Guido Cavalcanti (between 1250 and 1259 – August 1300) was a Florentine poet, as well as an intellectual influence on his best friend, Dante. His poems in their original Italian are available on Wikisource here.

Historical background

Cavalcanti was born in Florence at a time when the comune was beginning its economic, political, intellectual and artistic ascendancy as one of the leading cities of Renaissance. The disunited Italian peninsula was dominated by a political particularism that pitted each city-state one against the other, often with this factionalism contributing the fractious and sometimes violent political environments of each ''comune''. The domination of medieval religious interpretations of reality, morality and society were challenged by a rise of new urban culture across Europe that gradually supplanted rural, local, ecclesiastical and feudal ways of thinking. There was an accompanying return to study, interpret and emulate the classics, known as a revival of antiquity. New secular views laid the foundations for modern life in the Western Civilization. As Jacob Burckhardt, Swiss historian and author of the classic The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy described, “It was not the revival of antiquity alone, but its union with the genius of the Italian people which achieved the conquest of the western world.” In sum, Cavalcanti lived during and helped shape this time of great innovation that was spurred on by a desire to explore, create and experiment with new things.

The Politics of Florence

Cavalcanti was the son of Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti, a Guelph whom Dante condemns to torment in the sixth circle of his Inferno, where the heretics are punished. Unlike Dante, he was an atheist. As Giovanni Boccaccio (Decameron, VI, 9) wrote during the generation after Cavalcanti’s death, “''Si diceva tralla gente volgare che queste sue speculazioni erano solo in cercare se trovar si potesse che Iddio non fosse''” (People commonly said his speculations were only in trying to find that God did not exist).

During his lifetime, Florence was politically torn by the struggle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, factions supporting, respectively, the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor in central and northern Italy during the 12th and 13th centuries. Although the struggle for power between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire had originally arisen with the Investiture Conflict of the 11th century, it was subsequently fed by a desire of either the Papcy or Holy Roman Emperor either to share in or to control the economic boom that was taking place in the leading cities of northern Italy during this time.

The division between Guelphs and Ghibellines was especially important in Florence, although the two sides frequently rebelled against each other and took power in many of the other northern Italian cities as well. Essentially the two sides were now fighting either against German influence (in the case of the Guelphs), or against the temporal power of the Pope (in the case of the Ghibellines). In Florence and elsewhere the Guelphs usually included merchants and burghers, while the Ghibellines tended to be noblemen. After the Guelphs finally defeated the Ghibellines in 1289 at Campaldino and Caprona, Guelphs began to fight among themselves. By 1300 Florence was divided into the Black Guelphs and the White Guelphs. The Blacks continued to support the Papacy, while the Whites were opposed to Papal influence,

As part of a political reconciliation between the Blacks and Whites, two factions of Guelphs, Guido married Beatrice the daughter of Ghibelline party leader Farinata degli Uberti. In June 1300, when the Florentines had become tired of brawling between the Ghibellines and the Guelphs, the leaders of both factions were exiled and Cavalcanti was amongst them. 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.

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.

Dolce stil novo

Cavalcanti was a part of the Tuscan poetic movement known as the Dolce stil novo (Sweet New Style), whose members are referred to by their Tuscan name, the ''stilnovisti''. The formative influences on the ''stilnovisti'' came from two main sources.

First, there was the poetry of the troubadour and trobairitz, who began the tradition of courtly love, known by its then contemporary terms, as fin'amor, in the ducal and princely courts of Aquitaine, Provence, Champagne and ducal Burgundy, at the end of the eleventh century. Based on the Occitan language of south France, which produced this poetry, which was a part of Occitan literature, this courtly poetry spread throughout all European cultivated circles in the 12th and 13th centuries. (Many of its poets can be found here in this list of troubadours and trobairitz.)

Second, the poetry of the Sicilian School, which was a small community of Sicilian, and to a lesser extent, mainland Italian poets gathered around Frederick II, most of them belonging to his court, the Magna Curia. Headed by Giacomo da Lentini, they produced more than three-hundred poems of courtly love between 1230 and 1266, the experiment being continued after Frederick's death by his son, Manfredi. This school included Enzio, king of Sardinia, Pier delle Vigne, Inghilfredi, Stefano Protonotaro, Guido and Odo delle Colonne, Rinaldo d'Aquino, Giacomino Pugliese, Arrigo Testa, Mazzeo Ricco, Perceval Doria, and Frederick II himself.

The poets of Stilnovismo included the early forerunner Guido Guinizelli, Guido Cavalcanti and Dante, plus Cino da Pistoia, Lapo Gianni, Gianni Alfani, and Dino Frescobaldi. Far from being a derivative school of poetry that mimicked its French and Sicilian poetic ancestors, Stilnovismo brought an originality to and completely transformed the poetry of courtly love in that: 1) It was an urban poetry of the Tuscan commune, not of an aristocratic court. 2) It explored the philosophical, spiritual, psychological and social effects of love. 3) It championed the Tuscan vernacular. 4) It did all this while expressing the heart and mind of the poet in original verse that utilized the sonnet, ballata and canzone forms of poetry. Cavalcanti was a central part of this accomplishment.

