New Life. Dante Alighieri

«New Life» by Dante Alighieri is a youthful work of the great poet that brought him fame as a prophetic poet. His infatuation with Beatrice is a cosmic-scale event and a sacred history for him. Without this hymn to love, it is impossible to imagine the subsequent literary tradition: it is precisely young Dante who established love, and not mere imitation of nature, as the main stimulus for poetic creativity. Accurate psychological observations, mastery over one’s own lyrical feelings, biblical and ancient contexts of emotion— all of this allows us to view «New Life» as both a workshop for the future «Divine Comedy» and an example of deeply personal cultural experience. In this edition, «New Life» is presented in the translation by M.I. Liverovskaya, a prominent writer of the Silver Age. The introductory article is by Professor Alexander Markov from RGGU.