106. Montecchi: The Montecchi family gave its name to the imperial party, or faction of the Monticoli (Dante has Tuscanized the name), which was headed, from ca. 1235 to 1259, by Ezzelino III da Romano in his attempt to conquer Lombardy. Thus the Monticoli, as the name of a party, became synonymous with “friends of Ezzelino.” The focal point of the struggle between the imperial and anti-imperial parties passed (ca. 1247) to Cremona, where the anti-imperial party had long borne the name of Cappelletti.
The Monticoli, originally a merchant family, by the acquisition of vast estates became politically very powerful; by 1195, their name already designates a faction in the political life of Verona. And, as the faction of the Monticoli was absorbed into that of Ezzelino, it gradually extended the theater of its interests into all of Lombardy. By 1291, the Monticoli party was dead in Verona, the Della Scala family having gained control after the death of Ezzelino (1259).
[...]Luigi da Porto's Historia novellamente ritrovata di due nobili amanti, con la lor pietosa morte (published at Venice ca. 1530; adapted from a story by Masuccio Salernitano, Novellino 33 published at Naples in 1476), with its setting in Verona and its young protagonists named Romeo and Giulietta, of the feuding families of the Montecchi and Cappelletti (Da Porto thus misconstruing the meaning of Dante's verses), became, through Matteo Bandello's version (1554), Shakespeare's source for Romeo and Juliet.
Cappelletti: A Guelph party of Cremona (not, as has commonly been supposed, a Cremonese family). There is frequent mention of this party in the chronicles, between 1249 and 1266, and of their struggles against the Monticoli party for political supremacy in Lombardy.引自第130页
“Or quando tu cantasti le crude armi
de la doppia trestizia di Giocasta,”
disse 'l cantor de' buccolici carmi,
per quello che Clïò teco lì tasta,
non par che ti facesse ancor fedele
la fede, sanza qual ben far non basta.
Note: [...] Virgil simply means “it does not appear from what you wrote under the inspiration of Clio, your muse, i.e., from what you say in your poem.”引自第526页
This belief is witnessed by a reference to it in a sermon of a Brother Berthold, a Franciscan friar of Regensburg in the thirteenth century quoted by Longfellow as follows:
Now behold, ye blessed children of God, the Almighty has created you soul and body. And he has written it under your eyes and on your faces, that you are created in his likeness. He has written it upon your very faces with ornamented letters. With great diligence are they embellished and ornamented. This your learned men will understand, but the unlearned may not understand it. The two eyes are two o's. The h is properly no letter; it only helps the others; so that homo with an h means Man. Likewise the brows arched above and the nose down between them are an m, beautiful with three strokes. So is the ear a d, beautifully rounded and ornamented. So are the nostrils beautifully formed like a Greek ε beautifully rounded and ornamented. So is the mouth an i, beautifully adorned and ornamented. Now behold, ye good Christian people, how skilfully he has adorned you with these six letters, to show that ye are his own, and that he has created you! Now read me an o and an m and another o together; that spells homo. Then read me a d and an e and an i together; that spells dei. Homo dei, man of God, man of God!引自第546页
81. [...] Porena comments:
This is one of the very few places in the poem where Dante the writer substitutes himself for Dante the character in the poem itself. For it is hardly likely that in the spring of 1300, Dante, still fully active in the political life of his city, would already be so detached from earthly things, or that he would be nourishing such anguish, or such a desire for death.引自第573页
是说这一段：
"How long," I answered, "I may live, I know not;
Yet my return will not so speedy be,
But I shall sooner in desire arrive;
Because the place where I was set to live
From day to day of good is more depleted,
And unto dismal ruin seems ordained." (vv.76-81)
（抄了Longfellow的译文因为有在线版可以复制）
Suetonius, in his life of Caesar, gives the following account (De vita Caesarum I, xlix, I-4):
[...]so Marcus Brutus declares, one Octavius, a man whose disordered mind made him somewhat free with his tongue, after saluting Pompey as “king” in a crowded assembly, greeted Caesar as “queen.”[...]引自 Canto XXVI
20. la pineta in su 'l lito di Chiassi: The famous pine forest that extended (as it still does) along the shore of the Adriatic for several miles near Ravenna. The Roman Classis, the ancient harbor of Ravenna, under Augustus was an important naval station and at one time a large town. The name is still preserved in that of the beautiful church of Sant'Apollinare in Classe, which stands on the site of part of the old town. 引自 Canto XXVIII
32-33. sotto l'ombra perpetua... luna: This touch concerning a cool perpetual shade is a common feature of ideal paradises for poets who live under the hot Mediterranean sun. 引自 Canto XXVIII
Commentary on Canto XXXII
73-74. "...the blossoms of the apple tree that makes the angels greedy of its fruit..."
melo: Christ. Cf. Cant. 2:3: ”Sicut malus inter ligna silvarum, sic dilectus meus inter filios.“ (”As an apple tree among the trees of the woods, so is my lover among men.“)引自第791页
136 - 141. [...] Actually, the length of cantos throughout the poem varies, from 115 (the shortest) to 160 (the longest), as does the length of the cantiche (Inferno containing 4,720 verses; Purgatorio, 4,755 verses; and Paradiso, 4,758 verses). Thus the cantiche themselves are remarkably close to being equal in length. Such, finally, was the “curb of his art.”引自第824页
