[In the following excerpt, first published in Italian in 1870-71, de Sanctis offers an appreciation of Cavalcanti and describes how Dante advanced Cavalcanti's poetic descriptions of science.]

It is in the technique and outward forms of his works that Cino's artistic consciousness shows itself most clearly: his main preoccupation is to develop the musical elements of the language and of verse. Never before in any other poet had the language sounded so sweetly, fined down like lovely polished marble, with every harshness and inequality rubbed away. But an artist of more profound and serious qualities than Cino was Guido Cavalcanti. He too has a perfect technique—in fact, with Cavalcanti technique is a science. He was in love with his native language, gave up every other study in order to carve and fix it, and wrote a grammar and a work on the art of speaking. Villani says of him that “he took a delight in rhetorical studies, and for this reason brought the art of rhetoric with elegance and artifice into his composition of rhymes in the vulgar tongue,” from which it is clear what a great impression this new artifice, expounded as science and applied as art, must have made on the contemporaries of Guittone and Brunetto Latini. So Guido Cavalcanti became the head of the new school, the creator of the new style, eclipsing the fame of Guido Guinicelli:

Thus hath one Guido from the other snatch'd
The letter'd prize.(1)

But glory of language did not satisfy Guido. He looked upon language and poetry as mere accessories and ornaments to the substance, which was philosophy. And so he despised Virgil, because, says Boccaccio, “he considered philosophy of greater worth than poetry, as it truly is.” He was an extremely subtle dialectician, as we are told by Lorenzo de' Medici, and brought into his poetry all the finenesses of rhetoric and scholasticism. He aimed not only at saying things well, but also at saying things that were important in themselves. His canzone on Love was studied by his contemporaries in the spirit that one would bring to a philosophical treatise; they made comments on it as though it were Aristotle or St. Thomas; later, Ficino looked to find the doctrines of Plato in it. So Guido Cavalcanti was held to be supreme, not only as an artistic and elegant user of words, but also as a philosopher. This was the position he aimed at, and the one he attained. He was first among his contemporaries; they hailed him as both scientist and artist.

Yet Guido was less a scientific than a learned man. He served science by expounding it, not by leaving on it any trace of himself. And he was less an artist than an artisan. He had perfect understanding and command of the mechanical and technical sides of art, which is no small boast, but he only touched the surface of art. His glory is in those works in which he sought a relief and an outlet for his soul. It was then that without wishing it or knowing it he revealed himself as an artist and a poet. There are men whom their contemporaries and they themselves are incapable of appreciating. Cavalcanti was one of these: he was greater than he himself and his contemporaries knew.

Guido Cavalcanti was the first Italian poet worthy of the name, because he was one of the first to have the feeling and love of reality. The empty generalities of the troubadours, changed next into a rhetorical and scientific content, in the hands of Guido became living things when he wrote for his own delight and outlet. He then depicted the impressions and inner feelings of the soul. Poetry, which till then had meant thought and description, now began to narrate and represent, and not in the simple and crude manner of the ancient poets, but with that grace and finish which has made possible the language that Guido mastered so perfectly. Here, for instance, are two girls, excellently characterized, who snatch from his mouth his secret of love; there we get a youthful shepherdess whom he meets in the wood, and from that he sketches a scene of love taken from real life.

The subjects of these poems are the same as those of the troubadours, but with Guido they are reality; not merely ornamented and made pretty from the outside, but given in their substance, become character, images, feelings, that is to say, become life and action. We seem to be in the very soul of the poet; now he is joyous and serene, expressing himself with ineffable grace, as in the ballad of the two country girls; now penetrated with melancholy that melts sweetly into pleasant dreams of the imagination and tenderness of feeling, as in the ballad written as an exile at Sarzana, his swan-song, his foreshadowing of death. Here the scientist disappears, the rhetorician is forgotten. All is born from within, natural, sober, simple, with perfect proportion between the feeling and the expression. The poet is not thinking of pleasing, of being effective, of imposing on people with the subtlety of his doctrine and rhetoric. His material is himself—his feelings when in certain states of mind—and he writes with no other pretension than that of unburdening himself, and expanding. It was he who pointed out the way on which Dante was to go so far. Posterity might justly apply to him what Dante said of himself:

                                                                      Count of me but as one
Who am the scribe of Love; that, when he breathes,
Take up my pen, and, as he dictates, write:(2)

words which would not apply to the notary Lentino, nor to Guittone. These two remained outside of the dolce stil nuovo, the “sweet new style,” because they exaggerated their feelings and went beyond Nature, in order to satisfy, to please, their readers:

                                                            He that seeks a grace beyond,
Sees not the distance parts one style from other.(3)

Of this dolce stil nuovo the forerunner was Guinicelli, the workman was Cino, the poet was Cavalcanti. The new school was nothing other than a clearer consciousness of art. Philosophy by itself was no longer thought enough; form was demanded. Guittone d'Arezzo had ceased to be appreciated, although, as Lorenzo de' Medici says of him, he had a “very ornate philosophy, and was grave and sententious.” But he lacked style. His writing was “rather rugged and severe, and not illuminated by any sweet light.” And Benvenuto da Imola calls his words “rugged,” and commends him for his grave maxims, but not for his style. In Florence a new sense was being born, the sense of form.

