La Vita Nuova or Vita Nova is a text by Dante Alighieri published in 1294. It is an expression of the medieval genre of courtly love in a prosimetrum style, a combination of both prose and verse. Besides its content, it is notable for being written in Tuscan vernacular, rather than Latin; Dante's work helped to establish Tuscan as the basis for the national Italian language.The prose creates the illusion of narrative continuity between the poems; it is Dante's way of reconstructing himself and his art in terms of his evolving sense of the limitations of courtly love . Sometime in his twenties, Dante decided to try to write love poetry that was less centered on the self and more aimed at love as such: he intended to elevate courtly love poetry, many of its tropes and its language, into sacred love poetry. Beatrice for Dante was the embodiment of this kind of love—transparent to the Absolute, inspiring the integration of desire aroused by beauty with the longing of the soul for divine splendor.
“Love hath so long possessed me for his own
And made his lordship so familiar.”
Sì lungiamente m'ha tenuto Amore
e costumato a la sua segnoria
Source: La Vita Nuova (1293), Chapter XXIV
Amore e 'l cor gentil sono una cosa...
e così esser l'un sanza l'altro osa
com'alma razional sanza ragione.
Source: La Vita Nuova (1293), Chapter XVI (tr. Mark Musa)
ne le braccia avea
madonna involta in un drappo dormendo.
Poi la svegliava, e d'esto core ardendo
lei paventosa umilmente pascea:
appresso gir lo ne vedea piangendo.
Source: La Vita Nuova (1293), Chapter I, First Sonnet (tr. Mark Musa)
Source: La Vita Nuova (1293), Chapter I, opening lines (as reported in The 100 Best Love Poems of All Time by Leslie Pockell)
“Behold a God more powerful than I who comes to rule over me.”
Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi.
Source: La Vita Nuova (1293), Chapter I (tr. Barbara Reynolds); of love.
In that book which is
My memory...
On the first page
That is the chapter when
I first met you
Appear the words...
Here begins a new life.
Source: La Vita Nuova (1293), Chapter I, opening lines (as reported in The 100 Best Love Poems of All Time by Leslie Pockell)
“She is the sum of nature's universe.
To her perfection all of beauty tends.”
Source: La Vita Nuova (1293), Chapter XIV, lines 49–50 (tr. Barbara Reynolds)
