Petrarch

  52. winter in strange months: Despair following the death of Laura in April 1348, out of season because she died in full bloom.

  54. this one or my other foe: Neither Love nor Laura.

  55. a single moment: Punto, as in a sense of painful pleasure that is never absent.

  66. no bell has sounded: Sonò … squilla suggests both a tolling of the hours and a sharp summons. Cf. 53.55,109.6, and 143.7.

  69. worm gnaw at old wood: Remorse and pity feed on an old man because he has softened.

  74. and others, too: The real targets of his criticism who have been suffering his attacks for years.

  76. My adversary bitterly reproaching: Love, the prosecutor.

  79. I shall tell you entirely: Point for point, leaving nothing out. Cf. Job 21, where Job refutes his friends’ arguments one by one.

  81. selling little words, or rather lies: Like an unscrupulous lawyer, in order to have his way with Laura. Petrarch studied law until the death of his father in 1326, when he turned to ecclesiastical studies and poetry.

  83. boredom … delights: From the practice of “law” to love poetry.

  84–85. pure and clean: Showed him his desire’s true goal—virtue—behind the veil of worldly entanglements.

  87. in a sweet life which he calls misery: Reversing line 83, so that dolce vita becomes noia in the lover’s mind.

  88. risen to some fame: Fame which so quickly changes to infamy.

  90. risen on its own: Without a knowledge of Love’s action through all history. Cf. line 1.

  91. Achilles… Atrides: Achilles’ favorite slave girl, Briseis, was stolen from him by Agamemnon (Atrides), arousing Achilles’ vengeful wrath against the Greeks in the Trojan War.

  92. Hannibal: Who took vengeance on the Romans.

  93. and another: Scipio Africanus the Elder, hero of Petrarch’s Africa.

  96. fall in base love: Hannibal reputedly with a prostitute in Puglia, Scipio with a handmaiden.

  97. for this one: The poet, whose similarity to these heroes lies in his vengeful anger.

  100. had Lucretia back: The exemplary heroine of poems 260 and 263.

  106. wormwood: Cf. the “vinegar and aloe” of line 24. This and Laura’s scorn had a salutary effect on him. Cf. poem 351, where he acknowledges this himself.

  107. full joy of other women: An allusion to the love of slave girls mentioned above.

  108. good seed rotten fruit: Love seeded him with Laura’s example and was rewarded with ingratitude.

  111. knights and ladies: An allusion to lines 17–18: “how many good and useful paths I disdained….” Love gave him a choice; he could have remained in the safety of the orthodox, basking in fame, rather than flying in the face of it as he did overtly and covertly in his numerous attacks on “the world”—an expression for the court in Petrarch’s time.

  113. among the brilliant wits: These are not unlike women who grant full joys in line 107, since they did not require his self-sacrifice, as Laura did. Petrarch includes in his satire certain members of the learned and cultured class, perhaps other poets.

  115. collect his poetry: Conserve, meaning literally “preserve for posterity.”

  117. murmurmer of the courts: He might have been a lawyer or a flatterer of kings—a sycophant.

  118. make him famous: For divulgo, see the notes of poem 168.

  119. in my own school: The history of love, where one learns about thievery, wrath, revenge, and sacrifice, and, on occasion, peace, pleasure, and joy. Cf. lines 91–105.

  121. To mention finally: With words that both give and take away.

  122. a thousand vicious acts: Disloyalties to Love.

  125. shy and modest: By birth, before he became enamored.

  127. a deep impression: The original wound taken from Love.

  130. from her, and me he criticizes: The three personae are linked grammatically as one, even in their degree of culpability.

  131. Nocturnal ghosts: Perhaps recalling the poet’s dreams in poems 339–358.

  135. regrets and grieves: He rejected Love’s gifts as insufficient evidence of his worth.

  142. from one thing: Sembianza suggests that he could have sought in Laura one resemblance to the divine after the other, as if climbing a spiritual ladder.

  144. in his own verse: Cf. 72.1–30.

  146. I gave him as a column: The Laura of 126.6—living, dynamic, sustaining.

  147. I scream out loud: The lover’s cri de coeur. Cf. Job 19:7, “Ecce clamabo vim patiens, et nemo audiet: vociferabor, et non est que judicet,” and Dante, Purgatorio XXVI, 39: “each one tries to outshout the other’s cry.”

  153. each one of us concludes: Each expecting the lady’s sympathies to be with him.

