Petrarch (86 page)

and there he stays:
As a great object lesson. In Petrarch’s sixth eclogue, he wrote of Constantine in
the Inferno: “In aeternum gemat ille miser, pastoribus aulae qui primus mala dona
dedit.”

This and the next two sonnets find the poet returned to his customary preoccupations,
his righteous anger having subsided.

1.
wide with desire:
In the use of rhymes and in this opening line, the sonnet recalls poem 127, a canzone.

2.
O sweet flock:
He addresses the poet friends he left behind in Italy when he returned to Provence.

3.
Fortune with her birdlime:
His obligations to the hated papal state.

4.
far from you:
From his most desired goal of sharing in a meeting of minds.

6.
in that open valley:
He left his friends in the wide sunny Po valley, where he could speak freely.

7.
most wraps around:
Lending protection to the center—Italy—that nurtures his poetry.

9.
the left:
Toward the evil that is Avignon.

he… straight path:
His heart, at least, was not forced to turn against its natural bent.

11.
he to … and I :
His first desire was the rebirth of Rome as the Holy City (Jerusalem). Yet he was
obliged to cross over the sea, back to the pagan papal court he serves (Egypt).

14.
our togetherness is rare:
He has always been separated from his heart except for brief periods when events
matched his hopes.

Read within the context of the preceding four sonnets, this could be a description
of his renewed submission to Church authority after a brief outburst of honest anger
against the papal court. For all its disarming charm, its intent seems to be to attack
his enemies in a more covert way.

3.
appears all armed:
Comes forth in his verse in words of anger.

4.
sets his banner:
Makes his mark on the poet’s face as a challenge.

8.
is angry at our boldness:
Courtesy, virtue, and truth would have him ply his suit in a more pious manner.

more than she shows:
Suggesting that she responded to his earlier invective with silence.

9.
Love full of fear:
This little scene has Love disarmed, reduced to quailing fear by the disapproval
of Laura.

12.
What can I do:
In his role as Love’s standard-bearer.

13.
stay with him:
Remain silent until death.

14.
Who loves well dying:
“Controlled by reason, shame and reverence.” Petrarch first used this conceit in
poem 5. Cf. also 23.31 and 59.15–17.

The last of the Babylon sonnets, this compares him to the butterfly fatally attracted
to light.

2.
foolish butterfly:
The adjective
semplicetta
feigns disparagement of his verse, which is only apparently simple.

seeking the light:
To find comfort within flame, or the eternal beyond the temporal.

3.
someone’s eyes:
Of a large, unthinking person who brushes away the annoying insect. Here “someone”
blocks the butterfly’s path to light.

4.
makes the other cry:
Nonetheless he has dealt a minor injury to those eyes.

6.
so much sweetness:
The eyes are the source and the entryway of spiritual love.

8.
who discerns:
The truth behind those eyes that he has brushed against with his wings inflames him
to further death-defying endeavors.

10.
I will die from it:
Veracemente
(truthfully), as will become clear in the poems to follow.

11.
such pain:
Turned inside out, the line suggests that he no longer intends to fight against the
truth of the living hell where good dies. Cf. 138.4–8.

12.
but so mellifluously:
Like the butterfly seeking sweet warmth, he will return to writing in the language
of love.

13.
mourn for her wrong:
He regrets having given offense to her and bows to her greater power.

14.
my soul, blind:
Without the guidance of reason, making a descent into the region of death in the
search for a new kind of truth.

He returns in this sestina to his only refuge, the laurel, but in a new direction,
onto “another path.” More than ever he demonstrates in his rhymes multiple meanings
for significant and emotionally charged terms.

2.
merciless light:
From Venus, because of the relentless ardor he felt for Laura in Avignon.

4.
snow by then:
Laura showed signs of yielding.

5.
loving aura:
The spring breeze that renews thoughts of their first encounter.

6.
grass and branches:
To lyric poetry and to the support of the virtuous immortals who inspire it.

8.
the wind moved greener leaves:
Vento
is the wind of Juno, the force of circumstance; the leaves are a promise of hope
for regeneration.

11.
shade of hills:
Cf. the
poggi
of 129.5.

12.
tree most loved:
The laurel was most valued by the gods for being pure, strong, and evergreen.

13.
from Heaven:
She has provided him with immunity to the lightning of Jove. In this case heaven
is the visible universe and Jove the temporal authority.

15.
woods … hills:
His travels have taken him through various stages of understanding of the nature
of thought. Cf. poem 129.

16.
trunk or branches:
Other sources of inspiration besides Laura. The trunk has served as a column of support,
perhaps alluding to the church fathers.

17.
supernal light:
The light of the visible heavens.

18.
change their worth:
Demonstrate their fickleness.

19.
firmer all the more:
More grounded in his original faith in an everlasting source.

20.
the call I heard from Heaven:
Through his ears he received God’s message, and almost simultaneously was able to
see the sweet and clear light. Cf. Dante,
Purgatorio
XXXI, 13: “only by ears with eyes could it be heard.”

26.
won and changed:
All the works of nature yield eventually to time.

27.
I beg the pardon:
An appeal for forgiveness to poetry in general for the departure he has taken.

29.
the sticky branches:
From which he (the caught bird) fled in poems 136—141.

