Robert Sheppard: Petrarch 3: the semiotic translation removed from my sequence!

I have been revising (quite lightly) my translations of Petrarch's third sonnet (and the subsequent sonnets that will form a book, as yet, untititled) and have decided to remove the semiotic translation which I had placed as a 'semiotic fringe' at the bottom of my 'Semantic Poetry Translation' of the sonnet. (I think it detracts from my homage to Stefan Themerson's 'semantic poetry' method.) This is the sonnet, which describes the day he first saw Laura (depicted above).

Era 'l giorno ch'al sol si scoloraro
per la pietà del suo Factore i rai,
quando i' fui preso, et non me ne guardai,
ché i be' vostr'occhi, Donna, mi legaro.

Tempo non mi parea da far riparo
contra colpi d'Amor; però n'andai
secur, senza sospetto: onde i mei guai
nel comune dolor s'incominciaro.

Trovommi Amor del tutto disarmato,
et aperta la via per gli occhi al core,
che di lagrime son fatti uscio et varco.

Però, al mio parer, non li fu honore
ferir me de saetta in quello stato,
a voi armata non mostrar pur l'arco.

Here is the semiotic fringe translation, as a strip.

☼♂♂♀♂♥?♂         ↑♂♂↓♂█ ♂♂        →♀♂ !†♂         ♂†♂♂◙ !

But really it should not be a fringe but a sonnet in its own right:

☼♂♂♀♂♥?♂          

↑♂♂↓♂█ ♂♂        

 →♀♂ !†♂          

♂†♂♂◙ !


Read my first 'straight' translation and the Scouse doggie version here.


I write about my sonnets generally here, and here and see here and here for more on my Petrarch obsession/project, including how to purchase Petrarch 3 from Crater press in its 'map' edition.

The first review of Petrarch 3 by Alan Baker may be read on Litterbug, here. The second response, by Martin Palmer here. The third is by Peter Riley. My response to it here includes a few remarks about the whole project with links to other parts:

http://robertsheppard.blogspot.com/2018/03/peter-riley-on-my-petrarch-3-and-other.html

http://www.manifold.group.shef.ac.uk/issue20/RobertSheppardBM20.html

  takes you to excerpts from Hap:Understudies of Thomas Wyatt’s Petrarch (though the first, introductory, poem ‘Perhaps a Mishap’ is not a version of Wyatt’s versions of Petrarch. The rest are).