La Vita Nuova (1292–94) has many aspects. Dante’s libello, or “little book,” is most obviously a book about love. In a sequence of thirty-one poems, the author recounts his love of Beatrice from his first sight of her (when he was nine and she eight), through unrequited love and chance encounters, to his profound grief sixteen years later at her sudden and unexpected death. Linked with Dante’s verse are commentaries on the individual poems—their form and meaning—as well as the events and feelings from which they originate. Through these commentaries the poet comes to see romantic love as the first step in a spiritual journey that leads to salvation and the capacity for divine love. He aims to reside with Beatrice among the stars.
David Slavitt gives us a readable and appealing translation of one of the early, defining masterpieces of European literature, animating its verse and prose with a fluid, lively, and engaging idiom and rhythm. His translation makes this first major book of Dante’s stand out as a powerful work of art in its own regard, independent of its “junior” status to La Commedia. In an Introduction, Seth Lerer considers Dante as a poet of civic life. “Beatrice,” he reminds us, “lives as much on city streets and open congregations as she does in bedroom fantasies and dreams.”
Mock trial—Roman style.
The Lesser Declamations, dating perhaps from the second century AD and attributed to Quintilian, might more accurately be described as emanating from “the school of Quintilian.” The collection—here made available for the first time in translation—represents classroom materials for budding Roman lawyers.
The instructor who composed these specimen speeches for fictitious court cases adds his comments and suggestions concerning presentation and arguing tactics—thereby giving us insight into Roman law and education. A wide range of scenarios is imagined. Some evoke the plots of ancient novels and comedies: pirates, exiles, parents and children in conflict, adulterers, rapists, and wicked stepmothers abound. Other cases deal with such matters as warfare between neighboring cities, smuggling, historical (and quasi-historical) events, tyrants and tyrannicides. Two gems are the speech opposing a proposal to equalize wealth, and the case of a Cynic youth who has forsworn worldly goods but sues his father for cutting off his allowance.
Of the original 388 sample cases in the collection, 145 survive. These are now added to the Loeb Classical Library in a two-volume edition, a fluent translation by D. R. Shackleton Bailey facing an updated Latin text.
Mock trial—Roman style.
The Lesser Declamations, dating perhaps from the second century AD and attributed to Quintilian, might more accurately be described as emanating from “the school of Quintilian.” The collection—here made available for the first time in translation—represents classroom materials for budding Roman lawyers.
The instructor who composed these specimen speeches for fictitious court cases adds his comments and suggestions concerning presentation and arguing tactics—thereby giving us insight into Roman law and education. A wide range of scenarios is imagined. Some evoke the plots of ancient novels and comedies: pirates, exiles, parents and children in conflict, adulterers, rapists, and wicked stepmothers abound. Other cases deal with such matters as warfare between neighboring cities, smuggling, historical (and quasi-historical) events, tyrants and tyrannicides. Two gems are the speech opposing a proposal to equalize wealth, and the case of a Cynic youth who has forsworn worldly goods but sues his father for cutting off his allowance.
Of the original 388 sample cases in the collection, 145 survive. These are now added to the Loeb Classical Library in a two-volume edition, a fluent translation by D. R. Shackleton Bailey facing an updated Latin text.
For Rainer Maria Rilke, letter writing was a discipline and art unto itself. Some seven thousand of his letters have survived, among them works of profound beauty and insight to rival his poems and fiction. For the first time, this volume makes available to an English-speaking audience two of the earliest collections of Rilke letters published after his death, each with a nuanced introduction and notes by Annemarie S. Kidder.
The thematic collection Letters on God contains two letters by Rilke, the first an actual letter written during World War I, in 1915 in Munich, the second a fictional one composed after the war, in 1922 at Muzot in Switzerland. In these letters, Rilke builds on the mystical view of God conceived in The Book of Hours, but he moves beyond it, demonstrating a unique vision of God and Christ, the church and religious experience, friendship and death.
Like his famous Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke’s Letters to a Young Woman presents an intimate series of letters written to a young admirer. The nine letters collected here were written to Lisa Heise over the course of five years, from 1919 to 1924. Though Rilke and Heise never met, the poet emerges in these letters as a compassionate listener and patient teacher who with levelheaded sensitivity affirms and guides the movements of another person’s soul.
