The Western Literary Tradition: Volume 1 by King Margaret L.;

Author:King, Margaret L.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hackett Publishing Company, Incorporated
Published: 2020-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

Four sonnets from the Canzoniere

Alongside Petrarch the humanist and inhabiting the same body and mind, was Petrarch the poet. The former, writing in Latin, looked to antiquity; the latter, writing in Italian, was absorbed in the present. His Canzoniere (Book of Poems), particularly, concerns his obsessive love for a woman—a love never consummated, never reciprocated, and perhaps even wholly imaginary, as there can be no certainty that the Laura he longs for ever lived. The four sonnets included here, ##61, 211, 278, and 364, are selected from the 317 sonnets—the great majority—of the 366 poems composing Petrarch’s Canzoniere, the title most often used to describe the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Some Vernacular Fragments), the title Petrarch himself employed. The poems of the Canzoniere were composed across the forty-year span of Petrarch’s career, with revisions and reordering continuing until the poet’s death in 1374.

The Canzoniere overall looks to two pivotal moments: April 6, 1327, the day the twenty-three-year-old Petrarch first saw Laura during a church service in Avignon; and April 6, 1348, the day she died. In the first part (##1–263), Petrarch speaks of his love for a living woman; in the second (##264–366), still in love, he reconciles his love for a woman now resurrected and his love for God. The first and second of those given here, ##61 and 211, speak of Petrarch’s love for the living Laura; the third and fourth, ##278 and 364 (datable to 1350 and 1358), speak of her after her death.

Sonnets

#61: Petrarch recalls the day he first saw Laura

A blessing on the month and day and year;

and on the season, on the time, hour, moment,

on all that region and the place where I

was captured by two eyes that hold me fast.

A blessing on the first sweet perturbation

I suffered as my being fused with Love,

{262} and on the bow, the arrows piercing me,

and on the wounds that reach right to my heart.

A blessing on the many words that I

have broadcast calling out my lady’s name,

and on my signs, my tears, and my desire.

And blessings fall on every single page

where I win fame for her, and on my thoughts;

all are of her, and leave room for no other.

#211: Petrarch is entrapped by love—and has been since April 6, 1327

Lust spurs me on, Love guides me and directs me,

and Pleasure pulls and Habit hurries me,

and Hope’s there, wheedling and encouraging,

stretching his hand out to my weary heart,

which the fool takes and doesn’t realize

our escort is both blind and treacherous.

The senses are in charge and reason’s dead,

and from one restless urge another’s born.

Virtue, Honor, Beauty, a noble way,

sweet words—these brought me to the branches,

which trap the heart in pleasurable lime.

It was in 1327, precisely

at the first hour on the sixth day of April,

that I entered the maze. I see no exit.

#278: Laura has been dead for two years; why didn’t he die, too?

At her most beautiful, her most blossoming,

at that age when Love’s at his strongest in us,

leaving on earth her earthly covering,

my vital inspiration went from me,

and living, lovely, naked, rose to heaven.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.