A Brief History of the Sonnet.
Chapter 2 - Dante, Cavalcanti, Michaelangelo and the terza rima sonnet. (All rights reserved by Dr Koshy AV)
Petrarch's father knew Dante Alighieri. This is not fortuitous. Before we talk of the Petrarchan sonnet, we need to talk of two seminal figures, Dante Alighieri and Guido Cavacanti, and the terza rima sonnet and Cavalcanti's contribution to the Petrarchan sonnets. And as a bonus, I want to toss in something on Michaelangelo Buonarotti for all of you, my dear readers.
But first the terza rima sonnet. Like the Petrarchan one it has 14 lines but the stanzas go in threes except for the last one which only has two and the rhyme scheme is interlocking with an aba, bcb, cdc, ded, ee pattern so the very last line of the sonnet and/or the series (of sonnets) written in terza rima has to rhyme with the middle line of the previous tercet (three lines). Terza refers to the stanzaic form and rima to the fact that it has to rhyme. Its originator was Dante and he used it in the Divine Comedy and it swept the world. I would like to give an example from one of the most famous poems in the Western world, by PB Shelley "Ode to the West Wind." When western poets used this form they naturally tended to write it in iambic pentametre, meaning lines having five feet or ten syllables, and going da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM, to keep the beat or the metronome too intact, not to mention stressed-unstressed &/or accented-unaccented, being Shakespearean and Elizabethan in this matter.
I am not going to quote Dante as it brings in Italian and people do not read that and instead read the translation and get confused as the appearance changes as in translation into English the syllables become less. But Shelley is ideal in both his mastery of the ode and the terza rima as well as in his mastery of sound and all the tropes of poetry.
I
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, - a
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead -b
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, -a
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, -b
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, -c
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed -b
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, -c
Each like a corpse within its grave, until -d
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow -c
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill -d
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) - e
With living hues and odours plain and hill: -d
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; - e
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear! -e
I don't know how many people realize or know that the power of the poem "Ode to the West Wind" stems from it being five terza rima sonnets in iambic pentametre. While his ear for metre is impeccable, so is his eye for rhyme though he uses a couple of slant rhymes with 'thou' and 'where', to fulfil his purpose. Nowadays people speak of free verse, and imagery and figures of speech simply to hide their paucity in mastering sound devices, genre, structure and form and depths of meaning, but it is excusable to not write in metre only if one is not a native speaker. It does not make it right for them to not find it laudable when done exquisitely in the names of silly literary theories like decolonization.
Another poet who needs to be seen as a forerunner of the Petrarchan sonnet is Guido Cavalcanti.
"Guido Cavalcanti, was born in 1255, in Florence [Italy and died on Aug. 27/28, 1300, Florence), Italian poet, a major figure among the Florentine poets who wrote in the dolce stil nuovo (“sweet new style”) and who is considered, next to Dante, the most striking poet and personality in 13th-century Italian literature.
Born into an influential Florentine family of the Guelf (papal) party, Guido Cavalcanti studied under the philosopher and scholar Brunetto Latini, who earlier had been the teacher of Dante. Cavalcanti married the daughter of the rival Ghibelline (imperial) party leader Farinata degli Uberti but joined the White Guelf faction when, in 1300, that party split into Blacks and Whites. That same year, Dante, who had dedicated several poems to Cavalcanti and called him his “first friend,” apparently was involved in banishing Cavalcanti from Florence. In exile in Sarzana, Cavalcanti contracted malaria and was permitted to return to Florence, where he died.
Cavalcanti’s strong, temperamental, and brilliant personality and the poems that mirror it were admired by many contemporary poets and such important later ones as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Ezra Pound. He left about 50 poems, many addressed to two women: Mandetta, whom he met in Toulouse in 1292, and Giovanna, whom he calls Primavera (“Springtime”). Cavalcanti’s poems glow with the brilliance, grace, and directness of diction characteristic of the "dolce stil nuovo (sweet new style)" at its best. Love is the poet’s dominant theme, generally love that causes deep suffering.
