Petrarch’s Canzoniere: Scattered Rhymes in a New Verse Translation

By Peter Thornton

Category: All Books, Poetry

Formats available: Paperback, Ebook, Audiobook

Pages: 368

Publication date: 10/01/23

ISBN-13: 9781909954335

ISBN-10: 1909954330

PETRARCH FOR THE MODERN EAR

“A brilliant new translation of Petrarch’s intensely introspective verse: polished, vivid, and accompanied by illuminating annotations at the ends of poems.” – Dr Selene Scarsi

Petrarch’s Canzoniere (translated in English as ‘Scattered Rhymes’) is a collection of 14th century poems famed for their deep exploration of love, grief, spirituality and nature. Written over the course of forty years (approximately between 1328-1368), this collection includes 317 sonnets, 29 canzoni, 9 sestine, 4 madrigals and 7 ballate.

These Scattered Rhymes almost always return to Laura, a women who Petrarch loves deeply, whom he first saw on a Good Friday. On this same day, some years later, Laura died. But Petrarch’s love does not wane, in fact at points it burns brighter. Il Canzoniere also serves as a valuable contemporary insight into 14th century religion and the role of the papacy in Christendom.

Petrarch’s work is one of civilization’s most immaculate achievements. Michael R. G. Spiller regards Il Canzoniere as ‘the single greatest inspiration for the love poetry of Renaissance Europe until well into the seventeenth century’.

Following his acclaimed translation of Dante’s Inferno, which ‘immediately joins ranks with the very best available in English’ (Dr Richard Lansing), Peter Thornton brings the poetry of Petrarch to the 21st Century in direct and luminous verse.

Here’s a madrigal, number 52 in the sequence.

52

However much Diana may have pleased
the lover who by like chance spied her bare
amid the frigid water, I no less

delighted in the shy hill shepherdess
washing a wisp of veil to keep her hair,
glinting with gold, protected from the breeze.

And even now, when the sky burns above,
she makes me shiver with a chill of love.

 

 

Reviews

Petrarch’s Laura, presuming she existed, was unattainable, but what is verse for? Every step of the journey -- never straightforward -- towards attainment is precisely marked by Petrarch, and no less so by Peter Thornton in this magnificent new translation that is as soaring as it is earthly.

- Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

"A brilliant new translation of Petrarch’s intensely introspective verse: polished, vivid, and accompanied by illuminating annotations at the ends of poems. This concise commentary provides the reader with welcome, non-intrusive guidance, ranging from helpful historical contextualisation to perceptive textual interpretation, and quietly points out later echoes of the poems, from Proust to blues—testament to Petrarch’s lasting currency. An invaluable new resource for both the consummated Petrarch student and the first-time reader."

- Dr Selene Scarsi – Kingston University, London

Peter Thornton

Peter was born in Key West, Florida and moved to New York City with his parents shortly after World war 2. He was a greatly accomplished attorney, professor, poet, translator, and scholar. Throughout his life, Peter was a voracious reader and a serious scholar. He spoke and read, to varying degrees, eight languages: In addition to his native English, Peter knew Italian, French, Spanish, Latin, Greek, German, and Arabic. He went to Regis High School, a Jesuit high school for gifted students, in Manhattan, followed by a full scholarship to …

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A Petrarchan sonnet, a love poem in a fresh translation

“Given the impossibility of reproducing Petrarch’s verbal music in English,” writes Peter Thornton in his introduction to Petrach’s Canzoniere, “I decided that my goal was not to convey the matter of Petrarch’s sonnets and canzoni in adequately carpentered English that closely followed his grammar, let alone his difficult Italian syntax, which …