Petrarch (88 page)

1.
rest or turn:
These verbs make a distinction between gazing fixedly at Laura and scanning the entire
scene that reality presents. Cf. 156.1–4.

3.
I find there one:
Love, the artist; or the imagination.

7.
more than sight:
Beyond what he apparently sees.

seem to imagine:
“Seem” appears also in line 5. Cf. 156.4

8.
her living voice:
His imagination is able to recreate her beautiful image by hearing again her words
and their music.

holy sighs:
Verses expressing profound faith.

9–11.
Love and the truth … :
Leopardi paraphrased: “I judged, and Love also judged, in a judgment conforming to
the truth, that those beauties that I saw in my lady weeping were beauties unique
in the world, never again seen on earth.”

10.
unique:
Only he saw them. His heart alone was wrung.

He poses another question, in a philosophical context, to seek an explanation for
Lauras qualities.

1.
from what Idea:
A reference to Plato’s theory of the One Idea in the mind of God from which creation
springs. Cf. Dante,
Paradiso
XIII, 49–87.

2.
take the model:
Matter takes the stamp of the Idea from which the creature is formed.

4.
her power up above:
To reach the highest part of the heavens for her model. At Nature’s highest power,
“the brilliance of the seal would shine forth full” (Dante,
Paradiso
XIII, 75).

5.
What fountain nymph … woodland goddess:
What naiad, what dryad.

7–8.
How did a heart … :
Foseolo refers to “un inimitabile chiaroscuro,” the “pennellata da maestro” of these
lines.

9–11.
Who seeks … :
Without a knowledge of her effects, which cause any man who sees her to love her,
the Idea of her cannot be grasped. Cf. Dante,
Paradiso
XIII, 79–81: “But if the Fervent Love moves the Clear Vision / of the First Power
and makes of that its seal, / the thing it stamps is perfect in all ways.”

13.
the sweetness:
Cf. Horace,
Odes
I, 22, 23–24: “Dulce ridentem Lalagen amabo, dulce loquentem.”

The One Idea shaped by Nature into a particular creature quickly breaks down into
her several parts under the admiring eye of the lover. Laura here is a vision who
walks and talks.

1.
full of wonderment:
Her singularity, her very existence, fills him with awe.

5.
fair heaven:
He begins in the highest regions, that part of Heaven where Nature modeled her out
of God’s design.

tranquil brows:
Of a soul at peace with herself and the world.

6.
I trust in:
That he follows, as he would a guide.

7.
no light’s left:
No other beloved created from God’s image can compare with or succeed her. God has
thrown away the mold.

her white breast:
The vocabulary of this sonnet is unusually suggestive with its
preme, seno, cespo, cerchio, terso,
and
crespo.

12.
unripened season:
Spring.

14.
weaving a wreath:
A garland of flowers for her hair.

A lament for the eye as well as the ear (with the visually suggestive O’s predominating),
addressed to whatever love poets may still be listening and to those already dead
and gone.

1.
O useless steps:
Seeking Laura.

2.
O binding memory:
Of the first day, written in his heart by her hand. Cf. 155.11.

4.
O my eyes:
Oi,
emphasizing pain.

5.
O leafy bough:
The laurel.

6.
dual values:
Glory and virtue. Cf. poem 119.

10.
both spurs and rein:
The form and sense of love poetry both bind and loosen him.

11.
kicking back is useless:
The language echoes Acts 9:5, “Saule, Saule,… durum est tibi contra stimulum calcitrare.”

14.
stay awhile:
Cf. Dante,
Vita nuova
VII: “O ye who travel on the road of Love, pause here and look about for any man
whose grief surpasses mine.” Dante was himself paraphrasing Lam. 1:12.

The language of this sonnet derives from Virgil and is notable for its bucolic style,
contrasting with the preceding sonnet.

1.
joyful and glad:
Two kinds of happiness, subtly shaded (
lieti
and
felici
). Laura brings out their highest beauty.

2.
walk in thought:
Cf. 160.9–14.

3.
shore:
Like the fresh green shore of poem 106, yielding to her beauty and taking her impress.

4.
conserving traces:
Cf. 125.60. Rather than scattered, hidden tracks, these are securely recorded.

5.
straight and slender:
The laurel.

6.
delicately lovely:
The second diminutive in two lines (
amorosette),
suggesting that these flowers were allowed to grow in innocence and safety.

11.
from her live light:
Cf. Dante,
Paradiso
XIII, 52–57.

12.
I envy you:
The eternal countryside, which once was witness to her presence.

He appeals to Love to adjust his pace, for he is weary and the path is steep.

1.
Love:
Love, like Laura when she is at peace, understands him completely. Cf. 71.23, 95.5,
and 147.13.

3.
heart’s deepest part:
Where his
virtu
(his soul) resides. Cf. 2.5–8.

4.
clear to you:
His soul is “transparent as glass,” according to 147.13–14.

hidden to all others:
About this deepest part of his heart, Laura told him to be silent in 23.74.

5.
I have suffered:
Endured in her service.

7.
unaware that I am there:
He lags behind, while Love surges (
sorgi
) ahead, unmindful of him.

9–11.
I do see … :
He knows the goal—Laura’s loving eyes—toward which he struggles over mountains and
passes.

13.
consumed with loving well:
Love is contented as long as he dies following the right path. Cf. 140.14 and note.

But when night falls a different struggle begins, full of grief and anger.

