The
simplicity and strength of their feeling, the vigorous delineation of
fact, the precise expression and rounding off of their sonnets and
other poems, herald the coming of a Dante. Some political sonnets of
the Guelphs and Ghibellines (1260-1270) have about them the ring of his
passion, and others remind us of his sweetest lyrical notes.
Of his own theoretical view of the sonnet, we are unfortunately
ignorant, since the last books of his work, 'De vulgari eloquentia,' in
which he proposed to treat of ballads and sonnets, either remained
unwritten or have been lost. But, as a matter of fact, he has left us
in his Sonnets and 'Canzoni' a treasure of inward experience. And in
what a framework he has set them! The prose of the 'Vita Nuova,' in
which he gives an account of the origin of each poem, is as wonderful
as the verses themselves, and forms with them a uniform whole, inspired
with the deepest glow of passion. With unflinching frankness and
sincerity he lays bare every shade of his joy and his sorrow, and molds
it resolutely into the strictest forms of art. Reading attentively
these Sonnets and 'Canzoni' and the marvelous fragments of the diary of
his youth which lie between them, we fancy that throughout the Middle
Ages the poets have been purposely fleeing from themselves, and that he
was the first to seek his own soul.
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