Petrarch (89 page)

7.
army of armed sighs:
Stuolo
(army) appears only once in the
Canzoniere.

8.
Love’s enemy and mine:
For her imperviousness to earthly temptation.

10.
cloudy… brow:
Obscuring her eyes, preventing any prediction about the future.

12.
collect my soul:
Ready it for confession.

14.
I dare not begin:
Fear overtakes him. Cf. Arnaut Daniel, “Sols sui”: “Qu’ades ses lieis dic a lei cochos
motz; pois can la vei, no sai dir, tant l’ai que dire” (Zingarelli).

Occasionally reversing roles, he goes on the assault against his enemy; but a look
at her eyes will deprive him of the power to speak.

1.
fair and kind:
semblante umano,
a high compliment for Petrarch. Cf. 238.12.

2.
my faithful guides:
His eyes.

3.
to assail:
To speak his heart.

5.
thought is emptied:
Seeming vain and pointless to him.

8.
the only one who can:
Love.

10.
could understand:
Although Laura has always read the depths of his heart, his words of love have lent
themselves to misinterpretation.

11.
so weak and so unsteady:
The words
tremante e fioco
seem to illustrate the sense of these lines and of the tercet that follows:
tremante
because it vacillates between laughter and tears, and
floco
because it literally weakens the flame (
foco
) with its “i.”

12.
a burning love:
Caritate,
a different kind of love.

13.
steal his breath:
Cause his words to lose power in its spreading light. Cf. the “ray” of pity in 169.9.

14.
how he burns:
Arde,
speaking of his own inferior love.

Here his imagery is forceful, both rough and beautiful in sense as well as sound,
with an imbalance he corrects in the final tercet.

1–4.
hard and lovely arms … :
He finds himself caught between two extremes that overwhelm him, forcing him to be
silent.

3.
my suffering he doubles:
A spiritual as well as a physical suffering.

5.
burn the Rhine:
The “frozen Rhine” may be a metaphor for the German character and may suggest a political
message in this sonnet.

6.
break its… icy ridge:
Melt the barriers thrown up by the force of the river waters.

7.
so equal:
A phrase that corresponds to the doubling of line 3.

8.
pleasing others:
Corresponding to line 4. When he has spoken out he has pleased his audience but earned
her disdain.

11.
is marble:
His wit and skill have failed to soften her.

13.
dark glances:
For
sembiante oscuro,
cf. the
sembiante umano
and
caritate
of poem 170.

14.
my sweet sighs:
Brave defiance, worded so that euphony resists the harshness of her aspect.

He accuses Laura of envy.

1.
O Envy … enemy of virtue:
This personification derives from Ovid,
Metamorphoses
II, 760 ff. Cf. also Cicero,
Rhetorica
IV: “O virtutis comes invidia, quae bonos insequeris plerumque, immo adeo insectaris.”
Envy’s purpose in
Metamorphoses
is to study the ways in which she can thwart good fortune.

2.
against all good beginnings:
Of a love that began so fortuitously.

5.
pulled out my salvation:
Evicted benevolence from her heart.

6.
too fortunate:
Unneedy.

7.
my pure and humble prayers:
Poems that pay pious homage to her.

9–10.
weeps / at my own good:
According to Ovid and Dante also, these are the responses of Envy.

12.
kill me a thousand times:
Cf. 164.13–14.

14.
Love reassures me:
He may still reach salvation through constancy and faith.

He has passed the nadir where jealousy reigns, the halfway point in this 56-sonnet
series. From such bittersweetness little good can come.

2.
where dwells the one:
Love.

3.
my weary soul:
Cf. Plotinus,
Enneads
VI, 5.

4.
earthly paradise:
Where Love reigns in Laura’s heart.

7.
is spiderwebs:
Spun to catch souls flying too close to the center.

8.
spurs… hot… bit… hard:
Love, like the demiurge, takes the role of both evil prompter and limiter.

9.
mixed and contrasting:
Distinct from each other, yet obscurely combined.

11.
there it remains:
In this state of suspension between the worldly web and the earthly paradise.

13.
repents for its bold action:
Seeking her in Paradise, responding to the spurs of Love. Cf. 135.16: “Una petra
è sì ardita.”

14.
from such a root:
Cf. 142.35–36.

While cursing the circumstances of his birth, this sonnet links his love of Laura
with a wider destiny.

1.
the star:
On 20 July 1304, as the sun was entering Leo and just at the moment when the White
party began its assault on Florence, according to a letter Petrarch wrote to Boccaccio
in 1366.

3.
cruel the cradle:
Italy, from which his family fled into exile in 1311. The Latin
cuna
alludes to his exile, written by the
fata scribunda
at the time of his birth.

4.
cruel the ground:
Provence.

5.
cruel the lady:
Laura in her aspect as the warrior maiden.

8.
those very weapons:
Her eyes.

10.
it’s not harsh enough:
She wants him to dedicate his life.

11.
arrow not a spear:
The spear, on the other hand, is the weapon for delivering a coup de grace.

12.
I’m consoled:
Alone in exile, yet with her in his mind.

14.
your gold shaft:
Her glance.

That he should have failed to bring about an end to exile pains him, but his vision
endures. Cyclical in form, this sonnet returns in the last tercet to the language
of the first quatrain.

1.
comes to my mind:
Memories that arrive unbidden, like regret.

2.
that dear knot:
Laura’s beauty in soul and body.

