












































For a Study of the Reception of the Canzoniere in the "Petrarch Project"


Humanist Studies & the Digital Age, 1.1 (2011) 
ISSN: 2158-3846 (online) 
http://journals.oregondigital.org/hsda/ 
DOI: 10.5399/uo/HSDA.1.1.1096  
 

  180 

 

For a Study of the Reception of the Canzoniere  
in the “Petrarch Project” 

Giorgio Forni, University of Messina 

Abstract: This article presents a research project developed by a group of 
scholars from different Italian universities; they plan to help construct the 
hypertext configuration of the Petrarch Project by attempting a first collective 
research on the fortunes of a single poem of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta 
(Rvf), sonnet 35, “Solo et pensoso i più deserti campi.” The ultimate aim of 
this mosaic work is to produce a synthetic, but integral, investigation of the 
fortunes and poetic interpretations of the text. Finally, the article discusses 
the new perspectives opened by the hypertext approach to the study of the 
reception of the Rvf. For this reason, this group of scholars extends an 
invitation to other researchers to collaborate in creating the map of the 
reception of sonnet 35 and other poems from Petrarch's Canzoniere.  

I don’t think there is any need to dwell on the fact that, even in literary studies, the 
extraordinary quantity of information available through the Web and digital technologies 
provides the chance of experimenting with organisations and constructions of meanings. 
Otherwise the wealth of textual data could turn into a substantial and meaningless chaos. 
We therefore cannot fail to praise the “Petrarch Project,” begun by the University of Oregon, 
which reminds us of the opportunity in today’s new digital technologies for experimenting 
with new investigative methods and broader, coordinated research projects. 

The structure of the “Petrarch Project,” based on the individual poems of the 
Canzoniere, leads us to reconsider the study of the reception of a macrotext, no longer as a 
unitary “book of rhymes,” but by considering the fate of its discontinuous elements. The 
“Petrarch Project” website, starting from every single text, will allow the construction of a 
network of references and studies: from the reproduction of Petrarch’s manuscripts to the 
ancient commentaries, from the paraphrases to the bibliography of the individual texts, from 
the musical executions to the translations. A group of scholars from the Department of 
Italian Studies of the University of Bologna has begun, based on the configuration of the 
website, a first collective research on the fortunes of a single poem: sonnet 35, “Solo et 
pensoso i più deserti campi.” Each member of the group will identify a significant episode 
of reception in poetic rewritings from the fourteenth century to contemporary poetic 
adaptations. The ultimate aim of this mosaic work is to produce a synthetic, but integral, 
investigation of the fortunes and poetic interpretations of the text. We extend an invitation 
to other researchers to apply a similar mapping work to various other poems of Petrarch’s 
Canzoniere. 

http://journals.oregondigital.org/hsda/
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/


Humanist Studies & the Digital Age  Giorgio Forni 

1.1 Winter 2011  181 

What does significant episode of reception mean? By this we mean a cycle of historical 
experiences that share a common denominator or, better, a common interpretative stance. 
We believe that we can identify three cases: 

1. A homogeneous reception segment: a period of time in which most readers share the 
same interpretation or analytic approach to the text 

2. A collection of antagonistic interpretations in the same historical time: a competing 
reception 

3. A lack of interest or a moving away from the text in a specific chronological period 

Even a non-existent or weak or parodic reception is worthy of investigation as, once the 
reception of the Canzoniere has been mapped, we will be able to see the gaps and the texts 
that count and those that have been marginalized across the various periods and cultures as 
well as what the various historical interpretations of the Canzoniere have focused on. This 
will undoubtedly be useful to gain a better understanding of the semantic machine of the 
macrotext. 

First, we must distinguish the possible levels or poles of reception, including the 
thematic and the stylistic that perhaps require different investigative criteria. On the one 
hand, we must examine a set of significant microunits that cut across the boundaries of 
literary genres and their varied evolutionary lines; on the other, we must bear in mind the 
specific formal institutions of lyrical writing which are the origins of the modern poetical 
self. Let’s try and examine three cases related to “Solo et pensoso.” 

Solitude / flight 
Solo et pensoso i più deserti campi 
vo mesurando a passi tardi et lenti, 
et gli occhi porto per fuggire intenti 
ove vestigio human la rena stampi.  
(Petrarca, Canzoniere, 35, 1-4; see text 1 in Appendix)  

