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Sacra Solitudo. Petrarch's Authorship and the Locus Sacer

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Sacra Solitudo. Petrarch's Authorship and the Locus Sacer Karl Enenkel Sacra solitudo. Petrarch’s authorship and the locus sacer De vita solitaria figures among Petrarch’s most important and most influential autobiographical writings;1 it represents an extended meditation on his life-style that comprises a mixture of a more or less realistic self-definition, the powerful description of an ideal, a highly styled self-image,2 some strong artistic claims, a grim self-defence as an intellectual, and also a couple of social pretentions. Already from the preface it appears that Petrarch identified himself completely with the life-style that is the topic of the work. The vita solitaria is his life-style, he is the solitarius, he knows the topic thoroughly, and by experience, and he claims that he is so much in it that it comes automatically to his mind.3 If one looks at Petrarch’s works one gets the impression that the life-style topic, the vita solitaria, functions either as the starting point or as the core business of any meditation 1 For Petrarch as an autobiographical writer cf. Karl Enenkel: Die Erfindung des Menschen. Die Autobiographik des frühneuzeitlichen Humanismus von Petrarca bis Lipsius. Berlin-New York: Walter de Gruyter 2008, p. 40–126 (detailed bibliographical annotations and further reading on p. 865–871); for the autobiographical content of De vita solitaria see Francesco Petrarca: De vita solitaria. Buch 1. Kritische Textausgabe und ideengeschichtlicher Kommentar. Edited by Karl Enenkel. Leiden-New York-Köln-Kopenhagen: Brill 1990, passim; and, for the success of De vita solitaria, Karl Enenkel: Die monastische Petrarca-Rezeption: zur Autorisierung über den Wid- mungsempfänger und zu anderen Bedingungen des Erfolgs von De vita solitaria in spätmit- telalterlichen Klöstern. In: Neulateinisches Jahrbuch 14 (2012), p. 27–251. For De vita solitaria, cf. also Armando Maggi: You will be my solitude. In: Victoria Kirkham/Armando Maggi (eds.): Petrarch. A Guide to the Complete Works. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press 2012, p. 179–195; Peter von Moos: Les solitudes de Pétrarque. Liberté intellectuelle et activ- isme urbain dans la crise du XIVe siècle. In: Rassegna europea di letteratura iltaliana 7 (1996), p. 23–58; Sandra Isetta: Il linguaggio ascetico di Francesco Petrarca nel De vita solitaria. In: Studi umanistici piceni 23 (2003), p. 75–94; and the English translation of the work by Jacob Zeitlin: The Life of Solitude by Francis Petrarch. Urbana, University of Illinois Press 1924. 2 For its ingredients, cf. Enenkel: Die Erfindung des Menschen, p. 137–141. For a much extended version of this contribution cf. Karl A.E. Enenkel: Petrarch’s Construction of the Sacred Solitary Place in De vita solitaria and Other Writings. With an Appendix: Bucolicum Carmen 1. In: Karl A.E. Enenkel - Christine Göttler (eds.): Spaces, Places, and Times of Solitude in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Leiden-Boston: E.J. Brill 2018 (Intersections. Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture, 55). 3 Cf. Petrarca: De vita solitaria, Buch 1, p. 176–181 (Die persönliche Erfahrung als Grundlage von De vita solitaria); cf. Ibid., I, 1, 4–5: “In hoc autem tractatu magna ex parte solius experientie ducatum habui nec alium ducem querens nec oblatum admissurus liberiore quidem gressu […] sequor animum meum quam aliena vestigia. […] A me nunc audies, quod occurrit ex tempore.” Open access. © 2018 Karl Enenkel, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 license. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110419306-003 Sacra solitudo. Petrarch’s authorship and the locus sacer 53 or self-reflection. Take for example his first prose treatise, the Rerum memoran- darum libri: it is no coincidence that its first chapter deals with the solitary life (De otio et solitudine): “Sed michi cuncta versanti cum id solum temporis vixisse videar, quod otiosus et solus vixi, visum est non aliunde quam ab otio et solitu- dine potissimum ordiri [...].” [Because when thinking thoroughly about my whole life, it seemed to me that I was truly living only when I lived in solitude and when I enjoyed leisure, solitude and leisure seemed to me to be the best starting point.]4 Therefore, the solitary life is for him “the very source of all topics,” the “primus dicendorum fons” from which the whole “narration” or subsequent work will flow.5 The preface of Petrarch’s second prose treatise, De vita solitaria, starts with a similar argument. When discussing about what kind of topic Petrarch is going to write to his dedicatee, bishop Philippe de Cabassoles, he says: “Quid vero nunc prius ex me speres quam quod et in ore et in corde semper habui et ipse, qui modo sub oculis est, locus