In spite of so much ferocious political warfare, literature was flowering in the whole of Tuscany, and under the most varied aspects. Dante da Maiano, with his Sicilian Nina, was an echo of the troubadours; Guittone, Brunetto, Orbiciani da Lucca, were learned but rough poets, as also were the two Bolognese, Onesto and Semprebene. But already we feel the cult of form, the love of a fine style, in several poets. Dino Frescobaldi, Rustico di Filippo, Guido Novello, Lapo Gianni, Cecco d'Ascoli, make up the group from which the figure of Guido Cavalcanti emerges.

But very soon the name of Guido Cavalcanti was to be linked with that of Dante Alighieri, in a friendship that was to last unbroken till death. Dante's “new rhymes” appeared, making an impression so great that at once he rose to the side of Cavalcanti. He seemed to have achieved the ultimate ambition of all the poets of that time, that of expressing the profundities of science in a beautiful form. And so his canzone beginning. “Donne, che avete intelletto d'amore”—“Ladies that have intelligence in love”—was immensely popular, and still more the one beginning, “V oi, che intendendo il terzo ciel movete”—“You that with wisdom do the third Heaven move.”

Dante had these same opinions. The learned disciple of Bologna aimed at expounding science by poetizing, using means that were clear and open to the common intelligence. In the canzone where he exhorts women to despise the man who “from himself hath virtue far removed,” he says:

Ma perroché 'l mio dire util vi sia,
discenderò del tutto
in parte ed in costrutto
piú lieve, perché men grave s' intenda;
ché rado sotto benda
parola oscura giugne allo 'ntelletto;
per che parlar con voi si vuole aperto.

But that my speech may be useful to you, I will descend from the whole to the detail, and make my sentences more easy and the meaning more clear; for rarely under a veil do dark words reach the understanding; therefore my speech with you must be open.

And when he is forced to hide his ideas under a veil, he adds a comment in prose to explain his doctrine, for instance, the comment he makes on the canzone, “You that with wisdom do the third Heaven move.” Thinking that without the comment the canzone, taken by itself, is outside the common intelligence, he finishes:

Canzone, i' credo che saranno radi
color che tua ragione intendan bene,
tanto lor parli faticosa e forte;
onde, se per ventura egli addiviene
che tu dinanzi da persone vadi
che non ti paian d' essa bene accorte,
allor ti priego che ti riconforte,
dicendo lor, diletta mia novella:
—Ponete mente almen com'io son bella.

My song, I believe they will be but rare who will understand thy meaning rightly, so difficult and knotty is thy speech.

If, peradventure, thou take thy way into the presence of persons who seem not rightly to fathom it, then I pray thee, take heart again, O my last-born and well-beloved, and say to them, “At least take heed how beautiful I am.”

So Dante intended to proclaim the truths of science, now in the direct form of reasoning, now under the veil of allegory, but always in such a manner that even if the meaning of his verses was not understood by the majority of readers, his poetry would still have the innate value of being lovely and giving delight. Such was the theory of the new school in its highest development, an artistic conscientiousness grown more clear and more evolved. So great was his deference to scientific truth that he asked himself how love, not being substance but an accident, could be made to laugh and speak as though it were a person. And he adduces for his defence that rhymers who make verses in the vulgar tongue have the same privileges as have poets—a name that he assigns to the Latins. Many of the ancient poets, such as Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Horace, gave movement and speech to inanimate things; this he calls “rhyming under the clothing of figuration or of rhetorical colour,” and he dismisses as foolish those who at pleasure could not “denude their words of that clothing.” It is clear, then, that Dante and Cavalcanti, whom here he calls his “first friend,” have contempt both for those stupid rhymers who make use of rhetoric that was empty and void of meaning,⁴ and for those who have a content of naked science without rhetoric. In this fragment is the whole of the new school of poetry, which remained the last word of Italian criticism for many centuries: that which Tasso called “seasoning the truth with soft verses.”