The private correspondence of Rome’s most prolific public figure.
To his dear friend Atticus, Cicero reveals himself as to no other of his correspondents except perhaps his brother. In Cicero's Letters to Atticus we get an intimate look at his motivations and convictions and his reactions to what is happening in Rome. These letters also provide a vivid picture of a momentous period in Roman history, years marked by the rise of Julius Caesar and the downfall of the Republic.
When the correspondence begins in November 68 BC, the 38-year-old Cicero is a notable figure in Rome: a brilliant lawyer and orator, he has achieved primacy at the Roman bar and a political career that would culminate in the consulship in 63. Over the next twenty-four years—until November 44, a year before he was put to death by the forces of Octavian and Mark Antony—Cicero wrote frequently to his friend and confidant, sharing news and views and discussing affairs of business and state. It is to this corpus of over 400 letters that we owe most of our information about Cicero's literary activity. Here too is a revealing picture of the staunch republican's changing attitude toward Caesar. And taken as a whole the letters provide a first-hand account of social and political life in Rome.
D. R. Shackleton Bailey's authoritative edition and translation of the Letters to Atticus is a revised version of his Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries edition, with full explanatory notes.
The private correspondence of Rome’s most prolific public figure.
To his dear friend Atticus, Cicero reveals himself as to no other of his correspondents except perhaps his brother. In Cicero's Letters to Atticus we get an intimate look at his motivations and convictions and his reactions to what is happening in Rome. These letters also provide a vivid picture of a momentous period in Roman history, years marked by the rise of Julius Caesar and the downfall of the Republic.
When the correspondence begins in November 68 BC, the 38-year-old Cicero is a notable figure in Rome: a brilliant lawyer and orator, he has achieved primacy at the Roman bar and a political career that would culminate in the consulship in 63. Over the next twenty-four years—until November 44, a year before he was put to death by the forces of Octavian and Mark Antony—Cicero wrote frequently to his friend and confidant, sharing news and views and discussing affairs of business and state. It is to this corpus of over 400 letters that we owe most of our information about Cicero's literary activity. Here too is a revealing picture of the staunch republican's changing attitude toward Caesar. And taken as a whole the letters provide a first-hand account of social and political life in Rome.
D. R. Shackleton Bailey's authoritative edition and translation of the Letters to Atticus is a revised version of his Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries edition, with full explanatory notes.
The private correspondence of Rome’s most prolific public figure.
To his dear friend Atticus, Cicero reveals himself as to no other of his correspondents except perhaps his brother. In Cicero's Letters to Atticus we get an intimate look at his motivations and convictions and his reactions to what is happening in Rome. These letters also provide a vivid picture of a momentous period in Roman history, years marked by the rise of Julius Caesar and the downfall of the Republic.
When the correspondence begins in November 68 BC, the 38-year-old Cicero is a notable figure in Rome: a brilliant lawyer and orator, he has achieved primacy at the Roman bar and a political career that would culminate in the consulship in 63. Over the next twenty-four years—until November 44, a year before he was put to death by the forces of Octavian and Mark Antony—Cicero wrote frequently to his friend and confidant, sharing news and views and discussing affairs of business and state. It is to this corpus of over 400 letters that we owe most of our information about Cicero's literary activity. Here too is a revealing picture of the staunch republican's changing attitude toward Caesar. And taken as a whole the letters provide a first-hand account of social and political life in Rome.
D. R. Shackleton Bailey's authoritative edition and translation of the Letters to Atticus is a revised version of his Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries edition, with full explanatory notes.
The private correspondence of Rome’s most prolific public figure.
To his dear friend Atticus, Cicero reveals himself as to no other of his correspondents except perhaps his brother. In Cicero's Letters to Atticus we get an intimate look at his motivations and convictions and his reactions to what is happening in Rome. These letters also provide a vivid picture of a momentous period in Roman history, years marked by the rise of Julius Caesar and the downfall of the Republic.
