Canzoniere

If we are to believe the poet, Petrarch saw the beautiful Laura for the first time in 1327. The poems of his Canzoniere revolve around the fateful love for the distant, unattainable. From them emerged the modern lyric poetry in Europe. But can the love poetry of the 14th century poet still speak to us directly today?
It can. For Petrarch is not only the unhappy lover par excellence, but he also put into words the contradictions of love like no other: The need for freedom and commitment, suffering and the pleasure of suffering. And the "poeta laureatus," the laurel-flame poet, courts yet another lover, poetry itself. Petrarch's verses, which gave love poetry a whole new language, are also highly mo derne poems about the nature of poetry.
What would a sonnet be, what would a canzone be without rhyme? By submitting to the order of the rhyme, though not slavishly, in this selection, translator Karlheinz Stierle is drawn into a tense dialogue between the possibilities of his own language and the original. Through the bilingualism of this edition, the reader has the opportunity to follow this dialogue.