Petrarch
Page 78
As in poem 333, this sonnet sends up a sigh of hope that she will intercede for him.
2. pity’s strong: It still has the force to win forgiveness.
4. my faith is to the world: In the way it reflects her light. Cf. Dante, Paradiso XXIV, 64–96, regarding the bright coin of faith.
5. used to fear me: Doubted his trustworthiness. knows for certain: Now that he has been tested.
6–7. I have always / wanted: To praise her with honesty.
7. heard words: If she read his verse superficially while she lived.
8. now she can see: With an inner light.
9. Heaven will grieve at last: The angels will pity him.
10. all my sighs: His poems.
11. returns to me: In his dreams and visions since she died.
12. these remains are left behind: At the putting down (“al por giù”) of his body, suggesting a written record. Cf. 332.26.
13. that host of ours: The elect souls in the Third Heaven.
14. Christ and honesty: One of the rare appearances of Christ’s name in the Canzoniere. Cf. 28.90 and 138.8. Onestate is virtue in plenitude, integer vitae, the full meaning of which he continues to explore.
335 SONNET
Since burning desire was spent with her death, the icy fear she has always inspired in him is all that he feels.
1. Among a thousand ladies: One standing out among an elect group.
3. no false images: In the beginning, when his verse was free of the by-products of an overheated imagination. Cf. 329.6.
5. No signs of earth or mortal cares: She seemed an angel.
7. burned and froze for her so often: Loved her through so many seasons.
8. spread both its wings: He opened himself to the full range of feeling.
10. out of my sight completely: Cf. 323.67–68: “but all the upper part / of her was shrouded in a mist of dark.”
11. and stiffen: Literally, become numb (torpo).
12. lofty windows: Laura’s eyes.
13. she, who: Death.
14. found entrance: The eyes are the first organ of the body to die, according to Pliny; see Historia naturalis XI, 69: “Cor primum nascentibus formari in utero tradunt, dein cerebrum, sicut tardissime oculus; sed hos primum mori, cor novissime” (Tassoni).
336 SONNET
Considered among the most beautiful of Petrarch’s sonnets, this poem establishes the exact date of Laura’s death: 6 April 1348, on the same day and hour that he first saw her in 1327.
1. She comes to mind: Cochin suggested that Petrarch composed this sonnet upon rediscovering poem 211 in the summer of 1369 (Carducci).
2. Lethe: The river in which souls are immersed to wash away memory of the deeds and torments of this life. Cf. Dante, Purgatorio XXVI, 108.
4. of her own star: Venus.
6. so withdrawn: In high humility collected in itself.
7. It’s truly she: The reawakened subject of his thoughts. Cf. Dante, Purgatorio XXX, 73: “Yes, look at me! Yes, I am Beatrice!”
8. I ask her for the gift: Cf. 37.86–88: “and those decorous words / rare in the world, unique, / which were bestowed on me so courteously.”
10. like one mistaken: Someone who has misjudged.
11. have been deceived: His mind deceives itself.
12. You do know: This date also was written into Petrarch’s copy of Virgil’s works (found in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana), in which he noted the date of their first encounter and the circumstances of his learning of her death in Parma on 19 May 1348.
337 SONNET
He invested everything in the image of his goddess, combining in her all the wealth of East and West.
The order of the remaining poems in the Canzoniere was originally as follows: poems 339–351, 337, 362, 363, 365, 338, 352–361. Petrarch reordered them in the last year of his life by marking next to each one its new number in arabic numerals.
1. in fragrance and in hue: Virtue and beauty.
3. fruits, flowers … : A harvest that grew out of a seeding in the East.
6. every ardent virtue: Possessing the power to ignite virtue. Cf. 146.1.
7. saw in its shadow: Where the poet’s eyes seek her form.
8. my lord: Love—in keeping with Laura a benign and potent force.
10. burning, freezing: Reaching extremes of love and fear.
