by Mark Musa
9. to a better port: To a higher truth and the salvation of his soul.
10. more than a thousand rocks: A long history of potential shipwrecks.
12. than is the bark: His soul’s desire to know, driving him toward those rocks.
13. in this blind bark: The mind or soul in its mortal body.
14. wandered never looking: He lost his bearings. Cf. Cicero. Somnium Scipionis.
16. pleased the one: God.
18. to see the port: Literally, “the port might appear to me.” He was too close to danger even to see it.
19–22. Just as a light … : It is a clear, calm night, when the lights on the shore are visible from the sea. Cf. Dante, Inferno XXVI, 16–33.
23. I saw the ensigns: He charted his course from those stars above the inflated sail of his ambition.
24. I sighed for my end: For death into “that other” life of blessedness.
25. not because I’m sure yet: The words could be humble or they could be caviling. In 73.85–90, he shrank from his high enterprise, pleading wounds suffered long ago.
26. with the daylight: When the rocks will not be hidden in darkness and some of the day will be left to him.
28. fragile is my bark: He fears the perishability of his art.
31. perilous rocks: Perilous in the sense of dubbiosi, a reference to his uncertainty of mind in the last stanza.
36. change my way of life: Like Dante’s Ulysses, he cannot end his journey until he knows how it will end.
81 SONNET
Among Carducci’s favorites but criticized by those who seek signs of religious resolve in Petrarch, this sonnet borrows from Psalm 54 and the Gospel of Matthew. Because of the frankly political nature of the Psalm, this poem may contain complex messages. It begins a series of twenty-four sonnets.
1. the old bundle: For the burden of his sins, Petrarch chooses the word fascio, deeds both good and bad.
2. of all my sins: At various times in the Canzoniere, he names the sins contained in the bundle: sloth, anger, gluttony, envy, pride.
my bad habit: Of seeking Laura. He makes a semantic distinction between sin and his love for Laura.
3. fear much to fail: To be inadequate to the task of seeking her without becoming trapped in error.
4. my great foe: Since the next quatrain speaks of Christ as his friend, this “great foe” is Satan.
5. once came to free me: Christ.
10. O you: Petrarch paraphrases the words of Christ from Matt. 11:28: “Venite ad me, omnes….” His temerity has caused comment, especially since he adds his own clause to Christ’s words, “if no one blocks the way.” Cf. Dante, Inferno V, 80–81, and Purgatorio XI, 1–24.
12–14. What grace …: The relevant passage from Ps. 54 is: Quis dabit mihi pennas sicut columbae; et volabo, et requiescam?” Carducci noted how he links the Old and the New Testament with these citations.
13. those of doves: Of peace.
14. that I may rest: That he may regain his strength for the hard climb.
82 SONNET
If poem 80 was penitential and 81 was a prayer for a sign from God, this sonnet puts religious feeling aside to speak again of his “bad habit.”
3. at the end of my self-hate: His exile from himself.
6. written to my loss: For example, “Here lies Petrarch, who died unloved by Laura.”
10. without your breaking it: That he not be undone by her merciful glance, losing full battle strength as a consequence.
12–13. your disdain seeks/ to fill itself: To satisfy itself with proofs of his inadequacy.
13. it errs, and won’t succeed: She has not looked beyond appearances and seen his worth.
14. thanks to Love and me: And to his constancy.
83 SONNET
Weak negatives alternate in this sonnet with the fierce reality of his love.
3. I may take a chance: He still, unwisely, seeks out her eyes, from which Love launched his first assault.
5. I fear no longer: He is now defended, whereas before Love caught him unawares.
7. nor break: Literally, “nor open.” He has hardened his heart. Cf. 23.73.
8. pitiless and poisoned: Love is still able to invade him in a more generalized sense.
9. tears escape my heart: Find their way from Love’s wounds to his eyes.
10. they may know the way: Through pain distilled.
11. and barely: He is just able to restrain his tears.
12. the fierce ray: The light of her eyes, to which he is reluctantly drawn throughout the sonnet.
