00:00:00
Today we talk about one of the most important cultural figures in all of Italian history.
00:00:04
He is an author and it is an extraordinary historical and literary case: according to legend, he studied
00:00:10
so much that he died leaning his head on his papers; he is the first human being
00:00:17
in history about whom we have received so much information, and from first-hand sources at that;
00:00:23
and he is also the author of one of the most influential works of Italian literature,
00:00:27
to the point that not even Shakespeare would have been 100% the Shakespeare we all know,
00:00:34
if it hadn't been for the work in question. I'm talking about Francesco Petrarca,
00:00:41
who with Dante and Boccaccio is part of the so-called Three Crowns, the three major authors
00:00:46
of the late Middle Ages in Florence, fundamental in the history of the Italian language and literature.
00:00:54
This is the second video in this regard, after the one from a few years ago on Dante: naturally,
00:00:59
in the future there will be a third, on Giovanni Boccaccio. But let's get straight to Petrarca:
00:01:05
a stop in his world is an almost obligatory step, if you want to start studying and
00:01:10
understanding Italian literature, because this author has forever influenced not only the fate
00:01:18
of the literature of the Bel Paese, but also the fate of literary language in general,
00:01:23
and in particular the language of poetry. Initially, therefore,
00:01:28
we will focus on the author's life and his fortune, understood as success. Then we will take
00:01:34
a look at his best known and most studied work, namely the Canzoniere; and, finally,
00:01:39
we will try to understand the cultural, literary and linguistic legacy that
00:01:45
Petrarca left us. I'm Davide and this is Podcast Italiano, a channel for those who learn or love
00:01:51
Italian. If you learn the language of Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio, you will find the transcription of everything
00:01:58
I say on my website. I'll leave you the link in the description. And if you need it, turn on the subtitles.
00:02:08
Francesco Petrarca was born in 1304 in Arezzo, Tuscany; between 19 and 20 July,
00:02:14
according to tradition. He is the son of a notary banished from Florence, where
00:02:20
great political battles had raged in previous decades. These are the same battles
00:02:25
that led to Dante's exile, which – by the way – Petrarch's father knew about.
00:02:31
But let's return immediately to our Francesco Petrarca. Already as a child, he became a traveler: in 1312,
00:02:38
in fact, his father took the family to live in Avignon, in southern France, where
00:02:43
Petrarch was educated by an Italian who was himself an exile. Access to these studies was not common:
00:02:50
the very young Francesco was born into a fairly wealthy condition, and his father did not deny him
00:02:56
the purchase of several manuscripts useful for his studies. Consider that we are in the 14th century,
00:03:03
before the invention of printing: often, to have access to a text, the richest
00:03:09
could commission its reproduction to a copyist, who copied everything; otherwise,
00:03:15
you had to directly purchase the original or a copy already produced previously,
00:03:21
or even - think about it - copy the text yourself, if possible - think about the effort -: in all cases,
00:03:27
it was an investment, often of money or , alternatively, of time.
00:03:32
A few years later, Petrarca began studying law in Montpellier, still in France,
00:03:38
which however he tackled reluctantly. Always in the period of his early youth, he
00:03:43
also visited Rimini, Venice and, above all, Bologna, a very important destination for honing
00:03:49
his literary skills. In fact, at the time, the city was a very important center
00:03:54
for the radiation of poetry in the vernacular, that is, in this specific case, in one of the many
00:04:02
Italian languages that had evolved from Latin. Incidentally today, in Italian,
00:04:09
vulgar typically means coarse, rude, scurrilous or, in other words, rude. In
00:04:17
technical jargon, however, this word indicates, especially when talking about the Middle Ages, because
00:04:22
then in the future we start talking about dialects, it indicates, I was saying, the languages spoken by the vulgar,
00:04:28
that is, by the people, as opposed to the higher and more literary language noble, which was Latin.
00:04:36
In 1326, there is a turning point: the father of our young scholar dies, leading the family to a
00:04:43
period of economic difficulty. Precisely on this occasion Petrarch definitively abandons
00:04:49
he studied law and, perhaps, in turn began to produce works in the vernacular.
