Monica Louis
Discussing women poets using Petrarchism, draws back to how the female protagonist of Petrarch's poems is heard if at all. Laura only speaks after her death. Whenever she speaks, her speech is praised for being articulate rather than having any rational quality. In sonnet 200 of the Rerum vulgariam fragmenta, Petrarch praises Laura's physical beauty once again, but at the cost of being deaf to what she is saying. He draws attention to her “sweet words”, “lovely angelic mouth” and her teeth and lips as though being pearls and roses.
A defining trope of Petrarchism is that the poet's love is unrequited, or more specifically, inconsumable. Laura was unattainable to Petrarch in the first phase because she was a married lady, loyal to her husband. This was not admitted by Petrarch himself, who explained the unavailability because of Laura's spiritual purity, however, it was a known fact according to critics. In the second phase Laura is unavailable, admitted by the poet in this case because she is in the grave. Both these reasons do not make the physical consummation of the poet's desire possible. This was also probably a requirement for Laura to be considered to be of spiritual significance because fitting the Renaissance female ideals, a woman had to be chaste. It is this moral code which served as an agency in disguise, for aspiring female writers such as Vittoria Colonna (1492-1547), Gaspara Stampa (1523-1554) and Veronica Gambara (1485-1550). They were accepted because following the Petrarchan tradition meant, their desires were not and would never be physically fulfilled. Gaspara Stampa was one exception to this, the discussion of which follows.
If the unfulfillment for the male poet was because the lady was married, thereafter in the grave, the unfulfillment for the women poets were for different circumstances. The common circumstance was distance from their husband due to losing them through death, as for Vittoria Colonna and Veronica Gambara. Colonna was the widow of the Marquis of Pescara. Gambara was widow to Lord Gilberto X Correggio and was also known at this time as dowager Countess of Correggio. Both Gambara and Colonna were influenced by the Venetian poet and literary theorist Pietro Bembo (1470-1547). Bembo was a leading cultural theorists at this time in Italy and his exchange with both poets in his Rime of 1535 could be seen to have been the advent of women's voice in verses into elite lyric tradition, as Bembo's collection was a defining text of Italian Petrarchism. Gaspara Stampa on the other hand was yearning for a man not married to her but was serving in the French Army. Stampa's stance was definitely of a different extent.
Veronica Gambara
Veronica Gambara (1485-1550) was Brescian-born. A sonnet exchange between Gambara and Bembo establishes validity of the female voice. The sonnet exchange was first published in Bembo's Rime of 1535. In the modern edition by Bullock, the sonnet number 36 written by Gambara reads :
‘‘In the ardent desire that has always fired me to follow the path that leads to heaven, you alone were lacking, my dear serene light, to dispel the obscuring mists; but now that your ray is shining in me, trusted leader, I can follow you along the way of righteousness.
for this is now entirely my object. All base desires have ceased in me, and my soul now feeds solely on honor and rare virtue, o my dear, sweet, and honored fire, since from your gentle heat eternal fame and true glory are born.’’
In response to this verse of homage, Bembo writes, as sonnet 126 reads :
“That sweet sound, which clearly shows how bright a heavenly ray shines within you, now leads me back, after so many years, into the noose in which I was once caught, and renders me to you as a captive. I feel your lovely hand taking the knot and so tightening it that the end of my light seems nigh, but my soul neither flees from you nor offers any defense, for every pain it suffers for you seems rather a joy, and death becomes life. And so I thank Love, who has been my lord since my earliest days, and your fine mind, which I praise without cease, and that former desire that within my heart unfolds and is reborn like a flower in spring.”
