by Mark Musa
1. birds complaining: At widely separated times in the Canzoniere, Petrarch evokes the sound of birds. Cf. 10.9, 219, 311, and 353.
3. faint murmuring: Cf. Virgil, Georgics I, 109: “Ecce supercilio clivosi tramitis undam elicit: illa cadens raucum per levia murmur saxa ciet” (Tassoni).
transparent waves: Of the Sorgue, Vaucluse’s crystalline-clear spring waters.
7. see and hear and feel: The memory of Laura’s presence in this place so like Eden.
7. still alive: To his senses.
9. waste away before your time: Prematurely aging in his preoccupation with her death. Cf. 278.6.
13. into internal light: She opened the eyes of her intellect to a vision of God (Zingarelli). Some editors altered this phrase in later editions to “eternal light,” but Petrarch used it consistently through the various collections of his poems. Both Sapegno and Bosco discuss this apparent departure from doctrine.
280 SONNET
He heeds the words of the pitying voice in poem 279, but perhaps not in the way they were intended.
1–2. I’ve never … : These lines in the Italian are garbled. Muratori thought Petrarch left “in the pen” some word necessary for understanding. Cf. Dante, Inferno XIII, 25–27 for similarity of style.
3. so much freedom: To experiment in his verse free of distraction and to gain objectivity, as he says in the next sonnet.
4. cries of love: Stridi are shrill cries, and with soavi nidi in line 8, they carry a hint of the lustful.
6. hidden, trusty places: “Secret and closed” noted Gesualdo in 1540, alluding to the name Vaucluse but also to the hermetic style of his verses.
7. Love… in Cyprus: Mythical home of Venus and her son Cupid.
8. a sweeter nest: Not even, for example, that which Venus shared with Adonis.
9. the breeze: Not l’aura but l’òra. Cf. 131.10 and 127.80.
14. beg me … sweet hooks: Cf. Dante, Purgatorio XIV, 145. It is a curious fact that Laura does not actually say this in poem 279, nor elsewhere in the Canzoniere.
281 SONNET
Solitude and contemplation deep in the recesses of Vaucluse help to console him.
1. my sweet nest: Literally, shelter (ricetto).
4. the air around me: L’aere, a neutral, indifferent air. Cf. 280.9-n.
6. gloomy, shadowy places: Cf. the valley of 280.5–6.
7. exalted joy: The eyes of Laura.
9. nymph or other goddess: Cf. 129.40 ff.
10. clearest depths of Sorgue: The source of spring waters in Vaucluse.
11. take her place: Assume a reigning position.
13. walking on flowers: Su per l’erba, over these flowers yet just pressing upon them. Cf. Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis, line 1028: “The grass stoops not, she treads on it so light.”
like a living lady: Shadowed forth from his thoughts.
14. sorrow for my state: Her aspect changed now to mirror his pain.
282 SONNET
Although he bathes the earth with his tears by day, at night he sees her eyes once more and recognizes her from all the familiar signs of her coming.
1. Soul full of bliss: He responds to the consoling voice he heard in the night in poem 279, speaking to him from Heaven. Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses XI, 615.
5. I thank you for granting: As if for a special grace.
9. There where: In Vaucluse. Cf. poems 279–281.
11. no, not in tears for you: He again corrects himself. Cf. 277.10 and 12.
13. that when you come: In dream or vision.
know it’s you: This line and the next echo Ovid, Metamorphoses XI, the tale of Alcyone and Ceÿx. Cf. line 687.
14. from how you walk: He can visualize her soul only in his dreams, as Alcyone found in Ovid’s story. Cf. Metamorphoses XI, 635–36: “Best of them all at imitating humans, / Their garb, their gait, their speech, rhythm and gesture.”
283 SONNET
As if sharing in Laura’s death of the senses, he imagines himself blind and deaf to beauty.
1. discolored: Drained it of life’s contrasting colors. The first quatrain speaks of information received by the eyes, the second of that received by the ears.
3. ardent virtues: Courage and compassion.