As a result of these theories, with this habit of mind, many of the canzoni and sonnets were reasoning illumined by rhetoric, by coloured concepts. Of this type is his canzone on gentility or nobility: “Le dolci rime d'amor ch' i' solía …”—“The pleasant rhymes of love that I was wont …”—and the other: “Amor, tu vedi ben che questa donna …”—“O Love, thou well perceiv'st that this lady …” In the latter, under the rhetorical form of a loved woman, he describes the effects that the study of philosophy produces on his soul. The phenomena of love and Nature are less represented than explained scientifically, as is winter in the canzone: “Io sono venuto al punta della rota”—“The circle's point I have attained,” and love, in the canzone: “Amor, che muovi tua virtú dal cielo”—“O Love, who sendest down thy darts from Heaven,” and beauty, in the canzone: “Amor che nella mente mi ragiona”—“Love with delight discourses in my mind.”

The best known and most popular of Dante's allegorical and scientific canzoni is that of the three women, Uprightness, Bounty, and Temperance, germane to Love, who have been chased from the world and go about begging:

          Ciascuna par dolente e sbigottita,
come persona discacciata e stanca,
cui tutta gente manca
e cui virtute e nobiltá non vale.
Tempo fu giá nel quale,
secondo il lor parlar, furon dilette;
or sono a tutti in ira ed in non cale.

Each seems mournful and dismayed, like one who is weary and deserted by all, and for whom virtue and beauty avail nought. In days of old, according to their speech, they were beloved: now they are hated and shunned by all.

Here the poet does not reason, but relates and depicts. The scientific concept is conquered by the vivacity of the picture and the loftiness of the feeling. The rhetorical colour is not merely colour but is also substance.

These scientific canzoni of Dante show a degree of force and vivacity very different from those of the two Guidos. He was his own commentator; in his Vita Nuova and the Convivio he had explained the conception of his poems, the occasions that inspired them, and their forms. And in regard to technique and use of language, versifying and rhyme, he shows in his book De vulgari eloquentia that he was familiar with all the most secret artifices. These poems were accepted by his contemporaries as being perfect examples of their school: the maximum of doctrine under the most charming dress of rhetoric.

Dante's world of poetry was the same material that had been developing, but now it had greater variety and a clearer consciousness. Its god was Love—first in the wonderments, the torments, the imaginings of youth, later in mysticism and philosophic enthusiasm. Love can only work in gentle hearts, therefore lovers are called fine and courteous. Gentleness is not born from nobility or wealth, but from virtue. And yet the Virtues are sisters of Love and keep his arrow bright until they are honoured on earth. But virtue belongs to few, and so love is therefore “di pochi vivanda”—“the food of the few.” The object of love is beauty; not external, naked beauty, but the sweet fruit conceded only to those who are friends of virtue. Beauty can be perceived only by those who understand it: love was called “understanding” by the ancients, and Dante does not speak of “feeling love,” but of “having intelligence of love.” To satisfy love it is enough to see, to contemplate. Seeing is love; love is understanding.

          E chi la vede e non se n' innamora,
d' amor non averá mai intelletto.

He that can see it and not burn with love shall never have intelligence of love.

The celestial intelligences move the stars with wisdom: “You that with wisdom do the third Heaven move.” God moves the universe by thinking: “Costei pensò chi mosse l' universo”—“Of her He thought who launched the universe.”

Man's love is the “new intelligence, which draws him upward,” bringing him near to the primal intelligence. Woman is the exemplar of beauty, the “noble intellect”:

                                        … O nobile intelletto
oggi fu l' anno che nel ciel partisti.

O noble intellect! It is just a year today that thou art gone.

So woman is the face of knowledge, the lovely face of science, which enamours man and awakens the new intelligence in his heart and makes him understand. Woman, then, is science itself, and philosophy is her lovely garment: and this is beauty, the sweet fruit granted to few. Understanding is love, and love is to act according to understanding; for this reason philosophy is “the loving use of wisdom,” science become action through the medium of love. Virtue is nothing more than wisdom, the living in accordance with the dictates of science. Therefore the lover is called wise; and the woman is wise before being beautiful:

Beltate appare in saggia donna pui
che piace agli occhi.

Beauty seen in a virtuous woman will please the eyes.

With this philosophic mysticism is joined a religious mysticism, according to which the body is the veil of the spirit, and beauty is the light of truth, the face of God, supreme intelligence, contemplation of the angels and the saints. God, the angels, Paradise, all play their part. Theology and philosophy clasp hands.

In the works of Dante this content issued forth for the first time in its integrity and with perfect consciousness. It summarized the idealism of that day and took its natural form, which was allegory. If we add the work of the imagination, which gives to the figures so great a vivacity of colouring, we have the highest degree of perfection that could be hoped for in that era.

Notes

1. Purgatorio, XI, 97-98.

2. Purgatorio, XXIV, 52-54.

3. Ibid., 61-62.

4. He says: “This, my first friend and I know well about those who rhyme so stupidly.”

5. From the sonnet, “Era venuta nella mente mia.”—Translator.