Clearly, Bembo's response goes off the tracks of the guide and the disciple acquaintance. Like Petrarch paying more attention to Laura's physicality to her words, Bembo does the same. However, with patience to read through the seemingly patriarchal dominance, one will find rather a role reversal of the genders from the source tradition. In addressing Bembo as her spiritual guide, Gambara is actually equating his role to that of Laura as signified by Petrarch in sonnet 36 which reads :
“My noble lady, I see a sweet light in your eyes as they move that shows me the path that leads to heaven, and, there within, where, through long habit, I sit alone with Love, your heart almost visibly shines through. This is the vision that induces me to righteousness and leads me to that glorious end; this vision alone distances me from the vulgar herd....”
Bembo's response then becomes a prized compliment because he praises her attempt playing the role of Poet, praising Laura, her spiritual duce, who in this case is Bembo himself. Equality in the sonnet exchange is established, as Gambara plays the poet and makes Bembo her Laura and Bembo then plays the poet, making her the Laura. The exchange is metaliterary and the role playing serves as assurances of reciprocity, whether of love or just of appreciation, that is open to interpretation.
Vittoria Colonna
Vittoria Colonna (1490-1547) was among the noted Italian elite women writers. An example of Vittoria Colonna's poetic style modeled on Petrarchism is "Scrivo Sol per sfogar l'interna doglia", translated as "I write only to relieve the inner pain", where she grieves for her dead husband. She wishes to keep her verses simple as she wants no praise for her writing as her intentions to write are only to grieve. She writes :
“I write only to relieve the inner pain that was caused to my heart by those shining eyes, unique in this world, and not to add luster to my lovely Sun, to his bright spirit and revered mortal remains. A just cause leads me to lament, and it sorely pains me that I may detract from his glory; his great name deserves to be rescued from death by a loftier trumpet and wiser words. May my pure faith, my ardor, my intense suffering serve as my excuse among all who read. for my oppressive grief is such that neither time nor reason can restrain it. Bitter weeping, not sweet song, dark sighs, not a serene voice: the merits of my verse are not those of style but of sorrow.”
The last line, “...the merits of my verse are not those of style but of sorrow” calls to attention. What Colonna models this verse on is an echo of Sonnet 187 of Rerum vulgariam fagmenta, where he laments Laura's death and his inability to do any justice to the death. Reading Colonna's lines, the reader will be reminded of this trope and be assured that she is following the footsteps of the great sonneteer and so, her lines are worth attention.
In sonnet 187 itself, Petrarch celebrates his Laura being worthy of Homer and Virgil as their subjects for poetry. Thus, he makes a comparison of Laura, his subject, to subjects as heroic as Achilles or Aeneas. Colonna makes no such lofty comparisons to praise her husband, primarily because her subject, being male, does not require male parameters of heroism as Laura requires, according to Petrarch. Her position as a female writer is conscious.
In grieving for her lover, Colonna also takes the position of Laura herself, as her voice when she is in distress. Throughout the collection, Laura is rarely heard speaking. In the sequence of sonnets from 155-158 of Rerum vulgariam fragmenta, Laura is portrayed as weeping profusely for reasons unexplained, plausibly for seperation. This sequence is modeled on an episode in Vita Nuova where Beatrice mourns the death of her father. Colonna, weeping for her dead husband, fulfills the picture of Laura portrayed by Petrarch. Colonna gets a sense of identity and belonging in highbrow poetry, by mirroring the image of the weeping female voice. Colonna's voice as the poet herself and also by mirroring the grieving Laura, evokes a voice that is an amalgamation of both Petrarch and Laura.
Another remodeling of the Petrarchan trope that Colonna does is in the praise of bodily beauty of the subject. In wishing to experiment on this, she takes a more acceptable place, under the shelter of love for God. Her praise comes from devotional love, contrasting Petrarch's, coming from earthly love. In the end of her Rime in the 1539 edition in 'Il Trionfo della Croce' ('The Triumph of the Cross'), celebrating the divine beauty of Jesus's body even after being crucified. Her praises reads as :
“I saw his honored and sacred head.../ and his pierced hand, which takes and gives.../ Upon his sacred shoulders... at his sacred feet.”
