The Father of Humanism In Love With Laura

Miniature from Petrarca's songbook "Canzoniere" depicting Laura de Noves
crowning the poet (15th c.).Florence. Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana

I attended an online presentation "Of glorious and generous fame : The lasting influence of Francesco Petrarca" which was one of the the Wednesday Lectures from the British Institute of Florence Library, 

The 14th-century poet and man of letters, Francesco Petrarca (better known as Petrarch) is often referred to as the "Father of Humanism." 

Petrarch’s work anticipated many themes of the Renaissance, including a sensitivity to nature, the desire for earthly fame, and a close rapport with classical literature. Renaissance Humanism was an intellectual movement typified by a revived interest in the classical world and studies that focussed not on religion but on what it is to be human. 

Its origins went back to 14th-century Italy and such authors as Petrarch (1304-1374) who searched out 'lost' ancient manuscripts. By the 15th century, humanism had spread across Europe. Humanists believed in the importance of an education in classical literature

The trio of Italian authors who lived before the Renaissance period had even begun were Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio. All three would receive new interest in their work during the Renaissance when they were recognized as its founding fathers.

I never studied Petrarch from that perspective. I was introduced to him through the story of him meeting in 1327 at a mass in Avignon where he saw Laura de Noves, for the first time. Laura, though her true identity has yet to be confirmed, would become the primary subject of his poetry for the rest of his life.

I learned about his love and his sonnets. His poem “If no love is, O God, what fele I so?” is here translated by Geoffrey Chaucer.

If no love is, O God, what fele I so?
And if love is, what thing and which is he?
If love be good, from whennes cometh my woo?
If it be wikke, a wonder thynketh me,
When every torment and adversite
That cometh of hym, may to me savory thinke,
For ay thurst I, the more that ich it drynke.
And if that at myn owen lust I brenne,
From whennes cometh my waillynge and my pleynte?
If harm agree me, whereto pleyne I thenne?
I noot, ne whi unwery that I feynte.
O quike deth, O swete harm so queynte,
How may of the in me swich quantite,
But if that I consente that it be?
And if that I consente, I wrongfully
Compleyne, iwis. Thus possed to and fro,
Al sterelees withinne a boot am I
Amydde the see, betwixen wyndes two,
That in contrarie stonden evere mo.
Allas! what is this wondre maladie?
For hete of cold, for cold of hete, I dye.

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Hello Laura. Farewell Writer's Almanac

I was saddened to learn that Garrison Keillor will be ending The Writer's Almanac program this spring. I have listened to that daily program since it began in 1993 - first as a radio program and later as a podcast. I was fortunate to have several of my poems featured on the show. Each day, you got a poem read aloud in his good radio voice with some almanac-style notes on things about the day, mostly about writers.

Today, for example, you learn about poor Petrarch and his unrequited love for his sonnet muse, Laura.

"It was on this day in 1327 that Italian poet Petrarch first set eyes on “Laura,” the ethereal woman he would use as his muse for more than 300 sonnets. He met Laura on a Good Friday at St. Clare Church in Avignon. Some historians think she was a woman named Laura de Noves, a married woman, and mother, and most agree she never responded to Petrarch’s overtures. She died during the Black Death of 1348. The first 263 poems Petrarch wrote for her are known as the Rime in Vita Laura. After she died the remaining poems were known as Rime in Morte Laura. Petrarch’s works for Laura laid the groundwork for the sonnets of the Elizabethan era. Shakespeare would not be Shakespeare without Petrarch."

About his unconsummated love for Laura, Petrarch wrote:

“In my younger days, I struggled constantly with an overwhelming but pure love affair — my only one, and I would have struggled with it longer had not premature death, bitter but salutary for me, extinguished the cooling flames. I certainly wish I could say that I have always been entirely free from desires of the flesh, but I would be lying if I did.”

Apparently, the Almanac just wasn't paying its way and Garrison Keillor is leaving radio in favor of writing. He has a full shelf of books written already and lots of audio collections. Many of those concern his fictional town, Lake Woebegone, and come from his long-running radio program A Prairie Home Companion. 

How many radio shows became major motion pictures? PHC did - directed by Robert Altman with Keillor, Woody Harrelson, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Kline, Lindsay Lohan, Virginia Madsen, John C. Reilly, Maya Rudolph, Meryl Streep, and Lily Tomlin. Wow!