4.
weeping, pleasure:
Gioco
may also have the sense of “game.” Cf. 172.10.

5.
sulphur and tinder:
Producing a distinctive odor as they burn. Chiari notes that
zolfo
(sulphur), which appears only once, is an odd choice of image.

7.
enjoying that I burn:
Cf. 172.9–10.

8.
on this I live:
Bound, unable to let his line out freely.

10.
still warms me:
Smouldering in a cell of silence.

12.
she from afar:
His dream of love is as distant as the evening star.

14.
that knot:
Nodo,
in Laura’s case fresh and whole, is in his case rather like an egg that has been
left too long to rot in its hiding place, giving off the infernal smell of sulphur.
Or Petrarch may refer to the components of gun powder—sulphur and saltpeter, thereby
obliquely punning on his name as well as parodying his style. An anagram of Roger
Bacon’s in
De mirabili potestate artis et naturae
(1242) gave this recipe for gunpowder: “Item ponderis totum 30 sed tamen salis petrae
luru vopo vir can utri et sulphuris; et sic facies tonitrium et coruscationem, si
scias artificium.”

This sonnet and the next tell of a solitary journey Petrarch took through the forest
of Ardennes on a return home to Provence, an event mentioned in a letter to Cardinal
Giovanni Colonna dated 1333 (
Familiares
I, 4). Apparently these sonnets were early compositions he revised and added at a
later date.

3.
safely I move:
Unarmed with anything but his eyes and ears.

4.
except that sun:
Laura, whose ability to wound him is all he fears. He jokes, said Leopardi.

5.
I move and sing:
Celebrating her.

O unwise thoughts:
Uncontrolled, exuberant.

7.
she’s in my eyes:
He reproduces her in his mind.

8.
firs and beeches:
Standing in for the real Laura and her company.

10–11.
the murmur / of water:
Hidden waters that nourish the imagination. Cf. Virgil,
Georgics
IV, 19: “Et tenuis fugiens per gramina rivus.”

12.
lonely chill:
From its vastness.

14.
too much of my sun is lost:
Her light, lost in the savage hostility of the forest.

Like Cupid carrying a message to the goddess Venus, he traverses the forest of Ardennes
“in one day.”

1.
A thousand slopes:
He finds Laura’s configuration in the slopes and rivers of the forest, as he saw
her in the firs and beeches of poem 176.

2.
famous Ardennes:
A wooded plateau in northeastern France. Caesar and Livy wrote of its fearful vastness,
Boiardo and Ariosto of its allure for the imagination as a playground for dark psychological
conflict.

3.
he wings:
Love showed him the least arduous paths through the forest, the quickest route to
Venus.

6.
unarmed:
Cf. 176.3.

7.
a ship at sea:
The teasing tone of this sonnet recalls the “mixed and contrasting” extremes of 173.9,
which here mix metaphorically the sea with the forest.

8.
secret thoughts:
Penser… schivi
are thoughts for which he feels shame, that he’s too modest to express. There is
an ambiguity in
schivo,
since shifting the consonant “v” to “f “ (to
schifo),
can produce the sense of “disgusting.” Diez found a precedent for this poem in Arnaut
Daniel (Curtius, p. 97).

9.
Still:
He recalls where he was before he started drifting.

end of the dark day:
The root meaning of Ardennes in Celtic is “dark, obscure” (
ardu
).

12.
fair country:
Provence.

delightful river:
The Rhône.

Such frequent change of mood, such disorienting vacillation in style, is all the fault
of Love.

1.
Love spurs:
The impudent Cupid of poem 177.

5.
now high now low:
His path as he has followed it in these recent sonnets, sometimes with high humor,
sometimes low. Cf. poem 134.

7.
seems displeased:
Confused by conflicting signals from Love.

9.
A thought that’s friendly:
That offers wise advice.

11.
has hopes of joy:
The mind can turn either way, toward the imperfect world or away from it. Line 11
is typically a point for making a turn in Petrarch’s sonnet form.

12.
greater force:
Laura’s.

14.
its long death and mine:
Back to life in Avignon and martyrdom.

Another early work (as early as 1335 says Wilkins), this is a response to a sonnet
of his Florentine friend, Geri Gianfigliazzi, asking for Petrarch’s advice in matters
of love.

1.
my sweet enemy:
Lamenting that his lady warred against him, Geri had asked the expert to suggest
a remedy for her anger.

5–6.
wherever…/… cutting short my life:
When she chances to look at him, as if scanning his face for the offensive thought
and censoring it with her anger.

7.
full of humility:
Si vera;
cf. 23.101–131 for his thoughts on the psychology of humility.

9.
Were this not so:
If he were not so armed.

10.
looking at Medusa’s face:
The snaky-haired Gorgon in Greek myth who turned men to stone and was slain by Perseus
with the aid of Wisdom’s shield. Cf. Ovid,
Metamorphoses
IV, 780 ff., and Dante,
Inferno
IX, 52.

12.
You do the same:
This is the advice Geri asked from Petrarch, who, he believed, knew all the ins and
outs of love.

13.
to run away is useless:
Geri had asked if he should leave the band of lovers if found unworthy. This response
amounts to an endorsement of his verse.

14.
the kind of wings:
Wings of desire.

More than ever in a playful mood, he transports his body to the turbulent river Po
and allows his spirit to soar aloft on the wings of love. The sonnet projects an image
quite contrary to the humility he recommended in poem 179.