Guido Cavalcanti

The domination of medieval religious interpretations of reality, morality and society was challenged by the rise of a new urban culture across Europe that gradually supplanted rural, local, ecclesiastical and feudal ways of thinking.

As Jacob Burckhardt, Swiss historian and author of The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy wrote, "It was not the revival of antiquity alone, but its union with the genius of the Italian people which achieved the conquest of the western world."

During his lifetime, Florence was politically torn by the struggle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, factions supporting, respectively, the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor in central and northern Italy during the 12th and 13th centuries.

Headed by Giacomo da Lentini, they produced more than 300 poems of courtly love between 1230 and 1266, the experiment being continued after Frederick's death by his son, Manfredi.

In one of his earlier poems, Guido transforms the imagery of fin'amor, with its beautiful ladies and armed knights, into an idea that love has a philosophical component related to human intelligence and moral purity by equating it with a wise heart.

aria serena quand'appar l'albore, e bianca neve scender senza venti, rivera d'acqua e prato d'ogni fiore, oro e argento, azzurro 'n ornamenti,

E tant'a piu d'ogn'altra ha canoscenza, quanto lo cielo de la terra e maggio: A simil di natura ben non tarda.

beauty of women and wise hearts and noble armed cavaliers bird's song and love's reason adorned ships in strong seas

serene air at dawn and white snow falling windlessly watery brooks and fields of all flowers gold, silver, lapis lazuli in adornment-

The crowning achievement of Cavalcanti's poetic youth is his canzone Io non pensava che lo cor giammai in which he embodies his philosophical thoughts in a vernacular masterpiece.

Cavalcanti is best remembered for belonging to that small but influential group of Tuscan poets that started what is now known as Dolce Stil Novo, to which he contributed the following (note: translations provided in parentheses do not match the titles by which are widely known in English manuals but are meant to be a more literal rendering of the Italian originals): "Rosa fresca novella" (New, Fresh Rose), "Avete in vo' li fior e la verdura" (You Are Flowers in the Meadow), "Biltà di donna" (A Woman's Beauty), Chi è questa che vèn (Who's This Lady That Comes My Way), "Li mie' foll'occhi" (My Crazy Eyes), "L'anima Mia" (My Soul), "Guido Orlandi", "Da più a uno" (From Many to One), "In un boschetto" (In A Grove), "Per ch'io no spero" (Because I Do Not Hope), "Voi che per gli occhi mi passaste il core" (see below), and "Donna me prega" (A Lady Asks Me), a masterpiece of lyric verse and a small treatise on his philosophy of love.

As Dante wrote in his De Vulgari Eloquentia, I, XIII, 4: "Sed quanquam fere omne Tusci in suo turpiloquio sint obtusi, nunnullos vulgaris excellentiam cognovisse sentimus, scilicit Guidonem, Lapum, et unum alium, Florentinos et Cynum Pistoriensem (...) ("Although most Tuscans are overwhelmed by their bad language, we judge that some have known the excellence of the vernacular, namely Guido, Lapo and another [i.e: Dante himself], all from Florence, and Cino da Pistoia".

Scholars have commented on the Dolce stil novo with Dante as probably the most spiritual and platonic in his portrayal of Beatrice (Vita Nuova), but Cino da Pistoia is able to write poetry in which "there is a remarkable psychological interest in love, a more tangible presence of the woman, who loses the abstract aura of Guinizzelli and Guido's verse" (Giudice-Bruni), and Guido Cavalcanti interprets love as a source of torment and despair in the surrendering of self to the beloved.

An example in kind, and one of Guido's most widely read lyrics is a sonnet entitled Voi che per gli occhi mi passaste il core (Transl.

Questa vertù d'amor che m'ha disfatto Da' vostri occhi gentil presta si mosse: un dardo mi gittò dentro dal fianco.

Sì giunse ritto ‘l colpo al primo tratto, che l’anima tremando si riscosse veggendo morto ‘l cor nel lato manco.

Although there are many poems that exemplify Cavalcanti's poetic maturity, Certe mie rime a te mandar vogliendo is unparalleled in its originality, for here Guido adapts his medium of love to speak of his inner psychological state and the uncertainty of Dante's reaction in this example of occasional poetry.

temo non prenda sì gran smarrimento ch'avante ch'udit' aggia tua pesanza non si diparta da la vita il core.

He dramatically reinforces his condition through the appearance of Love—the medieval and Renaissance view of Love as Cupid matured into a grown man—in the guise of death, as if Guido is indeed on the verge of leaving this world.

Through his study of Averroës, and perhaps due to his native temperament, Cavalcanti held the pessimistic view that humans were limited in the sort of ultimate attainment they could achieve.

For example, in the famous line "a man who does not experience it [love] cannot picture it", a common axiom variously quoted from the troubadours to Dante's Vita Nuova.

The subject is divided into eight chapters dealing with In short, the sensitive, like the rational soul is located in the brain, but does not produce love feelings unless the eyes meet those of a particular woman who has an exclusive affinity to him.

This highly philosophical canzone was extremely influential, and it was commented upon by authors including Dino del Garbo, pseudo-Giles, Giles of Rome, Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Iacopo Mini, and Fracesco de Vieri (see Enrico Fenzi, La canzone d'amore di Guido Cavalcanti e i suoi antichi commenti, Melangolo, 1999).

While this has very little to do with modern psychology, Guido's philosophy of spiritelli was part of the guiding principles of Arabic medicine, considered very advanced in Dante's time.

The merit of such philosophy in Cavalcanti's verse is its ability to describe what goes through the poet's mind in a very detailed, personal manner, creating sensuous, autobiographic poetry.

This is revolutionary compared to the rhetoric and academic-seeming manner of the Sicilian and Neo-Sicilian Schools that had preceded the Dolce Stil Novo and, perhaps, a sign of the changing times.

His cynical beliefs towards the subject of desire, demonstrated in Donna me prega with images of wrath and death, have been proposed as inspiration for Dante's contrapasso observed in Inferno V,[6] where the carnal sinners are tossed uncontrollably by the winds of a never-ending storm.

[6] Cavalcanti is widely regarded as the first major poet of Italian literature: Dante sees in Guido his mentor; his meter, his language deeply inspire his work (cfr.

De Vulgari Eloquentia), though Guido's esthetic materialism would be taken a step further to an entirely new spiritual, Christian vision of the gentler sex, as personified by Beatrice whose soul becomes Dante's guide to Paradise.

Pound's main focus was on Cavalcanti's philosophy of love and light, which he viewed as a continuing expression of a pagan, neo-platonic tradition stretching back through the troubadours and early medieval Latin lyrics to the world of pre-Christian polytheism.