10.3726/78000_91 Critical Philology and Dante’s Rime Teodolinda Barolini Columbia University, New York Abstract This essay examines the insufficient critical vigilance and transparency with which we monitor the porous boundaries between philology and interpretation, with special at- tention to the Due and Trecento. The claims of philologists are unfortunately not always truly philological, but rather are hermeneutic arguments masquerading as, and claiming the authority of, philological arguments: weak interpretation made illegitimately strong by being presented as philology. After looking at earlier examples of this non-critical practice (the acceptance as factual of E. H. Wilkins’ conjectural nine forms of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, the invention of a non-existent “original” ending of the Vita Nuova, the use of culturally-freighted nomenclature like “rime estravaganti”, the reification of a conjectural relation between Boccaccio’s canzoni distese and the unwritten books of the Convivio), I consider the recent “discovery” of a new Dantean text, the so-called “libro delle canzoni di Dante”, viewed as a moment when we can track the violation of the boundary between philology and hermeneutics in real time. Keywords Dante, rime, canzoni distese, Vita Nuova, Convivio, critical philology In the final pages of his memoir, Vittore Branca writes passionately of his dream of finding a Dantean autograph. He describes in detail the emotions that he feels at the thought of proximity to the handwriting of “the greatest poet of modern Europe”, feelings that include the intense desire to com- municate his discovery to the world: Una commozione grande mi invade e insieme un’ansia di comunicarla agli altri. Penso subito di telefonare al «Corriere», di preparare un primo annuncio. Non avevo del resto, un ventennio prima, cominciato la mia collaborazione al giornale con una sug- gestiva scoperta dantesca? Un lungo trillo di campanello: è il segnale di chiusura se- rale della Biblioteca. No, è la sveglia delle sette di mattina. I sogni all’alba, si sa, sono illusori (Branca, 1987, p. 199).1 1 As the editor of «Lettere Italiane», Vittore Branca published the study that is the direct forerunner of this one (Barolini, 2004). He did so despite his personal friendship with De Robertis. I would like to record here my profound gratitude for Branca’s commit- ment to open and vigorous intellectual debate, as well as my thanks to my dear friend Wayne Storey for our ongoing conversation about philological matters that has nour- ished me over many years. © Peter Lang AG Philology, vol. 1/2015, pp. 91–114 92 Teodolinda Barolini The dream recounted at the end of Branca’s Ponte Santa Trinità is com- pelling because it is a feeling that we can all understand and that we have all, to some degree, experienced. And it is compelling also for its poignant and sobering recognition of limits: Branca registers the dream but also registers his acceptance of its illusory nature. This essay recounts the story of the recent “discovery” of a new Dante- an text, referred to by its discoverers as “il libro delle canzoni di Dante”. I explore this story as a case study of a phenomenon that I have been tracking since 1989, where I first noted it in the context of Petrarchan philology (Ba- rolini, 1989; 2006; 2012, pp. 297–346): the phenomenon of our insufficient critical vigilance and transparency in monitoring the porous boundaries be- tween philology and interpretation. These boundaries are necessarily po- rous, since interpretation and subjectivity are present in all forms of human cognition, nor am I suggesting that philologists be held to an impossible standard of inhabiting an interpretation-free zone. However, since philology lays claim to a more rigorously empirical and scientific foundation than that of literary interpretation, it is especially important that philologists be trans- parent about the discursive spectrum that they inhabit, and in particular that they signpost and acknowledge the point at which their arguments morph from philological arguments to interpretive ones. Along the path of my scholarly life, I found that I had to learn not to take on faith the statements of philologists. I learned that ecdotics must be scrutinized by hermeneutics, that philology must be accountable to phi- losophy. Although we tend to think that it is hermeneutics that must be certified by philology, in practical terms I have found myself, a literary critic, all too frequently in the position of verifying the claims of various philologists and finding them wanting, not because they were philologi- cally incorrect, but because they were not philological. Rather, they were hermeneutic arguments masquerading as, and claiming the authority of, philological arguments. The framework that I have outlined above is the common denominator of the case studies I have looked at, including the one that is the focus of this essay. The case of the so-called “libro delle canzoni di Dante” is only special because it has happened