The Life of Dante

The greatest poet of Italy, Dante Alighieri, gained many admirers among his descendants, but undoubtedly the most devoted of them was Giovanni Boccaccio. In the library of the author of the immortal "Decameron," there were handwritten copies of "New Life"... and "The Comedy," for which he introduced the epithet "Divine." By carefully studying these works, Boccaccio composed commentaries on the first seventeen cantos of the "Inferno" and established, in Florence, from where Dante had once been exiled, a special chair for explaining his monumental poem.
A kind of panegyric to his beloved poet was Boccaccio's "Little Treatise in Praise of Dante," or "The Life of Dante." As a biography, this book is quite unusual: from extensive information, the author selects only a few details that represent Dante's character, his scholarly and poetic pursuits, and his philosophical and creative doctrine. Undoubtedly familiar with other aspects of his life, Boccaccio writes a "spiritual biography" of the great genius, simultaneously affirming his own aesthetic principles and praising true poetry.
"The Life of Dante" has come down to us in three editions: one, more extensive, created between 1357 and 1362, and two other, shorter, and later versions. This edition reproduces the text of the first one in the talented translation by Elga Linetskaya - the "Ahmatova of Russian translation," as expressed by Mark Donskoy.