Ugo Dotti

I bought Doti's Vita di Petrarca in Milano, 1999. Four hundred and eighty large, 9” pages, though I skip here and there, reading thoroughly the last third, especially the end where he lives in the house in Arquà that Carrara gave him the land for. His last seven years: picture of my Italian daughter and me on the porch of Petrarch’s casa in Arquà on my website, habitableworlds.com.

Petrarch’s father knew Dante; Ser Petrarca was a notai, a notary. In an age when many people were illiterate, notaries were a boon; unfortunately, now in the 21stC, Italian notai are paid as if everyone is still illiterate— €6,000 for buying a casa, half officially, by the buyer, but usually doubled by the seller. Compare a U.S. Notary Public fee for a document in Massachusetts: $1.25. The downside to the prominence of FP’s father: he got caught up in the Guelf and Ghibelline acrid politics.

Just about when the poet moved to Arqua, the Pope, Urban V, moved the Papacy back from Avignon to Rome, which was in disrepair, April 30, 1367. Urban had been a surprise choice, a humble abbot at odds with church corruption, “Come Dio gli ha già mostrato la sua misericordia….” Petrarch had written a couple letters to the Pope urging this move, though of course the French Cardinals hated Petrarch for it. Petrarch had praised Italy as an alternative to the corruptions of the French Cardinals: also, because of prior popes and Rome’s needs. (382) Doti says the Cardinals all preferred France because of the Burgundian wine and food.

Petrarch was worried his letter urging the move might offend the Pope, so he found a specific messenger to take it to the papal secretary Bruni to check it before letting two others see it, and then give to the Pope if they agreed he would not be offended. (383)

Poor Petrarch didn’t learn Greek ‘til his thirties, around the first edition of Canzoniere, partly because his teachers were famous and travelled—the first one to Constantinople and Avignon. The poet’s “second father” Dionigi became bishop of Monopoli (not the board game, a town in Puglia south of Bari, with a great cathedral and tower). Doti laments that nearing forty Petrarch’s knowledge of Greek “rimasero a uno stato abbastanza elementare”(106). Yes, “Elementary,” but he neglects to say whether First Grade or Sixth.

As for his three hundred sonnets, the English importers Wyatt and Surrey in the 16C mostly brought his antitheses, oxymora, and euphuistic wit, though relatively few of his sonnets feature antitheses. Many more are excurses in sensibility, like “Solo e pensoso” (#28), or even incipient madness like “S’io credesse” and “Non d’atra e tempestosa unda” (118). And there is much questioning of the poet’s own judgement, like Christopher Smart or even John Berryman. (I should confess I have taken this paragraph almost verbatim from a book, This Critical Age, in only 4 university libraries. And on my home shelf, my doctoral thesis at U Minnesota, 1976.)

In one sonnet, “La gola, e’l sonno,” he tells of the world losing desire for achievement, the laurel and myrtle, originally for military triumphs, laurel eventually for poets. Gluttony and sloth have reduced such purpose, almost banned it so that in due course, “quasi smarrita/ nostra natura, vinta dal costume.” (101) I would claim this true of the US, where social media and other pop customs (“costume”) have reduced our nature. He also prays Signor about the eleven years he submitted to an unpitying yoke. (Must check his bio about those years.)… (mer)