The Poetry of Petrarch

by David Young

  “Again, and this is what I’ll finish with,

  I gave him wings to fly beyond the skies

  by means of mortal things,

  which make a ladder to our Maker, rightly used:

  for if he could have steadily observed

  the many virtues in that hope of his,

  from one thing to the next

  he could have risen up to the First Cause—

  “as he himself has mentioned in his rhymes.

  Now he’s forgotten me, and her, his lady,

  whom I made the support

  of his frail life.” At this I raise a shout

  and answer through my tears:

  “He gave her to me, then He took her back.”

  And he: “Not me, but One who loved her most.”

  And then, both turning to the seat of justice,

  I shaking, he with cruel, high-pitched voice,

  each one concludes his case:

  “Oh, noble lady, we await your sentence.”

  And then she smiles and says:

  “With pleasure I have listened to your pleadings;

  to judge this suit will take a long, long time.”

  361

  My faithful mirror tells me very often,

  as do my tired spirit, changing skin,

  diminished strength, and slow agility:

  “Don’t hide it from yourself now; you are old;

  Nature must be obeyed, since time removes

  our power to oppose her or resist her.”

  Immediately, as water douses fire,

  I waken from a long and heavy sleep,

  and I see clearly that our lives fly past,

  that we have life just once, and then it’s gone;

  and in my heart there sounds a word of her,

  the one who’s loosened from her lovely knot,

  who in her day was such a rarity

  that no one else will ever touch her fame.

  362

  I fly so often on the wings of thought

  to Heaven, that I almost feel I am

  one of those souls who have their treasure there,

  leaving their ripped-up veils behind on earth.

  Sometimes my heart will shiver with a sweet

  chill when I hear the one who makes me pale

  say to me: “Friend, I love and honor you

  because you’ve changed your habits and your hair.”

  She leads me to her Lord; I kneel down there,

  begging that He will let me stay this time

  and look upon them both, on their two faces.

  He says, “Your destiny is firm and fixed,

  and a delay of twenty years, or thirty,

  seems like a lot to you but will be little.”

  363

  Death has put out the sun that dazzled me;

  my eyes, though whole and sound, see only darkness;

  and she is dust who gave me heat and chills.

  My laurels, faded, become oaks and elms

  in which I see my good but still feel pain.

  No one’s alive to make my thoughts grow bold,

  to freeze them or to scorch them, nor to make

  them fill with hope or overflow with sorrow.

  Out of the hands of him who stabs and heals,

  who put me through a long and endless torture,

  I find myself in sweet and bitter freedom;

  and to the Lord whom I adore and thank,

  who rules the heavens truly with His brow,

  I turn in weariness; I’ve had enough.

  364

  Twenty-one years Love held me in the fire,

  joyfully burning, full of hope and sorrow;

  then ten more years of weeping since my lady

  rose into Heaven and my heart went with her.

  Now I am weary, and I blame my life

  for so much error, which almost extinguished

  the seed of virtue. And I dedicate

  its final moments, my high God, to You,

  penitent, sorry for my misspent years

  which should have gone to better purposes,

  to seeking peace and turning from my troubles.

  Lord, You who put me in this prison cell:

  bring me out safe, clear of eternal harm,

  for I repent and do not make excuses.

  365

  I go around in tears about my past

  which I spent loving something mortal, earthly,

  and did not soar in flight, though I had wings

  to make myself a less than base example.

  You who can see my wickedness and suffering,

  invisible, immortal King of Heaven:

  help my frail soul that has been lost and strayed

  and with your grace fill up her emptiness,

  so that although I’ve lived in war and storm,

  I yet may die in peace and in safe harbor,

  my sojourn vain but my departure just.

  Upon the little life that’s left to me,

  and on my death, I pray You’ll put Your hand:

  You know full well I look to no one else.

  366

  Beautiful Virgin, dressed in glorious sunlight,

  crowned with the stars, who pleased the highest Sun

  so greatly that He hid His light in you:

  love drives me to address you, speaking praise,

  but I cannot begin without your help

  and His who loved and placed Himself in you.

  I call on her who always has replied

  to those who called in faith.

  Virgin, if mercy turns

  to human things when misery is extreme

  and sees their sufferings, bend to my prayer,

  give succor to my war

  though I am earth and you are queen of Heaven.

  Wisest Virgin, numbered and praised among

  the virgins who are blessèd and most wise,

  and first among them, with the brightest lamp,

  oh, steady shield to the afflicted people

  against the blows of Death and fickle Fortune,

  through whom they can escape and even triumph,

  oh, refuge and relief from those blind passions

  that burn us foolish mortals:

  Virgin, your lovely eyes

  that gaze in sorrow on the frightful wounds

  that have been opened in your Son’s dear limbs,

  turn to my doubtful state.

  I come disconsolate to you for counsel.

  Purest Virgin, whole in every part,

  Daughter and mother both, of your great offspring,

  you who bring light to this earth and to Heaven:

  through you your Son, Son of the highest Father

  (oh, glowing window in the lofty Heaven),

  came down to save us in the latter days;

  you were elected, among earthly dwellings,

  you were the chosen one.

