by Mark Musa
2. rest upon one of these: Perhaps a pillow. One of the remedies for love was thought to be repose and meditation.
4. that cruel one: Love.
5. With the next one: The second gift, perhaps a book.
block to the left: On the side of the heart.
8. little time is left: Reminiscent of Horace’s “Ars longa, vita brevis.”
9. with the third one drink: Perhaps a cup or glass.
the juice of herbs: An extract for his affliction.
12. put me: The poem itself.
where all pleasure is reserved: In the heart or memory. The poem begs to be remembered with pleasure (Durling).
13. captain of the Styx: Charon, who ferries souls into the Underworld.
59 BALLATA
Deprived of the sight of Laura, he intends to love her nonetheless, with a new emphasis on her golden hair.
3. my fixed desire: Cf. 22.24.
4. hid the noose: Referring to the conical shape of her golden tendrils. Later he speaks of the golden threads with which he has spun his cocoon.
6. cold ice: The effect of a distant star. The memory of Laura’s cold glance, instead of stifling his ardor, increases it.
15. though through a good death: Cf. 5.7–8, 23.31, 140.14, and 207.65.
17. from such a knot: The knot and the noose are one—his tie to the “unexpected splendor” (1. 8) that memory of her calls up.
60 SONNET
The bitterness Petrarch now feels is put into the mouth of his successor in this harsh judgment of himself.
1. the gracious tree that I loved hard: The laurel. Petrarch speaks in the past tense of youthful, idealistic love born of intense study. Cf. Dante, Paradiso XI, 63.
4. in all my troubles: The plant grew strong by struggling against adversity.
6. it turned: The disdain of Laura—her sudden turning away from him—produced a corresponding change in his verse.
bitter wood: Pitiless, mirroring the maiden’s unyieldingness. Cf. 22.37.
9–11. What would he say … : A younger poet might ask (as he does now) whether he had been hopelessly deceived by the predecessor’s sweet words of love.
12–13. nor Jove / grant it favor: Nor grant it immunity from lightning.
13. let the sun pour anger: At midday, metaphorically the period of a man’s life when cynicism may replace idealism.
61 SONNET
As if to respond to the raveled nature of the preceding sonnet, this benedictory poem gathers up and blesses in a grand embrace all the contradictory elements of his love.
1. blessèd be the day: Echoing the beatitudes of the Gospel of Matthew has a number of precedents in Provençal poetry.
2. the season and the time, the hour: Spring, in the morning, at the first canonical hour, 6–9 A.M.
3. the place: Avignon.
5. the first sweet agony: More than his joy, he blesses his pain, which in its sweetness was unique and sudden.
7. all the arrows: Renewals of his wounds on other occasions.
9–10. all of the poetry / I scattered: Compare the title Petrarch gave the collection, Rime sparse. Blessing all his verse written in her name expresses joy in its variety.
14. shared with no one else: His thoughts at all times have been faithful to Laura.
62 SONNET
Third among the anniversary poems, this sonnet commemorates the eleventh year of his love, Good Friday, 1338, with a prayer to God.
2. spent in delirium: Cf. 23.3.
5. your light: The illuminating light of grace.
6. to deeds more beautiful: He prays directly to God for guidance, whereas before he invoked Love, la donna, or Apollo.
7. spread his nets in vain: He has turned at midday, as he wrote in 54.10, thus escaping the snares of the adversary.
8. may be disarmed: Scornare, with a root meaning of “break the horns of,” thus depriving Satan of his power.
10. pitiless yoke: His subjection to Love. Cf. 29.7 and 50.61.
11. harshest to those: Those most loyal to the pursuit of truth.
14. crucified today: Cf. poem 3. According to Salvini, Petrarch observed the Passion every year by taking only bread and water.
63 BALLATA
As if to give evidence of the healing effects of his prayer, this ballata makes a fresh start.
1. Turning your eyes: Demonstrating her quality of majesty.
my strange color: The pallor of one wounded in the heart.
3. you did so out of pity: Cf. 23.121–135.
