Complete Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti

by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

  Such scenes as the one related above had become common things in Florence, which kept on its course from bad to worse till Pope Boniface VII resolved on sending a legate to propose certain amendments in its scheme of government by Priori, or representatives of the various arts and companies. These proposals, however, were so ill received, that the legate, who arrived in Florence in the month of June 1300, departed shortly afterwards greatly incensed, leaving the city under a papal interdict. In the ill-considered tumults which ensued we again hear of Guido Cavalcanti.

  ‘It happened’ (says Giovanni Villani in his History of Florence) ‘that in the month of December (1300) Messer Corso Donati with his followers, and also those of the house of the Cerchi and their followers, going armed to the funeral of a lady of the Frescobaldi family, this party defying that by their looks would have assailed the one the other; whereby all those who were at the funeral having risen up tumultuously and fled each to his house, the whole city got under arms, both factions assembling in great numbers, at their respective houses. Messer Gentile de’ Cerchi, Guido Cavalcanti, Baldinuccio and Corso Adimari, Baschiero della Tosa and Naldo Gherardini, with their comrades and adherents on horse and on foot, hastened to St Peter’s Gate to the house of the Donati. Not finding them there they went on to San Pier Maggiore, where Messer Corso was with his friends and followers; by whom they were encountered and put to flight, with many wounds and with much shame to the party of the Cerchi and to their adherents.’

  By this time we may conjecture as probable that Dante, in the arduous position which he then filled as chief of the nine Priori on whom the Government of Florence devolved, had resigned for far other cares the sweet intercourse of thought and poetry which he once held with that first friend of his who had now become so factious a citizen. Yet it is impossible to say how much of the old feeling may still have survived in Dante’s mind when, at the close of the year 1300 or beginning of 1301, it became his duty, as a faithful magistrate of the republic, to add his voice to those of his colleagues in pronouncing a sentence of banishment on the heads of both the Black and White factions, Guido Cavalcanti being included among the latter. The Florentines had been at last provoked almost to demand this course from their governors, by the discovery of a conspiracy, at the head of which was Corso Donati (while among its leading members was Simone de’ Bardi, once the husband of Beatrice Portinari), for the purpose of inducing the Pope to subject the republic to a French peace-maker (Paciere), and so shamefully free it from its intestine broils. It appears therefore that the immediate cause of the exile to which both sides were subjected lay entirely with the ‘Black’ party, the leaders of which were banished to the Castello della Pieve in the wild district of Massa Traberia, while those of the ‘White’ faction were sent to Sarzana, probably (for more than one place bears the name) in the Genovesato. ‘But this party’ (writes Villani) ‘remained a less time in exile, being recalled on account of the unhealthiness of the place, which made that Guido Cavalcanti returned with a sickness, whereof he died. And of him was a great loss; seeing that he was a man, as in philosophy, so in many things deeply versed; but therewithal too fastidious and prone to take offence.’ His death apparently took place in 1301.

  When the discords of Florence ceased, for Guido, in death, Dante also had seen their native city for the last time. Before Guido’s return he had undertaken that embassy to Rome which bore him the bitter fruit of unjust and perpetual exile: and it will be remembered that a chief accusation against him was that of favour shown to the White party on the banishment of the factions.

  Besides the various affectionate allusions to Guido in the Vita Nuova, Dante has unmistakably referred to him in at least two passages of the Commedia. One of these references is to be found in those famous lines of the Purgatory (C. xi) where he awards him the palm of poetry over Guido Guinicelli (though also of the latter he speaks elsewhere with high praise), and implies at the same time, it would seem, a consciousness of his own supremacy over both.

  ‘Lo, Cimabue thought alone to tread

  The lists of painting; now doth Giotto gain

  The praise, and darkness on his glory shed.

  Thus hath one Guido from another ta’en

  The praise of speech, and haply one hath pass’d

  Through birth, who from their nest will chase the twain.’

  (Cayley’s Translation)

  The other mention of Guido is in that pathetic passage of the Hell (C. x) where Dante meets among the lost souls Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti: —

  All roundabout he looks, as though he had

  Desire to see if one was with me else.

