Selected Sonnets, Odes, and Letters

by Francesco Petrarca, Thomas G. Bergin (Editor)

Included in this highly useful volume are "Letter to Posterity"; 139 sonnets; odes 5, 6, 14, 16, 17, 21, and 29; the Metrical Letters "To Giacomo Colonna," and "To Italy"; and a complete list of sources. While most translations of Petrarch's work are by twentieth-century scholars in modern idiom, this insightful selection also presents classic translations by Chaucer, Wyatt, and Surrey. Edited by Thomas G. Bergin, this edition also contains a fine introduction, a list of principal dates in the life of Petrarch, as well as a bibliography

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Italian Literature

160 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1966

About the author

Famous Italian poet, scholar, and humanist Francesco Petrarca, known in English as Petrarch, collected love lyrics in Canzoniere .

People often call Petrarch the earliest Renaissance "father of humanism". Based on Petrarch's works, and to a lesser extent those of Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio, Pietro Bembo in the 16th century created the model for the modern Italian language, which the Accademia della Crusca later endorsed. People credit Petrarch with developing the sonnet. They admired and imitated his sonnets, a model for lyrical poems throughout Europe during the Renaissance. Petrarch called the Middle Ages the Dark Ages.

Reviews

[Daniel Chaikin · Rating 4 out of 5]

19. Petrarch: Selected Sonnets, Odes and Letters by Thomas G. Bergin
published: 1966 (Petrarch lived 1304-1374, and wrote the Canzoniere from roughly from 1327 to his death.)
format: 146-page paperback
acquired: Feb 19
read: Feb 19 – May 23
time reading: 7:56, 3.3 mpp
rating: 4
about the author: Thomas G. Bergin was an American scholar of Italian literature, 1904-1987

translators (number translated and approximate publication dates)
Thomas G. Bergin (29, 1954 & 1966), Albert Compton (3, 1898), Basil Kennett (1, 1879), James Caulfeild, 1st Earl of Charlemont (1, 1882), C. B. Cayley (14, 1879), Charles Tomlinson (2, 1874), Barbarina Wilmot, Lady Dacre (2, 1836), Edward FitzGerald (1, 1889), Francis Wrangham (1, 1817), Geoffrey Chaucer, (1, 1483), Gilbert F. Cunningham (3, 1955), Joseph Auslander (11, 1931), John Addington Symonds (3, 1890), John Nott (4, 1808), John Penn (1, 1798), James Henry Leigh Hunt (1, 1860), Morris Bishop (41, 1932), Maria Eugenia Wrottesley (1, 1851), Richard Garnett (18, 1896), R. G. Macgregor (6, 1854), Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1, 1557), Susan Wollaston (1, 1841), Thomas Caldecott Chubb (1, 1933), Thomas Wyatt (1, 1557), Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1, 1903), Warburton Pike (2, 1879)

I discovered this oddball anthology from 1966 in the introduction to The Poetry of Petrarch by David Young. It forms something like a cabinet of curiosities. It collects translations of about half of Petrarch‘s full 366 poem Canzoniere. Highlights are the older poets like Geoffrey Chaucer (translating in 1384!), Thomas Wyatt, and Henry, Earl of Surrey. And I really liked all the Morris Bishop and Joseph Auslander. Lowlights are painfully forced rhyming and one where the translator chose the word “blithe” to be used over and over again in a long poem. Overall it has a Victorian feel and very poor translation accuracy. Since i had more accurate translations available I found this great fun.

for fuller review, see https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Michael Palkowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some thoughts:

Timeless and brilliantly translated sequence of sonnets, odes and letters. Although admittedly fairly sparse and the editing of them seems to be fairly randomized at points. The work is striking in its poignancy and harrowing relevancy especially for Renaissance era sonnets. Ezra Pound in his ABC of Reading refers to the conceptual tools of phanopoeia, logopoeia and melopoeia in describing good literature. The melodic quality when read out loud is enough but its combined with some striking (logopoeia) metaphors where nature acts as a 'giver' before Laura's (his muse) death and as a taker afterwards. The wind blows Laura's words away (Sonnet 228) and life becomes a 'hopeless refugee' (Sonnet 231). What is striking is how love is externalized and ultimately not with him, it's anthropomorphized as being outwith his contours, so he stands with it agape in Sonnet 127 and his heart espied only 'secrets' in Sonnet 130. This has a biographical contingency obviously as Laura never accepted his love and he was hopelessly enamored with her. Passion and grief is conflated sometimes as in the case shown in Sonnet 128, we get "Yet on this earth, and ye, great Shades of Love!/ Linger and see my passion and my grief". Another biographical note is that he often followed her without her realizing it for years on end and so Laura in that sense is basically a 'Helen' type character for Petrarch. His love is so strong that he is prepared to suffer: If I believed that death could make an end/ To loves long torture that has laid me low/ My hand would long ere this have dealt the blow" (Sonnet 29) and be depressed: "Life's onward march puts not my passion by/ But frights me with its brief remaining scope" (Sonnet 135)

What an idealist he clearly was and as the father of Humanism and Alpinism, we see those roots in his unwavering persistence. I am sure that today he would probably have a restraining order or two. "You Grudge my good and sneer at my distress,/You cannot alter one thought, if you please!,/ Not though a thousand times each day confess,/Her scorn, nor hope, nor love grows less by these,/Her threats are nothing: Love survives the stress (Sonnet 139). The excavation persists beyond her death.

Another interesting point is that in his letter to posterity, he laments and wishes he was born within a different era. This shows how golden ageism seems to persist as a flawed conceptual metaphor within the human psyche.

"Among the many subjects which interested me, I dwelt especially upon antiquity for our own age has always repelled me, so that, had it not been for the love of those fear to me, I should have preferred to have been born in any other period than our own." (3)

Within Sonnet 228 written soon after Laura's death we get beautiful and aching lines such as "Still I burn in you, in you respire" I have memorized sonnet 228 and 231 which were written after Laura's death and obviously hope to throw them out during drunken conversations. It will be something that I will return to often.

An essay on Petrarch is available here: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Sf...

Thanks for the book Christen.

[Quiet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this for my Italian Renaissance course.

This poetry is in a weird spot for the modern reader. This is extremely important poetry from a historic context, but when reading it now it's just too expected. Petrarch's poetry is essentially broken up into 3 different "loves:" poetry, a woman Laura, and God. When these loves conflict with one another on a mortal/immortal debate the poems get very interesting. But many of these are about that woman Laura, and they mostly go back and forth between the same sensations and contradict the resolve of each poem so many times you'll quickly stop caring to try and stamp the character of Petrarch.

Very important historical figure, Petrarch. But I'm really not persuaded by his poetry; stick to his philosophy unless you're a big fan of poetical history and evolution, because Petrarch truly is an immense figure. Shakespeare was pretty hugely influenced from his sonnets, if you don't know. But unlike Shakespeare, I just didn't have much enjoyment from Petrarch.

[Kajah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Petrach to me is more interesting for his apparantly huge part in not only reviving classical works, but reinvigorating the search for understaning in the western world. His sonnets were interesting and kind of amusing, but the letters, one "for posteritiy" and one to Boccaccio were the most interesting entries in this decent introduction to Petrach's work.