Petrarch (103 page)

6.
valleys enclosed:
The topography of the reflecting mind. Cf. poem 129. It is interesting that all these
components of his happiness are given in the plural, even “valleys enclosed.”

10.
O nymphs:
Cf. 281.9. Tassoni (1609) imagined all these to be woodland deities, including dryads
and satyrs, who once attended Laura.

you whose… grassy bed:
The fish within the spring; the Naiads of paganism (Tassoni).

11.
liquid crystal:
Waters of the mountain spring.

13.
as Death, the cause of it:
Death the transvestite who changed his day to night.

14.
our destiny is with us:
Written into this place that surrounds him.

This sonnet concluded the Chigi form of the
Canzoniere,
put together between 1359–1362. Boccaccio was said to have destroyed some of his
lyrics after reading at least parts of this manuscript.

1–2.
by loving worms … devoured:
A colloquial expression for tormenting thoughts, as of one who thinks and rethinks
without ever coming to a conclusion (Salvini).

3.
charming beast:
Laura, fierce and elusive. Cf. 126.27–29.

7.
not so strong:
Literally, scarce
(scarse).

9.
That fire’s dead:
His fervor died with Laura.

meager marble:
Laura’s grave or his enduring poetic output. Cf. Petrarch’s
Epistles
I, 1, to Barbato da Sulmona: “Nunc breve marmor habet longos quibus arsimus ignes.”

10.
had it gone on growing:
Had Laura lived.

11.
as is the case with others:
More fortunate lovers. The phrase was echoed by Boccaccio in the introduction to
the
Decameron,
where he lists Dante, Cavalcanti, and Cino da Pistoia, but not Petrarch, as poets
whose productivity lasted until the end of their lives.

12.
armed with the verse:
Cf. poems 292 and 293. If she had lived, those “daring” poems he now finds unstable
and strange might have been the focal point of a great work, perhaps the epic Petrarch
yearned to write.

14.
shattered stone:
Cf. poems 286 and 294. For the use of
petra,
see 50. 78, 51.7, and 135.16.

He begs that she may look upon the good he has done in his solitary labors in Vaucluse
but turn away from that which is unworthy in Avignon, where her body lies.

5.
false opinion:
That he loved her for the beauty of her body alone.

7.
severe and cruel:
Because she doubted his faith.

now all secure:
From any further ambivalence.

8.
look upon me:
Turn her eyes toward this creature who can no longer do her harm.

9.
lofty rock:
Gran sasso,
whose high vault overlooking Vaucluse contained the treasure of his high idea. Cf.
poem 117.

11.
feeds upon:
Nourishes his verse.

12.
your house stands:
Her grave in Avignon.

13.
abandon, leave:
Disassociate herself for all time from the desecrated land.

14.
in your people:
In her countrymen. Those same sinful ways with which she identified him in her false
opinion continue to be practiced by the people she left behind.

He contemplates which road to take from his impoverished state, a “desert on a cliff.”

1.
The sun:
Laura. Cf. Dante,
Inferno I
, 16.

3.
to the highest sun:
God.

4.
her own earthly jail:
He has hidden his sun and her body in the graveyard of his words. Cf. 279.13–14:
“into internal light / my eyes were opened.”

5.
wild beast of the woods:
Animal silvestro,
Dianas sacred beast, unable to speak. Cf. 23.157–160 and poem 237.

8.
desert on a cliff:
Barren, where one can neither rise nor descend.

9.
all of those regions:
Contrada,
a naked word to describe what were, as recently as poem 303, nests of love adorned
with natural beauty.

11.
Love, come with me:
Be his only guide.

12.
holy footprints:
Vestiges of her life and works.

14.
far from the infernal lakes:
From the darkened wasteland in which he lives. Cf. Ovid,
Metamorphoses
IV, 309.

All his dreams of flying high in praise of her were a frail craft in comparison with
the sublime weight of the real, living Laura.

1.
my wings were strong enough to soar:
His imagination, with her inspiration, could raise him and her to the greatest heights.

2.
by his who spreads them:
Love.

3.
lovely knot:
Her body and soul, tied in life to his mind and senses. Cf. 296.5–8.

4.
Death loosens me:
Absolves him.

6.
a small branch:
The analogy excludes the bird that attempts to take flight from that branch, suggesting
that Petrarch had come to consider his love poems, at best, as points of departure
for future poets.

bent by a heavy burden:
The accumulated weight of her beauty. Note that in 81.1, the
fascio
is his bundle of sins.

7.
who flies too high:
Recalling the warning of Daedalus to Icarus not to fly too close to the sun.

8.
what Heaven denies:
Sufficient leverage.

10–11.
as high as Nature/flew:
To Heaven for her idea. Cf. 159.1.

11.
wove my sweet impediment:
The “lovely knot” of line 3.

13.
adorned her:
Weighted her down.

14.
my good luck:
To have been at the right place at the right time to see her.

Following Love, he attempts to bring forth her beauties with the poor materials he
has at hand.

1.
exchanged Arno for Sorgue:
Meeting with Boccaccio in Italy in 1351, Petrarch had refused his invitation to lecture
in Florence and returned to retirement in Vaucluse that summer, when this sonnet is
believed to have been written.

2.
servile riches:
Money and fame laboring for a lesser goal.

free poverty:
To study and write (and to love) without gain.

6.
capture her high beauty:
To reincarnate her in words.

7.
those to come:
Posterity.

10.
stars that spreading:
Each beauty yielding love as a blessed soul in Heaven.