Undoubtedly the motif of rural solitude found a long term development in the bucolic 
genre of the late fifteenth century until the Arcadian eighteenth century, as the idealised 
disguise for the separate nature of the court or literary society. In its first expression—the 
collection of the Bucoliche elegantissime printed in Florence by Antonio Miscomini in 
1482, the Pastorale by Boiardo, the Arcadia by Sannazaro—the pastoral eclogue drew 
almost exclusively on classical models: certainly not Petrarch, but rather Virgil, Theocritus, 
Moschus, Claudian, Calpurnius, and Nemesianus. However, in the conflictual and 
tormented first part of the sixteenth century the relationship between rural solitude and 
inner dialogue that we find in “Solo et pensoso” gathers prominence also in the pastoral 
genre, defining, in terms of themes, a double wish to isolate oneself: either in the idyllic-
loving shelter of the court (static motif of solitude: line 1, “Solo et pensoso”) or beyond the 
disorders of history and the fights for power (dynamic motif of the escape: line 3, “per 
fuggire”). Therefore the Petrarchan sonnet provides material for the introductory setting of 



Humanist Studies & the Digital Age  Giorgio Forni 

1.1 Winter 2011  182 

eclogues, woodland stanzas, silves and pastoral poems in two long-lasting methods that are 
worth examining separately.  

Let’s limit ourselves to a few representative examples. In introducing the shepherd’s 
lament, the portrayal of solitude drawn from “Solo et pensoso” can be combined with 
absolute immobility and with resting the tired body against a “trunk” or a “stick,” such as 
the beginning of the Aristeo by Girolamo Muzio which depicts Alfonso d’Avalos, marquis of 
Vasto, in a pastoral setting: 

Il pastor Aristeo pensoso e solo 
appoggiato si stava al duro tronco 
d’un faggio antico in solitaria piaggia; 
e per quel che di fuor porgea la fronte 
scorger ben si potea che ’l suo pensiero 
era tutto lontan d’ogni allegrezza. (Muzio, Aristeo, 1-6) 

The same applies for another courtly eclogue, Metauro, by Bernardino Baldi: “Quel 
pastor che colà pensoso e solo / sovra il curvo baston tutto s’appoggia, / Montan mi sembra” 
(Baldi 172). This happens again in Talia by Tullia d’Aragona, where the shepherd does not 
walk but sits on the grass, “in sé raccolto, immobile e pensoso” (Aragona 155). At the most, 
the protagonist’s movement is no longer directed toward fleeing (“fuggire”) but it rather 
becomes an “intorno,” wandering motion, vague and indefinite like that in the Aminta by 
Berardino Rota: “Aminta, ove ne vai solo e dolente, / di lagrime bagnando il lito intorno / 
ove vestigio uman nullo si vede?” (Rota 130). It is a solitude enclosed in a confined place 
that, however, embraces not only the innermost lament, but also the conversation between 
shepherds, with an invitation to socialise the lyrical words that use even vaguely ironic 
allusions to the “fuggire” of “Solo et pensoso,” as in the I due pellegrini eclogue by Luigi 
Tansillo, where Petrarch’s “vo mesurando” becomes “vo smarrito”: 

Già si raddoppia il dì ch’io vo smarrito, 
mercé del piè che mi conduce in via 
dove vestigio uman trovo scolpito. 
Sapessi almen dove mi vada o sia! 
Ecco un che va solingo e fuor di strada: 
forse, di me pietoso, il Ciel l’invia. 
… 
Chiunque sei, del loco o peregrino, 
tu che il piè movi sì pensoso e vago, 
quel che cerchi t’apporti il tuo destino. (Tansillo, I due pellegrini, 1-12; see text 2) 

On the other hand, the immobility of the pensive and solitary lover imposes itself as the 
stereotype also in Renaissance chivalric poems: from Ariosto’s Sacripante who, almost 
“cangiato in insensibil pietra,” remains “pensoso più d’un’ora a capo basso” (Orlando 
furioso I, 40), to the Rinaldo created by the young Torquato Tasso, who “sta pensoso e muto, 
/ e come sia di pietra immobil resta” (Rinaldo IX, 88). 



Humanist Studies & the Digital Age  Giorgio Forni 

1.1 Winter 2011  183 

But sonnet 35 from the Canzoniere portrays a poet distancing himself from society 
(“vestigio human” 35, 4; “le genti” 35, 6) with the dynamic motion of “fleeing”: pensive 
solitude can therefore become characteristic of a necessary autonomy of judgement of the 
well-educated gentleman and even an allusive distancing oneself from the oppressive world 
of the court and from intellectual, political, or religious conformism. For example, in the 
Silve by Antonio Fileremo Fregoso the reference to “Solo et pensoso” starts a lament against 
“vivere a la moderna” because at court “probità sincera” is not adequately rewarded: 

Solo e pensoso io passegiava un giorno 
per un’ombrosa e solitaria via, 
ascoso e ancor temendo d’alcun scorno; 
e discorrendo con la fantasia, 
pensava a la cagion de’ mei gran danni, 
se da me nasce o da la sorte ria. (“De la Probità,” 1-6) 

In the Orbecche tragedy by Giovan Battista Giraldi Cinzio the wooded and uninhabited 
space seems like a possible escape from a barbaric court and a corrupt and sinister 
authority: 