  155. she with a smile: Befitting the subject matter. Cf. Job 40:3, “Numquid irritum facies judicium meum.”

  157. I will need more time: Carducci notes that this canzone inverts the arguments of the Secretum, putting St. Augustine’s words into the lover’s mouth and Francesco’s into Love’s.

  361 SONNET

  This poem was originally numbered 357. The discord of poem 360 is calmed by a look in the mirror. He is old.

  1. faithful mirror: An advisor who doesn’t lie.

  2. changing skin: Rough like the bark of a tree.

  3. diminished strength and liveliness: In mind and body. Cf. the “old wood” of 360.69.

  5. obey whatever nature says: Try to be like what you see. Cf. Cicero, De senectute II.

  6. takes power from us to oppose her: Has her own way of snuffing out his desire.

  7–8. putting out a fire / I wake up: A suddenness that recalls poem 323. Carducci cites St. Augustine: “Eleemosyna extinguit peccatum, sicut aqua extinguit ignem.” See also Cicero, De senectute XIX: “ut cum aquae multitudine flammae vis opprimitun”

  9. life flies by: “A quick passing dream” (1.14).

  11–12. single word / of her: Some early commentators found this word in the next sonnet—t’ amo (I love you)—but he may simply refer to her name. For some of the many sayings of Laura, see poems 23.83, 87, 123, 240, 250, 262, 279, 302, 330, 331.53–54, 341, 342,359.5 ff.

  14. she took fame from all the others: Laura stole it away to heaven.

  362 SONNET

  This poem was originally numbered 358. Now awakened from long sleep, his thoughts automatically fly to heaven to seek her.

  2. I almost think I’m one: This tone of hopeful reasonableness contrasts with that in poems 340–344 and 346–348.

  3. treasure with them there: God and Laura.

  5. a sweet chill my heart will tremble: Cf. 52.8.

  7. and honor you: Cf. poem 5.

  8. you’ve changed your ways: The word variati (changed) recalls the “lovely variation” of 351.13.

  hair: Varying from dark to light through the seasons.

  9. She takes me to her Lord: Although his thoughts are winged, they still draw back from full kinship with “her Lord.”

  12–14. He answers … : Zingarelli argues that it is Laura who speaks here. In either case, this response mirrors the mind of the poet, hopeful of his rise to Heaven now that he has suddenly changed his ways.

  12. destiny is firmly fixed: Preordained, as was Laura’s in 359.30.

  13. twenty years or thirty: The wry, equivocating way in which this tercet ends (“et non fia però molto”) suggests that Petrarch is speaking tongue in cheek.

  363 SONNET

  This poem was originally numbered 359. He still complains of a bitterness in the sweetness of his new-found freedom.

  1. dazzled me: Held him in thrall.

  2. in the dark: Without his “sun.”

  4. turned oaks and elms: Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses X, 78–90, where Orpheus turns from love of women to the teaching of youths, and the trees gather around.

  6. boldness and fear: No object to war against.

  8. to overflow with sorrow: No one to pity.

  9. of him who stabs and soothes: Love. Molce (soothe
s) appears only once in the Canzoniere.

  10. long tortures: Of his love life—a laboring, a ceaseless gnawing.

  11. in freedom bittersweet: A state of involuntary truce.

  12. Lord whom I adore: Cf. 362.9: “her Lord.”

  13. holds all Heaven: Folce (holds) also appears just once. It derives from Latin fulcire, “to sustain,” which may find a cognate in Middle English folc (folk).

  14. sick of it all: Overflowing with it.

  364 SONNET

  This poem was originally numbered 360. It commemorates twenty-one years plus ten of suffering in “error” for love; he was destined barely to escape with his life. According to Wilkins (1951, p. 287), 1358 was probably the year Petrarch released the first incomplete collection of the Canzoniere, although this sonnet was not added until later, between 1367 and 1372.

  2. full of hope in sorrow: Seeded with hope in a harvest of sorrow. Cf. 363.8.

  5. blame my life: Take it to task.

  6. long error: Cf. 361.8.

  7. the seed of virtue: Similar to that bit of gold in the retort of 360.5.

  my life’s last part: The age of understanding and wonder.

  8. High God: Higher, perhaps, than the deity of poems 362 and 363.

  12. Lord, you who have enclosed me: Walled him in, like Job.

  14. I know my fault and do not justify it: He is finished with his arguments. This and the next sonnet make up a final prayer that he be pardoned for failure (fallo) to reach the sublime.

