100
This is the hundredth entry in my diary at vitanuova.loyalty.org. I guess there is some reasonably interesting stuff if you look back through this diary.
For those who joined us later on, "vita nuova" is Italian for "new life" (the Latin would be "vita nova"), and this is the name of a book of poems by Dante Alighieri about the history of his extraordinary romantic love for a young woman. There ensued a number of centuries of controversy about whether Dante's idea of love had been a good one (and whether it should be approved more or less than alternatives). Since the history of ideas, as well as the idea of romantic love, have been a significant part of my life for so long, I think this is not a bad name.
There is also the old ambiguity about the meaning of the word "new": so some people interpret "vita nuova" as meaning "youth" (when life is new, when life is fresh) and some people interpret it as meaning a redemption or a revelation, tantamount to a rebirth.
The idea that a life will at some point be changed and "renewed" (hmmmm, like "renice" on Unix?) is pervasive. You can find it all over the place in Christianity and other messianic religions:
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.(John 3:3 (KJV))
or
And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.(Revelation 21:5 (KJV))
(It isn't hard to multiply examples.)
I always think of
Et expecto resurrectionem mortorum, et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.(Nicene Creed)
This sense of "new life" is quite different from the other, and it leads back to thoughts of discontinuity, distinction, and separation. It suggests a possibility of a profound alteration in one's life: one which in messianic traditions is anticipated "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye".
Or as NetHack puts it, "You feel like a new xorn!".
Clearly there are ways to become a new person other than the apocalyptic. Our cultural ideas perhaps do not allow for this possibility so readily.
