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Anna-Laura Silva

Francesco Petrarch - Father of Humanism - 0 views

petrarch.petersadlon.com/read_letters.html

renaissance petrarch history grade5

shared by Anna-Laura Silva on 07 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • But so far he is vague and uncertain, because of the feebleness of youth, and does not always know what he wants to say. What he does want to, however, he says very nobly and beautifully. So it frequently happens that there falls from him some poem that is not only pleasing to the ear but dignified and graceful and well-considered, the sort of work that you would ascribe, if you were ignorant of the author, to some writer of long experience. I am confident that he will develop vigour of thought and expression, and work out, as the result of his experiments, a style of his own, and learn to avoid imitation, or, better, to conceal it, so as to give the impression not of copying but rather of bringing to Italy from the writers of old something new. Now, however, imitation actually is his greatest joy, as is usual at his time of life. Sometimes his delight in another's genius seems to lend to his spirit wings, and he defies all the restraints of his art and soars aloft, so high that he cannot continue his flight as he should, and has to descend in a fashion that betrays him.
  • In brief, we may appropriate another's thought, and may even copy the very colours' of his style, but we must abstain from borrowing his actual words. The resemblance in the one case is hidden away below the surface; in the other it stares the reader in the face. The one kind of imitation makes poets; the other---apes.
Anna-Laura Silva

Internet History Sourcebooks Project - 0 views

www.fordham.edu/...petrarch1.asp

history Renaissance petrarch grade5

shared by Anna-Laura Silva on 07 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • As to my disposition, I was not naturally perverse or wanting in modesty, however the contagion of evil associations may have corrupted me. My youth was gone before I realised it; I was carried away by the strength of manhood; but a riper age brought me to my senses and taught me by experience the truth I had long before read in books, that youth and pleasure are vanity-nay, that the Author of all ages and times permits us miserable mortals, puffed up with emptiness, thus to wander about, until finally, coming to a tardy consciousness of our sins, we shall learn to know ourselves.
  • On the other hand, the pleasure of dining with oiie's friends is so great that nothing has ever given me more delight than their unexpected arrival, nor have I ever willingly sat down to table without a companion.
  • I have always been most desirous of honourable friendships, and have faithfully cherished them.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • While I am very prone to take offence, I am equally quick to forget injuries, and have a memory tenacious of benefits.
  • I possessed a well-balanced rather than a keen intellect, one prone to all kinds of good wholesome study, but especially inclined to al philosophy and the art of poetry. The latter indeed, I neglected as time went on, and took delight in sacred literature. Finding in that it hidden sweetness which I had once esteemed
  • Such are the times, my friend, upon which we have fallen; such is the period in which we live and are growing old. Such are the critics of today, as I so often have occasion to lament and complain-men who are innocent of knowledge or virtue, and yet harbour the most exalted opinion of themselves. Not content with losing the words of the ancients, they must attack their genius and their ashes. They rejoice in their ignorance, as if what they did not know were not worth knowing.
  • had it not been for the love of those dear to me, I should have preferred to .,have been born in any other period than our own.
  • the fact that our age is the mother of pride and indolence,
  • 0 inglorious age! that scorns antiquity, its mother, to whom it owes every noble art, that dares to declare itself not only equal but superior to the glorious past.
  • The vernacular, on the other hand, has but recently been discovered, and, though it has been ravaged by many, it still remains uncultivated, in spite of a few earnest labourers, and still shows itself capable of much improvement and enrichment.
  • but we of today are too feeble a folk to read them, or even to be acquainted with their mere titles. Your fame extends far and wide; your name is mighty, and fills the ears of men; and yet
  • because men's minds are slow and dull, or, as I am the more inclined to believe, because the love of money forces our thoughts in other directions.
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