2 The “Rime”
The Rime—for which the more modern title, Canzoniere, has sometimes been substituted—comprise all Dante’s lyrical poems, together with others that are more doubtfully attributed to him. In the Vita Nuova were inserted three canzoni, two shorter poems in the canzone mould, one ballata, twenty-five sonnets (including two double sonnets). The “testo critico” of the Rime, edited by Michele Barbi for the sexcentenary Dante, in addition to these accepts as authentic sixteen canzoni (the sestina is merely a special form of canzone), five ballate, thirty-four sonnets, and two stanzas. Dante himself regards the canzone as the noblest form of poetry (V. E. ii. 3), and he expounded three of his canzoni in the Convivio. From the middle of the fourteenth century onwards, a large number of MSS. give these three and twelve others (fifteen in all) as a connected whole in a certain definite order, frequently with a special rubric in Latin or Italian prefixed to each; this order and these rubrics are due to Boccaccio.12 It has been more difficult to distinguish between the certainly genuine and the doubtful pieces among the ballate and sonnets, and the authenticity of some of those now included by Barbi in the canon is still more or less open to question. The Rime, on the whole, are the most unequal of Dante’s works; a few of the sonnets, particularly some of the earlier ones and those in answer to other poets, have but slight poetic merit, while several of the later canzoni rank among the world’s noblest lyrics. In the sexcentenary edition the arrangement of the lyrics is tentatively chronological, with subsidiary groupings according to subject-matter. While following the same general scheme, I slightly modify the arrangement, as certain poems regarded by Barbi as “rime d’amore” appear to me to be more probably allegorical.
(a) A first group belongs to the epoch of the Vita Nuova. Conspicuous among them are two canzoni. One:
La dispietata mente che pur mira,
“Pitiless memory that still gazes back at the time gone by,” is addressed directly to a woman (in this respect differing from Dante’s other canzoni), who is probably the second lady represented as the poet’s screen. The other:
E ’m’ incresce di me si duramente,
“I grieve for myself so bitterly,” seems to give fuller expression to the first part of the Vita Nuova with an alien note—the image of the little maiden has yielded to that of the woman whose great beauty is the object of unattainable desire. At times a lighter note is struck; Dante is apparently simply supplying words for composers to set to music, or revealing a spirit of playfulness of which there is no trace in the Vita Nuova.13 Besides sonnets in honour of Beatrice, we have a few relating to other women, and in two ballate even their names are given: Fioretta and Violetta. One delightful sonnet:
Sonar bracchetti e cacciatori aizzare,
“Beagles questing and huntsmen urging on,” reveals the poet taking part in sport and appreciating a jape at his own expense. A number of correspondence sonnets belong to this epoch, a small series addressed to Dante da Maiano (of which no MS. has been preserved) being probably earlier than the first sonnet of the Vita Nuova. A note of pure romance is struck in the charming sonnet to Guido Cavalcanti, in which the younger poet wishes that they two, with Lapo Gianni and their three ladies (Dante’s being the first lady who screened his love), might take a voyage over enchanted seas in Merlin’s magic barque. Several admirable sonnets, now included in this group, were formerly attributed to Cino da Pistoia.14
(b) The tenzone with Forese Donati forms a little group apart. Its date is uncertain, but may be plausibly taken as between 1290 and 1296. These sonnets, though not free from bitterness which is perhaps serious, may be regarded as exercises in that style of burlesque and satirical poetry to which even Guido Guinizelli had once paid tribute, and which Rustico di Filippo had made characteristically Florentine.
