by Mark Musa
29. appeared miraculously: The effects of love in others were merely surprising to him, so well defended was he against it. Cf. poem 2.
30. Oh, what am I? What was I?: A pained exclamation occurs in each stanza where a metamorphosis is about to take place.
31. The end lauds life: Just as the day can be judged or praised only in the evening, so life can be seen as good or bad, happy or unhappy, only in conclusion. The line echoes Ovid (Heroides II, 85), “Exitus acta probat.”
34. beyond the clothes I wore: Had not penetrated to his heart.
38. what I am: A state of being in the present that answers the first of the questions of line 30, “what am I?”
39. from living man: The first transformation draws on the legend of Apollo and Daphne in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1,550).
to green laurel: The image of the tree and its branches symbolizes the power of poetic language to restrain as well as glorify the human spirit. “What was I?” (1. 30) speaks of the time of freedom (1. 5), before recognition of this power struck him with full force.
41. The way I felt: He will tell also of this, as in line 21 he declared, “I tell you … that.”
44. hoped to make into my crown: The line is reminiscent of Inferno XVI, 106–108, in which Dante speaks of the cord he hoped to use as defense against the leopard. In the Inferno, Virgil drops into the pit the cord binding the Pilgrim’s waist, attracting Geryon, whose transport permits a release from the bounds of conventional language into new realms. Petrarch’s youthful hope was that the language he fashioned might bring him glory.
46. every limb: The metaphor flows backward from outward manifestations to the core of nature (and language).
48. not of Peneus: Daphne was transformed into a laurel tree by the compassionate goddess on the bank of the Peneus, to save her from the rape of Apollo.
a prouder river: Said to refer to the Rhône, the river flowing through Avignon, allegorically to a less simple, more prideful poetic environment.
50. Nor do I feel: The present tense, singling out emotion from event (“later on / when struck”) appears whenever feelings are about to be transformed into myth.
51. white feathers: The second metamorphosis refers to the myth of Phaeton and Cygnus (Ovid, Metamorphoses II, 367). It dramatizes the psychological processes involved in hoping for his lady’s favor, daring to reach for it, failing in the attempt, and ultimately losing courage to mount another effort. White is the color of fear, grief, and piety, now become the subject matter of his poetry.
57. near and in the waters: Whether he had lost his hope by immersing in the waters of life or standing back from them.
59. that evil fall: The fall of Phaeton, whose flight symbolized that of his hope.
60. I took on its color: He became celibate.
61. the shores I loved: Those frequented by Laura.
63. with a strange voice: Perhaps he means in Italian, among Frenchmen, a sound harsh and bitter to their ears, new and barbaric.
67. What I felt then: Virgil, Boethius, and Dante also speak of the memory that burns (literally “cooks”).
68–86. But much more …: This episode, believed by most critics to be loosely recounting the myth of Battus and Mercury (Ovid, Metamorphoses II, 685), may have other sources, such as the transformation of Atlas into a mountain when Perseus held up the head of Medusa. Cf. also St. Augustine’s account in Confessiones III of his mother’s vision of Christ, and Dante’s dream in Vita nuova III, in which Beatrice feeds on his heart at the urging of a lordly figure.
71. beyond… words: Beyond human knowledge.
74. “Say not a word”: Cf. 5.7–8, and see 2 Cor. 12:4 and Mark 1:44.
75. in other garb: He recalls the first assault, when love of poetry was “green,” by making this comparison with the second event, his meeting Laura.
77. what the truth was: Because she seemed receptive, and was alone, he revealed his passion to her.
79–80. quickly turned me …: The third metamorphosis, like his transformation to the swan, also describes fear, this more grievous and immediate. Whereas Cygnus was able to move, Battus suffers near paralysis, huddled like his cattle on the frozen tundra.
81. so much anger: Indignation at his failure to understand.
83. Perhaps I am not what you think I am: Rather than saying, “perhaps, sir, you misinterpret my kindness as acquiescence to your base desire,” Laura may be chiding him for glorifying her falsely. Cf. Inferno XIX, 62.