Early Poetry

In one of his earlier poems, Guido transforms the imagery of ''fin’amor'', with its beautiful ladies and armed knights, into an idea that love has a philosophical component related to human intelligence and moral purity by equating it with a wise heart. He then proceeds to create a series of images of nature’s serene beauty, which he then explains are all transcended by his lady’s beauty, grace and noble heart; i.e., her emotions that are pure, based on wisdom, something he is incapable of.

{| |valign=top|

:Bilta di donna, e di saccente corre :e cavalieri armati che sien genti, :cantar d’augelli e ragionar d'amore, :adorni legni ’n mar forte correnti,

:aria serena quand’ appar l’albore, :e bianca neve scender senza venti, :rivera d’acqua e prato d’ogni fiore, :oro e argento, azzurro ’n ornamenti,

:cio passa la beltate e la valenza :de la mia donna e’l su’ gentil coraggio, :si che rassembra vile a chi cio guarda.

:E tant’ a piu d’ogn’altra canoscenza, :quanto lo cielo de la terra e maggio: :A simil di natura ben non tarda. |valign=top|

:beauty of women and wise hearts :and noble armed cavaliers :bird’s song and love’s reason :bedecked ships in strong seas

:serene air at dawn :and white snow falling windlessly :watery brooks and fields of all flowers :gold, silver, lapis lazuli in adornment-

:these are transcended by the beauty and grace :of my Lady for her gentle heart :which renders unworthy he who looks at her

:so she is wiser than anyone :as the heavens are greater than the earth :so to such a similar nature, goodness delays not |}

In this simple, but beautiful sonnet, we have, then, both something emblematic of the best poetry of the Dolce stil novo, while at the same an example of Cavalcanti's poetic idiom that is at once powerful, persuasive and, here, mellifluous.

The crowning achievement of Cavalcanti’s poetic youth is his ''canzone'' ''Io non pensava che lo cor giammai'' in which he embodies his philosophical thoughts in a vernacular masterpiece. An analysis of two passages from this fifty-six line poem reveals his core ideas on love.

{| |valign=top|

:Io non pensava che lo cor giammai :avesse di sospir' tormento tanto, :che dell'anima mia nascesse pianto :mostrando per lo viso agli occhi morte. : Non sentìo pace né riposo alquanto :poscia ch'Amore e madonna trovai, :lo qual mi disse: - Tu non camperai, :ché troppo è lo valor di costei forte - . |valign=top|

:i never used to think that my heart :could have such tormented laments :that my soul would be born crying :revealing a face with dead eyes :i felt neither peace nor even rest :in the place where I found love and my Lady – :who said to me – you won’t escape :because my strength is too great – |}

Influenced by Averroës, the twelfth century Islamic philosopher who commented on Aristotle, Cavalcanti saw humans with three basic capacities: the vegetative, which humans held in common with plants; the sensitive, which man shared with animals; and, the intellectual, which distinguished humans from the two lower forms. Averroës maintained that the proper goal of humanity was the cultivation of the intellect according to reason. Further, Averroës maintained that the intellect was part of a universal consciousness that came into the body at birth and returned to the universal consciousness after death. As such, it meant there was no afterlife, and, as well, the thing that gives an individual his or her identity was not the intellect, but the sensitive faculty, the appetites and desires of the body. Hence, the goal for Averroës and Cavalcanti was the perfection of the sensitive capacity through reason in order to achieve a balance between the body’s physical desires and the intellect. This balance was considered the ''buon perfetto'', the "good perfection." Guido thought this balance could not be achieved, which is why he speaks of “tormented laments” that makes his soul cry, that make his eyes dead, so he can feel “neither peace nor even rest in the place where I found love and my Lady.”

{| |valign=top|

:Di questa donna non si può contare: :ché di tante bellezze adorna vène, :che mente di qua giù no la sostene :sì che la veggia lo 'ntelletto nostro. :Tant' è gentil che, quand' eo penso bene, :l'anima sento per lo cor tremare, :sì come quella che non pò durare …. |valign=top|

:of her one couldn’t sing :other than her coming in a beauty :that our lowly minds couldn’t sustain :what our intellects saw :so gently noble is she that when she fills my mind :my soul feels my heart shiver :so it can’t continue …. |}

This passage explains the conflict between the sensitive and intellectual, as Guido’s heart shivers as his “our lowly minds couldn’t sustain what our intellects saw.” All this is driven by the lofty beauty of his lady.

Poetic Maturity

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 with the excellence of high vernacular, namely Guido, Lapo and another [i.e: Dante himself], all from Florence, and Cino da Pistoia”.

Scholars have commented on the Dolce stil novo with Dante as 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:

{| |valign=top|

: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. |valign=top|

: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. |}

Although there are many poems that exemplify Cavalcanti’s poetic maturity, ''Certe mie rime a te mandar vogliendo'' is unparalleled in its originality, for here Guido adapts his medium of love to speak of his inner psychological state and the uncertainty of Dante’s reaction in this example of occasional poetry. This is creativity at its highest, for Cavalcanti transforms the medium into a unique response to a real world problem.

{| |valign=top|

:Certe mie rime a te mandar vogliendo :del greve stato che lo meo cor porta, :Amor aparve a me in figura morta :e disse: - Non mandar, ch'i' ti riprendo,

:però che, se l'amico è quel ch'io 'ntendo, :e' non avrà già s' la mente accorta, :ch'udendo la 'ngiuliosa cosa e torta :ch'i' ti fo sostener tuttora ardendo,

:ched e' non prenda s' gran smarrimento :ch'avante ch'udit' aggia tua pesanza :non si diparta da la vita il core.

