Dear comrades in strophe,

It is with great joy, as author of the [yet unfinished] cycle <u>Jubal and Erato</u> that I find myself with you in this circle.

It was brought to my attention as I was searching usenet for "Petrarch". Therefore, not as the hyperproverbial canned meat but as an alert would I like to share with all consocios two sites:

The Petrarchan Grotto . This site, under continual revision, attempts to unify under one page the best extent of Petrarchan culture and texts in post-Gutenberg media. Among the texts that appear or to which there are links: The Canzoniere, I Trionfi (with the rime di corrispondenza and the rime stravaganti), Africa, Bucolicum carmen, Epistola M. Tullio Ciceroni, Vita de Numa Pompilio, Vita de Romulo, as well as many pages of essays, bibliographies, etc. In addition, not satisfied with the sole inclusion of the nonetheless comprehensive Ser Petracco, are links to Dante, the Origini, the Hypnerotomachia Polyphili, the Vite di Vasari (complete, in Italian, 1568 edition), and the Provençal Cançonier .

In addition, for those who wish to engage in discussions on Petrarcha et alia, sermo ad libidinem omnia, I have founded the Petrarca apud ripas Sorgae , on Yahoo, and invite all interested to join us.

Pax moxque ac valete,
Sethus Philadelphiota ait.

Salve! Since you have brought up one of my favorite subjects, I thought I would mention that my handlettered chapbook of Petrarch translations, Longing For Laura, is coming out early next year from Birch Brook Press (www.birchbrookpress.com). If you check out the most recent Able Muse issue (the journal connected with this forum), you will also see my take on #22 of the Canzoniere.

Ait S. Ph.:

Amice, te salvere dico, ac gratias tibi ago tua epistola respondente.

Actually, it was your translation, news of which was posted on usenet, which caught my attention, and informed me of Able Muse, forum maxime probum.

To take on a sestina, for anyone who reads this response, is no mean feat. It is likely the most complex and rigorous of the metrical forms, and only few, beginning with its inventor Arnaut Daniel, and I daresay Petrarch --even beyond Dante--, mastered its demands. I still have not dared at any sestina translations, indeed, am daunted by the task.

Itaque, tibi istae operae gratulor!

If you are interested in viewing my translations, please do so at the Grotto , under SJ's On Petrarch . Would it be too presumptuous to post my Descorts here? As a cycle, though all have metrical components, including two ballate (in English), they may be perceived as free verse (sed cum uso cursi).

Pax moxque, ut probsit,
S. ph.

No by all means, go ahead and add your translations to this thread. Petrarch is a particularly hellish challenge for translators into English--the form is so essential to the art and yet almost impossible to mimic in English due to our comparative paucity of rhymes. I have tried to leap this insane hurdle, and tried to mimic the form closely. When the chapbook comes out, you will see a few surprises, including (to the best of my knowledge) the only translation of the Canzoniere's longest poem (23) that exactly duplicates the rhyme scheme. This type of approach has been somewhat deservedly out of favor for a while--the Bergin and Armi translations of about fifty years ago are awful on multiple dimensions. The Auslander and Bishop translations of the 1930's are better, but still tough sledding for a contemporary reader. I think that translators have had difficulty looking at this period without the lens of "courtly love", and have tended to inject a lot of phony bric-a-brac into their translations. These were the first great confessional poems--they were full of intimacy and passion unmediated by hierarchal conventions. Some of the tropes that were fresh at the time are weary from overuse now, but I have tried to bring energy and immediacy into my translations in addition to a reverence for the form. It is an effort, of course, destined for failure, but you try to fail less than those who came before you.


6

So clueless is my foolish lust
as he pursues her in her flight
that loosed from Love he's running light
and free and leaves me in his dust,

so when I summon him, I must
assign safe routes for he could fight
my will yet never be contrite,
since Love has made him hard to trust;

and when he grabs the bit, for me
his power stays so absolute
that I am dragged off to death's door,

only to reach the laurel tree
where one may taste the bitter fruit
that cuts but never calms a sore.

7

Indulgence, lethargy and padded ease
have driven virtue into banishment
and nature, vanquished by our temperament,
seems dazed and lost beyond its boundaries

while Heaven's gentle light, which sanctifies
all human life, has now become so spent
that we would look on with astonishment
if Helicon's parched rivers were to rise.

Who longs for laurel, or for myrtle leaves?
"Expose the bankruptcy of moral codes!"
shouts out the mob, intent on moneymaking.

With so few allies on the empty roads,
it shows, kind spirit, what your quest achieves;
do not abandon your grand undertaking.

312

No stars adrift in peaceful skies,
no ships that slip through tranquil seas,
no fields for clanging cavalries,
no woods where wildlife runs and flies,

no promise of a long-sought prize,
no love expressed in rhapsodies,
no fields or streams where melodies
of chaste and graceful ladies rise,

nor other things can lift my heart
for she who was my only light
and mirror shrouded it from me.

Life brings such grinding pain I start
to cry for death and clearer sight
of someone better not to see.