Saturday, December 17, 2011
Would you please tell me what you think of a Petrarchan sonnet?
As line 12 suggests, the poet's desire loses itself in the vastness of his love, and yet if rain can amplify rain, and fire incite itself, why not love? And if desire is 'unloosed of reins', i.e. not a natural and constrained outgrowth of love but essentially boundless, it is 'lost and ends' instead. I liked the way you handled the Heraian allusion in line 4, viz. forces are strengthened by opposition, so if Laura is too proud (hence the Nile reference of line 9), she deafens herself to the love of her suitor, but he reacts only by having his love strengthened. The poem works by defining a 'calculus of pion' in which pride, desire, and love are related in ways such that altering one causes changes in the others. This is an interesting insight in its own right and shows the poet not merely as the love-swept suitor but also as an introspective philosopher of the human condition. Thus the poem, which rests less on allusion than some of the other sonnets in the sequence, is interesting because it reveals the poet's understanding of the dynamic of love and pion. As always, the translation was exceptionally true to the original, which I have read many times. Like love, it has its hidden complexities and its delights. Beautiful work here.
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