Veronica Franco

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.       

-Veronica Franco (1546-1591), from Capitolo 13, excerpted from Terze Rime c. 1575, subtitled “a playful challenge to a lover”.

Veronica Franco was born in Venice in 1546.  At the end of her arranged and loveless marriage at the age of 20, she was to become what was then called piu honorate cortigiane, or what we would today call “whore” (the more congenial English word being courtesan).  So skilled was Miss Franco at her chosen profession she was listed in the Il Catalogo di tutte le principale et piu honorate cortigiane di Venezia, which I imagine translates to mean “The Top Sluts of Venice” or something to that effect.  In her lifetime, she survived giving birth to six children, three of whom died while still in infancy, managed to escape the bubonic plague when it hit Venice from 1575-77, and even stood before in Inquisition on charges of witchcraft (many of the citizens of the city turned on their once-celebrated poetess, believing the arrival of the plague in Venice to be a divine punishment for their former indulgences).  I find her to be one of the more fascinating women of history and a remarkable wordsmith.

And the less freedom we have,

the more our blind desire, which drives us off the path,

will find a way to penetrate our heart;

so that a woman either dies from this

or moves away from the restricted life that we all share

and owing to a small mistake is led far astray.

-Capitolo 22, Terze Rime