Dante Gabriel Rossetti translated the works of Italian poets, Guido Cavalcanti among them. There are two references to this poet in "Ada," in connection to Marina: "but the burbly flowlets grew more and more ambitious and odious, and when at her first ‘home’ she heard one of the most hateful of the visiting doctors (the Cavalcanti quoter) garrulously pour hateful instructions in Russian-lapped German into her hateful bidet, she decided to stop turning on tap water altogether" and Darkbloom's note: "p.25. ballatetta: fragmentation and distortion of a passage in a ‘little ballad’ by the Italian poet Guido Cavalcanti (1255-1300). The relevant lines are: ‘you frightened and weak little voice that comes weeping from my woeful heart, go with my soul and that ditty, telling of a destroyed mind.’ (Part One, ch.3)

Following a tortuous route I turned back, from Ada to Lolita, because of the lines satyrically inspired by T.S.Eliot's poem, Ash-Wednesday, written by Humbert Humbert.

 

After all, Marina's "hateful Cavalcanti quoter" might have been T.S.Eliot (and to Ash-Wednesday). In the Wikipedia we read: ""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."

Ash-Wednesday, T S Eliot : "Because I do not hope to turn again/ Because I do not hope..."

Guido Cavalcanti: "Perch’i’ no spero di tornar1 giammai,/ ballatetta, in Toscana,...."

Humbert Humbert (Lolita): "Because you took advantage of a sinner/ because you took advantage/because you took/because you took advantage of my disadvantage…"

 

In Brian Boyd's annotated ADA we find: 23.26-28: ballatetta . . . mente: Darkbloom: "fragmentation and distortion of a passage in a 'little ballad' by the Italian poet Guido Cavalcanti (1255-1300). The relevant lines are: 'you frightened and weak little voice that comes weeping from my woeful heart, go with my soul and that ditty, telling of a destroyed mind.'" From "Ballata" ("Perch' i' no spero di tornar giammai"), ll. 37-40: "Tu, voce sbigottita e deboletta / ch'esci piangendo de lo cor dolente, / coll'anima e con questo ballatetta / va' ragionando della strutta mente." The poet, far from Tuscany, and soon to die, sends his ballad to pay homage to his beloved. Notice that sbigottita echoes in Aqua's mind as spigotty (a pun on "spigot": cf. Ada/Ardeur 20, where sbigottita is deformed into gouttelette, "droplet"), and deboletta becomes diavoletta ("lively little imp," "young rascal," from diavolo, "devil"). Cavalcanti, Le Rime, ed. Guido Favati (Milan and Naples: Riccardi, 1957), 268-69; for Dante Gabriel Rossetti's translation ("Ballata: In Exile at Sarzana"), see Rossetti, The Collected Works (London: Ellis and Elvey, 1901, II, 149-150).