Meaning Of Sonnet 61 By Francesco Petrarca
Yrko Philogene
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An early career in finance as a licensed stockbroker and insurance agent was later followed by a return to college, studying literature and the poetry of Edmund Spenser and Geoffrey Chaucer, along with economics and environmental science.
A Petrarchan sonnet, which is the original form of sonnet as penned byPetrarch, is written in a two-stanza form with an octave followed by a sestet,as in Petrarch's "Sonnet II." As a point of comparison, the form called Englishor Shakespearean sonnet varies from the Petrarchan by having three quatrainsand a couplet. All sonnets comprise fourteen lines.
Petrarch's "Sonnet II" talks about Cupid's surprise attack of love arrows ina Classical allusion to the Greek god of love, Cupid. The attack is so fiercethat it feels like punishment for all the love sins the speaker has committed.He laments that he has no weapons to defend himself nor uneven rising ground tohide behind to shield himself from the attack of Cupid's arrows.
The metaphor in the sonnet compares love, or what might have been calledlove sickness, to an ambush military attack waged by Cupid, with falling inlove compared to mortal wounds in battle. The metaphor pictures the speaker ashaving escaped love before; as being punished for those escapes; and asdefenseless against a foe. The stanzas follow the Petrarchan rhyme scheme withabbaabba in the octave (eight lines) andcdeced (a variation of the standardcdecde rhyme scheme) in the sestet (six lines).
Sometimes, the best way to understand the overt meaning of the text with adifficult poem is to write a paraphrase of, putting each line into your ownwords, while being very careful to attend to punctuation and look up themeanings of even familiar words that don't look like they're used quite in theright way.
Paraphrase:
Punished for a bunch of love crimes all at once,
Providing a means of vengeance for my transgressions,
Cupid took up his bow in secret,
Like someone who is a conniving coward;
My courage against love had positioned itself in my heart.
There it will defend my heart against loves who have bright eyes;
When Cupid's dread arrows are poured out against me
Hitting me where I had been weakened even before all Cupid's arrows weresent.
I was scared at the surprise attack, I found
I had neither time nor strength to repel the attack of Cupid's arrows
By using weapons suitable to fight against love arrows;
Nor had I protection from rough, rising ground.
Where can I go to speed away from defeat at Cupid's hand,
Which I want to do even now, but no method of escape do I know!
Petrarch (1304-1374 CE), full name Francesco Petrarca, was an Italian scholar and poet who is credited as one of the founders of the Renaissance movement in art, thought, and literature. Petrarch actively searched for 'lost' ancient manuscripts hidden away in forgotten corners of medieval libraries; Cicero (106-43 BCE) was one particular beneficiary of Petrarch's diligence but there were many others besides. He not only found, edited, and collected these ancient works together but also wrote a vast catalogue of his own poems, texts, and letters. Petrarch's most famous work today is his Canzoniere, a collection of love poems written in the vernacular which revolve around an unknown and unobtainable woman called Laura. Through his discoveries, scholarship, and original works, Petrarch spearheaded a revival in ancient ideals and secular intellectual studies which focussed on human affairs rather than religious matters, even if, paradoxically, he himself remained very much interested in Christian studies. Consequently, Petrarch is, in this respect, considered the father of what became known as Renaissance humanism.
Petrarch was born in Arezzo, Italy on 20 July 1304 CE to parents who were exiles from the city of Florence. Around 1311 CE the family moved again, this time to Avignon in southern France, home of the now-exiled popes. His father was a notary and so Petrarch, too, studied law, first in Montpellier in France in 1316 CE and then back in Italy in Bologna in 1320 CE. The dry legal studies were not to his taste, though, and Petrarch decided to abandon law following his father's death in 1326 CE to instead focus on his first love: literature. He needed a patron for such activities but struggled to find a lasting one throughout his career. In his early working life, he had to settle for trivial clerk duties until something better came along and so he took minor orders and worked for Cardinal Giovanni Colonna in Avignon until 1337 CE. His required commitment to celibacy did not stop him fathering two illegitimate children, Giovanni in 1337 CE and Francesca in 1343 CE.
