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mayhap's review
4.0
Poor Guido Cavalcanti. First, his BFF Dante immortalizes him in a work of genius that will be studied and footnoted for centuries to come, but also kind of strongly implies that he is following his father to Hell. (The language in Canto X is ambiguous.) Then he gets an English-language poet champion who ably translates his work ... and whose own personal and political views are so unsavory that his work tends to be approached by civilized people only tentatively and with caveats. Lady Fortune pays him only backhanded attentions.
Cavalcanti's love sonnets are abstruse and intellectual. A few are addressed to Dante, including his response to the first sonnet of the Vita Nuova (as Pound footnotes, Dante implicitly rejects Guido's interpretation of his dream, saying its true significance was not then seen by anyway). Another bears this charming translator's note: 'Anyone who can, fron the text as it stands, discern what happens to who in the final lines of this sonnet, is at liberty to emend my translation.'
Cavalcanti's love sonnets are abstruse and intellectual. A few are addressed to Dante, including his response to the first sonnet of the Vita Nuova (as Pound footnotes, Dante implicitly rejects Guido's interpretation of his dream, saying its true significance was not then seen by anyway). Another bears this charming translator's note: 'Anyone who can, fron the text as it stands, discern what happens to who in the final lines of this sonnet, is at liberty to emend my translation.'
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