There have been many pandemics in human history; our current one
will just be added to the list dating back to at least the Plague of Athens in
Fifth Century BCE. Cholera, typhoid, bubonic plague, enteric fever, influenza,
smallpox, polio—humanity has been dancing with death as long as it’s been
around.
This doesn’t even count self-inflicted cataclysms like wars, which
often turbo-charge diseases in their wakes.
Those caught up in the horrors often take time to examine life
overall, and their lives in particular. And they write their way through the
exploration. So in this month of poetry, in the pandemic that’s reminding all
us first world poseurs who gets the last laugh, I’ll be featuring poetic
expressions of earlier catastrophes.
Today’s poet is Francesco Petrarca, known to Anglophones as
Petrarch. I was first introduced to Petrarch in a humanities class in college.
The humanities core curriculum was my primary consideration in choosing my
school, and the value of that choice has been validated again and again.
Petrarch, a Renaissance Italian poet and classical scholar, was a
humanist, which of course makes him kind of critical to the, you know,
humanities. In fact, he’s known in some circles as the Father of Humanism.
He followed on Dante, both chronologically and linguistically, and was a
contemporary of Bocaccio.
His use of language was foundational to the building of modern
Italian. And he developed the poetic form we know as the sonnet: two stanzas,
an octave and a sestet. The Petrarchan sonnet poses a question, an observation
or an argument in the octave, and then turns it around or answers it in the
sestet.
Many of his poems revolve around his unrequited and idealized love
for the woman he refers to as Laura. The story is that Petrarch first clapped
eyes on Laura at Mass on 6 April (Good Friday) 1327 in a church in Avignon,
France. A married woman, she spurned all his advances, so he channeled his
passion into his poetry. Laura died of plague on 6 April, Good Friday, in 1348
and Petrarch of course wrote through his grief.
I’m giving you two of his sonnets on the subject, No. 186 and No.
294:
No. 186
Occhi
miei, oscurato è 'l nostro sole;
anzi
è salito al cielo, et ivi splende:
ivi
il vedremo anchora, ivi n'attende,
et di
nostro tardar forse li dole.
Orecchie
mie, l'angeliche parole
sonano
in parte ove è chi meglio intende.
Pie'
miei, vostra ragion là non si stende
ov'è
colei ch'esercitar vi sòle.
Dunque
perché mi date questa guerra?
Già
di perdere a voi cagion non fui
vederla,
udirla et ritrovarla in terra:
Morte
biasmate; anzi laudate Lui
che
lega et scioglie, e 'n un punto apre et serra.
e
dopo 'l pianto sa far lieto altrui.
My
eyes, that sun of ours is darkened:
or
rather climbed to heaven, and shines there:
there
I'll see her again, there she waits,
and
grieves perhaps that we're so late.
My
ears, her angelic words resound there,
where
there are those who understand them better.
My
feet, your power does not extend there,
where
she is who set you in motion.
Then
why do you fight this war with me?
Already
every reason's lost to you,
for
seeing, hearing, walking the earth:
Blame
Death: or rather give praise to Him
who
binds and frees, opens and shuts again,
and,
after the tears, makes known another joy
And
one more, but I’ll stop here.
No.
294
Soleasi
nel mio cor star bella et viva,
com'altra
donna in loco humile et basso:
or
son fatto io per l'ultimo suo passo
non
pur mortal, ma morto, et ella è diva.
L'alma
d'ogni suo ben spogliata et priva,
Amor
de la sua luce ignudo et casso
devrian
de la pietà romper un sasso,
ma
non è chi lor duol riconti o scriva:
ché
piangon dentro, ov'ogni orecchia è sorda,
se
non la mia, cui tanta doglia ingombra,
ch'altro
che sospirar nulla m'avanza.
Veramente
siam noi polvere et ombra,
veramente
la voglia cieca e 'ngorda,
veramente
fallace è la speranza.
She
used to be lovely and living in my heart,
like
a noble lady in a humble, lowly place:
now
by her ultimate passing I am
not
only mortal, but dead, and she divine.
My
soul despoiled, deprived of all its good,
Love
stripped and denuded of her light,
are
pitiful enough to shatter stone,
but
there’s no one can tell or write the pain:
they
weep inside, where all ears are deaf,
but
mine, who so much grief encumbers,
that
I have nothing left but sighs.
Truly
we are ashes and a shadow,
truly
the blind will’s full of greed,
truly
all our hopes deceive us.
No comments:
Post a Comment