Oh perché ne’ Rifei monti non sono 
più tosto nato, o tra le tigri Ircane 
ne gli ermi boschi e ne’ più alpestri campi, 
ove vestigio uman non si vedesse, 
che qui dove i’ son nato e son nodrito, 
qui dove più d’ogn’aspra fiera crudi 
gli uomini si ritrovano? (Giraldi Cinzio 389, IV 1-7)  

In the eighteenth-century Eclogues by Gian Vincenzo Gravina the “fleeing” theme still 
illustrates the inner independence of the intellectual: “Qual novello desio lungi ti mena / da 
ninfe e da pastor, fuggendo il loco / ove vestigio uman segni l’arena?” (in Quondam 61). It is 
no accident that the “passi tardi et lenti” of “Solo et pensoso” appear between the lines of 
the most famous escape of Renaissance Italian literature: “pensosa” Erminia’s solitary and, 
in other words, anti-courtesan escape among the shepherds in Torquato Tasso’s 
Gerusalemme liberata: “tarda i passi” (VI, 82), “move lenti i passi” (VI, 93), “là s’indrizza a 
passi lenti” (VII, 6).  

By separating the Petrarchan text into thematic microunits, it will be easier to explore 
the multi-faceted labyrinth of the reception and define homogenous segments in even long 
chronological periods of time (case 1, as defined above). 

The conflict of the Petrarchist styles 
On a stylistic level it is better to examine the whole text, comparing it to its different 

versions in the lyrical genre; this mainly consists of taking a census of the rewritings and 
differences of the stylistic choices. Let’s once again examine sixteenth-century examples 
related to “Solo et pensoso.” 



Humanist Studies & the Digital Age  Giorgio Forni 

1.1 Winter 2011  184 

Perhaps it was inevitable that the worldly code of Renaissance Petrarchism would first 
of all refer to the wilder and more solitary Petrarch. It should come as no surprise that “Solo 
et pensoso” had a primary role in the early poetic apprenticeship of Pietro Bembo, the 
theorist of Italian vernacular classicism and the exclusive imitation of the Canzoniere: one 
of his very first sonnets, before 1500, “Solingo augello, se piangendo vai” (see text 3) is in 
fact a mosaic of Petrarchan elements under the dominant mark of the Rerum vulgarium 
fragmenta 35 (previously quoted as Canzoniere 35, henceforth as Rvf 35), not only for the 
opening “Solingo,” but most of all for the tercets that reformulate the opening of “Solo et 
pensoso: 

Rvf 35, lines 1-3: 
Solo et pensoso i più deserti campi 
vo mesurando a passi tardi et lenti, 
et gli occhi porto …  
(Petrarca 190; see text 1) 

Bembo, Rime 48, lines 10-12: 
e nudo e grave e solo e peregrino 
vo misurando i campi e le mie pene. 
Gli occhi bagnati porto …  
(Bembo 546; see text 3) 

The importance of the experience is revealed by the echoes of “Solo et pensoso” in the 
first book of the Asolani—for example, “D’erma rivera i più deserti lidi / m’insegna Amor” 
(Bembo 372)—and the expansion of “Solingo augello, se piangendo vai” from sonnet to 
canzone in the Asolani of 1505, until the retrieval of both texts in the Rime from 1530. Both 
the sonnet and the canzone document the fundamental nature of the experience: “vo 
misurando i campi e le mie pene” (Bembo, Rime 48, 11) and “vo misurando i poggi e le mie 
pene” (Bembo, Rime 56, 16). However Bembo’s rewriting, inaccurate compared to the 
model, outlines a socialising overturning of the Petrarchan solitude and a movement 
towards the other unhappy lovers: “i’ fuggo indi, ove sia / chi mi conforte ad altro, ch’a trar 
guai.” These verses are purposefully extremely tormented with the variants “fuggo ove che 
sia,” “ovunque sia,” and “ove alcun sia.” So, although the imitation of the Rvf 35 is placed 
in the tercet, the new text gives relevance to the “inseme” canto and the figurative rendering 
of the lyrical scene introducing the meeting with the bird, following the example of Rvf 311 
and 353. Similarly, the uniform rhythm of the Petrarchan sonnet (“Solo et pensoso–i più 
deserti campi / vo mesurando–a passi tardi et lenti”) is matched by Bembo’s more agitated 
and pathetic attack which links in a broader syntactic turn the thematic antithesis of 
“solingo” and “meco.” The aristocratic and solitary style of the lyrical abstraction was about 
to become the gentlemen’s dialogic instrument. 

But it is precisely Bembo’s multifaceted and problematic imitation that renders “Solo et 
pensoso” the touchstone text for those Renaissance poets who wanted to attempt a personal 
interpretation of the Canzoniere. 

