Sonnets, Songs, and Triumphs

pointed out

...to have consistency with the present matter of love. Nevertheless, if we wish to well consider the meaning original: sententia of the preceding sonnet, we will recognize this one to be its consequence. Because, having shown how great was the violence of unrestrained concupiscence Unregulated desire or lust—the end of which he concluded brings more affliction than comfort—here he demonstrates from where such a passion proceeds. He says that through the vice of gluttony, sleep, and being idle, every virtue is abandoned; and human nature, being driven out, becomes perverse through the conversation of evil customs. For this reason, one attends neither to science nor to any noble virtue, but only to gain, because he who has money can easily satisfy his dishonest appetites. Therefore, by comforting his friend Orso Orso dell'Anguillara, a Roman nobleman and friend of Petrarch toward virtuous studies, he shows that the aforementioned vices must be fled, so that man, following his own nature—which is reason and intellect—may be among the number of the few: that is, the sane. We shall understand this more particularly in the literal reading of this sonnet, although there are some who say the present sonnet was not directed to Orso, but to Messer Giovanni Boccaccio The famous author of the Decameron, who is said to have often written books for a price due to poverty. This opinion would not displease me if he were esteemed a philosopher, or had at some time studied philosophy.

Gluttony, sleep, and idle pillows,
Have banished every virtue from the world,
So that our nature, conquered by habit,
Has almost lost its way, wandering from its course.
And every benign light from heaven is so extinguished,
By which human life is shaped,
That he is pointed out as a wonder
Who wishes to make a river spring from Helicon.
What desire for laurel, what for myrtle?
"Philosophy, you go poor and naked,"
Says the crowd, intent on base gain.
You will have few companions on the other path;
So much more, I pray you, noble spirit:
Do not abandon your magnanimous undertaking.

GLUTTONY: immoderate eating and disordered drinking, in which activities the vice of gluttony consists. SLEEP: he does not mean natural and orderly sleep, but the accidental and disordered kind that proceeds from thick and humid exhalations and vapors. These, rising from a full and heaving stomach, ascend to the brain and, almost oppressing the senses, induce sleep; and drinking produces such an effect most of all, as Gaius Marius A Roman general and statesman (c. 157–86 BCE) used to do during the time he was defeated by Lucius Sulla. Finally, having escaped and fled from Italy, he found himself in Africa where, due to the greatest thoughts and anxieties of the mind, being unable to sleep and fearing for that reason falling into a most great infirmity, he gave himself to disordered drinking. The poet Juvenal, in his own satire, describes it in this manner:

¶ Then follows the third vice, that is idleness original: locio, which proceeds from the two aforementioned vices, saying: AND idle pillows original: lociose piume, literally "idle feathers". This is to say the idleness of the common people, which consists not only in not doing anything regarding physical exercise, but neither regarding mental exercise in considering and contemplating anything generous and noble. Instead, it is to lie in bed, even when not sleeping, but wandering in thought and building castles in the air. I say, then, that these three vices have banished every virtue from the world, insofar as no one attends to anything laudable and honest, but to luxury or to avarice, which is the nourishment of luxury. And human nature—which by itself is inclined to good like every other thing by its nature—is almost lost from its course, which it ought to follow, not according to passion, but according to reason. CONQUERED by bad custom, which according to the opinion of Plutarch is a quality of the irrational part of the soul; that is, conquered by evil customs—customs induced and generated by our bad habits and perverse practices. And SO extinguished every benign light of heaven: meaning knowledge or intellect, through which we have a likeness with the celestial intelligences, which are the angels, and also with God. BY WHICH human life: the life of us men. IS SHAPED: takes its form, because the form of man is the soul, according to the philosophers, but the matter is the body itself. And the human mind, as Aristotle says, is of the "fifth species": that is, of a celestial or ethereal body, which signifies the pure ardor of heaven. However, I do not know if Petrarch went so high, but I believe he meant that human life is "shaped" by heaven in that it takes the form and quality of the bodily powers from celestial influences; this sentiment holds place in those who do not follow reason.