Guido Cavalcanti

Guido Cavalcanti (Florence ~1250 - Florence 1300) is a Florentin poet.

Dante often mentions it like “the first of his/her friends”. Both belong to the initiatory brotherhood of the Fidèles of Love, which is mentioned by Dante in the Vita Nova (which besides is particularly addressed to Guido), and one finds in their works same symbolism in love. Thus the Lady ( gave ) there represents the wisdom, which the faithful one reaches by the divine love. From the stylistic point of view, the faithful ones of Love speak about “ dolce stil novo ” (soft new style), designation in which one should not see only one “literary” definition but also a significance symbolic system.

The work of Guido, like that of Dante, rests on a complex and coherent symbolism suitable for the Moyen-âge in Occident, and whose neither Guido nor Dante are the “inventors”, but that they draw from teaching that they accepted from faithful from Love. The presence in poetries of Guido of Mandetta, rams Toulouse met by the poet in the occitane city at the time of a stop on the way of Saint-Jacob, made establish with some of the bonds between the faithful ones of Love and the Catharisme. But it is necessary to specify here that the company to which Dante and Guido belonged, of filiation templière, was perfectly orthodoxe from the point of view Catholique, contrary to Cathares. The judgment of Catharisme by saint Bernard de Clairvaux, who is taken for guide by Dante with the Paradise, is particularly significant in this respect.

Guido, like Dante, bases its poetry on the use of the vulgar language, which must make it possible to the Italian initiates to directly know (i.e. without mediation, as it was the case with the language not-nursery school which Latin constituted) the divine grace.

And sings the birds
evening and morning
Each one in its Latin
On the greens shrubs.

Rhyme , “Fresca rosa novella”.

Tobias Eisermann, Cavalcanti oder die Poetik der Negativität, Band 17 in Romanica and Comparatistica: Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Studien, herausgegeben von Richard Baum und Willi Hirdt, Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag Brigitte Narr GMBH, 1992; ISBN 3-923721-67-6

Translation of one of the 52 poems which reached us :

Since I hope to never turn over, small, in Tuscany, goes, light, straight at my beautiful strolls, which by kindness will receive you with honor. You will speak to him about my sighs full with mourning and much with fear; but take guard that nobody sees himself who is enemy of a noble nature; because certainly for my misfortune, - you would be so much blamed and taken again that I would be afflicted with it and that I would have some after my death of the tears and a new pain. You feel, small strolls, whom death tightens me of so close the life gives up me; listen as my heart is extremely agitated storm which in me the affections make; my body is destroyed so much that I then to suffer more; - if you want to please to me, takes along my heart with you (please well extremely) when it leaves my body. Small strolls, to your friendship I recommend this heart who trembles; lead it with its love to beautiful to which I send it. Small strolls, say him while sighing when you are in front of it: “Me, your maidservant, I come to remain with you on behalf of that which was your servant of Love”. And you, timid and weak voice which leave while crying my suffering heart, with my heart and this small strolls, will speak to him about my destroyed spirit. You will find a Lady pleasant, with the so soft heart, which you will have of the joy to be in front of it always, and you, my heart, always adores in all its desires.

origin: Selected pieces of the foreign literatures by Edouard Trod - Hatchet 1901

External bonds

Biography and Œuvres of Guido Cavalcanti - Format HTML

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