Dante's sonnet, an early work (ca. 1283) written before the
Vita Nuova
The sonnet was “answered” by several of
Dante's friends and acquaintances, as Dante's immediately succeeding
DGR exploits that original Dantean situation in his translation, which now stands
as a translation in an analogous relation to nineteenth-century
English readers. The translation is an index of a kind of mystery needing
“true interpretation and kind thought” from DGR's contemporaries
who try to make contact with a source of poetic inspiration. Dante's friends answered
his sonnet with responsive interpretive sonnets. DGR's translation thus becomes a
model for contemporary readers and poets. The structure of thought is precisely what
Pound will follow in his “translational” approach to the cultural
heritage he sought to recover.
DGR's translation exhibits some of his typical transformations, starting with the slight alteration of the sestet's rhyme scheme. Also, lines 3, 6-7, and 12 all make notable semantic departures from Dante's text. The octave variances, which expand Dante's thought beyond the literal Italian, seem clear attempts to render tonal qualities in the original—a certain decorous formality that pervades and indeed distinguishes Dante's style. The departure in line 12 involves a subtraction: DGR refuses to translate one of Dante's words, “ardendo”. The decision is hard to understand or justify given the importance of the word in the sonnet.
DGR's source text was
“A ciascun'alma presa e gentil core” in the third volume of Fraticelli's
Opere
Minori di Dante Alighieri
This is an early translation, in the 1840s, perhaps as early as 1846.
The translation was first published in 1861 in
The
Early Italian Poets
Dante
and his Circle
Early Italian Poets)Dante's Lyric Poetry
Vita Nuova