Dante Alighieri (30 page)

    
²
Translations of these three sonnets in reply (which are in the same rimes as Dante's sonnet) are given by D. G. Rossetti in
Dante and his Circle
(ed. 1874), pp. 131, 183, 198.

    
³
See
Dante Dictionary
, s.v.
Canzoniere
; and
The Vita Nuova and Canzoniere of Dante
, by T. Okey and P. H. Wicksteed (1906), pp. 155-357.

    
⁴
Bk. ix. ch. 136.

    
⁵
Vita di Dante
, ed. Macrì-Leone, § 16, p. 74.

    
⁶
There are three English translations of the
Canzoniere
, viz. by Charles Lyell (in unrimed verse, in the metres of the original) in
The Canzoniere of Dante
,
including the poems of the Vita Nuova and Convito
(1835, 1840, 1845; a revised version of
The Poems of the Vita Nuova and Convito
was issued, with other matter, in 1842); by Dean Plumptre (in rimed verse) in
The Commedia and Canzoniere of Dante
, vol. ii. pp. 199-317 (1887); by P. H. Wicksteed (in prose) in
The Convivio of Dante
(1903), and in
The Vita Nuova and Canzoniere of Dante
, pp. 156-357 (1906).

    
⁷
See note on p. 47.

    
⁸
See G. R. Carpenter,
The Episode of the Donna Pietosa
, in
Annual Report of the Cambridge
(U.S.A.)
Dante Society
for 1889, p. 60.

    
⁹
See note on p. 67.

    
¹⁰
See above pp. 46-7.

    
¹¹
This is not borne out by what Dante himself says of it at the beginning of the
Convivio
: “E se nella presente opera, la quale è
Convivio
nominata e vo' che sia, più virilmente si trattasse che nella
Vita Nuova
, non intendo però a quella in parte alcuna derogare, ma maggiormente giovare per questa quella; veggendo siccome ragionevolmente quella fervida e passionata, questa temperata e virile essere conviene. Chè altro si conviene e dire e operare a una etade, che ad altra” (i. 1, ll. 111-20).

    
¹²
Vita di Dante
, ed. cit, § 13, p. 63.

    
¹³
The New Life of Dante Alighieri
, pp. 93 ff.

    
¹⁴
See A. Bartoli,
Storia della Letteratura Italiana
, vol. iv. p. 173.

    
¹⁵
This might be used as an argument in favour of the reading “Bice” instead of “Lagia” in the sonnet, “Guido, vorrei che tu e Lapo ed io” (
Son
. xxxii.), where the name occurs in the
ninth
line.

    
¹⁶
On this point see above, p. 47, note.

    
¹⁷
See C. E. Norton,
The New Life of Dante
(1892), pp. 129-34. Norton's views, however, are contested by M. Scherillo, in
La Forma Architettonica della Vita Nuova
, in
Giornale Dantesco
, ix. (1901).

    
¹⁸
See T. Casini,
La Vita Nuova
(1891), p. xxiii.

    
¹⁹
It was first introduced in the edition of A. Torri, Livorno, 1843.

    
²⁰
Unfortunately all editors have not adopted the same numeration. Witte (Leipzig, 1876) and Casini, for example, do not number the opening paragraph, which Dante himself refers to as “il proemio che precede questo libello” (§ 29, 11. 17-18); while Torri, the Oxford Dante, and others count it as § 1. Again, Torri's § 3 is divided by Witte and Casini into two (§§ 2, 3); while, on the other hand, Torri's and Witte's §§ 26, 27, are run by Casini into one (§ 26). In the critical edition recently published by M. Barbi (Florence, 1907) for the
Società Dantesca Italiana
the chapter divisions differ from those of all previous editions; and in the Oxford Dante, the arrangement of which is followed in this book, yet another system is adopted.

    
²¹
This is the subject of D. G. Rossetti's famous picture “Dante's Dream,” now in the Walker Art Gallery at Liverpool.

    
²²
See Paget Toynbee,
The Inquisition and the Editio Princeps of the Vita Nuova
, in
Modern Language Review
, April, 1908, vol. iii. pp. 228-31.

    
²³
See the introduction (pp. xvii. ff.) to Barbi's critical edition. There are eight English translations of the
Vita Nuova
, of which the first, by Joseph Garrow, was published at Florence in 1846. Of the others the best known are those by D. G. Rossetti (1862), Theodore Martin (1862), and C. E. Norton (1867). The latest is that by Thomas Okey (1906).

    
²⁴
This is the form of the title in the MSS., almost without exception, and in the
editio princeps
(1490); in the three sixteenth-century editions (1521, 1529, 1531) the title is
L' amoroso Convivio
. The title
Convito
appears for the first time in the edition published by Biscioni (in
Prose di Dante Alighieri e di Messer Gio
.
Boccacci
) at Florence in 1723. The correct title
Convivio
was restored by Witte in 1879, and is now almost universally adopted (see Witte,
Dante-Forschungen
, vol. ii. pp. 574-80).

    
²⁵
See
Convivio,
i. 1, 11. 102-5.