In April 1526 Bernardo Tasso sent count Claudio Rangoni the sonnet “Fuggo, Signor, ove 
l’arena stampi” (Lettere inedite 8; see text 4) in praise of Ginevra Malatesta (“l’arbor mio bel” 
of line 4 is in fact the Ginepro). The revival of Petrarch’s “ove vestigio human la rena 
stampi,” in the broken line of “ove l’arena stampi / vestigio uman” (lines 1-2), already 
documents a more vigorous striving for psychological chiaroscuro, between the “accesi 
lampi” of the beloved and the “desir pigro e restio” of the lover. Set in contrast with the 



Humanist Studies & the Digital Age  Giorgio Forni 

1.1 Winter 2011  185 

exterior situation—“ma non però...” (line 2), “suo mal grado” (line 6), “né però...” (line 8)—
the introspective intention defines a more allegorical rather than real landscape and it aims 
for a representation of the poetical self, somewhere between impulse and fall, between 
fervour and torpor, far removed from the classic composure of the image found in Bembo’s 
sonnet. Here we find a pursuit of a style modelled on Petrarch, but more modest and 
colloquial, right from the opening vocative that relativises the reason for fleeing from men 
with more immediacy: “Fuggo, Signor...”. 

Even if Bernardo Tasso’s is simply an extemporary experiment, subsequently not 
included in the collection of the Amori, his attempt to place side by side external actions (“I 
più secreti e solitarii campi / cerco solingo”) and inner feelings (“invio / il desir a virtù 
pigro e restio”) can be found in a more exhaustive way in a sonnet by Gian Giorgio Trìssino 
published in the Rime from 1529, “Quanto ognior penso, più la mente ingombra” (99; see 
text 5), that from “Fuggo, Signor” also takes the ombra: ingombra rhyme. In 1529 Trìssino 
published simultaneously a dialogue on the Italian language called the Castellano, a first 
part of the Poetica, and the elegant volume of the Rime, in order to contrast on various 
levels Bembo’s Petrarchan exclusivism, extending the “regola universalissima” of the 
imitation to an eclectic and not hierarchic repertory of “buoni autori” of all ages, from 
Pindar to Horace and the stil novo poets. Considering the variety of poetical selections, it 
will come as no surprise that in Trìssino’s sonnet, as in Bembo’s, the imitation of “Solo et 
pensoso” is revealed fully only in the tercets’ openings. If Bembo’s opening focused only on 
“solo-solingo,” Trìssino opts for “pensoso-quanto ognior penso,” developing an analysis of 
the melancholy of love that makes use of the Petrarchan vocabulary (apart from 
“intolerabil”), but to outline a stage of the pre-Petrarchan poetical self that is spatialized 
(“giù,” “profondo,” “mena”) and measurable (“Quanto... più...”). After all, even the 
metaphor of the thoughts weighing on the heart is more in the stil novo style than Petrarch: 
“Questa pesanza ch’è nel cor discesa” (Cavalcanti, Rime X, 13 503). This is an example of an 
open Petrarchism, subtly compositional, even adept at overturning the phenomenology of 
love canonized by Petrarch. 

Meanwhile, in the Libro primo degli Amori published in 1531 Bernardo Tasso presented 
a different rewriting of Rvf 35: “Solo e pensoso i miei passati affanni” (Rime 75; see text 6). 
It is already quite revealing that Bembo and Trìssino, in stirring the comparative attention of 
the reader, find the imitation in the body of the sonnet, while Bernardo Tasso focuses on the 
incipit, making it easier to recognise the underlying model to stress the stylistic difference. 
Therefore the new rewriting becomes an almost singable piece, constructed on a melodic 
play of repetitions (for example: “affanni” in rhyme in lines 1 and 5; “sempre lagrimando” 
and “sempre sospirando” in rhyme in lines 3 and 6; the grammatical rhyme in “–ando” 
multiplied in lines 6-7 by the series “sempre sospirando, / mercé gridando, lagrimando, 
amando”). It is a way of making the short measure of the sonnet not so much an image-
monad defined by a style of arduous elegance like Bembo’s, but a more natural and 
sentimental poetical dialogue and lyrical meditation, in line with an ideal of sprezzatura, of 
negligentia diligens defined in those years in the Cortegiano by Baldassarre Castiglione. 



Humanist Studies & the Digital Age  Giorgio Forni 

1.1 Winter 2011  186 

Even without producing further examples, it seems obvious that the different stylistic 
choices emerge more evidently by taking a census and comparing the single lyrical 
rewritings of the same text in a similar historical context (case 2). The multidimensional 
aspect of a website will allow for the inclusion of every significant rewriting, with a brief 
critical note. 

On the boundary of the ages 
Studying the reception of a single poem of the Canzoniere will also allow us to verify 

and investigate, on a smaller scale, the great articulations of literary history and geography. 
Let’s consider, for example, another historical context where “Solo et pensoso” becomes a 
relevant text of the Petrarchan book of rhymes: the passage from the eighteenth to the 
nineteenth century, from the neoclassical sublime to the romantic restlessness, from Alfieri 
to Foscolo. 