:E tu conosci ben ch'i' sono Amore; :però ti lascio questa mia sembianza :e pòrtone ciascun tu' pensamento. – |valign=top|

:When I wanted to send you certain poems :about my heart’s grave state :Love appeared as a dead figure :saying – I warn you not to send them

:because if the friend is who I imagine :his mind won’t be ready :to hear of the injustice I make you burn with

:he won’t take such a large loss :as if his heart would leave him :if he heard of the gravity of things

:and you well know I’m Love :for this reason I leave you my semblance :and carry away your thoughts – |}

Guido tells Dante of how desire, how “wanting” has ruined his heart. He dramatically reinforces his condition through the appearance of Love—the medieval and Renaissance view of Love as Cupid matured into a grown man—in the guise of death, as if Guido is indeed on the verge of leaving this world. Love then warns him not to send this poem to Dante, who is not ready to deal with Guido’s condition, given the depth of friendship Dante feels for him. Love also acknowledges that what he makes humanity suffer is “unjust,” In sum, because of the love he has felt in life, Guido is ruined, and because of the depth of friendship Dante holds for him, Guido fears he may be ruined as well, seeing him in such a state.

Poetic Masterpiece "Donna me prega"

Through his study of Averroës, and perhaps due to his native temperament, Cavalcanti held the pessimistic view that humans were limited in the sort of ultimate attainment they could achieve. The intellect could never be brought into a harmony based on reason with bodily desires. This affinity for the ideas of Averroës would have lent to his reputation that he was an atheist.

The crowning achievement of Guido’s poetic career is his masterpiece, the philosophical canzone ''Donna me prega'' (A woman asks me). It is a full fledged treatise of his personal thoughts and beliefs on love. Through it, he transforms all that came before him and influenced him: courtly love, the troubadours, the Sicilian School and his peers of the Dolce stil novo.

Guido says he was prompted to write it by his mistress, according to a formula very widespread in the tradition of love poetry. As such, Guido's doctrine draws on the greatest medieval poets or scholars, such as Chrétien de Troyes and Brunetto Latini. There are several hints to the Roman de la Rose, then considered the "Bible" of courtly love. For example in the famous line "a man who does not experience it [love] cannot picture it", a common axiom variously quoted from the troubadours to Dante's Vita Nuova. "Donna me prega", a remarkable anatomy of love, is divided into five stanzas of fourteen variously rhymed lines of eleven syllables each. The subject is divided into eight chapters dealing with

#Where love is located in the human body #What causes it #What his faculties (virtues) are #His power (what it can do or cause) #His essence (what it is made of) #His motions (or alterations it causes in the human body or mind) #What makes us call it love #The possibility of probing its effects using our sight.

In short, the sensitive, like the rational soul is located in the brain, but does not produce love-feelings unless the eyes meet those of a particular woman who has exclusive affinity to him. This complies with Aristotle's theory of cause and effect, whereby no effect can proceed from an object if the object has not the potential to accomplish it. When a woman's look meet the eyes of a man, the potential for love grows into passion, a spirit or fluid that possesses all his faculties. Such a passion needs more and more love to satisfy its ever-growing appetite, until (when desire outstrips human limits) he is led to insanity and death.

This highly philosophical ''canzone'' was extremely influential, and it was commented upon by authors including Dino del Garbo, pseudo-Giles, Giles of Rome, Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Iacopo Mini, and Fracesco de Vieri (see Enrico Fenzi, ''La canzone d'amore di Guido Cavalcanti e i suoi antichi commenti'', Melangolo, 1999).

While this has very little to do with modern psychology, Guido's philosophy of ''spiritelli'' was part of the guiding principles of Arabic medicine, considered very advanced at Dante's times. The merit of such philosophy in Cavalcanti's verse is its ability to describe what goes through the poet’s mind in a very detailed, personal manner, creating sensuous, autobiographic poetry. This is revolutionary compared to the rhetoric and academic-seeming manner of the Sicilian and Neo-Sicilian Schools that had preceded the Dolce Stil Novo and, perhaps, a sign of the changing times.

Legacy

Cavalcanti is widely regarded as the first major poet of Italian literature: Dante calls him "mentor". In the Commedia he says through Oderisi da Gubbio that "...ha tolto l'uno a l'altro Guido / la gloria de la lingua" (Purgatory XI, 97-8): the verse of the latter, younger Guido (Cavalcanti) has surpassed that of the former, (Guido) Guinizzelli, the founder of Dolce Stil Novo. Dante sees in Guido his mentor: his meter, his language deeply inspire his work (cfr. De Divina Eloquentia), though Guido's esthetic materialism would be taken a step further to an entirely new spiritual, Christian vision of the gentler sex, as personified by Beatrice whose soul becomes Dante's guide to Paradise.

Guido's controversial personality and beliefs attracted the interest of Boccaccio, who made him one of the most famous heretical characters in his Decameron, helping popularise the belief about his atheism. Cavalcanti would be studied with perhaps more interest during the Renaissance, by such scholars as Luigi Pulci and Pico della Mirandola. By passing to Dante's study of the Italian language, Guido's style has influenced all those who, like cardinal Pietro Bembo, helped turn the ''volgare illustre'' into today's Italian language.

