Delmarva Review: Petrarch’s Cat a story by John J. McKeon

Author’s Note: “Petrarch’s Cat” sprang from my experience of trying (trying!) to learn a piano piece by Franz Liszt, based on one of the poet’s sonnets. I had to dig for an English translation, in the process learning a lot more about the poet’s life and stumbling on a description of the supposed cat mummy. An irresistible peculiarity. Add the notion of a long-term, unrequited love, and…

Petrarch’s Cat

MY FIRST SIGHT OF SOPHIA came in the Piazza San Marco in the Italian village of Arquà Petrarca. The plaza was crowded, and it was hard to keep her in sight even though she was, with her red hair, bare shoulders, and long white legs, the most conspicuous person in the village. 

I lost her in the Piazza but saw her again an hour later in the Church of Santa Maria Assunta. She had covered her head and shoulders with a dark silk shawl, and she knelt before a side altar. I was struck by the timelessness of the image; a similarly draped woman might have knelt so at any time in the last five centuries. The air itself was hushed, the candle flames perfectly still, tiny threads of smoke rising undisturbed to the ceiling. The setting offered no chance of conversation, though, so I lingered outside the church. 

She did not emerge, but stayed on my mind as I walked the winding streets to my true destination, the house where the Renaissance poet Petrarch lived out his final years. And there she was, still wearing the scarf, and browsing the displays in the house’s small museum. I kept her in sight this time, moving with her from room to room, and standing a few paces behind her as she looked at Casa Petrarca’s famous oddity, the supposed mummy of Petrarch’s pet cat. To my eye, the object on display looked nothing like a cat, and there is little evidence that Petrarch even owned one, but never mind. A legend is a legend, and tourism matters to small towns. Saint Jerome is said to have had a lion for company in his hermit’s cell, so I suppose Petrarch is entitled to his kitty. 

Here, I realized, was my opening. Unless she read Latin, the inscription beneath the gruesome display would mean nothing to her. I could open that door, charm her, win her over. I knew my Petrarch. 

The beast’s own voice speaks in the inscription, first claiming to rank even higher in Petrarch’s affections than the poet’s eternal, unattainable love, Laura de Noves: 

AAAAnd when I say I had his heart,
AAAWhile Laura play’d the second part,
AAAI must not be derided. 

Then he boasts of preserving the Great Man’s works by driving the mice away: 

AAAEven now, though I am dead,
AAAThose nibbling wretches dare not tread
AAAlOn one of Petrarch’s verses. 

It was the Petrarch house that brought me to Arquà, as a freshly matriculated graduate student casting about for a thesis subject. I was brimming with Renaissance facts and eager to strut, and I stood a while in the gallery, looking the girl over and formulating my approach. I could appear to take her for a native and use my awkward student Italian to ask her help; perhaps she could recommend a pleasant trattoria where we… 

She was in the exit door of the museum, haloed by afternoon sunlight, and as I took a panicky step toward her, she showed me the serene half-smile of a Raphael Madonna, a smile that knew exactly what I was up to, and that sized me up and dismissed me in a single thought. Then she disappeared. 

I hurried outside and saw her at the next corner, tossing a crumpled piece of paper into a trash bin. A tour group, in the care of a shouting guide, engulfed me and slowed my pursuit. By the time I reached the corner she was gone again, into a warren of medieval alleys that gave no sign of her passage. 

Immune to embarrassment, I reached into the bin and retrieved the paper she had discarded. It was her receipt for the Casa Petrarca entry fee, made out in her name, Sophia Altobelli. 

That was thirty years ago. 

THROUGH ALL THESE YEARS, Petrarch has been my field, my niche, the key to whatever career success I have had. 

Petrarch, born Francesco Petrarca. V anguard of the Renaissance. The first humanist, the first tourist, first to climb a mountain just for the view. Coiner of the term “Dark Ages.” Inventor of the sonnet. 

The man who taught the world to pine. 

I can’t say Petrarch has made my fortune, because universities don’t pay that well. I have a modest reputation, all the same. My books on the poet have been well reviewed and have sold decently, given the limits of their subject. They rest even now in the stacks of hundreds of libraries, waiting to be stumbled upon by scholars looking for something else. 