There are multiple rewritings, including poetry and prose: the thematic refrains, even in 
the canonical metre of the sonnet, tend in fact to break Petrarch’s linear and meditative 
rhythm. According to Mario Fubini, Alfieri broke the unity of the Petrarchan verse by 
rewriting a calm beginning such as “Solo et pensoso i più deserti campi” in a cadence 
broken and distended by hyperbaton and enjambment: “Solo, fra i mesti miei pensieri, in 
riva / al mar...” (Alfieri Rime 1154; see text 7). But this could also apply to Foscolo’s sonnet-
self-portrait (“mesto i più giorni e solo, ognor pensoso”) (Poesie 71, 10) and even certain 
pages of the Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis (364; see text 10). In fact there is an ideal 
continuity from Alfieri’s sonnet “Solo, fra i mesti miei pensieri” to the sonnet by the young 
Foscolo “Quando la terra è d’ombre ricoverta” from 1797, “torno dove la spiaggia è più 
deserta / solingo a ragionar con la mia speme” (Poesie, 303, 5-6; see text 9), to the pages of 
the Ortis, until the portrait of Foscolo in the Epistola sui Sepolcri by Giovanni Torti, “Ahi! 
chi vegg’io / solo e pensoso e così fiero in vista / misurar queste arene?” (Torti, 25). 

And yet it is Rvf 35—and in particular the antithesis between “fuor” and “dentro” of line 
8—that perhaps allows us to draw a line between one period and the next, between two 
contiguous, and yet different, cultural systems. Quite clearly Petrarch’s success between the 
late eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century is linked to the 
exceptional reader Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his keen sense of the bitter and inhospitable 
landscape, as the interlocutor of the sincere and impassioned man, as “toutes les grandes 
passions se forment dans la solitude” (Nouvelle Héloïse II, 105; Nouvelle Héloïse I, 33). 
“Solo et pensoso” not only resurfaces as a title, Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire, but the 
entire Nouvelle Héloïse is pervaded with Petrarchan rewritings—with deserted and wild 
landscapes in which the lover finds in his surroundings an image of his own desolate and 
melancholic soul that consoles him of his inner anxiety. Here is an example perfectly 
balanced between interior and exterior: 

Dans les violens transports qui m’agitent, je ne saurois demeurer en place; je cours, je 
monte avec ardeur, je m’élance sur les rochers; je parcours à grands pas tous les environs, et 
trouve par tout dans les objets la même horreur qui regne au dedans de moi. On n’apperçoit 



Humanist Studies & the Digital Age  Giorgio Forni 

1.1 Winter 2011  187 

plus de verdure, l’herbe est jaune et flétrie, les arbres sont dépouillés, le séchard et la froide 
bise entassent la neige et les glaces, et toute la nature est morte à mes yeux, comme 
l’espérance au fond de mon cœur. (Nouvelle Héloïse II, 90; text 12). 

But in Rousseau we find most of all the sentimental myths of nature and the 
“camminatore solitario”: inaccessible peaks, shadowy forests, rushing torrents, and 
boundless seas. Also in Alfieri’s sonnet 135 (text 7) the emphasis is placed on the undefined 
and sublime landscape of the stormy sea (Petrarch’s “i più deserti campi” and “la rena” 
become an “ermo lido” pounded by “onde irate in suon feroce”) and it is a scene that 
consoles the lover with a “dolce oblio” of himself until it calms every “affanno” (lines 9-11). 
The situation is no different in another sonnet by Alfieri inspired by “Solo et pensoso,” “Là 
dove muta solitaria dura”: “a passo lento, per irta salita, / mesto vo...” (Alfieri, 1146; see text 
8, lines 3-4). The predilection for rugged and boundless landscapes will appear once again 
in the pages of the Vita scritta da esso: “immense selve, laghi, e dirupi,” “vasti deserti,” 
“solitudini immense,” “orrido mare,” “vasto indefinibile silenzio” (Alfieri, 80, 102, 196, 82 
and 83). However, the sonnet by the young Foscolo “Quando la terra è d’ombre ricoverta” 
(text 9) already performs a minimal but decisive change: now the landscape is a quiet lunar 
night scene that does not console the “piaga aperta” in the “cuore.” The image of solitary 
wondering “fra le ombre pacifiche della notte” is of a poetical self that does not find in 
natural objects a completed image of himself and a full harmony between landscape and 
“cuore.” The emphasis now falls on the “sublime” and “errante” inner life that does not find 
even momentary consolation from the surroundings, like in the Petrarchan pages of the 
Ortis: 

Oh! diss’ella, con quel dolce entusiasmo tutto suo, credi tu che il Petrarca non abbia 
anch’egli visitato sovente queste solitudini sospirando fra le ombre pacifiche della 
notte la sua perduta amica? Quando leggo i suoi versi io me lo dipingo qui–
malinconico–errante–appoggiato al tronco di un albero, pascersi de’ suoi mesti 
pensieri, e volgersi al cielo cercando con gli occhi lagrimosi la beltà immortale di 
Laura. (Ortis 364; see text 10) 