11.
just one or two:
The eyes of Laura.

12.
the part divine:
Her soul.

14.
my courage fails:
His fire is eclipsed by her glory.

Love still urges him to bring beauty and virtue to life again for those who have not
seen her truth.

1.
high, new miracle:
The soul of Laura.

2.
did not want to stay:
Left the world gladly.

4.
decorate the cloisters:
Divine Love adorns the heavenly nest with her beauty (Gesualdo).

5.
given freedom to my tongue:
When he first was moved by Love to praise her.

8.
for those who have not seen:
Posterity.

9.
not yet at its highest:
He has not yet even attempted the consummate subject matter. “Highest” (sommo) seems
to be a non sequitur to “a thousand times in vain” in line 6, since it compares the
sublime with repeated failure.

12.
think the silent truth:
That is beyond language to describe, although one can know it deep inside.

13.
surpassing every style:
Bringing an end to all trying.

14.
God blessed those eyes:
Not only luck (307.14) but Providence conspired to bring the goddess to life in his
eyes.

Some other bird will fill the air with song and seek the consummate love poem, now
that his world has become a desert. This sonnet has been translated into both music
and painting.

1.
Zephyr comes back:
The west wind, whose arrival brings a chill to the dimished spirit.

2.
his sweet family:
In a lovely train as if springing from Zephyr’s loins (Leopardi). Cf. Virgil,
Georgics
II, 330: “Parturit almus ager, Zephrique tepentibus auris Laxant arva sinus.”

3.
Philomel… Procne:
Cf. Ovid,
Metamorphoses
VI, 424–674. In Ovid’s version of the legend, Philomela was raped and her tongue
cut out by Tereus, husband of Procne, her sister. In revenge Procne slaughtered her
son, Itys, and with Philomela’s help cooked and served him to his father for dinner.
The sisters in turn were slaughtered by Tereus and turned into nightingale and swallow
respectively, and Tereus into the hoopoe, bird of war.

4.
all in whiteness and vermilion:
The colors of innocence and blood as well as the flowers of May. Cf. 127.71–76 and
poems 245 and 246; cf. also Virgil,
Eclogues
IX, 40.

6.
Jove takes joy:
This signifies a felicitous positioning of the planets Jupiter and Venus; or Jove
may be happy at the sight of Proserpina in the meadows before her rape by Pluto.

7.
waters, earth, and air:
Cf. Virgil,
Eclogues
VII, 55: “Omnia nunc rident.”

14.
deserts now:
Dead to the resurgence of beauty and spring.

According to Carducci, this lament to the nightingale is second only to Virgil’s in
the way it reproduces that bird’s music.

1.
That nightingale:
Cf. 10.10–12 and 310.3 (“crying Philomel”).

2.
children:
In
Epistles
I, 8, Petrarch praised Philomela as queen of song for the common people, the first
sufferers of loss.

4.
skillfully played:
As if repeating an ancient, well-learned music. Cf. Pliny,
Historia naturalis
X, 43: “In una perfecta musicae scientia modulatus editur sonus, et nunc continuo
spiritu trahi tur in longum, nunc variatur inflexu, nunc distringitur conciso, copulatur
intorto, promittitur revocato, infuscator ex inopinato; interdum et secum ipse murmurat;
plenus, gravis, acutus, creber, extensus, ubi visum est vibrans, summus, medius imus.”

6.
reminding me of my harsh destiny:
To speak out about loss.

7.
I have no one to blame:
Cf. poem 10, where the memory of Christ’s loss evoked the “amoroso pensiero.”

9.
one who is sure:
One whose faith comes too easily to him, that is, one who has not learned from history.
Cf. 119.50–53.

12.
fierce fate of mine:
To be witness to her lonely life and death.

14.
can please and also last:
For even goddesses die. Cf. 1.4.

As if to amplify the last line of poem 311, this sonnet is built entirely on negativities.
A
plazer,
it follows the style of Cavalcanti.

1–9.
No lovely
… :
Castelvetro noted that the first quatrain speaks of things seen and the second of
things heard.

1.
stars that roam:
Traced by the yearning eyes of astrologers.

2.
well-oiled ships:
Ready for fortuitous voyages.

3.
knights in armor:
Free to roam at will.

4.
swift and frisky beasts:
Graceful objects of the chase, delight of hunters.

5.
long-awaited joy:
Of new beginnings.

6.
poems of love:
A flowering of verse that follows on good news.

8.
ladies:
The loveliest and most lofty subject matter of all.

10.
buried it:
When she died. Lines 9–11 are among the most alliterative in the
Canzoniere.

12.
pain of living:
Noia,
as in Provençal and Old Italian.

14.
I should have never seen:
The ultimate negativity, contradicting 309.14: “God blessed those eyes that saw her
still alive!” To see her was to lose her.

Another lyrical enumeration of lost joys, this rises from the decrescendo of the last
sonnet to the wish that he might join her in Heaven.

2.
refreshed within …flames:
A faint echo of the icy fire of times gone by, suggesting here a purgatorial fire.

6.
that going:
Playing on the word
passando,
so that he brings forth the living Laura as she passed, making her coming almost
simultaneous with her leaving.

pierced my heart:
When she exchanged glances with him that very first day.

8.
wrapped it in her lovely cloak:
The veil of her mortality. According to Zingarelli, Petrarch alludes to the Virgin
Mary.

9.
She took it:
In part underground with her body, in part to Heaven with her soul. Petrarch pursues
this puzzling line of thought in sonnets to follow.