8. I owe to them: First the eyes, then the voice of Laura are the sources of his inspiration. Cf. Dante, Vita nuova II and III.
9. for, as the rod will to the lazy beast: The nature of his falling in love was sudden and splendid. Now memory of Laura’s greeting acts as a prod to his conscience.
10. the heavy soul in me: The soul is weighted down by the body. Cf. poems 6 and 33.
11. you hold both keys: She decides whether he experiences pain or joy, heaven or hell. Cf. 29.56, and Dante, Inferno XIII, 58.
14. anything from you: Even when she disdains him, he has been blessed by loving her.
64 SONNET
The intimacy he revealed in the preceding ballata becomes playful identification in this sonnet. He has created her, cruelty and all, just as she alone has inspired him.
The date of transcription on Vat. Lat. 3196, now completely illegible, at one time read 16 November 1337, according to Ubaldini.
4. my pure and worthy prayers: Cf. poems 61 and 62.
6–7. that first laurel/grafts many branches: Many styles, diverse traditions, creating new life out of old wood.
8. this is just reason: His being daunted by her would merit true disdain.
9. a noble plant: The laurel.
arid ground: In a breast devoid of love for her.
12. since your destiny prohibits you: Only he can know her and celebrate her, as a unique poet in a unique age.
14. the place you stay: In his heart and thoughts.
is not always so hateful: The line reminded Vellutello of the exiled Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto II, 8, when he sent a portrait to Augustus and Livia: “Denique, quae mecum est et erit sine fine, cavet ne sit in inviso vestra figura loco.”
65 SONNET
A slave to Love, he can only hope that his fire will exceed expectations when tested.
1. badly prepared: Cf. poems 2 and 3.
4. sits upon its summit: Has taken dominion over his thoughts.
5. force of his file: Wearing down his resistance.
6. strength or worthiness: An allusion to 2.5, “My strength was concentrated in my heart.”
7. hardened heart: Cf. 2.7–8.
8. when one thinks he’s above it: He esteemed himself above an earthly love.
10. except to test: His vital power is measured in terms of her response, much or little.
13. now in moderation: Hardly worthy of admiration. Cf. 170.14.
66 SESTINA
Written during his first residence in Vaucluse, perhaps in 1340, this sestina echoes in its imagery and design Dante’s canzone “Io son venuto al punto de la rota.” The state of the lover’s heart and mind is like a valley among mountains about to be swept by a winter storm.
1–6. The heavy air: Winter settles in on mountains and valleys like a gravitational force.
2. furious winds: Concentrating their anger in barely forming precipitation.
8. thoughts … in such a fog: In poem 37 the distant fog blocked him from the sight of her. Here he is in the midst of it.
9. sometimes rises: Fog that rises from the land like a miasma. He may allude to intrigue in the papal court at Avignon.
10. closed… against the loving winds: Cf. 28.10.
11. stagnating rivers: The rivers running through the valley feed into the Rhône near Avignon, whose corruption Petrarch later attacks. Cf. Virgil, Georgics IV, 288, “effuso stagnantem flumine Nilum.”
14. warmth makes disappear: The abrupt tone imitates
the sudden arrival of spring following on the heels of a scirocco.
17. the fury of the winds: Spring must follow this tempest.
19. no help for me: Cf. 9.14.
24. I’ll see dried up: Before she thaws, the impossible must happen.
25. As long as to the sea: Cf. Eccles. 1:7, “Omnia flumina intrant in mare; et mare non redundat: ad locum, unde exeunt flumina, revertuntur, et iterum fluant.”
26. and beasts: All beasts seeking refuge, all poets seeking truth.
29. in her lovely breast: Her hardened heart is constituted of ice; his of fire.
32. between two rivers: The Sorgue and the Durance.
35. her shade: He shadowed her forth wherever he was, giving form to his vision.
36. shattered fog: Nor did Jove’s bolts of lightning affect him since he was protected by her immortal shade. Cf. Dante, Inferno XXIV, 149.
38. on that day: When he first saw her.
