The ghost of life: Nothing left but sighs

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.