I haven't recognized anything, which looks like zodiac or elements, inside the 45 sonnets. Generally I reflect ideas like ....mikeh wrote: 11 Aug 2022, 08:48 Another question: is there any hint of the 12 zodiacal signs or the 4 elements of Minchiate? My sense has been that they were added later, perhaps with the "return of the Medici," but suggestions otherwise would be nice. The first mention of them is Berni, 1525 (quoted by Singer). The number 45 in itself doesn't suggest the 41 special cards of Minchiate. It could just as well be 23 plus the Fool.
Dialogue between Pa [normal text] and Po [italic text]Huck wrote: 10 Aug 2022, 13:29
Somehow it looks interesting to translate sonetto 42
Sonetto 42
Pa.
Tremando, ardendo, el cor preso si truova.
Po.
Ov’è la neve, il laccio, il foco, il sole?
Pa.
I tuoi sguardi, i dolci acti e le parole.
Po.
Vòi taccia, chiuda gli ochi e non mi mova?
Pa.
Questo el mio mal non spinge, anze ‘l rinova.
Po.
Perchè?
Pa.
Perchè indi nascon tre parole:
virtù, stil, legiadria, unde non dole
fuoco, giaccio, catena, anzi gli giova.
Quel che lo lega, par la lingua snodi,
quel che l’agiaccia, de virtù lo incende,
l’arde in legiadre et amorose tempre.
Po.
Donque meglio me vedi, miri et odi?
Po.
Ben sai che sì, però che non me offende
agiacciando, stringendo, ardendo sempre.
Noting this, I started to look, if I could detect a similar repeating word in Sonetto 41. I found the word "e" and "è"....01 02 03 04 [05] 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 [18] 19 20 21 22
......................................................... [23] .......................................................
24 25 26 27 [28] 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 [41] 42 43 44 45
... automatic translated to ..Dagli occhi de Madonna el solfo prende
Amore, et ha per mantici i desiri
vani: el cor soffia un vento de sospiri,
che in me, che stopia sum, la fiamma incende.
The Bahir is a very old book from the kabbala development. If Pico had opportunity to read it, might be doubted. But the name "the 32 ways of wisdom" was clearly known to him, it's an essential part of the Sepher Yetzirah.63. What is his heart?
He said: If so, Ben Zoma is out side, and you are with him.
The heart (Lev) [in numerical value] is thirty-two. These are concealed, and with them the world was created.
What these 32?
He said: These are the 32 Paths.
This is like a king who was in the innermost of many chambers. The number of such chambers was 32, and to each one there was a path. Should the king then bring everyone to his chamber through these paths? You will agree that he should not. Should he reveal his jewels, his tapestries, his hidden and concealed secrets? You will again agree that he should not. What then does he do? He touches the Daughter, and includes all the paths in her and in her garments.
One who wants to go inside should gaze there.
He married her to a king, and also gave her to him as a gift. Because of his love for her, he sometimes calls her “my sister,” since they are both from one place. Sometimes he calls her his daughter, since she is actually his daughter. And sometimes he calls her “my mother.”
In the structure of I-Ching there are 64 hexagrams and 8 trigrams, from which one is declared as "heaven", which in the words of Bahir is presented as the King.These are twelve, twelve, twelve, and they are the Functionaries in the Axis , the Sphere, and the Heart.
Their total is 36. The power of each of these 36 is in every other one.
Even though there are twelve in each of the three, they are all attached to each other. Therefore, all 36 Powers are in the first one, which is the Axis. And if you seek them in the Sphere, you will find the very same ones. And if you seek them in the Heart, you will again find the very same ones.
Each one therefore has 36. All of them do not have more than 36 forms.
All of them complete the Heart [which has a numerical value of 32]. Four are then left over. Add 32 to 32 and the sum is 64. These are the 64 Forms .
How do we know that 32 must be added to 32? Because it is written (Ecclesiastes 5:7), “For one above another watches, [and there are higher ones above them].”
We thus have 64, eight less than the 72 names of the Blessed Holy One. These are alluded to in the verse, “there are higher ones above them,” and they are the seven days of the week.
But one is still missing. This is referred to in the next verse (Ecclesiastes 5:8), “The advantage of the land in everything is the King.”
It is not the heart that blows, but the bellows of vain desire ['mantici' = the bellows/mouthpiece], Love takes the 'sulphur' ['solfo'], the igniting nature, of her gaze. The bellows of vain desire blows the heart [in him likened to a bundle of straw or hemp husk "stopia" i.e., the kindling or food for the fire] a wind of sighs, and ignites the flame [of love].Huck wrote: 13 Aug 2022, 03:41
Another word to cor ... the heart.
Sonetto 1 starts with ...... automatic translated to ..Dagli occhi de Madonna el solfo prende
Amore, et ha per mantici i desiri
vani: el cor soffia un vento de sospiri,
che in me, che stopia sum, la fiamma incende.
"From the eyes of Madonna el sulfo takes
Love, and has desires for bellows
vani: el cor blows a wind of sighs,
that in me, what stopia sum, the flame ignites."
...
The position of the poem terminus "cor soffia" shall mean the "heart blows"... It is hard to believe, that the author wanted, that the reader shall understand "heart blows" at this passage.
