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    The Poetry of Petrarch
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    The Poetry of Petrarch
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    The Poetry of Petrarch
    Ebook397 pages7 hours

    The Poetry of Petrarch

    By Petrarch and David Young

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Ineffable sweetness, bold, uncanny sweetness
    that came to my eyes from her lovely face;
    from that day on I'd willingly have closed them,
    never to gaze again at lesser beauties.
    --from Sonnet 116

    Petrarch was born in Tuscany and grew up in the south of France. He lived his life in the service of the church, traveled widely, and during his lifetime was a revered, model man of letters.

    Petrarch's greatest gift to posterity was his Rime in vita e morta di Madonna Laura, the cycle of poems popularly known as his songbook. By turns full of wit, languor, and fawning, endlessly inventive, in a tightly composed yet ornate form they record their speaker's unrequited obsession with the woman named Laura. In the centuries after it was designed, the "Petrarchan sonnet," as it would be known, inspired the greatest love poets of the English language--from the times of Spenser and Shakespeare to our own.

    David Young's fresh, idiomatic version of Petrarch's poetry is the most readable and approachable that we have. In his skillful hands, Petrarch almost sounds like a poet out of our own tradition bringing the wheel of influence full circle.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJun 3, 2014
    ISBN9781466872899
    Unavailable
    The Poetry of Petrarch
    Author

    Petrarch

    The sonnets of Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 1304-74) helped to establish Italian as a literary language.

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    Reviews for The Poetry of Petrarch

    4.5/5

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    • 4/5
      I'm sure much nuance is missing because, despite the competence of the translator, we do not get the same impression. Despite this, I can see Petrarch's brilliance as a poet.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      David Young’s translates all 366 poems of the Canzoniere. 366 poems written in the 14th century by a man lamenting his unrequited love for the woman of his dreams are an awful lot of poems to read unless you care about the development of poetry, or the subject of love of the most unrequited kind resonates with you. I read them all; I cared, I was enchanted and was able to share some of the emotions, and with the help of David Young’s introduction understand the points of view from a medieval perspective.. Petrarch was born in 1304 and on 6 April 1327 he saw Laura in the church of S. Claire, Avignon and immediately fell in love with her. His love was not returned. Laura was a respectable married Lady who would have nothing to do with the poet, she gave him no encouragement and when she saw him treated him mostly with disdain. Petrarch immediately started to write his poems about his love for Laura publishing them (this was before the availability of the printing press) as and when they were to hand. They were well received and he became the best known poet of his times. Laura died in 1348 probably of the Black Death, but Petrarch continued to love Laura and continued to write poems about her until he died in 1374.The poems written in the first person document a one sided love affair and written over a period of 47 years, we are able to see how this developed in the thoughts and ruminations of Petrarch whose mind was in turmoil. The first batch of poems are all about the beauty of Laura, his love for her and his passionate desire. It is clear that she has not returned his love but the poet can look ahead to a time when she will, if he continues with his suit. Some of these early poems also show the poet’s suffering; his despair about not being able to see her and a possibility that his overriding passion will lead to his early death. The poems continue along in this vein with Petrarch inventing new ways of praising the beautiful Laura and of describing his feelings and despair at his set backs. There are anecdotes, there are letters to friends there are poems about his house in the country and of course there are poems about writing his poems, but they all connect or lead back to his love for Laura. A smile from Laura or a kind word to him when they meet at a function or in the street will lead him to fire off a new batch of poems about renewed hope, but then he is plunged into despair when next he sees her and she is purposely wearing a veil. The time period and the number of poems written have resulted in some of the poems sounding quite similar; the poet is often reduced to tears as the same thoughts re-occur, but this is also part of the joy of reading them through because we can chart the poets moods, we can see his rising hopes, his downward turns into despair and always we can feel how he suffers in myriads of different ways.Laura’s early death does not stop the flow of poems and after the initial grief the moods subtly starts to change. We gradually feel a relief from his more acute suffering and the poet starts to look backwards at his passion and desire and to look forward to his own death when he fervently believes he will be reunited with Laura in heaven. He sees her as sitting at one with the saints and that she will lead him up to sit by her side. He starts to realise that her chastity and virtue have saved him from himself and the final longer poem in praise of the Virgin Mary whom he equates with Laura is moving indeed. His path however is not a smooth arc and this again is part of the pleasure of reading them through, some poems will express his doubts and fears and others will make the reader believe that the poet enjoys his suffering perhaps a little too much.Petrarch was aware that he was writing these poems for an audience, who would be well aware of the conventions of courtly (adulterous) love; the idea that a noble woman worthy of love was regarded as an ideal being, to be approached with worship bordering on adoration. The lover derived personal force, virtue elevation and energy from his enthusiastic passion and his sole purpose was to do the wishes of his lady. He should be made to suffer for his love and his suffering and untainted love would also raise him in the eyes of God so that his path to salvation would be easier. All this is in the Canzoniere, but it leaves the conventions of courtly love well behind in its wake as the poems look forward to a much more modern approach, with its concentration on the feelings of the poet. It is also a collection of poems without any prose or connecting thread and so it is the reader who puts the story together. This is not a difficult proposition because the language and thoughts shy away from a mystical or allegorical approach. We are firmly in the idiom of real time and real events.Petrarch was a devout Christian who firmly believed that he would get to heaven and there he would be united with Laura. His faith causes some of his inner turmoil; he finds it difficult to control his passion when Laura is alive and to control his self pity when Laura leaves him behind to suffer alone on earth, but towards the end of his life it gives him the comfort and the hope that he needs. Despite this being a Christian poem there are also pagan influences. Cupid the god of love or Amore is part of the triangle that enmeshes the poet and Laura and is an ambivalent force throughout.Modern readers may feel that Petrarch over emphasises the suffering, it is either part of or alluded to in most of the poems. Yes, we have sympathy for him, but more often than not begin to lose patience with yet more bouts of self-pity. The suffering though was a significant part of medieval courtly love and his audience would have expected it to be foremost in the poetry, Petrarch is a figure that seems to me to be at the crossroads of medieval thought and the new humanism that was such an essential part of the Renaissance. Sonnet no. 134 is a good example of the points I have been making and demonstrates the quality of David Young’s translations:“I find no peace, and yet I am not warlike;I fear and hope, I burn and turn to ice; I fly beyond the sky, stretch out on earth;my hands are empty, yet I hold the world.One holds me prisoner, not locked up, not free;won’t keep me for her own but won’t release me;Love does not kill me, does not loose my chains,He’d like me dead, he’d like me still ensnared,I see without my eyes, cry with no tongue,I want to die yet I call for help,Hating myself but loving someone else,I feed on pain, I laugh while shedding tears,Both death and life displease me equally;And this state, Lady, is because of you.”David Young’s translations have not attempted to keep Petrarch’s rhyming schemes, he explains that there are far more rhymes in the Italian vernacular than there are in modern English and attempts to force rhymes would be at the cost of the meaning of the poems. I think he has made the right choice here, he has given himself a far wider vocabulary to get to the heart of these lovely poems and has used internal rhymes and paid close attention to metre to give a feel for the original text. Petrarch was famous for his sonnets and there are over 300 here along with ballatas sestinas, madrigals and other longer forms. It is a wonderful experience to read them all and I heartily recommend that you do, but not all at once perhaps. A five star read .