Guido Cavalcanti
Dante:
"I come not of myself,
But he, who awaiteth there (i.e. Virgil), doth lead me through."
After these passages from the Commedia there should be small need of my writing introductions to the poems of Guido Cavalcanti, for if he is not among the major prophets, he has at least his place in the canon, in the second book of The Arts, with Sappho and Theocritus and all those who have sung, not all the modes of life, but some of them, unsurpassedly, those who in their chosen or fated field have bowed to no one.
It is conceivable that poetry of a far-off time or place requires a translation not only of word and of spirit, but of "accompaniment," that is, that the modern audience must in some measure be made aware of the mental content of the older audience, and of what these others drew from certain fashions of thought and speech. Six centuries of derivative convention and loose usage have obscured the exact significances of such phrases as: "The death of the heart," and "The departure of the soul."
Than Guido Cavalcanti, no psychologist of the emotions is more keen in his understanding, more precise in his expression; we have in him no rhetoric, but always a true description, whether it be of pain itself, or of the apathy that comes when the emotions and possibilities of emotion are ex-
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