6. gentle sounds of speech: Cf. 273.5 and 275.5. The world no longer hears her words, more suited now for Heaven.
9. She does, indeed, return: Cf. 282.1: “Soul full of bliss who often comes to me” either in dream or in vision.
11. no other help: Only by grace of her returning to his mind is he comforted.
12. speaks … shines: To the inner ear and eye.
if I/could tell you: If he were possessed of the power to describe spirit.
13–14. I could set aflame: Cf. Dante, Paradiso XXXIII, 67–75.
14. tigers, bears: Words used to describe Laura’s own heart in 152.1.
284 SONNET
The grace extended to him by the soul of Laura appearing in his dream is all too brief.
2. so long dead: Così morta—emphatically dead.
3. medicine falls short: Comfort fades quickly.
5. keeps me on this cross: The martyrdom of his sexuality.
6. trembles: With fear for his audacity (Zingarelli).
6–7. the threshold of the soul: His eyes (Zingarelli); his imagination or mind (Daniello, Carducci, et al.). Elsewhere in 274.3, “porte” applied to his senses.
8. so sweet… so soft: So intense a sensation.
9. her home: His heart, which she governs.
12. cannot bear so great a light: Is humbled.
13. blessèd be the hours: Cf. poems 13 and 61. This reference is to their first encounter, providing a link to line 1.
14. your eyes opened the way: Communicated their message of love to his soul.
285 SONNET
More and more often Laura returns in his thoughts to counsel him, as would a mother, wife, or lover.
1–9. Never did … : Critics have noted the way Petrarch begins this sonnet as if it were a primal event.
3. such consideration: With care that she not frighten or excite him too much, that she say the right thing with tact and diplomacy.
4. doubtful time: When he fears for his soul.
5. grave exile: From Heaven.
6. eternal home: Cf. poem 281, where the rhyme words ricetto, sospetto, and deletto appear in lines 1,5, and 7.
12. explaining things: Consoling and reasoning with him as a loving woman would, balancing the good against the bad.
14. a truce: From the struggle that weighs down his soul. Carducci pointed to the word tregua as the one factor preventing this sonnet from reaching sublimity.
286 SONNET
To be able to portray the soul of Laura in the act of coming to him, sweetly advising him of the right path, would cause a stone to weep.
1. auras sighs: The breath of Laura speaking her words of comfort.
2–3. was mine, /my lady: His sovereign.
4. she lives: Through the poet.
5. could I portray them: If it were possible to embody her sighs in words sufficiently meaningful.
warm desires: In the reader.
6. so anxious: Gelosa, concerned for his welfare.
8. turn back, go the wrong way: Fatal errors of love poets.
10. pure allurements: Cf. her “pure fire” in poem 285.
11. beseechingly and low: So as not to compete or arouse disdain; tactful. The persona of poem 285 colors this language.
12. hold myself to her: Go in the direction she advises, governing himself.
bend to her rule: Her superior position in Heaven.
13. her words: Cf. 285.12; and Dante, Paradiso IV, 119–22.
14. make a stone shed tears: Affect the heart of the most well-defended listener.
287 SONNET
A farewell sonnet addressed to his friend and fellow love poet Sennuccio del Bene, who died in November 1349, according to a note Petrarch made in Vat. Lat. 3196 beside poem 268, a canzone.
1. O my Sennuccio: Cf. poems 108, 112, 113, and 144.
3. which enclosed you dead: Petrarch is recalling Cicero, Somnium Scipionis VI, 7: “Immo vero, inquit, il vivunt, qui ex corporum vinculis tamquam e carcere evolaverunt: vestra vero quae dicitur vita, mors est.” Throughout the Middle Ages the belief was common that what appeared to be death was instead a return to the true life.
5. Now you can see: Sennuccio has a better view of the earth and the stars from his new position in Heaven.
9. But do please: Intercede for him, as his best-known connection.
souls in the third sphere: That of Venus, sphere of love poets. In Dante’s Paradiso, Beatrice explains how souls seek a haven suited to their powers, at a relative distance from God but one with Him.
