From the Sicilian
177
Frederick II
“Dolze meo drudo”
This dialogue poem between a lady and her lover is attributed, in the one manuscript in which is it preserved, to Frederick II. And indeed the tone of the opening stanzas—in which both lady and lover meditate on the pain of separation,
but more pointedly defend the bureaucratic justification of the separation (a military expedition)—seems to support the attribution to the emperor. For a discussion of this poem, see above, pp. 90–91.
S O U R C E : Bruno Panvini, Le rime della scuola siciliana, 423–24; Frederick II,
Rime, 6–7
Copyright © 2005. University of Pennsylvania Press. All rights reserved.
“My sweet lover, be oV!
My lord, I commend you to God:
for you are leaving me,
and, wretched, I remain.
Alas, life is a burden to me,
death is sweet to see;
for I don’t think I will ever be healed
thinking that I will know no joy.
Thinking that you go away,
my heart makes war against me.
That which I most desire
a distant land takes from me.
Now my love goes away,
whom more than any man I love;
I blame Tuscany,
which has broken my heart.”
“My sweet woman, my going
is not by my own will:
for I must obey
the one who has power over me.
Now take comfort if I go,
and don’t lose spirit—
for I will never betray you, love,
by loving any other.”
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10
15
20
25
“It is your love that keeps me70
and holds me in its power,
for it happens that I love you
70. Here the form of address changes from tu (the familiar) to voi (the formal). This stanza
may also be spoken by the lover, rather than the lady.
Mallette, Karla. The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100-1250 : A Literary History, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. ProQuest
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178
Texts in Translation
faithfully and without deceit.
May you remember me,
may you not forget me;
for you hold in your power
all of my desire.”
“My sweet lady, a farewell
I request without delay;
may you wish me well,
for my heart remains with you.
Such is the fascination
of our amorous pleasures
that I cannot go away
from you, lady, by my faith.”
30
35
40
Copyright © 2005. University of Pennsylvania Press. All rights reserved.
Mazzeo di Ricco
“Sei anni ò travagliato”
In this poem—one of the most satisfying of the Sicilian corpus—the poet uses
familiar poetic motifs to pleasing effect. It is in part the poem’s conceit that
infuses these potential clichés with vivacity: this is not a love poem, but the complaint of a man who is liberating himself from the burden of love for a cruel mistress. The fresh and innocent image of the child chasing bright things at the
close of the first stanza parallels light and love and plays perception against reality, as many of Giacomo’s poems do. The second stanza, like the central stanzas
of Giacomo’s “Amor non vole,” turns on the image of a gemstone as symbol of
something perceived (in error) to possess value and uses a Sicilian word derived
from the Arabic to refer to the stone. And the economic imagery that closes the
final stanza returns us to the quantitative logic of the poem’s opening line and
suggests, reassuringly, that the damage caused by bad love can be quantified
and contained.
S O U R C E : Bruno Panvini, Le rime della scuola siciliana, 210–11
I have labored for six years
in loving you, my lady,
and I have kept my pledge to you
more even than I can describe
and more than I can say.
Indeed, your love
has cost me dear;
for it has so betrayed me
with its sweet speech
that I can scarce believe it.
Truly, the folly
of a child led me—
Mallette, Karla. The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100-1250 : A Literary History, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. ProQuest
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5
10
From the Sicilian
a child that believes Wrmly
that he can pluck the sun from sparkling water,
and who believes that he can clasp the brilliance
of a burning candle,
whereupon he immediately
runs oV, crying, feeling the heat.
Copyright © 2005. University of Pennsylvania Press. All rights reserved.
If I have noticed tardily
my own foolishness
I hold myself fortunate,
because I am about to leave behind
the evil that held me;
for the man who is sick,
as soon as he returns to health,
forgets altogether
the evil that has passed
and the great suVering.
Alas—that I believed,
lady, in perfect faith
that your aVections
surpassed sapphires71 in brilliance!
Now I see well that your color
is nothing more than glass;
for the masters know well
how to counterfeit their work.
Hope deceived me
and made me stray so far,
like a man who has wagered
and thinks that he is gaining
and loses what he has.
Now I see that it is proven
what I have heard tell,
that he has gained enough
who knows how to free himself
179
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20
25
30
35
40
45
71. The word that Mazzeo uses here (jachiti) is derived ultimately from a Greco-Latin root
(Lat. hyacinthus/-os, a transliteration of the Greek), which generated a number of cognates in
modern languages, including the Italian giacinte and the English hyacinth. However, in terms
of both lexical range and phonetics, the Sicilian jachitu seems to be most closely related to
an Arabic word also derived from the Greco-Latin hyacinthus. The Arabic yaqut can mean
“hyacinth,” as the modern Italian giacinte and the Sicilian jachitu do. It can also—like its Greek
and Latin root, but unlike other modern cognates—mean “sapphire.” (Ibn Hamdis uses the
word, which I have translated as “gem,” in his poem “In youth, the soul attains its desire”; see
above, p. 132, v. 8.) Here, it seems obvious that Mazzeo is drawing on the second meaning of
the Arabic word (and its Greco-Latin root), lost in the modern languages of the West; and so I
have translated it “sapphires.”
Mallette, Karla. The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100-1250 : A Literary History, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. ProQuest
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180
Texts in Translation
from evil companions.
It happened to me
as it happens often
to one who in good faith lends
his own to a wicked and ungrateful debtor,
in that a man goes often
to an ill-spirited payer
and has nothing in return,
and so in the end he complains about it.
50
Rinaldo d’Aquino
“Già mai non mi conforto”
Copyright © 2005. University of Pennsylvania Press. All rights reserved.
The lament of the woman who watches her lover set sail on crusade was a set
piece for medieval Romance poets. This poem distinguishes itself from the crowd
by virtue of the simplicity and elegance of its language, and the lady’s rather
blunt criticism of the crusade that separates her from her lover. The poem is preserved in only one manuscript, and there are a variety of difficulties with the text.
The meter of the poem is far from certain. And in some places the text seems
to have been corrupted in transmission, presumably because of the difficulty
that the Sicilian original presented for northern copyists. Where these difficulties
affect the translation, they are noted. For a discussion of the poem, see above,
pp. 86–87.
S O U R C E : Bruno Panvini, Le rime della scuola siciliana, 105–9
Never will I be comforted,
nor do I wish to be cheered.
The ships have arrived at port
and are about to set sail.72
The noblest of men is leaving
for a land across the sea;
and I, alas, forlorn—
what am I to do?
He leaves for another land
and he sends no one to tell me,
and I have been deceived:
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10
72. The verb “colare” in this line (“e vogliono colare”), and the related noun “colle” in verse
49 below (“Le navi sone a le colle”), have presented substantial diYculties to modern editors.
A number of Italian words derived from various Latin roots are phonetically similar to these
words, but do not Wt the context. It seems more plausible to conjecture that both the verb and
the noun are derived from the Sicilian Arabic qal‘, meaning “sail of a ship” (see Dionisius Agius,
Siculo Arabic, 205).
Mallette, Karla. The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100-1250 : A Literary History, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/berkeley-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3441395.
Created from berkeley-ebooks on 2021-01-08 17:48:45.