He would have written sonnets all his life?
With this delightful couplet Byron comes to his real subject, the relationship of love and poetry, and his example is, needless to say, Petrarch and Laura, which leads him on to those two other epic venturers who both had marital difficulties, Dante and Milton.
9
All tragedies are finished by a death,
All comedies are ended by a marriage;
The future states of both are left to faith,
For authors fear description might disparage
The worlds to come of both, or fall beneath,
And then both worlds would punish their miscarriage;
So leaving each their priest and prayer-book ready,
They say no more of Death or of the Lady.
10
The only two that in my recollection,
Have sung of Heaven and Hell, or marriage, are
Dante and Milton, and of both the affection
Was hapless in their nuptials, for some bar
Of fault or temper ruined the connection
(Such things, in fact, it don’t ask much to mar);
But Dante’s Beatrice and Milton’s Eve
Were not drawn from their spouses, you conceive.
11
Some persons say that Dante meant Theology
By Beatrice, and not a mistress – I,
Although my opinion may require apology,
Deem this a commentator’s phantasy,
Unless indeed it was from his own knowledge he
Decided thus, and showed good reason why;
I think that Dante’s more abstruse ecstatics
Meant to personify the Mathematics.
Here the singing of the poet is not the sign of his laureation but the sign that he knows it is all a game. Byron is the nineteenth-century Sidney, with an added twist, that he throws away in the first stanza of the fifth canto of the poem.
When amatory poets sing their loves
In liquid lines mellifluously bland,
And pair their rhymes as Venus yokes her doves,
They little think what mischief is in hand:
The greater their success the worse it proves,
As Ovid’s verse may give to understand;
Even Petrarch’s self, if judged with due severity,
Is the Platonic pimp of all posterity.
Petrarch has been taken as far as he can go from his original intentions; he has become the Early Modern poet that serves so many of our interests today. Gone is the false spirituality of the fourteenth century; gone is the connection between the poet’s linguistic brilliance and his putative love. He becomes the ‘Platonic pimp’ of all mankind, and that is a very long journey for any poet. Petrarch’s initial proposition that he loved a woman and suffered much for this unrequited love in his life and in his poetry gets undone in the nineteenth century in two ways. Either it is spiritualized, as in many of the nineteenth-century poems in this volume, which flicker around the altar of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, or it becomes secularized as in this early poem, ‘Silet’, by Ezra Pound:10
When I behold how black, immortal ink
Drips from my deathless pen – ah, wellaway!
Why should we stop at all for what I think?
There is enough in what I chance to say.
It is enough that we once came together;
What is the use of setting it to rime?
When it is autumn do we get spring weather,
Or gather may of harsh northwindish time?
It is enough that we once came together;
What if the wind have turned against the rain?
It is enough that we once came together;
Time has seen this, and will not turn again;
And who are we, who know that last intent,
To plague to-morrow with a testament!
Desire satisfied does not need poetry, should not use poetry as a ‘testament’, but Pound nonetheless did write a poem, and it could not have been written without a Petrarch, somewhere at the bottom of the heap. Poetry has been thrown out of the realm of love, which has become just ‘coming together’. No need to satirize marriage, or wives or husbands; it is no longer a major concern. This is twentieth-century laissez-faire. Where do we go from here?
It has been my good fortune to have been sent two poems by women who learned from Christopher Ricks that I was compiling this volume. I include them because they continue the monologue begun by Petrarch, as we used to say, from the distaff side.
Sonnet after Wyatt after Petrarch
The poets swear their love in little cubes
with tidy borders: stressed, unstressed and rhyme.
As if by slicing our lives up in lines
the regiments of words would follow rules
in life like in those sonnets: it’s not true
This ‘in the field with him to live or die’
looks good on paper, no? But it’s a lie.
At least I know I couldn’t see it through.
Not for this guy I sleep with every night.
If our love dies it’s dying on its own.
Words like these could bring on domestic strife;
maybe he’ll leave. I’ll cry after the fight.
But if he finds some other girl to bone
I do recall I liked living alone.
Jill McDonough
The Lover Resorts to Commerce
To –––
Not, Oh not by me shall you get fame.
I will not line, O love, this box with you.
My lips are brazen, dustless, Delphic, warm,
While yours sprout veins of cobalt blue, and cold
Your eyes to match your stones. A crusted sac
Your heart, your head, your hair unwired is.
If I a rosebud, lush plush red red, am,
You, a fusty muffled ointment-daubed worm, are.