Two of Cavalcanti’s poems are canzoni, a type of lyric derived from Provençal poetry, of which the most famous is “Donna mi prega” (“A Lady Asks Me”), a beautiful and complex philosophical analysis of love, the subject of many later commentaries. Others are sonnets and ballate (ballads), the latter type usually considered his best.
...Cavalcanti’s poetry was first collected in 1527 and later in Le rime de Guido Cavalcanti (1902). Many poems were translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in The Early Italian Poets (1861; later retitled Dante and His Circle) and by Ezra Pound in The Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti (1912)."
Here is his best sonnet according to some - and here we find the Petrarchan sonnet already nascent or ab ovo, there in essence even before Petrarch/Petrarca, though with variations in the rhyme scheme. Rosetti has cast it in iambic pentametre.
Who is she coming, whom all gaze upon (Cavalcanti)
(Translated by D.G. Rossetti)
Who is she coming, whom all gaze upon, - a
Who makes the air all tremulous with light, - b
And at whose side is Love himself? that none - c
Dare speak, but each man’s sighs are infinite. -b
Ah me! how she looks round from left to right, - b
Let Love discourse: I may not speak thereon. - a
Lady she seems of such high benison -c
As makes all others graceless in men’s sight. -b
The honour which is hers cannot be said; -d
To whom are subject all things virtuous, -e
While all things beauteous own her deity. -f
Ne’er was the mind of man so nobly led, -d
Nor yet was such redemption granted us -e
That we should ever know her perfectly. f
Here we see that it is still a continuous flow but the stanzas are demarcated by the change in rhyme scheme, as usual, so it is an octave and sestet. Cavalcanti's lady is very much an idealized figure, seat of all virtues and so a bit boring like Beatrice, but his poetry is lovable and for those interested in gossip her name was Mandetta or Giovanna, or both. She is plural!
Last, but not least, my personal favourite Michael Angelo Buonarotti of whose sonnets there is a copy in Thiruvananthapuram Public Library that my eldest brother brought home. Most of the best things in my life came through him. I read it enchanted as they were exquisite love poems, and later found out to my surprise that they were probably for Tomasso Cavallieri, as he was gay. I loved them and still do, the sonnets: as they remind me of these lines by Robert Browning from "One Word More," his preface to his famous Fifty Men and Women, that made the dramatic monologue the form the Victorian Age's poetry would be remembered by.
"This: no artist lives and loves that longs not
Once, and only once, and for One only, 60
(Ah, the prize!) to find his love a language
Fit and fair and simple and sufficient—
Using nature that’s an art to others,
Not, this one time, art that’s turn’d his nature.
Ay, of all the artists living, loving, 65
None but would forego his proper dowry,—
Does he paint? he fain would write a poem,—
Does he write? he fain would paint a picture,
Put to proof art alien to the artist’s,
Once, and only once, and for One only, 70
So to be the man and leave the artist,
Save the man’s joy, miss the artist’s sorrow."
To return to Michael Angelo, all know his paintings (the Sistine chapel) and sculptures (Moses, David, the Pieta) but few know his poetry so let me close this chapter with his exquisite sonnet of his that is famous called The Silkworm
D' altrui pietoso.
Kind to the world, but to itself unkind, - a
A worm is born, that dying noiselessly -b
Despoils itself to clothe fair limbs, and be -b
In its true worth by death alone divined. - a
Oh, would that I might die, for her to find - a
Raiment in my outworn mortality! -b
That, changing like the snake, I might be free -b
To cast the slough wherein I dwell confined! -a
Nay, were it mine, that shaggy fleece that stays, c
Woven and wrought into a vestment fair, -d
Around her beauteous bosom in such bliss! -e
All through the day she'd clasp me! Would I were -d
The shoes that bear her burden! When the ways - c
Were wet with rain, her feet I then should kiss! -e
And yes, it is a Petrarchan sonnet! (translated by J Aldington Symonds)
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