Petrarch (96 page)

7.
such gentle notes:
Like the natural sounds of spring smoothing her roughness.

8.
sweeten Laura:
This is the first naming of his love not disguised in some manner by spelling. In
poem 5 she was Laureta, in poem 225 Laurëa, elsewhere l’
aura.

9.
reasoning:
Using the force of argument to soften her.

11.
before love blossoms:
Before his love poems have their miraculous effect.

12.
who never cared for rhymes or for my verses:
She whose soul is immune to changes of climate will not respond to love poetry. Cf.
Virgil,
Eclogues
II, 6: “O crudelis Alexi, nihil mea carmina curas.”

15.
to make humble that soul:
To bring her feelings finally into play.

16.
rough mountain:
A Virgilian image,
Aeneid
VI, 470–71: “Nec magis incepto vultum sermone movetur, quam si dura silex aut stet
Marpesia cautes.”

17.
leaves and flowers:
Lesser souls than hers (Carducci).

18.
a greater force:
Of her immutability.

24.
to draw from life:
Draw his soul upward to Heaven.

28.
There’s nothing can’t be done:
Cf. Virgil,
Eclogues
VIII, 69; and Ovid,
Metamorphoses
VII, 179–214, for the powers of the imagination.

29.
charm even serpents:
Cf. Pliny,
Historia naturalis
XXVIII, 4: “serpentes contrahique Marsorum can tu etiam in nocturna quiete.”

30.
decorate the frost:
Coax spring out of winter.

31.
The slopes:
Beneath the rough mountain, where he is.

33.
amorous notes:
Like the laughter of flowers. Cf. 127.71–90.

34.
our cruel fortune:
Speaking to his soul.

greater force:
Greater than the wit he would gather in lines 26–27.

36.
lame ox:
In the Augustinian sense, perhaps—with a faltering evangelism. Cf. note to 50.58.

37.
In nets … flowers:
Acts of magic.

38.
deaf and rigid soul:
The pitiless Laura.

39.
who prizes neither:
The fault is hers; more’s the pity.

With this sonnet a series of twenty-four begins, all of which were added to the collection
late in Petrarch’s life. The preceding sestina and poems 240–243 were included between
1371 and early 1373. Poems 244–263 were added in the last year of his life (Wilkins,
1951, pp. 176–83). It was during this period that he described his rhymes to Pandolfo
Malatesta as “nugellas meas vulgares.”

3–4.
complete/faithfulness:
Only his faith, in fact, guides him through the full round of experience.

8.
I am forced to follow:
Into error by overwhelming ardor, but also by the limitations of the verse line.
Tassoni found an earlier poet, Ugolin Buzzuola, who used the rare form
sego
(follow) in “Di me non t’ungi, che passion non sego.”

9–12.
You, with that heart…:
Laura. Cf. line 2,
appo voi.
In these lines he gives an example of the skill required to put such complicated
thoughts all in one place by ordering his clauses appositionally, enhancing them with
epithets, as he did in lines 2 and 3. Cf. 239.25–28.

13–14.
What choice:
Cf. 87.9–11 and 123.14 for other imagined opinions of Laura.

14.
lovely:
Cf. Ovid,
Heroides
XX: “Aut esses formosa minus, peterere modeste; audaces facie cogimur esse tua.”
For numerous antecedents, in earlier Italian and Provençal verse, of this theme of
the lady’s irresistible beauty, see Zingarelli.

In tones of utmost courtesy he describes to her how she might alter her present harsh
stance toward him.

1.
That lofty lord:
Love.

6.
advance his case:
To make its outcome sure.

7.
made of mercy:
The sight of her tearful eyes. Cf. Dante,
Inferno
XXIX, 43: “like arrow-shafts whose tips are barbed with pity.”

8.
from both sides:
“Here and there.” Love balances amorous passion with compassion, ardor with restraint.

assails and stabs:
Ardor wounds and pity overwhelms him.

9.
flame and fire:
All his unbridled desire.

10.
tears that misery distills:
When he reflects, pity makes his response more civil. Petrarch echoes a passage in
Dante,
Purgatorio
(XV, 94 ff.) where Pisistratus turns away his wife’s wrath by giving her a soft answer.

11.
your sad state:
Laura’s grief. Cf. 3.9–11.

12.
two fountains:
His eyes.

14.
my desire grows:
The one reinforcing the other.

In a variation on the dialogue form, he speaks to his heart with a divided mind. This
sonnet refers to a significant event in the
Canzoniere,
one to which he often returns in his thoughts: his desertion of Laura.

1.
Look at that hill:
Traditionally believed to be a midpoint between Avignon and Vaucluse—Caumont—where
Laura was born.

4.
into a lake:
Pooling with tears.

5.
glad to be alone:
To be relieved of his heart’s pain.

6.
if it is not time:
The unique phrasing of this line was noted by Carducci; Zingarelli and Leopardi read
it to say, “se fosse ancor tempo.” Cf. Dante,
Purgatorio
XI, 89–90.

8.
prescient:
his heart knows before his mind how their love is faring.

10.
talk to your heart:
The voice of his conscience speaks.

12.
highest wish:
His original high enterprise of praising Laura.

14.
hid inside:
His essential core hidden from his own sight.

Cut off from her and his heart, he falls into despondency for his lost powers.

1.
Green hill:
Cf.242.1.

2.
where she sits now:
Cf. poems 100, 111, 125.22, 126.32, and 129.5 for descriptions of Laura seated.

4.
outdoes all fame:
Cf. Dante,
Purgatorio
XI, 94–96.

