Just when Dante was writing his timeless work "The Divine Comedy" with great passion, another poet - Petrarch was quietly born in his hometown. Petrarch was born in 1304, and his experience was similar to that of Dante to some extent. For example, as we introduced before, a very important thing in Dante's life was that when he was 9 years old, he met the beautiful little angel Beidrice. Petrarch also had his "Beidlice", but The encounter happened later than Dante. When he had grown into a romantic and melancholy 24-year-old young man, he met Laura, a beautiful and noble aristocratic woman outside the church by chance. Petrarch's love and devotion to Laura are no different from Dante's. He also wrote many poems for Laura, collected into "Songbook". In the poem he calls Laura the Virgin Laura. But if we read it carefully and compare the image of Beidrice written in Dante's collection of poems "Rebirth" with the image of Laura written by Petrarch in "Song Book", we will find that these two women have many differences. Big difference. As we mentioned before, when Dante wrote about Bedrice, he sublimated her into a pure, beautiful, even unattainable angel, or even a Virgin. Bedrice was shrouded in a layer of beautiful mystery. golden halo. As for Laura, Petrarch also gave her many holy words, but at the same time, Petrarch spent a lot of space describing Laura's golden hair, beautiful eyes, and beautiful body. There are also chapters where he spies on Laura bathing naked in the river. Petrarch praised Laura not only as a Virgin, but also as a beautiful woman among mortals. Petrarch invented a debate with the church father St. Augustine. He said to the church father, you are only forcing me to say what Ovid said: "I love her body and soul at the same time." This is a very different point between Petrarch and Dante in the process of praising Laura. Petrarch said: "I don't want to become God... the glory that belongs to humans is enough for me. This is all I pray for. I am a mortal, and I only ask for the happiness of mortals." Because of this sentence In other words, Petrarch is called "the first modern man" by some experts in the history of literary thought in the West. Although Dante also had many humanistic thoughts and praised people, he always wanted to be close to God. He regarded being close to God as his own glory; while Petrarch did not long to be a slave of Emperor L, but to be a servant of Emperor L. Be an ordinary, flesh-and-blood mortal. What he likes is the happiness of mortals. This view marks the beginning of modern people's concepts.
Among the verses written by Petrarch in praise of Laura and some other poems, the one that people are most interested in or that has the greatest influence on the development of poetry is the "Petrarchan Metaphors". What is "Petrarch's Parable"? To give a simple example:
I cannot accept peace, and I am unable to fight war. I have hope amidst fear, as hot as fire and as cold as ice.
These four lines of poetry describe his feelings for Laura. Because Laura is a married woman, his passionate love for Laura is completely hopeless. But he couldn't stop his love. How could he describe such a state of mind? He uses war, peace, "fire" and "ice". We can all regard these four words as metaphors he uses to describe his passionate and desperate mentality in love: he competes for Laura The relationship is a "war" - the war is over, ended with no result. There should be peace after the war, but there is no peace in the heart. It was precisely the end of the war that made him feel even more desperate. Depression, anxiety. On the one hand, the end of the war was the end of hope. He once described this ambivalent state of fear and hope in more detail in another poem: He hoped that Laura could lift her veil and let himself see her beautiful eyes, or that he could let those Beautiful eyes look upon me. But when Laura actually lifts the veil, revealing her beautiful eyes. While looking at him, Petrarch begged again: "No, don't look at me like this. In your eyes, I die a thousand times and am reborn a thousand times." He was both afraid and full of hope, just like Like a patient suffering from cold and fever, sometimes his heart feels like a burning fire, but sometimes it feels like he is living in an ice cave, and his whole body is frozen. In this way, he was caught between extreme heat and extreme cold. When ordinary people describe love, they like to use gentle and beautiful words such as moonlight, sun, gold, and silver. But in Petrarch’s description of his love with Laura, what we see is Words expressing coldness, arrogance, and cruelty. When he uses these words on the people he loves, we feel that they are very appropriate and have great impact on readers. This is the so-called "Petrarch's mirage".