(c) Next comes a group of poems, connected with the allegory of the Convivio, in which an intellectual ideal is pursued with the passion and wooed in the language of the lover who adores an earthly mistress. “I say and affirm that the lady, of whom I was enamoured after my first love, was the most beautiful and most pure daughter of the Emperor of the Universe, to whom Pythagoras gave the name Philosophy” (Conv. ii. 16). By some, not entirely reconcilable, process the donna gentile, who appears at the end of the Vita Nuova, has become a symbol of Philosophy, and the poet’s love for her a most noble devotion. The canzone:
Voi che ’ntendendo il terzo ciel movete,
“Ye who by understanding move the third heaven” describing the conflict in Dante’s mind between this new love and the memory of Beatrice, deals again with the matter of one of the sonnets of the Vita Nuova; but the allegory is perhaps an after-thought. It is commented upon in the second treatise of the Convivio and quoted in Canto viii. of the Paradiso. The other poems of this group seem purely allegorical: “By love, in this allegory, is always intended that study which is the application of the enamoured mind to that thing of which it is enamoured” (Conv. ii. 16). At first this service is painful and laborious; and the mystical lady seems a cruel and proud mistress, as she is represented in the “pitiful ballata”:
Voi che savete ragionar d’Amore,
“Ye who know how to discourse of love,” which is referred to in the third treatise of the Convivio (iii. 9). But the defect is on the lover’s own part, and in her light the difficulties which sundered him and her are dispersed like morning clouds before the face of the sun. This mystical worship culminates in the supreme hymn to his spiritual mistress, whose body is Wisdom and whose soul is Love:
Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona,
“Love that in my mind discourses to me of my lady desirously,” which is the second canzone of the Convivio (quoted in V. E. ii. 6), the amorous song that Casella was to sing “met in the milder shades of Purgatory.” It is one of Dante’s lyrical masterpieces. Hardly less beautiful is the canzone, likewise cited in the De Vulgari Eloquentia (V. E. ii. 5, II):
Amor, che movi tua vertù dal cielo,
“Love that movest thy power from heaven”; with a mystical comparison of the workings of love to those of the sun and striking lines on the supernatural power of the illumined imagination. This allegorical group may be regarded as closed by the canzone:
Io sento si d’Amor la gran possanza,
“I feel so the great power of love,” in which Dante represents himself as too young to obtain his lady’s grace, but is content to serve on, finding the quest of philosophic truth its own reward. This poem has two commiati (the commiato, or tornata, being the stanza or part of a stanza, or a few independent lines, added as an address or farewell at the end of a canzone); both seem to imply that philosophic verse may be the instrument of political or social reform.15
(d) Dante originally held that Italian poetry should only be used for writing upon love, and therefore, in his younger days, a philosophical poem would naturally take the form of a love ode. In the Vita Nuova, he argues “against those who rhyme upon any matter other than amorous; seeing that such mode of speech was originally found for speaking of love” (V. N. xxv). His views naturally widened before he wrote his later canzoni (cf. V. E. ii. 2); but when, lacking inspiration for a higher lyrical flight or baffled by some metaphysical problem, he turns to set erring men right in didactic canzoni on some humbler ethical subject, he represents himself as so doing because out of favour with his lady or deserted by love. Thus, “The sweet rhymes of love, which I was wont to seek in my thoughts, needs must I leave”—
Le dolci rime d’amor, ch’i’ solia
—opens the canzone on the spiritual nature of true gentilezza (inspired in part by Guinizelli), which is expounded in the fourth treatise of the Convivio, and, although somewhat unequal, contains one ineffable stanza upon the noble soul in life’s four stages. A companion poem:
Poscia ch’Amor del tutto m’ ha lasciato,
“Since love has left me utterly,” deals with leggiadria, the outward expression of a chivalrous soul, and shows the influence of the Tesoretto of Brunetto Latini. These two canzoni, which contain transcripts from the Aristotelian Ethics, only here and there become poetry. In the larger proportion of short lines in the stanza, Dante seems feeling his way to a more popular metrical form and a freer treatment, as well as a wider range of subject. The second has satirical sketches of vicious or offensive types of men, with whom he will deal more severely in the Commedia.
(e) There are certain lyrics of Dante’s which can hardly admit of an allegorical interpretation, but are almost certainly the expression of passionate love for real women. Most notable among these are a group of four canzoni, known as the rime per la donna pietra, which are characterised by a peculiar incessant playing upon the word pietra, or “stone,” which has led to the hypothesis that they were inspired by a lady named Pietra, or at least by one who had been as cold and rigid as Beatrice had been the giver of blessing. The canzone of the aspro parlare:
Così nel mio parlar voglio esser aspro,
“So in my speech would I be harsh, as this fair stone is in her acts,” shows that Dante could be as terrible in his love as in his hate, and has a suggestion of sensuality which we hardly find elsewhere in his poetry. It is indirectly referred to in the Convivio, and quoted by Petrarch. The other three canzoni of this “stony” group show very strongly the influence of the Provençal Arnaut Daniel in their form, and all their imagery is drawn from nature in winter. The sestina:
Al poco giorno e al gran cerchio d’ombra,
“To the short day and the large circle of shade have I come,” is the first Italian example of that peculiar variety of the canzone which was invented by Arnaut (V. E., ii. 10, 13). It gives a most wonderful picture of this strange green-robed girl, her golden hair crowned with grass like Botticelli’s Libyan Sibyl, in the meadow “girdled about with very lofty hills.” Less beautiful and more artificial, the canzone:
Amor, tu vedi ben che questa donna,
“Love, thou seest well that this lady cares not for thy power,” is likewise quoted with complacency, for its novelty and metrical peculiarity, in the De Vulgari Eloquentia (ii. 13). And the passion of the whole group is summed up in the poem on Love and Winter:
Io son venuto al punto de la rota,
“I am come to the point of the wheel,” where, stanza by stanza, the external phenomena of the world in winter are contrasted with the state of the poet’s soul, ever burning in the “sweet martyrdom” of love’s fire. It is the ultimate perfection of a species of poem employed by Arnaut and other troubadours; another lyrical masterpiece, anticipating in its degree the treatment of nature which we find in the Commedia. These four poems were probably composed shortly before Dante’s banishment, but another canzone of somewhat similar tone was certainly written in exile—the famous and much discussed “mountain song”:
Amor, da che convien pur ch’io mi doglia,
“Love, since I needs must make complaint,” apparently describing an overwhelming passion for the fair lady of the Casentino; its pathetic close, with its reference to Florence, has been already quoted. The striking sonnet to Cino da Pistoia about the same time:
Io sono stato con Amore insieme.
“I have been in company with love since the circling of my ninth sun,” affords further testimony that, at certain epochs of his life, earthly love took captive Dante’s freewill.
(f) To the earlier years of Dante’s exile belongs the noblest and most sublime of his lyrics, the canzone:
Tre donne intorno al cor mi son venute,
“Three ladies are come around my heart and are seated without, for within sits Love who is in lordship of my life.” They are Justice and her spiritual children; Love prophesies the ultimate triumph of righteousness, and the poet, with such high companionship in outward misfortune, declares that he counts his exile as an honour. While recalling the legend of the apparition of Lady Poverty and her two companions to St. Francis of Assisi, and a poem of Giraut de Borneil on the decay of chivalry, the canzone echoes Isaiah (ch. li.). Its key may be found in the prophet’s words: “Hearken unto me, ye that know Justice, the people in whose heart is my law; fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings.” It was probably written between 1303 and 1306; its opening lines have been found transcribed in a document of 1310.16 To about the same epoch must be assigned the powerful canzone against vice in general and avarice in particular:
Doglia mi reca ne lo core ardire,
“Grief brings daring into my heart,” which is cited in the De Vulgari Eloquentia (associated with another poem of Giraut de Borneil) as a typical poem on rectitudo, “righteousness,” “the direction of the will” (V. E. ii. 2). These two canzoni are the connecting link between the Rime and the Commedia; the first contains the germ of Dante’s prophecy of the Veltro, his Messianic hope of the Deliverer to come, who shall make Love’s darts shine with new lustre and renovate the world; in the second, we already catch the first notes of the saeva indignatio of the sacred poem. With the exception of the “montanina canzone” and some sonnets to Cino da Pistoia, Dante wrote few other lyrics at this period17; indeed, one of the sonnets seems to imply that he had finally turned away from such poetry (da queste nostre rime) in contemplation of his greater task:
Io mi credea del tutto esser partito,
“I deemed myself to have utterly departed from these our rhymes, Messer Cino, for henceforth another path befits my ship and further from the shore.”