Diving Deep in the Closed Valley

Petrarch and I have something in common. We both fell in love with Fontaine-de-Vaucluse.

When Petrarch first glimpsed the closed valley, he was brokenhearted. Ten years prior, on Good Friday April 6, 1327, he first saw Laure in Avignon at L’Église Sainte-Claire. She was married, so he spent much of the rest of his life letting go of her. 

It seems to follow that when your heart is broken from love of a person, some kind of room opens up to fall in love with a place. I suppose a location appears to be more stable, more fixed, less likely to slip away from you, less likely to let you down.

It was like that for me at age 20 walking alone from L’Ile-sur-la-Sorgue to Fontaine-de-Vaucluse after a boyfriend’s dismissal and a tangle in Paris with a conman. And again now at age 50, walking alone from Gordes after the severing of twelve years built with the man I thought of as the love of my life. It was like that for my great grandmother in 1938, embraced by the cedar-scented adobe of Santa Fe, New Mexico after her marriage ended and the life of the man she adored turned out to be made-up, and she proceeded to build a kiva with her own hands south of Santa Fe while war brewed in Europe. And it was like that when Petrarch fell in love with the sweet isolation of the closed valley of Fontaine-de-Vaucluse in 1337. 

What better way to heal a sore heart than with clear waters from a bottomless chasm under a towering rock.

“There is no place in all the earth that is more dear to me than Vaucluse,” Petrarch wrote in one of his many letters.

In his Canzoniere 280, Petrarch wrote:
The waters speak of love, the air, the branches,
the little birds, the fish, the flowers, the grass,
all begging me together to love for ever.
   (Translated by A.S. Kline)

It is important to remember that no matter how alone I may feel, no matter how cut off from human touch as I travel by myself, I must remember that Petrarch lived alone for ten years in Fontaine-de-Vaucluse with only his love for its beauty, his love for words and language, and his imagined love for a woman who did not love him.

Like me, Petrarch was a traveler. Some consider him the first tourist, the first to go places just for the experience of it. And like Petrarch, I enjoy the internal journey that accompanies the physical one. Most of my life, I’ve felt rootless and sometimes my journeys seem like a quest to find home.

Petrarch’s life was nomadic. He never stayed anywhere very long, but was always coming back to the places that meant something to him while never losing reverence for the land of his birth.

Francesco Petracco (also known as Petrarca, also known as Petrarch) was born on July 20, 1304 in Arezzo, Italy south of Florence (Firenze to Italians). Dante Alighieri, 39 at the time of Petrarch’s birth, was a friend of his father, Ser Petracco, and they were in the same political party that got them exiled out of Florence just prior to Petrarch’s birth. 

In 1312 when Petrarch was 8, the Petracco family moved to Avignon to find work near the new seat of Pope Clement V. Although he would have preferred to study letters and literature, Petrarch obeyed his father by studying law at the University of Montpellier and later the University of Bologna. Seven years wasted in Petrarch’s opinion. 

Petrach’s father died in 1326, releasing him to pursue a life immersed in literature. Petrarch returned to Avignon, did clerical jobs, worked for a cardinal, and wrote, wrote, wrote, and sent, sent, sent. He was famous for his words within his lifetime.

In 1326, he fell in love with Laure. In 1337, after a trip to Rome and his dramatic epiphany about the importance of the soul’s journey while climbing windy Mont Ventoux, he fell in love with Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. It was the place where he was most productive as a writer. In the closed valley, he wrote the first sections of his epic poem Africa, which was about the Roman victory in north Africa during the Second Punic War.

In 1341, he was given the honor of Poet Laureate of Rome, and at the same time of Paris, but chose Rome in the land of his birth, and placed the laurel wreath he received on the tomb of Saint Peter, another kind of Petra or rock, making a symbolic link between classical literature and the Christian faith. The laurel wreath was also a symbolic link to Laure. He wrote hundreds of poems about Laure and many included the laurel plant as a symbol for her. Additionally, he planted laurel in Fontaine-de-Vaucluse and imagined it was the woman he loved with him there. Yes, love brings us to strange places doing strange things.

