Dante's Lyric Poetry: Poems of Youth and of the 'Vita Nuova'

by Dante Alighieri

  The recent proposal according to which the collection of canzoni distese existed before Boccaccio (see notes 16 and 21 above) has renewed the old speculative link between the fifteen canzoni distese and the fourteen canzoni of the unwritten but projected Convivio. This guessing game has been going on for centuries, and continues because of a profound and understandable urge to recover lost Dantean textuality. However, the new theory that the fifteen canzoni existed before Boccaccio does not mean that the list is necessarily Dante’s. Moreover, and most important, we cannot deduce how Dante might have organized his rime outside the Convivio from how he organized the canzoni he placed within it. In other words, even if we knew (as we emphatically do not) that the fifteen canzoni transcribed by Boccaccio (minus the first, Così nel mio parlar) were destined by Dante to be the fourteen canzoni of the Convivio, and in the same order, we still do not arrive at insight into the organizational principle of a possible lost Dantean canzoniere. The organization of the rime within the Convivio, all canzoni, does not necessarily mirror the order in which Dante would have arranged his rime, not all canzoni, outside of the Convivio. The Convivio follows its own criterion of order, determined by the philosophical topics treated by the prose.

  Finally, we need to consider one further “implicit poetry collection” that Dante makes with his own lyrics. Dante cites himself in the Commedia, where he transcribes the incipits of three canzoni, all hendecasyllables: Amor che nella mente mi ragiona (Purg. 2.112), Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore (Purg. 24.51), and Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete (Par. 8.37). The three canzoni cited in the Commedia are all poems that possess complex histories and deep archeological resonance in terms of Dante’s poetic autobiography: Amor che nella mente mi ragiona, cited in Purgatorio 2, is the second of the three canzoni in the Convivio (and the third in Boccaccio’s anthology of canzoni distese); Donne ch’avete intelletto d’amore, cited in Purgatorio 24, is the first canzone in the Vita Nuova; and Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete, cited in Paradiso 8, is the first canzone of the Convivio (and the second in Boccaccio’s anthology).30

  This complex stratification suggests a new and different organizing criterion: no longer the autobiographical and chronological criterion of the Vita Nuova, and no longer the thematic criterion of the Convivio. The ordering of the autocitations in the Commedia is in fact clearly non-chronological: if the order were chronological, Donne ch’avete would have to lead off the small canon of autocitations, and Voi che ’ntendendo would have to come before Amor che nella mente. Given the importance of Donne ch’avete in the Vita Nuova, where the canzone’s composition is discussed and its chronological and strategic place in Dante’s oeuvre clearly established, the non-chronology of the incipits of the Commedia seems quite glaring and intentional. The non-chronological ordering of the canzoni cited in the Commedia shows Dante’s intention to use his lyrics as stages in the construction of an ideal autobiography, an autobiography dedicated to a poetic “I” detached from historical chronology.31

  In conclusion, we observe that Dante, as an author who acts as publisher and editor of his own lyrics by means of periodically choosing and assigning a certain lyric to a “new life” in a macrotext (whether the macrotext be Vita Nuova, Convivio, or Commedia), does not follow a single organizing criterion. Of course, none of these implicit hybrid “poetry collections” is a pure collection of lyrics; each has precise aims determined by its respective macrotext. The rime collected in the Vita Nuova are adapted to the chronological and autobiographical story of the libello; the canzoni of the Convivio are adapted to the treatise’s project of popularizing philosophy; and the autocitations in the Commedia are adapted to the ideal poetic autobiography inscribed by Dante into the poema sacro.

  That said, it is also important to remember that the Vita Nuova provides the model for the canzoniere of the future, the model that Petrarch will follow and that will have immense influence down to our own day: a collection of lyrics, of mixed genres, that follows a tenuous but unmistakeable chronological itinerary.

  Editorial Criteria of the Present Commentary and the Poems of the Vita Nuova

  I will now review the criteria that inform this volume, starting with my approach to the inclusion and ordering of the poems, and moving on to the editions that I have followed.