As my expertise grew over the years, I never believed the story of the cat. The author of the inscription lived some two centuries after Petrarch, and the first mention of the cat mummy dates from about the same time. A fine joke on credulous pilgrims, I thought, and my thesis advisor shared my skepticism. 

Still, people relate to the cat. It humanizes Petrarch, just as his decades of devotion to Laura gave the world a model of loving from afar. He ascertained the routes of her daily walks and contrived to be in her path; he sat near her in church; he even bought a plot of land nearby to stay close to her. 

Today, of course, such conduct is called stalking. For Petrarch, it was enough to think she might appear if he dawdled in the town square or the public gardens, and that if she appeared, she might speak to him, or give him a brief smile. In his letters and journals, he berated himself for impure thoughts and for giving himself over to obsession. Yet he also cherished his obsession; it inspired his work. 

Did they know each other or ever speak? There is no record. Apart, of course, from the hundreds of love poems that sprang from Petrarch’s pen between his first glimpse of Laura in 1327 and her death from plague in 1348. And I know that a love such as Petrarch’s can not only survive separation from the beloved but require it. Some women, perhaps most, are loved best from a distance. Lord Byron, after all, had his own verdict on Petrarch: 

AAAAThink you that, had Laura been his wife
AAAAHe would have written sonnets all his life? 

SOMEHOW, I knew the girl was American. The way she crumpled the receipt and tossed it into the trash. The way she vanished so abruptly into the village’s ancient maze of stone- paved passages. That’s how Americans walk, I thought. And that display of flesh. Add in her smile, at once modest and arrogant. An American girl, for sure. 

I had two more days in Arquà and spent most of it wandering outdoors in hopes of another chance encounter. Surely, she had invited me, I thought; surely she expected me to follow. I took dozens of pictures, convinced that the place itself held a key. My scrawled notes gave me a plausible occupation as I sat in one café or another, drinking endless bitter coffee and scanning for her. 

She never re-appeared, and soon I thought of her simply as a future memory, an image sure to recur from time to time. I would smile briefly on my deathbed, and my loved ones would look at each other. Not so much a Road Not Taken—I had not really had the choice, after all—as one of those slightly worn trails that wander off from our main life path. A book of Petrarch’s love poems, coupled with an Italian dictionary, helped me pass my long flight home. 

FOR NEARLY TEN YEARS, the girl obediently played her assigned role in my life. Whenever an unknown woman smiled at me in a bar or on the subway, I returned the smile and thought of Sophia: her hair, her shoulders, her prayerful posture in the ancient church. She also appeared to me in dreams and flashed into my wandering mind in idle moments and odd places, often in much less pious poses. 

Meanwhile I wrote my thesis, got my master’s, got my doctorate, got my first job, and a better second job. I also acquired a wife, a slender pediatrician with no interest at all in Renaissance poetry. 

As to my Sophia, her beauty grew in my memory as Arquà Petrarca shrank into the past. She was safe in that mental realm where she would never age, never change at all. 

Then one day, there she was again, taking a seat on a dais in a Baltimore hotel ballroom at the annual conference of the National Society for Renaissance Literature. I had sat near the back, hoping to slip out early, and at first, doubted my eyes. But the program told me the next panel included a presenter named Sophia Altobelli. 

Her last name had not changed. Nor her hair. The shoulders and legs I recalled so well were demurely covered by jacket and pants. 

I remember almost nothing of her talk. She focused on Dante and only mentioned Petrarch near the end, when she accused him of thrusting himself at Laura but magnanimously forgave him because “he was a cat person, after all.” 

“I know,” she added, “because I’ve seen the remains of the cat at the poet’s house in Padua.” With that, she looked out over the audience and smiled, a smirk really, conveying to me, if no one else, that she shared my own opinion of that bogus artifact. Had she seen me in the audience or somehow sensed my presence? 

Afterward, I went straight to the evening reception on a terrace overlooking Baltimore Harbor, where I staked out a position near the bar and waited. In vain. 

I saw her the next morning, crossing the lobby and dragging a wheeled carry-on case. She glanced in my direction and seemed to pause; perhaps I imagined it. Did she recognize me, somehow, despite the years that had passed? My last sight of Sophia was as she passed through the revolving doors to a waiting taxi. She had not come to socialize, I thought; good for her. She’s busy and a serious scholar. 