13. cruel, harsh image: His primal vision of her.
84 SONNET
This sonnet is a dialogue between his heart and his eyes, which seem to sit in judgment on who is to blame for the poet’s unhappiness. The idea may have come from Guido Guinizelli’s sonnet “Dolente, lasso.”
1. Eyes, come now: Resolute eyes that held back his tears in sonnet 83.
2. suffer death because of you: Consume itself bit by bit. His eyes permitted the arrows of Love to penetrate that first time.
4. more for another’s fault: The heart’s.
5. as if to his own home: Settling in as a bird would to its nest, giving power and seniority not only to Love but to the heart.
7. We showed him in: The eyes protest. Because of the desire stirred in the heart, they were moved to turn out of pity for it.
9. The claims are not: One cannot counter the first argument with the second, says the heart.
10. in your first sight: The heart’s argument relies on the first motion of the eyes, establishing their culpability.
11. most greedy: Devouring her beauties.
12–14. Now this is what makes us … : The defense of the heart is, perhaps, less than judicious.
85 SONNET
This sonnet is interesting as a sequel to poem 84: final judgment has been postponed—guilt having been distributed among mind, heart, and eyes—and the poet, released, bursts forth in gratitude for the gifts of life.
3. that place so sweet: Where he first saw Laura.
4. when Love saddens my heart: On Good Friday.
9. see them all together: That harmony of joy, sadness, virtue, and beauty that characterizes the singular time, place, and circumstances of his falling in love.
10. from every side: Or quindi or quinci, literally, “now here, now there.” Cf. 73.53.
12. with what force: As if time, place, circumstance, and the lady were Love’s troops.
14. yearn to live: If he did not believe in the miraculous power of their encounter, he would cease to be.
86 SONNET
Having blessed the day in which all good converged for him he contradicts himself.
1. detest the window: Laura’s eyes. “Io avrò sempre in odio” responds to “Io amai sempre” in 85.1.
2. thousands of arrows: Cf. poem 2.
3. none of them: None demanded that he martyr himself in this way.
4. death would be lovely: To die in a state of defendedness against love.
5. But staying longer: Literally “surviving,” living just above death.
7. that they will be immortal: That his woes will accompany him into death.
8. cannot be disentangled: The errors of the heart threaten the soul’s salvation.
11. turn back time: He cannot reverse his fate as easily as he reversed his words.
87 SONNET
Carducci admired this sonnet for the way it “presents, with such a high degree of elegance,” Laura’s “cold and cruel flirtatiousness with his passion.”
1–4. let the bowstring go: Cf. the massacre of poem 2. The sound of the lines imitates the action, ending with line four’s “tocchi,” a light but decisive touch.
2. an expert archer: Sagittario, one of the attributes of Christ.
5. you felt the shot: She observed his reaction and knew in herself that her glance had reached its mark. Cf. the “graceful revenge” of 2.1
8. eternal tears: Of the eternal love
r.
9. I am sure: The certainty of faith. Cf. line 3.
13. my two enemies: Laura and Love.
14. not to kill me: Cf. 86.3
88 SONNET
Half-horse, half-man, lame from combat, he flees Love’s war. The sonnet ends with the news that his enemy has also been wounded, a bit of intriguing detail.
1–4. Since what I hope for …: He should have retreated when his soul was still unbloodied.
4. than a gallop: The word galoppo is used only once in the Canzoniere.
5. now I do flee: As an animal limps off to show his unwillingness to fight.
6. twisted me: Wounded on the left side, whereby “dead is reason now” (see 73.25).
8. the scars: The signs of struggle in the very verse he writes. Cf. poem 76.
11. burns to extremes: Causes you to lose your will to return.
12. not one in a thousand: Cf. 2.2.
13–14. And certainly … : Leopardi interpreted these lines to mean that Laura fell in love with the poet, departing from myth. Daphne was wounded with the leaden arrow, causing her to spurn Apollo.
13. my enemy was strong: He, “safe now,” and she, wounded, survive to fight another day.
