotional rollercoaster he went through as a result. This is Dante's unsung, more intimate masterpiece.

"La Vita Nuova" is a series of poems and anecdotes centering around the life-changing love of Dante for a young woman named Beatrice. The two first met when they were young children, of about eight. Dante instantly fell in love with her, but didn't really interact with her for several years.

Over the years, Dante's almost supernatural love only increased in intensity, and he poured out his feelings (grief, adoration, fear) into several poems and sonnets. During an illness, he has a vision about mortality, himself, and his beloved Beatrice ("One day, inevitably, even your most gracious Beatrice must die"). Beatrice died at the age of twenty-four, and Dante committed himself to the memory of his muse.

It would be a hard task to find another book overflowing with such incredible love and passion as "La Vita Nuova"; it's probably the most romantic book I have ever seen. Dante's feelings might seem a bit odd by modern standards, because Dante and Beatrice were never romantically involved. In fact, both of them married other people. But at the time, courtly love was considered the best, purest kind there is, and Dante's emotions are a perfect example of this.

But Dante's love for Beatrice shows itself to be more than infatuation or crush, because it never wanes -- in fact, it grows even stronger, including Love manifested as a nobleman in one of Dante's dreams. There is no element of physicality to the passion in "La Vita Nuova"; Dante talks about how beautiful Beatrice is, but that's only a sidenote. (We don't hear of any real details about her)

And Dante's grief-stricken state when Beatrice dies (of what, we're never told) leads him to deep changes in his soul, and eventually peace. And though Beatrice died, because of Dante's love for her and her placement in the "Comedia," she has achieved a kind of immortality.

One of the noticeable things about this book is that whenever something significant happens to Dante (good, bad, or neither), he immediately writes a poem about it. Some readers may be tempted to skip over the carefully constructed poems, but they shouldn't. Even if these intrude on the story, they show what Dante was feeling more clearly than his prose.

It's impossible to read this book and come out of it jaded about love or passion. Not the sort of stuff in trashy romance novels, but love and passion that come straight from the heart and soul. A true-life romance of the purest kind.