In una valle chiusa d’ogni ‘ntorno, ch’è refrigerio de’ sospir’ miei lassi, giunsi sol com Amor, pensoso et tardo. Ivi non donne, ma fontane et sassi, et l’imagine trovo di quel giorno che ‘l pensier mio figura, ovunque io sguardo.  (last two stanzas of Canzoniere 116 – Italian)	Thoughtful and late, I came with Love alone into a valley that’s closed all round, that leaves me refreshed with sighs. No ladies there, but fountains and stones, and I find the image of that day my thoughts depict, wherever I gaze.  (English translation by A.S. Kline)
Chi spïasse, canzone quel ch’i’ fo, tu pôi dir: Sotto un gran sasso in una chiusa valle, ond’esce Sorga, si sta; né chi lo scorga v’è, se no Amor, che mai nol lascia un passo, et l’immagine d’una che lo strugge, ché per sé fugge tutt’altre persone.  (last stanza of Canzoniere 135 – Italian)	Song, if they ask how I am, you can say: ‘He lives  under a great rock in a closed valley,  where the Sorgue rises, where no one  sees him, except Love, who never leaves his side, and that image with him, of one who destroys him, for whom he flees all other people.  (English translation by A.S. Kline)

Quante fïate, al mio dolce ricetto fuggendo altrui et, s’esser pò, me stesso, vo con gli occhi bagnando l’erba e ‘l petto, rompendo co’ sospir’ l’aere da presso! Quante fïate sol, pien di sospetto, per luoghi ombrosi et foschi mi son messo, cercando col penser l’alto diletto che Morte à tolto, ond’io la chiamo spesso! Or in forma di ninpha o d’altra diva che del piú chiaro fondo di Sorga esca, et pongasi a sedere in su la riva; or l’ò veduto su per l’erba fresca calcare i fior’ com’una donna viva, mostrando in vista che di me le ‘ncresca.  (Canzoniere 281 – Italian)

How often I come to my sweet retreat, fleeing from others, and, if I could, myself, bathing the grass and my breast with tears, troubling the air I touch with sighs! How often, alone and anxious I’ve gone through dark and shadowy places, seeking my noble joy, whom Death has taken, in thought, so that I often call out to her!  Now in the shape of a nymph or other goddess rising from the Sorgue’s crystal depths, she comes to sit on the river-bank: now I have seen her on the fresh grass, treading the flowers like a living woman, showing she pities me by her look.  (English translation by A.S. Kline)

In a letter written in 1349, Petrarch wrote, “I know that Vaucluse is a delightful place….The peace of its hills, founts, and woods and gained, not to say fame, but at least notoriety from my sojourn there…By my choice, it was there that I labored for fame with my prose and verse, constructing within the rude walls a similar edifice, but with, I hope, solider cement.” (translated by Morris Bishop)

And in a letter Petrarch wrote to Niccolò di Paolo dei Vetuli, Bishop of Viterbo in 1353: “Here the air is bland, the winds gentle; the land is sunny, the waters bright, the river full of fish, the groves shady, the caverns dripping, and there is many a grassy nook and smiling meadow. You will hear the lowing of cattle, the song of birds, the murmur of the streamside nymphs. Our pleasant retreat is hidden away, and so it is called the Closed Valley.” (translated by Morris Bishop)

Petrarch traveled to Paris, Flanders, and Germany, always in search of forgotten classical literature. He recovered many important works before returning to Fontaine-de-Vaucluse in 1345 and again in 1351 to rest and write. 

In 1361, after the death of his son by an unknown mother, he returned to Italy, going to Padua in an effort to escape the plague. He decided to remain in Arquà close to Padua to be near his daughter by an unknown mother and his grandson who he loved dearly. In 1374, Petrarch died in his study, his head resting on a manuscript of the Roman poet Virgil. 

Through his letters, literary finds, and poems, Petrarch, along with Dante, is credited with laying the humanist groundwork for the Renaissance. 