    
²⁶
Conv
. iv. 26, 11. 66-7

    
²⁷
Conv
. i. 12, 11. 86-8 ; iv. 27, 11. 100-2.

    
²⁸
Conv
. ii. 1, 11. 34-6.

    
²⁹
Conv
. i. 8, 11. 130-2; iii. 15, 1. 144.

    
³⁰
See Antonio Santi,
Il Canzoniere di Dante Alighieri
, vol. ii. pp. 13 ff. (Roma, 1907).

    
³¹
See
Conv
. i. 4, 1, 4; ii. 7, 1. 1; iii. 6, 1. 1; iv. 2, 1. 77; etc. etc.

    
³²
Bk. ix. ch. 136. This passage is omitted from some MSS. of the
Cronica
.

    
³³
Vita di Dante
, ed. cit. § 16, p. 74.

    
³⁴
Conv
. ii. 14, 11. 69 ff.;
Par
. ii. 49-148; xxii. 139-41.

    
³⁵
Conv
. ii. 6, 11. 39 ff.;
Par.
xxviii. 40-139.

    
³⁶
See Zingarelli,
Vita di Dante
(1905), pp. 45, 52.

    
³⁷
Conv
. i. 3, 11. 20 ff.; see the passage quoted above, pp. 88-9.

    
³⁸
Adapted, by kind permission of the author, from the “Summary of Contents” prefixed to each book in the translation of the
Convivio
by the Rector of Exeter College, Dr. W. W. Jackson (Oxford, 1909).

    
³⁹
As to this form of the title of the treatise, see above, p. 173, note 3.

    
⁴⁰
One in the Canonici collection in the Bodleian Library at Oxford; one in the Earl of Leicester's collection at Holkham; and one in the possession of Dr. Edward Moore at Canterbury. There are four English translations of the
Convivio
,
viz
. by Elizabeth Sayer (1887), Katharine Hillard (1889), P. H. Wicksteed (1903), and W. W. Jackson (1909).

    
⁴¹
See Zingarelli,
Dante
, p. 389.

    
The
Divina Commedia
—Its origin, subject, and aim—Date of composition—Scheme of the poem—Boccaccio's story of the lost cantos—Why it was written in Italian—Dante and his rimes—Manuscripts and printed editions—English editions and translations—Commentaries.

D
IVINA COMMEDIA.
—At the close of the
Vita Nuova
Dante says that “a wonderful vision appeared to me, in which I saw things which made me resolve to speak no more of this blessed one,
¹
until I could more worthily treat of her. And to attain to this, I study to the utmost of my power, as she truly knows. So that, if it shall please Him through whom all things live, that my life be prolonged for some years, I hope to say of her what was never said of any woman.” This promise to say of Beatrice what had been said of no other woman Dante fulfilled in the
Divina Commedia
, the central figure of which is Beatrice glorified.

    
“Several years after the composition of the
Vita Nuova
,” says Boccaccio, “Dante, as he looked down from the high places of the government of the commonwealth of Florence wherein he was stationed, and observed over a wide prospect, such as is visible from such elevated places, what was the life of men, and what the errors of the common herd, and how few, and how greatly worthy of honour, were those who departed therefrom, and how greatly deserving of confusion those who sided with it, he, condemning the pursuits of such as these and commending
his own far above theirs, conceived in his mind a lofty thought, whereby at one and the same time, that is in one and the same work, he purposed, while giving proof of his own powers, to pursue with the heaviest penalties the wicked and vicious, and to honour with the highest rewards the virtuous and worthy, and to lay up eternal glory for himself. And inasmuch as he had preferred poetry to every other pursuit, he resolved to compose a poetical work; and after long meditation beforehand upon what he should write, in his thirty-fifth year he began to devote himself to carrying into effect that upon which he had been meditating, namely, to rebuke and to glorify the lives of men according to their different deserts. And inasmuch as he perceived that the lives of men were of three kinds—namely, the vicious life, the life abandoning vices and making for virtue, and the virtuous life—he divided his work in wonderful wise into three books comprised in one volume, beginning with the punishment of wickedness and ending with the reward of virtue; and he gave to it the title of
Commedia
. Each of these three books he divided into cantos, and the cantos into stanzas. And he composed this work in rime in the vulgar tongue with so great art, and with such wondrous and beautiful ordering, that never yet has any one been able with justice to find fault with it in any respect. How subtly he exercised the poet's art in this work may be perceived by all such as have been endowed with sufficient understanding for the comprehension of it. But inasmuch as we know that great things cannot be accomplished in a brief space of time, so must we understand that so lofty, so great, and so deeply thought out an undertaking as was this of describing in verses in the vulgar tongue all the various actions of mankind and their deserts, could not possibly have been brought to completion in a short time, especially by a man
who was the sport of so many and various chances of fortune, all of them full of anguish and envenomed with bitterness, as we have seen Dante was; he, therefore, from the hour when he first set himself to this lofty enterprise down to the last day of his life (notwithstanding that meanwhile he composed several other works) continually laboured upon it.”
²