in real time, before our eyes over the last decade, but otherwise it bears all the hallmarks of the previous cases I have consid- ered. I will begin by listing the cases I have looked at previously, with only minimal documentation in order to make clear the common denominator: in each instance we find interpretive arguments used by philologists as though © Peter Lang AG Philology, vol. 1/2015, pp. 91–114 Critical Philology and Dante’s Rime 93 they were philological arguments. Let me be explicit: philologists are of course permitted to engage in interpretation, and indeed are not capable of not engaging in interpretation (we will come to Domenico De Robertis’ principled attempt to refuse to engage in interpretation, as problematic as its converse). However, philologists have a responsibility – a moral responsibil- ity, given that their work creates the textual foundation on which interpreters can build their interpretive castles – to be vigilant and transparent about labeling their interpretations and conjectures as such. As an installment in the ongoing practice of critical philology, this essay reflects my commitment to analyzing, in the context of the Italian Duecento and Trecento, the culturally inflected presuppositions that are built into supposedly objective philological discourses. There are numer- ous examples from the history of interpreting medieval Italian texts where the roles of philology and interpretation have been confused, to the det- riment of both endeavors. The following are examples of the egregious contamination between interpretation and philology, or better: they are examples of weak interpretation made illegitimately strong by being pre- sented as philology. 1) The spreading as dogma of Ernest Hatch Wilkins’ doctrine of the nine forms of Petrarch’s Canzoniere, although the nine forms are non- existent and there are only two “extant” forms (Wilkins’ word). Wilkins himself frequently engages in speculation, which he presents as such.2 However Wilkins’ speculative hypotheses are frequently treat- ed as factual by literary critics – and even by philologists, as in the case of Guglielmo Gorni’s 1978 essay on Rerum vulgarium fragmenta 142 (Gorni, 1978).3 Reading Wilkins’ The Making of the “Canzoniere” from the perspective of subsequent Petrarch criticism, one is startled by how many of Wilkins’ hypotheses are now treated as textual if not material facts (for full documentation, see Barolini, 2007). 2 For instance, Wilkins concludes his reasoning for choosing sestina 142 as the last poem of the form he labels the “pre-Chigi” or “Correggio” form of the Rerum vul- garium fragmenta with a statement of probability: “I conclude, therefore, that it is probable that Part I of the Pre-Chigi form of the Canzoniere ended with No. 142” (Wilkins, 1951, p. 97). 3 Gorni accepts as factual Wilkins’ conjecture of sestina 142 as the last poem of the so-called – also conjectural – “Correggio form”. © Peter Lang AG Philology, vol. 1/2015, pp. 91–114 94 Teodolinda Barolini 2) The invention by Luigi Pietrobono (not a philologist, but his inven- tion was later promoted by Maria Corti, who was) of a non-existent “original” ending of the Vita Nuova, which according to this theory was supplanted by our “current” ending, in order to explain away the incon- sistencies between Vita Nuova and Convivio. Pietrobono states transparently that he posits the existence of a lost original ending to the Vita Nuova in order to reconcile the Vita Nuova and Convivio, and therefore he in fact meets my standard. Both Michele Barbi and Mario Marti play exemplary roles in this story, as philolo- gists who deplore Pietrobono’s hypothesis and try to bring philological reason back into the discussion. However, the absence of any reason – other than interpretive – to believe in a lost original ending of the Vita Nuova did not deter Maria Corti from reviving Pietrobono’s thesis, which she supports with argumentation that is entirely non-philological (see Barolini, 2014c). 3) The nomenclature adopted by philologists that assigns the term estra- vaganti to the lyrics that Dante did not select for inclusion in the Vita Nuova and Convivio, as though this were a philologically neutral term, when instead it is freighted with value-based assumptions about the su- periority of the “organic” and the “ingathered” to the “fragmented” and the “ungathered”. These assumptions have governed the critical reflex- es of philologists, as we can see through analysis of the recurrent trope organico versus estravaganti in their writings. One example of the way that the pervasive trope warps critical judg- ment may be found in Michelangelo Picone’s 1995 essay Dante rima- tore. Reviewing the issue of whether to include the Vita Nuova and Convivio poems within an edition of Dante’s lyrics, Picone first voices impeccable critical appreciation for the position of inclusion: Ha così ragione Barbi nel ritenere essenzialmente diversa una lirica letta nel contesto della Vita nuova o del Convivio dalla stessa lirica letta invece singolarmente.