[17] Barbi adds to the Rime written in exile the impressive political sonnet, yearning for justice and peace, Se vedi li docchi miei di pianger vaghi (of which the attribution to Dante has sometimes been questioned), and the sonnet on Lisetta, Per quella via che la bellezza corre, a beautiful piece of unquestionable authenticity, but which may, perhaps, belong to an earlier epoch in the poet’s life.
[18] But cf. Wicksteed, From Vita Nuova to Paradiso, pp. 93-121.
CHAPTER III
DANTE’S LATIN WORKS
1. The “De Vulgari Eloquentia”
In the first treatise of the Convivio (i. 5), Dante announces his intention of making a book upon Volgare Eloquenza, artistic utterance in the vernacular. Like the Convivio, the De Vulgari Eloquentia remains incomplete; only two books, instead of four, were written, and of these the second is not finished. In the first book the poet seeks the highest form of the vernacular, a perfect and imperial Italian language, to rule in unity and concord over all the dialects, as the Roman Empire over all the nations; in the second book he was proceeding to show how this illustrious vulgar tongue should be used for the art of poetry. Villani’s description of the work applies only to the first book: “Here, in strong and ornate Latin, and with fair reasons, he reproves all the dialects of Italy”; Boccaccio’s mainly to the second: “A little book in Latin prose, in which he intended to give instruction, to whoso would receive it, concerning composition in rhyme.”[19]
Book I.—At the outset Dante strikes a slightly different note from that of the Convivio, by boldly asserting that vernacular in general (as the natural speech of man) is nobler than “grammar,” literary languages like Latin or Greek, which he regards as artificially formed (V. E. i. 1). To discover the noblest form of the Italian vernacular, the poet starts from the very origin of language itself. To man alone of creatures has the intercourse of speech been given: speech, the rational and sensible sign needed for the intercommunication of ideas. Adam and his descendants spoke Hebrew until the confusion of Babel (cf. the totally different theory in Par. xxvi. 124), after which this sacred speech remained only with the children of Heber (i. 2-7). From this point onwards the work becomes amazingly modern. Of the threefold language brought to Europe after the dispersion, the southernmost idiom has varied into three forms of vernacular speech—the language of those who in affirmation say oc (Spanish and Provençal), the language of oil (French), the language of sì (Italian).[20] And this Italian vulgar tongue has itself varied into a number of dialects, of which Dante distinguishes fourteen groups, none of which represent the illustrious Italian language which he is seeking. “He attacks,” wrote Mazzini, “all the Italian dialects, but it is because he intends to found a language common to all Italy, to create a form worthy of representing the national idea.” The Roman is worst of all (i. 11). A certain ideal language was indeed employed by the poets at the Sicilian court of Frederick and Manfred, but it was not the Sicilian dialect (i. 12). The Tuscans speak a degraded vernacular, although Guido Cavalcanti, Lapo Gianni and another Florentine (Dante himself), and Cino da Pistoia have recognised the excellence of the ideal vulgar tongue (i. 13). Bologna alone has a “locution tempered to a laudable suavity”; but which, nevertheless, cannot be the ideal language, or Guido Guinizelli and other Bolognese poets would not have written their poems in a form of speech quite different from the special dialect of their city (i. 15). “The illustrious, cardinal, courtly, and curial vulgar tongue in Italy is that which belongs to every Italian city, and yet seems to belong to none, and by which all the local dialects of the Italians are measured, weighed, and compared” (i. 16). This is that ideal Italian which has been artistically developed by Cino and his friend (Dante himself) in their canzoni, and which makes its familiars so glorious that “in the sweetness of this glory we cast our exile behind our back” (V. E. i. 17). Such should be the language of the imperial Italian court of justice, and, although as far as Italy is concerned there is no prince, and that court is scattered in body, its members are united by the gracious light of reason (i. 18). This standard language belongs to the whole of Italy, and is called the Italian vernacular (latinum vulgare); “for this has been used by the illustrious writers who have written poetry in the vernacular throughout Italy, as Sicilians, Apulians, Tuscans, natives of Romagna, and men of both the Marches” (i. 19).
