Petrarchan Love

One day in class my professor used a term to describe a type of love, “Petrarchan.”

Have you ever “fallen in love” with someone you can never have?

Maybe it was a crush on the popular boy or girl in your high school or maybe it’s an obsession with a celebrity that goes beyond fandom, in any case, we have all probably felt that kind of love before. An infatuation with a person that is more than perfect, they are every fantasy you have ever have personified and walking the earth.

I researched the term “Petrarchan” and discovered it is derived from a fourteenth century poet named Francesco Petrarch. This man is amazing.

Petrarch

Petrarch lived in the early fourteenth century and had a passion for literature. His father wanted him to become a lawyer, but Petrarch felt that the legal profession was “selling justice” and refused to practice. Instead he became a priest in the catholic church and spent his days reading and writing literature. He was not allowed to marry and never fell in love during his time as a priest.

This is where the story gets good…

After leaving his profession as a priest he was in the church on Good Friday, it was a beautiful spring day and he was 23. In church, he saw a 17 year old girl named Laura; it was love at first sight. She was already married to an older man and refused Petrarch because of that, but did that stop his love? Absolutely not.

Laura became the inspiration for one of Petrarch’s greatest works, a collection of 366 poems called Il Canzoniere. Here is an exceprt about the day he first laid eyes on her…

It was on that day when the sun's ray
was darkened in pity for its Maker,
that I was captured, and did not defend myself,
because your lovely eyes had bound me, Lady.

It did not seem to me to be a time to guard myself
against Love's blows: so I went on
confident, unsuspecting; from that, my troubles
started, amongst the public sorrows.

Love discovered me all weaponless,
and opened the way to the heart through the eyes,
which are made the passageways and doors of tears:

so that it seems to me it does him little honour
to wound me with his arrow, in that state,
he not showing his bow at all to you who are armed.

Imagine a love so intense and real that the idea of that person alone inspires hundreds of poems. Petrarch’s love for Laura was unceasing and although it brought great inspiration, it caused him even greater agony. He had contempt for men who persused women and wrote poems exclaiming Laura’s beauty and magnificence rather than love poems to woo her to him. Petrarch put Laura on a pedestal and glorified her name with his writing. He loved her unconditionally and that love was real, even though he was never able to have her.

Petrarch loved Laura until the day she died. She died at the age of 38, meaning Petrarch loved her for 21 years. Upon her death he experienced extreme grief and never loved again.

That is Petrarchan love.

Petrarch wasn’t and isn’t alone. My professor used “petrarchan” love to describe the feelings of many modernist writers, Matthew Arnold being my favorite. The poor guy fell in love with a girl that didn’t love him back…

We were apart; yet, day by day,
I bade my heart more constant be.
I bade it keep the world away,
And grow a home for only thee;
Nor fear'd but thy love likewise grew,
Like mine, each day, more tried, more true.

The fault was grave! I might have known,
What far too soon, alas! I learn'd--
The heart can bind itself alone,
And faith may oft be unreturn'd.
Self-sway'd our feelings ebb and swell--
Thou lov'st no more;--Farewell! Farewell!

Arnold struggled with isolation and quite naturally a woman occupied his thoughts. Unlike Petrarch however, many of the modernist authors did not embrace their unrequited love, but bemoaned their loneliness and complained about their circumstances.

In our day we are no different than Petrarch or Arnold. Whether we like to admit it or not we all fall in love. We have to fall in love. In many ways Arnold mirrored the attitude of John Donne’s idea that, “no man is an island entire of itself.” As hard as we try to tell ourselves otherwise, we can’t, and don’t want to be alone. It helps to know that through the ages, people have felt just like we do.

So the next time you fall in love with a cute boy or girl you always see in the library, don’t feel so bad facebook stalking them, Petrarch or Arnold would do the same.

The Sorrows of Young Werther

In English class I heard a story that I fell in love with.

A book titled, “The Sorrows of Young Werther” by Goethe is a semi-autobiographical account of a  young romantic man who is known for boldly wearing a yellow waist coast with his blue jacket. The book is a fictional collection of letters written from the main character Werther to his friend Wilhelm.

The letters recount Werthers infatuation and love for a girl his age named Charlotte who is engaged to a much older man. Werther does his best to be friends with Charlotte and her fiancé but is so pained by her presence and circumstance that he decides to leave. Eventually his love for Charlotte and inability to be with her brings so much anguish that he decides one of the three, himself, Charlotte, or her fiancé, must die. Unable and unwilling to murder, he decides it is himself that must die and in a memorable and dramatic act, shoots himself in the head, leaving behind a farewell letter. His deep unfailing love for someone who he could not have drove Werther to suicide. He would rather die than live in a world with out his love. What a “romantic” idea.

This work by Goethe is undoubtedly the beginning of what some would jokingly call EMO. However, its story and character are powerful enough that it provides fuel for works across the ages with a rage of titles anywhere from Romeo and Juliet to Catcher in the Rye. The poignant story of a young person trapped in his or her feelings, so introverted and able to feel, so sensitive to their environment, that they wince when touched emotionally. The light at the end of their tunnel is either too far in the distance to ever reach or something they completely don’t understand, and instead of seeking to decipher anything at all, they plow forward, unsure of the direction, but onward into the light. Goethe was a genius, not for his ability to write a piece like this, but for his unabashed honesty and the genuine heart of the novel that pumps real life, feelings, and experience into the story.

Werthers have and always will exist. They are the best and worst in all of us. They are what make us human. The ability to love - not only the ability, but the choice to love - even when that love is unrequited. The foolish decisions made in moments of passion are what define some of the biggest events mankind will ever know. Its almost no wonder Werther was driven to suicide, these paramount feelings and thoughts, metaphorically as big as mountains, the same mountains that the world carries on its shoulders, are all raging with life and intensity inside a young boy.

Imagine 20 stray cats crammed into a burlap sack that is tied shut. The noise. The movement. The desperate clawing and howling of 20 enraged cats. Imagine Werthers emotional insides. Imagine how torn he felt. Ripped to pieces by relentless thoughts and feelings. Charlotte alone holds the scissors, the way out. 

Romantics

Oh to be a romantic. Studying the romantic period in English this year has been one of the most interesting topics I have covered in college this far. Conventionally, the word “Romantic” in our time has a connotation associated with love or passion.  “Romantic” novels fill bookstore shelves covered in pictures of a half naked Fabio seducing some emotionally distressed damsel.  A romantic night usually entails candles, cuddling, and copious lovemaking. These modern definitions of “Romantic” are far from the original meaning of the word.

I began to understand the meaning of Romanticism through another word, rebellion. The age of enlightenment began somewhere around the beginning of the eighteenth century. I studied into this period to better understand the circumstances that gave rise to the romantics. This period essentially focused on the use of reason as a form of intelligence and authority giving rise to common sense (liberty, natural laws, and inherent rights). This was a drastic change from the time of kings and aristocrats who based their authority on their title and the intelligence and knowledge was reserved to a small percent of the people, keeping them in power.  The period of enlightenment dominated the first half of the eighteenth century eventually giving birth the romantics mid eighteenth century.

Romantics were figuratively like new borns in the society they lived in. They valued innocence, youth, asthetic experience, emotion, and sought out the spiritual or unseen truths. The values and mindset of the romantics were drastically different from those of the enlightened period. Many fresh new romantics sported colored wigs (opposed to the white powdered ones of the time) and were proud of their youthfulness. It had been a commonplace in that time for youth to be frowned upon and age was associated with intelligence, position, and power. Romantics changed that paradigm.