Introduction
DGR's source text for this translation is the sonnet numbered LXVII in
the Boccaccio section of the collection
<hi rend="i">Raccolta
di Rime Antiche Toscane</hi>
(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,
<hi rend="i">Fiammetta</hi>
,
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.