NOTES1.Gentile.The word means “noble” rather than (in its modern shade of meaning) “gentle.” “Genteel” would sometimes apply, but has ceased to be admissible in serious writing.2.“Purgatorio,” C. xxx.3.I must hazard here (to relieve the first page of my translation from a long note) a suggestion as to the meaning of the most puzzling passage in the wholeVita Nuova,—that sentence just at the outset which says, “La gloriosa donna della mia mente, la quale fù chiamata da molti Beatrice, i quali non sapeano che si chiamare.” On this passage all the commentators seem helpless, turning it about and sometimes adopting alterations not to be found in any ancient manuscript of the work. The words mean literally, “The glorious lady of my mind who was called Beatrice by many who knew not how she was called.” This presents the obvious difficulty that the lady’s name reallywasBeatrice, and that Dante throughout uses that name himself. In the text of my version I have adopted, as a rendering, the one of the various compromises which seemed to give the most beauty to the meaning. But it occurs to me that a less irrational escape out of the difficulty than any I have seen suggested may possibly be found by linking this passage with the close of the sonnet at page 104 of theVita Nuova, beginning, “I felt a spirit of love begin to stir,” in the last line of which sonnet Love is made to assert that the name of Beatrice isLove. Dante appears to have dwelt on this fancy with some pleasure, from what is said in an earlier sonnet (page 39) about “Love in his proper form” (by which Beatrice seems to be meant) bending over a dead lady. And it is in connection with the sonnet where the name of Beatrice is said to be Love, that Dante, as if to show us that the Love he speaks of is only his own emotion, enters into an argument as to Love being merely an accident in substance,—in other words, “Amore e il cor gentil son una cosa.” This conjecture may be pronounced extravagant; but theVita Nuova, when examined, proves so full of intricate and fantastic analogies, even in the mere arrangement of its parts, (much more than appears on any but the closest scrutiny,) that it seems admissible to suggest even a whimsical solution of a difficulty which remains unconquered. Or to have recourse to the much more welcome means of solution afforded by simple inherent beauty: may not the meaning be merely that any person looking on so noble and lovely a creation, without knowledge of her name, must have spontaneously called her Beatrice,—i.e., the giver of blessing? This would be analogous by antithesis to the translation I have adopted in my text.4.“Here beginneth the new life.”5.In reference to the meaning of the name, “She who confers blessing.” We learn from Boccaccio that this first meeting took place at a May Feast, given in the year 1274 by Folco Portinari, father of Beatrice, who ranked among the principal citizens of Florence: to which feast Dante accompanied his father, Alighiero Alighieri.6.“Here is a deity stronger than I; who, coming, shall rule over me.”7.“Your beatitude hath now been made manifest unto you.”8.“Woe is me! for that often I shall be disturbed from this time forth!”9.Οὐδὲ ἐῴκειἈνδρός γε θνητοῦ παῖς ἔμμεναι, ἀλλὰ θεοῖο.(Iliad, xxiv. 258.)10.“I am thy master.”11.“Behold thy heart.”12.The friend of whom Dante here speaks was Guido Cavalcanti.13.i.e., in a church.14.It will be observed that this poem is not what we now call a sonnet. Its structure, however, is analogous to that of the sonnet, being two sextetts followed by two quatrains, instead of two quatrains followed by two triplets. Dante applies the term sonnet to both these forms of composition, and to no other.15.The commentators assert that the last two lines here do not allude to the dead lady, but to Beatrice. This would make the poem very clumsy in construction; yet there must be some covert allusion to Beatrice, as Dante himself intimates. The only form in which I can trace it consists in the implied assertion that such person ashadenjoyed the dead lady’s society was worthy of heaven, and that person was Beatrice. Or indeed the allusion to Beatrice might be in the first poem, where he says that Love “in forma vera” (that is, Beatrice), mourned over the corpse: as he afterwards says of Beatrice, “Quella ha nome Amor.” Most probablybothallusions are intended.16.“My son, it is time for us to lay aside our counterfeiting.”17.“I am as the centre of a circle, to the which all parts of the circumference bear an equal relation: but with thee it is not thus.” This phrase seems to have remained as obscure to commentators as Dante found it at the moment. No one, as far as I know, has even fairly tried to find a meaning for it. To me the following appears a not unlikely one. Love is weeping on Dante’s account, and not on his own. He says, “I am the centre of a circle (Amor che muove il sole e l’altre stelle): therefore all lovable objects, whether in heaven or earth, or any part of the circle’s circumference, are equally near to me. Not so thou, who wilt one day lose Beatrice when she goes to heaven.” The phrase would thus contain an intimation of the death of Beatrice, accounting for Dante being next told not to inquire the meaning of the speech,—”Demand no more than may be useful to thee.”18.