Francesco Petrarca The famous expression of Petrarch

Francesco Petrarca
The famous expression of Petrarch:
« Il saggio muta consiglio, ma lo stolto resta della
sua opinione. »
TRANSLATION IN ENGLISH:
« The wise man changes his mind, but the fool
man doesn’t changes his mind. »
Life:
Francesco Petrarca was born in Arezzo (20th July 1304)
and he was an Italian poet. He is known in English as
Petrarch.
Petrarch is often popularly called the "Father of
Humanism". Based on Petrarch's works, and to a lesser
extent those of Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio,
in the 16th century a model for the modern Italian
language was created. Petrarch is credited with
developing the sonnet. His sonnets were admired and
imitated in Europe during the Renaissance and became a
model for lyrical poetry. Petrarch was also known for
being one of the first people to call the Middle Ages the
Dark Ages, although the negative connotation of that
word, as we know it today, is largely the legacy of
romantic literature.
Petrarch died in Arquà (19th July 1374).
The Canzoniere:
The most important written work of Petrarch is “The Canzoniere”.
This work is written in a vernacular language.
Of its 366 Rime , the vast majority are in sonnet form (317), though the
sequence contains a number of canzoni (29), sestine (9), madrigals (4),
and ballads (7). Its central theme is the poet's love for Laura, a woman
Petrarch allegedly met on April 6th, 1327, in the Church of Sainte
Claire in Avignon. Petrarch's meticulous dating of his manuscripts has
allowed scholars to deduce that the poems were written over a period
of forty years, with the earliest dating from shortly after 1327, and the
latest around 1368. The transcription and ordering of the sequence
itself went on until 1374, the year of the poet's death. The two sections
of the sequence which are divided by Laura's death have traditionally
been labelled 'In vita' (In life') and 'In morte' (In death) respectively,
though Petrarch made no such distinction. His work would go on to
become what Spiller calls 'the single greatest influence on the love
poetry of Renaissance Europe until well into the seventeenth century'.
Voi ch'ascoltate in rime sparse il suono:
ORIGINAL TEXT:
TRANSLATION IN ENGLISH:
Voi ch'ascoltate in rime sparse il suono
di quei sospiri ond'io nudriva 'l core
in sul mio primo giovenile errore
quand'era in parte altr'uom da quel ch'i'
sono,
You who hear the sound, in scattered
rhymes,
of those sighs on which I fed my heart,
in my first vagrant youthfulness,
when I was partly other than I am,
del vario stile in ch'io piango et ragiono
fra le vane speranze e 'l van dolore,
ove sia chi per prova intenda amore,
spero trovar pietà, nonché perdono.
I hope to find pity, and forgiveness,
for all the modes in which I talk and weep,
between vain hope and vain sadness,
in those who understand love through its
trials.
Ma ben veggio or sí come al popol tutto
favola fui gran tempo, onde sovente
di me mesdesmo meco mi vergogno;
et del mio vaneggiar vergogna è 'l frutto,
e 'l pentersi, e 'l conoscer chiaramente
che quanto piace al mondo è breve sogno
Yet I see clearly now I have become
an old tale amongst all these people, so that
it often makes me ashamed of myself;
and shame is the fruit of my vanities,
and remorse, and the clearest knowledge
of how the world's delight is a brief dream.
…The end…
Thank you very much for your attention
Work of: Marotta Francesco and Stefano Cipro