A Tiny Violin for Petrarchan Ways 9/12/19

Love, that doth reign and live with my thought,
And built his seat within my captive breast,
Clad in the arms wherein with me he fought,
Oft in my face he doth his banner rest.

But she that taught me love and suffer pain,
My doubtful hope and eke my hot desire
With shamefast look to shadow and refrain,
Her smiling grace converteth straight to ire.

And coward Love, then, to the heart apace
Taketh his flight, where he doth lurk and plain,
His purpose lost, and dare not show his face.

For my lord's guilt thus faultless bide I pain,
Yet from my lord shall not my foot remove:
Sweet is the death that taketh end by love.

-Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

There is something very telling about the Petrarchan sonnets. It is that men are vastly insecure and possibly harbor some very deeply ingrained fear of women. These fears are based on forced expectations of what equates one's value in society. But what I also see reading this sonnet is something a bit more basic; I see the crushing emotions of adolescence. This idea of "Love, that doth reign and live within my thought" reminds me of being a teenager who's emotions are sharp and new. Love was an obsession and in a simplistic way of thought it makes some sense to view it as a me versus them kind of way until experience dulls the edges.

I rather (in a twisted humored way) enjoy the imagery of a "Clad in the arms" knight losing a battle against a women "that taught me love and suffer pain". Who exactly is this armored "love" the speaker is referring to? Is this a writer's self projection onto the poem? Even removing the idea of self projection the poem still reads one way: The women was more fearsome than "he". The speaker is not putting in much effort with the ideas of what we might collectively think of what an "armored" man is when they subvert the idea for a "coward love... Taketh his flight".

This lack of complexity is why I am reminded of adolescence because the time is marked with the inability to adequately express oneself. Having the affliction of being a women (har har) I may be more inclined to roll my eyes at the entire idea of the Petrarchan Sonnet but it is the final line that should make any reasonable person reevaluate the content. The embarrassment of rejection is a fairly universal experience. While it is not an enjoyable experience it is one given enough time loses that sharp edge. It merely becomes unpleasant. It is childish to say, "Sweet is the death that taketh end by love". The complicated syntax of the final line fails to produce ambiguity as to its meaning. Instead, it simply comes off as an overly dramatic reaction to a basic human experience.