Thanks to the printed program, I now knew where to find her—the University of North Carolina—and had a sampling of what turned out to be an impressive library of papers and other publications. Our shared professional interests also gave me an excuse to get in touch. I did not do so, but I still have that program somewhere. 

The immediate effect of this second encounter was to jump- start my own rather becalmed career. I read all of her papers looking for something I could comment on or a tidbit I could develop into an article of my own. And it worked, for a while: I had three significant publications in the next two years, boosting my chances of tenure. I thought, she’s inspired me, hasn’t she? 

Newly motivated, I began to work up a session proposal for the society’s next national meeting, conveniently nearby. They turned me down, but accepted a proposal from my colleague Mel Isaacson, whose work had never impressed me. When the advance program came in the mail, I quickly discovered my Sophia was also on the agenda once again. 

So: A serious scholar, admirable for more than just her looks, and her work was more interesting than mine. 

PETRARCH usually prefaced his poems, and some of his other works, with a pun: “His laurels grew along with his love of Laura.” His poems are also full of references to gentle breezes and light airs, portraying the subtle effect of his beloved on her surroundings. The Italian word he used most was l’aura, the air, which has led some scholars to argue that he fixated on her mainly for the wordplay. Or perhaps made Laura up. 

He found resonance in the fact that Laura died twenty years to the day from the day he first saw her. He claims that first milestone occurred on Good Friday of the year 1327, and the date of that holy day is easy to establish. Laura died on April 6, 1348. That date might or might not be accurate, depending on the reliability of local clerks more than six centuries ago. 

The notion fits well with Petrarch’s own narrative of his life, as a man who wholly devoted himself over twenty years to the praise of a distant beloved. He defined himself, which most people living today would be hard-pressed to do. 

If the dates turned out to be unreliable, would it matter? 

“HAVE YOU EVER MET THIS ALTOBELLI WOMAN?” I asked Mel in the university food court. I was leafing through the advance program, which listed his accepted session. He shook his head. 

“You should go to this,” I said, tilting the booklet toward him. He leaned forward for a look and shrugged. “Not really my field,” he said, and returned to his acai bowl. 

“I saw her once,” I went on. “In fact, we go back a long way.” 

“Really,” Mel said flatly. 

“She does good work. And she’s definitely worth looking at.” 

Mel glanced around the almost-empty cafeteria. “Don’t you know better than to say something like that out loud?” he asked. 

He shook his head slowly while I forced a laugh. The next month he was off to the conference. When he returned, he dropped the thick on-site program on the coffee table in the department lounge. He had marked several pages with Post-it Notes; Sophia’s presentation was not among them. 

“I did check out her session,” he told me over coffee. “Didn’t stay long. It was kind of superficial, actually.” 

“Superficial?” I repeated, and even as I said it, I heard my voice rise in pitch and volume. 

“Whoa,” Mel said, chuckling. “Dial it back a bit, hey?” 

I smiled. “I’m surprised,” I said. “I’ve read a few of her papers and thought they were quite good.” 

“Well, as I said before, not really my field,” Mel said.

“I have a couple of ideas on which she might be a good collaborator,” I went on. 

“So get in touch. All the presenters’ emails are in there,” he said, gesturing at the program. 

I decided to write to Sophia and propose that we work together on something for the following year’s conference, something that might even result in a book. I threw myself into the task and generated a 2,000-word document, which I then slaved to cut to a reasonable email. I finished by proposing that we meet at the conference to discuss it in person. The event was close enough that I could go on my own dime. The message sat in my “Drafts” folder for two days, then I clicked “Send.” 

She replied almost immediately to say she had been forced to cancel her conference trip, so we couldn’t meet, and as to collaboration, she unfortunately found herself fully engaged for the foreseeable future. 

My encyclopedic proposal lingered in my files for a year, then began evolving into my first book. Sophia had inspired me once again. 

She also beat me to publication with a thin but well- reviewed study of Boccaccio. I decided to bring my copy to a conference someday and ask her to sign the title page. I also noted in the author bio that she “lives in the Chapel Hill area with her husband and two young sons.” 

I spent some time online—knowing I was behaving badly— and found her address, then used Google Streetview to get a look at her house. On-screen I saw an abode of brick and siding, with window boxes full of blossoms flanking the door. An SUV was parked in the driveway, its license number blurred out. On the stone entry threshold sat a black cat, benignly surveying its front yard. 

