Dante at Verona

title  See WMR's note (1911)

first epigraph   Paradiso XVII. 58-60. The whole of Canto XVII is deeply relevant to DGR's poem (see Commentary [Literary]). Dante's canto centers in Cacciaguida's prophecy to his great-great grandson Dante about the future course of his life (after 1300, which is the fictive date of the Commedia 's events). The passage from 55-69 is especially pertinent to DGR's text: “You shall leave everything beloved most dearly; and this is the arrow which the bow of exile shoots first. You shall come to know how salt is the taste of another's bread, and how hard the path to descend and mount by another man's stairs (duro calle/lo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale). And that which shall most weigh your shoulders down will be the evil and senseless company with which you shall fall into this vale; which shall then become all ungrateful, all mad and malevolent against you, but, soon after, their brows, not yours, shall redden for it. Of their brutish folly their own conduct shall afford the proof, so that it will be for your fair fame to have made you a party by yourself” (Singleton translation).

second epigraph   Purgatorio XXX. 73. The words are Beatrice's greeting to Dante when he first meets her in the Earthly Paradise.

4  Beatrice died in June 1290.

5-6  The final decrees for Dante's exile from Florence were issued in March 1302. The figure of the arrow is drawn from Paradiso XVII. 56-57 (see gloss to first epigraph).

15  Dante's years of exile lasted till his death in 1321.

22  The line glances back at DGR's first epigraph; see also Shakespeare's Richard II III.i.19.

24ff.  See WMR's note ( Works [1911], 647 ).

24-25  The first line perhaps recalls Paradiso XVII. 23-24; the second echoes Paradiso XXV. 1-2.

25-28  Dante was in the midst of the composition of the Paradiso during his second sojourn at Verona.

29-30   I.e., the door that would allow Dante to return to his native city.

31-36  DGR is recalling Boccaccio's representation of Dante's desire to be crowned with the laurel at the font of San Giovanni in Florence, where he had been baptized: see Boccaccio'sTrattatello in laude di Dante chapter 7 (and also chapter 11).

41-42  The incident is related by Boccaccio , chapter 12.

55-56  Refers to Dante's exilic wanderings from 1302 till his death in 1321.

57  The text recalls the opening sonnet of the Vita Nuova , “A ciascun' alma presa” .

64  The poem focuses on Dante's second stay at Verona, the dates of which are uncertain, although the years 1314-1318 comprise the period in whole or in part, according to scholars.

74-105  Dante's spiritual intensity, not to say severity, was well known and is widely recorded in the biographical (and legendary) record. DGR's narrative recapitulates the general tenor of that record, which passed down not only through the various early lives, but through numerous anecdotes preserved (or invented) elsewhere. Contemporary novelle carried many anecdotes and tales: see for example Giovanni Sercambi's Esemplo lxxi (“De justa responsione”), or Franco Sacchetti's Trecentonovelle (nos. 8, 114, 115).

101-102   DGR glances at the volatile political state of Italy; the factional strife was continual among various groups within the different cities, between the cities themselves, between the papacy and the cities, and finally between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire.

115-116  This is one of the chief themes of Boccaccio's Life of Dante : the worldly corruption that surrounded Dante virtually everywhere.

121-156  This important passage is an imaginary conjuring of an uncorrupted Florence as an ideal figure of truth. This ideal figure is not the Florence that exiled Dante, but the Florence that gave birth to the poet.

122  Alluding to the arms of the city of Florence; see line 142. These are the arms of peace, and they contrast strongly with the arms of Verona, which depict the eagle of war surmounting a stair.

123  Giotto di Bondone (1266/67-1336/37).

128  The line modifies Dante's ideal Florence, not Can Grande, though DGR certainly means to make the syntax difficult (but finally necessary) to decipher.

139-144  Once again, a figure meant to contrast with the relative vulgarity of Can Grande's Verona (as DGR will represent it in the poem); the text imagines an elegant, courtly Florentine world dominated by love and tournament games. Line 142 once again glances at the heraldic insignia of Florence (see line 122).

173-175  This is the first canzone in Dante's Vita Nuova , translated by DGR as “Ladies that have intelligence in love”.