  But after his surmise was all extinct,

  He weeping said: ‘If through this dungeon blind

  Thou guest by loftiness of intellect, -

  Where is my son, and wherefore not with thee?’

  And I to him: Of myself come I not:

  He who there waiteth leads me thoro’ here,

  Whom haply in disdain your Guido had.”

  * * * * *

  Raised upright of a sudden, cried he: ‘How

  Didst say He bad? Is he not living still?

  Doth not the sweet light strike upon his eyes?’

  When he perceived a certain hesitance

  Which I was making ere I should reply,

  He fell supine, and forth appeared no more.

  Dante, however, conveys his answer afterwards to the spirit of Guido’s father, through another of the condemned also related to Guido, Farinata degli Uberti, with whom he has been speaking meanwhile: -

  Then I, as in compunction for my fault,

  Said: ‘Now then shall ye tell that fallen one

  His son is still united with the quick.

  And, if I erst was dumb to the response,

  I did it, make him know, because I thought

  Yet on the error you have solved for me.’

  (Translated by W. M. Rossetti)

  The date which Dante fixed for his vision is Good Friday of the year 1300. A year later, his answer must have been different. The love and friendship of his Vita Nuova had then both left him. For ten years Beatrice Portinari had been dead, or (as Dante says in the Convito) ‘lived in heaven with the angels and on earth with his soul’. And now, distant and probably estranged from him, Guido Cavalcanti was gone too.

  Among the Tales from Franco Sacchetti, and in the Decameron of Boccaccio, are two anecdotes relating to Guido. Sacchetti tells us how, one day that he was intent on a game at chess, Guido (who is described as ‘one who perhaps had not his equal in Florence’) was disturbed by a child playing about, and threatened punishment if the noise continued. The child, however, managed slily to nail Guido’s coat to the chair on which he sat, and so had the laugh against him when he rose soon afterwards to fulfil his threat. This may serve as an amusing instance of Guido’s hasty temper, but is rather a disappointment after its magniloquent heading, which sets forth how ‘Guido Cavalcanti, being a man of great valour and a philosopher, is defeated by the cunning of a child’.

  The ninth Tale of the sixth Day of the Decameron relates a repartee of Guido’s, which has all the profound platitude of mediaeval wit. As the anecdote, however, is interesting on other grounds, I translate it here.

  You must know that in past times there were in our city certain goodly and praiseworthy customs no one of which is now left, thanks to avarice, which has so increased with riches that it has driven them all away. Among the which was one whereby the gentlemen of the outskirts were wont to assemble together in divers places throughout Florence, and to limit their fellowships to a certain number, having heed to compose them of such as could fitly discharge the expense. Of whom to-day one, and to-morrow another, and so all in turn, laid tables each on his own day for all the fellowship. And in such wise often they did honour to strangers of worship and also to citizens. They all dressed alike at least once in the year, and the most notable among them rode together through the city; also at seasons they he
ld passages of arms, and specially on the principal feast-days, or whenever any news of victory or other glad tidings had reached the city. And among these fellowships was one headed by Messer Betto Brunelleschi, into the which Messer Betto and his companions had often intrigued to draw Guido di Messer Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti; and this not without cause, seeing that not only he was one of the best logicians that the world held, and a surpassing natural philosopher (for the which things the fellowship cared little), but also he exceeded in beauty and courtesy, and was of great gifts as a speaker; and everything that it pleased him to do, and that best became a gentleman, he did better than any other; and was exceeding rich and knew well to solicit with honourable words whomsoever he deemed worthy. But Messer Betto had never been able to succeed in enlisting him; and he and his companions believed that this was through Guido’s much pondering which divided him from other men. Also because he held somewhat of the opinion of the Epicureans, it was said among the vulgar sort that his speculations were only to cast about whether he might find that there was no God. Now on a certain day Guido having left Or San Michele, and held along the Corso degli Adimari as far as San Giovanni (which oftentimes was his walk); and coming to the great marble tombs which now are in the Church of Santa Reparata, but were then with many others in San Giovanni; he being between the porphyry columns which are there among those tombs, and the gate of San Giovanni which was locked; - it so chanced that Messer Betto and his fellowship came riding up by the Piazza di Santa Reparata, and seeing Guido among the sepulchres, said, ‘Let us go and engage him.’ Whereupon, spurring their horses in the fashion of a pleasant assault, they were on him almost before he was aware, and began to say to him, ‘Thou, Guido, wilt none of our fellowship; but lo now! when thou shalt have found that there is no God, what wilt thou have done?’ To whom Guido, seeing himself hemmed in among them, readily replied, ‘Gentlemen, ye are at home here, and may say what ye please to me.’ Wherewith, setting his hand on one of those high tombs, being very light of his person, he took a leap and was over on the other side; and so having freed himself from them, went his way. And they all remained bewildered, looking on one another; and began to say that he was but a shallow-witted fellow, and that the answer he made was as though one should say nothing; seeing that where they were, they had not more to do than other citizens, and Guido not less than they. To whom Messer Betto turned and said thus: ‘Ye yourselves are shallow-witted if ye have not understood him. He has civilly and in a few words said to us the most uncivil thing in the world; for if ye look well to it, these tombs are the homes of the dead, seeing that in them the dead are set to dwell; and here he says that we are at home; giving us to know that we and all other simple unlettered men, in comparison of him and the learned, are even as dead men; wherefore, being here, we are at home.’ Thereupon each of them understood what Guido had meant, and was ashamed; nor ever again did they set themselves to engage him. Also from that day forth they held Messer Betto to be a subtle and understanding knight.