11. I was very happy: Felice, rather than the more common lieto, suggesting “creative.”
12. Her perfect qualities: A wholeness more valued now in retrospect. Cf. 263.12–14.
13. to adorn His Heaven: As she in her love adorned the shade of the laurel.
14. took her: God desired her and won her.
338 SONNET
Virtue’s flowering departed the world, leaving him alone to grieve in a wasteland.
1. You have left, Death: Cf. 218.9–14.
2. unarmed and blind: Without her eyes.
3. charm naked: Nobility stripped of her lovely presence.
4. me here, unconsoled: Zingarelli compares him to Galahad when the Holy Grail was taken from England.
5. courtesy exiled: Her generosity no longer generates generosity.
6. more have cause to grieve: The world, which did not recognize her.
7. the pure seed: That generates love of virtue, producing new acts of valor.
8. what will be second: Who can succeed to perfection? This question is not answered until the final canzone. Cf. 366.55 ff.
10. mankind’s lineage: All those born into this wasteland.
12. The world did not know her: Cf. John 1:9, “Mundus eum non cognovit.”
13. to weep: To testify.
14. now made lovely: So much had her honesty and saintliness informed his verse.
339 SONNET
For all the varied ways in which he put form to her loveliness while she lived, a language for her celestial immortality is beyond him.
1. opened my eyes: In the beginning.
2. diligence: Study of her person and her ways.
3. but mortal: Dying with Laura.
6. forms: Summoned in his dreams and visions of her since her death.
7. no match: Neither his intellect nor style could reach as far as Heaven to describe her there.
8. not able to endure: To be exposed for long periods of time. Cf. 325.99–100.
10. prayers to God: Her beauty, withheld from him in life, now humbly intercedes for him in Heaven.
11. depthless seas: The infiniti abissi can mean, figuratively, either chasms or hells.
12. beyond one’s wit: Stilo (wit) plays on its similarity to stilla (drop) in line 11, as if his stony rhymes were just barely forming in the abyss.
14. the brighter shines its light: The more blinded he is by its intensity, that is, the more he seeks to seize her unveiled truth with his mind, the less he understands of it. Cf. Dante, Paradiso XXX, 25.
340 SONNET
As if his efforts in the preceding sonnets should have earned him some response, he prays for her appearance in his dreams.
1. cherished pledge: His faith. Cf. 29.57 and 39.14.
2. Heaven keeps for me: Like an investment.
3. why is pity late: What is delaying the interest on that investment?
4. life’s habitual support: Love of Laura.
5. Sleep … worthy: When she came to him in dream.
7. who delays its coming?: A less than pious question, perhaps.
9–11. because of which … : These lines draw divine pity down to his own level in an unusual use of enjoinment of the tercets with the quatrains.
10. feed upon another’s torment: Withhold reward, as Laura did.
11. in his own realm is vanquished: When mercy is not shown. Cf. Juvenal, Satires VI, 209.
12. You, who can see: The soul of Laura.
know my pain: Il mio mal, a phrase early commentators understood to mean his concupiscence.
14. with your own shadow: A specter of her divine form.
341 SONNET
Almost
despite himself he receives a swift answer to his prayer, so encouraging that his interest in life is renewed.
2. to carry through the heavens: Acting as a go-between, carrying his laments directly to God.
4. in her own way: In this case, free of disdain.
5. wretched heart: One that’s reduced in circumstance, as in poem 340.
6. full of humility: Altered from one who “will feed upon another’s torment” in 340.10.
7. draw back from death: From the fires that consume him, but also, pursuing the metaphor of poem 340, to take back an allotment for his suffering.
10. or with those words of hers: He was doubly blessed.
11. had meaning: Cf. Dante, Paradiso XXXIII, 124; and Statius, Thebais V, 614.
13. I was cruel to you: By restraining him.
14. things that would stop the sun: Bring all creation to a halt. This hint of apocalypse marks the beginning of the end as Petrarch centers his thoughts more and more on Heaven.
342 SONNET
Here Laura speaks again with words that heal.
1. my lord: Love.