6.
showed good sense:
Cf. 242.12–14.

7.
goes counting now:
In its beating it numbers the golden days of his early love.

8.
the wetness of my eyes:
Cf.
Purgatorio
XI, 115, where Dante echoes Isa. 40:6–7, “What shall I cry? That all mankind is grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades.”

11.
so worn out:
So limp. In the seventeenth century Tassoni saw in this image a man on all fours,
unable to stand upright (Carducci).

12.
She smiles:
It has been a long time since Laura smiled, even in his imagination. Cf. 172.9–11.

13.
I’m stone:
Unable to speak out, like one of Medusa’s victims.

you’re paradise:
The verdant hill of line 1.

This sonnet responds to one by Giovanni Dondi of Padua (b. 1318), with whom Petrarch
corresponded beginning in 1370. A physician and mathematician, Dondi invented and
erected on the tower of Padua a clock that traced more than 200 rotations of the stars.
Dondi’s sonnet asks for the master’s advice in matters of love. Petrarch responds
using the same rhymes.

1.
terrified by worse:
Afraid of the future, like a horse shying at shadows. Cf. 227.8.

2.
so broad and smooth a way:
They are both being pushed from behind by events into a frightening future.

3.
your same frenzied road:
Petrarch plays on the word
frenesia,
whose Latin root means bridle (Greek
phreno,
mind). They are like reluctant animals spurred and restrained by their thoughts at
the same time.

4.
with hard thoughts:
Like the bit in the mouth—painful.

ramble:
The word
vaneggio
can apply to the raving of a seer.

5.
for peace or war:
That he means this in a political sense is suggested by his echoing poem 128 in the
next line.

6.
heavy is the loss:
Corresponding to war.

cruel the shame:
Corresponding to peace. Cf. 128.68.

9.
of that great honor:
Dondi had appealed to Petrarch to speak out as Petrarch himself had appealed to another
in poem 28.

11.
healthy eye see wrong:
Dondi had complained of an inability to see, hear, or otherwise trust his senses
and the world around him.

After his wry admission of artistic and political impasse in the preceding sonnet,
this seems to describe the passing on of a sacred legacy to a younger generation.
The traditional interpretation is that the two lovers here are Petrarch and Laura,
the donor undertermined. Zingarelli suggested Dante or Cino da Pistoia.

1.
Two roses:
Red for the lover, signifying courage and sacrifice; perhaps white for the maiden,
as in poem 246, signifying purity.

picked in paradise:
The green hill of 243.12–14.

2.
the other day:
Only a short time ago. Cf. 214.1–12.

first of May:
May was the Virgin’s month in the Christian calendar.

3.
a sweet gift:
The words stand free and clear syntactically, like an offering.

lover old and wise:
One who has kept his prescient heart in the paradise of his youth. Cf. poem 243.

4.
shared equally:
One to each, a portion.

7.
stream of light:
Of understanding.

sparkles lovingly:
Trembling on the verge of joy or pity.

10.
and sighing:
Star-crossed as they are.

11.
he then turned round:
He retired.

13.
weary heart still fears:
The poet in the present still remembers how he felt on that occasion.

14.
Oh happy eloquence:
Of both words and roses.

Inspiration once more flows. The next three sonnets celebrate another and different
flowering of his adoration, pure and candid.

1–2.
The aura …/…laurel… golden:
Variants of the name of Laura.

2.
hair:
Crine
appears just this once in the
Canzoniere.

3.
its aspects new and delicate:
Cf. 239.1–6, his most recent point of new beginnings.

3–4.
turns…/ souls into pilgrims:
Stealing them away into exile.

5.
Whiteness of rose … thorns:
The simplicity of Laura’s beauty is created out of a wasteland of suffering.

6.
when:
Cf. poem 220, where similar questions are asked: where, what, and whence?

7.
O living Jove:
Christ.

9.
public loss:
To all the world.

10.
without sun:
Since poem 237 he has foreshadowed her loss.

12–13.
and my soul
… :
His soul and all his senses are caught up in her perfection, like “pilgrims wandering
from their bodies.”

14.
sweet perfection:
He starts anew with his single white rose.

To praise her is a task for stylists on the level of the greatest orators and poets,
not just one humble lover like himself.

1.
Someone:
Some skeptic who has not seen her.

2.
my style is wrong:
Castelvetro amended this to say “deceitful” (
bugiardo
).

5.
I think the opposite:
The terms of this sonnet are just subtle enough to make one doubt him, beginning
with “perhaps” in line 1.

6.
disdains the humble words:
Considers them, notwithstanding their apparent hyperbole, too slight for her notice.

7.
higher, finer ones:
A style even more sophisticated than he has shown so far.

8.
come and gaze on her:
Come see her in person, but also, “look closely at my words.”

10–11.
all Arpinum and Athens, / Mantua, Smyrna:
Birthplaces of Cicero, Demosthenes, Virgil, and Homer, respectively.

11.
one lyre and the other:
The Latin and Greek languages.

12.
A mortal tongue:
The one in which he is presently writing—vernacular Italian.

13–14.
draws and drives / his tongue:
Forces his words into a style so “wrong” that it appears to say the opposite.

14.
but destiny:
Along with the pushing and pulling of Love, the force of circumstance determines
the forward thrust of his language.

If he cannot entice the blind world to come gaze on her virtue, then perhaps some
seeker of highest truth might want to see her before it is too late. Petrarch seems
almost to be hawking his wares in this sonnet.

3.
sole sun:
Laura unique, apart, and the only one who matters to him.