  I have remained faithful to the attempt to establish an overarching chronological order of Dante’s rime, albeit one executed in broad strokes that lead to the Commedia rather than one that claims capillary knowledge of historical information that we do not possess. I stipulate that mine is an unassuming chronology, consciously hypothetical, undertaken in the awareness that our historical knowledge is full of lacunae, but in the faith that an attempt at a reconstructed poetic itinerary, even if imperfect, is preferable to an a priori renunciation. The readings in this volume represent an attempt to reconstruct the ideological history inherent in the composition of the rime. Such a history is the necessary basis for the reader who wants to understand these poems not only as individual experiences but as stages in the journey of Dante’s poetic and ideological development.

  Although it is not identical to that of any of my predecessors, my order has most in common with Foster-Boyde’s, not a surprising result considering my sympathy for their innovative handling of the Vita Nuova poems: as noted previously, they are the first to print the Vita Nuova poems not as a compact group (as the Giuntina and Barbi do), but dispersed among the other texts. One might surpass Foster-Boyde’s model in choosing not to retain the exact sequencing of poems that we find in the Vita Nuova. I considered this possibility as well, but did not pursue it because the Vita Nuova itself adopts a chronological framework for its disposition of the lyrics, and this framework – Dante’s own – is not one upon which we can substantially improve.

  As I noted above, in my discussion of De Robertis’ decision to include some but not all of the Vita Nuova poems in his edition of the rime, the present commentary includes all lyrics attributable with certainty to Dante. It thus embraces all thirty-one Vita Nuova poems.

  In my 2004 essay “Editing Dante’s Rime and Italian Cultural History,” I wrote about the cultural forces that may be factors in Italian editors’ resistance to including the Vita Nuova poems in their editions of Dante’s rime: cultural factors that I speculate are related to the enormous cultural capital assigned to the “organic” and “unified” whole that once united by an auctor should never again be fragmented and disunified. Emblematic of these cultural forces is the “philological” term used traditionally by Italian philologists for the poems left outside of the Vita Nuova and Convivio: they are the estravaganti, literally “the wandering outside ones.” This is a cultural context in which philology is clearly not neutral but freighted by cultural baggage that privileges the “organic” and “unified” macrotext at the expense of the lyrics that, simply because never collected, are experienced as “outsiders” condemned to eternal wandering. These lyrics are subsequently labelled by critics as in some way inferior because excluded.

  In this context, one in which removing poems from the Vita Nuova is viewed as subjecting that which is organic and unified to a “hermeneutics of fragmentation,”32 a hermeneutics that should only be applied to poems that are already “outside” and hence always already fragmented, I felt it was important to resist the resistance to including the Vita Nuova poems in an edition of the rime. It seemed thus imperative to disunify the organic macrotext of the Vita Nuova and to print, in material form, alongside their uncollected and contemporary companions, the poems of the Vita Nuova: not as a unified block that reflects Dante’s editorial choices, like the Giuntina and Barbi, but dispersed, à la Foster and Boyde. My Rizzoli volume, Rime giovanili e della “Vita Nuova,” is the first Italian edition of the rime to intersperse the Vita Nuova poems among the other lyrics.

  Italian editors of the rime have not only resisted interspersing the Vita Nuova poems among the other rime; as noted previously, many do not include them at all
. The following chart displays the treatment of the Vita Nuova poems in the editions discussed in this Introduction, a list to which I have added an Italian commentary to the rime that has come out since De Robertis’ in 2002 and mine in 2009, the 2011 commentary of Claudio Giunta:

  Status of Vita Nuova Poems in Editions Discussed in This Introduction

  Barbi

  Includes all 31 VN poems as a block in first book, “Rime della Vita Nuova” (this is the Giuntina model)

  Contini

  Omits VN poems altogether

  Foster-Boyde

  Intersperses all 31 VN poems throughout the rime; the first edition of Dante’s lyrics to do so

  De Robertis

  Includes, and intersperses, only those 13 VN poems that are attested in manuscript prior to the VN, plus (for no apparent reason) the first sonnet of the VN, A ciascun’alma. Hence there are 14 VN poems in De Robertis’ edition.

