Where Petrarch Like Likes Laura

The Poetry of Petrarch by Francesco Petrarca
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I am not attempting to be a poetry critic. I am a "reading for fun" critic. IMO, Petrarch's not that fun. A little. 3 stars.

I found some poems and lots of lines that are fantastic, well worth reading, and I have some good things to say overall. But in general, as a book for passing some quiet moments, this isn't that great. As alway, YMMV, but I don't think most modern readers would enjoy steadily reading through this book very much.

I'll give the translator all the credit in the world. This reads well in English; though it doesn't rhyme, and I don't think a lot of attention was given to rhythm (though some, clearly), this is still poetry, much of it still able to connect with a modern reader. It sounds good.

It's just that it's almost all--and famously so--aimed at the one particular beautiful woman that he fell in love with as a young man and only kinda knew, and it gets tiresome. There are only so many puns on her name (Laura, connected to laurel trees, and l' aura, a wind, and a similar word for gold) that can be used before you're tired of them; there are only so many references to the lights of her eyes or the path her feet have trod that you can take before you have had enough of those. The first 150 poems or so feel like he's playing, pretending to be sick with love, as if he'd randomly chosen her to be his muse for a display of courtly love in poetry. But the longer he goes on, especially the years after her death, the more it sounds like an unhealthy delusion, a life wasted on the unattainable woman he turned into a saint.

Just too much.

Still, some of it's pretty. Here's how he feels (#292) about being left alive after she had died:

...and still I live, which makes me sad and angry,
abandoned by the light I loved so much,
lost in a storm, on a dismasted ship.

So let my love song have an end here now;
the vein of my accustomed wit is dry,
and all my lyre can produce is sobs.

And this expression (#300) is excessive, but just within bounds, perhaps:

How much I envy you, you greedy earth,
who get to clasp the one who's taken from me...

His last poems, when he's feeling old and Laura has been dead a long time, are so sad and pathetic and overly religious I want to shake him. Find someone else! What are you doing? It feels like mania, not an homage. And the same figures of speech get reused over and over. Maybe the excess is the point. I dunno.

Overall--some great, long-admired, critically-acclaimed, beautiful poetry. Too much of a good thing, probably.

My recommendation if you want to enjoy these more than me: pick a poem at random, just one, and read it carefully. Enjoy it. Pull it apart if you like, or just let it roll over you. But stop there. Don't keep shoveling them in like eating sour patch kids, one after another, until your stomach hurts and your mouth is sore. Too much. One at a time. Wait a week or two and choose another one. Space it out.

Mildly recommended.

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