2015 HUMANITIES FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS

Source A Eng.

Petrarca, Francesco. “If No Love Is, O God, What Fele I So?”
Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 20 May 2015.

 

SUMMARY: In the sonnet If No Love Is, O God, What Fele I So by Petrarch and accompanying analysis, the student

can use this text to show how the society is angled towards deep and abstract thought,

much of which is displayed in the Inferno.

 

despite many archaic wordings and spellings, remains quite readable and even more relevant.  It’s a monologue about the pangs of love, and how it manifests itself so really within us.  Petrarch begins by wondering, paraphrased for your convenience, “If there is no love, God, what do I feel?”  Moving on with the assumption that it is love, he wants to know, “what thing and which” is love?  Love is thought of as positive, but Petrarch feels pain from it.  “If love is good, then from where comes my woe?  If it’s wicked, why do I find its torments savory, why do I thirst for it?”  It’s the question we all ask:  “Why does love hurt if it’s good, why do I want it so badly, why can I not live without it?”  Further wondering where love comes from, Petrarch wonders if it comes from within his own brain.  But if it comes from himself, then why does he wail and feel plaintive?  The whole poem is loaded with images of pleasure and pain in opposition, both caused by love.  It’s like an irreconcilable quarrel within, seemingly happening without his permission.  But surely he must be letting himself fall in love, he thinks!  “How may you (love) be in me in such quantity but with my consent?”  Assuming he is allowing himself to fall in love, Petrarch then thinks he has no right to complain!  “If I consent, I wrongfully complain, I think!”  He feels passed to and fro, as if a boat caught between two winds.  He feels as if he’s dying of cold in the heat, or dying of heat in the cold.   The best descriptor of love in the poem is this line, “Allas! what is this wondre maladie?” which translated, reads, “Alas!  What is this wondrous malady?”  Love surely is a wondrous malady.  It afflicts us all with tremendous pain, wonderful pleasures, leaves us constantly thirsting for it, and yet it happens despite our wishes, and we have no choice but to allow it.

 

 

If no love is, O God, what fele I so?

And if love is, what thing and which is he?

If love be good, from whennes cometh my woo?

  If it be wikke, a wonder thynketh me,

 When every torment and adversite

That cometh of hym, may to me savory thinke,

For ay thurst I, the more that ich it drynke.

And if that at myn owen lust I brenne,

From whennes cometh my waillynge and my pleynte?

If harm agree me, whereto pleyne I thenne?

 I noot, ne whi unwery that I feynte.

 O quike deth, O swete harm so queynte,

How may of the in me swich quantite,

But if that I consente that it be?

And if that I consente, I wrongfully

 Compleyne, iwis. Thus possed to and fro,

Al sterelees withinne a boot am I

 Amydde the see, betwixen wyndes two,

That in contrarie stonden evere mo.

Allas! what is this wondre maladie?

For hete of cold, for cold of hete, I dye.