Guido Cavalcanti. “Sonnet (to Dante Alighieri). He reports, in a feigned Vision, the successful Issue of Lapo Gianni's Love.”

The sonnet inevitably recalls the opening sonnet in Dante's Vita Nuova. DGR's subtitle, however, which refers to “a feigned vision”, amounts to an important interpretive gloss on Cavalcanti's text, turning it into a kind of skeptical critique of Lapo Gianni's love relations with Lady Lagia. Cavalcanti's famous response to Dante's famous sonnet shows that he recognizes a true vision of love as well as a verse that itself keeps true to such a vision. It's clear that DGR is asking us to read this sonnet in an ironical way. The fact is underscored by the next sonnet in DGR's collection, which directly criticizes the character of Lapo's love.

The rhyme scheme in the translation departs slightly from the source text, which was Cicciaporci (Sonnet XXIX, page 15).

An early translation, late 1840s.

The translation was first published in 1861 in The Early Italian Poets; it was reprinted in 1874 in Dante and his Circle.