5. no equal or a second: Cf. 338.8: “once highest worth is dead, what will be second?” Cf. also Horace, Odes 1, 12, 18–20.
6. comes to my sickbed: Where he languishes from the fevers of life (1. 3).
7. on such a one: The image of Laura in this sonnet suggested to some commentators a rendering of the Beatific Vision, although these words are studiedly noncommittal. Cf. 340.14, where Laura appeared to him as an ombra, an apparition of his imperfect mind.
8. on the edge: That is, closer than she has ever been before.
9. that hand which I so much desired: Cf. poems 199–201, 208, 302, and 72.56.
10. she dries my eyes: Cf. 126.37–39.
12. knowledge with despair: Assuming, upon approaching the verge of death, that it is a cause for sorrow and tears, a conclusion Socrates spoke against in Plato’s Phaedo. Cf. Familiares VII, 6.
13. Stop weeping: Cf. poems 279–280.
14. as much alive as I’m not dead: Would he could gain faith in eternal life from her experience of dying.
343 SONNET
He lives only because she sustains him in dream.
1. Heaven now esteems: Chooses as its lovely adornment.
2. the tilting of her golden head: Laura pensive.
5. still alive: Cf. 342.14: “Were you as much alive as I’m not dead,” and 341.7–8.
6. makes one doubt: Her image retains something of the corporeal, something of the divine; it hovers in uncertainty.
8. so quick to help me: Cf. 341.1.
when dawn comes: As he is about to reawaken into life. Visions at dawn were often thought to be prophetic—closest to truth. Cf. Dante, Purgatorio IX, 16–18.
9. what sweet welcomings: A mutual exchange of greetings.
11. the long history: Cf. 285.12: “explaining things that happen in our life.”
12. appears to strike: Dissolving her shadow.
13. she knows the ways: The ways of virtue (Leopardi), or the several paths over which she seeks him where he is (Zingarelli).
14. bathed in her tears: Sorely grieved for him. Cf. Virgil, Aeneid I, 228; and Dante, Inferno II, 116.
344 SONNET
His vision of a merciful Laura has vanished like a phantasm.
2. know not when: So little of the sweet was there, he has nearly forgotten it (Tassoni).
3. well knows the truth: Cf. 56.13–14: “before the day we finally depart / a man cannot consider himself blest.”
5. glory of our world: Irony may be intended, since Petrarch has always before damned his age for abandoning her in its search for riches. Cf. 24.6, 248.4, 261, and 338.12.
6. makes bright and lovely: An example to the world, an ornament to heaven.
9. Cruel Death: In poem 283, after Laura spoke of awakening to the internal light in poem 279, he expressed similar recriminations. Cf. 342.12–14.
robbed me: Removed his treasure to Heaven.
10. great bliss: He plays on the words onorare-onore and their core sense of “gold.” His vision of her alive in Heaven cannot truly sustain him.
14. pour forth: He continues to write lamentations out of habit. Note the equivocal rhyme verso/verso in lines 12 and 14. The style echoes Boccaccio in Decameron IX, 3, the tale of the pregnant Calandrino (Carducci).
345 SONNET
This sonnet expresses repentance for the lack of faith he has demonstrated since poem 339 in those metaphors which sought from Heaven some palpable reward for his suffering. It begins Petrarch’s final addition to Part II, transcribed in the last year of his life.
1. My tongue: His language, in spite of himself, because it is that of mortal love. Some editions read la mal lingua (rather than la mia lingua), meaning an evil, rash, or imprudent tongue (see Neri and Durling).
2. move in the wrong way: Was forced to bring her down to mortal reality and have her speak in his erring tongue.
4. that which: Cf., for example, 344.10–11: “nor does great bliss of her free, lovely soul / afford my adverse state some consolation.”
if it were true: Compare the central conceit of poem 206.
would not be right: Cf. 339.12: “for pen cannot extend beyond one’s wit.”
6. my sad condition: His state of turbulence.
7–8. the fact … : She has gathered herself in God in death as in life. The verb domesticarsi appears just this once in the Canzoniere.
