Gaspara Stampa, Selected Poems

by Gaspara Stampa, Mary Prentice Lillie (Translator), Laura Anna Stortoni (Editor)

Gaspara Stampa (1523-54) is considered the greatest woman poet of the Italian Renaissance, and she is regarded by many as the greatest Italian woman poet of any age. A highly skilled musician, Stampa produced some of the most musical poetry in the Italian language. Her sonnets of unrequited love speak in a language of honest passion and profound loss. They look forward to the women writers of the nineteenth century and are a milestone in women's literature. This dual-language edition of selected poems presents, along with the Italian original, the first English translation of Stampa's work. It includes an introduction to the poet and her work, a note on the translation, and provides the reader with notes to the poems, a bibliography, and a first-line index. Dual-language poetry. Introduction, bibliography, first-line index.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Italy, Italian Literature, 16th Century, Literature

272 pages, Paperback

First published November 29, 1994

About the author

Stampa's collection of poems has a diary form: Gaspara expresses happiness and emotional distresses, and her 311 poems are one of the most important collections of female poetry of the 16th century. This collection was published after her death by her sister Cassandra, and dedicated to Giovanni Della Casa.

The German poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, refers to Gaspara Stampa in the first of his Duino Elegies; which is often considered his greatest work.

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, if the cord that binds me in my sorrow
And holds me back could only hold you too,
You would not try to pull me with your reins
From one misfortune to another one.
But since I am all fire and you all ice,
You live in freedom, but I live in chains;
Your breath flows easily, my own is labored;
You live contented, I destroy myself.
The laws you lay upon me are so heavy
That even Milo's shoulders could not bear them,
Much less can mine, so delicate and fragile.
But go your way, since heaven so decrees.
Perhaps the god of Love will change at last.
Perhaps this god some day will do me justice.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

I shall admit that I knew nothing of Gaspara Stampa. I never heard her name or read a single one of her poems. Then I came across mention of her in the first of Rainer Maria Rilke's first Duino Elegy*, so I looked her up. It turns out that she is generally considered to be the greatest female poet of the Italian Renaissance. So, I decided to read some of her work and, thankfully, there is a fairly recently new translation of Selected Poems. This one.

The translation and editing have been done by Laura Anna Stortoni and Mary Prentice Lillie. I cannot vouch for their accuracy but this book has the original Italian so if you do speak Italian you can cross-reference them.

The introduction calls these poems an 'amorous Calvary' and they are her response to her love for Collatino di Collalto, Count of Collalto in all its manifold moods. Collalto was, apparently, first pretty impressed with her attentions but eventually - possible - found her passionate intensity a little irksome. They did have an affair for a while and rumour is that Gaspara Stampa was a courtesan and that, rather than her poetry, seems to have preoccupied scholars more than it should. It doesn't really matter what she was except that she was a poet.

She was first published in Italian in 1554, but very few of her poems have been translated into English. I did wonder about this as I read them because they reminded me - sometimes more directly than others - of Shakespeare's Sonnets, but it seems that the chances of Shakespeare reading them and being influenced by them are long.

Most of the poems here are sonnets but there are eight madrigals, two longer poems and a smattering of other forms.

But enough of the preamble, what of the poetry? Well, it is good. Sometimes exceptional. The long poem, #298, which is dedicated to a Nun and compares her life to the life of women in the 'real' world is a masterpiece. Indeed the last few poems in the collection seem to have a more direct religious turn than the earlier ones, although being Renaissance Italy religion is not far behind.

These poems cover jealousy, longing, pain, hope, joy and all the parts of love that one can feel - and today, we have naming of parts. #88 features the lines:

"You made me drink of you dark river Lethe
Which pleases me the more, the more it harms me"

Which is pleasingly gothic and might sneak into a Sisters of Mercy song given the right motivation. #22 is delightfully snarky:

"And maybe pity for my pain will move you
Where now you walk about in scornful pride'
Since you don't see it deeply as I feel it."

None of the poems has a title btw, they're all just numbered. My bookmark contains a list of 22 poems I particular liked above all the others, but to be honest this is a fine collection of love poetry from a woman's point of view.

You come to the conclusion that, whatever the gap between Count Collalto and Gaspara Stampa in social terms, there was a bigger gap between them. And that it was Collalto who was punching above his weight. If you've read Shakespeare's Sonnets you should really give these a read. The best of them are the equal of anything Shakespeare wrote.

*Rilke's quote:
"...Have you imagined
Gaspara Stampa intensely enough so that any girl
deserted by her beloved might be inspired
by that fierce example of soaring, objectless love
and might say to herself, "Perhaps I can be like her?"