Cavalcanti was to become a strong influence on a number of writers associated with the development of Modernist poetry in English. This influence can be traced back to the appearance, in 1861, of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's ''The Early Italian Poets'', which featured translations of works by both Cavalcanti and Dante.

The young Ezra Pound admired Rossetti and knew his Italian translations well. quoting extensively from them in his 1910 book ''The Spirit of Romance''. In 1912, Pound published his own translations under the title ''The Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti'' and in 1936, he edited the Italian poet's works as ''Rime''. A reworked translation of ''Donna me prega'' formed the bulk of Canto XXXVI in Pound's long poem ''The Cantos''. Pound's main focus was on Cavalcanti's philosophy of love and light, which he viewed as a continuing expression of a pagan, neo-platonic tradition stretching back through the troubadours and early medieval Latin lyrics to the world of pre-Christian polytheism. Pound also composed a three-act opera titled ''Cavalcanti'' at the request of Archie Harding, a producer at the BBC. Though never performed in his lifetime, excerpts are available on audio CD.

Pound's friend and fellow modernist T. S. Eliot used an adaptation of the opening line of ''Perch'i' no spero di tornar giammai'' ("Because I do not hope to turn again") to open his 1930 poem ''Ash Wednesday''.

See also

Dante Alighieri

Dolce Stil Novo

Italian literature

Florence

Sicilian School

Notes

References

Cavalcanti's Rime in original Italian available through Wikisource.

Maria Corti, ''La felicità mentale. Nuove prospettive per Cavalcanti e Dante'', Turin, Einaudi, 1983.

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

Giudice, A. and Bruni, G. ''Problemi e scrittori della letteratura italiana''. Turin, Paravia, 1973.

Dante, ''Divina Commedia'', ed. Natalino Sapegno. Florence, La Nuova Italia, 1982.

AA.VV., ''Antologia della poesia italiana'', ed C.Segre and C. Ossola. Turin, Einaudi, 1999

Migliorini, B. ''Storia della lingua Italiana''. Florence, Sansoni, 1987

Dante, ''Vita Nuova''. Milan, Garzanti, 1982.

Guido Cavalcanti, ''The Complete Poems'', edited and translated by Marc Cirigliano. New York, Italica Press, 1992; ISBN 978-0-934977-27-2

Guido Cavalcanti, ''Complete Poems'', translated by Anthony Mortimer. Oneworld Classics.

External links

Some translations

Alphabetical index of the rhymes

Category:1250s births Category:1300 deaths Category:Characters in The Decameron Category:Italian atheists Category:Italian poets Category:Sonneteers Category:Dante Alighieri

af:Guido Cavalcanti als:Guido Cavalcanti de:Guido Cavalcanti es:Guido Cavalcanti fr:Guido Cavalcanti hr:Guido Cavalcanti it:Guido Cavalcanti la:Guido Cavalcanti nl:Guido Cavalcanti pl:Guido Cavalcanti pt:Guido Cavalcanti ro:Guido Cavalcanti ru:Кавальканти, Гвидо scn:Guidu Cavalcanti sh:Guido Cavalcanti fi:Guido Cavalcanti sv:Guido Cavalcanti tr:Guido Cavalcanti zh:吉多·卡瓦尔康蒂

Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
name	Dante Alighieri
alt	head-and-chest side portrait of Dante in red and white coat and cowl
birth date	Mid-May to mid-June 1265
birth place	Florence
death date	September 14, 1321 (aged about 56)
death place	Ravenna
occupation	Statesman, poet, language theorist
nationality	Italian
movement	''Dolce Stil Novo''
influences	Aristotle, Homer, Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Boethius, Avicenna, Averroes, Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Richard of St. Victor, Boethius of Dacia
influenced	almost all Western literature, Samuel Beckett, Giovanni Boccaccio, Geoffrey Chaucer, Jorge Luis Borges, William Blake, Sandro Botticelli, Anthony Burgess, T. S. Eliot, John Milton }}

Durante degli Alighieri (; ; 1265–1321), commonly known as Dante, was a major Italian poet of the Middle Ages. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called '''' and later called '''' by Boccaccio, is considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.

In Italy he is known as '''' ("the Supreme Poet") or just ''''. Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio are also known as "the three fountains" or "the three crowns". Dante is also called the "Father of the Italian language".

Life

Dante was born in Florence, Italy. The exact date of Dante's birth is not known, although it is generally believed to be around 1265. This can be deduced from autobiographic allusions in ''La Divina Commedia'', "the Inferno" (''Halfway through the journey we are living'', implying that Dante was around 35 years old, as the average lifespan according to the Bible (Psalms 89:10, Vulgate) is 70 years; and as the imaginary travel took place in 1300, Dante must have been born around 1265). Some verses of the ''Paradiso'' section of the ''Divine Comedy'' also provide a possible clue that he was born under the sign of Gemini—''"As I revolved with the eternal twins, I saw revealed from hills to river outlets, the threshing-floor that makes us so ferocious"'' (XXII 151-154). In 1265 the Sun was in Gemini approximately during the period 11 May to 11 June.