“Names are the consequents of things.”19.It is difficult not to connect Dante’s agony at this wedding-feast with our knowledge that in her twenty-first year Beatrice was wedded to Simone de’ Bardi. That she herself was the bride on this occasion might seem out of the question, from the fact of its not being in any way so stated: but on the other hand, Dante’s silence throughout theVita Nuovaas regards her marriage (which must have brought deep sorrow even to his ideal love) is so startling, that we might almost be led to conceive in this passage the only intimation of it which he thought fit to give.20.Guido Guinicelli, in the canzone which begins, “Within the gentle heart Love shelters him.”21.There is a play in the original upon the wordsPrimavera(Spring) andprima verrà(she shall come first), to which I have given as near an equivalent as I could.22.“I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord.’”23.That is (as I understand it), suppressing, from delicacy towards his friend, the words in which Love describes Joan as merely the forerunner of Beatrice. And perhaps in the latter part of this sentence a reproach is gently conveyed to the fickle Guido Cavalcanti, who may already have transferred his homage (though Dante had not then learned it) from Joan to Mandetta.24.On reading Dante’s treatiseDe Vulgari Eloquio, it will be found that the distinction which he intends here is not between one language, or dialect, and another; but between “vulgar speech” (that is, the language handed down from mother to son without any conscious use of grammar or syntax), and language as regulated by grammarians and the laws of literary composition, and which Dante calls simply “Grammar.” A great deal might be said on the bearings of the present passage, but it is no part of my plan to enter on such questions.25.i.e., the languages of Provence and Tuscany.26.It strikes me that this curious passage furnishes a reason, hitherto (I believe) overlooked, why Dante put such of his lyrical poems as relate to philosophy into the form of love-poems. He liked writing in Italian rhyme rather than Latin metre; he thought Italian rhyme ought to be confined to love-poems: therefore whatever he wrote (at this age) had to take the form of a love-poem. Thus any poem by Dante not concerning love is later than his twenty-seventh year (1291-2), when he wrote the prose of theVita Nuova; the poetry having been written earlier, at the time of the events referred to.27.“How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow, she that was great among the nations!”—Lamentations of Jeremiah, i. I.28.Beatrice Portinari will thus be found to have died during the first hour of the 9th of June, 1290. And from what Dante says at the commencement of this work, (viz., that she was younger than himself by eight or nine months,) it may also be gathered that her age, at the time of her death, was twenty-four years and three months. The “perfect number” mentioned in the present passage is the number ten.29.Thus according to some texts. The majority, however, add the words, “And therefore was I in thought:” but the shorter speech is perhaps the more forcible and pathetic.30.Boccaccio tells us that Dante was married to Gemma Donati about a year after the death of Beatrice. Can Gemma then be “the lady of the window,” his love for whom Dante so contemns? Such a passing conjecture (when considered together with the interpretation of this passage in Dante’s later work, theConvito) would of course imply an admission of what I believe to lie at the heart of all true Dantesque commentary; that is, the existence always of the actual events even where the allegorical superstructure has been raised by Dante himself.31.The Veronica (Vera icon, or true image); that is, the napkin with which a woman was said to have wiped our Saviour’s face on His way to the cross, and which miraculously retained its likeness. Dante makes mention of it also in theCommedia(Parad. xxxi. 103" (Paradiso, Canto 31, line 103))., where he says:—“Qual è colui che forse di CroaziaViene a veder la Veronica nostra,Che per l’antica fama non si saziaMa dice nel pensier fin che si mostra:Signor mio Gesù Cristo, Iddio verace,Or fu sì fatta la sembianza vostra?” etc.32.This we may believe to have been the Vision of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, which furnished the triple argument of theDivina Commedia. The Latin words ending theVita Nuovaare almost identical with those at the close of the letter in which Dante, on concluding theParadise, and accomplishing the hope here expressed, dedicates his great work to Can Grande della Scala.33.“Who is blessed throughout all ages.”
NOTES
1.Gentile.The word means “noble” rather than (in its modern shade of meaning) “gentle.” “Genteel” would sometimes apply, but has ceased to be admissible in serious writing.
2.“Purgatorio,” C. xxx.
