La Vita Nuova
On a link and a prayer:
http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Italian/TheNewLifeI.htm
Below is an email excerpt I would like to share with all. The poem contents are at the link above.
My meaning in sending this is to spur the thought in your mind that there was a time in the history of our kind of living thing (Human) when men had not yet met women. And when we did meet there was indeed a possibility that had not occurred previously. An opportunity for “La Vita Nuova“; The new life. A life rich with complexity and purpose. New eyes with which to see. New feelings to explore. A new life filled with opportunity. A fresh life neither of us had before. It seems our greatest challenge in this new life is not in it’s living but in the discovery of what it can become.
In this new life exists many wonderful things. Things that could not be without such a meeting. A future in which we can explore more of our own selves through our little Earthen thoughts than we could without such a meeting. And so, life is an ongoing process of discovery and development for us all. Sometimes we become lost on our travels and disoriented in our environment, it being such a new thing to us. Sometimes we invent things that don’t exist so we don’t have to think about it as much, or feel so overwhelmed by it. And there are those of us who met before others, those of us with more experience both in this new life and in the ongoing processes it affords us. Those of us who have more experience navigating the drowning waters that comfort us, fill us, and cover us at times. Those of us with less fear.
So it would seem that the full consequence of our meeting has not yet, and may never be, fully realized. For myself I can say I’m happy to think such thoughts. If there is no end to this asymmetry between gender, neither is there an end to the life or lives we may have.
-Tom