Dante claimed that his family descended from the ancient Romans (''Inferno'', XV, 76), but the earliest relative he could mention by name was Cacciaguida degli Elisei (''Paradiso'', XV, 135), of no earlier than about 1100. Dante's father, Alighiero di Bellincione, was a White Guelph who suffered no reprisals after the Ghibellines won the Battle of Montaperti in the middle of the 13th century. This suggests that Alighiero or his family enjoyed some protective prestige and status, although some suggest that the politically inactive Alighiero was of such low standing that he was not considered worth exiling.

Dante's family had loyalties to the Guelphs, a political alliance that supported the Papacy and which was involved in complex opposition to the Ghibellines, who were backed by the Holy Roman Emperor. The poet's mother was Bella degli Abati. She died when Dante was not yet ten years old, and Alighiero soon married again, to Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffi. It is uncertain whether he really married her, as widowers had social limitations in these matters, but this woman definitely bore two children, Dante's half-brother Francesco and half-sister Tana (Gaetana). When Dante was 12, he was promised in marriage to Gemma di Manetto Donati, daughter of Manetto Donati, member of the powerful Donati family. Contracting marriages at this early age was quite common and involved a formal ceremony, including contracts signed before a notary. Famously, Dante had by this time fallen in love with another, Beatrice Portinari (known also as Bice), whom he first met when he was nine years old. Years after his marriage to Gemma, he claims to have met Beatrice again; although he wrote several sonnets to Beatrice, he never mentioned his wife Gemma in any of his poems. (Dante scholar Dorothy L. Sayers, following the lead of Giovanni Boccaccio, asserts that Dante did not actually marry Gemma until the mid-1290s, after Beatrice's death.)

Dante fought with the Guelph cavalry at the Battle of Campaldino (June 11, 1289). This victory brought forth a reformation of the Florentine constitution. To take any part in public life, one had to be enrolled in one of the city's many commercial or artisan guilds, so Dante entered the guild of physicians and apothecaries. In the following years, his name is occasionally found recorded as speaking or voting in the various councils of the republic. A substantial portion of minutes from such meetings from 1298-1300 were lost during the Second World War, however, and consequently the true extent of Dante's participation in the city's councils is somewhat uncertain.

Dante had several children with Gemma. As often happens with significant figures, many people subsequently claimed to be Dante's offspring; however, it is likely that Jacopo, Pietro, Giovanni and Antonia were truly his children. Antonia later became a nun with the name of Sister Beatrice.

Education and poetry

Not much is known about Dante's education, and it is presumed he studied at home or in a chapter school attached to a church or monastery in Florence. It is known that he studied Tuscan poetry, at a time when the Sicilian School (''Scuola poetica Siciliana''), a cultural group from Sicily, was becoming known in Tuscany. His interests brought him to discover the Provençal poetry of the troubadours and the Latin poetry of classical antiquity, including Cicero, Ovid, and especially Virgil.

Dante claims to have first met Beatrice Portinari, daughter of Folco Portinari, at age nine, and claims to have fallen in love "at first sight", apparently without even speaking to her. He saw her frequently after age 18, often exchanging greetings in the street, but he never knew her well; he effectively set the example for so-called courtly love, a phenomenon developed in French and Provençal poetry of the preceding centuries. Dante's experience of such love was typical, but his expression of it was unique. It was in the name of this love that Dante gave his imprint to the ''Dolce Stil Novo'' (''Sweet New Style'', a term which Dante himself coined) and would join other contemporary poets and writers in exploring the themes of Love (''Amore''), which had never been so emphasized before. Love for Beatrice (as in a different manner Petrarch would show for his Laura) would apparently be the reason for poetry and for living, together with political passions. In many of his poems, she is depicted as semi-divine, watching over him constantly and providing spiritual instruction, sometimes harshly. When Beatrice died in 1290, Dante sought refuge in Latin literature. The ''Convivio'' reveals that he had read Boethius's ''De consolatione philosophiae'' and Cicero's ''De amicitia''. He then dedicated himself to philosophical studies at religious schools like the Dominican one in Santa Maria Novella. He took part in the disputes that the two principal mendicant orders (Franciscan and Dominican) publicly or indirectly held in Florence, the former explaining the doctrine of the mystics and of Saint Bonaventure, the latter presenting Saint Thomas Aquinas' theories.

At 18, Dante met Guido Cavalcanti, Lapo Gianni, Cino da Pistoia and soon after Brunetto Latini; together they became the leaders of the ''Dolce Stil Novo''. Brunetto later received a special mention in the ''Divine Comedy'' (''Inferno'', XV, 28), for what he had taught Dante. ''Nor speaking less on that account, I go With Ser Brunetto, and I ask who are His most known and most eminent companions''. Some fifty poetical components by Dante are known (the so-called ''Rime'', rhymes), others being included in the later ''Vita Nuova'' and ''Convivio''. Other studies are reported, or deduced from ''Vita Nuova'' or the ''Comedy'', regarding painting and music.

Florence and politics

Dante, like most Florentines of his day, was embroiled in the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict. He fought in the Battle of Campaldino (June 11, 1289), with the Florentine Guelphs against Arezzo Ghibellines, then in 1294 he was among the escorts of Charles Martel of Anjou (grandson of Charles I of Naples, more commonly called Charles of Anjou) while he was in Florence. To further his political career, he became a pharmacist. He did not intend to actually practice as one, but a law issued in 1295 required that nobles who wanted public office had to be enrolled in one of the Corporazioni delle Arti e dei Mestieri, so Dante obtained admission to the apothecaries' guild. This profession was not entirely inapt, since at that time books were sold from apothecaries' shops. As a politician, he accomplished little, but he held various offices over a number of years in a city undergoing political unrest.

