Commentary
Introduction
DGR's source text, in Fraticelli's
<hi rend="i">Opere minori di Dante Alighieri</hi>
(I. 67-70), wrongly attributes this canzone to Dante.
Its actual author remains unknown. In his 1874 edition of his translations, DGR included this translation as a
substitute for another canzone that he had
translated from the same source and included in
<hi rend="i">The Early Italian Poets</hi>
volume. DGR discovered the latter to be spurious, but his substitution did not improve
the situation. In a note to the
canzone DGR associates it with “the time during which
Beatrice denied her salutation to Dante” in the
<hi rend="i">Vita
Nuova</hi>
.
DGR's attention was called to this poem by Theodore Martin, whose own translation of Dante's autobiography was published almost simultaneously with DGR's larger collection. Martin printed this poem in an appendix.
Textual History: Composition
Alhough DGR made this translation fairly early—at the
same time as he was making his other Dante translations—he
“omitted [it] formerly [i.e., in the 1861 volume] as
bearing on no special event” in Dante's life. In March 1873, however,
he asked his mother to help WMR find his MS of the translation
in a “very old portfolio of MSS. of mine” in
order to put the translation in the 1874 edition (see letter to his mother, 7 March 1873, in WMR,
<hi rend="i">Family Letters</hi>
II. 284).
Textual History: Revision
Printing History
First printed in
<hi rend="i">Dante
and his Circle</hi>
(115-117) and collected thereafter,