  In the above story mention is made of Guido Cavalcanti’s wealth, and there seems no doubt that at that time the family was very rich and powerful. On this account I am disposed to question whether the Canzone at page 168 (where the author speaks of his poverty) can really be Guido’s work, though I have included it as being interesting if rightly attributed to him; and it is possible that, when exiled, he may have suffered for the time in purse as well as person. About three years after his death, on the 10th June, 1304, the Black party plotted together and set fire to the quarter of Florence chiefly held by their adversaries. In this conflagration the houses and possessions of the Cavalcanti were almost entirely destroyed; the flames in that neighbourhood (as Dino Compagni records) gaining rapidly in consequence of the great number of waxen images in the Virgin’s shrine at Or San Michele; one of which, no doubt, was the very image resembling his lady to which Guido refers in a sonnet. After this, their enemies succeeded in finally expelling from Florence the Cavalcanti family, greatly impoverished by this monstrous fire, in which nearly two thousand houses were consumed.

  Guido appears, by various evidence, to have written, besides his poems, a treatise on Philosophy, and another on Oratory, but his poems only have survived to our day. As a poet, he has more individual life of his own than belongs to any of his predecessors; by far the best of his pieces being those which relate to himself, his loves and hates. The best known, however, and perhaps the one for whose sake the rest have been preserved, is the metaphysical canzone on the Nature of Love, beginning ‘Donna mi priega’, and intended, it is said, as an answer to a sonnet by Guido Orlandi, written as though coming from a lady, and beginning, Onde si muove e donde nasce Amore?’ On this canzone of Guido’s there are known to exist no fewer than eight commentaries, some of them very elaborate, and written by prominent learned men of the middle ages and renaissance; the earliest being that by Egidio Colonna, a beatified churchman who died in 1316; while most of the too numerous Academic writers on Italian literature speak of this performance with great admiration as Guido’s crowning work. A love-song which acts as such a fly-catcher for priests and pedants looks very suspicious; and accordingly, on examination, it proves to be a poem beside the purpose of poetry, filled with metaphysical jargon, and perhaps the very worst of Guido’s productions. Its having been written by a man whose life and works include so much that is impulsive and real, is easily accounted for by scholastic pride in those early days of learning. I have not translated it, as being of little true interest; but was pleased lately, nevertheless, to meet with a remarkably complete translation of it by the Rev. Charles T. Brooks, of Cambridge, United States. The stiffness and cold conceits which prevail in this poem may be found disfiguring much of what Guido Cavalcanti has left, while much besides is blunt, obscure, and abrupt: nevertheless, if it need hardly be said how far he falls short of Dante in variety and personal directness, it may be admitted that he worked worthily at his side, and perhaps before him, in adding those qualities to Italian poetry. That Guido’s poems dwelt in the mind of Dante is evident by his having appropriated lines from them (as well as from those of Guincelli) with little alteration, more than once, in the Commedia.

