Petrarch (101 page)

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.