What is Your Favorite Petrarch Poem?

[Drkshadow03]

What is your favorite Petrarch poem?

[mortalterror]

I made a note of these poems when I read the Canzoniere 4 years ago.

1.
O you who hear within these scattered verses
the sound of sighs with which I fed my heart
in my first errant youthful days when I
in part was not the man I am today;

for all the ways in which I weep and speak
between vain hopes, between vain suffering,
in anyone who knows love through its trials,
in them, may I find pity and forgiveness.

But now I see how I’ve become the talk
so long a time of people all around
(it often makes me feel so full of shame),

and from my vanities there comes shame’s fruit,
and my repentance, and the clear awareness
that worldly joy is just a fleeting dream.

118.
And now behind me is the sixteenth year
of all my sighs and I am moving forward
toward the last, and yet it seems to me
that all this suffering has just begun.

The bitter's sweet and all my losses useful,
my living hard; I pray that life outlast
cruel fortune, and I fear that Death before then
may close the lovely eyes that make me speak.

I'm here, alas, and wish that I were elsewhere,
and wish that I wished more but wish no more,
and unable to do more, do all I can;

and new tears shed from old desires show
that I am still what I have always been,
not through a thousand turnings have I moved.

132.
If it's not love, then what is it I feel:
but if it's love, by God, what is this thing?
If good, why then the bitter mortal sting?
If bad, then why is every torment sweet?

If I burn willingly, why weep and grieve?
And if against my will, what good lamenting?
O living death, O pleasurable harm,
how can you rule me if I not consent?

And if I do consent, it's wrong to grieve.
Caught in contrasting winds in a frail boat
on the high seas I am without a helm,

so light of wisdom, so laden of error,
that I myself do not know what I want,
and shiver in midsummer, burn in winter.

from 173.
...then finding it all full of bitter sweetness,
it sees that everything the world has spun,
is spiderwebs

That said, I'm not sure I had a very good translation. I read the Mark Musa version.

[Stewed]

Damn, I should really read Petrarch.

[mortalterror]

I actually liked this old translation of The Secret I found on archive.org better than the Mark Musa translations of his Canzoniere. http://www.archive.org/stream/secretpetrarch00millgoog#page/n130/mode/2up

And what is life itself? A space of toil,
A wrestling, a stage-play, a labyrinth
Of errors, or a game of mountebanks,
A desert, a morass, a land of briers,
An unploughed valley, or a crest unclomb:
Sombre its caves, and what wild beasts dwell there!
There is the stream of tears, the sea of woes,
Rest ever anxious, labour all for naught,
Hope without fruit, false pleasure but true pain,
Full breadth of poverty but empty wealth,
Inglorious honour, waste of all desire,
Adversity with never-stayned complaint,
The sting in all enjoyment, and the sweet,
Alas, not seldom bitter; a brief halt
At wayside inns; a dirty prison; a ship
Without a rudder; a blind man unled;
A stormy sea, a dangerous coast, a port
All doubtful,--with no dearth of monstrous wreck;
Hate, lust, and anger, virtue aye assumed,
Successful fraud labelled with honour's name,
Innocence scoffed at, faith held up to scorn,
And puffed-up science that no science is;
A land of ghosts and spectres, 'neath the reign
Of Lucifer and demons; or a sleep
Death ends and every dream. But yet some way
Remains, thank heaven, to good life, and hereafter
Unto the eternal.

I think he comes off more intellectual and less emo in this excerpt than in the other poems I listed; though he might have used one poetic style for Italian and another for Latin, which the latter example was in.

[ZTay]

Damn, I should really read Petrarch.

Yes.

When Love within her lovely face appears
now and again among the other ladies,
as much as each is less lovely than she
the more my wish I love within me grows.

I bless the place the time and hour of the day
that my eyes aimed their sights at such a height,
and say: `My soul, you must be very grateful
that you were found worthy of such great honour.

From her to you comes loving thought that leads,
as long as you pursue, to highest good,
esteeming little what all men desire;

there comes from her all joyous honesty
that leads you by the straight path up to Heaven—
already I fly high upon my hope.'

[cafolini]

Boccaccio

[Drkshadow03]

I made a note of these poems when I read the Canzoniere 4 years ago.


That said, I'm not sure I had a very good translation. I read the Mark Musa version.

I am using the David Young translation, which I think is a bit more modern than the Musa translation. Also, I think Young includes all the poems rather than just selections.

Did you read all the poems at once? While I like Petrarch and I'm really impressed with his poetry, I'm finding a little goes a long way.

[mortalterror]

I am using the David Young translation, which I think is a bit more modern than the Musa translation. Also, I think Young includes all the poems rather than just selections.

Did you read all the poems at once? While I like Petrarch and I'm really impressed with his poetry, I'm finding a little goes a long way.

I'm pretty sure Musa translated the whole thing, and since he's only 55 I'm fairly sure it was a recent translation. Here's the edition I read http://www.amazon.com/Petrarch-Canzoniere-Rerum-vulgarium-fragmenta/dp/0253213177/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318629836&sr=1-1 The Young translation came out about 8 years after that. I remember being very impressed by Musa's translations of Petrarch's prose letters and so I took a chance on his verse. His Ascent of Mount Ventoux, and his letters to the deceased Cicero are not to be missed. The impression I was left with, upon consideration of his verses, was that they are a little wooden and over-literal like most modern academic translations.

I think I read them over the course of two or three days.

[Drkshadow03]

I'm pretty sure Musa translated the whole thing, and since he's only 55 I'm fairly sure it was a recent translation. Here's the edition I read http://www.amazon.com/Petrarch-Canzoniere-Rerum-vulgarium-fragmenta/dp/0253213177/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318629836&sr=1-1 The Young translation came out about 8 years after that. I remember being very impressed by Musa's translations of Petrarch's prose letters and so I took a chance on his verse. His Ascent of Mount Ventoux, and his letters to the deceased Cicero are not to be missed. The impression I was left with, upon consideration of his verses, was that they are a little wooden and over-literal like most modern academic translations.

I think I read them over the course of two or three days.

Ah, I was thinking of the Oxford World Classics edition (http://www.amazon.com/Selections-Canzoniere-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0199540691/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318631492&sr=1-2).

I've been reading these on and off since the summer. I think I have to be in the right mood to read poetry and attack it in small bites.

[donaldbracy]

Not yet i read. its damn good. I m going to read. :banana: