FOOTNOTES:
[28] “Della insufficienza del titolo è prova ed effetto il pronto e universale accoglimento, che, messo una volta sul frontespizio, trovò l’epiteto divina, che al generico Commedia diede determinatezza e colore” (P. Rajna, Il titolo del poema dantesco, in Studi danteschi diretti da M. Barbi, vol. iv.).
[29] For details of structure and scansion, the reader should consult P. E. Guarnerio, Manuale di versificazione italiana; G. Federzoni, Dei versi e dei metri italiani; F. D’Ovidio, Versificaizone italiana e arte poetica medioevale.
[30] Cf. G. Livi, op. cit., pp. 26, 27.
[31] Traces of an earlier design have been tentatively found in various places of the first seven cantos, and associated with Boccaccio’s story of Dante having begun the poem before his exile and resumed it after the recovery of his manuscript when the guest of Moroello Malaspina. In Boccaccio’s commentary upon the opening of Inf. viii., Andrea Poggi and Dino Perini are represented as rival claimants for the honor of having recovered the manuscript for Dante.
[32] Cf. Conv. ii. 5.
[33] Cf. Inf. xxxiii. 79-84 with Phars. viii. 827-830.
[34] See Moore’s Time-References.
[35] Cf. Sonnets lx. and lxi. of The House of Life.
[36] See in particular Parodi, “L’Albero dell’Impero,” in his Poesia e storia nella Divina Commedia.
[37] In Purg. xxx. 109-117, Dante thus distinguishes between the ovra de le rote magne and the larghezza di grazie divine in his own case. St. Gregory the Great, speaking of the correspondence of men with the angelic orders, uses the phrase: divinae largitatis munere refecti (Hom. in Evangelia, ii. 34).
[38] I venture to retain this reading, although the testo critico now gives: E’n la sua volontade.
[39] The Vulgate has virtutes caelorum, in Matt. xxiv. and Luke xxi., where the English Bible reads “the powers of the heavens.”
[40] St. John of Damascus.
[41] Note the scansion of the previous line (37): Io che al divino da l’umano. There is no syneresis in ïo, no elision of the e in che; thus emphasising Dante’s personal experience, his wonder that it should be vouchsafed to him, and producing the slow movement, the solemn intonation of the line.