00:04:54
He soon settled in Avignon, where at the time, among other things, the seat of the
00:05:00
papal curia was located. As some of you may know, in fact, for much of the 14th century the Pope did not reside
00:05:07
in Rome, but rather in Avignon, France. Speaking of religion... In Avignon, Petrarch
00:05:14
decides to take the minor orders, which, in short, represent an affiliation to the Church
00:05:20
which involves some tasks, but, above all, which guarantees all the economic benefits that at the time
00:05:27
were reserved for men of church. Smart, our Francesco. This practice was actually
00:05:34
not rare, precisely because it did not require great effort, but it gave considerable advantages. In this way,
00:05:40
Petrarch basically frees himself from major economic worries,
00:05:44
and has the opportunity to do what he likes. The years of youth are characterized,
00:05:50
at least according to Petrarca, by a certain abandonment to worldly life - even if we must consider
00:05:57
that we are talking about the criteria of a severe man, who wants to give a certain image of himself,
00:06:02
and we will talk about it later. In this period, perhaps, Petrarch also indulged in love
00:06:07
for a woman, about whom, once again, we know little: some scholars believe they have
00:06:13
even found her identity, while others strongly doubt it. In any case,
00:06:18
this relationship will later be taken up in Petrarch's most important work, so let's keep it in mind.
00:06:25
Meanwhile, the years pass, and our Francesco becomes closer, thanks to his culture and
00:06:30
knowledge, to important personalities, to visit whom he makes several other trips.
00:06:36
We are now around the 1930s when we see big steps forward in studies too:
00:06:41
Petrarch, in fact, was very close to the texts of antiquity, and constantly tried to
00:06:47
understand and analyze the Latin texts. It even produces editions, for example of
00:06:53
a work by the famous Latin author Livy; and, perhaps even more surprisingly, he discovered the
00:07:00
manuscripts of some very important Latin texts, such as that of Cicero's Pro Archia.
00:07:06
At the same time, these texts served as teachers for Petrarch, who absorbed the subtleties of the
00:07:12
Latin language and reproduced them with mastery. A mastery to which his contemporaries did not remain
00:07:20
indifferent: in 1341, Petrarch was crowned poet in Rome, in the Campidoglio, by none other than
00:07:28
King Robert of Anjou, who at the time was the sovereign of the Kingdom of Naples. This rite was intended to
00:07:35
explicitly recall the Latin tradition, in which, according to the information available at the time,
00:07:41
it was customary to honor poetic glory in this way. And Petrarch is crowned
00:07:47
precisely for his production in Latin, which was considered the most beautiful: for now,
00:07:52
his verses in the vernacular are not yet ready to shine, even if, as they say,
00:07:59
something is cooking. Meanwhile, a laurel wreath
00:08:04
is placed on our author's head , making him, so to speak, a VIP of his era; and with good reason,
00:08:10
because we do not forget that Petrarch is one of the greatest authors in the Latin language of his time.
00:08:17
But our Petrarch does not rest on his laurels: the journeys continue, thanks to
00:08:22
ecclesiastical benefits and, even more so now, thanks to the protection of the powerful, who are happy
00:08:29
to support an intellectual of this caliber. In 1348, when Italy and Europe are on
00:08:35
their knees due to a plague epidemic, Petrarca overcomes the crisis unscathed, but the woman
00:08:41
he loves - remember? – but he doesn't survive. This event will also be very important for what
00:08:47
we will say later, so let's keep it in mind. In 1350, the poet finally visited Florence:
00:08:53
the family's exile had been lifted in the meantime, and there were friends and
00:08:59
admirers in the city. Furthermore, our poet meets another very important writer for his
00:09:05
era and for future centuries, the third crown we will talk about, namely Giovanni Boccaccio,
00:09:12
also influencing his artistic production. The travels between Italy and France still do not
00:09:18
stop, until, in 1352, Petrarch definitively leaves France for Milan. In
00:09:24
that year, in fact, Innocent VI became pope; and relations with Petrarca were not
00:09:29
exactly the best. Remember that the Pope was in France at the time;
00:09:34
so our friend decides it's time to pack his bags and return to his homeland.
00:09:41
Starting from his stay in Milan, his literary activity grew further, even if there was no
00:09:46
shortage of travel and political commitments. The powerful of the time did not mind having
00:09:51
a great intellectual at their service, nor entrusting him, for example, with diplomatic missions.