3.
her car of stars:
The constellations wheeling quietly in their course.

7.
war is my state:
A
conflict between the spur and the rein.

full of grief and anger:
Cf. Virgil,
Aeneid
IV, 522–31 and 136–41, when Dido tossed on her bed with rage against Aeneas.

8.
the thought of her:
Laura as an object of contemplation pacifies him; as an achievable objective she
puts him at war.

9.
clear and living font:
The source of wisdom.

11.
one hand alone:
Laura’s.

13.
a thousand times a day:
Because his wound continues to be healed by forgetfulness, then reinflicted whenever
he thinks of her. Cf. Bernard de Ventadorn,
Non es Meravilha,
“Cen vetz mor lo jorn de dolor / E revin de joi autras cen.”

14.
from my salvation:
The end of his war, linking him with lines 1–4 and sleep.

From the darkness of the preceding sonnet with its undertone of torment, he moves
forward into morning.

1.
As soon as:
Laura emerges into the clearing like the very first maiden.

3–4.
a force…/ renews:
Cf. Venus in Hesiod,
Theogony
194–95: “and grass grew up about her beneath her shapely feet.”

6.
does not deign:
Love chooses only the worthiest for his target.

7.
fair eyes rain:
Like the shower of sweetness in 72.37—45.

9.
with her walk:
He praises Laura in motion, adding this to her other beauties.

10.
accord these words:
Move in graceful harmony.

11.
slow:
Deliberate, poised, thoughtful.

12.
those four sparks:
Her walk, look, words and gestures. Cf. 55.9.

not from them alone:
Her many other attributes have been praised elsewhere, for example, in poem 157.

14.
I have become a nightbird:
Dazzled by her fourfold light. He may refer to himself as the cuckoo, a bird that
appropriates other birds’ nests.

This self-mocking sonnet explains why he has turned from the language of the ancients
to love poetry in the vernacular. It was probably a response to an anonymous poem,
using the same rhymes, beginning “voi mi negate la virtù che nunca” (Carducci). Its
rhyme scheme in the tercets is called “oblique.”

1.
stay in the cave:
Had not left study and contemplation to wander in exile. Before he became the sun
god, Apollo was worshipped for his oracles at the shrine at Delphi on Mount Parnassus.
In other writings, Vaucluse was Petrarch’s
spelunca.

3.
Florence… have its poet:
Its epic poet writing in the Latin language, as Petrarch had set out to be. His allusion
to Florence was probably not meant to disparage Dante but to make excuses for himself,
to explain why he, Petrarch the imposter, had not risen to the level of the ancients.

4.
Verona, Mantua, and Arunca:
Birthplaces of Catullus, Virgil, and Juvenal.

5.
springs with reeds:
Fresh, meaningful growth, adaptable to love, as in 50.37.

6.
another planet:
Venus.

8.
thistles and thorns:
Stunted growths from the wasteland; also burrs and prickles that annoy and stick
to anyone who passes.

hooked scythe:
Death’s blade.

9.
The olive tree:
Sacred to Minerva.

11.
at one time:
In the age of Catullus, Juvenal, and Virgil.

12.
fault or my misfortune:
Lack of genius or the fault of the age.

13.
all good fruit:
Cf. 142.36.

14.
eternal Jove:
God.

Guided by love, Laura sings, and he is transported by her divine sweetness.

1.
to the ground:
In pity.

3–4.
voice/… so divine:
With heavenly grace. Cf. 166.14.

6.
changed so there:
Her song has the power to alter his thoughts, redirect his desires.

7.
the final plunder:
The ultimate ravishment—death.

8.
die so well:
In a manner consonant with her song.

9.
But sound which binds:
The soul holds back in reverie, captive to that sound. Cf. Dante,
Purgatorio
II, 106–14.

12–13.
this way I live … spool of life:
Binding on the one hand his senses to her sound and on the other freeing his mind
to her words, as if she were the fate Lachesis measuring out the span of his life.

14.
heaven’s only siren:
In Plato’s myth of Er (
Republic X),
the sirens of all the individual planets governed the harmony of the spheres, but
Laura’s singing combines them all in one.

He grows old in his hope, still made articulate by desire.

1.
that sweet thought:
The amoroso pensiero.
Cf. 127.99–106.

2.
a confidant of old:
Secretario,
the thought he shares with Laura through the medium of her eyes. The conceit was
used by Andrea Capellanus in
De amore,
where ultimately the
secretarius
(in this case Petrarch’s thought) betrayed the lover in the Court of Love by citing
his shortcomings.

4.
hope for now:
For a corresponding love in Laura.

5.
at times a lie:
Betraying his trust by failing at times to be precise in his wording. Laura, too,
as she is identified with Love, has deceived him.

10.
the time that contradicts:
Stagion,
the season. The mirror doesn’t lie: winter is coming.

13.
does not change:
The season for burning (
etate
) is not over, nor has he lost hope that she, also aging, continues to share his love.

14.
I do fear:
His fear a self-corrective that holds the secret thought in sight.

Laura, love’s enemy, appears here armed with sighs. The sonnet disturbed early commentators
for its departures from the usual courtly protocol.

2.
go the world alone:
Strike out in a completely new direction where no poet has gone before.

4.
whom I should flee:
The vengeful side of Laura.

5.
so sweet and hard:
She reflects the pitilessness the poet is resolved to explore in the same way that
he explored her beauty.