After defeating the Ghibellines, the Guelphs divided into two factions: the White Guelphs (''Guelfi Bianchi'')—Dante's party, led by Vieri dei Cerchi—and the Black Guelphs (''Guelfi Neri''), led by Corso Donati. Although initially the split was along family lines, ideological differences rose based on opposing views of the papal role in Florentine affairs, with the Blacks supporting the Pope and the Whites wanting more freedom from Rome. Initially the Whites were in power and expelled the Blacks. In response, Pope Boniface VIII planned a military occupation of Florence. In 1301, Charles de Valois, brother of Philip the Fair, the king of France, was expected to visit Florence because the Pope had appointed him peacemaker for Tuscany. But the city's government had treated the Pope's ambassadors badly a few weeks before, seeking independence from papal influence. It was believed that Charles de Valois would eventually have received other unofficial instructions. So the council sent a delegation to Rome to ascertain the Pope's intentions. Dante was one of the delegates.

Exile and death

Boniface quickly dismissed the other delegates and asked Dante alone to remain in Rome. At the same time (November 1, 1301), Charles de Valois entered Florence with Black Guelphs, who in the next six days destroyed much of the city and killed many of their enemies. A new Black Guelph government was installed and Messer Cante de' Gabrielli da Gubbio was appointed ''Podestà'' of Florence. Dante was condemned to exile for two years and ordered to pay a large fine. The poet was still in Rome where the Pope had "suggested" he stay and was therefore considered an absconder. He did not pay the fine in part because he believed he was not guilty and in part because all his assets in Florence had been seized by the Black Guelphs. He was condemned to perpetual exile, and if he returned to Florence without paying the fine, he could be burned at the stake. (The city council of Florence finally passed a motion rescinding Dante's sentence in June 2008.)

He took part in several attempts by the White Guelphs to regain power, but these failed due to treachery. Dante, bitter at the treatment he received from his enemies, also grew disgusted with the infighting and ineffectiveness of his erstwhile allies and vowed to become a party of one. Dante went to Verona as a guest of Bartolomeo I della Scala, then moved to Sarzana in Liguria. Later, he is supposed to have lived in Lucca with a lady called Gentucca, who made his stay comfortable (and was later gratefully mentioned in ''Purgatorio'', XXIV, 37). Some speculative sources claim he visited Paris between 1308 and 1310 and others, even less trustworthy, take him to Oxford: these claims, first occurring in Boccaccio's book on Dante several decades after his death, seem inspired by readers being impressed with the poet's wide learning and erudition. Evidently Dante's command of philosophy and his literary interests deepened in exile, when he was no longer busy with the day-to-day business of Florentine domestic politics, and this is evidenced in his prose writings in this period, but there is no real indication that he ever left Italy. Despite these years of disputed whereabouts, Dante's ''Immensa Dei dilectione testante'' to Henry VII of Luxembourg confirms his residence "beneath the springs of Arno, near Tuscany" in March of 1311. In 1310, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII of Luxembourg marched 5,000 troops into Italy. Dante saw in him a new Charlemagne who would restore the office of the Holy Roman Emperor to its former glory and also re-take Florence from the Black Guelphs. He wrote to Henry and several Italian princes, demanding that they destroy the Black Guelphs. Mixing religion and private concerns, he invoked the worst anger of God against his city and suggested several particular targets that coincided with his personal enemies. It was during this time that he wrote ''De Monarchia'', proposing a universal monarchy under Henry VII.

At some point during his exile, he conceived of the ''Comedy'', but the date cannot be specified. The work is much more assured, and on a larger scale, than anything he had produced in Florence, and it is likely that he would have undertaken such a work only after he realized that his personal political ambitions, which had been central to him up to his banishment, would have to be put on hold for some time, possibly forever. It is also noticeable that Beatrice has returned to his imagination with renewed force and with a wider meaning than in the ''Vita Nuova''; in ''Convivio'' (written c.1304-07) he had declared that the memory of this youthful romance belonged to the past. One of the earliest outside indications that the poem was under way is a notice by the law professor Francesco da Barberino, tucked into his ''I Documenti d'Amore'' (Lessons of Love) and written probably in 1314 or early 1315: speaking of Virgil, da Barberino notes in appreciative words that Dante followed the Roman classic in a poem called the Comedy, and that the setting of this poem (or part of it) was the underworld, that is, Hell. Unfortunately, the brief note gives no incontestable indication that he himself had seen or read even ''Inferno'', or that this part had been published at the time, but it indicates that composition was well under way and that the sketching of the poem may likely have begun some years before. We know that Inferno had been published by 1317; this is established by quoted lines interspersed in the margins of contemporary dated records from Bologna, but there is no certainty whether the three parts of the poem were published each part in full or a few cantos at a time. ''Paradiso'' seems to have been published posthumously.

In Florence, Baldo d'Aguglione pardoned most of the White Guelphs in exile and allowed them to return; however, Dante had gone too far in his violent letters to ''Arrigo'' (Henry VII), and the sentence on him was not recalled.