Your fingers, though they’re ten, can’t sum love’s knot.
I’ll carry not, O love, to fame your name.
I’ll praise a tomcat (though unstoned), swiss cheese
(Though partial), Bromsgrove poems (although no though).
Yet if you spend with me the course of sluttish time,
And love me night by night, Oh, then what I will write!
Marcia Karp
When all is said and done, are we not back to the original premise of Petrarch? Man loves woman; woman loves not man. Neither the reason for not loving, nor the gender of who is writing matters, but write we will. Where do we go from here?
I think the answer lies in a recent volume called The Triumph of Love by Geoffrey Hill, who has obviously been influenced by Petrarch but who takes as his starting point the final poem of the Canzoniere, the very beautiful hymn to the Blessed Virgin, ‘Vergine bella, che di sol vestita’, a poem, the elaborate stanzaic form of which has not been imitated in English except by Milton in his ‘On the Circumcision’, the most minor of Milton’s minor poetry (see above). The exactitude of Milton’s duplication of the stanzaic form cannot be questioned, once George Watson’s Bibliography pointed it out. Circumcision is not a subject congenial to lyric poetry, and perhaps Watson is correct in suggesting that a hymn to the Virgin was equally uncongenial to a Protestant poet, but I think that Milton did not chuckle while writing his poem. The circumcision of Jesus was the first blood-letting of the infant God-man and anticipated his dying on the Cross. I think it more likely that Milton was taking from the Mater Dolorosa to give proper praise to the Son. At any rate Milton is giving praise to Petrarch’s poem in appropriating its verse form. Hill, by using the Vergine bella as a leitmotif in his poem, is calling our attention back to a voice in Petrarch that has not been listened to in five centuries. His poem is a fitting finale to this volume.
Vergine bella – it is here that I require
a canzone of some substance. There are sound
precedents for this, of a plain eloquence
which would be
perfect. But –
ought one to say, I am required; or, it is
required of me; or, it is requisite that I should
make such an offering, bring in such a tribute?
And is this real obligation or actual
pressure of expectancy? One cannot purchase
the goodwill of your arduously simple faith
as one would acquire a tobacconist’s cum paper shop
or a small convenience store
established by aloof, hardworking Muslims.
Nor is language, now, what it once was
even in – wait a tick – nineteen hundred and forty
five of the common era, when your blast-scarred face
appeared staring, seemingly in disbelief,
shocked beyond recognition, unable to recognize
the mighty and the tender salutations
that slowly, with innumerable false starts, the ages
had put together for your glory
in words and in the harmonies of stone.
But you have known and endured all things
since you first suffered the Incarnation:
endless the extortions, endless the dragging
in of your name. Vergine bella, as you
are well aware, I here follow
Petrarch, who was your follower,
a sinner devoted to your service.
I ask that you acknowledge the work
as being contributive to your high praise,
even if no one else shall be reconciled
to a final understanding of it in that light.11
Notes
1. Katherine M. Wilson, Shakespeare’s Sugared Sonnets (1974), p. 34.
2. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Early Italian Poets (1861).
3. Helen Vendler, The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1997), pp. 556–8. The text is from the first edition (1609).
4. The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The Old Arcadia), ed. Jean Robertson (1974), pp. 30–31.
5. Ibid., pp. 238–42.
6. Nancy J. Vickers, ‘The Body Re-membered: Petrarchan Lyric and the Strategies of Description’, in Mimesis: From Mirror to Method, Augustine to Descartes, ed. John D. Lyons and Stephen G. Nichols, Jr. (1982).
7. Barnabe Barnes, Sonnet 43, Parthenophil and Parthenophe, ed. Victor A. Doyno (1971).
8. Pierre de Ronsard, Les Amours, eds. Henri and Catherine Weber (1963).
9. Barnes, Ode 3, Parthenophil and Parthenophe.
10. The Ripostes of Ezra Pound (1912).
11. Geoffrey Hill, The Triumph of Love (1998).
PETRARCHAN ORDER OF THE SELECTED TRANSLATIONS
All the Petrarchan numbers are to sonnets unless followed by a letter: b = ballata; c = canzone; m = madrigale; s = sestina. TM is Tottel’s Miscellany; Bohn is Bohn’s Illustrated Library
In vita di Laura
1
TM 276: Anon.; Bergin
2
Shore
3
TM 277: Anon.
4
Kennet
5
Phoenix Nest; Bohn: Anon.