That this, already romantic, experience takes place under the Petrarchan influence of 
“Solo et pensoso” can also be confirmed by Foscolo’s letter to Pietro Borsieri from 5 May 
1809: 

Quando non piove, passeggio solo, e pensoso, e ne’ deserti campi anch’io come il 
signor canonico Francesco; ma non però come lui Or rime e versi, or colgo erbette e 
fiori; ch’io non amo le rime, e pavento d’accostarmi a’ versi; né in queste paludi 
trovo mai fiori, e invece di erbette, m’abbatto in erbacce crasse, e inodore. 
(Epistolario III 169; see text 11) 

Between the eighteenth and nineteenth century there was a juxtaposition of two 
different ways of interpreting Petrarch’s sonnets: at first emphasis was placed on the 
exterior “i più deserti campi,” the impassioned and consoling dialogue with the vastness of 
nature (“monti et piagge / et fiumi et selve”); subsequently prominence was placed on the 



Humanist Studies & the Digital Age  Giorgio Forni 

1.1 Winter 2011  188 

restless and solitary inner life, the I imprisoned amongst “marshes” and “weeds” of a grey 
and oppressive world.  

 In conclusion, this methodology of inquiry based on comparative study of the reception 
allows, on the one hand, for a redefinition of the relationship between micro and macro text 
in the system of the Canzoniere and on the other hand, for a thorough and refined reflection 
on the great rhythms of cultural history. 

Texts 
Text 1: F. Petrarca, Canzoniere 35. 

Solo et pensoso i più deserti campi 
vo mesurando a passi tardi et lenti, 
et gli occhi porto per fuggire intenti 
ove vestigio human la rena stampi. 
Altro schermo non trovo che mi scampi 
dal manifesto accorger de le genti, 
perché negli atti d’alegrezza spenti 
di fuor si legge com’io dentro avampi: 
sí ch’io mi credo omai che monti et piagge 
et fiumi et selve sappian di che tempre 
sia la mia vita, ch’è celata altrui. 
Ma pur sí aspre vie né sí selvagge 
cercar non so ch’Amor non venga sempre 
ragionando con meco, et io co llui. 

Text 2: L. Tansillo, I due pellegrini, lines 1-12. 

Filauto: 
Già si raddoppia il dì ch’io vo smarrito, 
mercé del piè che mi conduce in via 
dove vestigio uman trovo scolpito. 
Sapessi almen dove mi vada o sia! 
Ecco un che va solingo e fuor di strada: 
forse, di me pietoso, il Ciel l’invia. 
Pria che l’ombrosa notte qui m’invada, 
vo’ dimandar s’albergo è di vicino, 
dove le stanche membra a gittar vada. 
Chiunque sei, del loco o peregrino, 
tu che il piè movi sì pensoso e vago, 
quel che cerchi t’apporti il tuo destino. 

Text 3: P. Bembo, Rime 48. 

Solingo augello, se piangendo vai 
la tua perduta dolce compagnia, 



Humanist Studies & the Digital Age  Giorgio Forni 

1.1 Winter 2011  189 

meco ne ven, che piango anco la mia: 
inseme potrem fare i nostri lai. 
Ma tu la tua forse oggi troverai; 
io la mia quando? e tu pur tuttavia 
ti stai nel verde; i’ fuggo indi, ove sia 
chi mi conforte ad altro, ch’a trar guai. 
Privo in tutto son io d’ogni mio bene, 
e nudo e grave e solo e peregrino 
vo misurando i campi e le mie pene. 
Gli occhi bagnati porto e ’l viso chino 
e ’l cor in doglia e l’alma fuor di spene, 
né d’aver cerco men fero destino. 

Text 4: B. Tasso, Lettera a Claudio Rangoni. 

Fuggo, Signor, ove l’arena stampi 
vestigio uman, ma non però poss’io 
fuggir l’ingordo e folle mio desio, 
né dell’arbor mio bel gli accesi lampi. 
I più secreti e solitarii campi 
cerco solingo, e suo mal grado invio 
il desir a virtù pigro e restio, 
né però trovo chi d’amor mi scampi. 
Che ovunque volgo gli occhi infermi e chiusi 
veggio quei rami sacri e la dolc’ombra 
ch’al mio caldo pensier dà rezzo et òra. 
Dunque s’io fallo e se talor m’ingombra 
vano disio vostra mercé mi scusi 
perché ’l nemico mio meco dimora. 

Text 5: G.G. Trìssino, Rime 29. 