Perhaps here as well, she is a very conscious female writer, carefully choosing her shelter of divine love.
Gaspara Stampa
Gaspara Stampa was the daughter of a gold merchant. Though coming from a middle-class family, Stampa received education of noble ranks, including training in classical languages, literature, music, history and rhetoric. As a musical performer performing for private recitals in the academies of Venice, she met her subject of love poetry, at perhaps one such event. Her openness of desire for her beloved was bold, as she and the man were not married, yet she never hesitated to openly state who she is addressing her verses of desire to - the Count Collatino di Collalto, a nobleman of the Veneto. Collalto served in the French army then and was not as committed to her as perhaps she was. A descendant of his had the poems republished in 1738, to spread the praises sung to Collalto. Some poems in the collection were translated into English in 1881. Until lately, when she had equal place to be recognised as a wealthy Italian lyricist of the Renaissance, she was known as nothing more than a courtesan. There was legend that Collatino's heartlessness deeply depressed her when his fickle infatuation dwindled and made Stampa take her own life. What she left behind addressed to her heartless lover, raised the voice of women in poetry, a decibel louder.
In a sequence of her poems in her Rime, Venice, 1554, she recurs a metaphor of him being her high hill, so lofty, that she has the agency to surpass even the poetry of Hesiod. The metaphor of the high hill also has a personal significance for the couple as Collalto got his name from his family estate built on a 'coll' (hill) which is 'alto' (high). All the heights she crosses in writing of an affair with a man in the sixteenth century, she writes, are enabled by how high the hill she writes of is, her Count Collalto. She writes :
“If Ascrea's peak could turn an uncouth shepherd/ of goats and sheep/into a poet -he who rose to such praiseworthy heights/ that he stole renown from almost all others -/ what marvel is it if that high and verdant hill /lifted up someone like me, base and lowly,/ raised me up to write piteous verse,/ doing far more than study or the stars?”
In sonnet 104 of her Rime, Venice, 1554, she even celebrates a fulfilling night with the Count, drawing on the metaphor of being a river and him, being a high hill. She names herself ‘Anassilla’, from the name of the river that flowed over the Collalto territory - Anasso. She celebrates the journey of the river down the hill, emphasizing the gradual confluence of the two, as a metaphor for fulfilling physical encounters between the two. She writes : “O night, to me more luminous and blessed / than the most blessed and luminous of days.../ you alone have been the faithful minister of all my joys,/ all that was bitter/in my life you've rendered sweet and dear,/ and placed me in the arms of the man who bound me.”
Stampa radically recontextualizes Petrarchism as writing of reciprocity, physical consummation, yet there being a distance of proximity and emotional commitment. She writes that too, being a woman belonging to a middle-class background.
The use of Petrarchism by these three poets, according to Ann Rosalind Jones, could be what Thomas Greene calls “dialectical imitation,” in which the poet both acknowledges the source model of poetic style along with remodeling aspects. Colonna's, Gambara's and Stampa's setting foot into what was clearly a male domain, gave a home for female voices of later female poets. They are not only role models but conquerors.
References
Jones, Ann Rosalind. ‘Female Petrarchists’ In The Cambridge Companion to Petrarch, edited by Ascoli, Albert Russell, Falkeid, Unn, 201-209. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2015.
Cox Virginia. ‘Sixteenth Century Women Petrarchists and the Legacy of Laura’ Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 35:3, Fall 2005, 583-602.
https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/petrarchizing-genders-genres-english-italian/docv iew/2381678970/se-2?accountid=194492
White, Hope, Marie Victoria. Petrarchizing Genders and Genres in English, Italian and Spanish Literatures, 2019, University of California, Doctor of Philosophy.
https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/petrarchizing-genders-genres-english-italian/docv iew/2381678970/se-2?accountid=194492
Monica Louis
Monica Louis is a student of Post graduation in St Xavier’s University, Kolkata. She has an avid interest in poetry.