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Petrarch and his sonnet

On April 26 1336 Francesco Petrarca (July 20, 1304- July 19, 1374), his brother and two servants climbed to the top of Mont Ventoux in the south of France. His reason was purely recreational which was something quite unheard of in those days. In a letter to his friend Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro he describes his journey in a grand and sweeping manner that focused on the beauty of the scenery. The letter is still quoted in various reference works on the sport of mountaineering. Upon reaching the summit, Petrarca took from his pocket a volume written by his mentor St. Augustine.
As the tale goes the book fell open to the following passage-
“And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.”
At that moment he turned from the material world and entered into what would be a life long search for “the soul”.
If there is a moment, a single, glaring instant where the Renaissance (pronounced re-nay’-sans) began it is here. Petrarca ascended the mountain a man of the Dark Ages (a phrase he coined) and descended a Renaissance Man. Among other titles granted him by the centuries and their scholars, he is known as “the Father of the Renaissance”.
Humanist, philosopher, priest and poet, he is of singular importance to western civilization.
Though much of what he wrote is lost, he was a prolific writer, so that even though what survives is only a moderate percentage of what he actually penned there is yet a sizable amount contained in several books and many letters to friends. These letters include a number written to long dead mentors such as Cicero and Virgil.
Throughout his life, Petrarca continued to revise the songs and sonnets in his “Canzoniere” (Song Book). Although the sonnet was borrowed from Giacomo da Lentini, he perfected the form and is considered to be its creator, for which it bears his name- “The Petrarchan Sonnet.” Along with Dante and Boccaccio, his sonnets are thought to have been influential in creating the modern Italian language.
The Petrarchan sonnet consists of two stanza. An octet (meaning eight lines) and a sestet (meaning six lines). Fourteen lines in all. The meter is iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is a-b-b-a, a-b-b-a, c-d-e, c-d-e. The last line in each quatrain must be an “end stop”.
The first quatrain should introduce the theme, the second quatrain should carry this further in the same direction. “The sestet introduces a new development in a different direction, with the first tercet carrying this new direction to a definite point; and the final tercet bringing the theme to a conclusion.” (Clement Wood).
Although there are as many versions of a sonnet as there are people who write them, the Petrarchan and Elizabethan (Shakespearean) are by far the most popular.
Francesco had but one love in his life. In his writings she was known only as Laura, though she may have been Laura de Noves, the wife of Count Hugues de Sade. Torn between the canonical requirements of his Christian faith and the passion instilled in him by this beautiful woman he met only once in life, Francesco fed his desire through poetry. The collection of works he titled Rime Sparse (“scattered rhymes”), many of which were in the sonnet form, spoke largely to this woman’s beauty and his love.
‘Laura, famous for her own virtues, and so long celebrated in my verses, was first seen by me in my early youth, in the year of our Lord 1327, on the sixth of April, in the Church of Saint Clare at Avignon, in the morning hour: and that light was taken from daylight in the same city, in the same month, on the same sixth day, in the same first morning hour, but in the year 1348, when I chanced to be in Verona, sadly unaware of my fate.’ (Added by Petrarch to his copy of Virgil).
It is fitting then, perhaps, that the love poem of the ages was popularized by a man in chaste and towering love.
I leave with Francesco’s own words in the new language of Italian with a translation, wholly inadequate, in English. This is the first piece in the Song Book of Petrarch. Perhaps his first sonnet.

Voi ch'ascoltate in rime sparse il suono
di quei sospiri ond'io nudriva 'l core
in sul mio primo giovenile errore,
quand'era in parte altr'uom da quel ch' i' sono,

del vario stile in ch'io piango e ragiono,
fra le vane speranze e 'l van dolore,
ove sia chi per prova intenda amore,
spero trovar pietà, non che perdono.

Ma ben veggio or sí come al popol tutto
favola fui gran tempo, onde sovente
di me mesdesmo meco mi vergogno;

e del mio vaneggiar vergogna è 'l frutto,
e 'l pentersi, e 'l conoscer chiaramente
che quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno.

You who hear the sound, in scattered rhymes,
of those sighs on which I fed my heart,
in my first vagrant youthfulness,
when I was partly other than I am,

I hope to find pity, and forgiveness,
for all the modes in which I talk and weep,
between vain hope and vain sadness,
in those who understand love through its trials.

Yet I see clearly now I have become
an old tale amongst all these people, so that
it often makes me ashamed of myself;

and shame is the fruit of my vanities,
and remorse, and the clearest knowledge
of how the world’s delight is a brief dream.

Comments

I was asked a little while back to write a regular article for another website. I was given carte blanche on the subject (risky) and so I run the gamut from the trivial to the excessively pedantic. The best I throw out here because I, like you, write very slowly. It gives me something to post. If I have it here, please read "Arrival". It has one of my favorite stories to tell.

And since I have you, I feel my hope that you will survive very far into Caco is dubious at best. However, if you actually get to the point where you need more (pauses for hysterical laughter) you will let me know won't you?
wesley

W. H. Snow

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. Percy Bysshe Shelley

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