84–86. If she were …: The “if” clause makes these lines ambiguous. In St. Augustine’s account (see above, note 68–86), he is struck by his mother’s faith but fails to understand it, instead continuing in his sinful ways for nine more years. Here, Petrarch’s protagonist would rather return to his early period as a swan than endure his own thwarted passions.
88. but myself: This line begins a psychological process completed in line 100, when he blames her.
90. my time is short: Cf. Dante, Inferno XVI, 124–29.
92. many things recorded in my mind: He chooses to remain silent about certain events in his life. Instead, he will write only of that which brings about amazement and reverence.
95. Death had now wrapped itself: “Denied” by Laura, he enters a period of despair of being understood.
98. my spoken voice: Cf. poem 18, where the “deadly words” in line 12 are unspoken.
99. pen and paper: Cf. Job 19:23–24. Advised to suffer in silence by his friends, Job declared in 7:11 that he would not hold his peace, but would argue with God in defense of his life.
100. I’m not mine: He is hers. Cf. Job 9:35.
your fault: Laura, in possession of his heart and soul and having killed all hope in him, must take responsibility for his very death. This will be his defense against unintelligibility.
101. by doing this: By writing down the details of his love.
105. sometimes inflame it: His meekness will succeed in arousing her disdain, because boldness instead will be called for.
106. I was wrapped in darkness: Out of the sight of her eyes.
107. with my prayers: Cf. line 98, “my spoken voice had been denied me.”
112. fugitive ray: A sun in decline. The passage recalls Job 16:18–22, where Job’s prayers are unanswered and he yearns for an intercessor.
114. whenever they decided: Cf. Dante’s Vita nuova, where the poet succumbs to self-pity (or takes the less arduous road to wisdom).
117. turn to fountain: The fourth metamorphosis, patterned on that of Byblis into a fountain (Ovid, Metamorphoses IX, 660). Byblis had confessed in writing her forbidden love for her brother Caunus, who then repudiated and abandoned her. Seeking him and not finding him anywhere she fell to the ground in despair, transformed by grief.
the beech tree: Petrarch alters Ovid’s version, where the tree was the ilex or holly, coincidentally sacred to Christ. The beech commonly symbolizes literature.
118. the wet road: The path of tears.
119. who ever heard: The question begs an answer, for Petrarch was unique in investing in himself these transformations. Dante also claimed to break precedent in a sequence where metamorphosis was the peculiar characteristic of the thief. Cf. Inferno XXV, 97 ff.
120. clear and well-known things: This might compare accessible writings with those more mysterious and difficult, that is, those lines he pens to express his pain rather than to praise his lady. The distinction is Augustinian.
121. The soul: Laura’s, created in the image of God.
124. she never stops forgiving: The nature of God is to forgive; therefore by praying to her likeness in God he comes to mercy.
127–131. unlike herself …: She has, instead, silenced him.
129. be more feared: That the prayer might also be an atonement for the sin.
134. punishment was equal: Cf. Dante, Purgatorio XXX, 108.
135. restored: In a sense, she dried his tears and restored him to a state of grace.
136. wise men count on nothi
ng: Echoing the pessimism of the Stoic.
138. she turned to hardest stone: This is the fifth metamorphosis, patterned after Echo’s into flint in Ovid, Metamorphses II, 390. The nymph Echo loved Narcissus, who loved only the image of himself. Since Narcissus always started his own fire, and Echo’s flint struck sparks that never ignited, they were of no use to each other.
140. for Death and only her by name: He is reduced to a disembodied voice endlessly repeating itself. Narcissus died by the pool, yearning for his reflection, Echo’s mourning call repeating his dying syllables.
142. deserted caves: Where no one listened.
144. I found freedom: He found a new voice.
147–160. The sixth metamorphosis is based on the myth of Actaeon, Ovid, Metamorphoses III, 183. Acteon, while out hunting, came upon Diana in a grotto bathing in the waters of a spring. Angered by his seeing her naked, the goddess splashed water in his face, turning him into a stag hunted to death by his own dogs.
149. cruel and lovely beast: Cf. 22.19–22.
151. hottest time of day: When creatures seek the deepest woods and cooling waters.