In 1312, Henry assaulted Florence and defeated the Black Guelphs, but there is no evidence that Dante was involved. Some say he refused to participate in the assault on his city by a foreigner; others suggest that he had become unpopular with the White Guelphs too and that any trace of his passage had carefully been removed. In 1313, Henry VII died (from fever), and with him any hope for Dante to see Florence again. He returned to Verona, where Cangrande I della Scala allowed him to live in a certain security and, presumably, in a fair amount of prosperity. Cangrande was admitted to Dante's Paradise (''Paradiso'', XVII, 76).

In 1315, Florence was forced by Uguccione della Faggiuola (the military officer controlling the town) to grant an amnesty to people in exile, including Dante. But Florence required that as well as paying a sum of money, these exiles would do public penance. Dante refused, preferring to remain in exile. When Uguccione defeated Florence, Dante's death sentence was commuted to house arrest, on condition that he go to Florence to swear that he would never enter the town again. Dante refused to go. His death sentence was confirmed and extended to his sons. Dante still hoped late in life that he might be invited back to Florence on honorable terms. For Dante, exile was nearly a form of death, stripping him of much of his identity and his heritage. He addresses the pain of exile in ''Paradiso'', XVII (55-60), where Cacciaguida, his great-great-grandfather, warns him what to expect: {| align="center" |- |''... Tu lascerai ogne cosa diletta'' || ... You shall leave everything you love most: |- |'' più caramente; e questo è quello strale'' || this is the arrow that the bow of exile |- |'' che l'arco de lo essilio pria saetta.'' || shoots first. You are to know the bitter taste |- |''Tu proverai sì come sa di sale'' || of others' bread, how salty it is, and know |- |'' lo pane altrui, e come è duro calle'' || how hard a path it is for one who goes |- |'' lo scendere e 'l salir per l'altrui scale ...'' || ascending and descending others' stairs ... |- |}

As for the hope of returning to Florence, he describes it as if he had already accepted its impossibility, (''Paradiso'', XXV, 1–9):

{| align="center" |- |''Se mai continga che 'l poema sacro'' || If it ever come to pass that the sacred poem |- |''al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra,'' ||to which both heaven and earth have set their hand |- |''sì che m'ha fatto per molti anni macro,'' ||so as to have made me lean for many years |- |''vinca la crudeltà che fuor mi serra'' ||should overcome the cruelty that bars me |- |''del bello ovile ov'io dormi' agnello,'' ||from the fair sheepfold where I slept as a lamb, |- |''nimico ai lupi che li danno guerra;'' ||an enemy to the wolves that make war on it, |- |''con altra voce omai, con altro vello'' ||with another voice now and other fleece |- |''ritornerò poeta, e in sul fonte'' ||I shall return a poet and at the font |- |''del mio battesmo prenderò 'l cappello ...'' ||of my baptism take the laurel crown ... |- |} Prince Guido Novello da Polenta invited him to Ravenna in 1318, and he accepted. He finished the ''Paradiso'', and died in 1321 (at the age of 56) while returning to Ravenna from a diplomatic mission to Venice, possibly of malaria contracted there. Dante was buried in Ravenna at the Church of San Pier Maggiore (later called San Francesco). Bernardo Bembo, praetor of Venice in 1483, took care of his remains by building a better tomb.

{|align=center |

|} On the grave, some verses of Bernardo Canaccio, a friend of Dante, dedicated to Florence: :''parvi Florentia mater amoris'' :"Florence, mother of little love"

The first formal biography of Dante was the ''Vita di Dante'' (also known as ''Trattatello in laude di Dante'') written after 1348 by Giovanni Boccaccio; several statements and episodes of it are seen as unreliable by modern research. However, an earlier account of Dante's life and works had been included in the ''Nuova Cronica'' of the Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani.

Eventually, Florence came to regret Dante's exile, and made repeated requests for the return of his remains. The custodians of the body at Ravenna refused to comply, at one point going so far as to conceal the bones in a false wall of the monastery. Nevertheless, in 1829, a tomb was built for him in Florence in the basilica of Santa Croce. That tomb has been empty ever since, with Dante's body remaining in Ravenna, far from the land he loved so dearly. The front of his tomb in Florence reads ''Onorate l'altissimo poeta''—which roughly translates as "Honour the most exalted poet". The phrase is a quote from the fourth canto of the ''Inferno'', depicting Virgil's welcome as he returns among the great ancient poets spending eternity in Limbo. The continuation of the line, ''L'ombra sua torna, ch'era dipartita'' ("his spirit, which had left us, returns"), is poignantly absent from the empty tomb.

In 2007, a reconstruction of Dante's face was completed in a collaborative project. Artists from Pisa University and engineers at the University of Bologna at Forli completed the revealing model, which indicated that Dante's features were somewhat different than was once thought.

Works

:''See also Works by Dante Alighieri.'' The ''Divine Comedy'' describes Dante's journey through Hell (''Inferno''), Purgatory (''Purgatorio''), and Paradise (''Paradiso''), guided first by the Roman poet Virgil and then by Beatrice, the subject of his love and of another of his works, ''La Vita Nuova''. While the vision of Hell, the ''Inferno,'' is vivid for modern readers, the theological niceties presented in the other books require a certain amount of patience and knowledge to appreciate. ''Purgatorio,'' the most lyrical and human of the three, also has the most poets in it; ''Paradiso,'' the most heavily theological, has the most beautiful and ecstatic mystic passages in which Dante tries to describe what he confesses he is unable to convey (e.g., when Dante looks into the face of God: "all'alta fantasia qui mancò possa"—"at this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe," ''Paradiso,'' XXXIII, 142).

