Petrarch (73 page)

12.
such mirrors were constructed:
Fabbricati
alludes perhaps to the work of Vulcan, an analogy for Petrarch’s recent poems. Cf.
poems 41–43.

13.
forgetfulness eternal:
Sunk in oblivion. The unspeakableness of war is a Virgilian theme.

14.
beginning of my death:
Synonymous with the muteness of Love.

Laura’s eyes, the murderous mirrors in the preceding sonnet, are shielded, and once
again he finds himself on the right path.

1–2.
already failing / those spirits:
From estrangement from Laura.

4.
for every mortal animal to fight:
To protect its vitals. By analogy he defends his heart.

5.
I freed desire:
He gave it free play, let it seek other objectives.
keep in check:
The crisis has passed.

6.
path I almost lost:
The
quasi smarrita
suggests he skirted close to unworthy acts but pulled himself back in time.

8.
lead it somewhere else:
On the path to good.

11.
carefully avoid:
Because of the danger of being struck mute once again. Cf. 46.9–11.

14.
I’ll die then:
Responding to lines 1–4. Unless he frees desire from time to time, his spirits will
slowly die without the vitalizing effects of her glance.

His desire loses itself in the vastness of his love. This sonnet has been described
as abstruse by Zingarelli and misleading by Carducci because it is sexually suggestive.

4.
contrasts will increase:
In opposition there can be a strengthening of forces, according to Heraclitus.

5.
our every thought:
Of any lover.

8.
strengthen desire less:
Why is his love not amplified, as fire is by fire and rain by rain?

9.
just as the Nile:
The archetypal river of the proud.

13.
something too immense:
A good so undefined, so boundless (“ne lo sfrenato obietto”). See 47.5 and note.
Early commentators thought this line revealed a wantonness on the part of Laura.

His tongue has not served him well in presenting his suit to his lady. The sonnet
dates from the period of his Roman journey in 1337 (dated precisely 13 February),
when he wrote poems 37 and 38.

5.
need of your assistance:
He needs the redeeming influence of a more beautiful style.

7.
still colder:
As if his poetry were a corpse growing cold.

8.
they are broken:
Imperfecte,
as if he stutters.

spoken in a dream:
Cf. Dante,
Purgatorio
XXXIII, 31: “It is my wish that you from now on free yourself from fear and shame,
and cease to speak like someone in a dream.”

11.
when my peace is present:
When the sweet thought comes to him.

12–13.
so quick … / my sighs:
So ready to emerge as the offensive poem, so tardy to emerge as the one of praise.

14.
Only my look:
Only in his eyes can he show the true state of his heart.

The second anniversary poem (the first being a sestina, poem 30), this canzone commemorates
the tenth year of his martyrdom, bringing him to his thirty-third year. It is distinguished
by its doubling of consonants and adverbial phrases, a dividing of stanzas into two,
and its movement, similar to that of poem 37, of slowing and quickening according
to the sense of the lines.

1.
the rapid heavens:
When the sun seems to sink more rapidly toward the horizon in the evening sky. Each
stanza begins with the sunset, advancing into night.

3.
expectant race:
The people on the other side of the globe, at the antipodes (cf. 22.14).

6.
doubles her pace:
Eight doublings of consonants appear in these two lines. Approaching death slows
her while love of God spurs her on.

12.
But, oh:
Each stanza divides at some point to make reference to himself, at lines 12, 25,
39, 46, and 63, moving from the end of the stanza to the beginning.

14.
eternal light begins to fade:
The light of the sun, but also of Laura, who is a sun for him.

15.
begin to flame:
As the sun reddens and seems to blaze just before sinking in the west.

17.
shadows / … cast deeper:
Shadow is cast over shadow by the alpine heights.

18.
avid workman:
He, too, has doubled his efforts to finish his labors before dark. The lines echo
Virgil’s
Georgics I
, 47, and 1,160.

22.
all full of meager food:
An illusion to the classical Golden Age, sung by Virgil (
Georgics
IV, 132), Ovid (
Metamorphoses
I, 103 and 106) and Boethius (
Consolatione Philosophiae
II, 5), when man lived in harmony with nature, feeding on acorns.

24.
the whole world sings:
Giving lip service to the simple life but in fact seeking one ever more complex.

28.
for all the turning:
The wheeling of the zodiac.

30.
are falling toward the nest:
Cf. Dante,
Purgatorio
VII, 85. In fable the sun rested in the breast of the sea.

33.
grass and springs and beech’s shade:
The language of this passage evokes the age of great pastoral poetry.

37.
he weaves out of green leaves:
This metaphor was used by Boccaccio in the archetypal sense of preparing the marriage
bed (Carducci).

40.
wild beast:
Laura-Daphne.

44.
in some protected cove:
Chiusa valle
echoes the name Vaucluse, Petarch’s retreat near Avignon.

47–48.
Spain, / Granada … Pillars:
The western-most points of Africa and Spain, beyond which man was forbidden to go
by the ancient gods.

55.
nearly ten years:
Since he first saw Laura, 6 April 1327.

56.
set me free:
To be freed from love is to die. Petrarch uses
indovinare
to suggest that one cannot, as Ulysses discovered in Dante’s
Inferno,
know the nature of Death.

57.
relieve my pain:
Cf. 23.4.

58.
I see at evening:
The natural sun has disappeared from this stanza. Instead, only Laura’s beautiful
face will be recalled in line 65.

oxen coming home:
Yoked oxen are a familiar image in classical poetry. Cf. Horace,
Odes
III, 6: “sol ubi montium Mutaret umbras et juga demeret Bobus fatigatis.” St. Augustine
used the term to mean evangelists in
De Doctrina
2.10.15.