The Petrarchan sonnet form was one I learned in school. Fourteen lines of iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme: abba, abba, cdcdcd or cdecde. We used to chant it in English class. Poets for centuries have written Petrarchan sonnets, including Shakespeare. Go to the end of this article for two masterpiece Petrarchan sonnets: “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus and “When I Consider How My Light is Spent” by John Milton.

Petrarch is also credited for coining the term “Dark Ages” to refer to the time of deterioration that followed the decline of the Roman Empire. He believed the classical period of the Greeks and Romans was a time of light and the time after, including his lifetime, was a time of darkness.

Petrarch wrote at the end of his poem Africa: “My fate is to live among varied and confusing storms. But for you perhaps, if as I hope and wish you will live long after me, there will follow a better age. This sleep of forgetfulness will not last forever. When the darkness has been dispersed, our descendants can come again in the former pure radiance.”

How things change and how they stay the same.

I wake on a gray morning in November on the second floor of Hôtel du Poète. The petit déjeuner in the salle á manger downstairs overlooks turquoise water dotted with rain. In addition to my morning café and bread with brie and apricot jam, there are scrambled eggs and green olives and a choice of thick juices. Feeling more like writing than going anywhere, I force myself out the door and on the path to “le Gouffre” or the chasm without known end.

The fifth largest spring in the world, its annual flow varies between 630,000,000 to 700,000,000 cubic meters of water. That’s over 166 billion gallons per year. In 1879, Nello Ottonelli made it to 75 feet. By 1938, 90 feet was the deepest they could go until the invention of scuba diving suits. Jacques Cousteau and another diver were almost killed, but made it to 151 feet in 1946, and Cousteau got to 243 feet in 1954, which was the limit for dives with air. In 1981, an oxygen-helium mixture enabled a dive of 502 feet and 673 feet in 1983. With the use of robots, the lowest known depth to date is 1,033 feet. 

If you want to see the gouffre with very little water and a lot of people and with all the touristic stores and restaurants open, summer is best. If you prefer to see the many colors of water and hear its gushing force, fall and spring are better times to visit.

I walk through the little town, its turquoise waters rushing everywhere under bridges and trickling through water wheels, and gushing along lamplit, overhanging restaurant patios, empty in the offseason. The pleasant shock of auburn and gold leaves sprawl from branching trees with caves gasping above the ruins of the Château des Evèques (the castle of the bishops). I continue past the sign for a tour of the mysteries of the underworld and speleology, I’ll come back for that,  the little artisan mall called Galerie Vallis Clausa, I’ll come back for that, and the paper mill open to visits, I’ll come back for that, and I keep moving between the river and the rocks, never swerving from my mission to reach the source of it all. 

There’s Petrarch’s old house, now a museum, across the river and I realize just how close it is to the ruins of the castle high above. I read that his friend Philippe de Cabassolle, Bishop of Cavaillon, lived in the Château des Évêques while Petrarch was in Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. 

And then, I am out of the town and alone with the water, trees, and rock except for the appearance of the occasional seasonal restaurant, now closed. The water becomes loud and it is white with the force of its flow. I step closer and closer to a wall of rock going straight up. And beside me, there are three plaques in three different languages: Italian, the unlikely Esperanto, and the faintest and oldest one is etched in French and roughly translates: “In this closed valley, fleeing from the pleasures of the world, Francesco Petracco found shelter for his meditation in the autumn of 1337. Faithful to Laure and the study of antiquity, no place was dearer to his heart, nor any more conducive to his glory. The city of Vaucluse to its poet. August 1937.”

I walk just a little further and, sudden as a pin drop, the racing white waters are still.

When the water is low, you can see the entrance cave to the subterranean wonderland. For centuries, coins have been thrown into the gouffre. Roman coins from centuries ago have been retrieved during dives. 

To take your own virtual dive, select Virtual dive of le gouffre de Fontaine de Vaucluse.

