Francesco Petrarch

 Petrarch was an Arretine, apparently.  And so was Giorgio Vasari.  Goodness.  The more I learn about Arezzo, the more impressed I am.  Petrarch was a very important early Renaissance scholar and poet.  He was highly educated, studying law at the University of Montpelier and the University of Bologna.  Boccaccio was a friend.  He was a writer, a Classicist, and his work Africa, a huge Latin poem that told the story of the Roman general Scipio Africanus, made him a star in Europe.  He traveled and lectured.  Being madly in love with the Classical world, and notable the work of Cicero, it was Petrarch who coined the term "the Dark Ages" as a moniker for the medieval era.  I guess we can forgive him for that because he did initiate humanist ideas and he was an awesome poet.

In Arezzo, you can visit his house (just close your eyes and imagine.... this building is built upon the spot where they think his house was, of course):

This exhibit is largely made up of a library of editions of Petrarch's work over the centuries.  Rooms and rooms of glorious old books.  When I was there, it was only me and a fellow geek who looked a lot like some worn-out academic.  Of course, I was fresh as a daisy :)

In April of 1327, Petrarch was following a calling to become a priest but this came to an abrupt end when he caught sight of a woman named "Laura," who was married.  Very much like the Dante/Beatrice story, he spends the rest of his life obsessed with her, writes many lyrical poems, and becomes the master of the sonnet.  The sonnet is a very cool poetic form in which a question, a situation, a problem, etc. is posed at the beginning and then worked out through the poem in very clever ways.  There may not be a definitive answer at the end, but there is movement... movement of thought, feeling, understanding.  Via poetry, or any other art, the individual employs intellect and emotion to ponder a dilemma.  It's humanism, darlings.

For example, here is Sonnet 227, which is about Laura:

Breeze, blowing that blonde curling hair,
stirring it, and being softly stirred in turn,
scattering that sweet gold about, then
gathering it, in a lovely knot of curls again,

you linger around bright eyes whose loving sting
pierces me so, till I feel it and weep,
and I wander searching for my treasure,
like a creature that often shies and kicks:

now I seem to find her, now I realise
she’s far away, now I’m comforted, now despair,
now longing for her, now truly seeing her.

Happy air, remain here with your
living rays: and you, clear running stream,
why can’t I exchange my path for yours?

In this, he addresses the wind, something from nature, of which he is very envious because it can get so intimately close to his love, Laura.  It can tousle her hair, touch her skin, and he cannot.  It is felt by eyes that don't see him, though he is in agony for just a glance.  Nothing he does can get him close to her.  But then he realizes that in his imagination, in his heart, he can get close... and that is his comfort.  Actually, in his art (poetry) he can get close.  So, in the end he tells the air, that has been captured in his poetry, that image for all eternity, stay here.  And then he addresses another thing from nature, a stream.  A CLEAR running stream.  Carefree, clear, moving on.  Again, envious.  Why can't I get over her?

And then there's Dante.  Even in HIS house, Petrarch can't move away from the comparison to Dante.  There are some marvelous Dante goodies here as well:

And after a lifetime of scholarship, unrequited love, endless poetry and horrible Latin lessons, apparently Petrarch just dropped dead at his desk:

Ugh.