Gaspara Stampa(1523-1554):-
v Introduction: -
European Renaissance, reformation and Counter Reformation during 15th and 16 century produced a few but talented woman whose works were felt to be more akin to the spirit of the Renaissance. For centuries, the definitions of the Renaissance have gone unchallenged, but recent criticism has questioned the very existence of the Renaissance. Joan Kelly in her essays questions
“Did women have a Renaissance’
Indeed it was the traditional assumption about the experience women. She and other scholars stressed that women’s historical experience differs form en’s regarding changing property, relations, religions and social ideologies. Most Renaissance literature written by men referent women as a represent a deterioration in the state and freedom. Italy is represented by the women who ere member of upper class and were known for her poetic mystic latently, their contemporaries.
The writers Vittoria Colonna, Veronica Gaspara and Gaspara Stampa all of them composed lyric poetry of high quality. Gaspara and Colonna ere married aristocracstic lad. Gaspara Stampa was a cultivated Venetian Prostitute. All these threes women broke the strict confines of Petrarchan tradition with her own essentially person choice. Vittoria colonna paid tribute to married love and Gaspara Stampa depicted passionate and even obsessive love and its frustration. Three poet were themselves as lovers not as the beloved and the two married poets by sings of fulfilled love burst the confines of the Petrarchan tradition domination by the themes of betrayal and erotic frustration. Colonna and Gaspara wrote ‘devotional poem as well. They were noted patron of art and pressed over literary salons.
v Life and Work
Gaspara Stampa was a prominent figure in 16th century Italian literary circles. Even today many critic consider her the best female poet, Ital has ever produced. She was born in Padua probably in 1524. By 1531, her father a successful artisan, had died and her mother had moved the family to Venice.
Gaspara’s brother a university student earned praise as a poet. The family home became a salon for the Venetian Scholars at which Gaspara and her sister presented musical performance. In 1544, Gaspara’s brother dies, but his fellow-poets continued to visit to the salon. Later on by late 1540s, Gaspara became a part the Venetian groups that met in different homes to discuss and
practice the art. At one of these she met Count Collaltino de Collato. Her affairs with him produced the poems for which she is best known. Here are few liens from her best known poem.
v Her dramatic contrast with Vittoria Colonna:-
Gaspara Stampa is the most talented Italian Renaissance woman poet. She depicted passionate and even obsessive love and its frustration. She was the great woman poet of the Italian Renaissance. In both her life and works, she provides a dramatic contrast with another prominent woman poet of the time, Vittoria colonna, the great aristocrat and platonic beloved of Michelangelo. Vittoria Colonna was noble, while Gaspara was not so. Gaspara was a Venetian courtesan. Here poems except few poems on Christian repentance are devoted to obsessive sexual love, particularly to the torments of its frustration. Gaspara Stampa can not be regarded a courtesan in the ordinary sense. She was respectable woman and had enjoyed a social status of some dignity.
Gaspara’s position as a dignified courtesan assured for her a certain degree of esteem. The complimentary poem praising her beauty and her artistic gifts seem full of sincere admiration even if they do show at times a faintly sexual quality. Count Collatino di collato was the lover and protector of Gaspara Stampa.
v Petrarchan spirit in Gaspara:-
There is much of Petrarchan spirit in Gaspara as we find in the sixteen century love lyrics. The first of her sonnets for example tells how fist she saw Collatino on Christian as Petrarch first saw Laura on Good Friday. She aspires to go beyond the sphere of earthly love.
“If love with a new unprecedented spark….
Could raise me to a place I could not reach.”
She wants …
“Why can not pain and pen combine to teach
Such arts as never known shall find their mark?”
Hence it is not Collatino, who has made Gaspara a poet, According to Ruport Graves..
“Gaspara is her own Muse”
Her love poem:-
She refers to her absent lover in the third person in the initial stage and then shifts to a dire (terrible) address in which she predicts with sadistic glee(joy) the sorrow he will one day feel when he repents his cruelty. First she praises her lovers’ excellent qualities and ways to approach her. His excellent qualities have been her sweet chains. She feels her lover is like an intellect, angelic, and divine. She finds him of royal nature and of valorous (heroic) deeds. He seems to be sober in speech and dignified in show. She sees him then, when he is in the flower of his age and fair to view. He is mild in manner and in courtesy. As she is attracted to him, she begins to consider him like a sun. In a hyperbolic style, she writes
“A face more clear and radiant than the sun
Were grace and beauty were by love bestowed.”
She feels captivated by his charming personality. His love attraction is felt as chains. She finally desires to be held by love and lover, so she says,
“Oh may love chose in the bonds to hold me over.”
Equally it is interesting to not her first day of love, in “The first Day of Her Love- On Christmas Day. She finds him in human form. She feels he might have chosen her to choose her heart to make his nest. Further, in love and confessional mood, she tells,
“Joy full I embroiled this blessed change
So rare and so exalted.
She feels each of her hope and thought was for him. Her love makes her tendered. She feels that he is as noble as is the sun rising or setting. She finds her lover’s beauty is dug within her heart. She feels that he has drown her form herself and made…
“Now that to you I’m made,
You become with me a single one.”
In one more poem With You My Heart World Rove (Roam),she finds her heart going with her lover on voyaging. Then the poem is directed towards sob and sighs.
“But my sighs will be companions on
your way my cries and sobbing too.”
She then wants her lover tha when his comrades forske him, he will know how he has mistaken. But when the love returns, she in her sonnet says,
“I bless, O love, the troubles main fold,
All the injuries and all thea tears
All the distresses, whether new or old
You’ve made mie feel so much so many years.”
And she feel joy and writes, “All my past sorrow, I now put away.”
v Petrarchan style.
Her poetry is written in the Petrarchan style. Most of her poetry is main concerned wit the theme of the rejected lover. The unrecognized lover in her poetry was based perhaps Count Collaltino di Collato. The majority of her poems deals explicitly wit her love affair. Stampa’s unconventional life as ‘a musical performer at men’s homes’ makes her an exception and controversial literary figure.
v Her noteworthy literary work The Rime:-
Only three sonnets which written by Stampa were ever published during her lifetime. The Rime, her noteworthy literary work, which contained three hundred and eleven poems, was edited and published by her sister, Cassandra after Stampa’s death. The Rime did not attract the readers so soon the Rime went out of print, only to re-merge in 1738 in reedited by Lusia Bergalli. The sonnets in the Rime are written in the Petrarchan tradition which was a typical style of sixteenth century poets. The Rime is divided into tow section. The first section of the Rime contains Stampa’s love poetry and the second part of the Rime contains poems which were dedicated to renowned figures of sixteenth century Venetian Society.
v Diary form:-
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, Rilke, refers to Gaspara Stampa in the first of his Duino Elegies; which is often considered his greatest work.
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