Next after the Ugolino episode, from the thirty-third canto of the Inferno, of which there are altogether more than seventy English versions, the two most popular passages of the Commedia with English translators have been the episode of Francesca da Rimini, from the fifth canto of the Inferno, and the first two terzine of the eighth canto of the Purgatorio. Of the Francesca da Rimini episode there are twenty-three separate versions independent of translations of the Inferno, of which only one belongs to the eighteenth century, as against seven of the Ugolino. The most famous version is that by Lord Byron, in “third rhyme,” to use his own term, which was composed in 1820, but not published until ten years later. Of the first six lines of the eighth canto of the Purgatorio, the last line of which is famous in English literature as having inspired the first line of Gray’s Elegy, there are sixteen independent translations. Among these are versions by Peacock in Headlong Hall (1816); by Byron in the third canto of Don Juan (1821); and by Samuel Rogers in his Italy (1830).
This record31 constitutes a remarkable tribute on the part of the English-speaking32 races to the transcendent genius of Dante. Not as yet, it seems, need Dante fear
“Di perder viver tra coloro
Che questo tempo chiameranno antico,” 33
as he expressed it to the spirit of his ancestor Cacciaguida six hundred years ago.
Commentaries on the Commedia began to make their appearance in Italy at a very early date. Four at least, on the Inferno, were written within three or four years of Dante’s death; viz. one, in Latin, by Graziolo de’ Bam-baglioli (d. before 1343), Chancellor of Bologna, composed in 1324 (published in 1892 by Antonio Fiammazzo),34 of which an Italian translation (published in 1848 by Lord Vernon)34 was made in the fourteenth century35; one, in Italian, by Dante’s son, Jacopo (d. before 1349), written before 1325 (published by Lord Vernon in 1848),36 which is considered by some to be earlier than that of Graziolo37; one, in Latin, by Guido da Pisa, written probably about 1324 (as yet unpublished)38, of which a fourteenth century Italian translation exists (also unpublished)39; and one, in Italian, by an anonymous author, probably a native of Siena, written between 1321 and 1337 (published in 1865 by Francesco Selmi).40 The first commentary on the whole of the Commedia was written in Italian between 1323 and 1328 by Jacopo della Lana (d. after 1358), of Bologna; this was first printed in the edition of the Commedia published at Venice by Vendelin da Spira in 1477, in which, however, it was erroneously attributed to Benvenuto da Imola; it was printed a second time in the following year in the edition of the Commedia published by Nidobeato at Milan; and was reprinted at Milan in 1865, and at Bologna in 1866-7, by Luciano Scarabelli.41 Lana’s commentary, of which more than sixty MSS. are known, was twice translated into Latin in the fourteenth century, the author of one of these versions being Alberico da Rosciate (d. 1354), a celebrated lawyer of Bergamo.42 Eight more commentaries belong to the fourteenth century ; viz. that known as the Ottimo Comento, written in Italian by Andrea Lancia (c. 1290–c. 1360), a Florentine notary, about 1334 43 (published in 1827-9 by Alessandro Torri)44; the Latin commentary of Dante’s son, Pietro (d. 1364), written in 1340-1, which exists in two different forms,45 only one of which has been published (by Lord Vernon in 1845)44; that written in Latin by an unknown monk of Monte Cassino not earlier than 1350 (published in 1865)44; the unfinished commentary in Italian on the Inferno, comprising the first sixteen cantos and part of the seventeenth, written by Boccaccio (1313-1375) for the purpose of his public lectures on Dante in Florence between 1373 and 1375 46 (first published in 1724 by Lorenzo Ciccarelli)44; the Latin commentary (of which a fourteenth century Italian version exists in MS.) 47 composed between 1373 and 1380 by Benvenuto da Imola (c. 1338-1390), part of which he delivered as public lecturer on Dante at Bologna in 1375 48 (published in 1887 by William Warren Vernon, under the editorship of G. F. Lacaita)44; the Italian commentary, formerly attributed to Boccaccio, composed in 1375 (published in 1846 by Lord Vernon)44; that in Italian by Francesco da Buti (1324-1406), of which the first draft appears to have been completed in 1385, and which was finally completed in 1395,49 composed for delivery as public lectures at Pisa (published in 1858-62 by Crescentino Giannini)50; and the commentary in Italian, written at the end of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth century51 by an unknown Florentine (commonly referred to as “Anonimo Fiorentino”) (published in 1866-74 by Pietro Fanfani).50