3.I must hazard here (to relieve the first page of my translation from a long note) a suggestion as to the meaning of the most puzzling passage in the wholeVita Nuova,—that sentence just at the outset which says, “La gloriosa donna della mia mente, la quale fù chiamata da molti Beatrice, i quali non sapeano che si chiamare.” On this passage all the commentators seem helpless, turning it about and sometimes adopting alterations not to be found in any ancient manuscript of the work. The words mean literally, “The glorious lady of my mind who was called Beatrice by many who knew not how she was called.” This presents the obvious difficulty that the lady’s name reallywasBeatrice, and that Dante throughout uses that name himself. In the text of my version I have adopted, as a rendering, the one of the various compromises which seemed to give the most beauty to the meaning. But it occurs to me that a less irrational escape out of the difficulty than any I have seen suggested may possibly be found by linking this passage with the close of the sonnet at page 104 of theVita Nuova, beginning, “I felt a spirit of love begin to stir,” in the last line of which sonnet Love is made to assert that the name of Beatrice isLove. Dante appears to have dwelt on this fancy with some pleasure, from what is said in an earlier sonnet (page 39) about “Love in his proper form” (by which Beatrice seems to be meant) bending over a dead lady. And it is in connection with the sonnet where the name of Beatrice is said to be Love, that Dante, as if to show us that the Love he speaks of is only his own emotion, enters into an argument as to Love being merely an accident in substance,—in other words, “Amore e il cor gentil son una cosa.” This conjecture may be pronounced extravagant; but theVita Nuova, when examined, proves so full of intricate and fantastic analogies, even in the mere arrangement of its parts, (much more than appears on any but the closest scrutiny,) that it seems admissible to suggest even a whimsical solution of a difficulty which remains unconquered. Or to have recourse to the much more welcome means of solution afforded by simple inherent beauty: may not the meaning be merely that any person looking on so noble and lovely a creation, without knowledge of her name, must have spontaneously called her Beatrice,—i.e., the giver of blessing? This would be analogous by antithesis to the translation I have adopted in my text.
4.“Here beginneth the new life.”
5.In reference to the meaning of the name, “She who confers blessing.” We learn from Boccaccio that this first meeting took place at a May Feast, given in the year 1274 by Folco Portinari, father of Beatrice, who ranked among the principal citizens of Florence: to which feast Dante accompanied his father, Alighiero Alighieri.
6.“Here is a deity stronger than I; who, coming, shall rule over me.”
7.“Your beatitude hath now been made manifest unto you.”
8.“Woe is me! for that often I shall be disturbed from this time forth!”
9.
Οὐδὲ ἐῴκειἈνδρός γε θνητοῦ παῖς ἔμμεναι, ἀλλὰ θεοῖο.
Οὐδὲ ἐῴκει
Ἀνδρός γε θνητοῦ παῖς ἔμμεναι, ἀλλὰ θεοῖο.
(Iliad, xxiv. 258.)
10.“I am thy master.”
11.“Behold thy heart.”
12.The friend of whom Dante here speaks was Guido Cavalcanti.
13.i.e., in a church.
14.It will be observed that this poem is not what we now call a sonnet. Its structure, however, is analogous to that of the sonnet, being two sextetts followed by two quatrains, instead of two quatrains followed by two triplets. Dante applies the term sonnet to both these forms of composition, and to no other.
15.The commentators assert that the last two lines here do not allude to the dead lady, but to Beatrice. This would make the poem very clumsy in construction; yet there must be some covert allusion to Beatrice, as Dante himself intimates. The only form in which I can trace it consists in the implied assertion that such person ashadenjoyed the dead lady’s society was worthy of heaven, and that person was Beatrice. Or indeed the allusion to Beatrice might be in the first poem, where he says that Love “in forma vera” (that is, Beatrice), mourned over the corpse: as he afterwards says of Beatrice, “Quella ha nome Amor.” Most probablybothallusions are intended.
16.“My son, it is time for us to lay aside our counterfeiting.”
17.“I am as the centre of a circle, to the which all parts of the circumference bear an equal relation: but with thee it is not thus.” This phrase seems to have remained as obscure to commentators as Dante found it at the moment. No one, as far as I know, has even fairly tried to find a meaning for it. To me the following appears a not unlikely one. Love is weeping on Dante’s account, and not on his own. He says, “I am the centre of a circle (Amor che muove il sole e l’altre stelle): therefore all lovable objects, whether in heaven or earth, or any part of the circle’s circumference, are equally near to me. Not so thou, who wilt one day lose Beatrice when she goes to heaven.” The phrase would thus contain an intimation of the death of Beatrice, accounting for Dante being next told not to inquire the meaning of the speech,—”Demand no more than may be useful to thee.”
18.“Names are the consequents of things.”
19.It is difficult not to connect Dante’s agony at this wedding-feast with our knowledge that in her twenty-first year Beatrice was wedded to Simone de’ Bardi. That she herself was the bride on this occasion might seem out of the question, from the fact of its not being in any way so stated: but on the other hand, Dante’s silence throughout theVita Nuovaas regards her marriage (which must have brought deep sorrow even to his ideal love) is so startling, that we might almost be led to conceive in this passage the only intimation of it which he thought fit to give.
20.Guido Guinicelli, in the canzone which begins, “Within the gentle heart Love shelters him.”
21.There is a play in the original upon the wordsPrimavera(Spring) andprima verrà(she shall come first), to which I have given as near an equivalent as I could.