89 SONNET
He is freed from the prison of Love to pursue a lesser love—a liberty paradoxically more confining than before. The sonnet’s figurative vocabulary suggests the metamorphoses of the silkworm, whose triple life the lover applies to his own.
1. Escaping from the prison: Cf. poems 67, 69.9, 76.1–4.
3. would take too long: Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses XV, 419–20: “Before I have the time I need to tell you / All of the things that take new forms.”
4. my new-found liberty displeased me: Liberty from Laura (cf. poems 47 and 48) caused him to lose his purpose. He plays on the word increscere, an inversion of the verb “to grow,” as well as on the figurative meaning of the silkworm, which is hidden desire.
7. along the way that traitor so disguised: Cf. the circumstances of Vita nuova IX, where Dante meets Love in pilgrim’s garb along a river. See also Dante, Paradiso XX, 91.
13. to free myself: Mi spetro, “unrock myself,” recalls 23.80–85. To free himself from this chrysalis, to emerge as the butterfly, is emblematic of the soul liberating itself from the body.
90 SESTINA
Laura, perhaps less lovely now, is remembered at the peak of her beauty.
1. flow free: So Daphne appeared in Ovid, Metamorphoses I, 529: “Et levis impexos retro dabat aura capillos”; and Venus in Virgil, Aeneid I, 319: “Dederatque comas diffundere ventis.”
4. whose light is dimmer now: With the passage of time, as if the sun of a kinder civilization were sinking into the west. Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses XV, the teaching of Pythagoras.
5. the color pity wears: Of pearl, balanced between paling and blushing.
6. I did not know: On that first day.
7. with all Love’s tinder: With all his potential as a poet.
9. was not the way: He speaks of the past.
12. a godly spirit and a living sun: Christlike qualities were invested in her form, acts, and movements. Cf. Virgil, Aeneid I, 328: “dea certe, an Phoebi soror an nympharum sanguinis una.”
13. and if she is not now: If Lauras beauty and virtue, and his ability to evoke them, have faded.
14. my wound still bleeds: This famous line, “piaga per allentar d’arco non sana,” was taken as an emblem by King Rénard d’Anjou after the death of his wife Isabel of Lorraine. Chiari paraphrases: “I cannot help but continue to love her, just as the wound is not healed if the arrow in the bowstring is no longer poised to strike.”
91 SONNET
To his brother Gherardo, or to a poet friend, as consolation for the death of his beloved.
2. has suddenly departed: She has died at a young age.
5. recover both the keys: Cf. 37.35 and 63.11. The keys to will or not to will, say some; or the keys to pleasure or to pain.
7. straight, clear path: By her virtuous example she shows him the way.
9. your greatest burden: Salma is synonymous with the body.
10. all the others: Other worldly goods.
11. rise up: To go forth unencumbered. Petrarch uses the spelling saliendo, following the Provencal saillir, meaning to stand out, project, jut out. Zingarelli (and others) changed it to the conventional salendo because the other was “too jarring.” I have kept the Provençal derivative as does the manuscript and Contini in his edition.
14. the dangerous pass: Judgment.
92 SONNET
Petrarch’s affinity for the older poet Cino da Pistoia was strong. This sonnet mourns the occasion of Cino’s death in 1337.
1–4. Now weep … : The lines echo Cino and Dante (see Vita nuova III), also Catullus III: “Lugete, Veneres, Cupidinesque.”
3. whose mind was fixed: Whose verse in honor of the beloved lady consumed his entire attention.
6. stopping up my tears: Heavy grief that did not permit tears pooled and petrified in the heart. Cf. Dante, Inferno XXXIII, 49.
7. be so courteous: Although Cino suffered because of the premature death of his lady, his style remained gracious, and Petrarch would ask this favor of his own pain.
9. let every verse: Petrarch exhorts all to honor Cino as his Latin and Italian works honored all poets.
10. messer Cino: Cino was “master” of the form, teacher as well as practitioner.