10. messer Cino: Cino da Pistoia, poet and teacher of law (see poem 92). The term messer suggests that Cino the love poet, as Petrarch’s immediate predecessor, was his master. Cf. 70.31–40.
Dante: Although Dante himself gravitated toward the sphere of Mercury, home of the worldly ambitious (Paradiso VI, 112–14), Petrarch places him here. It has often been noted that Petrarch slights Dante; but including him in the ranks of teachers and close friends seems more to honor than to disparage him.
Guittone: Guittone d’Arezzo, the oldest love poet listed (d. 1294); once praised by Guinizelli as “Charo padre meo,” later criticized by him as overrated, a judgment repeated by Dante in Purgatorio XXVI, 124–26. According to Carducci, Guittone was the first to collect a book of love songs.
11. Franceschino: Franceschino degli Albizzi, Petrarch’s valued friend and relative in Avignon, who died young of the plague in 1348.
all that company: An expression echoing Dante, Purgatorio XXVI, 34, when the pilgrim meets Guinizelli, Dante’s own immediate predecessor and teacher, on the terrace of the lustful. Cf. also Inferno V, 41 and 85.
12. And to my lady: Laura also having risen to the third sphere. Boccaccio, in a sonnet lamenting the death of Petrarch, placed him there with “Lauretta,” Boccaccio’s Fiammetta, Sennuccio, Cino, and Dante.
13. how wild I am: Una fera, grief-stricken, but also, in the feminine, reflecting a quality of Laura, who has been described frequently as a wild beast. This description tends to draw all the above-mentioned poets into Petrarch’s demented sphere, as Dante did in Purgatorio XXVI, mentioning black ants, cranes, and fish as analogies for the lustful.
288 SONNET
Alone, he feels connected with the harsh earth through his pain, and with the words that generations of poets have used to describe her dying.
2. rugged hills: In Vaucluse.
2–3. sweet plain / where she was born: According to early commentators, Laura’s village lies in this plain between Vaucluse and Avignon.
3–4. with my heart in hand/… bore fruit: She kept him in thrall all through his days, up to and including his poetry’s mature flowering. Cf. Vita nuova III, “Vide cor tuum.”
5. gone to Heaven: Left him without an object of desire.
9. no stick: Sterpo, from the Latin stirpis, meaning new generation from an old trunk. His roots are dead.
10. upon these shores: Piagge, that is, verging on the abyss.
12. water trickles from these springs: Springs once “arising from the clearest depths of Sorgue” (281.10). Cf. also 279.3.
289 SONNET
It was all for his good that she set up so many obstacles to his impetuous desire; this he can see now with his new objectivity.
1. beauty beyond all beauty: In the words oltra le belle bella, Petrarch echoes Dante in the Paradiso, intensifying a proposition to the third power.
2. kindest friend: For the virtue invested in her (Castelvetro).
4. back to her star: To the sphere of Venus.
7. tempered: Exposing them alternately to heat and cold, strengthening them. Cf. poems 285 and 286.
8. bitter, sweet: Fella, bitter, is a one-time-only word meaning angry, even choleric, alternating with loving.
9. holy counsel: From Heaven.
10. lovely face and gentle anger: Corresponding to “bittersweet” but closer and less fearsome.
13. with the tongue: Her words, sweet or contentious.
with a glance: Her expression, loving or angry.
14. her glory … my well-being: These are interchangeable, according to the implicit correspondences in lines 9–13. His glory might lead to her greater well-being.
290 SONNET
This new change in him reveals his past ambivalence.
2. what displeased me most: Her angry expression.
4. fight a short war: A brief day or night of conflict between unbridled passion and sweet reason.
5. Oh hope, oh wishes: Words elongated and resonant in the Italian.
6. for those in love: Whose joy and pain have so many modes of expression.
7. How much worse: How many more treacherous hopes and wishes might he have expressed in his verse if she had given in to his desire?
9. my own deafened mind: Oblivious to the sound of her words during his times of darkness.
11. where Death is found: A gloss on the Ulysses legend. Lack of understanding permitted him to skirt close to death without being himself in danger.
