Donna me prega

   by Guido Cavalcanti

(ca. 1290)

   Guido CAVALCANTI’s Donna me prega, (A lady asks me) is one of the most often anthologized and discussed poems in Italian literature. In the poem, Cavalcanti says he is writing the poem at the request of a lady in order to define the phenomenon of love. In his first stanza, he outlines the poem, announcing the specific aspects of love he intends to “demonstrate”:

   where it dwells, and who created it,

   its influence and potency,

   its essence, its effects,

   the pleasure which gives it the name of love,

   and whether it is visible.

   (Goldin 1973, 325, ll. 10–14)

   In addition, Cavalcanti expresses three other themes that become characteristic of his poetry: First, love, as pictured here and elsewhere in his poetry, is an overwhelming and often negative force; second, only the truly noble in heart are able to understand love or its poetry; and third, the terms he will use to describe love will come from learned sciences. Love is, he says:

   an accident that is often cruel,

   and so unmerciful, it is called love:

   . . .

   and now I speak to those who understand,

   for I do not think that one whose heart is base

   can follow such an argument:

   because unless I can use the methods of natural philosophy

   I am unwilling to demonstrate

   where it dwells and who created it,

   (Goldin 1973, 323–25, ll. 2–10)

   These last two themes Cavalcanti took and refined from his great predecessor, Guido GUINIZELLI. But the extent of Cavalcanti’s learned allusions was never approached by Guinizelli. In the remainder of Donna me prega, Cavalcanti goes on to discuss love in familiar terms to scholastic philosophers like Albertus Magnus or Thomas AQUINAS, or perhaps a more direct influence would be the Muslim philosopher AVERROËS. Love becomes destructive because a man mistakes the image of his beloved, held within his memory, for the highest good, and seeks to attain it though, in the woman, it is unattainable.Here and elsewhere, he uses terms drawn from medieval psychological and medical theory, developing a doctrine of “spirits” that dominate the internal landscape of the mind, in which most of the drama of Cavalcanti’s love affairs occurs. While Dante borrowed much from Cavalcanti, including the psychological imagery and the spirits, the exclusive attitude about lovers, and the internalization of the love story, for Dante love was a very positive force, and one that ultimately leads him to Paradise in the Divine Comedy. Nevertheless, Cavalcanti’s influence, through this and other poems, was tremendous.