  Barolini

  Intersperses all 31 VN poems, following precedent of Foster-Boyde; the first Italian edition to do so

  Giunta

  Omits VN poems altogether – a return to the Contini model

  My task here was to read the Vita Nuova poems as though they were not in the Vita Nuova. I learned that this is no easy task. In order to show what each poem does on its own, independent of the Vita Nuova, I realized that I had first to acknowledge the meaning that accrues to the poem within the libello, and then show the reader how much of that meaning is the work of the prose. The encounter with these texts in their pre–Vita Nuova form thus requires two stages: a kind of backing out of the Vita Nuova followed by an analysis of the poem as an independent entity. In an interesting practical confirmation of the gravitational pull of the Vita Nuova prose on the lyrics, I found it necessary to acknowledge the effect of the prose before being able to set it aside. Emblematic of this critical work is that in the present commentary I refer to “Beatrice” only when Dante does so: he uses the name in the prose of the Vita Nuova, in the Convivio, in the Commedia, and in a handful of lyrics. If the name “Beatrice” is not in the text of the poem – and it usually is not – then I refer more generically to madonna (my lady).

  I follow De Robertis’ Rime for the text of all lyric poems that he includes in his edition. However, as we have seen, he does not include all the Vita Nuova poems in his edition of the Rime. Therefore, the texts of the thirty-one Vita Nuova poems are taken from two different editions. With respect to the fourteen Vita Nuova poems that De Robertis includes in his edition of the Rime (the thirteen poems that exist in an early redaction plus A ciascun’alma), I follow his Rime. The remaining Vita Nuova poems come from his 1980 edition of the Vita Nuova, for reasons I discuss below.

  Our ability to separate the Vita Nuova poems from the prose is immeasureably assisted by De Robertis’ laudable decision to print the pre–Vita Nuova version of a poem where possible. Just to see such a version of the poem printed on the page has a clarifying effect, helping us to resist Dante’s pervasive fiction that the poems in the Vita Nuova were written for the occasions described in the prose. If we know incontrovertibly that a poem existed in material form before the Vita Nuova, many of the interpretive problems that plagued earlier critics disappear. For instance, the issue of the chronology of the First and Second Beginnings of Era venuta nella mente mia is a non-issue once we have the earlier redaction of the sonnet in front of us.

  Therefore I follow De Robertis in printing the pre–Vita Nuova redaction of those thirteen lyrics where such a redaction exists (in his formula, these lyrics are in their “pre–Vita Nuova dress”), making this the first English edition of the rime to present these thirteen Vita Nuova poems in their original form. In cases where I have printed the early redaction, the reader will find also De Robertis’ listing of the most significant variants with respect to the Vita Nuova redaction. The variants are most often relatively slight. In the case of Era venuta nella mente mia, where there is a particularly notable divergence between the two redactions, both the original redaction and the Vita Nuova redaction are printed.

  The thirteen lyrics of the Vita Nuova that exist in a redaction prior to the Vita Nuova, in the order in which they appear in De Robertis’ Rime, are:

  O voi che per la via d’Amor passate

  DR 33, VN VII (2)

  Con l’altre donne mia vista gabbate

  DR 52, VN XIV (7)

  Ciò che m’incontra, nella mente more

  DR 57, VN XV (8)

  Vede perfettamente ogne salute

  DR 62, VN XXVI (17)

  Negli occhi porta la mia donna Amore

  DR 63, VN XXI (12)

  Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare

  DR 64, VN XXVI (17)

  Venite a ’ntender li sospiri miei

  DR 67, VN XXXII (21)

  Era venuta nella mente mia

  DR 68, VN XXXIV (23)

  Deh pellegrini che pensosi andate

  DR 69, VN XL (29)

  Oltra la spera che più larga gira

  DR 70, VN XLI (30)

  Videro gli occhi miei quanta pietate

  DR 71, VN XXXV (24)

  Color d’amore e di pietà sembianti

  DR 72, VN XXXVI (25)

  Lasso, per forza di molti sospiri

  DR 73, VN XXXIX (28)

  I preferred to place these thirteen lyrics not in the above order used by De Robertis but in the order in which they appear in the Vita Nuova. In the index I indicate, for the reader’s convenience, which of the lyrics were included by Dante in the Vita Nuova, and which of them are presented not in the Vita Nuova’s version but in the pre–Vita Nuova redaction.

