Commentary
Introduction
DGR made this translation from a text he found in
Poeti
del Primo Secolo
(I. 18), where the date of the original is
hypothetically placed at 1200— almost certainly much too early. Neither
of the editions of DGR's books of translations have any notes elucidating
the text or the author, and subsequent scholarship is equally silent on these
topics. Both the original sonnet and the translation are relatively uninteresting. DGR
may have translated it because the text discloses the kinds of internecine violence
that was so prevalent in the Italian cities of Tuscany.
Textual History: Composition
The translation may have been made at any time between 1846-1860, but it
is probably one of the early translations, dating from the late 1840s.
Textual History: Revision
Printing History
The translation was first published in 1861 in
The
Early Italian Poets
; it was reprinted in 1874 in
Dante
and his Circle
.
Bibliographic
Poeti
del Primo Secolo1 Text
I. 18