  Towards the close of his life, Dante, in his Latin treatise De Vulgari Eloquio, again speaks of himself as the friend of a poet - this time of Cino da Pistoia. In an early passage of that work he says that ‘those who have most sweetly and subtly written poems in modern Italian are Cino da Pistoia and a friend of his’. This friend we afterwards find to be Dante himself; as among the various poetical examples quoted are several by Cino followed in three instances by lines from Dante’s own lyrics, the author of the latter being again described merely as ‘Amicus ejus’. In immediate proximity to these, or coupled in two instances with examples from Dante alone, are various quotations taken from Guido Cavalcanti; but in none of these cases is anything said to connect Dante with him who was once ‘the first of his friends’. As commonly between old and new, the change of Guido’s friendship for Cino’s seems doubtful gain. Cino’s poetry, like his career, is for the most part smoother than that of Guido, and in some instances it rises into truth and warmth of expression; but it conveys no idea of such powers, for life or for work, as seem to have distinguished the ‘Cavicchia’ of Messer Corso Donati. However, his one talent (reversing the parable) appears generally to be made the most of, while Guido’s two or three remain uncertain through the manner of their use.

  Cino’s Canzone addressed to Dante on the death of Beatrice, as well as his answer to the first sonnet of the Vita Nuova, indicate that the two poets must have become acquainted in youth, though there is no earlier mention of Cino in Dante’s writings than those which occur in his treatise on the Vulgar Tongue. It might perhaps be inferred with some plausibility that their acquaintance was revived after an interruption by the sonnet and answer at p. 148, and that they afterwards corresponded as friends till the period of Dante’s death, when Cino wrote his elegy. Of the two sonnets in whi
ch Cino expresses disapprobation of what he thinks the partial judgements of Dante’s Commedia, the first seems written before the great poet’s death, but I should think that the second dated after that event, as the Paradise, to which it refers, cannot have become fully known in its author’s lifetime. Another sonnet sent to Dante elicited a Latin epistle in reply, where we find Cino addressed as ‘frater carissime’. Among Cino’s lyrical poems are a few more written in correspondence with Dante, which I have not translated as being of little personal interest.

  Guittoncino de’ Sinibuldi (for such was Cino’s full name) was born in Pistoia, of a distinguished family, in the year 1270. He devoted himself early to the study of law, and in 1307 was Assessor of Civil Causes in his native city. In this year, and in Pistoia, the endless contest of the ‘Black’ and ‘White’ factions again sprang into activity; the ‘Blacks’ and Guelfs of Florence and Lucca driving out the ‘Whites’ and Ghibellines, who had ruled in the city since 1300. With their accession to power came many iniquitous laws in favour of their own party; so that Cino, as a lawyer of Ghibelline opinions, soon found it necessary or advisable to leave Pistoia, for it seems uncertain whether his removal was voluntary or by proscription. He directed his course towards Lombardy, on whose confines the chief of the ‘White’ party, in Pistoia, Filippo Vergiolesi, still held the fortress of Pitecchio. Hither Vergiolesi had retreated with his family and adherents when resistance in the city became no longer possible; and it may be supposed that Cino came to join him not on account of political sympathy alone; as Selvaggia Vergiolesi, his daughter, is the lady celebrated throughout the poet’s compositions. Three years later, the Vergiolesi and their followers, finding Pitecchio untenable, fortified themselves on the Monte della Sambuca, a lofty peak on the Apennines; which again they were finally obliged to abandon, yielding it to the Guelfs of Pistoia at the price of eleven thousand lire. Meanwhile the bleak air of the Sambuca had proved fatal to the lady Selvaggia, who remained buried there, or, as Cino expresses it in one of his poems,