When the correspondence begins in November 68 BC, the 38-year-old Cicero is a notable figure in Rome: a brilliant lawyer and orator, he has achieved primacy at the Roman bar and a political career that would culminate in the consulship in 63. Over the next twenty-four years—until November 44, a year before he was put to death by the forces of Octavian and Mark Antony—Cicero wrote frequently to his friend and confidant, sharing news and views and discussing affairs of business and state. It is to this corpus of over 400 letters that we owe most of our information about Cicero's literary activity. Here too is a revealing picture of the staunch republican's changing attitude toward Caesar. And taken as a whole the letters provide a first-hand account of social and political life in Rome.
D. R. Shackleton Bailey's authoritative edition and translation of the Letters to Atticus is a revised version of his Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries edition, with full explanatory notes.
Bartolomeo Fonzio (1447–1513) was a leading literary figure in Florence during the time of Lorenzo de’ Medici and Machiavelli. A professor of poetry and rhetoric at the University of Florence, he included among his friends and colleagues leading figures such as Marsilio Ficino, Angelo Poliziano, John Argyropoulos, Cristoforo Landino, and Pietro Soderini. He was one of the principal collaborators in creating the famous humanist library of King Mattyas Corvinus of Hungary. As a scholar and teacher, he devoted himself to the study of classical authors, particularly Valerius Flaccus, Livy, Persius and Juvenal; his studies of Juvenal led to bitter polemics with Poliziano.
Fonzio’s letters, translated here for the first time into English, are a window into the world of Renaissance humanism and classical scholarship, and include the famous letter about the discovery in 1485 on the Via Appia of the perfectly preserved body of a Roman girl.
Private correspondence and dubious disquisitions.
Cicero had an affectionate relationship with his only brother, Quintus, down to the closing years of their lives. The letters from Cicero to him in this collection offer an intimate look at their world. Cicero’s close friendship with the intensely intellectual Brutus was signalized by Cicero’s dedication of his prized Orator to Brutus. The correspondence between the two collected here dates from the spring and summer of 43 BC, and it conveys some of the drama of the period following the assassination of Julius Caesar.
Shackleton Bailey also provides in this volume a new text and translation of two invective speeches purportedly delivered in the Senate: Sallust attacking Cicero and Cicero attacking Sallust. These are probably anonymous ancient schoolbook exercises, but have come down to us with the works of Sallust and Cicero. Another work in the same category, the Letter to Octavian ostensibly by Cicero but probably dating from the third or fourth century AD, is included as well. Here too (with text by Shackleton Bailey and revised introduction and translation by M. I. Henderson) is the Handbook of Electioneering, a guide said to be written by Quintus to his brother, advising him on campaigning for the consulship of 63 BC. Whether or not this is genuinely the work of Quintus, it remains an interesting treatise on Roman elections. Letter fragments complete the volume; these were not previously available in the Loeb Classical Library.
Marjorie Agosín’s intensely personal long poem The Light of Desire is both a secular and sacred meditation on love and its meanings in the land of Israel. Following the tradition of the Song of Songs and the secular poetry of Sepharad, the beloved in The Light of Desire is both physical and metaphorical. The lovers’ bodies are the paths, the geography, leading not only from desire to sensual pleasure, but to memory and illumination. The light on the pink stones of Jerusalem, the sunlight of Galilee, from hills to the sea, the fragrant air and “mantle of stars,” all become one in this tender, rhapsodic expression of longing and desire. This is not unrequited love, but rather a reciprocal passion that brings exquisite pleasure, pain, a sense of fragility, and the hope and belief in that which is eternal.
The poem was written over a four-year span in Jerusalem’s Mishkenot Sha’ananim neighborhood, overlooking the wall of the Second Temple, and these hallowed surroundings imbued Agosín’s poetic voice. Lori Marie Carlson’s sensitive translation maintains the spirit of the original Spanish in this bilingual edition.
