Commentary
Introduction
The sonnet explicates the ideas—which is also to say, the
practise—of the great canzone preceding it in the
<hi rend="i">Vita Nuova</hi>
,
“Ladies that have intelligence in love”
.
Once again the inventive excellence of DGR's translation leaps to attention. As
DGR's note indicates, Dante's sonnet references Guinizzelli's famous canzone, also
translated by DGR,
“Within the gentle
heart Love shelters him”
. DGR's translation is particularly
interesting in the opening passage where the Guinizzelli allusion is made. DGR's
purpose comes into focus in line 3, which departs drastically from the
literal sense of Dante's Italian (“E cosė
senza l'un l'altro esser osa”). The differential is measured by DGR's
clear effort to evoke the figure of Samuel Taylor Coleridge by echoing a
famous passage from
“The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner”
in the context of a theoretical discussion of
the psycho-dynamics of love. Indeed, Dante's
(and DGR's) argument for the intimate relation of form and matter (see Dante's
divisio for this sonnet) has no force unless the “power
[sustaining that relation] translates itself into act”. That prose explanation
from the divisio involves its own remarkable act of translation,
for the Italian source of “translates itself” is “si
riduce”. We know that DGR asked WMR to translate the
<hi rend="i">Vita
Nuova</hi>
's
divisions for him. Whichever Rossetti brother was responsible for this
translation, it is a trenchant linguistic moment.
DGR's source text was
“Amore e cor gentil sono una cosa” in the third volume of Fraticelli's
<hi rend="i">Opere
Minori di Dante Alighieri</hi>
.
Textual History: Composition
This is an early translation, in the 1840s, perhaps as early as 1846.
Textual History: Revision
Printing History
The translation was first published in 1861 in
<hi rend="i">The
Early Italian Poets</hi>
; it was reprinted in 1874 in
<hi rend="i">Dante
and his Circle</hi>
.
Bibliographic
“Introduction
to Part II” (in
Early Italian Poets)
189-193
Foster and Boyd,
<xref doc="a.pq4309.a1.1967.rad" link="dead" from="64" to="65">
<hi rend="i">Dante's Lyric Poetry</hi>
</xref>
,
I.64-65 (II. 104-107)
.
De Robertis, ed., Vita Nuova, 133-136
.