22.“I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord.’”
23.That is (as I understand it), suppressing, from delicacy towards his friend, the words in which Love describes Joan as merely the forerunner of Beatrice. And perhaps in the latter part of this sentence a reproach is gently conveyed to the fickle Guido Cavalcanti, who may already have transferred his homage (though Dante had not then learned it) from Joan to Mandetta.
24.On reading Dante’s treatiseDe Vulgari Eloquio, it will be found that the distinction which he intends here is not between one language, or dialect, and another; but between “vulgar speech” (that is, the language handed down from mother to son without any conscious use of grammar or syntax), and language as regulated by grammarians and the laws of literary composition, and which Dante calls simply “Grammar.” A great deal might be said on the bearings of the present passage, but it is no part of my plan to enter on such questions.
25.i.e., the languages of Provence and Tuscany.
26.It strikes me that this curious passage furnishes a reason, hitherto (I believe) overlooked, why Dante put such of his lyrical poems as relate to philosophy into the form of love-poems. He liked writing in Italian rhyme rather than Latin metre; he thought Italian rhyme ought to be confined to love-poems: therefore whatever he wrote (at this age) had to take the form of a love-poem. Thus any poem by Dante not concerning love is later than his twenty-seventh year (1291-2), when he wrote the prose of theVita Nuova; the poetry having been written earlier, at the time of the events referred to.
27.“How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow, she that was great among the nations!”—Lamentations of Jeremiah, i. I.
28.Beatrice Portinari will thus be found to have died during the first hour of the 9th of June, 1290. And from what Dante says at the commencement of this work, (viz., that she was younger than himself by eight or nine months,) it may also be gathered that her age, at the time of her death, was twenty-four years and three months. The “perfect number” mentioned in the present passage is the number ten.
29.Thus according to some texts. The majority, however, add the words, “And therefore was I in thought:” but the shorter speech is perhaps the more forcible and pathetic.
30.Boccaccio tells us that Dante was married to Gemma Donati about a year after the death of Beatrice. Can Gemma then be “the lady of the window,” his love for whom Dante so contemns? Such a passing conjecture (when considered together with the interpretation of this passage in Dante’s later work, theConvito) would of course imply an admission of what I believe to lie at the heart of all true Dantesque commentary; that is, the existence always of the actual events even where the allegorical superstructure has been raised by Dante himself.
31.The Veronica (Vera icon, or true image); that is, the napkin with which a woman was said to have wiped our Saviour’s face on His way to the cross, and which miraculously retained its likeness. Dante makes mention of it also in theCommedia(Parad. xxxi. 103" (Paradiso, Canto 31, line 103))., where he says:—
“Qual è colui che forse di CroaziaViene a veder la Veronica nostra,Che per l’antica fama non si saziaMa dice nel pensier fin che si mostra:Signor mio Gesù Cristo, Iddio verace,Or fu sì fatta la sembianza vostra?” etc.
“Qual è colui che forse di Croazia
Viene a veder la Veronica nostra,
Che per l’antica fama non si sazia
Ma dice nel pensier fin che si mostra:
Signor mio Gesù Cristo, Iddio verace,
Or fu sì fatta la sembianza vostra?” etc.
32.This we may believe to have been the Vision of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, which furnished the triple argument of theDivina Commedia. The Latin words ending theVita Nuovaare almost identical with those at the close of the letter in which Dante, on concluding theParadise, and accomplishing the hope here expressed, dedicates his great work to Can Grande della Scala.
33.“Who is blessed throughout all ages.”
THE SIDDAL EDITIONOFD. G. ROSSETTI’S WORKS.Volumes now Ready.THE HOUSE OF LIFE:A Sonnet Sequence.BALLADS:Rose Mary;The White Ship;The King’s Tragedy.THE NEW LIFE (La Vita Nuova)Of DANTE ALIGHIERI.Small 8vo, with Photogravure Frontispieces, cloth extra, gilt edges, price 2s. 6d. per vol., net.Other Volumes are in Preparation.ELLIS AND ELVEY29, NEW BOND STREET, LONDON, W.
THE SIDDAL EDITIONOFD. G. ROSSETTI’S WORKS.
Volumes now Ready.
THE HOUSE OF LIFE:A Sonnet Sequence.
BALLADS:Rose Mary;The White Ship;The King’s Tragedy.
THE NEW LIFE (La Vita Nuova)Of DANTE ALIGHIERI.
Small 8vo, with Photogravure Frontispieces, cloth extra, gilt edges, price 2s. 6d. per vol., net.
Other Volumes are in Preparation.
ELLIS AND ELVEY29, NEW BOND STREET, LONDON, W.
Transcriber's Note:Original spelling and punctuation have been preserved. Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
Transcriber's Note:
Original spelling and punctuation have been preserved. Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.