“Gold, silver, gems, purple cloth, a marble house and a well-tended field give only a mute and surface pleasure; books delight us through and through, they speak with us, they counsel us, and they join us in a living intimacy.”
About Francesco Petrarca
1304–19 July 1374
Francesco Petrarca, known in English as Petrarch, was born on 20 July 1304 in Arezzo, Tuscany, and died during the night of 18–19 July 1374 at Arquà, near Padua. He stands among the decisive makers of European literary culture: a poet whose Italian lyrics established an enduring language of desire; a Latin author who…