There’s a large sign with the legend of the gouffre as written by Frédéric Mistral, a French writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1904. It says something like this: “After making the daughters of L’Ile-sur-la-Sorgue dance, the old fiddler Basile fell asleep in the shade one hot day on the path to Vaucluse. A nymph as beautiful as a clear wave appeared and took the sleeper’s hand, leading him to the source of la Sorgue. In front of them, the water opened and let them descend between two walls of liquid crystal at the bottom of the chasm. After a long subterranean journey, the nymph stopped the fiddler in the middle of a smiling meadow sown with supernatural flowers in front of seven large diamonds. She lifted one of them and it let out a powerful jet of water. “There,” she said, “the secret of the source of which I am the guardian. To raise the water, I take out the diamonds. At the seventh, the water reaches the fig tree that drinks only one time per year.” And she disappeared, waking Basile.” 

I scramble up the hill for a view from above. It’s not an easy climb. There is the feeling of having come to a genesis point, as if the rock says, come here and no further. 

I follow the colorful roaring river back to the town, stop in the paper mill and its store, visit the charming local artisan shops in the Galerie Vallis Clausa, sit at a little table in front of one of the shops for a chocolate drink, walk in the gardens around Petrarch’s old house, and find a stone bust made in his honor.

Damp and a bit cold, I return to Hôtel du Poète for a nap before dinner. It is dark when I venture out and I realize that although the town is small, it is very easy to get twisted around and lose your way. 

Chez Dominique is open for dinner tonight. In the off season, it looks like the restaurants rotate their open days, so I’m not really choosing a dinner restaurant so much as it’s choosing me. Dominique greets me at the door and leads me up the stairs to the second floor where she seats me at a table with a window view of the square with the column dedicated to Petrarch at its center. The plaque reads: “This column was erected in memory of Petrarch on July 20, 1804 by L’Athénée de Vaucluse who first placed it near the Source. It was transferred to this location in 1827.” 

Dominique tells me that the stew on the menu for the evening is a specialty passed down from her mother, so of course, I must try it. After a bone chilling day, the tender stew warms me within. Downstairs, Dominique shows me her father’s beautiful paintings of the natural beauty of the Vaucluse and I enjoy listening to her French, responding as I’m able, before returning to the hotel. 

Even in the dark, the water roars. I remember sitting at the bank with Marita and Sabine thirty years ago, watching the leaves float along the top of the rushing green water, carried along, wondering about how our different futures, theirs in Deutschland, mine somewhere, would carry us. Where were they now? “Time was flowing on, and I was flowing with it,” Petrarch wrote in 1353, “slipping down, departing, or to use the right word, dying. We are continually dying; I while I am writing these words, you while you are reading them, others when they hear them or fail to hear them, we are all dying. I shall be dying when you read this, you die while I write, we both are dying, we all are dying, we are dying forever…” (translated by Morris Bishop)

“If we are sensible,” Petrarch wrote in 1349, “we must not merely look far ahead, but right to the end, to avoid Seneca’s reproach to the human race: ‘Everyone thinks about parts of life, no one thinks of the whole.’ Quite true; hence our hasty judgments, so that in the press of our varied occupations, sadly and absurdly enough, we don’t know where to steer on life’s sea.” (translated by Morris Bishop)

To read Petrarch’s incomplete account of his life, select Letter to Posterity.

To read more of Petrarch’s letters, select Letters from Petrarch.

Next France for Two Months: Défense de marcher sur l’eau

This is #14 in a series of stories: France for Two Months. Follow the links below to read the other parts of the series starting with the first:
1.   Santa Fe Depot Departure
2.   Return to the Great Lady
3.   Shakespeare and Company Bookstore
4.   Paris Stroll
5.   Paris – des heures exquises
6.   Train to Thonon-les-Bains
7.   Château de Ripaille
8.   Getting up with the Birds: Lac Léman to Lyon to Lille
9.   Navigating to Avignon
10. In the Walled City of Avignon
11. Inside the Rich Ochre of Roussillon
12. Up the Steep Calades to Gordes
13. Retraversant à Fontaine-de-Vaucluse