Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
La Vita Nuova

La Vita Nuova

Slavitt, David R.
Lerer, Seth
Dante Alighieri

Paperback

General Poetry

ISBN10: 0674416767
ISBN13: 9780674416765
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: Oct 1 2014
Pages: 160
Weight: 0.32
Height: 0.47 Width: 4.41 Depth: 7.23
Language: English

La Vita Nuova (1292-94) has many aspects. Dante's libello, or little book, is most obviously a book about love. In a sequence of thirty-one poems, the author recounts his love of Beatrice from his first sight of her (when he was nine and she eight), through unrequited love and chance encounters, to his profound grief sixteen years later at her sudden and unexpected death. Linked with Dante's verse are commentaries on the individual poems--their form and meaning--as well as the events and feelings from which they originate. Through these commentaries the poet comes to see romantic love as the first step in a spiritual journey that leads to salvation and the capacity for divine love. He aims to reside with Beatrice among the stars.

David Slavitt gives us a readable and appealing translation of one of the early, defining masterpieces of European literature, animating its verse and prose with a fluid, lively, and engaging idiom and rhythm. His translation makes this first major book of Dante's stand out as a powerful work of art in its own regard, independent of its junior status to La Commedia. In an Introduction, Seth Lerer considers Dante as a poet of civic life. Beatrice, he reminds us, lives as much on city streets and open congregations as she does in bedroom fantasies and dreams.

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