Guido Cavalcanti

Guido Cavalcanti (c. 1255 in Florence, † 1300 ) was an Italian poet.

Life and work

Guido Cavalcanti was born in 1255 in Florence, the son of a wealthy family of merchants. His father Cavalcante de ' Cavalcanti - Dante in his Inferno represents the circle of hell Criminal Epicureans and heretics - belonged to the party of the Guelphs and went after the victory of the Ghibellines in 1260 to Lucca into exile. 1266 the father returned to Florence and married his son Guido in 1267 with Beatrice from the Ghibelline family of Farinata degli Uberti.

Guido Cavalcanti took since the 80s active part in the political dissensions in Florence and took it as his father, the interests of the Guelphs and their ' white ' fraction. In 1284 he was one - together with Dino Compagni and Brunetto Latini - the Council of the Commune, in 1294 he was temporarily occupied by a ban on political activity, and in June 1300 he was appointed by the Priory, which his friend Dante belonged, along with other leaders the white and the black banished from Florence. In exile in Sarzana, he fell ill, presumably of malaria, and as the sentence of banishment was repealed in the same year, he returned seriously ill back to Florence, where he died in August.

As a poet Guido Cavalcanti counts with Dante, Dino Frescobaldi and Cino da Pistoia of the main representatives of style of the Dolce stil novo. From him 53 poems ( sonnets, canzoni, and ballads ) are obtained, remove the borrowed from the Occitan Trobadordichtung courtly love concept to an over-molded with natural philosophical and medical content doctrine of the fateful power of love, which in this case more of Cavalcanti than by his peers a pessimistic attitude in their pathological and destructive characteristics is emphasized. His most famous work is the canzone Donna mi prega that has already been provided by Dino del Garbo with a Latin commentary and to this day is considered one of the most important documents for the Amordoktrin Italian Duecento.

With its sought linguistic and rhetorical difficulty Cavalcanti 's poems are explicitly created not on width effect, but the reception in an elite group of like-minded poets and scholars. His poetry has sustained not only to Dante ( who dedicated his Vita nova and praised him as the leader among the " famosi Trovatori " ) and other poets of his time, but also worked on Petrarch and Marsilio Ficino.