Sonnets from Petrarch's Canzoniere
Sonetto CXXXII
S'amor non é‚ che dunque é quel che ch'io sento?
Ma s'egli é amor, per Dio, che cosa e quale?
Se bona ond'é l'effecto aspro mortale?
Se ria, ond'é sí dole ogni tormento?
S'a mia voglia ardo, and'é 'l pianto e 'l lamento?
S'a mal mia grado, il lamentar che vale?
O viva morte, o dilettoso male,
Come puoi tanto in me, s'io nol consento?
E s'io 'l consento, a gran torto mi doglio.
Fra sí contrari venti on frale barca
Mi trovo in alto mar senza governo,
Sí lieve di saver, d'error sí carca,
Chi'i' medesmo non so quel ch'io mi voglio;
E tremo a mezza state, ardendo il verno.
Can it be love that fills my heart and brain?
If love, dear God, what is its quality?
if it is good, why does it torture me?
If evil, why this sweetness in my pain?4 If I burn gladly, why do I complain?
If I hate burning, why do I never flee?
O life-in-death, O lovely agony,
how can you rule me so, if I'm not fain?
8 And if I'm willing, why do I suffer so?--
By such contrary winds I'm blown in terror
in a frail and rudderless bark on open seas,
ballasted all with ignorance and error.12 Even my own desire I do not know;
I burn in winter, and in high summer freeze.
(Translated into poetry by Maurice Bishop, Petrarch and His World, 54)
Questions:
- This is a mediatation about the paradoxical state of love.
- Define the term "paradox" (see glossary or dictionary).
- Explain the "paradoxical" effects of passionate love on the speaker of the poem.
- The phrase "lovely-agony" (line 7) is an example of an oxymoron.
- Define the term,"oxymoron" (see glossary or dictionary).
- Make up three of your own oxymorons and list them here.
- In lines 11-12, what "conceit" (literary comparison) does the speaker use to describe his condition?
- Look at the last two lines of the poem. Does the speaker believe he is in sync with the world, or out of sync with it? Explain.
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