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's Orders), a masterpiece of lyric verse and a small treatise on his philosophy of love. Starting from the model provided by the French troubadours, they took Italian poetry a step further and inaugurated the volgare illustre, that higher standard of Italian language that survives almost unchanged to the present day. The founder of this school, Guido Guinizzelli, a law professor at Bologna’s University wrote the first poem of this kind, a poem whose importance does not so much lie in its literary merits but in outlining what would the fundamentals of the Stil Novo program, which was further perfected by a second generation of poets, including Dante, Cino da Pistoia, Lapo Gianni, and Guido himself. 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 think that someone has experimented the excellence of high vernacular, namely Guido, Lapo and another [i.e: Dante himself], all from Florence, and Cino da Pistoia”.
This second generation, active between the later 13th and early 14th centuries, however, is not a school in the literary sense of the term. Rather, it is a group of friends who share similar ethical and esthetic ideals though not without noticeable differences in their approach; Dante is 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. You, Whose Look Pierced through My Heart), dedicated, to his beloved Monna (lady) Vanna:
Voi che per gli occhi mi passaste ‘l core
e destaste la mente che dormìa,
guardate a l’angosciosa vita mia
che sospirando la distrugge amore
E’ ven tagliando di sì gran valore
che’ deboletti spiriti van via
riman figura sol en segnoria
e voce alquanta, che parla dolore.
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.
You whose look pierced through my heart,
Waking up my sleeping mind,
behold an anguished life
which love is killing with sighs.
So deeply love cuts my soul
that weak spirits are vanquished,
and what remains the only master
is this voice that speaks of woe.
This virtue of love, that has undone me
Came from your heavenly eyes:
It threw an arrow into my side.
So straight was the first blow
That the soul, quivering, reverberated,
seeing the heart on the left was dead.
Quote:
This type of philosophy traces back to Solomon and Ovid and influences, in modern times, Swinburne, Joyce, Pound, Lawrence etc and, of course Bob Dylan: troubadour extraordinaire.
Quote:As I walked out tonight in the mystic garden
The wounded flowers were dangling from the vine
I was passing by yon cool crystal fountain
Someone hit me from behind.
Ain't Talkin'.
