See the commentary for
might be so because the donna is usurping the place of Beatrice in
the poet's affections, which is what the heart warns the eyes in
Dante's sonnets signal these connections through several important purely verbal repetitions.
DGR's translations do not follow the originals in these respects but instead make the point
by trying to clarify the poet's psychology. The translations are thus fairly free renderings of
the originals. One can discern DGR's purposes most plainly in the free rendering of lines 1-2 of
DGR's source text was
“Color d'amore, e di pietà sembianti” in the third volume of Fraticelli's
Opere
Minori di Dante Alighieri
Presumably an early translation, late 1840s.
The translation was first published in 1861 in
The
Early Italian Poets
Dante
and his Circle
Early Italian Poets)Dante's Lyric Poetry