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            In poem 23, the sequence’s long middle poem, Petrarch fully recounts his fall and its consequences.   “While blaming sunlight that had fled, / I gave my melancholy tears free rein / and let them fall wherever they would run; / no snow has ever vanished in the sun / or felt like me as I slipped down a drain / and near a beech became a fountainhead. / I kept pursuing where this wet trail led. / Who ever heard of men becoming springs?  / And yet I speak of clear and famous things.”  Metaphors and famous myths like those of men becoming springs represent universal truths that are as clear as water.
            Unlike Professor Maio, I do not think that Petrarch’s “deepest torments are shockingly foreign and mysteriously antiquated.”  Most of the people I know have experienced some form of intense, and often prolonged, unrequited love, be it romantic or parental.  Many of us, Christian or otherwise, have engaged in bitter dispute with God (by whatever name) over issues that involve the core integrity of our being.  Certainly many poets have deeply felt the emotional frustration, melancholy, confusion, and lack of control that stem from intense grappling with life’s riddles.
            Nor do I agree that “Laura is a poetic invention” or “the poems’ speaker an invention, a literary alter ego of Petrarch.”  In an academic atmosphere of nothing but text, it might be difficult to believe that some people have genuine feelings that can be articulated in poems.  My stance is that the poet Petrarch is Petrarch the man, and that Laura is no more an invention than any of us might be to any other of us.
            Petrarch’s poems of unrequited love are more than occasions to discuss “all unrequited desires” or the allure of forbidden fruit.  They are testimonies to his actual experience in all its interconnected dimensions, including physical, emotional, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual.
            Laurette may have been impervious to Petrarch’s entreaties, but the words of sonnet 1 to those of us able to hear not only communicate, but enact in a real sense a communion.  “I seek, from others tested by love’s art, / both pity and their pardon for my crime.”  His art transcends time, cultural differences, and cynicism, touching that universal realm that is profoundly human.  His wish, expressed in the 14^th Century, is fulfilled whenever an empathetic reader enters the reality of his poetic world — a complex paradox Petrarch would no doubt have recognized.
            Though any articulation is, of course, a representation, my experience of these poems is that they convey the immediate, intense feeling and thought of an authentic soul tormented by paradox, mystery, and self-contradiction. I was thoroughly compelled, moved, and impressed.  For that experience I am indebted not only to Petrarch, but to Juster’s wise selections and skillful poetics.
            It may seem that I have spent more time talking about Petrarch’s poetry than Juster’s translation of it.  But this is a compliment.  It is perhaps the greatest irony of translation that the better it is, the more directly it draws the reader’s attention away from itself and into the original.
            Longing for Laura is accessible enough to serve as an introduction to Petrarch and complex enough to occupy aficionados.  It will no doubt prove to be an important contribution to the canon of translations.