Background
Guido Cavalcanti was born in Florence not later than 1259, the son of a wealthy Guelf.
(Dante's best friend and a major exponent of the dolce sti...)
Dante's best friend and a major exponent of the dolce stil novo, Guido Cavalcanti has had a lasting influence upon Italian poetry and is best known to English readers through the essays, translations and adaptations of Ezra Pound. Born from the cultural ferment of thirteenth- century Florence, Cavalcanti's poetry is an extraordinary blend of unorthodox philosophy, sharp psychological insight and dazzling formal mastery. Anthony Mortimer, acclaimed for his versions of Petrarch and Michelangelo, provides a new verse translation complete with notes, critical comment and biographical material: following in the footsteps of Rossetti and Pound, he presents a Cavalcanti who speaks for his own time and to ours.
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Guido Cavalcanti was born in Florence not later than 1259, the son of a wealthy Guelf.
Many of his lyrics, in the first place, are akin to traditional popular poetry, but they are characterized by a greater refinement of vocabulary than Guinizelli's, a tone of greater elevation, and sometimes a new life and vigor as compared with their conventional models.
Here the rationalizing Cavalcanti has made love an affair of the mind and regarded its object as an abstraction.
Guido was one of the Guelf guarantors of a peace concluded between the two factions in 1280.
His fiery temperament is evident in his animosity toward Corso Donati, the leader of the Black Guelfs of Florence.
While Cavalcanti was on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela-a trip which took him to Toulouse, where he met a young woman, Mandetta, to whom he wrote two poems, and to Nîmes but not beyond-it is said that Corso attempted to have him assassinated.
Cavalcanti tried in vain to avenge himself by spurring his horse against Corso in a Florentine street and throwing a dart.
On June 24, 1300, the priors of Florence (Dante among them) exiled some of the leaders of both factions, and Cavalcantri went to Sarzana with other followers of the Cerchi.
His ballad of farewell, Perch'i' no spero di tornar giammai, a masterpiece of grace and tenderness, could have been written during this exile.
He returned to Florence 2 months later, mortally ill.
The poems which can be attributed positively to Cavalcanti are 36 sonnets, 11 ballads, 2 canzoni, 2 isolated stanzas, and 1 motet.
Almost all his poetry is concerned with love.
In his famous canzone Donna me prega…, he develops his theory of love within an elaborate poetic structure and in complex philosophical terms.
Original in Cavalcanti is his concept of love as a cruel, overpowering force with a violent potentiality for destruction.
The technique of personified spirits was adopted by Dante and other poets of the dolce stil nuovo.
He was sent to Sarzana, where, after only a few months he decided to try to return to Florence. He died of fever (probably malaria) in August of the same year on his journey home.
(Dante's best friend and a major exponent of the dolce sti...)
It is interesting to note that Guido's marriage to Beatrice degli Uberti should not be seen in the context of modern relationships where people marry each other for love, but rather in the context of his own age, when marriage was often motivated by business and/or political interests. As such, Guido's poetry, which dwells on love, should be seen as a philosophical exploration of love and not as that of a husband bound into and seeking satisfaction outside a marriage made for political purposes.