If a people
Have no poets
And no poetry of their own
For a National Anthology
Then treachery and barking
Will do the trick
With these words, a challenge is laid down in this new volume of Albanian poetry. Albania, however, has a dynamic tradition of literature. Lightning from the Depths is the first English collection to present the full range of Albanian verse. Albanian literature has had many lives. The early Christian traditions disappeared as Islam and the Ottoman Empire took over. Muslim literature, too, withered when the nation strove to become an independent European country. The beginnings of a modern tradition were quashed by the Stalinists. All along this rocky path, poets have turned the political strife, poverty, and isolation their nation has often experienced into culture, both celebrating and questioning the society in which they live. Lightning from the Depths opens readers’ eyes to a new political and cultural world populated artists who can spin despair into poetry.
A new English translation of Raghuvaṃśa by the celebrated Sanskrit poet Kalidasa, who inspired such modern writers as Goethe and Tagore.
For a millennium and a half, Kalidasa’s works—from The Cloud Messenger to The Recognition of Shakuntala—have delighted audiences in India and beyond. Although the renowned poet and dramatist inspired many literary works over the centuries, little is known about his life. He likely lived in central India in the late fourth or early fifth century.
Kalidasa’s The Lineage of the Raghus, or Raghuvaṃśa, belongs to the Sanskrit literary tradition of mahākāvya, or court poem. It recounts the lives of ancient kings in the sūryavaṃśa, the Solar Dynasty who ruled from the capital city of Ayodhya. The poem describes, among other episodes, the quest for offspring by Dilipa, a descendant of the primordial king Manu; the world conquest of his son Raghu, which offers a panorama of the Indian subcontinent; the exploits of the famous Rama, an incarnation of Vishnu; and the debaucheries of Agnivarna, which jeopardize the future of the lineage.
This volume presents a new edition of the Sanskrit text in the Devanagari script alongside a fresh English translation of this enduring epic.
A paperback anthology of essential Greek and Latin texts with facing English translations.
This selection of lapidary nuggets drawn from thirty-three of antiquity’s major authors includes poetry, dialogue, philosophical writing, history, descriptive reports, satire, and fiction—giving a glimpse at the wide range of arts and sciences, thought and styles, of Greco-Roman culture.
The selections span twelve centuries, from Homer to Saint Jerome. The texts and translations are reproduced as they appear in Loeb volumes.
The Loeb Classical Library is the only existing series that, through original text and English translation, gives access to all that is important in Greek and Latin literature. A Loeb Classical Library Reader offers a unique sampling of this treasure trove.
In these pages you will find, for example: Odysseus tricking the Cyclops in order to escape from the giant’s cave; Zeus creating the first woman, Pandora, cause of mortals’ hardships ever after; the Athenian general Nicias dissuading his countrymen from invading Sicily; Socrates, condemned to die, saying farewell; a description of Herod’s fortified palace at Masada; Cicero’s thoughts on what we owe our fellow men; Livy’s description of the rape of the Sabine women; Manilius on the signs of the zodiac; and Pliny’s observation of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.
Here you can enjoy looking in on people, real and imaginary, who figure prominently in ancient history, and on notable events. Here, too, you can relish classical poetry and comedy, and get a taste of the ideas characteristic of the splendid culture to which we are heir.
Given recent changes in politics and demographics, Latin America and the United States are becoming increasingly important to one another. Recognition of the two regions' differences and similarities may facilitate a more fruitful relationship, with increased respect and understanding.
It is with this in mind that editors John J. Hassett and Braulio Muñoz present a collection of writings that provides a look into the ways in which Spanish America has viewed its northern neighbor over the past two centuries. Gathered here are pieces by well-known figures from the worlds of Spanish American politics, history, philosophy, creative writing, and culture—names like Mario Vargas Llosa, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Pablo Neruda.
Divided into three sections, Looking North begins by underscoring the cultural and political differences between the two Americas. It opens with a speech by Simón Bolívar to the Venezuelan Congress in 1819 and closes with an essay by Mario Vargas Llosa from 2006 on the controversial wall being constructed between the United States and Mexico. The second section explores the experiences of Spanish American travelers in the US, beginning with an account of former Argentine president Domingo Sarmiento's fascination with the United States during his travels in 1847 and ending with a 2008 essay by Vargas Llosa on the city of New York. The final section encompasses creative writing and commentaries by some of Spanish America's most gifted poets and novelists. It opens with Rubén Darío's "To Roosevelt" from 1905 and ends with Christine Granados's humorous and profound short story "Inner View," first published in 2006.