60–62.
why, then …:
These questions are rhetorical and recall the lamentations of Job, “favored” by God.

61.
heavy yoke:
The burden that he assumed as a love poet.

63.
what I did:
What he wrought.

66.
carve it:
Cf. poems 30 and 46, both for the sculpting of the idol and the mirroring of her
beauties, recalled as a petrifaction.

67.
neither by coercion nor by art:
Neither by God’s will nor by his own efforts.

69.
of one who:
Death.

70.
could she even then:
Her beauty may be immortal. This point of disagreement with theology raises a question
in the
Canzoniere
—never definitively answered—of whether he can, in fact, ever completely renounce
her.

73.
join my party:
The company of love poets.

74.
you will not show yourself:
His song makes no pretensions to praise her.

76.
from hill to hill:
In solitude and contemplation.

78.
living stone:
Laura. Cf. 30.31–36.

This sonnet stands alone between a canzone and a sequence of madrigal, canzone, madrigal,
and provides a summing up of the first of five possible subdivisions in the
Canzoniere
created by four single sonnets. The others are 120, 238, and 269.

1–4.
Had it come … :
Had he been favored by that star or sun whose light is remembered even at a distance,
he might have undergone the metamorphosis Daphne did in Thessaly when she turned into
a laurel.

5.
change into her form:
Attain to her beauty and perfection.

8.
chiseled in care:
Not beautiful, not perfect, but lined with thought, as his syntax demonstrates.

10.
crystal:
Diaspro,
red crystalline quartz spotted with deeper red, yellow, and brown. It is suggestive
of shame, according to some commentators, but to Leopardi it represented truth.

11.
prized by the foolish:
Valued for its baser qualities.

12.
I’d be free:
If his poetry were, in fact, a reflection of any one of these things alone, rather
than a composite of all three.

13–14.
old, tired man:
The titan Atlas, holding up the world, had no greater weight than that of his triple
burden. Cf. Ovid,
Metamorphoses
IV, 653.

This is the first of the
Canzonieres
four madrigals (see also poems 54,106, and 121), consisting of two tercets of the
terza rima
type, followed by a couplet, comparable to the conclusion of a canto in Dante. Sapegno
noted its sensual form with its intertwining rhyme of the
terza rima
and the kiss of the couplet. Soft
g
-sounds predominate.

1.
pleased her lover:
Actaeon. Cf. Ovid,
Metamorphoses
III, 138–252; see notes to 23.147–160.

2.
just by chance:
Cf. Ovid,
Metamorphoses
III, 141–43: “In the story / You will find Actaeon guiltless; put the blame / on
luck, not crime: what crime is there in error?”

4.
simple mountain shepherdess:
Imagery appropriate to a madrigal, which was intended to be amorous and bucolic in
setting.

5.
the pretty veil:
See note to 11.2.

7–8.
hot sunlight…/… chill of love:
As if his burning thoughts were plunged in chilly waters, tempering them.

According to Wilkins, this canzone dates from Petrarch’s first residence in Vaucluse,
between 1337 and February 1341. It may have been directed to Cola di Rienzo, the fiery
Roman commoner who seized power in 1344 and for a time appeared to Petrarch to be
the one man capable of resurrecting a fallen Rome, and by so doing, Italy itself.
Some have speculated that the “noble spirit” was senator-elect Bosone da Gubbio, others
that he was senator Stefano Colonna the younger.

1–3.
Noble spirit:
The spirit governs a man’s energies and works—in this case “members” most virtuous.
The terms of this canzone are drawn from Laura’s model and transferred to the political
figure.

4.
honored staff:
The scepter of command. Cf. Ezek. 19:14.

5.
erring people:
Those Romans who had lost sight of Rome’s glory and her role as capital of the world.

11.
appear to feel her woes:
Italy has had no other recent spokesman.

14.
grab her by the hair:
In Ezek. 8:3, God reaches out with his hand and seizes the prophet by the forelock.

17.
by such weight:
Italy subjected to the oppression of tyrannical and warring lords.

26.
Mars’ progeny:
The Romans, descendants of Romulus, son of Rhea Sylvia and Mars.

27.
to their own honor:
Should they aspire to goals appropriate to their heritage.

29.
the ancient walls:
Rome’s walls, symbol of her glory, were being dismantled and carted away by an indifferent
and greedy populace, along with columns and statues and other treasures.

33.
men … great fame:
The heroes of Roman history, whom he goes on to name.

35.
this one ruin:
Rome abandoned to gradual decay, not only buildings and monuments but religion and
culture—”one ruin” all.

37.
Scipioni:
An ancient Roman family. One was Scipio Africanus, subject of Petrarch’s unfinished
epic poem in Latin.

O faithful Brutus:
Brutus the first, renowned for his love of country.

39.
down there:
In the Underworld, the afterlife of pagans.

41.
Fabricius:
Famous for his incorruptibility, he brought down the Etruscans in Rome’s name.

43.
if the heavens care:
The line echoes Virgil,
Aeneid
II, 536.

44.
citizen-souls:
The saints in Heaven, alluding to the celestial Jerusalem. Cf. Dante,
Purgatorio
XXXII, 101.

48.
closed the pathway:
Because of vandals and thieves, the churches and holy places were too dangerous to
enter.

50.
den of thieves:
Cf. Dante,
Paradiso
XXII, 76.

54.
how diverse:
Estranged from good. Cf. Dante,
Inferno
XXXIII, 151.