Tag: post2

Canzoniere 61: Bound

Italian (Venetian) School; Petrarch and Laura de Noves; The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/petrarch-and-laura-de-noves-141634

Poem 61 has an evident theme of love, especially within its first moments where Petrarca describes the emotions of when he fell in love with Laura. He expresses this theme of love throughout this poem and many others, through his uses of detailed imagery and hyperboles. 

In the first stanza of this poem, Petrarca regards the very instant and place where he first met Laura as a blessing. He explains how he felt ‘bound’ to love after he laid eyes on her ‘two lovely eyes’. This same theme of being ‘bound’ to Laura’s love is evident throughout many of his poems, not just this one. He then continues to describe this love as his ‘first sweet agony’, and explains how he is now tied to this love.

In the second stanza, he uses metaphors to compare this feeling of love to being pierced through the heart with a bow, which left wounds so deep he feared they would “reach the bottom of his heart. By using this hyperbole, he gets the reader to understand his feelings of love, and how he fell so deep in love that it caused agony and pain, and ended up hurting his heart, and portrays the struggles he had to go through when it came to loving Laura. Petrarca also mentions many Roman gods throughout his poetry to get his points across. In this particular poem, he alludes to Cupid through the mention of bows and arrows to describe his love.

In the next stanza, Petrarca discusses all of his poetry, and the main catalyst for writing them. He states that all of his poetry was made to be a call out for Laura, and a way to express his love for her, and the feelings that came with it. He also talks about how this poetry was filled with ‘all the sighs, and tears, and the desire’ that came with loving her. By stating this, Petrarca gives the reader a good sense of what most of his poetry is about, and the feelings and emotions they can find within it. It also shows how he deeply cares for Laura to the point where he has to cry out her name and shed tears.

In the last and final stanza of this poem, Petrarca talks about how all of this paper he uses to write his poetry is blessed with Laura’s grace, as she is the topic for the poetry he writes about her. Petrarca also states how every thought he has only relates to Laura, and is not shared with anyone else. 

Canzoniere 159: Goddess

In poem 159, there were very vivid descriptions of Laura. In the first stanza, Pertrarca questioned where in heaven nature took the model to obtain her lovely face and show her power down here with the rest of us. This description made the person who was being talked about seem respectable and of very high power. The way Pertracra made these words come together created a perfect visualization for me about what this woman looks like. After reading this stanza, I knew the theme was love and I wanted to analyze it because of that. I love the way love is depicted in this poem, particularly the preface. The next stanza starts to include words that have overall positive definitions. For instance, the word nymph. This word was used in Greek mythology to categorize any of a large class of inferior female divinities. Nymphs were associated with fertile, growing things, including water or trees. The usage of this word provided a wholesome and superior model of the woman. Also, the word virtues was used. The second stanza states “How did a heart collect so many virtues the sum of which is guilty of my death.” I love this line of the poem because it is a play on words. A virtue is a morally good trait or quality, and it is used in the poem as something that caused death which is not something virtues are morally capable of. However, he makes it seem that her qualities were so good, that they are capable of death. 

The next stanzas really depict the depth of Laura’s beauty and the way Petrarcra felt about her. He states that ‘if a man has not yet looked upon her eyes and seen how tenderly she makes them move.’ Before he proceeds to the next stanza, this stanza proves how strongly he feels towards Laura’s eyes, which is extremely significant. Before that, he also states that ‘who seeks for divine beauty seeks in vain.’ The usage of the word vain in this instance shows that even though someone might have a high opinion on her appearance, it should not affect their perspective towards her. To summarize, the last stanza states that this man does not know how love can heal as well as kill, if he did not know the sweetness of Laura’s speech, sighs, and smile. This final stanza really drew me to this poem because of how sweet but deep the message is. Petrarca describes Laura as a perfect goddess, but he also adds these undertones of death and guilt that added a different level of emotion to his feelings about her. As I read the poem, the love was so deep it kind of reminded me of Dante and Beatrice a little bit. I really enjoyed reading about the love that was depicted in The Divine Comedy and it is interesting to see the similarities and differences in that theme with Pertrarca.