In fact, her name means 'blessed' and when she died Dante believed that God saw how good Beatrice was and He wanted her to be near Him, so he took her up to be with Him in heaven. Dante felt that Beatrice was so special that he held her in higher esteem than other humans. To show his love, Dante wrote poetry in honor of Beatrice. For Dante, his love for Beatrice was so deep that with only a smile or a gracious word, she could cause him to become weak. To do so he used what he called 'screen loves' in which he showed admiration to other women so that no one would know who his true love was. Dante was very much in love with Beatrice, but he had to keep his love secret. This was during the age of chivalry, and was often a secret love between members of nobility. Read moreĭante lived in an era when 'courtly love' or 'unrequitted love' was common.

This complete and unabridged edition features the distinguished translation by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His unconventional approach - drawing upon personal experience, addressing readers directly, and writing in Italian rather than Latin - marked a turning point in European poetry, when writers departed from highly stylized forms in favor of a simpler style. Dante's commentaries explicate each poem, further refining his concept of romantic love as the initial step in the spiritual development that culminates in the capacity for divine love. In addition to its appeal as a sublime meditation on the anguish and ecstasy of love, this volume also serves as a treatise on the art and technique of poetry.

La Vita Nuova records the poet's adoration of Beatrice, the celestial figure who would ultimately guide him through his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy. In this celebration of a poet's passionate love for the woman he worshiped from afar, Dante weaves together rapturous sonnets and canzoni with prose commentaries and an autobiographical narrative.

Dante's la vita