39. sunlight opens: Cf. Virgil, Georgics II, 317: “Rura gelu tunc claudit hiems.”
67 SONNET
This and the next two sonnets, written during Petrarch’s Roman journey in late 1336 and 1337, are a unit and speak of a comic struggle between two styles of love.
1. On the left bank: If traveling from Provence, the western shore of Italy.
2. where the waves weep … break: Cf. Virgil, Georgics I, 334: “Nunc nemora ingenti vento, nunc litora plangunt.” He plays on the dual meanings of piangere (to weep) and its Latin form piangere, “to beat the head and breast as a sign of grief.”
3. that proud branch: The laurel. Cf. 24.1.
5–6. boiling/in the remembrance: His love igniting his fire amidst all this water.
6. her golden tresses: Her curling hair is recalled rather than the eyes. Zingarelli notes that the more spiritual eyes are off-limits because “boiling” has infernal significance.
7. a stream the grass was hiding: Cf. Dante, Vita nuova IX, XIX. Petrarch is probably referring to Tuscan love poetry with its highly sexual imagery. Cf. poem 69.
8. fell, dead weight: Cf. Dante, Inferno V, 142: “come corpo morto cade.”
12. changed my style: From having wet eyes to having wet feet, that is, turning tearful thoughts to verse (piedi) in this style.
14. the others dry: His tearful eyes would dry in a less cruel climate.
68 SONNET
“Jousting” thoughts are the subject of this sonnet directed to one or all of the Colonna family during Petrarch’s sojourn in Rome. Head and heart struggle for supremacy.
1. The sacred sight: Of ancient Rome and, by contrast, the ruins of present-day Roman religion and culture.
2. the evil of my past: Cf. 53.77 and the thousand years of darkness resulting from the move of the Church to Byzantium.
3. Get up, you fool: As God ordered Ezekiel to do in the Old Testament.
5. another one: The amoroso pensiero, now calling him back to Laura.
10. turn cold as ice: From fear, compassion, or piety.
12. the first returns: The voice of his conscience.
and this one: The one nearest his heart, the voice of Love, gives way to the stronger voice he hears in Rome.
14. on more than one occasion: When one thought cedes to the other, a turning results. Compare sequences such as poems 54–55 and 62–63.
69 SONNET
On the trip from Marseilles to Rome, on the margin of the Tuscan coast, new voices make him realize the futility of struggling against Love.
1. any human means: Any advice from his senses.
3. unkept promises: Promises of mercy. Cf. 56.4
4. fierceness of your claw: Through struggle he has felt himself ever more firmly caught in love’s grip. The word artiglio (claw), has the figurative sense of predation.
6. the person who’s concerned: To whom it happened, himself.
8. by Tuscan shores: Italy’s western coast, opposite old Etruria.
9. I fled your hands: He thought to escape his pain by leaving her behind.
10. unknown and quite unusual: Like meraviglio and novamente in line 5, these words speak of the uniqueness of this pilgrimage to Rome.
11. the winds… driving me: The force of events.
12. out of nowhere: I’ non so donde suggests irony. These disembodied voices with messages of love resemble siren calls from an unexpected source.
13. from one’s destiny: He, a Tuscan himself, must follow in that poetic tradition.
14. one cannot fight it off: Although he suggests that the voice of his conscience (the winner in sonnet 68.12) ultimately lost the battle, it may be that he has begun to learn the science of bringing the ship to port by negotiating the waves (tacking into the wind).
70 CANZONE
This canzone serves as an introduction to the three that follow, the so-called “canzoni of the eyes.” They were all written in Avignon before 1337.
Poem 69, a sonnet, spoke of Tuscan love poetry as a remedy for the motion of the sea waves. This canzone brings that art into steady focus by weaving together verses from the works of five different love poets, concluding with the first line of Petrarch’s poem 23, a canzone. Each stanza builds momentum on the strength of the one before it, summarizing as it goes the thought of the poet quoted in its own last line. In this way, the argument moves forward as if on waves, the final line of the canzone being the crest of the next wave, giving the effect of a manifesto.
