Introduction

The New Life is a work of Dante's youth, in which prose links thirty-one poems to tell the story of his love for Beatrice: their first meeting when he was nine; her first greeting at eighteen, which threw him into ecstasy; his pretence of loving other ladies to hide the truth, which made her withhold her greeting; his grief and change of heart, from longing for her greeting to finding his happiness in praising her alone; and her early death. It ends with a vision after which the poet vows to write no more of her until he can do so worthily, 'to say of her what was never said of any woman'. The vow was fulfilled in the Divine Comedy.