(c. 1260–1311/13). Strikingly original Sienese exponent of poesia giocosa . He projects an image of himself as a dissipated profligate, and surviving legal documents attest to his being involved in a vicious brawl and having to sell off some of his property. We have possibly 112 poems by him, all sonnets . The two major themes are a decidedly profane, physical love for a woman he calls Becchina, and violent antipathy towards his parents for their meanness, which leads to a number of poems about money and poverty, very much in the goliardic Latin tradition. The popular, realistic tone of his love poetry is not, however, an expression of some native, ingenuous feeling, and still less of romantic rebellion, but rather a studied reaction to the rarefied treatment of the lady in the lyric tradition, showing awareness of the literary effects of using low language and far-fetched hyperbole. Some of the best involve verbal duels with Becchina, often dividing each line of the sonnet between the two participants to create a comedy in miniature. His most famous poem is the splendidly misanthropic ‘S'i' fosse foco’ in which he declares that, if he were death, he would visit his parents, and, if he were life, he would flee them.
Like Dante , he was present at the battle of Campaldino in 1289, when the Florentines and the Sienese defeated the Aretines. Three of his poems are addressed to Dante. ‘Dante Alighier, Cecco, 'l tu’ serv' e amico' is a reply to the last sonnet in the Vita nova , ‘Oltre la spera’; probably Dante's commentary in the Vita nova on that poem responds to Cecco's accusations of inconsistency about the heavenly Beatrice's audibility. The poem ‘Dante Alighier, s'io so' bon begolardo’ refers to the misfortunes of exile and is a response to a poem of Dante's now lost.
The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature. © 2002
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