Introduction
DGR's source text in Ciampi's edition of the
Vita
e Poesie di Messer Cino da Pistoia
(page 98) is fairly corrupt and the translation reflects that fact. For a more reliable
text of the original sonnet see Marti
(pages 74-75). The translation also deals pretty freely with its bad source so that
the final result is a poem that reflects the original only in a remote way.
Nevertheless, DGR's sonnet is full of interest. For example,
line 8 in the translation distinctly
suggests not the idea of resurrection, or of its mortal
equivalent, a “new life”, but of reincarnation. The latter was
an attractive idea for DGR and it runs as a subtext through the sonnets of
“The House
of Life”
,
which is strangely forecast in various respects by this sonnet.
Notable is the close relation in which it stands to
“The One Hope”
,
the important culminant sonnet of DGR's sequence; but this sonnet echoes a number of
texts in DGR's famous later sequence, and clearly anticipates DGR's treatment of the relation of
the Beloved of the sequence and the Innominata. The latter relation, of course, is built upon
the model fashioned by Dante in the
<hi rend="i">Vita
Nuova</hi>
between Beatrice and the screen ladies.
Finally, the last two lines of the octave force the translation into the kind of
reflexive mode that characterizes so many of DGR's translations, especially those
of the poems in the
<hi rend="i">Vita
Nuova</hi>
. As a consequence the first person pronouns in DGR's sonnet
acquire a palimpsestic character, with Cino and DGR each playing a
ghostly presence to the other.
See also the commentary for the source text.