A Translation of Dante's Eleven Letters Author:Dante Alighieri Subtitle: With Explanatory Notes and a Biographical, Historical, and Critical Comment to the First, Second, Third, Ninth, and Eleventh Letters General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1891 Original Publisher: Printed at the Riverside pr. Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / Italian Poetry / Continental European... more » Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: LETTER III. Dante writes to the Lord Moroello Marchese Malaspina. 1. That the fetters of the servant, who is swayed by a sense of gratitude, may not be hidden from his lord, and that the various reports, which, when circulated by others, are too frequently wont to sow the seeds of false impressions, may not proclaim that I have been made a captive through negligence, I have thought it well to lay these words before the eyes of Your Magnificence. 2. Accordingly, after my departure from the threshold of the Court, for which I have since longed, and in which, as you often marvelled to behold, it was my privilege to be enlisted in the service of liberty, barely had I set foot by the streams of Arno, with entire peace of mind, and without heed, when suddenly alas ! descending like a flash of lightning,1 there appeared to me, I know not how, a woman suited in all respects to my inclinations, my character, and my fortunes. Oh! how in wonder at her did I stand amazed. But my amazement gave place to the terror of the thunder that followed. For just as the lightnings from heaven arefollowed straightway by thunder, so I had barely beheld the flash of her beauty, when a love, terrible and imperious, held sway over me. And this love, as violent as a lord who, banished from his native land, returns to it after a long exile, either slew, or drove...« less