The examination of the dialects is perhaps the most original feature in the book; that Dante did not recognise that what was destined to be the literary language of Italy was, in reality, the Tuscan dialect, but adopted instead the theory of a conventional or artificial Italian, was largely due to his theories being based upon the lyrical poetry of his predecessors, in which he seemed to find this abstraction realised; for, though natives of different regions of Italy, they used—or, in the form in which their poems came to him, appeared to have used—a common literary language. Nevertheless in the Divina Commedia, which was to codify the national language, Dante recognised that he himself was speaking Tuscan (Inf. xxiii. 76, Purg. xvi. 137).
Book II.—The unfinished second book is of the utmost value to the student of Italian poetic form. It makes us realise, too, how zealously Dante sought out technical perfection, studying subtle musical and rhythmical effects, curiously weighing the divisions of his stanzas, balancing lines, selecting words, harmonising syllables. No less noteworthy are his modest references to his own work and his generous appreciation of that of others, his predecessors and contemporaries, with reference to whose poems, as well as to his own, he illustrates his maxims. There is a certain limitation in that Dante conceives of poetry as only lyrical and written to be set to music (ii. 4), recognising only the most elaborate and least spontaneous forms of lyrical poetry—the Canzone (of which the Sestina is a variety), the Ballata, the Sonnet (ii. 3). There is no hint of that splendid rhythm, at once epical and lyrical, in which the Divina Commedia was to be written; though it is possible that Dante would have dealt with it in the fourth book, in which he intended to treat the discernment to be exercised with a subject fit to be sung in the “comic” style, in which sometimes the “middle” and sometimes the “lowly” vernacular may be used (ii. 4), and also, dealing with poems in the “middle” vulgar tongue, to treat specially of rhyme (ii. 13). The third book would perhaps have been concerned with the use of the illustrious vernacular in Italian prose (ii. 1.)
The illustrious vulgar tongue having been found, Dante proceeds thus to show the noblest use to which it can be put by the poet. Only three subjects are sufficiently exalted to be sung in this stateliest form of Italian speech, this highest vernacular: Salus, Venus, Virtus; or those things which specially relate to them: the rightful use of arms, the fire of love, the direction of the will; and the first of these themes had not been handled, according to Dante, by any Italian poet. He cites Bertran de Born as having written on arms, Arnaut Daniel and Cino da Pistoia on love, Giraut de Borneil and “the friend of Cino” (himself) on rectitudo (ii. 2). Of the three legitimate lyrical forms the canzone is noblest, and contains what Rossetti called the “fundamental brainwork” of the most illustrious poets (ii. 3). And the ballata is nobler than the sonnet. It is in the canzone alone, in the “tragic” or highest style, that these sublime themes are to be sung; the style in which the stateliness of the lines, the loftiness of the construction, and the excellence of the words agree with the dignity of the subject. In this superexcellent sense, a canzone is a composition in the loftiest style of equal stanzas, without a refrain, referring to one subject.[21] And the rest of the book is occupied with rules for its proper construction; the different lines to be used, the choice of words, the structure of the various types of stanza, in which the whole art of the canzone is contained, the arrangement of rhymes; the work breaking off at the point where Dante was about to treat of the number of lines and syllables in the stanza. It is noteworthy that, though he illustrates his practical rules by examples from the Provençal troubadours, his Italian predecessors and contemporaries, and his own canzoni, the great Latin poets are set up as models: “The more closely we imitate these, the more correctly we write poetry” (ii. 4). There is some indication that the De Vulgari Eloquentia would have been dedicated to Cino da Pistoia as the Vita Nuova had been to Guido Cavalcanti.
Date of Composition.—The De Vulgari Eloquentia was probably written about the same time as the Convivio or slightly earlier. From a mention of the Marquis Giovanni of Monferrato apparently as living (V. E. i. 12), who died in January (?) 1305, it has been supposed that Book i. cannot be much later than the beginning of that year. Dante’s evident friendly feeling for Bologna (which altered before he wrote the Commedia) may be connected with the time when the Florentine exiles were welcomed in that city, before the decree of expulsion in 1306. It has sometimes been thought that Book ii. may be a much later piece of work, produced as a poetical textbook at Ravenna in Dante’s last years, and broken off, as Boccaccio suggests, by his death. Nevertheless, when the tone of the work and the probable dates of the lyrics quoted be taken into account, it seems more probable that what we have of the De Vulgari Eloquentia was written between 1304 and 1306; it represents part of the labours which were interrupted by the advent of Henry VII., or abandoned when the poet turned to the Divina Commedia.