Commentary Purg XXVI 112

For the rarity of Dante's use of the honorific voi, here given to Guido, see C.Purg.XIX.131.

If Guido's poems are dolci (sweet), in what way are they different from those of Dante that are written in the 'sweet new style' ([Purg XXIV 57])? This is a question that has had a variety of answers. Some make Guido the first practitioner of the 'sweet new style' (which is impossible, in Dante's view, given his precisions at [Purg XXIV 49-51] that make his canzone 'Donne ch'avete,' written at least ten years after Guido's death, the first of the 'new' poems that constitute the dolce stil novo). The better understanding is that Guido Guinizzelli, Guido Cavalcanti, others among the Tuscans, and surely Dante himself, all wrote in the 'sweet style' (the most effective demonstration of this is found in Leonardi [Leon.2001.1]). But what both Guidos, the early Dante, and just about everybody else failed to do was to find the 'new style' that Dante developed from his understanding of Guinizzelli's sweet style of praise, a mode that he took one step farther when he developed his own theologized poetics of Beatrice. In that he was the first, and had perhaps no more than one companion (Cino da Pistoia, who also wrote 'theologically' of Beatrice after her death). This is what the evidence of the texts seems to suggest. In short, Dante honors Guinizzelli for being what he was, as far as the younger poet was concerned, the 'father' of the dolce stil novo, but not one of its practitioners. Thus we may understand that a number of poets wrote in the 'sweet style,' but hardly any of them achieved the new 'sweet style' that is the hallmark of Dante's praise of Beatrice. In all aspects of this debate, it is essential to remember that we are trying (or should, at any rate, be trying) to negotiate an answer from what Dante said happened, not from what actually happened (or what we imagine actually happened).

Lino Pertile, with whom this writer disagrees cordially about a number of issues, including this one, some ten years ago suggested, thoughtfully and usefully, that the interpretation advanced here boiled down to understanding the phrase dolce stil novo as though it had been ordered alla rovescia, that is as though Dante had written it as 'novo stil dolce' (which he might easily have done, but chose not to). In other words, Guinizzelli had written in the 'old' stil dolce, while Dante's theologized Beatrice made for a sweet 'style' that is radically novo. Further, in this line of analysis it is possible that Dante thought of his own former poetry in celebration of other women as being similar to Guinizzelli's, as lacking precisely the theological 'edge' that the prose of the Vita nuova (and the later poetry of the Commedia) gave to Beatrice, thus making a breakthrough that the younger Dante turned his back on. For instance, Casella's song in Purgatorio II is referred to as deeply affecting its auditor, Dante himself. The poet marks the moment in the following terms: 'la dolcezza ancor dentro mi suona' (the sweetness sounds within me still -- verse 114). Are we to think of the second ode of Convivio, 'Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona,' as being in the intellectualizing 'style' of Guinizzelli, praising his lady as being the repository of every value except the most important one, at least in a Christian poet? and thus as falling short of the dolce stil novo? This would again set the poetry in praise of the donna gentile against that in praise of Beatrice, the allegorical poetry of earthly love against a poetry based in a Psalm (113) itself based on the Exodus (see Hollander [Holl.1990.1]).