Pico della Mirandola. By passing to Dante's study of the Italian language, Guido's style has influenced all those who, like cardinal Pietro Bembo, helped turn the volgare illustre into today's Italian language. Cavalcanti was to become a strong influence on a number of writers associated with the development of Modernist poetry in English. This influence can be traced back to the appearance, in 1861, of Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The Early Italian Poets, which featured translations of works by both Cavalcanti and Dante. The young Ezra Pound admired Rossetti and knew his Italian translations well, quoting extensively from them in his 1910 book The Spirit of Romance. In 1912, Pound published his own translations under the title The Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti and in 1932, he published the Italian poet's works as Rime. A reworked translation of Donna me prega formed the bulk of Canto XXXVI in Pound's long poem The Cantos. Pound's main focus was on Cavalcanti's philosophy of love and light, which he viewed as a continuing expression of a pagan, neo-platonic tradition stretching back through the troubadours and early medieval Latin lyrics to the world of pre-Christian polytheism. Pound also composed a three-act opera titled Cavalcanti at the request of Archie Harding, a producer at the BBC. Though never performed in his lifetime, excerpts are available on audio CD. Pound's friend and fellow modernist T. S. Eliot used an adaptation of the opening line of Perch'i' no spero di tornar giammai ("Because I do not hope to turn again") to open his 1930 poem Ash Wednesday. See also Italian literature References Bibliography Cavalcanti's Rime in original Italian available through Wikisource. Maria Corti, La felicità mentale. Nuove prospettive per Cavalcanti e Dante, Turin, Einaudi, 1983. Tobias Eisermann, Cavalcanti oder die Poetik der Negativität, Band 17 in Romanica et Comparatistica: Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Studien, herausgegeben von Richard Baum und Willi Hirdt, Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag Brigitte Narr GmbH, 1992; Giudice, A. and Bruni, G. Problemi e scrittori della letteratura italiana. Turin, Paravia, 1973. Dante, Divina Commedia, ed. Natalino Sapegno. Florence, La Nuova Italia, 1982. AA.VV., Antologia della poesia italiana, ed C.Segre and C. Ossola. Turin, Einaudi, 1999 Migliorini, B. Storia della lingua Italiana. Florence, Sansoni, 1987 Dante, Vita Nuova. Milan, Garzanti, 1982. Guido Cavalcanti, The Complete Poems, edited and translated by Marc Cirigliano. New York, Italica Press, 1992; Guido Cavalcanti, Complete Poems, translated by Anthony Mortimer. Oneworld Classics. External