| Summary: | This article brings Petrarch’s (1304–74) lyric poetry into dialogue with Barthes’s
notion of “idiorrythmie” (idiorrhythmy) as outlined in his lecture course Comment vivre
ensemble (How to Live Together). It explores both the idiorrhythmic aspects of Petrarchan desire
and the traits of lyric utterance through which they are expressed, with a focus on canzone 126 of
Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Fragments of Vernacular Things). The article begins
with a study of Barthes’s exposition of idiorrhythmy: its medieval origins in the monastic
communities of Mount Athos and the productively unstable and improvised character of the
“living together,” and apart, that it implies. Most significant for the analysis that follows is
idiorrhythmy’s relationship to eros, Barthes’s idea that idiorrhythmy preserves a space for the
body’s desires in opening to interruptions, deviations, and digressions. The remainder of the
article offers a close reading of Petrarch’s Rvf 126, focusing on one image in the poem that, like
Barthes’s idiorrhythmy, is rooted in fantasy and embraces errancy: the image of a flower that
turning and falling around the poet’s beloved seems to speak of love.
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