He still writes frequent columns, and newsletters and has a new audiobook, Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80, coming out, (here is a preview) so he hasn't given up on reading aloud to us.

The show's ending leaves a poetry gap that I hope someone else fills.

More about Petrarch and his poetry

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Prompt: Petrarch, Laura and the Sonnets

On an April day in 1327, Italian poet Francesco Petrarch first saw “Laura,” She would become his muse for more than 300 sonnets.

It was Good Friday and he saw her at St. Clare Church in Avignon. There is some controversy about the identity of Laura, but it is generaly thought that she was a real woman. Many sources identify her as Laura de Noves, a married woman and mother. Whether she knew that she was his muse, and whether or not Petrarch ever contacted her is not known. Laura de Noves died during the Black Death plague of 1348.

The first 263 poems Petrarch wrote for her while she was alive and he called them Rime in Vita Laura. After she died, the poems he wrote were known as Rime in Morte Laura.

His love for Laura was unconsummated. Petrarch wrote about this love:

“In my younger days, I struggled constantly with an overwhelming but pure love affair — my only one, and I would have struggled with it longer had not premature death, bitter but salutary for me, extinguished the cooling flames. I certainly wish I could say that I have always been entirely free from desires of the flesh, but I would be lying if I did.”

Lord Byron wrote this sarcastic couplet about Petrarch's love-at-a-distance for Laura:

Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch's wife
He would have written sonnets all his life?

Petrarch's poems popularized the Italian sonnet form and influenced the English sonnets that came in the Elizabethan era. Petrarch did not invent the sonnet. It had been a popular classical form long before him. "Sonnet" comes from the Italian sonetto, which means “a little sound or song."

Traditionally, the sonnet is a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, which uses a particular rhyme scheme and has a structured thematic organization.

The sonnet form popularized by Petrarch and which now carries his name uses two stanzas. One is an octave (8 lines) with the rhyme scheme abbaabba and the second a sestet (6 lines) with either a cdecde or cdcdcd rhyme scheme.

Some of Petrarch's sonnets were translated by Chaucer and other poets, but their Middle English is still difficult for modern readers. But you can find a Petrarchan sonnet that was written in 1903 and is engraved on a plaque found on the lower level of the Statue of Liberty. That sonnet is 'The New Colossus' by Emma Lazarus.

'Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
'Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!' cries she
With silent lips. 'Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'

A variation of that form is known as the Shakespearean, or English sonnet, This sonnet form uses iambic pentameter and has three quatrains (4 lines) and a couplet follow this rhyme scheme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

Traditionally, the first stanza of a sonnet is the question and the break is seen as a "turn" with the second stanza being an answer or response. In the English sonnet the concluding couplet is a conclusion, amplification, or even refutation of the previous three stanzas,

And there are many variations on these two formal definitions.

John Milton’s sonnets blended the two variations and didn't follow all the rules. (See his "When I Consider How My Light is Spent")

The Spenserian sonnet, named for the sixteenth century English poet Edmund Spenser, uses the Shakespearean three quatrains and a couplet but uses “couplet links” between quatrains (rhyme scheme: abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee).

"Hades' Pitch" by Rita Dove imagines a pitch, a seduction, by that Greek god of the underworld and uses a single 14-line sonnet with rhyme.  "Anne Hathaway" by Carol Ann Duffy (from The World's Wife) takes the form of a sonnet written by the wife of Mr. Shakespearean sonnet himself.

Modern poets have taken the variations much further. For this month's prompt we will do the same, writing sonnets that follow these three "rules":
1) Fourteen lines in one or more stanzas
2) Some rhyme (whether using a traditional rhyme scheme, couplets or something of your own design)
3) The structure of question and response or problem and resolution and the "turn" of the sonnet

Billy Collins - not a formalist poet - wrote a "Sonnet" that pokes fun at poets' loose variations on the form.

How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist the iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines,

and pokes fun at Petrarch, and even allows Francesco to consummate his Laura-love (or perhaps explains why all that sonnet writing prevented it!)

But hang on here while we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blowout the lights, and come at last to bed.

Submission deadline for this prompt: June 4, 2017. Please follow our submission guidelines.