31/05/2024
Ratnagarbha verses AI!
So I am working to some translations of Petrarch sonnets. I did some in blank verse but I aspire to do 14 of them in rhyme. Here is my attempt at the first in his famous sequence to the mysterious Laura. For fun I asked google's Gemini to have a go. It preserved the rhyme scheme, added an extraneous stanza which I have omitted, but failed to preserve the meaning of the very complex second stanza. And somewhat garbled the rest, but at least it does rhyme. A McGonagall version. Win to the human race!! But isn't it amazing that it managed to have a go...
Sonnet to Laura, 1, Ratnagarbha translation:
All you who've heard from wandering scraps of rhyme
those sighs on which I fed my foolish heart,
when in my youth I felt love’s brutal dart –
I was not then the person I’ve become.
All you who mark the reasoned sorrows found
throughout my songs, of hope and fear born.
If you yourselves have felt love’s bitter thorn,
then may your pity be with pardon crowned.
But now, alas, I see how my good name
is hopelessly embroiled in public scorn.
Myself I must convict of foolish schemes,
for the fruit of all my vanity is shame,
and deep repentance, of the knowledge born
that life’s sweet joys are merely fleeting dreams.
Sonnet to Laura, 1, Gemini AI translation:
Ye who in scattered verses hear the strain
Of sighs that fed my heart in youthful days,
When in my early years, I, yet unchained,
Was but a fledgling, far from what I've grown to be, this way,
Mark now the change, the years that swiftly glide,
The hopes once bright, now dimmed by time's cold hand,
The love that burned, now cooled by age's tide,
The dreams that soared, now buried in the sand.
But well I see, a spectacle to all,
A long-held tale, a source of frequent shame,
Wherefore I blush, within my heart's own hall,
And from my folly's fruit, regret's sharp flame,
And bitter knowledge, clear as day's bright gleam,
That all the world's delights are but a fleeting dream.
