Reflection 1

I've been reading an essay entitled Petrarch, Dante, Cavalcanti by Baranski. It talks about the complex relationship between Petrarch and Dante, some of the ways this relationship has been interpreted by other literary historians, and new ways to approach Petrarch's appreciation of Dante. I'm wondering a lot lately about the general questions of my thought over the past about five years: what is modernity? from whence did modernity come? what does modernity represent? what are the concrete manifestations of modernity? etc. This essay sets up a dialogue in my mind that seats Dante in a classical sense, and Petrarch in a modern sense, but it seems this is the opposite of reality...

Baranski discusses Petrarch's criticism of Dante's Comedy. Petrarch's criticism comes from a few different angles: he examines the Comedy and finds that Dante claims he is the sixth of a line of classical poets. His authority rests within the poem that he writes, where he claims greatness by associating himself with those personages. It's almost as if he proclaims himself a prophet by imaging this journey into the divinity, and by telling the story of his dream he is magically granted authority. Petrarch examines and critiques this authority in several different works, and even put together a letter to a fan of Dante that hides subtle, yet powerful criticisms.

I'm wondering if there is a crossroads here. Petrarch criticizes Dante for his appeal to the common through the vernacular, and argues that his work fails to meet classical standards because of this ambition. Petrarch also argues that Dante's near-claim to divinity is impious and debases his art. Petrarch positions himself as a poet that presents something different, which includes more honesty about his non-divinity, or more acknowledgement of personal failure. It seems Petrarch sets the stage for modern poetry when he criticizes the Comedy for its claims to divine authority. The precedence that Petrarch sets in the Canzoniere is that of personal lyric poetry that doesn't make claims to high authority.

I'm puzzling through a few different ideas here. Sometimes I want to think of Petrarch as the progenitor of the modern, but then I find language where he condemns it. Part of his criticism of Dante is that he's merely writing the Comedy for vainglorious reasons: he wants the fame of the now, so he crafts a story that is in the common tongue and speaks to the common aesthetic. Petrarch argues that this betrays flaws in Dante's ethic, or that it's a symptom of an imperfect virtue. Petrarch believes that Dante crafted the Comedy with the intent of establishing his own authority and equating it with those of the epic poets of antiquity. Petrarch would rather seat himself in real, living virtue, instead of dead on a pedestal amongst giants.

I've gotta do more of an examination of Petrarch's Christianity, and his ideas about poetic craft and history. There are a few epics he wrote, and many of the sonnets and other poems in the Canzoniere I've still yet to read. To me it seems he sits at the crux of the classical and the modern, of the sacred and the secular. He seems to be the key to what separates our modern conceptions of creation from those mythologies of antiquity. All of this seems reductionist, but I needed to write it out for my own understanding. Maybe the words work themselves out, the libraries research themselves, the enjoyer enjoys the enjoying.