Murmurs of the Heart—The vampires were closing in. No, this isn't the retelling of a B movie but a portrait of my state of mind. Every night I’d fall into an abyss and in the morning I’d wake up with the shakes and a tubercular cough (the result of chain smoking cigarettes and pot).
The Vita Nuova (the Autobiography of Dante’s youth till about his twenty-seventh year) is already well known to many in the original, or by means of essays and of English versions partial or entire. It is therefore, and on all accounts, unnecessary to say much more of the work here than it says for itself. Wedded to its exquisite and intimate beauties are personal peculiarities which excite wonder and conjecture, best replied to in the words which Beatrice herself is made to utter in the Commedia:
