A real voice was united to an invented name and figure. Laura became a shield covering Petrarch’s singular, defenseless love. The rest was just a matter of poetry.
Nevertheless, evil tongues (the human passion for destroying all that is beautiful and pure is truly fathomless) gave the poet no peace. A friend from the university lecture halls and thus a witness from his youth, the skeptical Giacomo Colonna, made him his special target—stubbornly, eagerly, and with poorly concealed glee. At every opportunity he gave it to be understood that Laura was the creature of the poet’s imagination, and worse, he dared to write to Petrarch about it. Petrarch, touched to the quick, feeling as if he had been deprived of earth and air, wrote back with a vehemence which he neither wanted nor was able to temper.
“What are you saying? That I invented the convenient name Laura to have someone to talk about and to be talked about myself for that reason; that in fact Laura is nothing to my soul, nothing but a poetic laurel for which I yearn…And so in that living Laura whose shape allegedly bewitched me, everything is artifice—the songs fabricated, the sighs feigned?
If your joke only went that far! If only this was all about pretense, not about madness! But believe me: no one can pretend for long without a great effort, and to make an effort to be taken for a madman is truly the height of madness! I will add that one can fake an illness while being in good health, but one cannot fake a true pallor. You know my sufferings and my pallor. So please take care that your Socratic joke does not bring on illness in me.”
The sober-headed Boccaccio—not a youthful companion of the poet because of the difference in their ages, and therefore a witness whose testimony has no force of proof—also took part in this curious trial of voice, name, and body. His verdict was dry and categorical: “I myself am persuaded that Laura should be understood allegorically.”
Meanwhile, Petrarch went on tirelessly building the labyrinth. In the center to which he alone had access (was he not at once Daedalus and the Minotaur?) the non-existent Laura reigned. He invented everything for her—her birth from nothingness, the color of her hair, the radiance of her eyes, her elusive existence. Now he had to invent the date of her premature ascension to heaven.
It cannot be an accident that it was in the most valuable book of his library—a parchment codex containing the works of Virgil with a commentary by the Roman grammarian Servius—that Petrarch wrote these words: “with bitter sweetness, in painful memory of the event.”
“Laura, famed for her virtues and long praised in my songs, appeared before me for the first time in the dawn of my youth, Anno Domini 1327 on the morning of April 6th in the church of Sainte-Claire in Avignon. And in the same place in the year 1348, also in April and also on the 6th day of that month, in the early hours of that day, that light left the world when I happened to be in Verona—Ah!—oblivious to my fate.”
A farewell inscription, a little too literary, apparently appealing to the tender hearts of posterity. That epitaph, stuck to the cover of the poet’s most beloved book, is longer than the fragment quoted above, and it goes on to speak of Laura’s loveliest and purest flesh, of the soul, God, Scipio Africanus, Seneca, the flight from Babylon…But the two first sentences, referring to concrete events, calling persons, place, and time to witness, prompt doubts that seem justified.
For one thing, the attempt to make the history of this unreciprocated love geometrical, to give it the shape of a circle, and thus of a symbol of perfection, is suspect. From the birth of the emotion to the beloved’s death the hand of the magical clock describes a full circle. It stops after twenty-one years, on the same day, at the same hour.
Then, it isn’t clear why Petrarch for the first and only time christened the object of his adoration “Laurea,” not Laura or Lauretta, as he did in the sonnets. Could it be that the hand of the outstanding philologist, tried and tested in copying the most difficult and illegible texts, so trembled with emotion that it lost control over the correct orthography?
There is no Church of Sainte-Claire in Avignon today. Nor do its ruins and fundaments exist. Was it only time that destroyed the drama’s décor?
And finally the most astonishing thing. We know from experience that our memories retain caringly and faithfully the important dates of our lives; and surely the day—blessed for poetry—when Francesco and Laura first crossed glances for the first time was precisely such a date.
Nevertheless, there is an apparently minor but crucial disparity between two confessions made by the poet concerning that meeting so laden with consequence. In the epitaph we quoted, written on the cover of the Virgilian codex, Petrarch speaks of April 6, whereas we clearly read in one of the sonnets dedicated to the birth of his great love:
“Era il giorno ch’al sol si scoloraro5
per la pietà del suo fattore i rai…”
which is an unmistakable indication that the first meeting occurred on Good Friday, on the day of the Lord’s Passion, when according to the testimony of the evangelists there was a solar eclipse. With the aid of a historical calendar we can easily ascertain that April 6, 1327, was not Good Friday but Easter Monday. If we take into account the great role the rhythm of the important religious holidays played in the life of those times, it is truly very difficult to understand this casual and reprehensible negligence in recollection.
So we have strayed onto tricky ground riddled with uncertain circumstantial evidence and indiscreet inferences. A criminological-literary method that strives to determine incontrovertibly the place, time, and victim of the crime of love, a pettifogging investigation into the reliability of the witnesses for the prosecution and defense, both aim to announce triumphantly that Laura never existed. Laced with smug nihilism, it is all pedantically arid and futile.
Equally dubious, it seems to us, are the efforts of history’s gossips, driven by a hunger for the concrete, who swear that the heroine of Petrarch’s poems was a woman of flesh and blood, one among thousands of young ladies in Avignon. It is said her name was Laura de Noves and that at a young age she married a hearty Provençal, the marquis Ugo de Sade, whom she bore eleven children. A few months after her death the inconsolably grief-stricken marquis married again. A story straight from a naturalistic novel.
Let us not seek for Laura. May she lie in the alabaster tomb of three hundred sonnets. The history of that imagined and necessary love moves along a different trajectory than the course of earthly affairs. The essence of the mystery is in our grasping, apprehending, conjuring from the uncertain reports and scattered sources the curious fashion in which Laura existed.
Petrarch—let us say it again—loved only one woman, Donna Novella, with a desperate, blind, wrong love—for how else can you love a woman without a mouth, the color of whose eyes you don’t know, a woman without hands whose whole being was—a voice. It was a feeling, a feeling too great, that is to say beyond the limits of form.
At that time he began writing poems dedicated to the Voice on the Other Side of the Curtain. The poems were hopelessly awkward, without beginnings or endings or even a middle pulsing with pain, full of empty exclamations and tedious repetitions, poems whose miserable vapidity he tried to conceal with the loud wailing of ancient heroines and gods. If those creations had any value at all, it could only have been that they accurately reflected his unbounded, nameless passion.
And then Petrarch made a great, that is to say a simple discovery. He realized that he had to invent a double for his love who would be born from his own rib like Eve from Adam’s rib, and be the creature of his own royal imagination, and therefore subject to his every whim, and above all worthy of an art governed by cool ardor and disciplined madness.
That is why he defended his sacred allegory so fiercely. He knew that while he lived he had to invent proof of the existence of his unreal woman, for after his death her fate would be identified with his poetry and after the world’s ultimate conflagration—Laura would be inviolable, strong, immutable, and vivid as Penelope, Dido, Isolde, and Be
atrice.
1981
MIRROR
1
DSOU-GI, AN INFLUENTIAL MINISTER in the kingdom of Tsi, stood in front of the mirror. Neither he himself nor anyone else could have foreseen that this fact, so banal, would have serious consequences and influence the kingdom’s history in an entirely unexpected way.
The tailor had just brought him new ceremonial robes: a purple cloak lined with gold, a sky-blue kimono embroidered with pagodas and flowers, dragons and moons. To these silken splendors the minister added the noble oval of his face, smooth black hair woven into an artful braid, a shapely nose, a narrow mouth where thunderbolts and caresses, decrees and kisses lay in wait; eyes with almond lids discreetly outlined with a brush that expressed what the eyes of a dignitary ought to express: gentle strength. The mirror—which according to naïve notions reflects the truth, as if there were not different mirrors for lovers and suicides—that unreliable object at the mercy of changing moods—the mirror admired him and made courtly compliments.