  365 Sonnet

  This poem was originally numbered 361. In verse reflecting some of his infirmities, he prays to an invisible King of Heaven in repentance for his errors and impieties.

  1. I go my way lamenting: He begins this sonnet loosely, like a bird trying to take flight. Dante used similar language in the closing cantos of the Paradiso, for example, XXXII, 145–51.

  those past times: All his experience of life, recollected.

  2. I spent in loving something… mortal: That he invested in a changing, ephemeral Laura.

  3. I had wings: Of high intellect. Cf. 360.29 and 360.39–40.

  5. shameful, wicked: Unworthy of his promise (but reflecting the real world).

  6. invisible, immortal: Words that sum up his accumulated knowledge of God.

  7. soul… has strayed: Has traveled the low road because of his weakness. Cf. Dante, Paradiso XXXIII, 22–27.

  8. all her emptiness: Defetto, incompleteness in the theological sense.

  11. let my departure count: May the honesty of his confession make a difference.

  13. deign that your hand be present: That He takes him quickly and with mercy.

  14. only hope I have: A thought that descends to the weak and prosaic, according to Muratori (cited by Carducci). Cf. 302.12: “Ah, why did she stop speaking and drop my hand?” Cf. also Dante, Paradiso XXXII, 145–46.

  366 CANZONE

  In this final canzone, a hymn of 137 lines to the Virgin Mary, the language of love is finally reabsorbed into the language of Scripture, a small part of which is cited here in the notes. Of all the praises raised here to the Virgin, only a few have not been applied to Laura at one time or another. Probably transcribed into Vat. Lat. 3195 in 1370–71 (Wilkins 1951, p. 175), the canzone appeared as the concluding poem in other manuscripts also, such as Malatesta and Quiriniano of 1373. It was not always believed that Petrarch intended to conclude his work with it, however. Castelvetro wrote: “If what is said is true, that it was found in a small box after Petrarch’s death without ever having been shown to anyone, it is presumptuous on the part of the person who discovered it not only to classify it among the other rhymes that he brought to light but also to save it for the end, where the most excellent work is saved as conclusion.” Castelvetro questioned the poem on theological grounds, saying it would not withstand the criticism of “pure Christianity,” and on poetic grounds because of the repetition of the -etta rhymes in the third and seventh stanzas. Critical judgments since the eighteenth century overlook Petrarch’s anomalies and consider this canzone his most beautiful work. Macaulay thought it to be the world’s most beautiful hymn.

  Numbers figure prominently in the form of the poem. Ten stanzas divide into two parts of six and seven lines, each stanza with its numerically significant pattern or gestalt. The name “Virgin” is repeated in lines one and nine, and an internal rhyme divides the last line of each stanza into five and six beats. The seven-line congedo offers the poet’s last breath (spirto) to God.

  1. Virgin, so lovely: He invokes the Virgin Mary with an echo of the Song of Songs 1:7, “O pulcherrima inter mulieres,” and Rev. 12:1, “Signum magnum adparut in coelo: mulier amicta sole et in capite eius corona stellarum duodecim.”

  2. so pleased the highest Sun: God the Father. Cf. Antiphon: “Beata Dei Genetrix.”

  3. hide his light: Cf. Dante, Paradiso XXXIII, 7: “Within your womb rekindled was the love”; and John 8:12, “Ego sum lux mundi.”

  4. speak of you in verse: Cf. Dante, Inferno II, 72: “love moved me, as it moves me now to speak.” Cf. also Rev. 13:11–15, for the second beast that spoke for the first, moved by the dragon.

  5. cannot begin without your help: As intercessor.

  6. His who loving placed himself in you: The Holy Spirit. Cf. Isa. 11:1, “Egredietur virga de radice Iesse, et flos de radice eius ascendent, et requiescet super eum spiritus dominus”; and St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, 45, 6: “Deus pater operatus est creaturum per suum verbum quod est filius et per suum amorem, qui est spiritus sanctus.” Cf. also Dante, Paradiso X, Iff, and XXXIII, 7.

  7. I call upon the one: Mary.

  11. bend now: “Lower yourself” to speak to one so miserable. Cf. Ps. 87:3, “Inclina aurem tuam ad precem meam.”

  12. help me in my war: His continuing struggle with himself.

  13. I am dust: A mortal man. Cf. Eccles. 10:9, “quid superbit terra et cinis?”

  you are queen of Heaven: Cf. Antiphon, “Regina coeli.”