Quanto ognior penso, più la mente ingombra 
nuovo pensiero, e giù nel cuor profondo 
mena sì grave e intolerabil pondo, 
che d’ogni suo piacer l’anima sgombra. 
Crudel Amor, crudel, che sotto l’ombra 
de l’ale tue sperai viver giocondo, 
ma pianta fui che in un terren fecondo 
uggia mortale in sul fiorire adombra. 
Ond’io per selve e per deserti campi 
vò sospirando e consumando il giorno, 
senza riposo, infin che ’l sol s’asconde. 
Poi, come vien la notte, a pianger torno, 
così mi guida Amor, perch’io non scampi; 



Humanist Studies & the Digital Age  Giorgio Forni 

1.1 Winter 2011  190 

et io, lasso, pur vivo, e non so donde. 

Text 6: B. Tasso, Libro primo degli Amori 87. 

Solo e pensoso i miei passati affanni, 
e li futuri ancor vo misurando, 
e veggio ben che sempre lagrimando 
spoglierò l’alma de’ terrestri panni; 
veggio che ’n tanti e sì gravosi affanni 
viver non posso; e sempre sospirando, 
mercé gridando, lagrimando, amando, 
fuggiran l’ore in un momento e gli anni; 
ma siami come vole acerba e fera 
l’alta mia Donna, Amore, e ’l mio destino, 
ch’a le mie notti non cheggio altro sole: 
sempre fian le bellezze al mondo sole 
ne l’alma impresse, e quella luce altera 
onde di gir al Ciel scorgo il camino. 

Text 7: V. Alfieri, Rime 135. 

Solo, fra i mesti miei pensieri, in riva 
al mar là dove il Tosco fiume ha foce, 
con Fido il mio destrier pian pian men giva; 
e muggìan l’onde irate in suon feroce. 
Quell’ermo lido, e il gran fragor mi empiva 
il cuor (cui fiamma inestinguibil cuoce) 
d’alta malinconia; ma grata, e priva 
di quel suo pianger, che pur tanto nuoce. 
Dolce oblio di mie pene e di me stesso 
nella pacata fantasia piovea; 
e senza affanno sospirava io spesso: 
quella, ch’io sempre bramo, anco parea 
cavalcando venirne a me dappresso... 
nullo error mai felice al par mi fea. 

Text 8: V. Alfieri, Rime 89. 

Là dove muta solitaria dura 
piacque al gran Bruno instituir la vita, 
a passo lento, per irta salita, 
mesto vo; la mestizia è in me natura. 
Ma vi si aggiunge un’amorosa cura, 
che mi tien l’alma in pianto seppellita, 
sì che non trovo io mai spiaggia romita 
quanto il vorrebbe la mia mente oscura. 
Pur questi orridi massi, e queste nere 



Humanist Studies & the Digital Age  Giorgio Forni 

1.1 Winter 2011  191 

selve, e i lor cupi abissi, e le sonanti 
acque or mi fan con più sapor dolere. 
Non d’intender tai gioje ogni uom si vanti: 
le mie angosce sol creder potran vere 
gli ardenti vati, e gl’infelici amanti. 

Text 9: U. Foscolo, Versi giovanili 12. 

Quando la terra è d’ombre ricoverta, 
e soffia ’1 vento, e in sulle arene estreme 
l’onda va e vien che mormorando geme, 
e appar la luna tra le nubi incerta; 
torno dove la spiaggia è più deserta 
solingo a ragionar con la mia speme, 
e del mio cor che sanguinando geme 
ad or ad or palpo la piaga aperta. 
Lasso! me stesso in me più non discerno, 
e languono i miei dì come viola 
nascente ch’abbia tempestata il verno; 
che va lungi da me colei che sola 
far potea sul mio labbro il riso eterno: 
luce degli occhi miei, chi mi t’invola? 

Text 10: U. Foscolo, Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis, I, 364. 

– Oh! diss’ella, con quel dolce entusiasmo tutto suo, credi tu che il Petrarca non 
abbia anch’egli visitato sovente queste solitudini sospirando fra le ombre pacifiche 
della notte la sua perduta amica? Quando leggo i suoi versi io me lo dipingo qui–
malinconico–errante–appoggiato al tronco di un albero, pascersi de’ suoi mesti 
pensieri, e volgersi al cielo cercando con gli occhi lagrimosi la beltà immortale di 
Laura. 

Text 11: U. Foscolo, Lettere, A Pietro Borsieri, 5 Maggio 1809. 

Quando non piove, passeggio solo, e pensoso, e ne’ deserti campi anch’io come il 
signor canonico Francesco; ma non però come lui Or rime e versi, or colgo erbette e 
fiori; ch’io non amo le rime, e pavento d’accostarmi a’ versi; né in queste paludi 
trovo mai fiori, e invece di erbette, m’abbatto in erbacce crasse, e inodore. 

Text 12: J.-J. Rousseau, Nouvelle Héloïse I, 26. 