To the beginning of the fifteenth century belongs the Latin commentary written by Giovanni dei Bertoldi (c. 1350-1445), commonly known as Giovanni da Serravalle, Bishop of Fermo, which was composed between February 1416 and January 1417. This commentary52 (published at Prato in 1891)53 has a special interest for Englishmen as having been written (during the Council of Constance, 1414-1418) at the instigation of two English Bishops, Nicholas Bubwith, of Bath and Wells, and Robert Hallam, of Salisbury, by one who had himself been in England,54 and who made, for the first time, the explicit statement that Dante visited this country and studied at Oxford—55 a statement (unhappily not otherwise authenticated) prompted probably by a desire to please his English colleagues, one of whom, Hallam, had been Chancellor of the University of Oxford.56 Three other commentaries belong to this century, one, on the Inferno only, by Guiniforto delli Bargigi (1406-c. 1460), of Pavia, written about 1440 (published in 1838 by G. Zacheroni)57; another, in Latin, by Stefano Talice da Ricaldone (d. c. 1520), written in 1474, and supposed at one time to have been delivered as lectures at Saluzzo,58 but now regarded as a more or less faithful transcription of Benvenuto da Imola’s lectures at Bologna59 (privately printed, by order of the King of Italy, at Turin in 1886; published in 1888 at Milan under the editorship of V. Promis and C. Negroni)53; and the third, in Italian, written in 1480 by Cristoforo Landino (1434-1504), of Florence, which first saw the light in the celebrated first Florentine edition of the Commedia (published in 1481),60 and has many times been reprinted.61
In the sixteenth century the only commentaries of importance were those (in Italian), of Alessandro Vellutello (c. 1519–c. 1590), of Lucca, first published at Venice in 1544,62 and three times reprinted63; of Giovan Battista Gelli (1498-1563), of Florence, whose lectures on the Commedia before the Florentine Academy (delivered at various times between 1541 and 1563) were successively printed at Florence in a series of issues between 1547 and I561,64 and have recently (1887) been collected and published by C. Negroni65; and of Bernardino Daniello (d. c. 1560), of Lucca, whose commentary was printed at Venice in 1568,62 and has not been reprinted.
In the seventeenth century, during which only three editions of the Commedia were printed in Italy,66 as against some forty in the previous century, the interest in Dante was at its lowest ebb. It is not surprising, consequently, that during this period no commentaries on the poem were produced. In the eighteenth century, however, when a marked reaction took place, two notable commentaries made their appearance which retained their popularity down to the middle of the next century. The earlier of these, by Pompeo Venturi (1693-1752), a Jesuit of Siena, was first published at Lucca in 1732, and was reprinted more than twenty times in the next hundred years (between 1739 and 1850).67 The other was the celebrated commentary of Lombardi, first published at Rome in 1791, with the title La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri novamente correta spiegata e difesa da F.B. L. M. C. (i.e. Francesco Baldassare Lombardi, Minor Conventuale), a voluminous work, which has been seven times reprinted in full,68 and four times in an abbreviated form.69 To the eighteenth century also belong the valuable indices to the Commedia, the first of their kind, compiled by Giovanni Antonio Volpi (1686-1766), of Padua, which were first published in the third volume of the edition of the poem issued at Padua in 1726-27,70 and have been many times reprinted.
In the nineteenth century commentaries on the Commedia began to abound. The best known of the earlier ones are, that of Niccolò Giosafatte Biagioli (1772-1830), first published in Paris in 1818-19, and reprinted more than a dozen times between 1819 and 1868 71; and the still more popular comment
ary of Paolo Costa, first published at Bologna in 1819-21, which has been reprinted more than thirty times.72 Others worthy of mention belonging to the first half of the century are the once famous “Comento analitico” of Gabriele Rossetti (1783-1854), projected in six volumes, but of which only the first two volumes (on the Inferno) were published (London, 1826-27) ;73 the commentary projected by Ugo Foscolo (1778-1827) in five volumes, of which only one, containing the Discorso sul testo, appeared in his lifetime (London, 1825), the remaining portion of the work so far as completed being published twenty years later (London, 1842-43) under the editorship of Mazzini; and that of Niccolò Tommaseo, first published at Venice in 1837, and several times reprinted.74 Of more recent Italian commentaries the following may be mentioned, all of which more or less hold their own at the present day; viz. those of Brunone Bianchi (Florence, 1854, 1857, 1863, etc.; tenth edition, 1890) (based on that of Costa, of which Bianchi had previously published several editions, with additions of his own); Pietro Fraticelli (Florence, 1852, 1860, 1864, etc.; reprinted eight or nine times before 1900) (based on Venturi, Lombardi, Costa, and Bianchi); G. A. Scartazzini (Leipzig, 1874-90; minor editions, Milan, 1893, 1896, 1903); and Tommaso Casini (Florence, 1887, 1889, 1892, etc.; fifth edition, 1903); to which may be added those of Antonio Lubin (Padua, 1881) ; Giuseppe Campi (Turin, 1888-93); Giacomo Poletto (Rome, 1894); and Francesco Torraca (Rome-Milan, 1905-7).
