Veronica Franco
Veronica Franco was one of Venice's most famed courtesans in the sixteenth century. Unlike the common whore, a courtesan would not simply provide sexual favours, but also engage in intelligent conversation with their clients.
Veronica had been trained to become a courtesan by her mother, who had also been in the trade. At age 20 Veronica was listed in Il Catalogo di tutte le principale et piu honorate cortigiane di Venezia - just as it sounds, a Yellow Pages of prostitutes in Venice.
Veronica enjoyed both studying and writing poetry and would actively seek out patrons with similar interests. This eventually gained her access to an important Venetian literary circle.
In spite of her male clients' sexual appetite, often they would call upon her only for company and not for lewd liaisons.
Veronica became wealthy, however she did not forget the city's poor women. She proposed to the council that a home might be established for those unfortunates, but her campaign was not successful.
Veronica died at the age of forty-five, sometime after one of her most wealthy patrons had passed away. She is supposed to have ended her days in a known part of Venice home to destitute courtesans. Much of her life still remains a mystery, which makes her all the more intriguing. The Hollywood movie Dangerous Beauty is based on Veronica.
Elegiac verses written by Franco, away from Venice:
I passed a time weighed down with grief;
and, with my spirit forced to languish,
my only real pleasure came from reciting
heavy, pain-filled lays and from weeping.
Alas, I say now and will always say
that life is cruel death to me without you,
and pleasures to me are torments and woes.
Often, as I cried aloud that dear name,
Echo, touched with pity by my lament,
answered me with brief and broken calls....
The cool roses, lilies, and violets
were burnt by the wind of my hot sighs,
and I saw the sun turn pale with pity.
Moving their eyes in tearful swirls,
the rivers stood still, and the sea quelled its rage,
through tender pity for my suffering.
Oh, how many times the trembling leaves
stood still and the breeze ceased to blow,
in order to listen to my bitter pain.
And finally, never could I make my way
through any place where I did not see
even stones weep openly for my grief.
I live, if a person can be said to live.......
A playful challenge to a lover:
No more words! To deeds, to the battlefield, to arms!
For, resolved to die, I want to free myself
from such merciless mistreatment.
Should I call this a challenge? I do not know,
since I am responding to a provocation;
but why should we duel over words?
If you like, I will say that you challenged me;
if not, I challenge you; I'll take any route,
and any opportunity suits me equally well.
Yours be the choice of place or of arms,
and I will make whatever choice remains;
rather, let both be your decision....
Come here, and, full of most wicked desire,
braced stiff for your sinister task,
bring with daring hand a piercing blade.
Whatever weapon you hand over to me,
I will gladly take, especially if it is sharp
and sturdy and also quick to wound.
Let all armor be stripped from your naked breast,
so that, unshielded and exposed to blows,
it may reveal the valor it harbors within.
Let no one else intervene in this match,
let it be limited to the two of use alone,
behind closed doors, with all seconds sent away....
To take revenge for your unfair attack,
I'd fall upon you, and in daring combat,
as you too caught fire defending yourself,
I would die with you, felled by the same blow.
O empty hopes, over which cruel fate
forces me to weep forever!
But hold firm, my strong, undaunted heart,
and with that felon's final destruction,
avenge your thousand deaths with his one.
Then end your agony with the same blade.....
The reply to her challenge:
No more war, but peace! and may the hate and rage,
and whatever disagreement has arisen between us
be transformed into twice as much love.
I entrust my case completely to you,
on the condition that, to end our quarrel,
we remain better friends than we ever were.
To me it's not enough that we hang up our weapons,
but to ensure peace, let attacks
be put an end to on both sides.
I am sorry that strife rose up between us;
but if disdain grows into love,
I am glad that we felt disdain for each other;
and even though reason requires of me
that I resent and avenge the injury
that you were always intent on dispensing to me,
I intend, through the use of the weapons of courtesy,
to stand up so well to this battle, unvanquished,
that in the end I am acclaimed the victor.
True love has no objection to this;
with these and never with any other weapons
every great-hearted spirit undertakes battle.
Oh, if you were willing to face me, armed yourself,
if you wanted to test, with such strength,
whether you are able to overcome me,
my state would be equal to that of Jove;
but perhaps my hope is too daring,
for it seeks to fly without wings.......
Franco, to Venice and her distant lover:
Everything that brings solace and joy
throughout these fields and lovely shores
causes me pain and heavy, dismal grief.
The sunny valleys, full of breezes and scents,
the grasses, the branches, the birds, the cool springs
that pour from crystalline, pure streams,
the shady groves and cultivated hills,
so delightful and so welcoming to climb,
and easier the farther up one goes,
and all the things that art, nature, and heaven
with industrious hands have created here
are savage and foreign deserts to me.
No sweetness can assuage the bitterness I feel
because of the painful departure I took
from my dearly beloved native soil:
leaving, I left my life behind,
which, lying ignored at my cruel lover's feet,
lies torn asunder and parted from me.
And yet among these flowers and plants
I go seeking it, and the tracks of that vile man
who stands before me wherever I go.
And I seem to see him, transforming himself
now into a beech tree, now a fir, now a pine,
now a laurel, now a myrtle, into all sorts of shapes.
It seems to me that I can see him close by,
and I reach out with eager hands to seize him,
and try to bring my lips close, to kiss him.
In this confusion I see and understand
that, deluded by imagination and hope,
I embrace and hold a tree trunk or a rock.
If I see two little singing birds
land together in joy on a branch,
with the desire Love gently imprints in the heart,
I realize that I count in vain
on distance as a cure for my misery,
in a place where no one assists me.
And then two birds share sweet delight,
coming together to enjoy that good
that fulfils their desire and hope as one;
in the groves and woods, one senses Love,
driven from the company of men, among
the animals, which love each other equally;
mutual desire draws wild creatures
to the sweet invitation of love's delights,
with feeling shared equally between two hearts;
in mountains, valleys, groves, banks, and shores,
here and there, joined in tight embrace,
pairs of wild beasts wander in twos,
and man, chosen by heaven to be lord
over all the other beasts of the earth,
endowed with reason and with intellect,
man, who by choice errs rarely or never,
desiring sweet love, wages against himself
such a continuous and abominable war
that in the end it is impossible for him
to love without finding his beloved's heart
marked with desires that resist his own........