others are described as helpless witnesses to the poet’s
crisis. Noi siàn le tristepenne isbigotite (“We are the sad
and mournful pens”) takes the process a step further:
the languishing poet’s writing tools are all that is left
to plead to the lady.
Guido Cavalcanti sought to understand his experi-
ence of love in terms that transcended the literary and
purely subjective.
Gianni Alfani, his follower, jokingly refers to Caval-
canti as the only man who actually sees Love (Ballatetta
dolente, 19), and lexical studies bear this out: vedere
occurs fi fty-fi ve times in Cavalcanti’s corpus; guardare
fi fteen times; mimare thirteen times; sguardare twice;
riguardare once; guatare once; occhi thirty-one times;
sguardo four times; veduta once, and vista once, accord-
ing to Calenda (1976, 82–83). The eyes are, of course,
the conduit for love; but perhaps more important for
Cavalcanti was the fact that visibility represented the
most concrete form of demonstration in Aristotelian
natural philosophy. As the young Dante pursued the
understanding and appropriation of the experience of
love, he was profoundly infl uenced by Cavalcanti’s
poetic “research.” In Chapter 26 of Vita Nuova, when
Dante is fi nally able to defi ne his poetry of praise as
beatitude, and his credo che (“I believe that”) becomes
the more objective pare che (“it seems that,” as in
Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare and the surrounding
prose), Dante borrows essential elements from two of
Cavalcanti’s ballatas: Posso degli occhi miei novella dire
and Veggio negli occhi de la donna mia (De Robertis
1961, 142–145).
The ballata was Cavalcanti’s preferred form, and
eleven of his ballate are extant. In contrast to the Italian
canzone, which in the course of the Duecento became
the form of choice for doctrinal poetry, the ballata was
associated with music, dance, and—given its codifi ca-
tion at the court of Charles of Anjou (Asperti 1995,
107–112)—perhaps a certain spirit of aristocratic hedo-
nism. Cavalcanti may have preferred the asymmetrical
musicality of the ballata or, as Calenda has suggested
(115–117), may have consciously refused to engage
in writing canzoni, which were becoming, with Guido
Gunizzelli and Dante, ideological “manifestos” for
the emerging bourgeoisie. In one of most famous bal-
late, Perch’io no spero di tornar giammai (“Because
I do not hope ever to return”), Cavalcanti expands the
expressive potential of the recurring rhyme, engaging
it in conversation with the stanzas, as the writer Ugo
Foscolo (1778–1827) pointed out. This poem was long
thought to be an autobiographical fi nal appeal to his
lady from afar, by a poet fearing his imminent death;
but Calenda (33–52) has shown that the work actually
represents a summa of the poet’s themes and stylistic
elements.
An important achievement in Cavalcanti’s hendeca-
syllabic ballate is his fl uid, natural elaboration of ideas
within the stanza. This presents a marked contrast to
the more “scholastic” use of conjunctions of coordina-
tion and subordination to develop ideas, in canzoni
like Guinizzelli’s Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore
(“Love makes its home in the noble heart”). De Robertis
points to this as a major accomplishment of the dolce
stil nuovo, and an essential lesson that Dante learned
from one of his fi rst friends (134–135).
Of the two extant canzoni by Guido Cavalcanti, one,
Donna me prega, is regarded as the most diffi cult in the
Italian language. It has been interpreted from numer-
ous perspectives, although a strictly neo-Aristotelian
interpretation in line with contemporary teaching at the
universities of Bologna and Paris now seems to prevail.
Donna me prega represents a signifi cant departure from
the dramatic form of Cavalcanti’s other poems. The
work offers a philosophical and scientifi c presentation of
the essence of love, how love manifests itself, and what
its effects are; the questions are divided into eight topics,
two of which are treated in each of the four remaining
stanzas. The structure of the poem is tightly controlled,
and internal rhymes enhance the rigor of the canzone.
See also Dante Alighieri; Guinizzelli, Guido;
Guittoni d’ArezzoFurther Reading
Asperti, Stefano. Carlo d’Angiò e i trovatori. Ravenna: Longo,
1995.
Barolini, Teodolina. Dante’s Poets: Textuality and Truth in the
Comedy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984.
Calenda, Corrado. Per altezza d’ingegno: Saggi su Guido Cav-
alcanti. Naples: Liguori, 1976.
Cavalcanti, Guido. Rime: Con le rime di Iacopo Cavalcanti, ed.
Domenico De Robertis. Turin:-Einaudi, 1986.
Contini, Gianfranco, ed. Poeti del Duecento, 2 vols. Milan and
Naples: Ricciardi, 1960.
Corri, Maria. “La fi sionomia stilistica di Guido Cavalcanti.”
Rendiconti dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 8(5), 1950,
pp. 530–552.
——. La felicità mentale: Nuove prospettive per Cavalcanti e
Dante. Turin: Einaudi, 1983.
De Robertis, Domenico. Il libro della Vita Nuova. Florence:
Sansoni, 1961.
Favati, Guido. Inchiesta sul dolce stil nuovo. Florence: Le Mon-
nier, 1975.
Gorni, Guglielmo. “Lippo contro Lapo (sul Canone del Dolce Stil
Nuovo).” In Il nodo della lingua e il verbo d’Amore. Florence:
Olschki, 1981, pp. 99–124.
Kleinhenz, Christopher. The Early Italian Sonnet: The First
Century (1220–1321), Lecce: Milella, 1986.
Marti, Mario. Storia dello stil nuovo. Lecce: Miieila, 1974.
Nelson, Lowry, Jr., ed. The Poetry of Guido Cavalcanti. New
York: Garland, 1986.
Russell, Rinaldina. Tre versanti della poesia stilnovistics: Guiniz-
zelli, Cavalcanti, Dante. Bari: Adriatica, 1973.
Laurie ShepardCAVALCANTI, GUIDO