A history of Italian literature

by Richard Garnett

GUIDO CAVALCANTI would be memorable if only for his youthful friendship with Dante, celebrated in many poems of both, and more especially in the sonnet, so well known in England from Shelley’s more poetical than accurate version, in which Dante wishes for his company, along with Lapo Gianni and their respective ladies, on a voyage with him and his Beatrice. Vanna, Cavalcanti’s lady-love in those days, is mentioned in another sonnet as the chosen companion of Beatrice:

Each
Beside the other seemed a thing divine.

Cavalcanti had the reputation of a free-thinker, and the charge seems hardly refuted by his having made a pilgrimage to Compostella, even if he ever arrived there, which may be questioned. It is supposed to have been on this journey that he made the acquaintance of the pretty Mandetta of Toulouse, the theme of much of his verse. He was a leading personage in the Florentine republic, and his strifes with inimical factions eventually led to his exile to Sarzana, where he contracted a disease which carried him off after his return to his native city.

Guido’s merits as a poet were highly estimated by his contemporaries. Dante mentions him in his treatise De Vulgari Eloquio among the masters of Italian literature, and declares that he has eclipsed Guido Guinicelli, whom also he greatly admired. Benevento da Imola, the commentator on theDivine Comedy, names him along with Dante as one of the two great lights of the age. That these praises were not undeserved will appear from a comparison of his lyrics with Dante’s, remembering that he was the older man and that the obligation was entirely on the side of the younger. Dante, especially in his sonnets, is continually borrowing thoughts which, whether original with Cavalcanti or not, had been previously expressed by him. The expression is indeed greatly improved, but even Cavalcanti’s comparatively rude form is full of charm. In his ballate he has the great merit of having exalted a popular carol to the dignity of literature with little injury to its simplicity. Of the canzoni ascribed to him only two are recognised as undoubtedly genuine. Both are instinct with the philosophical spirit which he imported into poetry. The objections to the genuineness of the others derived from external evidence do not always appear very conclusive; but it must be admitted that there is an almost entire lack of external testimony in their favour. Four of them, from one of which we have already borrowed a quotation, have been translated by Rossetti. The most celebrated of Guido’s genuine compositions, the canzone beginning “Donna mi prega; perch’ io voglio dire,” was considered by his contemporaries the ne plus ultra of poetry, but rather for its erudition than its strictly poetical merits: it had eight separate commentaries, which indeed were by no means superfluous.

Guittoncino de’ Sinibuldi, commonly called CINO DA PISTOIA, a poet of somewhat later date (1270-1336), possessed less originality than Guido Cavalcanti, but having a better standard of taste, is perhaps more generally pleasing. Like Cavalcanti, he was a man of varied accomplishments, and it is his special renown to have been among the first jurists of his time. Like Dante, he was exiled from his native city, and went to Paris; he subsequently professed law in several of the chief cities of Italy, and was eventually restored to his own. His verse, like Cavalcanti’s, bears a strong affinity to Dante’s lyrical poetry, and, in the opinion of so accomplished a judge as Lorenzo de’ Medici, is even more completely divested of primitive rudeness. His most celebrated composition is the canzone consoling Dante for the loss of Beatrice, from which we quote a stanza in Rossetti’s version:

Why now do pangs of torment clutch thy heart,
Which with thy love should make thee overjoyed,
As him whose intellect has passed the skies?
Behold, the spirits of thy life depart
Daily to Heaven with her, they so are buoyed
With thy desire, and Love so bids them rise.
O God! and thou, a man whom God made wise,
To nurse a charge of care, and love the same!
I tell thee in His name
From sin of sighing grief to hold thy breath,
Nor let thy heart to death,
Nor harbour death’s resemblance in thine eyes.
God hath her with Himself eternally,
Yet she inhabits every hour with thee.

Here, and in the remainder of the poem, there is a clear prefiguration of Petrarch, who admired Cino, and wrote a sonnet on his death. The following is a favourable example of Cino’s own sonnets:

Descend, fair Pity, veiled in mortal weed;
And in thy guise my messengers be dight.
Partakers to appear of virtuous might
That Heaven hath for thy attribute decreed.
Yet thou, ere on their errand these proceed,
If Love consent, I pray, recall and cite
My spirits all astray dispersed in flight,
That so my songs be bold to sue and plead.
Then, hast thou sight of ladies’ loveliness,
Thither accede, for I would have thee there,
And audience with humility entreat;
And charge my envoys, kneeling at their feet,
Their Lord and his desirings to declare:
Hear them, sweet Ladies, for their humbleness.

Several other good poets, such as Lapo Gianni, Dino Frescobaldi, and Gianni Alfani, would deserve notice in a more elaborate history. They all wrought in the spirit of Cavalcanti and Dante himself, spiritualising the earthly passion of the troubadours, and endowing the ladies of their songs with such superhuman perfections as to incur the risk of appearing mere types of ideal virtue. We must, however, pass to a different order of poetry, the gay and satirical. Here Folgore di San Geminiano is the leading figure. His political sonnets are very forcible; but he is better known for two sets of sonnets on the pleasures of the months and the days of the week, celebrating, not without an undercurrent of satire, the luxurious extravagance of a set of wild young men at Siena, who, another poet informs us, reduced themselves to beggary thereby. Another humorous poet, justly defined by Rossetti as the scamp of the Dante circle, is Cecco Angioleri, who is irreverent enough to call Dante himself a pinchbeck florin, and whose favourite theme is his quarrels with his parents:

My mother don’t do much because she can’t,
But I may count it just as good as done,
Knowing the way and not the will’s her want.
To-day I tried a kiss with her—just one—
To see if I could make her sulks avaunt;
She said, 'The devil rip you up, my son!'