STIL NUOVO. - Also dolce stil nuovo, an expression that Dante, Purg., XXIV, 57, puts in the mouth of Bonagiunta Orbicciani, to indicate a new poetic manner different from that followed by the notary Jacopo da Lentini, by Guittone d'Arezzo and by Orbicciani himself.
The initiator of this new poetic manner in Bologna had been Guido Guinizelli, whom Dante calls (Purg. XXVI, 97-99): "the father / of me and of the others, my betters, who ever / used sweet and graceful rhymes of love." Certainly not without intention, Dante brings in Bonagiunta, since it was precisely he, in a famous sonnet to Guinizelli (cf. Rimatori siculo-toscani del Dugento, 1st series, edited by G. Zaccagni - A. Parducci, Bari 1915, p. 79).
he reproaches him for having "changed the manner / of the pleasing sayings of love, / of the form, of the being, from where it was, / in order to surpass every other troubadour." This means that the Bolognese poet had deepened, more than the preceding troubadours had done, the nature of amorous passion and the subject in which it resides, as later Guido Cavalcanti would also try to do in the famous and obscure canzone Donna me prega. In doing this Guinizelli began to make use of subtle philosophical concepts, drawn from Aristotelian psychology, and of a language unusual for preceding rhymers. For this reason Orbicciani accused him of obscurity and of too much "subtlety," as well as of wanting to "betray song by force of writing." The Bolognese poet replied to the rhymer of Lucca: "Birds of strange kinds fly through the air / and have diverse workings, / nor are they all of one flight nor of one daring. / God and nature and the world set things in degrees / and made unequal minds and understandings." To the Lucchese, in short, it seemed that there was only one "manner" of poetizing; Guinizelli, on the other hand, held that there were as many "manners" as there are "minds and understandings" of men whom God has made unequal. And as for "subtlety," "obscure speech" and "betraying song by force of writing," he recalls that among birds there are not only sparrows and finches, nightingales and larks, but also falcons and eagles: "nor are they all of one flight nor of one daring." Every poet "must heed his state and his nature," since every poet has his own poetic world, in accordance with his spiritual interests, his education and his culture.
The "manner" that Bonagiunta reproaches the Bolognese rhymer for having changed is that of the Notary and of Guittone. The uniform and tedious repetition of certain obligatory motifs ("love is a desire that comes from the heart...", the cruelty of the beloved woman, the hope of "merzede" or "guiderdone," and so on) constituted the poetic "manner" of the rhymers dear to the heart of the gluttonous Lucchese. And to express these trite concepts, a rough and labored language, bristling with archaisms and dialectal turns that grated on the ear of a generation educated to the polished forms of Florentine speech and to the harmony of the verse of the "other Guido" and of Dante. That among the rhymers of the old "manner" there were true poets, and that some of their rhymes still have the freshness of a clear spring of living water, demonstrates only that poetics is something different from poetry. This, however, does not prevent the fact that, alongside poetry, there arise from time to time poetics or "manners" of poetizing, from that of the Sicilians to Petrarchism, to Marinism, to Romanticism, to Hermeticism. The s. n. is a reaction, in the name of poetry, against one of these fashions or poetic "manners"; without which reaction Dante probably would have stopped at Guittone. And Dante precisely, replying to Bonagiunta, affirms that the novelty of his rhymes, beginning with the first great canzone of the Vita Nuova: "Donne ch'avete...", consists in his having given expression to the sentiments of the inspired soul, without overly concerning himself with the "manner" of the Notary of Lentini or of Guittone; that the true art of dictating draws no nourishment from the imitation of models, however excellent, but from interior inspiration, not stifled by technique: "I am one who, when / Love inspires me, notes, and in that mode / which he dictates within I go signifying" (Purg., XXIV, 52-54). To some this norm of dictating is so little new that they have found it all too obvious, such at any rate as to serve to distinguish true poetry of all times from that which is not poetry. But if this is true, it is no less true that too often this simple norm has been forgotten before and after Dante, and it was fitting to recall it to mind. And Orbicciani recognizes its appropriateness for himself as for the Notary and for Guittone: "I see well how your pens / follow close behind the dictator, / which certainly did not happen with ours. / And whoever sets himself to look further beyond / sees no more from the one style to the other" (ibid., 58-61). Several modern critics have set themselves "to look further beyond," who have ended by no longer seeing the knot that fixes the substantial difference "from the one style to the other"; and they have sought it in the content of Stilnovist poetry: now in a certain more or less philosophical mysticism, more or less Arabizing, or Platonic, or Franciscan, or Cistercian, and now in a certain "Senaistic (sic) and Averroistic rationalism," traces of which they would have discovered even in the Vita Nuova, indeed more in this than in the Convivio! And certainly the poetic world of the two Guidos, and even more that of Dante, is far richer and more complex than that of the Sicilians, of the Lucchese and of the Aretine, although in Guittone's poetry motifs already echoed in Alighieri's philosophical rhymes may be perceived. But this greater complexity and richness of content could not have flowed into the forms of Stilnovist poetry, had not "the manner" been "changed" and had not the freedom of poetizing been affirmed, which feeds on what love "dictates within" and on all that moves the soul, from feminine beauty to the horror of the storm, from the trill of the lark to the most collected philosophical meditation.
Understood thus, the s. n. was certainly not a school, at least in Guinizelli, in Cavalcanti and in Dante, since each of the three had his own poetic world and his own particular way of expressing it. And if it shows signs of becoming a school in some of the minor poets, this is due to the suggestion exercised by these three great poets and to the formation of habits or "manners," as had happened in Sicilian poetry and as was inevitably to happen also for the s. n., until Petrarch would infuse into it "the weeping of his heart," without however preventing a new "manner" from in turn taking its name from him for more than two centuries. The Stilnovist poet, when love inspires, notes; and in attentively observing the motions of his own soul, he draws near to the inexhaustible source of all true poetry. Noting them, he gives form to his own sentiments, his own thoughts, and goes about constructing his poetic world, truly his own, because it mirrors the aspirations, the spiritual interests, the problems of his creator: a world of moral aspirations in Guinizelli, who discovered the identity of love with nobility and worth, and who, to express this identity, summons the culture gathered in the schools of philosophy; a world quivering with passion in Guido Cavalcanti, but veiled in melancholy, in the certainty that amorous seduction, destined to fade, often diverts the mind from the perfect good and is a cause of death; a world of violent contrasts in Dante and of superhuman harmonies. Dante begins as a stilnovista because of the suggestion exercised upon him by both Guidos; but very soon he introduces into their manner a new motif: the death of the beloved woman. Then love for the virginal phantom of Beatrice develops into love for philosophy, sung first in allegorical canzoni that still allow the use of the «dolci rime d'amor» adapted to the «bellissima e onestissima figlia de lo imperadore de lo universo» (Conv., II, XV, 12). This second series of love poems in praise of philosophy forms what some have also called a second dolce s. n. But suddenly Dante interrupts these allegorical songs and, now master of the vernacular, begins to treat philosophical-moral subjects with «rima aspra e sottile»; harsh, because stripped of every rhetorical embellishment; subtle, because wholly pervaded by the subtilitas proper to the art of loicare in defining and distinguishing. In his mind the art of dittare of the Bolognese is replaced by a more complex poetics, that of the regulated style of the canzone, of which the De vulgari eloquentia wishes to be the justification. But even this new poetics proves insufficient, when from the fervor of his omnipotent imagination is born the idea of the «poema sacro», in which Virgilian humanism merges with the prophetic and apocalyptic spirit of the Bible.
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Bruno Nardi