Petrarch and Laura

Francesco Petrarch is best known for The Canzoniere: 366 poems written to/for his beloved Laura. He also wrote many fine letters - such as The Ascent of Mont Ventoux - and moral essays. His Secretum is a masterful discourse between himself, St. Augustine and Lady Truth. It is a profound and rigorous examination of conscience. He is often referred to as the Father of Humanism and was an inspiration to countless poets, including Shakespeare. He was crowned with laurels in Rome for his tremendous literary achievements and is usually pictured thus.

POEMS TO LAURA
Francesco Petrarch

Discussion questions:
1. The Muse: what part does she play in the artist's life and work?

2. "For the very art of being a Muse is to nourish love in the poet, to let him realize that she loves him - that in fact she loves him much too well ever to grant him anything." - Etienne Gilson, Choir of Muses. Do all Muses love this well? What happens when they don't? Is it necessary to the poet and his poetry that his Muse be unattainable?

3. "Laura is for [Petrarch] the straight road leading to the supreme Good; but though he is sure to reach this Good through her, he will never win the woman herself by whom he comes there." - Choir of Muses. Is Laura as successful as Beatrice in her mission of leading her lover to God? Do modern Muses understand the nature of their responsibility?

4. Petrarch's love is clearly, if not wholly, carnal. Are his poems more, or less, appealing than poems devoted to purely spiritual love?

5. Is Petrarch sincere? Is he in love with a real woman, or his own image of her (which does not change over the years), or in love with being in love? Which is easier? Does it matter?

6. The fruit of Petrarch's love is his poetry, but is it overly introspective?

7. His struggles against vice are a recurring theme; is a moral battleground necessary to good poetry?

Further Reading:
- Choir of Muses, Etienne Gilson, Sheed & Ward, 1953

Of Related Interest:
- Cyrano de Bergerac, play written by Edmond Rostand, 1897
- Cyrano de Bergerac, 1950, film starring Jose Ferrer, who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for this performance.

Dostoyevsky Is Not Considered Summer Reading

Summer Reading:

1. 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff - The charming correspondence between a New Yorker and an English book dealer.

2. The Professor & the Madman by Simon Winchester - Truth is stranger than fiction. A tale of murder, insanity & the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Caution: there are some disturbing elements to the madness.

3. Autobiography of a Hunted Priest by John Gerard, S.J. - The story of an English Jesuit on the mission under Elizabeth I & James I. It reads like a suspense novel. Some editions have an introduction by Graham Greene.

4. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K.Jerome - Delightful Victorian humor.

5. Wodehouse on Crime - P.G.Wodehouse - One of the better anthologies; sure to please.

6. A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle - Laugh out loud. The first in a great series.

7. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson - Ditto.

8. Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene

Then and Now

"When lovely woman stoops to folly,
And finds too late that men betray,
What charm can soothe her melancholy?
What art can wash her tears away?

The only art her guilt to cover,
To hide her shame from ev'ry eye,
To give repentance to her lover,
And wring his bosom is - to die."

Oliver Goldsmith - She Stoops to Conquer
(2001 Reading List)



"When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces around her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramaphone."

T.S.Eliot - The Waste Land
(2006 Reading List)

Life of Johnson

James Boswell's lengthy biography of Samuel Johnson is available in both abridged and unabridged editions. It is wise to begin with the abridged! I found an abridged version - Everybody's Boswell (G.Bell & Sons, London, 1930) - illustrated by Ernest Shepard, of all people. His illustrations are typically charming.

Boswell was the first to use actual conversation as material for biography. And Dr. Johnson had conversation in abundance: he was a philosopher, scholar, wit, curmudgeon and Establishment man.

This painting of Johnson, circa 1772, is by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Discuss the following quotes:

(Honorary Member) Matt Anger's selections:

"Pity is not natural to man. Children are always cruel. Savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason."

"If he really does think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons."

"The history of manners is the most valuable. I never set a high value on any other history."

"Why, Sir, most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things."

"The excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged, must end in disappointment. If it be asked, what is the improper expectation which it is dangerous to indulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is such expectation raised as is dictated not by reason, but by desire; expectations raised, not by the common occurrences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an expectation that requires the common course of things to be changed, and the general rules of action to be broken."

Anna's selections:

"Nature has given women so much power that the law has wisely given them little."

"One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts."

"Go into the street and give one man a lecture on morality and another a shilling, and see which will respect you most."

And for many more great quotes go here.