Touching on history, sociology, politics, and religion, the writings assembled here will be of interest to humanists, social scientists, and anyone intrigued by the ever-growing connection between the United Sates and Spanish America at all levels.
Cristina, the young protagonist of Tree of Desire, and her little brother Joaquín run away from a home that is outwardly normal, but inwardly disfunctional. Lost on the streets of Mexico City, they confront some of the most terrifying aspects of city life. Or is it all a dream? The story suggests, without confirming, that sexual abuse has driven Cristina to her desperate escape. But is it an escape? Are they awakening from a dream, or reentering a nightmare?
Serafín, too, is lost in the city. Searching for his father who has deserted the family, he is virtually helpless amid the city dangers. Serafín finds compassion in surprising places, but will he survive to return to his mother and their rural village?
These two novels by one of Mexico's premier writers illuminate many aspects of contemporary Mexican life. Solares describes Mexico's different social classes with Dickensian realism. His focus on young protagonists, unusual in Mexican literature, opens a window onto problems of children's vulnerability that know no national borders. At the same time, his use of elements of the fantastic and the paranormal, and his evocative writing style, make reading his novels a most pleasurable experience.
Widely praised for his recent translations of Boethius and Ariosto, David R. Slavitt returns to Ovid, once again bringing to the contemporary ear the spirited, idiomatic, audacious charms of this master poet.
The love described here is the anguished, ruinous kind, for which Ovid was among the first to find expression. In the Amores, he testifies to the male experience, and in the companion Heroides—through a series of dramatic monologues addressed to absent lovers—he imagines how love goes for women. “You think she is ardent with you? So was she ardent with him,” cries Oenone to Paris. Sappho, revisiting the forest where she lay with Phaon, sighs, “The place / without your presence is just another place. / You were what made it magic.” The Remedia Amoris sees love as a sickness, and offers curative advice: “The beginning is your best chance to resist”; “Try to avoid onions, / imported or domestic. And arugula is bad. / Whatever may incline your body to Venus / keep away from.” The voices of men and women produce a volley of extravagant laments over love’s inconstancy and confusions, as though elegance and vigor of expression might compensate for heartache.
Though these love poems come to us across millennia, Slavitt’s translations, introduced by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Dirda, ensure that their sentiments have not faded with the passage of time. They delight us with their wit, even as we weep a little in recognition.
Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), scholar and critic, was one of the most admired Latinists of his day. After some years at the court of Urbino, where he exchanged Platonic love letters with Lucrezia Borgia, he moved to Rome and served as secretary to Leo X (1513-1520). Later he retired to Padua and a life of letters. He was made a cardinal in 1539. The poems in this volume come from all periods of his life and reflect both his erudition and his wide-ranging friendships. This verse edition is the first time they have been translated into English.
This volume also includes the prose dialogue Etna, an account of Bembo's ascent of Mt. Etna in Sicily during his student days, translated by Betty Radice.
This is the second volume in the Oratory of Classical Greece series. Planned for publication over several years, the series will present all of the surviving speeches from the late fifth and fourth centuries B.C. in new translations prepared by classical scholars who are at the forefront of the discipline. These translations are especially designed for the needs and interests of today's undergraduates, Greekless scholars in other disciplines, and the general public.
Classical oratory is an invaluable resource for the study of ancient Greek life and culture. The speeches offer evidence on Greek moral views, social and economic conditions, political and social ideology, and other aspects of Athenian culture that have been largely ignored: women and family life, slavery, and religion, to name just a few.
This volume contains all the complete works and eleven of the largest fragments attributed to Lysias, the leading speechwriter of the generation (403-380 B.C.) after the Peloponnesian War, who was also one of the finest and most deceptive storytellers of all time. As a noncitizen resident in Athens, Lysias could take no direct part in politics, but his speeches, written for clients to deliver in court, paint vivid pictures of various private and public disputes: one speaker defends himself on a charge of murdering his wife's lover, while another is accused of having caused the deaths of democratic activists under the short-lived oligarchy of the Thirty (404/3), despite his claim to be protected by the amnesty that accompanied the restoration of democracy in 403.
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