Intelligence

INTELLIGENCE. - Allegorical poem in nona rima of 309 stanzas by an unknown author (the attribution to Dino Compagni is uncertain), but certainly composed at the end of the 13th century or in the early 14th.

It sings of a most beautiful woman, luxuriously dressed, and describes her golden crown adorned with 60 stones (st. 16-58), her gracious company and her sumptuous palace in the East divided into 12 parts and adorned with representations of the triumph of Love (st. 71-76), of the stories of Caesar (st. 77-216), of Alexander (st. 216-39), of the Trojan War (st. 240-86), of the Round Table (st. 287-88). The woman, her company, her palace, are a complicated symbol of the Intelligenza, which dwells in the soul and shines all the way to God: «e mai nessun piacer no le si serra... e chi l'è servidor già mai non erra». The material is drawn from lapidaries, from French romances or their reworkings and from medieval Latin literature, and overloads the slender plot, which is moreover lightened by a delicate sense of nature and by a gentle enchantment of stilnovistic tone for the beauty of the woman.

Alberto Chiari