Hm ... do you have some material to other poems attributed to Pico or to sonnets of the 45-poems-collection, which appeared elsewhere?SteveM wrote: 14 Aug 2022, 07:45 I am not convinced by your numerological speculations that this particular complitation of 45 sonnets does represent a completed work, nor even if it is, that it encodes some cabalistic riddle, and is not just the compilers collection from a variety of sources, written at different times and places. Several of the sonnets are also reproduced in other manuscripts, and all with some variation, some are minor orthographraphical variations, others more major, with differing rhymes schemes [there is a variant of the PO PA sonnet that I translated in a post above for example], so we cannot even be sure that the sonnets in this particular compilation even represent the authors final revision. There are some other poems to be found too, mainly sonnets, but other types too, such as a sestina and a capitolo.
I followed the note "Codice 1543 della Biblioteca Nazionale di Parigi" inside his Italian text.Let us now abandon the existential turmoil and return to literary production. We have chosen from the forty-five sonnets in the vernacular that make up the Canzoniere surviving of Giovanni the ten compositions in our opinion most significant for the purposes of our study. Probably, these sonnets were conceived over a period of time ranging from 1479 to 1486. ?? It is impossible to further specify the dating, although it can be stated with certainty that they risked being set on fire together with the five books of Latin elegies, as it tells us. Poliziano in a well-known Greek epigram: Pico, continually wounded and inflamed by the arrows of love, rebelled, tore arrows, bow and quiver, made a stake and everything burned. Grasping the Loves themselves, he tied their tender hands with the rope, and threw them into the midst of the fire. And he burned the fire with fire. Why, o foolish loves, did you fly from Pico, prince of the Muses? The episode is slightly later than March 1483, since in that month he had sent the first of these five books to Angelo. We must therefore conclude that this exercise had faithfully accompanied the Count of Concordia in the long years of wandering and study, in Bologna (1477 and 1478), Ferrara (1479), Florence (1480), Padua (1481 and 1482), Pavia (1483) , before the new Florentine stay in 1484 and the semester spent in Paris in 1485. But the desire to express himself in Italian verse also touched Giovanni in the following years, if a letter dated May 15, 1492, addressed to his nephew, mentions poetic nonsense by now abandoned with a tone that betrays relative proximity in time.
In any case, the manuscript on which our knowledge of the collection is based comes from the court of Ludovico Sforza known as il Moro, who was a relative and good friend of the Mirandolan prince. It is precisely the Code 1543 of the National Library of Paris, drawn up between 1492 and 1497. It is composed of more than two hundred sheets, which present, in addition to many poorly-known versers, the Stanze di Lorenzo il Magnifico, the Stanzeby Poliziano, sonnets by Bembo and Tebaldeo, strambotti by Pulci and dell'Aquilano, works by Benivieni and Sannazzaro. It is a remarkable collection of loving and encomiastic poems, almost certainly completed after Pico's death, which documents how at the Milanese court the spirits of the great Tuscans coexisted with the more conventional Po Valley ways, in the rich flourishing of Petrarchian inspiration.
... according the manuscript commentary.Incipit
Uror in ambiguo gemino correptus amore
Urar et ut vivam nec graue vulnus erit.
??Huck wrote: 13 Aug 2022, 03:41 We have, that Sonetto 42 got artificial 10 lines more than the other sonetti, which had the usual 14 lines.
Here, for example is the above Sonnet 42 as it appears in the Codex Nicolò da Correggio [Codex .H.6.1 (It. 836 [X * 34]) at the Estense Library of Modena] :Huck wrote: 14 Aug 2022, 13:02 Hm ... do you have some material to other poems attributed to Pico or to sonnets of the 45-poems-collection, which appeared elsewhere?
Indeed, I am not sure what the rules, if any, for punctuation in the vernacular there were at the time, probably nothing standardized. From a brief look it looks like the only abbreviation used in this collection was a colon : , the use and meaning of which may have been very different to modern English [or Italian] use, and a forward slash / to indicate the end of each sonnet.Huck wrote: 15 Aug 2022, 08:12
An observation:
The offered internet text of the poems
http://a.trionfi.eu/p/atest.txt
has 6 question marks for sonetto 23 at the lines 2-4-8-9-10-11.
The handwritten text at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b ... .item.zoom (sonetto 23 is at the bottom of the page) has there nothing, as far I can decipher that.
from page 184Footnote 4, page 182: G. PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA, Sonetti, a cura di G. DILEMMI, Torino 1994. Agli studi finqui menzionati, si aggiunga il saggio di M.
MARTELLI, La poesia giovanile e le opere in volgare di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Convegno internazionaledi studi nel cinquecentesimo anniversario della morte (Mirandola, 4-8 ottobre 1994), 2 voll., acura di G. C. GARFAGNINI. , Firenze 1997, II, pp. 531-541, di cui si dirà in seguito.
P = Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, cod. it. 1543. Cartaceo, miscellaneo di un’unica mano, con minime aggiunte di altri copisti. Il nucleo centrale del codice, allestito daun primo copista, è anteriore al 1497 (come si deduce da alcune note marginali apposte da una seconda mano alle cc. 48v e 123v). L’ispiratore-allestitore del codice viene indicato nel poeta milanese Gaspare Visconti. Al suo interno, alle cc. 62r - 69v, si con-ervano 45 sonetti di Pico raccolti sotto il titolo Sonetti del Conte Zoanne de la Mirandola. Il manoscritto è un’antologia – prevalentemente poetica – di autori toscani (Lorenzo, Poliziano, Girolamo Benivieni) e di area settentrionale (Bembo, Tebaldeo). Daquesto manoscritto è stato ricavato l’attuale ms. Naz. IIII 75 della Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze (F1), che ne riproduce – ma non integralmente –, il contenuto (mancano, ad esempio, le Stanze del Poliziano); F1 è inoltre mutilo delle carte iniziali e pertanto privo dei primi 27 sonetti pichiani e dell’incipit del sonetto 28.