00:09:57
Over time, however, Petrarch decided that he wanted to dedicate himself to his studies in peace:
00:10:02
starting from 1369-70 he settled, as far as possible, in Arquà, not far from Padua,
00:10:10
in Veneto, where he died in 1374. Today, in his honor, Arquà is a
00:10:16
village also known by the name of Arquà Petrarca, where it is still possible
00:10:21
to visit the house where the great poet lived. Great, yes – and now we will see why – to the point that,
00:10:27
after his death, admirers and scholars began to look for his books. And to this day
00:10:33
a huge amount of material arrives: works, notes, letters. Letters then carefully copied and,
00:10:41
always along the lines of the great Latin models, designed to be actually read
00:10:47
by posterity. Petrarch knew that his letters would be read, and for this very reason
00:10:53
we cannot blindly trust their content: the author wanted to outline an
00:10:59
ideal autobiography, in order to show the world and posterity that he had retraced as much as
00:11:04
possible the steps of a great ideal Roman. Throughout the 14th century and part of the 15th,
00:11:13
Petrarch was admired as a fine Latin poet; until something changes:
00:11:18
starting from the second half of the fifteenth century, attention for the Latin Petrarch decreases, while the fame
00:11:25
of the poet in the vernacular increases. Soon, our poet becomes the poet,
00:11:33
the unsurpassed model of poetry, both in the Italian peninsula and outside.
00:11:39
But thanks to which work, exactly? The work in question is typically called
00:11:48
Canzoniere, a generic word which, in Italian, indicates a collection of poems.
00:11:55
It goes without saying that Petrarch's has become the songbook par excellence, and this is
00:12:01
the title of the work. In reality, however, the real title was Rerum vulgarium fragmenta,
00:12:07
that is, fragments of vulgar things, that is, various texts written in the vulgar language.
00:12:12
In all, we received 72 sheets of parchment, which contain all 366 poems that make up
00:12:20
the work (one for each day of the year, if we exclude the poem that serves as an introduction
00:12:25
to the work). Both Petrarch himself and a copyist
00:12:31
who worked under his direct supervision wrote on these sheets of parchment. These sheets were bound, that is, put together,
00:12:37
after the author's death, and are now found in the Vatican Apostolic Library,
00:12:43
with the Latin Vatican code name 3195: there is almost no scholar of Italian literature who does not
00:12:51
know this number. The fact that we have an entire work by Petrarch written by
00:12:57
Petrarch himself is extraordinary: just think that we do not have a single word of Dante written
00:13:03
first hand, nor, in reality, written under his direct supervision (in these cases,
00:13:08
in jargon technical, we speak of an idiographic text). But there is an even more extraordinary fact:
00:13:14
the papers containing the drafts of the work, and other drafts still, have even reached us (the
00:13:20
manuscript, in this case, is called Vaticano Latino 3196). These papers give us the possibility
00:13:27
of studying how the text was improved, reworked and brought to its final form:
00:13:33
today this exercise might seem obvious, but at the time it was not, and Petrarca's papers
00:13:39
played the role of driving force, of engine that gave a boost to these reflections.
00:13:45
At this point, it is impossible not to ask ourselves: what is the work about?
00:13:49
The Canzoniere tells of Petrarch's love for Laura, a beautiful woman who represents
00:13:56
not only the object of an earthly love, but also poetic glory itself. This
00:14:01
interpretation arises from the fact that Petrarca continually compares Laura's name with a
00:14:07
series of words that have the same etymology, that is, the same origin, and which refer to laurel:
00:14:13
this plant, also called laurel, is the same one that it was made of the crown with which - you
00:14:20
remember - Petrarch was crowned, and it is precisely a symbol that represents poetry. Among other things,
00:14:26
this is also why in Italy, when you finish university, you graduate from "lauro", and
00:14:32
a laurel wreath is worn in the ceremony. Our Petrarch, therefore, loves a woman and loves
00:14:38
poetic glory: you are perhaps wondering what the problem is. The fact is that Petrarch
00:14:44
would like to love eternal things, and therefore dedicate his spirit to the adoration of God. This generates
00:14:51
an internal conflict: either one loves earthly things, or one loves otherworldly things, and there
00:14:58
is no way medium as possible. Yet Petrarch struggles to let go of his love for Laura:
00:15:03
he himself tells us, thinking about his past self, that he is now a different man, but only "in part" (and
00:15:11
he uses exactly these two words, "in part"). This internal struggle lasts an entire life,
00:15:16
and condemns Petrarch to eternal restlessness: he cannot enjoy love and poetic glory,
00:15:22
because he feels guilty; and, at the same time, he cannot enjoy the love for God, because the love for Laura
00:15:28
never dies completely, no matter how much the work constantly leads us towards the adoration of God.
