The earthly story of this love, of its beginning, its irregular course,
its hopes and doubts, its exaltations and despairs, its sudden
interruption and transformation by death, is the story which the "Vita
Nuova" tells. The narrative is quaint, embroidered with conceits,
deficient in artistic completeness, but it has the _naivete_ and
simplicity of youth, the charm of sincerity, the freedom of personal
confidence; and so long as there are lovers in the world, so long as
lovers are poets, so long will this first and tenderest love-story of
modern literature be read with appreciation and responsive sympathy.
But "The New Life" has an interest of another sort, and a claim, not
yet sufficiently acknowledged, upon all who would read the "Divina
Commedia" with fit appreciation, in that it contains the first hint of
the great poem itself, and furnishes for it a special, interior,
imaginative introduction, without the knowledge of which it is not
thoroughly to be understood. The character of Beatrice, as she appears
in the "Divina Commedia," the relation in which the poet stands to her,
the motive of the dedication of the poem to her honor and memory, and
many minor allusions, are all explained or illustrated by the aid of
the "Vita Nuova.
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