“Petrarch Sonnet” part 2
Pan took his hatchet, went to the forest
to cut a flute. A lewd flute. Mew Gulls mewed
near the shore. Spirits in the trees argued
about mildewed leaves, bedewed disgust. Lust,
for Pan, is the greenest of hewed green oak,
holiest wood. When he makes his flute sing
he calls all who'd be crude, rude and willing
to be nude to him. His tattooed kinfolk,
lush tribes, hear that roughhewed song. Even now
some cringe. For them, it is tabooed; passion
a feud with flesh. But we hear Pan's fluted
song, this mood prude's call shameful. It's a vow.
Why be a boorish virgin? Somehow, one
day, we shall be blessed, too, wicked, naked.
Today I have been thinking of the great god Pan, a fitting subject for a Petrarchan sonnet. Not Pan Jin Lian, the Chinese goddess of fornication and prostitution (though they probably hung out in the same discotheques), but Pan, the Greek god of woods, pastures, shepherds and sheep with his legs of a goat and body of a man. On his forehead rest two horns and his hairy body was filled with lice. He played wild carnal songs on a reed pipe and legend usually had him chasing nymph-girls through the forests and mountains. Oscar Wilde wrote in his poem, Pan:
Then blow some trumpet loud and free,
And give thine oaten pipe away,
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!
This modern world hath need of thee!
Oaten pipes? Nuts and honey. Still, as I said, Pan is today's subject matter. An Italian theme for an Italian sonnet. White and Rosen1 have this to say about the sonnet:
Despite its name, the sonnet is not a song. It is dramatic in nature, rather than lyric. Characteristically, it begins with a scene or image drawn from the external world, compares it by statement, implications, or symbol with some state of mind or emotion, and through analogy thus reflects upon or presents an insight into some particular or universal situation. Essentially it objectifies an inner conflict of some kind, commenting on or resolving it in brief compass. It is far more logical in structure, more precise in thought, more concise and unified in both substance and design than the ordinary lyric. In symmetry, its very life, is the internal logic, intellectual and emotional, that governs the balance and relationship of its parts. The qualities of a good sonnet are found not in its conformity to some external pattern but in its unity of design, condensation of thought, exactitude of language and image, and — even at its most meditative and abstract — its essentially dramatic nature. (White and Rosen, pages 2-3)
Perhaps this is where we need to start with our understanding of what makes a sonnet different from, say, free verse or other forms? This understand that it is dramatic, it tells a story of some sort. Stories are looked down upon in poetry right now. To follow a narrative flow, to go from point A to B to C is seen as hack work. Much better to create perplexity, confusion, discomfort in your work. The argument is that if the reader is confused, then the work must be deep. This is what you call a self-deception, fallacy, wishful thinking. It is the middle class assumption that readers need that discomfort to confront some struggle of the soul they had hitherto failed to understand. Like ugly public art, if you have to stare at it every single day, you might be forced to draw some conclusions. Perhaps that your tax money was spent on horrendous eye sores? Perhaps a Molotov Cocktail would be useful? Or, simply, that your public officials have ghastly taste in art? As The Onion put it, Artist Starving For A Reason.
But back to the Italian sonnet, Pan's sonnet:
The origin of the sonnet has been a matter of much speculation and controversy, but Italian writers of the thirteenth century … were the first to give it definite, permanent shape and character. Once devised, the form rapidly became popular in Italy and was brought to its perfection by Dante and Petrarch … Of the two, the influence of Petrarch was by far the greater … in his individuality, subjectivity, and curiosity [he] seemed like a modern … by the [time of the Renaissance in the ] sixteenth century "Petrarchismo" — a term applied to imitations of the poet more artifcal than artful — was at its height (White and Rosen, pages 4 - 5).
Ah, Petrarchismo! Something we will have to learn to avoid. So, in a nutshell, here are the basic concepts of the Petrarch love sonnet:
* Love is a frustrating though inspiring experience that suddenly drops into the poet's (startled) lap and changes the world forever.
* Poets are a melancholy yet obsessive bunch when it comes to love, alternating between a balance of lust and indifference, possibility and disillusionment.
* The speaker of the poem is usually a long-suffering (male) lover mulling over a Beloved (some chilly female) who cannot stand to be in the same room as the poet.
* The poet hopes that from deep devotion to the Beloved's rejections that somehow love will show itself again. This is called "stalking" in today's modern lingo. It was called "Courtly Love" in Petrarch's time.
* Because the poet's "devotion" rarely worked the mood of the sonnet can change from fainthearted, feverish, amorous, idealized, euphoric, despairing all in the first stanza.
* The Beloved usually dies in some horrid way and the poet then gets to write about meeting the Beloved in heaven, where she forgives him for making her life miserable while on earth.
* Petrarch's Beloved was named Laura; he apparently saw her while she was at church one day. Petrarch thus set the standard for our current glorification of fraudulent, unrealistic, problematic views in women, beauty and relationships and male poets since have only been too glad to go along.
But, you say, the Petrarch sonnet is not in vogue as it once was. What happened? To answer that we must thank the forefounders of American culture. By that, I mean, of course, the Puritans, who apparently could not stand Courtly Love or bad rhymes:
[With] the death of Elizabeth in 1603, the fashion of the Petrarchan love sonnet had burned itself out. The conditions, social and cultural, that had produced and encouraged it had changed, and a new age had begun for England and for poetry … Humanism, which spread the idea of Platonic love, had given way to an increased Puritanism and the growth of a critical attitude toward love … as immoral or trivial … Revulsion against Italy and things Italian fed on religious bigotry, fear of the Inquisition and … to associate the homeland of Dante and Petrarch with all manner of vice and immorality (White and Rosen, page 11).
Ironically, that we even have a debate at all as to the usefulness of the sonnet as a form in poetry just goes to show how influential the Puritans were in throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The 1960s habit of prohibiting anything that hinted at bourgeois sensibilities has produced a large number of poor sonnet writers. Regardless of what the editors of the Penguin Book of the Sonnet tell us, Billy Collins' attempts at sonnets ("We do not speak like Petrarch," page 276 and "All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now," page 277) do not please. Which is too bad, since much of the rest of his poems do.
Still, what is curious to me about the Petrarch sonnet is not what others have or have not done with it, rather what we can do with it now. That with it, somehow, we too shall be blessed … wicked, naked.
- White, Gertrude M., and Rosen, Joan G. A Moment's Monument: The Development of the Sonnet. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York (1972) [back]