12. better shore: Toward understanding, but belatedly.
13. flattering a will: Cf. the “pure allurements” of 286.10. She uses the sorceress’s methods, but to a good end.
14. wicked, aflame: Opposed to the “lofty flame” (poem 289), whose flight he now would follow.
checked it: The living Laura lured and contained him, tempering his rampant will.
291 SONNET
His world has stopped, and he finds himself on the underside deep in shadow, envying Tithonus his Aurora.
1. coming down the sky Aurora: The dawn descending now rather than rising. Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses XIII, the late myth of Aurora and Memnon, after Aurora is brought to her knees at the death of her son. Cf. also Dante, Purgatorio X, 1–3.
2. roses… gold: Aurora resembles Lauras loving aspect, radiating now from Venus. In a sonnet to Sennuccio del Bene excluded from the manuscript, Petrarch spoke of loving this “beautiful Aurora” as if she were a new inspiration.
4. Laura is there: A play on the word l’aurora. Cf. 219.5–8 and notes.
5. you know when its time: At night when Aurora rejoins Tithonus.
7. with my sweet laurel: She who flourished in the day and now rests at night, unlike Tithonus.
9. aren’t so difficult to take: Do not last an eternity.
11. despise your head of white: Reject you for your reputed loss of ardor.
12. she darkens: “Discoloring,” as if the sun had withdrawn.
14. only her name: Like a puzzle, this sonnet hides the treasure of her name among its many images.
292 SONNET
Laura is dead but he lives on, like a verse line he cannot finish.
4. made me different: Set him apart, somewhere between Laura and the rest of the world.
6. lightning flash: Cf. 181.10.
9. And I still live: Cf. Virgil, Aeneid X, 855: “Nunc vivo, neque adhuc homines lucemque relinquo” (Mezentius after the death of his son).
13. dry is the vein: Unnourished by her living presence. Cf. 230.9 and 288.9–14.
14. my lyre … playing tears: La cetera mia, his song an echoing refrain of grief. Cf. Job 30:31, “Versa est in luctum cithara mea.”
293 SONNET
This sonnet, cited as evidence that Petrarch disparaged his love poems, continues the theme of redundancy and irrelevancy taken up in poems 290–292.
2. so dear: So valued, that is, profitable. Cf. 360.81.
6. summit of my thoughts: Laura ruled his imagination.
7. no longer sweet: Polished.
8. rough and dark: His true feelings now.
10. somehow: Spontaneously, because his love was fresh and fervent.
11. not to win myself some fame: Not to please with their sweetness.
12. not honor: He did not think of his love songs as earning him a place in Heaven.
13. I would gladly please: Resume the writing of polished love songs, if he could.
14. silent: With nothing more that’s pleasing to say.
294 SONNET
This and the next two sonnets are similarly constructed, taking the form of a review of his work.
1. would fill my heart: In his young life she and his heart were one.
2. a great lady in a poor and humble home: Cf. poem 4.
4. but dead, and she a goddess: Now the two are radically split (the word diva making her more divided from him than ever).
7. out of pity: Cf. 286.14.
8. no one can explain or write: Cf. 283.12 and 286.5.
9. they lament within: Love and his soul silenced by her death and the passing of time.
12–14. In truth … : He declares three harsh truths in this tercet, illustrating how “stripped bare” of hope he is.
nothing but dust and shadow: An expression found in the Psalms, Genesis, and Job. Cf. also Horace, Odes IV, 7,16: “Pulvis et umbra sumus.”
295 SONNET
He turns another side to the light, making Laura the object of his thoughts rather than the subject. The rhyme scheme abab, baab appears one other time, in poem 210.
2. softly sweet converse: Remembering the good that she inspired and his “bit of happiness.”
their object: Separate from himself.
4. perhaps: He sought explanations for her disappearance, remaining, in the main, hopeful.
7. sees and hears andfeels: As if she were still fully alive, existing in time.
9–11. Oh gracious miracle: Laura alive was proof to him of Providence.