Dsou-Gi was intoxicated with his own looks. He stood a long time motionless, as if wishing the image before him could be fixed for all time.
True wisdom is content with itself, but beauty demands confirmation, applause, and so Dsou-Gi asked his wife: “Tell me, am I more handsome than Mr. Si? (Mr. Si was universally considered to be the embodiment of male grace.) “Of course,” his wife replied without hesitation. But Dsou-Gi was not yet completely persuaded, so he asked his concubine the same question. “Mr. Si,” she said, “is barely even good-looking, and you are truly handsome. The difference between you is like that between the rising sun and a star fading at dawn.” Two voices, and women’s voices at that, were not enough to dissolve Mr. Dsou-Gi’s doubts, so he turned to a guest residing in his house and seeking favor at the royal court. The guest for a moment clumsily pretended he couldn’t remember who Mr. Si was, and finally replied gravely: “No one would dare compare a peacock (here he doubtless had in mind his host and protector) with a common sparrow.”
A few days passed. One afternoon the handsome Mr. Si visited the minister. Dsou-Gi observed him closely and at length and came to the conclusion that his visitor’s looks were unequaled. After the meeting he stood before the mirror once again. This time the mirror was withholding, cool, even repelling.
He did not sleep all night. He lay thinking. His wife considered him the model of beauty because they were bound by ties of love, his concubine was motivated by fearful deference, while the house guest was simply hoping for advancement.
The next day in a council with King Wei, Minister Dsou-Gi spoke up unexpectedly and on a subject apparently unconnected to the debate then being held: “I want to tell you a story about what just happened to me. I know I am not the most handsome of men, but because my beloved wife said I was, and my concubine, feeling a fearful deference, confirmed it, as did the house guest who is seeking my patronage—I was easily persuaded it was true. The Tsi kingdom is vast and bounteous—mountains that reach the heavens, cultivated fields, wild rivers flowing from the very center of the earth, a hundred and twenty populous cities and innumerable villages. The ocean on the eastern borders of our kingdom is like an enormous mirror reflecting our might. And you, King Wei, rise over your lands in a cloud of universal adoration. The courtiers and concubines love you, the ministers, provincial governors and minor officials feel for you a fearful deference, and all others hope for favors at your hands. And that is precisely why they are unable to speak the truth.”
“You’re right,” said King Wei. And he immediately issued a decree: “For the information of ministers, provincial governors, and the whole population. Whoever comes before me and points out my mistakes to my face shall receive an award of the first order. He who submits criticism of my government in writing shall receive an award of the second order. Those who in the streets, squares, and public spaces loudly—so that it may reach our ears—decry abuses of power, shall receive an award of the third order. That is our will.”
A chronicler reports that the decree had barely seen the light of day before crowds seeking awards and justice began to flock to King Wei’s palace. This went on for many months, and by the time a year had passed, peace and justice reigned, for no one could find anything to complain about, no matter how he wanted to. The chronicler closes his edifying tale with the dictum: “This is what is called vanquishing the enemy without leaving the palace.”
2
OLD MASTERS OF THE popular tale are familiar with the narrative strategy that leads by way of threefold repetition as by a threefold spell to a happy ending. But it is precisely the tale’s suspect symmetry, the abyss dividing the trivial first cause from the astonishing consequence—the tiny pebble of Dsou-Gi’s vanity thrown in the water making far-flung circles, awakening the dormant elements of the Tsi kingdom—all this arouses our distrust.
The true course of events was as follows.
After the publication of the decree urging people to criticize the government openly in the royal palace, not many came forward. From the point of view of the throne this was completely incomprehensible. King Wei was beside himself with indignation. Had he not with his own word guaranteed freedom of speech? Had he not released all prisoners and ordered the hated guardians of public order whom the people called “blood hounds” to be sent to labor in the silver mines? So why did the few who appeared before him not dare to raise their eyes, why did their grievances amount to incomprehensible drivel, why did they bow down low asking for forgiveness?