6
Kilmer
7
Nott
11b
TM 13: Surrey
12
Wrangham
13
Wrangham; Kilmer
16
Bishop
19
TM 47: Wyatt; Ayres
20
Shore
21
TM 96: Wyatt; Phoenix Nest
22s
W. Smith; Alexander
23c
TM 185: Anon.; Cook
24
Cook
27
Cook
28
Cook
29c
Cook
30s
Bergin; Cook
34
Mortimer
35
Mortimer
37c
TM 104: Wyatt
49
TM 48: Wyatt
50c
Musa
51
Bohn: Anon.
52m
Musa
53c
Musa
54m
Bishop
57
TM 94: Wyatt
61
Phoenix Nest; Wrangham
62
Hough
70c
Musa
71c
Musa
72c
Musa
73c
Musa
77
Penn
82
TM 38: Wyatt
84
Constable
90
C. Smith; Bohn: Anon. Ox. 1795
99
Kennet
102
TM 45: Wyatt; Paradise of Dainty Devices: Earl of Oxford
106m
Ayres
108
Bohn: Anonymous 1777
112
Drummond; Bohn: Anonymous 1777
119c
Cayley
121m
TM 69: Wyatt; Ayres
122
Wrangham
123
Wrangham
124
TM 95: Wyatt
126c
Jones; Hunt
128c
Dacre
129c
Dacre
132
Chaucer; Watson, Hekatompathia; Ayres
134
TM 49: Wyatt; Watson, Hekatompathia; Lodge, Phillis; Ayres
138
Symonds
140
TM 6: Surrey; TM 37: Wyatt
145
TM 12: Surrey; Phoenix Nest; Drummond; Habington; Ayres
148
Drummond
153
TM 77: Wyatt; Carew; Cartwright
156
Nott
159
Campbell; Bohn: Anon.
163
Wrangham
164
TM 10: Surrey; Drummond
169
TM 41: Wyatt
173
TM 51: Wyatt
178
Drummond
181
Garnett; Mortimer
185
Garnett
188
Kilmer
189
TM 50: Wyatt; Lodge, Rosalynde; Phoenix Nest (2)
190
Wyatt (Egerton MS); Tofte
192
Mortimer
199
Wyatt (Egerton MS)
218
Charlemont; Wyatt;
224
TM 98: Wyatt; Wrangham
232
Bohn: Anon.
234
Mortimer
243
Wrangham
248
Constable; Charlemont; Hemans
250
Mortimer
258
TM 40: Wyatt; Handful of Pleasant Delights: Anon.
263
Collier; Wollaston
In morte di Laura
264c
Macgregor
267
Mortimer
269
TM 102: Wyatt; Langhorne
272
Mortimer
275
Ayres
279
Hemans; Mortimer
280
Lofft; Tobin
292
Woodhouselee; Dacre
293
Mortimer
294
Higginson
297
Daniel
299
Langhorne
300
Synge
302
Mortimer
310
TM 2: Surrey; Watson, Madrigalls Englished; Phoenix Nest;
England’s Helicon; Drummond; Carew; Charlemont
311
/>
Charlemont
312
Boothby; Dacre
315
Dacre
323c
Spenser
324b
Stanley
325c
Cayley
334
Constable
344
Auslander
346
Mortimer
353
Tobin
355
Ayres
360c
TM 64: Wyatt
361
Brydges
362
Mortimer
363
Mortimer
364
Mortimer
365
Bishop; Mortimer
366c
Milton; Macgregor; Peabody
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank first of all Professor Christopher Ricks who felt that I could do this task and secondly Professor George Watson, without whose Bibliography the task would have been impossible. Also my two ‘Lauras’, Laura Barber, my kind and patient editor at Penguin Books, and Laura McPherson, who submitted Petrarch to the rigors of the computer, as well as those Princeton students, who came to my rescue at moments of technological despair: Cynthia Snyder, Genelle Gertz-Robinson, Todd Barry, Kate Mackenzie and Nick Merritt. And lastly, my eternal gratitude to Monica Schmoller, who ‘tweaked’ the whole mess into shape with patience, goodwill and a relentless eye. I would also have liked to thank, but must only acknowledge, my indebtedness to Professor Thomas Bergin who first taught me Petrarch in translation when I was a Yale undergraduate now more than fifty years ago. Finally, my profound gratitude to all those teachers of Italian who have tried to make me competent in that language: Guelfo Frulla at Yale, Frank Soda of Princeton High School and Luisa Rapaccini of the Istituto Britannico in Florence.
Petrarch in English Page 30