In his search for more meaningful employment, Petrarch shifted about various courts of French and Italian city-states, notably those at Naples, Padua, and Milan. He also travelled for scholarly purposes, visiting men of learning and monastery libraries in France, Flanders, and the Rhineland. Throughout, he maintained a property in the hills of Vaucluse near Avignon, which he returned to sporadically as he deplored what he saw as the corruption and duplicity of court life in the cities which gave him employment. This nomadic lifestyle is reflected in such works as the 1346 CE De Vita Solitaria (On the Solitary Life) and the 1347 CE De Otio Religioso (On Holy Retreat).
Nevertheless, Petrarch did try and involve himself in practical politics, albeit with indifferent results. Unable to promote the reforms he hoped would make politics and rulers less hypocritical and corrupt, his greatest disappointment was seeing the popular leader Cola di Rienzo (1313-1354 CE) fail to revive the government of Rome as capital of a 'sacred Italy' in 1347 CE.
The high point of Petrarch's public career was perhaps his coronation as Poet Laureate in Rome on 8 April 1341 CE. He was by then internationally famous as a poet and scholar and was the first to receive this award, which was revived from antiquity. Petrarch had long lobbied the Pope to have the title, and it symbolised for him the possibility that poets and scholars could lead Italy and Europe back to the glory days of the Pax Romana of the Roman Empire. This would be a rebirth, a renaissance. From then on, he concentrated on literature, both studying the past and creating new works for the future.
Petrarch seems to have adopted Cicero's approach to life, the Roman scholar whose works he rediscovered as he searched Europe's libraries for ancient texts. This approach was otium cum dignitate or 'leisure spent properly', that is, a man of learning should find the right balance between a fully active public life and a reclusive private life devoted to study. Indeed, never abandoning his religious beliefs despite his interest in the pagan past, Petrarch was, too, a keen student of the works of Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE), whom he thought more significant than Aristotle (384-322 BCE), a figure who then greatly preoccupied scholars. Petrarch considered the medieval church as a source of continuity from antiquity through the centuries to his own times, but he was against the scholasticism which had bogged down thinkers with endless circular arguments on dogma. He continued to search out the works of Latin and Greek authors. Even if he could not read Greek himself (although he tried to learn), he accumulated manuscripts in that language such as the Iliad by Homer (c. 750 BCE). He most famously rediscovered copies of letters and speeches by the Roman statesman and author Cicero; in 1333 CE in Lige, he found Pro Archia and, in 1345 CE in Verona, his Letters to Atticus.
Petrarch continued to write for the next 25 years building up an impressive catalogue of scholarship. He even rejected an offer from his great friend the poet and scholar Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375 CE) of a post at the University of Florence. Still travelling around, Petrarch had fallen out with the Pope at Avignon and so moved on to Milan. Eight years later he moved to Padua but left after a year in 1361 CE. Trying to avoid the Black Death and ending up in Venice, the poet was at least given a house in exchange for leaving in his will his personal library to the city. In 1367 CE he moved for the last time to the seclusion of Arqu in the hills just outside Padua.
Later works by Petrarch focussed on philosophical themes such as moral perfection, and he was especially interested in the ancient Roman idea of virtus (virtue or excellence) and civic duty. Petrarch suffered a stroke in 1370 CE in Ferrara while travelling on his way to Rome. He recovered and continued to write but died in July 1374 CE at his home outside Padua, appropriately enough, while working at his desk. When his body was discovered his head was resting on a manuscript by the Roman author Virgil (70-19 BCE). Petrarch was buried at Arqu.
Petrarch's interest in classical literature was reflected in his own Latin verse and sonnets. His earliest poems, written while he was a law student, were on the theme of the death of his mother. Petrarch's most famous work is his collection of poems written on the theme of love for an unattainable woman called 'Laura', his Canzoniere (Sonnets). The poet met this woman in church in Avignon in 1327 CE, but he never revealed who she was, and she has never been successfully identified by scholars ever since. Laura died of the Black Death plague in 1348 CE. These 366 love poems, sonnets, and songs, which are also collectively known as the Rerum Fragmentum Vulgarium (Vernacular Pieces), were written in the Tuscan vernacular with extra vocabulary from other Italian dialects. They cover the themes of unrequited love, lost love, and regret, amongst others. Petrarch revised his poems, even his very earliest ones, throughout his life right up to his death.
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