Table Of ContentLA VITA NUOVA
DANTE ALIGHIERI was born in Florence in 1265 and belonged to a noble but
impoverished family. He followed a normal course of studies, possibly
attending university in Bologna, and when he was about twenty he
married Gemma Donati, by whom he had three children. He had first
met Bice Portinari, whom he called Beatrice, in 1274, and when she died
in 1290 he sought distraction by studying philosophy and theology and
by writing the Vita Nuova. During this time he became involved in the
strife between the Guelfs and the Ghibellines; he became a prominent
White Guelf and when the Black Guelfs came to power in 1302 Dante,
during an absence from Florence, was condemned to exile. He took
refuge first in Verona and after wandering from place to place, possibly
to Paris and even, some have said improbably, to Oxford, he settled in
Ravenna. While there he completed The Divine Comedy, which he had
begun in about 1308, if not later. Dante died in Ravenna in 1321.
BARBARA REYNOLDS was for twenty-two years Lecturer in Italian at
Cambridge University and subsequently Reader in Italian Studies at
Nottingham University. Her first book was a textual reconstruction of the
linguistic writings of Alessandro Manzoni. The General Editor of the
Cambridge Italian Dictionary, she was created Cavaliere Ufficiale al Merito
della Repubblica Italiana in 1978. She has been awarded silver medals
by the Italian Government and by the Province of Vicenza and the
Edmund Gardner Prize for her services to Italian scholarship. She has
been Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, at
Wheaton College, Illinois, at Hope College, Michigan, and at Trinity
College, Dublin. She has translated Dante’s Paradiso,left unfinished by
Dorothy L. Sayers on her death in 1957, and Ariosto’s Orlando Furiosofor
the Penguin Classics. She is the author of The Passionate Intellect: Dorothy
L. Sayers’ Encounter with Dante and Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul.
She is also the editor of The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers. She holds three
Honorary Doctorates and is the managing editor of SEVEN: An Anglo-
American Literary Review.
DANTE ALIGHIERI
La Vita Nuova
(Poems of Youth)
Translated with an Introduction by
BARBARA REYNOLDS
REVISED EDITION
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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This translation first published 1969
Revised edition, 2004
4
Copyright © Barbara Reynolds, 1969, 2004
All rights reserved
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,
by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the
publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published
and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent
purchaser
EISBN: 978–0–141–90734–5
Contents
Foreword to the Revised Edition
Chronology
Introduction
Further Reading
A Note on the Translation
LA VITA NUOVA
I
II
III
First Sonnet
IV
V
VI
VII
Second Sonnet (double)
VIII
Third Sonnet
Fourth Sonnet (double)
IX
Fifth Sonnet
X
XI
XII
Ballad
XIII
Sixth Sonnet
XIV
Seventh Sonnet
XV
Eighth Sonnet
XVI
Ninth Sonnet
XVII
XVIII
XIX
First Canzone
XX
Tenth Sonnet
XXI
Eleventh Sonnet
XXII
Twelfth Sonnet
Thirteenth Sonnet
XXIII
Second Canzone
XXIV
Fourteenth Sonnet
XXV
XXVI
Fifteenth Sonnet
Sixteenth Sonnet
XXVII
Third Canzone (unfinished; one stanza only)
XXVIII
XXIX
XXX
XXXI
Fourth Canzone
XXXII
Seventeenth Sonnet
XXXIII
Fifth Canzone (two stanzas only, but complete)
XXXIV
Eighteenth Sonnet (with two beginnings)
XXXV
Nineteenth Sonnet
XXXVI
Twentieth Sonnet
XXXVII
Twenty-first Sonnet
XXXVIII
Twenty-second Sonnet
XXXIX
Twenty-third Sonnet
XL
Twenty-fourth Sonnet
XLI
Twenty-fifth Sonnet
XLII
Notes
Index of first lines of poems
Foreword to the Revised Edition
Over thirty years have passed since my translation of the Vita Nuova was
first published by Penguin Classics in 1969. It has been reprinted many
times and has met with a measure of acceptance. Since then I have
altered some of my views on the work and in the course of writing a
biography of Dante I have made one or two discoveries. I have
accordingly provided a new Introduction and made a few adjustments to
the Notes. There are also some alterations to the verse.
Cambridge, 2003
Description:A unique treatise by a poet, written for poets, on the art of poetry, LA VITA NUOVA is elaborately and symbolically patterned, consisting of a selection of Dante's early poems, interspersed with his own prose commentary.The poems themselves tell the story of his love for Beatrice, from their first m