English commentaries, like English translations, came late into the field. The earliest made their appearance in the form of notes to the translations of Henry Boyd (1785, 1802), H. F. Cary (1805-6, 1814, 1819, 1831, 1844), Nathaniel Howard (1807), Joseph Hume (1812); I. C. Wright (1833-40, 1845, 1854), and John Dayman (1843, 1865).75 The first English commentary properly so called was that published anonymously in London in 1822 by John Taaffe, an Irishman domiciled in Italy, under the title of A Comment on the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, in the publication of which Byron and Shelley interested themselves, but of which only the first portion (on Inferno, i.-viii.) ever saw the light.76 Among recent commentaries in the form of notes to translations of the Commedia, the most important are those of C. B. Cayley (1855),77 J. W. Thomas (1859-66), H. W. Longfellow (1865-7),78 A. J. Butler (1880-92),79 E. H. Plumptre (1886-87), F. K. H. Haselfoot (1887),80 and C. E. Norton (1891-92)81; and of commentaries proper, W. W. Vernon’s “Readings” on the Inferno (1894), Purgatorio (1889), and Paradiso (1900)82; and H. F. Tozer’s “English Commentary on the Divina Commedia” (1901).83
Other works on the Commedia (or including the Commedia) which should be mentioned here are, the Vocabolario Dantesco of L. Blanc (Leipzig, 1852), translated into Italian by G. Carbone (Florence, 1859) 84; the Dizionario della Divina Commedia of Donato Bocci (Turin, 1873); the Dizionario Dantesco of Giacomo Poletto (Siena, 1885-7) ; the Concordance of the Divina Commedia of E. A. Fay (Boston, Mass. 1888) ; the Enciclopedia Dantesca of G. A. Scartazzini (Milan, 1896-8); the Dante Dictionary of Paget Toynbee (Oxford, 1898); and the Indice dei Nomi Propri e delle Cose Notabili of the same author, appended to the Oxford Dante (Oxford, 1894).85
DANTE ALIGHIERI
From the painting by Andrea del Castagno, in the Museo Nazionale at Florence
* * *
1i.e. Beatrice.
2 Vita di Dante, ed. Macrì-Leone, § 13, pp. 63-4.
3 Bk. ix. ch. 136.
4 The title Divina Commedia, as appears from this statement, was not Dante’s own. It probably had its origin in Dante’s own description of the poem as “lo sacrato poema ” (Par. xxiii. 62) and “il poema sacro ” (Par.xxv. 1). It occurs in some of the oldest manuscripts of the poem, and in Boccaccio’s Life of Dante (§ 14). The first printed edition bearing this title is the Venice one of 1555; in a previous edition, with the commentary of Landino (Florence, 1481), the epithet “divine” is applied to Dante himself, but not to the poem; which, however, had been styled “opus divinissimum” by the Florentine Coluccio Salutati eighty years before (see F. Novati, Epistolario di Coluccio Salutati, vol. iii. p. 371). In the earliest printed editions the title is simply “La Commedia di Dante Alighieri”.
5Trans. by Latham (with modifications).
6 Cf. Vita Nuova,§ 30, 11. 9-10; Convivio, ii. 15, 11. 30-6.
7 This date has been disputed by some authorities in favour of the year 1301, on the ground that Dante in Purg. i. 19-21 makes Venus a morning star at Easter, which she was in 1301, whereas actually at Easter in 1300 she was an evening star. This argument, however, has now been disposed of, for it has recently been discovered that in the almanack which there is every reason to believe Dante made use of, by a curious mistake, Venus is shown as a morning star at Easter in 1300 (see Boffito e Melzi d’ Eril, Almanack Dantis Aligherii, Florence, 1908, pp. xiv-xv; and E. Moore, Studies in Dante, iii. 172-5).
8 For details of the chronology of the poem, see E. Moore, Time-References in the Divina Commedia (though the conclusions there arrived at are not by any means universally accepted).
9 See below, p. 253.
10 These three steps are symbolical of the state of mind with which penance is to be approached, and denote respectively, according to the interpretation of Maria Rossetti, “candid confession, mirroring the whole man; mournful contrition, breaking the hard heart of the gazer on the Cross; love, all aflame, offering up in satisfaction the life-blood of body, soul, and spirit” (Shadow of Dante, p. 112)
11 For an excellent account of Dante’s Purgatory, see P. Perez, I setti cerchi del Purgatorio (Verona, 1867).
12 An epicycle is a small circle whose centre is on the circumference of a larger circle, along which it travels. In the solar system the path of the Moon about the Earth forms an epicycle in respect of the orbit of the Earth around the Sun.
