POETS Day! Giacomo da Lentini, Inventor of the Sonnet

AnonymousUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Happy POETS Day ladies and gentlemen, lads and lasses. The hour is near to Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. This week I don’t have to come up with a scam to get out of work as one was dropped into my lap. I live in a plague house!

Driving back from the beach last Saturday we got a call from my wife’s uncle. Her side of the family all rent houses in the same development every year; it becomes a movable feast and is all manner of outrageous fun, catching up, and seeing children that are taller than you could imagine they’d be. Her uncle wasn’t feeling great on his drive back to Baton Rouge, so he took a COVID test and, naturally, tested positive.

Late last August my wife lost her sense of smell – just for a week or so – and felt run down so we all got tested. She and both my children had it, and despite living and sleeping amongst the unclean I never picked it up. The kids didn’t show any symptoms and we got to read articles telling us that despite the vaccine not keeping them from catching the targeted virus we should consider ourselves lucky because everything might have been much worse if we didn’t get “the jab.” We quarantined for fourteen days and watched a lot of movies.

Well, here we are again. Thankfully the recommended quarantine is shorter now. My wife had a sore throat and her voice got raspy in a sexy way, my youngest had a fever but he’s feeling better now, and my oldest has no symptoms but he’s going stir crazy now that he’s been denied his bike ride to a neighborhood joint for a Coke and some fries. I, again, remain the only member of my family who has not tested positive.

Oh, while we were out of town, we boarded the dog. Now he’s got kennel cough. Plague house.

Don’t get out of work this way. It’s effective, but a real drag.

Do something simpler. Make a show out of eating a late sushi lunch in the office or worksite and look up  a few mild food poisoning symptoms. I’m not exactly sure what turf toe is but you could try that. Get out work early and start the weekend on your own terms but seriously, keep it simple. No need to enlist a global pandemic to catch happy hour prices.

This week’s poet is Giacomo da Lentini, a member of the Sicilian School – a movement to write poetry in a Sicilian dialect rather than Latin – and a regular at the court of Holy Roman Emperor Fredrick II. He popped up in Dante’s Purgatorio, so there must be some skeletons in one or another of his closets. Of the Sicilian School I’ve read that Dante said that for the first hundred and fifty years of Italian literature all poetry was written in the Sicilian dialect. I read that in an article by Gaetano Cipolla, a retired St. John’s University professor. He didn’t cite his source on that so I can’t tell you in what context Dante said that, but the professor has published several works on Italian writers Including Dante so I’m accepting his word on it.

The most impressive thing about Giacomo da Lentini is that he’s credited with the invention of the sonnet form, and that endears him to me immensely.

I’ve mentioned in these electronic pages that I’m wary of translated poems because I don’t know who’s the real hero. Is it the author? The translator? In this case it’s even more complicated in that the originals were written in Sicilian. Some of those are lost, leaving remains written in a Tuscan dialect. By the time we get to the English version we might be twice removed from what Giacomo da Lentini actually wrote. Throw in that a sonnet has a specific rhyme scheme which causes a translator to use judgement in choosing words to fit the form and you have a perfect storm of the confused admiration I hope to avoid. But…

Sonnets are so pleasing. What you are about to read is not the author’s own words or maybe not even translated from his own words, but Giacomo da Lentini’s structure and its wonderful rhythm inspired how many?

Sonetto 26

Giacomo da Lentini (1220 – 1270)
Translation by Leo Zoutewelle

I’ve seen it rain on sunny days
And seen the darkness flash with light
And even lightning turn to haze,
Yes, frozen snow turn warm and bright

And sweet things taste of bitterness
And what is bitter taste most sweet
And enemies their love confess
And good, close friends no longer meet.

Yet stranger things I’ve seen of love
Who healed my wounds by wounding me.
The fire in me he quenched before;
The life he gave was the end thereof,
The fire that slew eluded me.
Once saved from love, love now burns more.

It looks like we are housebound until at least Tuesday. Honestly, I think the dog has it the worst. He sounds terrible. Enjoy the poem – and the weekend.