  14. Virgin so wise: The highest praise, after her beauty, is for her wisdom and prudence. Laura, too, was valued for her wise speech (and her lovely silences), both in life and as she appeared to him in dream.

  the lovely number: Cf. Matt. 25:1–13, the parable of the foolish and prudent virgins at the wedding, a passage that speaks of prophecies and warnings; cf. also Antiphon I, ad laudes of the Roman breviary: “Haec est virgo sapiens et una de numero prudentum.”

  16. with the brightest light: Cf. St. Bernard, in assumpt. B. V. II, 9: “Processit ergo gloriosa Virgo, cuius lampas ardentissima ipsis quoque angelis miracolo fuit….”

  17. O sturdy shield: The defense of her wisdom and intercession. Cf. 2 Kings 22:3, “scutum meum et cornu salutis meae … quia circumdederunt me contritiones mortis.”

  19. triumphant: Able to transcend affliction through her power.

  20. blind ardor: Cupidity (yearning) for worldly things (Vellutello). Cf. Virgil, Aeneid IV, 2: “coeco carpitur igne.”

  21. foolish mortals: In contrast with “prudent virgins.”

  22. those lovely eyes: That he seeks now instead of Lauras, whose eyes had aroused his “blind ardor.”

  25. turn to my perilous state: Cf. Antiphon, Salve Regina: “illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte.”

  26. who come imprudent: Considering his past errors.

  27. pure and perfect: Cf. Deut. 12:15. These attributes, and all that follow, reflect both ways, forward and backward. Chiari compares his style here to the Provençal poets Peire Cardenal and Peire de Corbiac.

  28. mother and daughter both: Cf. Dante, Paradiso XXXIII, 1: “Oh Virgin Mother, daughter of your son,” and XXXIII, 6; cf. also Roman breviary domin. II oct.: “Beata est, virgo Maria, quae dominum portasti creatorem mundi, Genuisti qui te fecit et in aeternum permanes virgo.”

  29. brighten this life: With the shield of her wisdom. The image corresponds to “pure.”

  adorn the other: Corresponding to “perfect.”

&nbs
p; 30. through you your son … Father: The three indivisible.

  31. lofty window: Mary, the means through which God’s light came down in the body of Christ.

  32. final days: According to the prophets and Church doctrine, the time of most need. Dante called it “plenitudo temporum,” a fulfillment of promise. Cf. Virgil, Eclogues IV: “Ultima Cumaei venit iam carminis aetas,” in regard to Orpheus’ prediction: “Sexta in aetate cessabit harmonia mundi.”

  36. who change the tears of Eve: Brought the world hope of healing original sin. Zingarelli cites St. Augustine, Sermones: “Heva enim luxit, Maria exsultavit…, et Hevea planctum Mariae cantus exclusit.”

  37. make me, for you can: An imperative, followed by the force of a declarative. These modes of speech recur as an assertion of Mary’s power. Cf. Dante, Paradiso XXXIII, 34–35

  worthy of this grace: Of changing his tears to happiness.

  38. blessèd without end: Shield and comforter for all generations. Cf. Luke 1:48, “ecce enim ex hoc beatum me dicent omnes generationes.”

  40–41. Virgin so holy, full of every grace… : Cf. Luke 1:28, “Ave Maria, gratia plena,” and 1:48, “respexit humilitatem ancillae suae.”

  43. Fount of pity: Cf. St. Ambrose: “Fons pietatis ex te ortus, Sol justitiae, thronus gratiae”; and St. Anselm: “Ilia pie potens et potenter pia, de qua ortus est fons misericordiae.”

  44. Sun of justice: Cf. Mal. 4:2, “Orietur vobis timentibus nomen meum sol iustitiae.”

  brightens the world: The perilous age in which he lives.

  47. mother, daughter, and bride: Cf. Song of Songs 4:8–9.

  49. freed us from our bonds: Cf. Ps. 123:7.

  50. a free and happy place: In an ideal sense, as in the Golden Age.

  51–52. upon whose holy wounds /I pray: As the free and happy world prays, unmindful of its errors.

  52. true Beatrix: Paradigm of blessedness.

  53. Virgin without an equal: Cf. Antiphon: “Sola sine exempio placuisti domino nostro Jesu Christo.” The attributes of Mary and Laura find more common ground in this fifth stanza than anywhere else in the canzone. Five is the number of worldliness and blindness as well as of carnal love.