Dans les violens transports qui m’agitent, je ne saurois demeurer en place; je cours, 
je monte avec ardeur, je m’élance sur les rochers; je parcours à grands pas tous les 
environs, et trouve par tout dans les objets la même horreur qui regne au dedans de 
moi. On n’apperçoit plus de verdure, l’herbe est jaune et flétrie, les arbres sont 
dépouillés, le séchard et la froide bise entassent la neige et les glaces, et toute la 
nature est morte à mes yeux, comme l’espérance au fond de mon cœur. 

 



Humanist Studies & the Digital Age  Giorgio Forni 

1.1 Winter 2011  192 

Works Cited 
Aragona, Tullia d’. Le rime. Ed. Enrico Celani. Bologna: Romagnoli, 1891. Print. 

Alfieri, Vittorio. Rime. Ed. Francesco Maggini. Asti: Casa D’Alfieri, 1954. Print. 

---. “Vita di Vittorio Alfieri da Asti scritta da esso.” Opere. Ed. Vittore Branca. Milano: 
Mursia, 1965. 3-281. Print. 

Ariosto, Ludovico. Orlando furioso. Ed. Cesare Segre. Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1982. 
Print. 

Baldi, Bernardino. Versi e prose scelte. Ed. Filippo Ugolini and Filippo-Luigi Polidori. 
Firenze: Le Monnier, 1859. Print. 

Bembo, Pietro. Prose e rime. 2nd ed. Ed. Carlo Dionisotti. Torino: UTET, 1966. Print. 

Cavalcanti, Guido. Rime. Contini, Gianfranco, ed. Poeti del Duecento. Milano-Napoli: 
Ricciardi, 1960. 487-567. Print. 

Foscolo, Ugo. Epistolario. Ed. Plinio Carli. Firenze: Le Monnier, 1949-1954. Print. 

---. Poesie. Ed. Guido Bezzola. Milano: Biblioteca universale Rizzoli, 1974. Print. 

---. Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis. Ed. Giovanni Gambarin. Firenze: Le Monnier, 1955. Print. 

Fregoso, Antonio Fileremo. “De la Probità, al probo Enrico Boscano” in Silve. Web. 26 Nov. 
2010. <http://www.bibliotecaitaliana.it/>. 

Giraldi Cinzio, Giovan Battista. “Orbecche.” Teatro del Cinquecento. Tomo I. La tragedia. 
Ed.Renzo Cremante. Milano-Napoli: Ricciardi, 1988. 283-448. Print.  

Muzio, Girolamo. “Il pastor Aristeo pensoso e solo” Ed. Lodovico Domenichi. Venezia: 
Gabriel Giolito di Ferrarii, 1545. 273-75. Print. 

Petrarca, Francesco. Canzoniere. Ed. Marco Santagata. Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori, 2004. 
Print. 

Petrarch Project. University of Oregon Yamada Language Center, 2010. Web. 26 Nov. 2010. 
<http://language.uoregon.edu/petrarch/>. 

Quondam, Amedeo. Filosofia della luce e luminosi nelle Egloghe del Gravina: documenti 
per un capitolo della cultura filosofica di fine Seicento. Napoli: Guida, 1970. Print. 

Rota, Berardino. Egloghe pescatorie. Ed. Stefano Bianchi. Roma: Carrocci, 2005. Print. 

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Nouvelle Héloïse in Œuvres complètes. Ed. Bernard Gagnebin and 
Marcel Raymond. Paris: Gallimard, 1959-1995. II, 7-808. Print. 

Tansillo, Luigi. L’egloga e i poemetti secondo la genuina lezione dei codici e delle prime 
stampe. Ed. Francesco Flamini. Napoli: Vecchi, 1893. Print. 

Tasso, Bernardo. Lettere inedite. Ed. Giuseppe Campori. Bologna: Romagnoli, 1869. Print. 

---. Rime. Ed. Domenico Chiodo and Vercingetorige Martignone. Torino: RES, 1995. Print. 

http://www.bibliotecaitaliana.it/
http://language.uoregon.edu/petrarch/


Humanist Studies & the Digital Age  Giorgio Forni 

1.1 Winter 2011  193 

Tasso, Torquato. Gerusalemme liberata. Ed. Lanfranco Caretti. Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori, 
1995. Print. 

---. Rinaldo. Ed. Luigi Bonfigli. Bari: Laterza, 1936. Print. 

Torti, Giovanni. Poesie complete. Ed. Giovanni Battista Cereseto and Luigi Cicchero. 
Genova: Grondonà, 1853. Print. 

Trìssino, Gian Giorgio. Rime 1529. Ed. Amedeo Quondam and Gabriella Milan. Vicenza: 
Neri Pozza, 1981. Print. 

 

 


	For a Study of the Reception of the Canzoniere  in the “Petrarch Project”
	Giorgio Forni, University of Messina
	Solitude / flight
	The conflict of the Petrarchist styles
	On the boundary of the ages
	Texts
	Works Cited


