La Vita Nuova (The New Life) XXX. His letter to the Rulers
by Alighieri Dante
After she had departed this life, the whole city was left as though widowed, shorn of all dignity: so that I, still weeping in the desolate city, wrote to the rulers of the Earth something of its condition, taking the beginning from the Prophet Jeremiah which says: ‘Quomodo sedet sola civitas: How solitary lies the city.’
And I say this so that no one might wonder why I have written it previously, almost as an introduction to the new theme that follows it. And if anyone wants to criticise me for this, that I do not write the words that followed that quotation, I will excuse myself in that I intended from the first to write nothing except in the common tongue: so that, since the speech that follows that which is quoted is all in Latin, it would be against my intentions to write it. And likewise it is the intention of my best friend for whom I write this, also, that I should write it only in the common tongue.