195ff.  The text refers to Dante's house in Florence where he wrote the Vita Nuova . This text's imagining recalls Dante's own fantasy of his room that comes upon him when he is suffering extreme grief after the death of Beatrice (see The Early Italian Poets, 267-268 ).

213-214  Can Grande's forces were part of those that fought to recover Vicenza from Padua in 1314.

215-217  Can Grande's military designs were so important to him that the word Peace was forbidden by law to be spoken in Verona. The contrast with Dante's celebration of the word throughout his work is strong.

235-240  Besides the eulogy of Can Grande in Paradiso XVII. 70-90, the famous “Epistle XII”, addressed to Can Grande, celebrates the man. The authenticity of the latter remains in dispute, however. Lines 91-99 of Canto XVII treat of subjects relating to Can Grande that Cacciaguida took up with Dante but that Dante “nol dirai” (shall not tell). These untold tales are precisely the matters that DGR's Dante at Verona determines to focus upon, or re-imagine (partly on the authority of Dante's early commentators and biographers, and novellieri like Sacchetti, whom DGR much admired).

239-240  DGR's note refers to the famous Ghibbeline general (1250-1320).

265-94  DGR has this anecdote from Petrarch's Rerum Memorandum Libri II.83 (see the ed. by Giuseppe Billanovich [Firenze,1943], pages 98-99).

295-306  This anecdote DGR had from his father's Comento Analitico al Purgatorio; see the edition by Pompeo Giannantonio [Firenzi, 1967], pages 110-11). The story comes in the gloss on Canto III line 109. See below for the related passage that puns on Can Grande's name: 508-510.

307  grout: lees.

320  I.e., from day to day (literally, from noon to noon).

331ff.  DGR's text recapitulates the Florentine amnesty offered to Dante and exiles like him, in 1316. The terms of the amnesty were so insulting that Dante, despite his longing to return home, refused it. Among the conditions of amnesty (see lines 341-348) were the payment of a fine and the performance of public penance in the Baptistry (“candleshrift”). The events are schematized by Boccaccio (chap. 12). DGR is certainly recalling and using Epistola X , the letter to Dante's unnamed Florentine friend.

379-380  All three were ancient Florentine families with Guelf affiliations. The Rinucci and the Manelli in fact both come from the same family, said to trace its parentage back to the Manlii of Rome. (See the Archivo Biographico Italiano .)

403  “Twelve” should be“Thirteen”.

413-14  These terms were stipulated in the final decree of banishment in March, 1302.

416  The Paradiso was being completed during Dante's second sojourn in Verona.

420  DGR's note quotes the concluding lines of the three parts of the Commedia .

424-425  “Her” refers to the Virgin Mary, not Beatrice (see Paradiso XXXIII. 40). But the text immediately after this alludes to the conclusion of the Vita Nuova , where Dante anticipates the moment when he shall behold in vision the eyes of Beatrice gazing upon him. The Paradiso passage of course recalls (and raises up the imagination of) the Vita Nuova passage. And both of the Dantean visions forecast their Rossettian reimagination of both, most famously articulated in DGR's The Blessed Damozel .

427ff.  The text recapitulates the conclusion to Dante's Vita Nuova ; see the final paragraph.

442-444  The Commedia defines the moment when the Italian language achieved the status of the classical languages.

450  The Latin text in DGR's note is from the Vulgate, Jeremiah 1:1.

451ff  The passage recollects (and also reimagines) the Beatrice of the Vita Nuova rather than the Beatrice of the Commedia.

470-474  From Boccaccio , chapter 7.

485-486  Dante went from Verona to Ravenna around 1317 or 1318; he died in Ravenna.

487-488  Matthew 10:14; Acts 13:51.

508  With its final play on the Italian meaning of “Can(e)” (dog), the poem associates Can Grande with Briareus (see also lines 295-306). It also suggests (as had the epigraph, recalled in this last stanza) that Dante's time at Verona was a more arduous task than his journey recorded in the Commedia .

510.5-6  These lines distinctly recall The Blessed Damozel , and in particular the final lines; but both the damozel and her lover experience this sense of loss and separation, and the parenthesis here is the lover's sign in the other poem.