00:15:34
We see, or rather we read with our eyes : below you will listen to the poem (or more precisely
00:15:41
the sonnet) which, in fourteen verses, serves as an introduction to the entire work.
00:15:46
You who listen in scattered rhymes to the sound of those sighs with which I nourished my heart
00:15:53
in my first youthful error when I was partly a different man from what I am,
00:15:59
of the various style in which I cry and I reason between vain hopes and vain pain,
00:16:04
where there is someone who intends love by test, I hope to find pity, as well as forgiveness.
00:16:11
But I see well now how
00:16:15
I was a complete fable to the people for a long time, so that I am often ashamed of myself;
00:16:22
and shame is the fruit of my raving,
00:16:25
and repentance, and clearly knowing that what pleases the world is a brief dream.
00:16:33
Petrarch, with this text, addresses those who are reading the text, and in particular those who,
00:16:38
like him and many of us, have suffered for love: his hope is to be understood and
00:16:45
forgiven for having made the mistake of love Laura. His youthful mistake led him to
00:16:50
be mocked, to repent, and above all to understand that earthly things are only a
00:16:57
brief dream, in the sense that they are not eternal like divine things. Yet Petrarch's change
00:17:03
is not complete: it occurred, as we have already seen, only "in part".
00:17:08
There is not the time necessary to analyze the text in detail or read others,
00:17:13
but I would like to point out, in the meantime, that fundamentally Petrarch's Italian is also our Italian,
00:17:18
for the most part, and this is because Petrarch himself contributed indirectly to create literary Italian
00:17:25
, and because the Florentine vernacular, which was the language of Petrarca,
00:17:29
over the centuries, as you know, would have been chosen as the reference language for Italians.
00:17:35
Let's just think about the first verse: You who listen to the sound in scattered rhymes. Phonetically, all
00:17:42
words remained identical. It would be really difficult to say the same about a verse written
00:17:47
in English, in French, in German, in Greek or in Chinese in the 14th century, it is astonishing.
00:17:54
As for the meaning, scattered rhymes could rather be translated as loose poems, that is, not
00:18:00
collected in a well-ordered and concluded work. In general, however, the poem is quite easy,
00:18:07
all things considered, to understand for an Italian in 2024, obviously provided
00:18:12
that some indication is provided. The message is that Petrarch's Italian,
00:18:17
for a series of reasons, is very similar to our Italian, and this applies to a
00:18:21
good portion of literary Italian. This is excellent news for those who already know and study
00:18:27
Italian, because it means that those who know the contemporary language can also,
00:18:32
with a little effort and patience, access eight hundred years of literature. It's not bad, right?
00:18:43
Before closing the video, I would like to try to explain more explicitly why Petrarca
00:18:48
is such an important author and why I dedicated such a long video to him.
00:18:53
First of all, he left us a huge cultural and
00:18:57
literary legacy, both with his Latin and vernacular works, both with the works he discovered,
00:19:02
and with the works he studied and commented on. But if this is also a merit of several other
00:19:07
authors, with Petrarch there is something else. With the Canzoniere the poetic forms of Italian were basically definitively established
00:19:14
: they range from the canzone, which is the noblest form,
00:19:20
used for the highest and most political topics, to the sestinas, ballads and madrigals,
00:19:26
up to the sonnet, that is, the form used to write the poem we read just now, composed of
00:19:32
fourteen verses. In the Canzoniere, the sonnet is the quantitatively most represented form,
00:19:38
and in general, starting from Petrarch, it will often be used to deal with
00:19:43
slightly lighter topics than those of the song, and in particular obviously love.