9. console myself: Find peace within, corresponding to her example in line 8.
10. in this hell: This world as he finds it, in particular court life. Cf. 138.7 and 259.11.
11. to die and live alone: Reversing order, as he has already done, in a sense, because when Laura died he died. Reversing order has been his pattern in this period of recollection and repentence beginning with poem 270.
14. my eternal Lord: Christ.
346 SONNET
This version of Laura welcomed into Heaven by the angels demonstrates how she comes and goes for him. The sonnet has been compared with works of Dante, Cino da Pistoia, and the troubadours. At some point in his transcriptions, Petrarch wrote the Roman numeral CCC next to it.
1. The chosen angels: The choicest guests at a coronation.
blessèd souls: Lesser than angels but equal before the eyes of God, a hierarchy such as Dante’s in the Paradiso.
2. Heaven’s citizens: Referring to the City of God. Cf. 53.44.
on the first day: Laura’s rising to Heaven, like that of the elect bound for the highest echelons, was not delayed.
5. What light is this: Sending reverberations through the crowd.
6–7. so lovely /a soul: Beauty housed in her soul, which is her true form collected in itself. Cf. 345.7.
7. has never risen: Nowhere has Laura’s uniqueness been given such emphatic expression. Cf. Petrarch, Africa VI, 1, the arrival of Sophonisba in the Underworld.
9. changed her dwelling place: Left flesh for spirit.
10. is equal: She joins her peers.
12. if I am following her: Linked to him in Heaven as on earth.
13. strain to Heaven: Raise themselves up (al ciel ergo) in order to perfect themselves.
14. that I hurry: That he come more quickly.
347 SONNET
With humble touches he has enthroned his queen in Heaven and now asks her to pray that he might join her quickly.
1. in our Maker’s presence: For principio nostro, cf. Rev. 1:8, “Ego sum alpha et omega, principium et finis.”
3. glorious throne: Next to God Himself.
4. pearls and purple: Cf. 263.10 and 185.9: “A purple gown all bordered with sky-blue.” Ostro is used only once in the Canzoniere and can also mean, in poetic language, south wind.
5. rare wonder: The raro mostro of the original is like the French expression sacre monstre, meaning an icon.
6. in the face of Him: Enlightened by his truth.
who sees all things: The phrase echoes Dante
, Paradiso XXI, 49–50, where Dante is satirizing the indulgences of the Church.
7. pure faith of mine: Faith unveiled, corresponding to “unadorned” in line 4.
8. so much ink: “Ink” alludes to the infernal nature of his output, written in hell’s colors.
10. what it feels now: With her in Heaven. Cf. 313.7 and 314.12–14.
11. sunlight of your eyes: Of her gaze turned on him as God’s eyes now are turned on her.
12. So then: The dunque in this line comes as a final flourish of satisfaction. to make amends: To make reparation for his losses. Cf. poems 340–343.
348 Sonnet
As if to hold up for “amends” the simple elements of her created beauty, he lists them once again.
2. most beautiful hair: Taking the second place of honor.
3. seem not as lovely: Diminished in his world and in his wording. Cf. poem 90.
4. from: Repeated use of “from” in the quatrains reinforces the sense of absence.
5. hands and arms that could have conquered: Possessing the power to seduce.
8. body made in Paradise: Her divine movement and form, reduced to their simplest components.
10. the heavenly King and his winged couriers: God and his angels, not unlike Jove and his messengers.
13. she who can see every thought: Cf. 347.6: “in the face of Him who sees all things.”
14. obtain for me: In her role as intercessor.
349 Sonnet
Straining to hear the answer to the heavenly plea Laura might make on his behalf, he readies himself for a liberating flight to Heaven.
1. hear the messenger: For an amusing sidelight on heavenly messengers, see Familiares I, 5.
4. so reduced: Dimesso suggests having even his small portion taken from him.
5. hardly recognize myself: Cf. the “naked and blind” of 348.11.
7. to know just when: The moment of his dying.