#maybe thot number 1 is: Sappho is gay....Guido?? Is this another of your many signs that you're not straight? hmmmMMM?

[eresia-catara]

That Sappho's and Guido's poetry comparison article sounds like heaven or earth??? If you have a link would you mind sharing it? 👀

Awh I'm sorry but the article is in italian! It mainly talked about Sappho, the part about Cavalcanti was just a brief comment :( However, I can expand a little on the subject if you're interested :') (for what my analysis is worth...)

So, let's focus on the kind of love that Sappho described in her poems: it's a love that makes you suffer and long (sometimes with jealousy!) and that gives you no rest, as we can see, for example, in fragment I ("Immortal Aphrodite, on your intricately brocaded throne...") and in the famous fragment XXXI ("That man seems to me to be equal to the gods..."). In it, she describes the effects that this emotion solicits when she looks at the girl even for a short amount of time, which are: a fluttering heart, inability to speak, the skin feels on fire, inability so see and buzzing ears, cold sweat, tremors and becoming "greener than grass" with the result that she feels and looks close to death.

It's amazing how, even though in medieval western europe Sappho's poems had been lost (and generally speaking the knowledge of the greek language), we can see many similarities in Guido's poems! He talks about a love that is tragic, that originates from the sight of the loved one, who looks like an angel (but it's important to specify that they're not one), and it rips your soul into many little pieces (he calls them "little spirits", how cute) which results in a spiritual/metaphorical death. So, although with different meanings (behind Guido's poems is a complex philosophical belief), we can already see two similarities: love originates from sight, it brings you closer to death, and the person looks of divine nature.

Now, let's give a look at Guido's description of the effects of love (each taken from various poems): it makes your heart ache, you're unable to speak (you can only sigh), the mere sight of the loved one cannot be comprehended (which also means the eyes cannot see clearly), it takes away your vigour, brings tremors and makes you look pale like death and it feels like you're dying (which technically, according to him, you are).

Notice anything? Yep...

It would be interesting to also consider Catullus, who wrote a poem modelled on Sappho's XXXI, his carmen LI ("That man seems to me to be equal to the gods..." yep, same sentence), where he also talks about his senses being "ripped away" from him so he's not able to speak, hear or see, and I say this especially because in the middle ages poets could read Catullus, although it seems he wasn't very famous...but it's also known that Guido was really really cultured compared to most of his contemporaries (may I remind you, Dante was his best friend) so who knows if he read it or not! Personally, I wouldn't be too pessimistic...

Soo...this is all I can offer right now :] perhaps in the future I will develop thots™ on it, but for now I hope this can make up for the article! Have a nice day/night >3