The Beautiful Italian Language

From the Sicilian Court to Dante

The process of language development is very dynamic. If one were able to travel back in time in the United States, he/she would find it somewhat difficult to understand the messages which the early settlers were trying to convey. Their word usage and idioms had different meaning than ours of today. Even still, if we were to travel to the various parts of this country, today, it would be discovered that words, idioms and their usage would be meaningful only if one were native to the area. Yet, there is an official American English language. Language is used to communicate whatever is meaningful in terms of place, time, needs and imagination. It is spoken and written; it is often local; and it is widespread. It is a social necessity.

When one considers the Italian language, the dynamics of language development must be kept in focus. It is a variation of Latin, one of the Roman[ce] languages. There are several Romance languages: Spanish,

Portguese, French, Romanian and Italian; their common thread is that each developed from the Latin of the Romans. Though Latin is the common tie, each has developed into a distinct separate means of

communication with its own rules of syntax and expression, each representing the various influences which

affected the Latin of government and religion.

Italian as a language developed accordingly. The different localities used the Latin according to their needs for communication and developed language dialects. Though Latin was the language of the government and Church, it was "corrupted" to meet the needs of the common man and woman, in the homes, in the streets, in the byways, in the market places. This communications was definitively referred to as the vulgar Latin, the

language of the people.

With the passage of time, the use of vulgar Latin began to influence the people's songs and written expression. Poems and songs began to be written in dialectic Latin. The beginning of Italian literature was almost

coincidental with the shaping of vulgar Latin into an "Italian" language.

At the court of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily, early in the 13th century [1200's], a

permissive atmosphere for intellectual and artistic development was cultivated. Poets, actors, musicians, and intellectuals from Italy and France gathered in Palermo to share their learning, imagination and experiences. There the impress of learning and intellectual curiosity and imagination made the Sicilian dialect, existing side by side with the Latin, superior to all other dialects spoken by the common people of Italy.

With the intensified crusade by the Papacy against the Albigensian heretics in France, many fled from the church dominated areas to the safe tolerant country of Frederick's Sicily.

Thus, the brilliant king, an able writer himself, and a generous patron of the arts, attracted some of the finest minds and talents from various areas of mainland Italy, from France, as well as Sicily. His inner circle included approximately thirty men, many Sicilians as well as a group of Tuscans and southern Italians. They established the vernacular, the Sicilian dialect, as the standard language for Italian love poetry. They are also credited with the invention of the "canzone" [a lyric poem in stanza form suited to a musical setting] and the "sonnet" [a verse form rhyming to a prescribed scheme]. Studies show that these forms show the influence of both French and Arabic tradition.

Undoubtedly, it was the French love poetry which was the most admired by the poets of the Sicilian School. The poets: Enzio, Pier delle Vigne, Inighilfredi, Guido delle Colonne, Odo delle Colonne, Jacobo d'Aquino,

Giacomino Pugliese, Giacomo da Lentini and Arrigo Testa, sought to adapt the French models to the Sicilian.

Frederick's poets produced many poems; more than 125 are still in use, all in the Sicilian dialect. About 85 of these are canzones, while most of the rest are sonnets.

The invention of the sonnet is attributed to Giacomo da Lentini. The Sicilian School sonnet became, with

variation, the dominant poetic form in Renaissance Italy and in Elizabethan England. The canzone became the

standard form for Italian poets for centuries.

The glory of Frederick's court, though short lived existing but a half century, was an inspiration for the technical perfectionists of central Italy. In the latter half of the 13th century, the more able Tuscan School of Poetry, founded by Guittone d'Arezzo, experimented with elaborate and difficult forms of love poetry in local dialect. Guido Guinicelli [also, Guinizelli] of Bologna, a major force in the Tuscan School, a long time disciple and

admirer of Guido delle Colonne of the Sicilian School, began writing conventional love lyrics. His lyrics were

expressed according to his guiding principle that a true gentleman was a lover of his lady's spirituality, not her physical charms.

Following his lead, other lyric poets inspired by religious piety wrote devotional poems worshipping the Virgin Mary. Among them was Jacobini da Todi. They combined the conception that beauty of earthly women,

inaccessible like Mary, was an inspiration and a stepping stone to an understanding of Heavenly Beauty.

Among the scholars at the Tuscan School were Guido Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoia and Dante Alighieri who admired and revered Guido Guinicelli and who referred to him as his literary father. All learned men, they wrote to and for each other in the cultivation of their vulgate Italian, in what Dante called "il dolce stil nuovo" [the sweet new style].

Dante studied and reviewed the many dialects of the vulgate Italian: Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombardian,

Emilian, Venetian, Tuscan, Umbrian, Neapolitan, Sicilian, Sardinian. He found none worthy to be chosen as a standard language. His judgment was based on two factors: his devotion to a language other than Latin which could be identified with the people; and, his interest in prosody, the system, theory and study of versification. He proposed the creation of these vernaculars [dialects] into an Italian language which would be exalted, basic, balanced and worthy as an official language.

Dante set forth rules for the classification and selection of words to achieve a varied and pleasing diction.

Regarding the art of poetry, he answered questions as to the proper themes for various types of poetry,

different forms of poetry, the relation between style and form, and the problems of versification.

The Italian language was a result of the genius of Dante to create an acceptable amalgamation of the various dialects into a masterfully consistent language for use throughout Italy.

In passing judgement on the use of his Italian in his writings, in a letter to Can Grande delle Scala de Verona, regarding the language of the Divine Comedy, Dante wrote: "If we consider the style of language, the style is basic and humble, because it is the vulgar tongue, in which even housewives hold conversation". In another comment he noted that the Italian vernacular "would be marking the paths into other worlds".

Dante's words can be considered by some to be a prediction of the Italian nation. Mazzini calling for unification stated: "...A nation is the universality of citizens speaking the same language".

- Dr. Anthony A. Abruzzese

References:

Monarch Notes, The Divine Comedy, Jules Gedernt

Barron's Simplified Approach to Dante, Vincent F. Hopper

The Creators, Daniel Boorstin

Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature

The Columbia Encyclopedia

Webster's New Universal Encyclopedia

A PUBLICATION of the PIRANDELLO LYCEUM Institute of Italian American Studies, Research and Cultural Disemmination.