Guido Cavalcanti

Guido Cavalcanti (c. 1255–1300) was a Florentine poet and philosopher, the leading figure after Guinizzelli of the dolce stil novo, the 'sweet new style' of love poetry. Born into a wealthy Guelf family, he was drawn into the strife between the Black and White factions of Florence and was banished in 1300, spending his exile at Sarzana, where he fell ill; he returned to the city and died that same year. Dante called him his 'first friend' and dedicated the Vita Nuova to him.

His surviving verse, about fifty pieces, treats love as a dark, near-fatal force acting on the soul and its spirits, and is among the most intense of its age. The texts given here are Dante Gabriel Rossetti's English versions in The Early Italian Poets (1861), the translator's own selection of twenty-nine poems, which follow the Italian forms (sonnet, ballata and canzone) and rhyme patterns. Poems that Rossetti prints as the replies of other poets, and Dante's sonnets to Guido, are not included.