00:19:49
It is, by the way, an entirely Italian form, given that it was born in Italy in the early
00:19:54
thirteenth century, soon spread throughout the peninsula and, thanks to Petrarch, even went beyond the
00:20:00
borders of Italy. In fact, in the sixteenth century, Henry Howard, an English poet, translated several
00:20:06
texts by Petrarch. Thomas Wyatt, himself a poet, tends to use translation
00:20:12
and imitation less, and rather writes his own sonnets, always based on the form established
00:20:17
by Petrarch. Starting from these inputs, and then from the contributions of other followers of Petrarch,
00:20:24
the sonnet spread more and more. The number of these followers rose to the point where
00:20:30
we can speak of a real artistic phenomenon, called Petrarchism: in the 16th century
00:20:37
we find signs of it, not only in England, but also in France and Spain, and beyond. Shakespeare
00:20:43
probably read only part of Petrarch's works, also because he did not know
00:20:48
Italian very well; however, he could not fail to know the Petrarchists of his era, and in fact Shakespeare's sonnets
00:20:58
are not without this influence. If we had not had Petrarch, we would not
00:20:59
even have had the Shakespeare we know, nor would we have had several other works as we have
00:21:04
known them, both in Italy and abroad. As for the Italian language, Petrarchism
00:21:10
arrived at the right time, because at the beginning of the sixteenth century the debate on the
00:21:14
language was quite intense: the Peninsula was divided into many political entities,
00:21:19
there was no nation, as you know, and yet people were looking for a language to Italy,
00:21:25
to write and communicate among the various reasons. It is at this point that Pietro Bembo,
00:21:31
an Italian intellectual who we will talk about in more detail in a future video, enters the scene . Bembo,
00:21:36
an Italian intellectual and man of letters, understands that choosing an Italian vernacular as the reference language
00:21:42
also means making one language prevail over all the others, and he also understands that
00:21:49
this imposition can only occur successfully if it is based on prestige. For this reason, as a model
00:21:56
for prose (i.e. non-poetic writing) he chooses the famous Decameron by Boccaccio,
00:22:02
the author I mentioned before, who Petrarch met in Florence in 1350, we will talk about it;
00:22:08
and as a model of poetic language, instead, it indicates the Canzoniere of our Petrarch. Perhaps Bembo
00:22:15
indicates the only winning solution, the only one possible in that precise cultural,
00:22:21
historical and geographical context. In the fifteenth century there had been much more linguistic heterogeneity,
00:22:26
but the sixteenth century, the first true century of printing, required greater uniformity;
00:22:33
and Bembo gives the right proposals at the right time. In 1525 he composed the Prose della volgar lingua,
00:22:41
in which the models just mentioned are given, thus constituting a sort of grammar of
00:22:47
fourteenth-century Tuscan literature, that is, two centuries ahead of his time. Furthermore,
00:22:52
Bembo himself composes, on this basis, several texts, which will then be taken as examples.
00:22:57
The proposal works, it works incredibly well: Petrarca remains unquestionably the
00:23:03
greatest poetic model for over five hundred - five hundred! – years,
00:23:08
so much so that we can still clearly see its influence in nineteenth-century poems.
00:23:13
Let's take The Saturday of the Village, a poem written by Giacomo Leopardi in 1829. At a certain point,
00:23:19
we find "the little old lady up the stairs"; in the Canzoniere, however,
00:23:24
we find «risata era a filar la rossarella»: not only is the language very similar, but also the
00:23:30
poetic images that Leopardi selects are often of Petrarchan inspiration. And again:
00:23:35
we read «already all the dark air» in the Saturday of the village, while in the Canzoniere we find
00:23:40
«et l'aere nostra et la mia mente bruna». In short, we have discovered an
00:23:50
important Italian author: important from every point of view (cultural, literary, linguistic), even
00:23:56
European level. The examples could not be counted: just think of how many intellectuals of
00:24:02
eighteenth-century Vienna knew Italian thanks to the Canzoniere... And then, thanks to his role as a great
00:24:08
model of poetic language, Petrarch has forever influenced the fate of Italian, even if the
00:24:13
story is much longer. In the next video of this series we will talk about the third crown, namely
00:24:19
Giovanni Boccaccio. In the meantime, if you haven't seen it yet, I'll leave you my video on Dante here.