152. no other sight: No other than the naked virgin goddess.
154. to revenge herself or else to hide: The language echoes Ovid and also the original experience of poem 2, in which Love’s assault is graceful revenge, secretly delivered.
155. splashed some water: To erase the traces of what he saw.
156. I’ll tell the truth: Cf. Dante, Inferno XVI, 124 ff. Dante and Petrarch use this mode of address to announce an event of extraordinary importance. Petrarch’s final inscriptions on this canzone, written in 1356, appear next to this line.
a lie: In Seniles XII, 2, Petrarch wrote: “He who simply pretends cannot be classified by the word ‘poet,’ nor honored as a wise man, but can only be termed a liar,” a belief similar to one expressed by Dante in Vita nuova, XXV.
157. from my very image: Of himself as a man. Ovid’s Actaeon dies, torn apart by his own dogs while trying to shout, “I am he, I am Actaeon!”
159. wandering deer: Graves (p. 54) writes that the roebuck, forever fleeing through the woods, is a symbol in poetic literature of the keeper of the secret.
160. I flee the rage: The line has the effect of a freeze frame of the poet in flight.
my own hounds: The dogs have been variously identified as his thoughts, his desires, his contemporaries. In the Book of Job, “dogs” hound Job, first in the form of his friends and later as unworthy men who want to bring him down.
161–169. Canzone …: There is no agreement about the myths the congedo (leave-taking) refers to, other than that of Jove and Danaë (ll. 161–163), source of the image of the “golden cloud” described in Horace’s Odes III, 16. Also mentioned are the myths of Jove and Aegina (Ovid, Metamorphoses VI, 113); Jove and Semele (Metamorphoses III, 250); Jove and Ganymede (Metamorphoses X, 155), and Jove and Asteria (Metamorphoses VI, 106).
162. precious rain: Because the issue of this seed was the birth of Perseus, but also because it symbolizes a first cause for poetry.
flame lit by Love’s glance: Probably the enamored Semele desiring to behold her divine lover.
165. the bird that rises: An eagle carried Ganymede to Olympus, and Aegina to the island where Jove sequestered her. Petrarch claims to be merely the medium of transport and not the object of transport. Cf. Dante, Purgatorio IX, 13–24.
168. the first laurel: That is, the first metamorphosis. Cf. lines 38–39.
169. lesser pleasure: Anything short of the one true figure.
24 SONNET
Written between 1330 and 1333 (in Petrarch’s late twenties) to Stramazzo da Perugia, whose sonnet “La santa fama de la qual son prive” praised Petrarch’s qualifications for poet laureate. This poem repeats Stramazzo’s rhymes.
1. illustrious branch: That of the laurel, crown of emperors and poets. Fronde (branch) carries the sense of collective critical judgment.
1–2. can control / the wrath of heaven: The laurel was believed to be immune to lightning and as the symbol of poetry to be invulnerable to temporal power.
2. when Jove thunders down: When the temporal power threatens.
3–4. had not refused… poetry: Petrarch writes poetando, as in poem 10.8, to reflect with irony a prevailing opinion that poetry was a form of literature inferior to philosophy and theology.
5. those goddesses: Minerva and the Muses.
7. that offense forces me far away: On the subject of medieval coronation, Wilkins (1951, p. 65) writes: “The coronation of… Mussato (1315) was obviously a classicizing adaptation of the medieval academic graduation ceremony…. Its most obviously academic features are the preliminary examination, the use of a Privilegium or diploma, and the specifically academic awards of the diploma; the designation as Master; the giving of the ‘legendi disputandi: atque interpretandi… liberam … potestatme’; and the conferring of the right to enjoy those privilegia immunitates honores et insignia’ commonly enjoyed by professors of liberal and honorable arts.”
8. inventress: Minerva. The allusion is to Virgil’s Georgics I, 18, “oleacque Minerva inventrix,” and identifies poetry with philosophy.
9. Ethiopia’s sands do not burn more: An allusion to Rome’s lost glory. Cf. Dante, Purgatorio XXVI, 16—21.
11. from losing something: The laurel crown, later awarded to him in 1341.