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stampa uses unrequited love to claim poetic glory as much as to ask for pity. So, we might read her poems as staged performances as much as expressions of feeling.

[Vanessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

feminist icon (lusting over someone who literally does not want her)

[James Violand · Rating 3 out of 5]

The problem with any translation of poetry is that the rhythm and rhyme cannot be conveyed. Stampa was acknowledged to be the greatest woman poet of the Renaissance and yet I cannot appreciate her brilliance because I do not know Italian. The side-by-side Italian/English translation hints at her gift, but without an inner ear to hear her, she comes off as a whining, pathetic, pessimistic sufferer of love.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

beautiful and tragic

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are very passionate poems. I love it.

[Karina Montalvo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poemas intensos sobre el amor y otros temas.

[Clark Hays · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Certain is the parting.”

I picked up this collection because I wanted to (finally) understand the famous line in Rilke’s first elegy:

“Have you imagined Gaspara Stampa intensely enough
so that any girl deserted by her beloved might be inspired by that fierce example of soaring,
objectless love and might say to herself, "Perhaps I can be like her?"

Rilke is one of my favorite poets, or, more accurately, his Duino Elegies are some of my favorite poems, so I wondered who could inspire him so. Turns out, it’s another poet.

Gaspard Stampa, (1523 - 1554) is considered one of Italy’s greatest poets.

She was classically trained in the arts, highly creative and she had the misfortune of falling for a handsome douchebag who — it seems — strung her along for awhile, then ghosted and married someone else. Her misfortune in love is our good luck, because she chronicled in verse every stage of the romance, from early joyous obsession to self-flagellating grief in especially modern and empowered (if only through heartache) terms.

Reading a translation — especially from 16th century Italian — requires a good deal of trust in the translator, and they are not all created equal (just read Mitchell’s soaring translation of Rilke, compared to all others) but I’m a trusting person. And regardless of her native language, it’s clear Stampa was a passionate and talented writer, and that she was burdened by an exquisitely painful form of unrequited love.

Rilke, in his first elegy, mirrors one of her own lines:

“I dare to hope some woman will exclaim:
Happy is she, she who has undergone
For such a noble cause, sorrow so noble.”

Later she writes:

“If you should care to know me, you might see
A lady in her manner and appearance
Like Death herself and every kind of sorrow.”

This is one of my favorite opening lines for a poem of all time:

“Let all the minds and tongues on earth come forth
With every style of prose as well as verse…”

Here’s a little something that gets to the heart of her work:

“You who are chosen by the grace of Love,
Do not repine, therefore, if you must suffer,
Since torments caused by love are always blest.”

And a rare happy moment:

“While I am suffering such a painful good,
I fear my heart will break with too much joy:
Only she who has felt it understands.”

And this powerful reminder:

“I bid you die to joy and live in grief,”
Love answers me his hard final sentence.
“Let this suffice you, that it makes you write.”

And so, even she somehow knew that her suffering would be the impetus for some of the greatest poetry ever written, poetry that would shape the work of Rilke and countless others. Was it worth it? She died at 31 in 1554, probably of a broken heart and whatever other horrible diseases were creeping around Italy at the time. But her gorgeous and unflinching poetry, inspired by anguish, lives on.

The douchebag, happily, has been all but forgotten by the sands of time.

[Myhte · Rating 4 out of 5]

I who wept and burned and sang shall weep and burn and sing forever.

ah, why were my eyes so late to open
to that divine, non human, yet dear face,
wherein I found, carved and incised with grace,
an ocean of diverse wonders hidden?

welcome me, O benign hill, O river,
home of the divine graces and of love,
I, who shall your noble lord approve,
burn and live, solely by his light ever.

those who gaze, all intently, at the sky
will ever find some new sight there, above,
that once unseen, will brightly seek to move,
a fiery spirit, o'ver the world, on high.

O with what effort I have toiled, in vain,
O what sighs, and yet in vain I've sighed,
O living fire, O faith, search here inside,
no other frozed and burned so, in such pain.
O pages vainly written and those still to write

fair meadows, all the sweet and smiling scene,
green fields, and towering forests, grassy dells,
sheltered valley, where now lives and dwells
he who grants me days wretched or serene.

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wrestle to appreciate literary laments about a poor soul throwing his or her life away on someone who doesn't appreciate it, but Stampa makes the ordeal witty and musical. She fully deserves her reputation for brilliance.

[Mills College Library]

851.4 S7838s 1994