  Oh, blessed Virgin, then,

  you who convert the tears of Eve to joy,

  make me, for you can, worthy of His love,

  you who are endlessly blessed,

  you who sit crowned above in the high kingdom.

  Holy Virgin, full of every grace,

  who through your true and high humility

  mounted to Heaven, where you hear my prayers:

  you who gave birth to Pity’s Fountain,

  and to the Sun of Justice, who brings light

  into a world that’s dark and full of error.

  You’ve gathered three sweet names unto yourself:

  mother, bride, and daughter,

  Vergine gloriosa,

  Lady unto that King who loosed our bonds

  and made the world felicitous and free,

  upon whose holy wounds,

  I pray, quiet my heart bringer of joy.

  Matchless Virgin, unique in all the world,

  who made high Heaven love you for your beauty,

 
; which no one has surpassed, or even neared:

  your holy thoughts, your mercy and chaste actions,

  made you a sacred and a living temple

  which God could visit in its ripe virginity.

  Through you my life can come to proper joy

  if at your prayers, oh, Mary,

  Virgin sweet and pious,

  grace comes abundant where sin thrived before.

  I kneel before you on my mind’s bent knees,

  beg you to be my guide,

  make straight my twisted path to a good end.

  Bright Virgin, stable for eternity,

  the star that shines above this stormy sea,

  the guide that faithful helmsmen come to know:

  see what a dreadful storm I’m captured by,

  sailing along alone, without a tiller,

  close to the final shouts with which I’ll drown.

  But still my soul looks up to you for help,

  sinful though it may be,

  Virgin, I don’t deny it,

  I beg your enemy may not deride me.

  Remember that our sins made God adopt

  the flesh of human life in your pure cloister.

  Virgin, how many tears I’ve scattered here,

  how many pleadings, how many prayers in vain,

  and naught to show for them but pain and loss!

  Since I was born, upon the Arno’s bank,

  searching now one way, and now another,

  my life has only been a heap of troubles:

  mortal beauty, mortal acts and words

  have burdened all my soul.

  Virgin, do not delay,

  holy and life-giving one, I’m near the end;

  swifter than arrows my days have gone away

  in wretchedness and sin,

  and all that lies ahead is Death, expectant.

  Virgin, there’s one who’s dust, who makes my soul

  grieve greatly, one who kept it, one who knew

  nothing about my thousand sufferings;

  and if she had, I don’t think anything

  would have been any different, since desire

  would have been death to me, to her dishonor.

  Now you, the Queen of Heaven, you our goddess

  (if that’s appropriate),

  Virgin of greatest sense:

  there’s nothing you don’t see, and what another

  would find impossible is well within your power:

  close down my sorrows, since

  that would bring honor to you me, salvation.

  Virgin, in whom my hopes all now reside

  that you both can and will address my need:

  do not abandon me at this last pass,

  think not of me but of the one who made me,

  not my own worth but His great likeness in me,

  may that move you to care for one so low.

  Medusa and my sin have made me stone

  dripping a little moisture.

  Virgin, fill up my heart

  with tears of holiness and true repentance;

  at least my weeping should become devout

  and free of earthly mud

  as I was at the first when not insane.

  Virgin so kind, the enemy of pride,

  let love of our joint origin inflame you:

  have pity on a bowed and humbled heart.

  If I can love with such a glowing faith

  a bit of mortal and corrupted dust,

  how greatly will I love a noble thing?

  If from this state, so wretched and so vile,

  I rise up by your hands,

  Virgin, to your name then

  I consecrate my thoughts and wit and style,

  my tongue and my poor heart, my tears and sighs.

  Show me the way to cross

  as you gaze kindly on my changed desires.

  The day draws near, it cannot be far off,

  time speeds along and flies,

  Virgin unique, alone,

  conscience and death are stabbing at my heart:

  commend me to your Son, who is the true

  man and the true God,

  may He accept my last and peaceful breath.

  Notes

  Petrarch: An Introduction

  1. C. S. Lewis, for example, points out that “the difference between the Vita Nuova and Petrarch’s Rime is that Petrarch abandoned the prose links, and it was they that carried the narrative” (327). Teodolinda Barolini adds, “In other words, Petrarch takes the idea from Dante of transcribing previously written lyrics into a new order where the order generates significance, but he does not take Dante’s means of controlling significance, namely the prose” (2).

  2. David Kalstone, in a study of Sidney’s poetry, makes the useful point that Petrarch’s appeal is finally based on the ability of his poems, both individually and as a sequence, to hold contrary emotions in an equilibrium. What makes this possible is the concentration on memory. Pain and sweetness, recollected, reveal their paradoxical joint existence, even perhaps their interdependence. The memory of Laura, which is also the memory of Petrarch’s failure to persuade her to return his love, persists as an inspiration, a token from the past that clarifies and illuminates the present and the future. Morris Bishop, in his biography, sounds a similar note: “In the chemistry of the spirit the emotions do not neutralize each other” (247).