1. Oh what to do: Lasso me carries a sense of limpness, echoed in the last lines of the canzone.
all that hope of mine: All the talent he possesses. He stands ready, but to what end?
4. cast so many prayers: In so many different directions.
6. an end to my poor words: That Love no longer deny him access to her. 8. it please him: Non gravi, that is, that it not weigh him down and cause him to be late or slow.
10. It’s right: This line is quoted by Petrarch in Provençal: “Drez et rayson es qu’ieu chant em demori.” It is the first verse of a canzone attributed either to Arnaut Daniel, the twelfth-century poet, or to William of St. Gregory, and its appearance at the end of the first stanza gives first place to that tradition.
14. equal to my many woes: To make equal is to bring into balance, a goal he seeks to achieve by “changing style” (cf. 67.12)
15. those holy eyes: This is the first time he has called Laura’s eyes holy.
16–17. receive delight…/… of mine: That his poetry might please her to the point where she herself would sing it.
17. some sweet words: Cf. Dante, Purgatorio XXVI, 112, where the poet Guido Guinizelli’s words are so described.
18. above all lovers: True happiness would come if he could elevate his poetry to match the holiness of Laura.
20. A lady begs me: This is the first line of the famous canzone by Guido Cavalcanti, “Donna mi priega.”
21–24. that step by step have led … : He ascends with the measured steps of the philosopher, as did Cavalcanti.
23. hard as stone: Smalto, meaning enameled and fired.
24. on my own: Without her guidance.
29. hard and bitter now: Mirroring hers. His language becomes militant, shading into Dante’s.
30. So in my speech I now wish to be harsh: This is the first line of one of Dante’s “stony rhymes,” a canzone.
31. What am I saying?: Cf. Virgil, Aeneid VI, 595: “Quid loquor? aut ubi sum? Quae mentem insania mutat? Infelix Dido!” He recollects himself, as Aeneas did after Dido’s suicide.
33–34. My mind could run … : He is not fated to be unhappy. Cf. line 10.
35. if mortal veil it is: The perceptions of the body, as well as the body itself.
36–37. stars / or any lovely thing: Stars signify a fixed reality; things a reality in flux.
39. burden of the pleasure: The sweet weight of his pledge.
40. Her sweet presence, her soft and lovely glance: This is the first line of a canzone by the Florentine poet Cino da Pistoia, a contemporary of Dante and Petrarch, writing o
n the occasion of the death of his lady.
41–50. All things adorning … : The final stanza, climaxing with the first line of Petrarch’s first canzone (poem 23), begins with a thanksgiving of two lines and follows with two-line refrains of each of the preceding stanzas, giving the canzone a form which links beginning with end. The critical opinion that Petrarch wrote the canzone with the intention of outdoing his predecessors is not supported by the text. Rather, he identifies his own mental processes with that of each poet, producing a cumulative effect.
43. but I: He returns to the idea of the pilgrim in need of guidance.
45. should I: He returns to Laura’s eyes, which tell him to acquiesce in blessedness.
48. by their own fault: An admission he has not made before.
49. when I turned: He returns to harsh reality, to his infirmity and the poor state of his soul.
50. the sweet season: Before that first day when he fell.
71 CANZONE
This canzone is one of three in a series, known as the “canzoni of the eyes,” that are among the most admired of the collection. Petrarch himself calls them “sisters” and structures them identically except for the total number of stanzas in each. The first stanza here serves as a preface to poems 72 and 73.
4. I hope for understanding: In Laura’s heart.
6. that pain of mine: A deeper, more serious pain beneath the abject surface pain. Cf. Ovid, Ars amatoria I, 574: “Saepe tacens vocem verbaque voltus habet.”
9. by nature lazy: A faulty human art that attempts to reach the divine.
10–13. acquires from the subject gracious habit: Her loveliness, with all its gracious expressive qualities, schools him in an appropriate style. Dante and Cino da Pistoia also used the conceit.
14. raised by such wings: Provided to one who has intelligence of love.