The whole scene had an appealing domesticity. I imagined the life going on behind the brick, under the self-satisfied gaze of the black cat. A settled life of scholarship, modest success, yard work, grocery shopping, contentment. 

And two young sons. Well, I thought, Laura gave her husband eleven children while Petrarch pined away for her. 

While I pined, my university moved steadily closer to shutting down its comparative literature program. Enrollment was scandalously low, alumni financial support had fallen off, and the institution did not have the comfort of a large endowment. The field I loved had become a frill, an indulgence, no match for all that indispensable science and tech. It was only prudent, I thought, to fish in a few other ponds. 

Over supper one evening near the end of the spring semester, I said to my wife, “They have a strong program at UNC.” 

“North Carolina?” she replied. “Are you serious?” 

“Well, my days here are numbered,” I replied. “And why not UNC? I hear Chapel Hill is charming.” 

“And what in the world would I do there?” 

“The same as here,” I said. “They need pediatricians everywhere. Renaissance scholars, not so much.” 

“It’s not that simple,” she said. “What about my patients? What about my parents?” 

“What about them?” I countered. “You can be a doctor anywhere. There’s not so many opportunities in my field.” 

“Then maybe you should think about a new field,” she said, and began to clear the table even though neither of us had finished eating. 

I sulked the evening away in my (our) home office. I had fully imagined a new life in Chapel Hill, building my reputation while rooting for the Tar Heels and seeing Sophia almost every day. 

I updated my curriculum vitae and began making lists of people I could approach for letters of recommendation. Each time I raised the topic of a move with Nicole, she shut down the conversation. 

Mel did not return to the university that fall. He let his colleagues know by email that he’d taken a new job in California. I passed this news on to Nicole, who said only, “I wish him well.” 

I tried to remember the name of the department chair at UNC. Idly I clicked on the UNC website. On the comparative literature program page, I found a box captioned “In Memoriam,” within which I saw the long-remembered face: Older, but still serene and beautiful. Sophia, I learned, had died of brain cancer the previous month. 

I sometimes invite my students to imagine the day Petrarch learned of Laura’s death, of the unrecoverable loss of something that was never his at all. 

He imagined it himself, or at least imagined avoiding that day: 

AAACreator kind!
AAAGrant that ere hers my death shall first be met.
AAASo the great public loss I may not see,
AAAThe world without its sun. 

My male students sometimes identify with Petrarch’s longing, but mostly they think he was a fool. Most of the women I’ve taught have had persistent unwanted suitors and don’t find them appealing. I doubt I have ever known a woman student who had received an original love poem from a guy. Nor can I plausibly imagine any of my male students sitting down and composing such a thing. 

As far as I can tell, they’re stumped by the very notion of a faithful love from afar. 

That was the role Petrarch defined for himself: The chaste and endlessly devoted lover of the perfect woman. That role is not available today. I know, because I tried. 

Petrarch’s legacy has shrunk. The nibbling wretches have been hard at work, right under the cat’s nose. Scholars long ago discarded the term “Dark Ages.” Other poets have been credited with the actual creation of what is known as the Petrarchan Sonnet. His ascent of Mont Ventoux has been endlessly re- interpreted. 

And the mummy? Though the subject of smiles and shrugs among the knowing, it continues to draw modest crowds in the little museum in Arquà, and its epitaph continues to charm. The ugly little thing simply fits the romantic story Petrarch concocted for his own life. And I continue to love it. 

♦ 

John J. McKeon is a Maryland writer with an Irish/German heritage. He grew up in New York City and has always been interested in the immigrant American experience. His career has included work as a newspaper reporter and magazine writer. He is the author of several novels and a short story collection, and his work recently appeared in the Delmarva Review,  Volume 11 (2018) and Volume 16 (2023). Website: www.johnjmckeon.com 

The Delmarva Review, in St. Michaels, MD, offers selected writers a desirable home in print (with a digital edition) for their most compelling new prose and poetry to present to discerning audiences everywhere. It exists at a time when many commercial print publications (and literary magazines) are closing their doors or reducing literary content. For each annual edition, the editors have read thousands of submissions (at no charge) to select the best of new poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. About half are from the Delmarva and Chesapeake region. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, support comes from tax-deductible contributions and a grant from Talbot Arts with funds from the Maryland State Arts Council. Website: www.DelmarvaReview.org