hortatur?” – [What would you rather expect of me than the topic I always had in mind and I was always talking about, the topic which the very place suggests I am looking at, just now when I am writing those lines?]6 This time, of course, the solitary life is not only the first part of a meditation, but its main theme. Its initial part, however, is revealing, since it displays a remarkable ritual: the ritual of a new intellectual who – when he starts to write – engages in a complex self-assurance and self-reflection;7 a self-reflection he obviously consid- ered necessary when coming out, so to say, as an author, who longed to be taken serious by his audience. The last wish, of course, may seem not very spectacular; it is probably the aim of all authors. In Petrarch’s case, however, the spectacular thing is the kind of ritual he engages in, its ingredients or elements, and the way in which these ingredients function. When he is going to appear as an author, Petrarch always first creates a kind of sacred space or place; a space and place that will legitimate his authorship; that will safe-guard the power of his inventio; and that will persuade his readers to open up their mind for the poet’s new and unusual inventions. As he says for example to Philippe de Cabassoles about his authorship: he is always 4 Petrarca: Rerum memorandarum libri I, 1, 1. Edited by Giuseppe Billanovich. Florence: Sansoni 1943, p. 3. 5 Petrarca: Rerum memorandarum libri I, 1, 2. 6 Cf. Petrarca: De vita solitaria I, prohemium 8. All translations from Petrarch’s De vita solitaria are my own. 7 For the problem of authorship in Neo-Latin literature cf. Karl A.E. Enenkel, Die Stiftung von Autorschaft in der neulateinischen Literatur (ca. 1350–ca. 1650). Zur autorisierenden und wissens- vermittelnden Funktion von Widmungen, Vorworttexten, Autorporträts und Dedikationsbildern, Leiden-Boston: Brill 2014; for Petrarch esp. p. 32, 48–50, 93, 112, 142, 169–174, 176, 187, 234, 240, 257–258, 265–266, 280–287, 289, 298–301, 303–311, 313, 335, 356, 368, 372, 378, 386–396, 404 etc. 54 Karl Enenkel going to present “new things” [res novae] that are “hard to understand” [durasque et rigidas], full of “unusual ideas” [peregrinae sententiae]; ideas that have nothing to do with the mind-set and the opinions of common people, or generally accepted opinions of average intellectuals.8 I suspect that it is connected with this special type of authorship that Petrarch always constructs a sacred place for the author. In the following paper, I will analyse this construction, and have a closer look at its elements and the way in which they function. I will depart from the treatise De vita solitaria, since this work offers a blueprint of Petrarch’s authorship. Now what are the elements of Petrarch’s sacred space where his authorship can take place? First, its sacrality seems to have something in common with some ancient sanctuaries. The locus sacer of Petrarch’s authorship is always located outside cities or towns, crowded and narrow places; places where many people would come together, where one would expect manifold social interaction, and noise. In a sense, Horace’s “Odi profanum volgus et arceo” from Carmina III, 1 could function as a motto for Petrarch’s self-definition as an author. Petrarch claims that his authorship functions only in a place far away from the profane vulgus or the town people. Petrarch deliberately writes, as he indicates in the preface of De vita solitaria, for a small elite of selected readers, paucis lectoribus, another quote from Horace (Satires I, 10, 74). Horace indeed functions as one of the main examples for Petrarch’s authorship: in the 2nd book of De vita solitaria he uses Horace, Letter II, 6 as a blueprint, and interprets line 77 as a “universal rule” of authorship: “Scriptorum chorus omnis amat nemus et fugit urbes” [All writers love the woods and flee from the towns.]9 Interestingly, Petrarch takes the line as a “universalis regula,” although he must have understood the iron- ical and satirical tendency of Horace’s letter, which is a playful farewell poem as a lyrical poet. Already in his Epistole metrice, Petrarch had imitated Horace’s line as a golden rule: “Silva placet Musis, urbs est inimica poetis” [The Muses love woods, poets hate towns.]10 In De vita solitaria, as yet another form of self- assurance, Petrarch includes this verse too.11 With this authoritative and exclu- sive golden rule, Petrarch deauthorizes urban writers. In the 14th century, such a position seems quite remarkable, especially if one takes into account the 8 Cf. De vita solitaria I, prohemium 2: “[….] posse tibi res meas, pater optime, placere, que ut paucis placeant, laboro, quando, ut vides, sepe res novas tracto durasque et rigidas peregri- nasque sententias et ab omnia moderantis vulgi sensibus atque auribus abhorrentes.” 9 Francesco Petrarca: Prose.
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