12. a more peaceful fountain: One more clear and limpid, unobscured by dark passions such as his own.
25 SONNET
Written as early as 1330, this sonnet and the next are addressed to a poet friend recently returned to the bonds of love.
1–2. Love at times: Always himself a willing prisoner of love, he had wept for this friend struggling against it.
3. strong and strange effects: For these effects of love, see note to 29.13.
4. released your soul: Gave him a leave of absence.
7. His mercy: Cf. Dante, Purgatorio II, 2.
9. returning to the life of love: To the contemplative life.
10. on sweet desire: Cf. line 3.
11. hills or ditches: Worldly snares.
12–13. thorny … hard: Rising out of the depths to reach the peaks is the test of the man.
26 SONNET
Because his friend has turned back to Love, he exults as if rescued from disaster.
1–2. to land / a ship: The ship is symbolic of the poet’s craft and of the soul’s journey.
2. defeated by the waves: Overwhelmed by circumstance, by the storms of daily life.
3. piteously painted pale: Cf. Dante, Inferno IV, 19 ff. The color of fear is also that of piety. Cf. also Dante, Vita nuova XXIII.
7. sword back in its sheath: And peace restored.
8. against my lord: Love.
10. fine weaver: In medieval times, a complex idea for the author which defines aesthetic principles. The Italian word testor (weaver), from Latin textor, provides a connection with revelation literature.
love’s poetry: Petrarch’s amorosi detti echoes Dante, Purgatorio XXVI, 112, where Guinizelli speaks of Dante’s dolci detti.
11. honor the one who strayed before: One whose experience has carried him into infernal regions from which he emerged victorious.
12–14. more glory shines … : The lines paraphrase Luke 15:7, “Quod ita gaudium erit in coelo super uno peccatore poenitentiam agente, quam super nonaginta novem iustis, qui non indigent poenitentia.”
27 SONNET
In this sonnet, perhaps directed to Orso dell’Anguillara, Petrarch makes a call to arms in behalf of the Crusade against the Saracens (declared in 1334 by Philip VI of France, moral “successor” of Charlemagne), and for the return of Pope John XXII from Avignon to Rome.
1. The successor of Charles: Although Philip’s father was Charles V, Petrarch hopes that he will follow in the footsteps of Charlemagne, champion of Rome against the “infidels.”
3. already takes up arms: Philip joined the Crusade on 25 July 1332 and was sub
sequently named head of the expedition by Pope John. Hopes for his departure continued for six years, when the pope lost faith in him because of his continued war with England.
break the horns: In biblical literature, the horns signified pride and arrogance.
4. of Babylon: Ancient Baghdad; in this case, however, the reference is to Cairo, seat of the caliph.
and those who bear her name: All those followers of the Muslim religion.
5. the vicar of Christ: The pope.
6. keys and cloak: The duties of the pope.
6. returns now to the nest: To Rome from Avignon, to which the papacy transferred in 1309 under Pope Clement V.
8. he’ll see Bologna: He refers, perhaps, to the French pope Johns intention to take his first journey to Italy.
9. Your lamb: The noun is given in the feminine. Identification of her ranges from the force for peace among Italians (the Colonna family?), to Florence, to a specific Agnese, wife of Orso dell’Anguillara and sister of Giovanni and Giacomo Colonna.
10. savage wolves: Unidentified political forces hostile to the Church of Rome. They will be subdued not by predation but by grace and humility.
12. console her then, the one who still is waiting: Some say Bologna, others Florence (the lamb). The two events, the Crusade and the papal return, are awaited by all the principal players.
13. lamenting her bridegroom: The pope, as vicar of Christ.
14. raise your sword: In the canzone to follow he will exhort Giacomo Colonna to raise the weapon of eloquence on behalf of the Crusade. Cf. 26.7–8 for another metaphoric use of “sword.”
28 CANZONE
Taking up the rallying cry of poem 27, Petrarch writes this appeal to Giacomo Colonna, bishop of Lombez, to lend his eloquence on behalf of the new Crusade proclaimed by the king of France in 1334.
3. is clothed: Not dominated by the flesh, Colonna wears it lightly and is beautified by it.