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.
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