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Cavalcanti's Family Origin
Florence - Italy
 The Estate of Villa Castelletti is located outside the hills West of Florence, just North of the Arno river, along the Lucchese plain – literally between Florence and Lucca (The historic heart of Florence is about 9 miles away). The estate grounds are set within an ancient park that is surrounded by forest. The main villa is spectacular, large and beautiful.
 The geographical location of Private Villa Castelletti and its Borgo is particularly happy, as very close to Florence, where million tourists arrive from all over the world, actacted by its artistic jewels; at the same time it is surrounded by the wonderful Tuscan countryside, famous for wine and olive-oil. Villa rental at its best!
 The origins of the villa date to the beginning of the 4th century AD. The oldest nobile landlord was the Strozzi family. Through the centuries the villa passed hands from the Strozzi to the Lapi, then to the Uguccioni, then the Cavalcanti (of whom the poet Guido belonged; he was a companion of Dante), then the Cattani-cavalcanti family. It was the Cavalcanti family who, in the 18th century, radically expanded the villa’s structure adding 2 outside walls, enlarging the central area, adding a second level and the characteristic top.
 In the following century, under the guidance of the Count Leopoldo Cattani Cavalcanti, the property became a model agricultural producing estate founding the Istituto Agrario Filantropico (Agricultural Philanthropic Institute). At the end of the 18th century, the Montagliari Counts (of German origin with the name “Mayer”) came to acquire the villa. Today the villa is managed by a historical society that promotes cultural initiatives and special events.
 Guido Cavalcanti (c. 1255–1300) Born to the noble and powerful family of the Cavalcanti, Guido was a celebrated poet whose work belongs, along with that of Dante, Lapo Gianni, Dino Frescobaldi and others, to the school of the dolce stil novo.Was an Italian poet who was a friend and colleague of Dante.
He was born in Florence and was the son of the Guelph Cavalcante de' Cavalcanti, whom Dante condemns to torment in The Inferno. As part of a political reconciliation between the Blacks and Whites, two factions of Guelphs, Guido married Beatrice the daughter of Ghibelline party leader Farinata degli Uberti. Unlike Dante, he was an atheist. His poetry explores the philosophy of love, and he also wrote prose on philosophy and oratory. When the Florentines tired of the party brawling and exiled the leaders of both factions, Cavalcanti was sent to Sarzana, where he died of fever.
Fifty-two of his poems have survived, all of which give voice to a tragic and cruel image of sentimental realities, marked by a profound pessimism. Cavalcanti's "Donna me prega," one of his most famous and complex poems, contributed to the lively 13th-century debate on the nature of love.
Poetry
Cavalcanti is best remembered for belonging to that small but influential group of Tuscan poets that started what is now known as Dolce Stil Novo, to which he contributed the following (note: translations provided in parentheses do not match the titles by which are widely known in English manuals but are meant to be a more literal rendering of the Italian originals): "Rosa fresca novella" (New, Fresh Rose), "Avete in vo' li fior e la verdura" (You Are Flowers in the Meadow), "Biltà di donna" (A Woman's Beauty), Chi è questa che vèn (Who's This Lady That Comes My Way), "Li mie' foll'occhi" (My Crazy Eyes), "L'anima Mia" (My Soul), "Guido Orlandi", "Da più a uno" (From Many to One), "In un boschetto" (In A Grove), "Messer Lapo Farinata degli Uberti", "Per ch'io no spero" (Because I Do Not Hope), "Voi che per gli occhi mi passaste il core" (see below), and "Donna me prega" (A Lady's Orders), a masterpiece of lyric verse and a small treatise on his philosophy of love. Starting from the model provided by the French troubadours, they took Italian poetry a step further and inaugurated the volgare illustre, that higher standard of Italian language that survives almost unchanged to the present day. The founder of this school, Guido Guinizzelli, a law professor at Bologna’s University wrote the first poem of this kind, a poem whose importance does not so much lie in its literary merits but in outlining what would the fundamentals of the Stil Novo program, which was further perfected by a second generation of poets, including Dante, Cino da Pistoia, Lapo Gianni, and Guido himself. As Dante wrote in his De Divina Eloquentia, I, XIII, 4:
"Sed quanquam fere omne Tusci in suo turpiloquio sint obtusi, nunnullos vulgaris excellentiam cognovisse sentimus, scilicit Guidonem, Lapum, et unum alium, Florentinos et Cynum Pistoriensem (...) (“Although most Tuscans are overwhelmed by their bad language, we think that someone has experimented the excellence of high vernacular, namely Guido, Lapo and another [i.e: Dante himself], all from Florence, and Cino da Pistoia”.
This second generation, active between the later 13th and early 14th centuries, however, is not a school in the literary sense of the term. Rather, it is a group of friends who share similar ethical and esthetic ideals though not without noticeable differences in their approach; Dante is probably the most spiritual and platonic in his portrayal of Beatrice (Vita Nuova), but Cino da Pistoia is able to write poetry in which “there is a remarkable psychological interest in love, a more tangible presence of the woman, who loses the abstract aura of Guinizzelli and Guido’s verse” (Giudice-Bruni), while Guido Cavalcanti’s production tends towards love as a source of torment and despair rather than happiness. An example in kind, and one of Guido’s most widely read lyrics is a sonnet entitled Voi che per gli occhi mi passaste il core (Transl. You, Whose Look Pierced through My Heart), dedicated, to his beloved Monna Vanna (i.e. Madonna Giovanna):
Voi che per gli occhi mi passaste ‘l core
e destaste la mente che dormìa,
guardate a l’angosciosa vita mia
che sospirando la distrugge amore
E’ ven tagliando di sì gran valore
che’ deboletti spiriti van via
riman figura sol en segnoria
e voce alquanta, che parla dolore.
Questa vertù d’amor che m’ha disfatto
Da’ vostri occhi gentil presta si mosse:
un dardo mi gittò dentro dal fianco.
Sì giunse ritto ‘l colpo al primo tratto,
che l’anima tremando si riscosse
veggendo morto ‘l cor nel lato manco.
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You whose look pierced through my heart
Waking up my sleeping mind
Have mercy on my miserable life
Which love is killing with his sighs.
So deep he cuts my soul
That its weak spirits do come off
Only the body is left in control
With a loud voice which cries its woes
This virtue of love, that has devastated me
Came from your heavenly eyes:
It threw an arrow into my side.
So straight was the first blow
That the soul, quivering, flitted to dodge it
When it realised the heart on the left was dead
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