The true founder of the DOLCE STIL NOVO (“sweet
new style”) school of poetry and DANTE’s closest
friend, the poet Guido Cavalcanti was, more than
anyone else, the person responsible for the “sweet
new style”that Dante followed and then transcended
in his DIVINE COMEDY. The style, characterized by a
philosophical approach and learned imagery, is represented most manifestly in Cavalcanti’s great CANZONE, DONNA ME PREGA (A lady asks me).
Guido was born in 1259 or before—he is
known to have been at least six years Dante’s senior—to a wealthy merchant family of Florence. His
father, Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti, was a prominent
Guelf (a member of the party that supported the
pope in Italian politics). He betrothed his son to
Bice, daughter of the Ghibelline captain Farinata
(the Ghibellines were the aristocratic party that
supported the emperor) to help seal the peace between the two factions in the late 1260s, and in
1280 Guido was named as a guarantor of the peace
arranged by Cardinal Latini. A prominent public
figure, Guido was elected a member of the General Council of the Commune of Florence in 1284,
and was reelected in 1290. But by this time a split
had occurred within the Guelf party of Florence,
and bitter, even violent, political feuds were raging
between the Blacks (generally representing the old
money, banking, and imperial interests) and the
Whites (who represented trade interests and the
peace faction). Corso Donati, leader of the Blacks
(and Dante’s brother-in-law), was an unscrupulous politician: Cavalcanti, an outspoken White,
was the target of an assassination attempt while he
was on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.
On June 24, 1300, in an attempt to deal with the
violence in the city, the six priors of the commune
(who were the chief magistrates of the city) decided to sentence the leaders of both sides to exile.
Cavalcanti, along with Donati and other prominent citizens, was forced to go into exile at Sarzana.
It was a particularly bitter pill to swallow since
Dante himself was serving as one of the priors at
the time. Cavalcanti’s sentence was revoked the following month, but Cavalcanti was not to return—
he died in Sarzana at the end of August.
Dante’s friendship with Cavalcanti dates certainly from at least the early 1280s. Dante was influenced strongly by Guido’s poetry, and thought
of him as the “father” of modern love poetry in
the vernacular. He and Cavalcanti exchanged several sonnets on a variety of topics, and Dante dedicated the VITA NUOVA to him, calling Cavalcanti
“primo amico,” that is, “my first friend.” Dante’s
puzzling lack of reference to Cavalcanti in the Divine Comedy, however, has caused some scholars to
wonder whether their friendship had cooled before
Cavalcanti’s death: The only reference to Guido is
in canto X of the Inferno, when Dante speaks with
Guido’s father in the circle of heretics, and mentions that perhaps Guido held Virgil “in scorn.”
Possibly Dante’s part in Guido’s banishment had
strained their friendship. Or perhaps Dante was
simply writing a new kind of poetry that went beyond Guido’s, and therefore does not invoke him.
In any case, while he was alive, Guido’s influence over Dante, and over Italian lyric poetry in
general was tremendous. He has left 52 poems
(SONNETS, canzoni, songs, and other genres). All
display his characteristic style, which was forged
largely in contrast with the Tuscan style of GUITTONE D’AREZZO, which Cavalcanti saw as vulgar
and overwrought rhetorically. He returned to a
simpler and more direct lyric style rhetorically, but
at the same time introduced very difficult imagery
drawn from philosophy, science, psychology, medicine—a variety of learned traditions.
Cavalcanti’s influence has been admired even
into modern times. The 20th-century American
poet Ezra Pound thought Cavalcanti a brilliant
psychologist regarding love and its effects, and
translated a number of his poems into English.
Bibliography
Anderson, David. Pound’s Cavalcanti: An Edition of
the Translations, Notes, and Essays. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 1983.
Ardizzone, Maria Luisa. Guido Cavalcanti: The Other
Middle Ages. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2002.
Goldin, Frederick, trans. German and Italian Lyrics of
the Middle Ages: An Anthology and a History. New
York: Doubleday, 1973.
Nelson, Lowry, Jr., ed. and trans. The Poetry of Guido
Cavalcanti. New York: Garland Press, 1986.
Shaw, James E. Guido Cavalcanti’s Theory of Love: The
“Canzone d’Amore” and Other Related Problems.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1949.
Valency, Maurice. In Praise of Love. New York:
Macmillan, 1958.