Giovanni Boccaccio. “Sonnet. Of his last sight of Fiametta.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

General Description

Date: 1846-56?
Rhyme: abcaabcadefdef
Meter: iambic pentameter
Genre: sonnet

Bibliography

◦ Villarosa, ed., Raccolta, IV. 42

◦ Ricci, ed., Opere in versi

Annotations

Editorial glosses and textual notes are available in a pop-up window. Line numbering reflects the structure of the Dante and his Circle text.

Scholarly Commentary

Introduction

DGR's source text for this translation is the sonnet numbered LXVII in the Boccaccio section of the collection Raccolta di Rime Antiche Toscane (IV. 42). Contemporary scholars like Ricci, however, do not include the sonnet among Boccaccio's authoritative works.

As WMR's note to the poem indicates, the translation has much in common with DGR's double work on Fiammetta—both the original sonnet, which he wrote in 1879, and the painting of 1878, A Vision of Fiammetta. The picture of 1866, Fiammetta, is much less closely related. All these works, however, as well as two of DGR's other translations dealing with Fiammetta, comprise a single body of related materials that elucidate DGR's interest in the myth of Fiammetta, which in certain respects stands in a closer relation to his work than does the myth of Beatrice. For Fiammetta is a second-order poetical construction, an imaginative response to and reprise on the Beatricean vision explicated in Dante's work.

The two related translations are “Of Fiammetta singing” and “To Dante in Paradise, after Fiammetta's death”.

The mid-rhymes (bc) in the octave are off rhymes of each other, so that the rhyme scheme might well be described abbaabba. In that case the metrical structure of the translation would be exactly correspondent with the original Italian text.

Textual History: Composition

As with most of DGR's translations of the early Italian poets, the date of this one cannot be determined with certainty. It is probably one of the later translations.

Printing History

The translation was first published in 1861 in The Early Italian Poets; it was reprinted in 1874 in Dante and his Circle.

Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File: 95d-1861.raw.xml