  3. Bishop quotes Edgar Quinet, a nineteenth-century French critic: “Petrarch’s originality consists in having realized, for the first time, that every moment in our existence contains in itself the substance of a poem, that every hour encloses an immortality” (253).

  4. Hainsworth, 25. He further notes that Petrarch was fond of Horace’s metaphor for the poet as a bee who collects pollen from many sorts of flowers. “His own pollen came from all sorts of textual and stylistic bric-a-brac—conceits, conversational phrases, echoes of Latin, Provençal, Dante and other Italians, bits of high rhetoric, conventional images, even clichés. The magic lies in how it comes together and also in its awareness of its own problematic status.”

  5. The Africa was intended to be his ticket to fame, an epic that would recapture the glory of the past. But while it has some fine passages, it is, by common agreement, mostly frigid and dull, boring in the extreme to modern readers. At some level Petrarch must have sensed this, for he tended to keep it to himself, and his anxiety about its success was evident in many of his actions and statements. If it dawned on him that his lyric poems would turn out to be the real testimony to his poetic genius, the recognition came late.

  6. In retreating to rural solitude, not like a hermit bent on prayer and self-denial but rather like a man who enjoys communing with himself in the friendly presence of nature, Petrarch picked up a classical tradition and founded what we might call the modern tradition exemplified by figures such as Thoreau. Here is a passage from one of his letters about his Vaucluse retreat: “You will see me content with a small but shady garden and a tiny house.… You will see me from morn to eve wandering alone among the meadows, hills, springs, and woods. I flee men’s traces, follow the birds, love the shadows, enjoy the mossy caves and the greening fields, curse the cares of the Curia, avoid the city’s tumult, refuse to cross the thresholds of the mighty, mock the concerns of the mob. I am equidistant from joy and sadness, at peace by day and night. I glory in the Muses’ company, in bird-song and the murmur of water-nymphs. My servants are few but my books many.” From Familiar Letters, 6, 3, as quoted in Bishop, 136.

  7. The suggestion provoked a pained and vigorous denial: “So what do you say? That I invented the beautiful name of Laura to give myself something to talk about and to engage many to talk about me! And that in fact there is no Laura in my mind except the poetic Laurel for which I evidently have aspired with long-continued un-wearying zeal; and that concerning the living Laura, by whose person I seem to be captured, everything is manufactured; that my poems are fictitious, my sighs pretended. Well, on this head I
wish it were all a joke, that it were a pretense and not a madness! But believe me, no one can simulate long without great effort; to labor to appear mad, to no purpose, is the height of madness. Add that we can in health imitate the behavior of the sick, but we cannot simulate pallor.” From Epistolae Familiares 2, 9, as quoted in Thompson.

  8. For example, among the last sonnets he wrote was a pair that he inserted into the first half, 194 and 197. See Wilkins, Making of the “Canzoniere,” 367.

  9. Of the 366 poems in the collection, 317 are sonnets, followed by twenty-nine canzones, nine sestinas (one of which is double), seven ballatas, and four madrigals. The sestinas, with their repeating end words and strict patterning, are especially good at reinforcing the obsessive, time-trapped nature of the speaker’s dilemma. Some of the canzones choose especially demanding Provençal forms in complex stanzas that match rhymes and repeat difficult patterns. The sonnets, of course, are of the formal Italian type that uses just two rhymes in the octave and two or three in the sestet. Their two-part structure is thus more emphatic than it is in Shakespearean examples.

  10. From volume 7 of his Storia della letteratura italiana, as quoted in Bishop, 254.

  The Canzoniere, 1–366

  Reason

  April 6, 1327, Church of Santa Clara, Avignon

  pages of Scripture

  probably Carpentras, near Avignon

  Latin form of Laurette, i.e., Laura, with accompanying reference to the myth of Apollo and Daphne, changed to a laurel tree

  recipient unknown

  This sonnet was written to accompany a gift of game; the dead creatures are posited as the speakers.

  This sonnet was written to accompany a gift of truffles.

  This sonnet was written to Stefano Colonna the Elder, from the estate of his son near the Pyrenees.

  This variation on the sonnet form is called a ballata; note the shorter second and twelfth lines.

  This is another ballata, with shorter third and thirteenth lines.

  the Veronica, said to have retained Christ’s likeness, kept at St. Peter’s and an object of pilgrimage

  a reference to Virgil’s account of the underworld in Aeneid 6

  The metamorphoses referred to are Daphne, Cygnus, Battus, Biblis, Echo, Actaeon, Danaë, Semele, and Ganymede.

  This is a reply to a sonnet from Perugia inviting Petrarch to drink at Pallas Athena’s fountain.

  recipient unknown

  recipient unknown, perhaps the same as that of Number 25

  Philip VI of France

  Benedict XII

  rival factions in Florence or Rome

  join the Crusade declared in 1334