By its serious purpose, its literary stature and the range—both stylistically and in subject matter—of its content, the Comedy soon became a cornerstone in the evolution of Italian as an established literary language. Dante was more aware than most earlier Italian writers of the variety of Italian dialects and of the need to create a literature beyond the limits of Latin writing at the time, and a unified literary language; in that sense he is a forerunner of the renaissance with its effort to create vernacular literature in competition with earlier classical writers. Dante's in-depth knowledge (within the realms of the time) of Roman antiquity and his evident admiration for some aspects of pagan Rome also point forward to the 15th century. Ironically, while he was widely honoured in the centuries after his death, the Comedy slipped out of fashion among men of letters: too medieval, too rough and tragical and not stylistically refined in the respects that the high and late renaissance came to demand of literature.

He wrote the ''Comedy'' in a language he called "Italian", in some sense an amalgamated literary language mostly based on the regional dialect of Tuscany, with some elements of Latin and of the other regional dialects. The aim was to deliberately reach a readership throughout Italy, both laymen, clergymen and other poets. By creating a poem of epic structure and philosophic purpose, he established that the Italian language was suitable for the highest sort of expression. In French, Italian is sometimes nicknamed ''la langue de Dante.'' Publishing in the vernacular language marked Dante as one of the first (among others such as Geoffrey Chaucer and Giovanni Boccaccio) to break free from standards of publishing in only Latin (the language of liturgy, history, and scholarship in general, but often also of lyric poetry). This break set a precedent and allowed more literature to be published for a wider audience—setting the stage for greater levels of literacy in the future. However, unlike Boccaccio, Milton or Ariosto, Dante didn't really become an author read all over Europe until the romantic era. To the romantics, Dante, like Homer and Shakespeare, was a prime example of the "original genius" who sets his own rules, creates persons of overpowering stature and depth and goes far beyond any imitation of the patterns of earlier masters and who, in turn, cannot really be imitated. Throughout the 19th century, Dante's reputation grew and solidified, and by the time of the 1865 jubilee, he had become solidly established as one of the greatest literary icons of the Western world.

Readers often cannot understand how such a serious work may be called a "comedy". In Dante's time, all serious scholarly works were written in Latin (a tradition that would persist for several hundred years more, until the waning years of the Enlightenment) and works written in any other language were assumed to be more trivial in nature. Furthermore, the word "comedy", in the classical sense, refers to works which reflect belief in an ordered universe, in which events not only tended towards a happy or "amusing" ending, but an ending influenced by a Providential will that orders all things to an ultimate good. By this meaning of the word, as Dante himself wrote in a letter to Cangrande I della Scala, the progression of the pilgrimage from Hell to Paradise is the paradigmatic expression of comedy, since the work begins with the pilgrim's moral confusion and ends with the vision of God. Dante's other works include the ''Convivio'' ("The Banquet") a collection of his longest poems with an (unfinished) allegorical commentary; ''Monarchia'', a summary treatise of political philosophy in Latin, which was condemned and burned after Dante's death by the Papal Legate Bertrando del Poggetto, which argues for the necessity of a universal or global monarchy in order to establish universal peace in this life, and this monarchy's relationship to the Roman Catholic Church as guide to eternal peace; ''De vulgari eloquentia'' ("On the Eloquence of Vernacular"), on vernacular literature, partly inspired by the ''Razos de trobar'' of Raimon Vidal de Bezaudun; and, ''La Vita Nuova'' ("The New Life"), the story of his love for Beatrice Portinari, who also served as the ultimate symbol of salvation in the ''Comedy.'' The ''Vita Nuova'' contains many of Dante's love poems in Tuscan, which was not unprecedented; the vernacular had been regularly used for lyric works before, during all the thirteenth century. One of the most famous poems is ''Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare'', which many Italians can recite by heart. However, Dante's commentary on his own work is also in the vernacular—both in the ''Vita Nuova'' and in the ''Convivio''—instead of the Latin that was almost universally used. References to ''Divina Commedia'' are in the format (book, canto, verse), e.g., (''Inferno'', XV, 76).

See also

References

Further reading

Gardner, Edmund Garratt (1921). ''Dante'', London, Pub. for the British academy by H. Milford, Oxford University Press.

Hede, Jesper. (2007). ''Reading Dante: The Pursuit of Meaning''. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Scott, John A. (1996). ''Dante's Political Purgatory'', Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press.

Seung, T. K. (1962). ''The Fragile Leaves of the Sibyl: Dante's Master Plan''. Westminster, MD: Newman Press.

Toynbee, Paget (1898) ''A Dictionary of the Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante''. London, The Clarendon Press.

Whiting, Mary Bradford (1922). ''Dante the Man and the Poet''. Cambridge, England. W. Heffer & Sons, ltd.

External links

Category:1265 births Category:1321 deaths Category:People from Florence Category:14th-century Latin writers Aligheri, Dante Category:Christian writers Category:Epic poets Category:Italian poets Category:Italian political theorists Category:Italian politicians Category:Italian Roman Catholics Category:Medieval poets Category:Roman Catholic writers Category:Sonneteers

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