11. just now: The word novellamente speaks of a vacancy only now turning up in the highest rank of love poets.
12. Pistoia, weep: In a much more moderate (courteous?) way than Dante, Petrarch inveighs against Cino’s native city. Cf. Dante, Inferno XXIV, 126, and XXV, 10.
and all her wicked folk: The party of the Blacks, which exiled Cino in 1303. Blacks and Whites, the factions that threw into exile the families of Cino, Dante, and Petrarch, were given their names in Pistoia.
13. lost a neighbor: He laments political disunity that would drive away a loyal compatriot. Cf. Dante, Purgatorio XI, 139–41.
14. Heaven, celebrate: Only there can neighbor be reunited with neighbor, great poet with great poet.
93 SONNET
In this sonnet Love exhorts the poet to return to the golden subject from “other work” that has distracted him. In the next, Petrarch will attempt to work out a response to Love based on empirical evidence. The two sonnets are distinguished by their unusual rhyme schemes: abba/abba/cde/edc and abba /abba /cdd /dee.
3. change … in color: Render them pale as death. Cf. Ovid, Ars amatoria I, 729: “Paleat omnis amans, hic est color aptus amanti.”
6. famous example: Cf. poems 1 and 23.9.
7. other work: Poetry on subjects other than Laura.
8. while you were fleeing: Cf. 39.3, 68.6, 69.9, 89.1.
9. you saw me in: He once saw love in Lauras eyes. Cf. 71.8, and 88.
12–14. give back to me … : “Turn in your weapon; you are discharged for failure to execute your duty to weep.” Cf. 90.14.
14. how I can feed on tears: Cf. Virgil, Eclogues X, 29–30: “Nec lachrymis crudelis Amor, nec gramina rivis nec cythiso saturantur apes nec fronde capellae.”
94 SONNET
Petrarch uses this rhyme scheme only two other times, in poems 13 and 326. The equivocal rhyme parte appears in lines 2, 6, and 7.
1–8. When through my eyes …: He describes the psychophysiological effects of seeing his beloved, well known from Cavalcanti and given new spiritual depth by Dante in Vita nuova XX and XXI.
2. the master image: Of the ideal woman, transformed into this dominating image by his desiring mind.
all the rest depart: She fills his entire being.
3. all the powers: The vital spirits.
4. like dead weight: The body is left sweetly immobilized (the word pondo in Latin means a measure of weight in gold).
5. this first miracle: Miraculous for its transfiguring effects.
a second one: Somewhere between an exchange of glances,
“the powers that the soul distributes” leave the lover’s body and are received by the beloved.
8. vengeance: The exchange of love sometimes is reciprocal, and the game begins happily, although each lover is reduced by having sold his or her power to the other for the sweet golden words of Love (Love’s vendetta).
13. I saw two lovers: Said to refer to an occasion when Petrarch observed his close friend Sennuccio del Bene (see poem 108 and notes) become enamored of Laura’s female companion in Avignon (Daniello).
14. mine often does: Only his is transformed.
95 SONNET
The weighty physicality of falling in love, even when written about in words of gold, is compared with the lightness of his most deeply felt faith in Laura. The sonnet’s irony lies in his transparency as a man before her gaze, when he desires to be most visible as a reflection of her splendor and piety.
7. you see me naked: Without defensive arms, entirely revealed. Cf. 71.74.
8. although my pain: He knows two kinds of pain, one which he expresses as his suffering—cries about—and the other the grief he experiences inwardly. Cf. 87.2–14.
11. without words suffice: This tercet speaks to her directly through her angelic intelligence.
12–14. Alas, Mary or Peter were not harmed … : Mary Magdalene and Peter were understood and beloved by Christ in spite of their shortcomings and humble origins. In Petrarch’s continuing war with Love, however, even his own faith is an enemy. Cf. poem 87, where Laura the archer aimed at him with faith that the arrow would strike its target.
96 SONNET
This sonnet echoes others preceding it, combining and itensifying the contributing factors of his martyrdom.