30.
see the light:
The light of line 21 shining like a star within sunlight. Cf. Dante,
Paradiso
VIII, 16–21.

32.
the greatest hills:
Seeking justice he attempted to scale mountains before he was ready. “Happily” implies
his naivete.

34.
place and season:
A corrupt era requires a new orientation.

35.
another path:
The path of Orpheus, eventually leading through the Underworld in a winding descent.

38.
another climb to Heaven:
Some believe he shows penitence and new resolve to climb the purgatorial mountain.
His turning toward an entirely new path, however, suggests he first intends to look
inward, descending into the dark regions of the self.

39.
other branches:
The cross.

Believed to have been written to a poet (in the
voi
form of courteous respect), this sonnet weaves themes from the poetry of Guido Guinizelli
together with those of Dante from
Inferno
V.

1.
When I hear:
Cf.
Inferno
V, 100: “Love, quick to kindle in the gentle heart.” This line from Dante recalls
Guinizellis “Al cor gentil rempaira sempre amore,” a poem Dante echoed himself in
the
Vita nuova
in “Amore e ’l cor gentil sono una cosa.”

2.
inspires in his flock:
In love poets, those who follow a particular school.

4.
dead soul:
One whose fires are “spent.”

5.
lovely lady present:
The very phrase “la bella donna” awakens the amorous thought in him, recalling Guinizelli’s
“Al cor gentil.”

7.
appearing so that often:
She emerges adorned with love.

8.
but sighs:
He finds in love poetry more inspiration than comes to him from the sound of the
church bell ringing for prayers.

12.
too much joy:
Soverchio piacer,
the rule of Venus.

13.
stopping my tongue:
Her beauty so awes him.
Atraversa
(stopping), an atypical spelling, reveals the Latin word for “dark” (
atra
) and for “turning” (
versa
).

14.
what she is like inside:
To reveal what is written within requires a new language, a new topology (other leaves,
light, hills, and branches, as he wrote in poem 142).

He summons up his vision of the past for his friend Sennuccio del Bene, but with new
effects, new colors.

1–4.
I never saw … :
Her face once pierced through clouds and storms like the morning star at sunrise.

3.
rainbow:
Arco
reappears in line 12 as the drawn bow of Love.

4.
so many colors:
Cf.
Virgil, Aeneid IV,
700–701: “Iris croceis per coelum roscida pennis mille trahens varios adverso sole
colores.”

6.
flaming color changed:
Her face and his at times had paled, at times had blushed, Cf. 140.1–2.

7.
I am spare with words:
He chooses them carefully, as one who selects from a scarce supply (
nel mio dirparco
).

8.
can be compared:
A demonstration of his desire to linger over her memory is this loving comparison
between Laura and the dawn of a new day.

9–11.
I saw Love … :
Looking at her light cast all other beauty into shadow.

12.
with his bow drawn:
Love, but also Laura/Christ.

Often numbered among the anniversary poems because of its reference in line 14 to
a period of fifteen years, this sonnet insists on the ineradicable fact of his flawed
humanity. Its humorous tone suggests that it was directed to a fellow poet.

1.
Put me where sun can kill:
He divides the earth into five zones, the first of which is the torrid zone. Cf.
Horace (
Odes
I, 22) and Virgil (
Eclogues
X, 64).

2.
can conquer him:
The sun, as in the two polar regions.

3.
mild and light:
In the temperate zones, Cancer and Capricorn.

4.
where those give him to us:
The setting Sun gives his cart and horses to the Hours while he rests during the
night.

9.
in abyss:
The vastness of the sea or the deepest regions of Hell.

10.
low and swampy:
Cf. poem 66 and Dante,
Inferno
VI.

13.
I’ll be:
However he may attempt to purify himself, some things never change.

14.
sigh trilustrally:
He has completed a fifteen-year period of expiation and purification. The
lustrum
in Roman times gave absolution to citizens in good standing every five years in the
month of May.

This sonnet is striking for its apparent simplicity, but it is composed of words whose
etymological roots have traveled in many directions.

1.
O noble soul:
Laura.

glowing virtue warm:
This is “Another light” emanating from her, more the patina of gold than the white
light that dazzles.

2.
I line so many pages:
In order to vaunt her name. Among the many senses of the root of
vergo
is that of chastising.

3.
sole place:
Albergo,
normally home of the soul, can also carry the sense of brothel, one of the Latin
meanings of
lustrum
at the root of “trilustral” in 145.14. Cf. 138.1.

chastity lives:
The Latin
onestate
is a condition in which honor, reason, and justice prevail. Its antonym is “decorum”
or “adornment” (the
ornata
of line 1). When applied to a woman, its value changes because she is an adornment
to the man, and her incorruptibility (chastity) must be guaranteed.

5.
O flame, O roses:
Apocalyptic language. (Alfieri noted here Petrarch’s “oriental style.”)

6.
living snow:
Unyielding hardness, burnished into gold. Cf. 30.37–39.

looking makes me pure:
Specchio
(looking, as if in a mirror) continues the theme of examining the self honestly.
But compare poems 45, 46, and 136.11, where he speaks of the devil’s mirrors.

7.
joy raising my wings:
Joy is, perhaps, the single least corruptible word in the sonnet. With the wings
of imagination he soars beyond idolatry.