Who was Petrarch?
Something about his life and works

Petrarch was undoubtedly the most important Italian poet of the XIV^th century. He is said to have started a new literary trend, the Humanism, together with Giovanni Boccaccio another famous writer of that period.

He was born in Arezzo on 20^th July, at dawn, and died in 1374 in Arquà, a village near Padua in the north of Italy.

His father Petracco  (i.e. Peter), had been sent into exile just like Dante and other people belonging to the Whites (a faction inside the Guelph party -the Guelphs and the Ghibellines were the two political parties of the time, supporting either the Emperor (the Ghibellines) or the Pope(the Guelphs) in their struggle of power. He thus moved to Arezzo, but only stayed shortly there. He started travelling in Italy and finally went to Avignon in France in 1312, the Pope’s seat at the time.

Petrarch was sent to Italy to study grammar law and returned to Avignon only after his parent’s death. Here in a church on 6^th April 1327 he first saw Laura, a woman he deeply felt in love with who then inspired all his main poems. He travelled trough France, Germany, Spain and England, coming back to Italy too. Anyway he loved to retire in solitude in Valchiusa, near Avignon where he dedicated himself to his favourite studies. On 1^st September 1340, both the University of Paris and Rome’s Senate invited him to be crowned poet laureate. He chose Rome, where he was solemnly crowned poet in Campidoglio on 8^th April 1341.

Some years later the Republic of Florence decided to give him back all the possessing which had been confiscated to his family on occasion of the exile. They also offered him the Florentine citizenship but he did not accept. He continued moving to different towns until he settled in Arquà where he died in 1374.

He wrote a lot and some of his work were written in Italian, “Il Canzoniere” and “I Trionfi”, some in Latin, “Africa”. He was sure his fame was mainly to be attributed to his Latin works, although his genius was more lyrical than epical. “Il Canzoniere” to be known and spread his influence in Italy and abroad. “Il Canzoniere” is a collection of poems about his love for “Madama Laura”, where he signs her physical and moral beauty, his hopes, his happiness and sorrows.

He had the constant wish to evade from reality and enter the cultural Olymp, even if he participated in the social life of his time, he was a studious of the ancients, homesick for the “lost paradise”: the past times!

Here follows one of his best sonnets:

“Solo e pensoso"

  Solo e pensoso i più deserti campi

Vo mesurando a passi tardi e lenti,

e gli occhi porto per fuggire intenti,

ove vestigio uman l’arena stampi.

Altro schermo non trovo che mi scampi

Dal manifesto accorger delle genti,

perché negli atti d’alegrezza spenti

di fuor si legge com’io dentro avvampi:

sì ch’io mi credo amai che monti e piagge,

e fiumi e selve sappian di che tempre

sia la mia vita, ch’è celata altrui.

Ma pur sì aspre vie, né sì selvagge

Cercar non so ch’Amor non venga sempre

Ragionando meco; et io con lui.