13 Vita di Dante, ed. Macri-Leone, § 14, pp. 68-70 (trans. by Bun-bury).
14 This story is given both in the Vita di Dante and in the Comento; in the latter (Lezione 33) the name of Boccaccio’s informant is given, not as Pier Giardino, but as Ser Dino Perini of Florence, who is supposed to be the individual who figures in Dante’s Latin Eclogues under the name of Meliboeus (see below, p. 254).
15 Comento, ii. 129-32 (trans. by Bunbury); cf. Vita di Dante, ed. cit. § 14, PP 65-7.
16 “The furthest realms I sing, conterminous with the flowing universe, stretching afar for spirits, paying the rewards to each after his merits,” etc.
17 Vita di Dante, ed. cit. § 15, pp. 71-2 (trans, by Wicksteed). This information was obviously derived by Boccaccio from a passage in the suspect) letter of Frate Ilario (see above, p. 92 note).
18 See E. Moore, Contributions to the Textual Criticism of the Divina Commedia; and Colomb de Batines, Bibliografia Dantesca (Parte iv.).
19 At first sight it might appear as if the popularity of the poem had decreased since the invention of printing; but it must be borne in mind that a manuscript “edition” consisted of one copy only, whereas a printed edition may consist of hundreds or even thousands of copies.
20 See Paget Toynbee, Dante in English Literature, vol. i. pp. 129-30,
21 Tutte le opere di Dante Alighieri, nuovamente rivedute nel testo dal Dr. E. Moore; con Indice dei Nomi Propri e delle Cose Notabili compilatoda Paget Toynbee (Clarendon Press).
22 La Commedia di Dante Alighieri. Il testo Wittiano riveduto da Paget Toynbee (‘Per il sesto centenario del viaggio di Dante MCCC. . . MDCCCC ’ (Methuen and Co.).
23 La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri nuovamente riveduta nel testo dal Dr. E. Moore, con indice dei nomi propri compilato da Paget Toynbee (Clarendon Press).
24 See Paget Toynbee, The Earliest Editions of the Divina Commedia printed in England, in Athenceum, 2 Jan. 1904.
25.See Paget Toynbee, Dante in English Literature, vol, i. pp. 1 ff.
26 See above, p. 215.
27 See Paget Toynbee, English Translations of Dante in the Eighteenth Century, in Modern Language Review, vol. i, pp. 9-24.
28 Including bastard terza rima, six-line stanzas, nine-line stanzas, heroic couple
ts, and rhymed quatrains.
29 Including bastard terza rima, six-line stanzas, nine-line stanzas, heroic couplets, and Marvellian stanzas.
30 Including bastard terza rima, six-line stanzas, nine-line stanzas, and heroic couplets.
31 For details, see Paget Toynbee, Chronological List of English Translations from Dante, from Chaucer to the Present Day, in Annual Report of the Cambridge (U.S.A.) Dante Society for 1906; see also English Translations of Dante’s Works, in Bulletin Italien, tom. vi. pp. 285-8 (1906).
32 Translations (three of the Commedia, and one of the Inferno) by Americans are included in the record.
33 Paradiso, xvii. 119-20:—
“To be as one forgotten among those
Who shall regard as ancient these our days.”
34 See Appendix D, where the titles of the printed editions of the early commentaries referred to above are given in extenso.
35 See Luigi Rocca, Di alcuni Commenli della Divina Commedia composti nei primi vent’anni dopo la morte di Dante. Firenze, 1891, pp. 43-77. The identification of this work as a translation of the commentary of Graziolo de’ Bambaglioli is due to Dr. Moore (see his Studies in Dante, vol. iii. p. 345 n.2).
36 See Appendix D.
37 See Rocca, op. cit. pp. 63 ff. Another authority, F. P. Luiso, holds that the Chiose printed by Lord Vernon were not written in that shape by Jacopo di Dante, but are a distorted translation of a Latin original. He considers, on the other hand, that the Latin Chiose di Dante le quali fece el figliuolo co le sue mani, preserved in a MS, in the Laurentian library at Florence, of which he published a portion (on the Purgatorio) at Florence in 1904, represent the work of Jacopo, and were written probably in his father’s lifetime, and were possibly to some extent inspired by the poet himself. See, however, an article by M. Barbi in Bullettino della Società Dantesca Italiana, N.S. xi. pp. 195-229 (1904).
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