On the other hand, the grievances submitted in writing flowed in such abundance (if a flood can be called an abundance of water) that a special Ministry of Laments had to be created. It employed an increasing number of scribes and clerks; the officials, as officials do, set to work eagerly at first, examined each application, each individual complaint, but soon they were no longer able to cope with the tasks that overwhelmed them. The reports they sent the king were initially precise and to the point, later more and more generalized and vague. In the end they did no more than inventory the letters that arrived, segregating them in enormous folio’s entitled “Murders,” “Torture,” “Theft,” “Extortion of Provincial Administrators,” “Bureaucratic Corruption.”
Oral criticism, for which the royal decree allotted the lowest level of award, was practiced by literally everybody. Never before had the inhabitants of the Tsi kingdom moved their lips so eagerly. However, with the exception of a few crazies doubtless drunk on rice wine, the complaints were made in a low voice, in a whisper, so they could not reach the ears of the king so hungry for truth. On the other hand the complaints provided their speakers inexpressible relief.
The good king Wei couldn’t understood what was happening apart from the fact that the injuries inflicted on his subjects were great. He then summoned Mr. Dsou-Gi, who was now his closest advisor, chief ideologue, expert on public opinion (for finally that monster had been set loose) and better-future planner all rolled into one.
“I am not at all certain,” said the king, “that one must see one’s true face in the mirror. Perhaps it is good for philosophers but not for rulers. Until recently it seemed to me I knew myself and my subjects quite well. When I visited cities, and sometimes even remote villages, simple people came out to meet me bearing gifts, flowers, and anxious smiles—and you know that such inspections do not alter anyone’s fate and are nothing but a confirmation of my divine omnipresence. We were probably living in a delusion: they thought I was the embodiment of wisdom and goodness, and I was sure of their bottomless submission. Two illusions compacted with each other. And so it must be. Now I know nothing. How can an unsure king rule an unsure people?”
To this Minister Dsou-Gi replied: “You are mistaken, for you have achieved something that future generations will speak of with admiration. You loosened tongues, made people happy, gave them the priceless privilege of speaking of their injuries. A king who forbade mourning of the departed would be thought a crueler tyrant than one who all
owed violence and crime. Tears and complaints reconcile one to the world. They allow people to bear their lot more easily.”
King Wei was a lamb in the sphere of dialectics and not easily persuaded by convoluted proofs. Apart from that he didn’t know exactly what “mourning” or “complaint” meant, he knew the words only from dictionaries and poems. “All right,” he said, “but you will admit we have done nothing to let justice reign in our kingdom. Everything has remained as it always was. We haven’t paid out one silver piece from the treasury, we haven’t given anyone an acre or a bowl of rice. In a word, none of the plaintiffs have received compensation.”
“That’s true,” said Dsou-Gi. “But we can’t do that, because there are too many injured parties. (Here he mentioned an approximate but truly appalling number.) If we chose only a part of that mass, now that would be a screaming injustice.” And after a moment’s thought he added: “We should take one more step to ensure the happiness of our subjects. Reading various letters of grievance I noticed that no one holds anything against you; the whole of the people’s resentment is directed against the provincial governors. We should sacrifice them on the altar of justice.” Then he explained in brief what he had in mind.
In the state capital, on the Square of Heavenly Peace1, a ceremonial decapitation of governors took place. Great masses of people made the journey from the farthest edges of the Tsi kingdom. The ceremony was conducted amid celebratory silence. In the crowd’s eyes were astonishment, bliss, and cruel innocence.
Now the people’s happiness was truly beyond description. A fear arose that it would burst its banks (that period bore the apt name Period of the Spring Flood), and therefore should be closely monitored, lest enthusiasm break the bounds of reason. Following a council with the king, Mr. Dsou-Gi decided to hold back the Great Reforms for a certain time. He devoted himself to theoretical work.
The Collected Prose Page 78