  For the eighteen lyrics of the Vita Nuova that do not exist in a redaction prior to that of the Vita Nuova, and for which we have only the redaction of the Vita Nuova, I follow (ironically enough, given his decision to exclude them from his Rime) De Robertis’ edition of the Vita Nuova.33 I do this because this edition of the Vita Nuova is, in my view, superior to the subsequent, more belletristic, edition of Guglielmo Gorni. De Robertis also best does the work of comparing poetry and prose with an openness towards ideological discrepancies. Quotations from the Vita Nuova give the chapter number first in roman numerals, according to Barbi’s numbering system, adopted also by De Robertis, and then in arabic numerals according to the numbering system in Gorni’s edition of the libello.34 For example, in the list given above, the sonnet Lasso, per forza di molti sospiri is accompanied by the following information: DR 73, VN XXXIX (28). The sonnet, which is number 73 in De Robertis’ Rime, belongs to chapter XXXIX of the Vita Nuova in De Robertis’ edition and to chapter 28 in Gorni’s.

  There are a very few instances in which I have indicated that I do not follow De Robertis’ text of the poem. Thus, I explain in the introductory essay to Guido, i’vorrei why I do not adopt De Robertis’ “Lippo” (see especially note 46). In the case of divergences between De Robertis’ edition with commentary of 2005 and his critical edition of 2002, I follow the edition with commentary, insofar as it comes later.

  In some cases two redactions are reproduced here: No me poriano zamai far emenda is reproduced both in the original Emilian version edited by De Robertis and in the Tuscan version edited by Contini (Non mi poriano già mai fare ammenda); Per quella via che la Bellezza corre is printed in the two versions that appear in De Robertis’ critical edition (but that do not, inexplicably, both appear in his edition with commentary).

  Finally, with regard to the lyrics of uncertain attribution, the eight “rime dubbie” that De Robertis has “restored” to the canon are not included here, except for Amore e monna Lagia e Guido ed io. On the issue of the dubbie in general, and the decision to include this sonnet in particular, see the introductory essay to Amore e monna Lagia.

  I decided to avoid the use of numbers in referring to the rime, instead always using the incipit, or first verse, as per the medieval custom. This decision was dictated by both practical considerations and methodological scruple. From the practical poi
nt of view, the use of the incipit minimizes problems arising from the variations in the order (and hence in the numbering) among the various editions. It is, moreover, not customary to refer to Dante’s rime by a number, as it is customary, for example, in dealing with Petrarch’s poems in the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta. In referring to the latter work, to use the number “126” to indicate the canzone Chiare, fresche et dolci acque is not only force of habit but also correct: Petrarch himself placed the canzone Chiare, fresche et dolci acque at position 126 of his sequence and the numbering is therefore the author’s own. It is precisely here that my methodological scruple comes into play: in the case of Dante’s lyrics, where neither the ordering nor therefore the numbering that communicates the order are the author’s, the automatic reification of the editor’s order that is conferred by the use of numbers should be avoided.

  My use of only incipits thus reflects a desire for methodological coherence and of fidelity to the principles on which this work has been based.

  The Final Poem

  In conclusion, I must note that the present volume is the first stage of Dante’s lyric itinerary, and therefore – if the fates are willing – the first stage in my own. The texts included here were written before 1293, and those with which the next volume will begin also belong to the Duecento. I will pick up the discussion again with Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete, the poem that became the first canzone of the Convivio, where it is dated by Dante to August 1293. The connection of Voi che ’ntendendo to the material in this volume is very strong, in that its “plot” is sketched in the sonnet Gentil penser, placed by Dante in chapter XXXVIII (27) of the Vita Nuova.