Poetry Codex

Italian

Dante Alighieri

1265–1321

Dante Alighieri was born in Florence in 1265 and became one of the city's political figures as well as its greatest poet. His early lyrics and the prose-and-verse Vita Nuova (c. 1294) celebrate Beatrice, the woman he loved from afar and who later became his guide in the Paradiso.

In 1302, on the losing side of Florence's factional struggles, he was sentenced to exile and never returned. During those years he wrote the Divine Comedy, a vision in rhymed tercets of the soul's journey through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, composed in the Tuscan vernacular rather than Latin. He died in Ravenna in 1321, soon after finishing it.

Major Works (9)

  1. The Divine Comedy — translated by Henry Francis Cary (1814)
  2. The Divine Comedy — translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1867)
  3. The Divine Comedy (Norton) — translated by Charles Eliot Norton (1891–1892)
  4. The Divine Comedy (Plumptre) — translated by E. H. Plumptre (1886–87; text of the Isbister edition, 1899)
  5. The Inferno (Carlyle) — translated by John Aitken Carlyle (1849), revised by H. Oelsner (Temple Classics, 1900)
  6. The Inferno (Sibbald) — translated by James Romanes Sibbald (1884)
  7. The Inferno (Wright) — translated by Ichabod Charles Wright (1833)
  8. The Paradiso (Wicksteed) — translated by Philip H. Wicksteed (1899)
  9. The Purgatorio (Okey) — translated by Thomas Okey (1901)

Poems (31)

  1. Vita Nuova: 'To every heart which the sweet pain doth move'
  2. Vita Nuova: 'All ye that pass along Love’s trodden way'
  3. Vita Nuova: 'Weep, Lovers, sith Love’s very self doth weep'
  4. Vita Nuova: 'Death, alway cruel, Pity’s foe in chief'
  5. Vita Nuova: 'A day agone, as I rode sullenly'
  6. Vita Nuova: 'Song, ’tis my will that thou do seek out Love'
  7. Vita Nuova: 'All my thoughts always speak to me of Love'
  8. Vita Nuova: 'Even as the others mock, thou mockest me'
  9. Vita Nuova: 'The thoughts are broken in my memory'
  10. Vita Nuova: 'At whiles (yea oftentimes) I muse over'
  11. Vita Nuova: 'Ladies that have intelligence in love'
  12. Vita Nuova: 'Love and the gentle heart are one same thing'
  13. Vita Nuova: 'My lady carries love within her eyes'
  14. Vita Nuova: 'You that thus wear a modest countenance'
  15. Vita Nuova: 'Canst thou indeed be he that still would sing'
  16. Vita Nuova: 'A very pitiful lady, very young'
  17. Vita Nuova: 'I felt a spirit of love begin to stir'
  18. Vita Nuova: 'My lady looks so gentle and so pure'
  19. Vita Nuova: 'For certain he hath seen all perfectness'
  20. Vita Nuova: 'Love hath so long possessed me for his own'
  21. Vita Nuova: 'The eyes that weep for pity of the heart'
  22. Vita Nuova: 'Stay now with me, and listen to my sighs'
  23. Vita Nuova: 'Whatever while the thought comes over me'
  24. Vita Nuova: 'That lady of all gentle memories'
  25. Vita Nuova: 'Mine eyes beheld the blessed pity spring'
  26. Vita Nuova: 'Love’s pallor and the semblance of deep ruth'
  27. Vita Nuova: 'The very bitter weeping that ye made'
  28. Vita Nuova: 'A gentle thought there is will often start'
  29. Vita Nuova: 'Woe’s me! by dint of all these sighs that come'
  30. Vita Nuova: 'Ye pilgrim-folk, advancing pensively'
  31. Vita Nuova: 'Beyond the sphere which spreads to widest space'

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