Putting Love on a Pedestal, Part 3

In this final segment of our series on Petrarchan love, we come full circle. As you may recall, we began with the modern song “Smooth,” by Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas. This week, we return to the modern day with an interesting take on Petrarchan love from the wonderful world of outlaw country music.

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Has anyone ever accused you of imitating something when you thought you were being original? At first, maybe you were offended—then, when you saw the evidence, maybe the experience was just plain eerie. “Whoa, how did I know that?”

This is another interesting thing that happens when a thing becomes a Thing: the idea is so pervasive (or maybe just insidious) that we don’t even realize that we are imitating someone else, unless . . .

The psychologist Carl Jung postulated that humans have something called a “collective unconscious,” a shared set of images and ideas passed down through the generations, and some literary scholars have borrowed the idea and suggested that certain “archetypes,” or recurring concepts, pop up in literature again and again.

Whether through unintentional imitation or a “collective unconscious,” the Petrarchan motif has sprung up in some surprising places, including “outlaw country.”

A Different Kind of Stella

If you have been reading Mind Travel for a while, you may already know that I’m an avid fan of classic country music. I wrote two columns about the poetry of country music last year. If you don’t share my passion for Hank, Tammy, and steel guitar, then let me explain that “outlaw country” is a subgenre made famous by singers and songwriters who embraced the role of the outsider, the “outlaw” who can’t (or won’t) fit in with the crowd. Think Waylon and Willie, Hank Williams Jr., and Kris Kristofferson.

Think Johnny Paycheck.

Paycheck (who was born with the somewhat less memorable name of Donald Eugene Lytle) was the quintessential country outlaw—and not just in name. He served two terms in prison, once for shooting a man in a bar. (For the record, he said he was acting in self-defense.)

I don’t endorse shooting people in bars (or anywhere else). In fact, I don’t endorse some of the other things I know Paycheck did or, I think it’s safe to say, some of things I don’t know he did, but he did come out with some fun songs, including one with a clever twist on the Petrarchan motif. Here are a few lines:

She don't drink. She don't smoke. She can't stand a dirty joke. She don't hang out till the morning light. She don't have to get high, Lord, to get it right. She's a friend. She's a lover. Ooh, she's my wife.

Now, abstaining from tobacco and booze is a long way from being “a spirit from heavens” (like Petrarch’s Laura) and a guide through Paradiso (like Dante’s Beatrice), but consider the next verse Paycheck sings (with his almost cartoonishly outlaw voice):

But I'll take a drink, Lord, and I'll have a smoke, And I've told some downright filthy jokes. I've been known to hang out till the morning light, Been known to get high trying to get it right, But that's just me, you saw, that's just me.

Now the genius of the song starts to come into focus. Just as Petrarch and Dante were gazing up at angelic figures, this speaker is gazing up at someone who, compared to him, is practically celestial. I have to quote two more lines because they are some of my favorites in the song:

Mm-hm, I wear jeans, and she wears silk. I like beer, and she likes milk.

Promise me you will listen to the song and not just read the words on the page because Paycheck’s delivery is pure gold. Well, maybe it’s more appropriate to say it’s pure beer label—the torn and wrinkled kind you might find on a barroom floor after a brawl. Anyway, the contrast is obvious: She’s everything he’s not, and he’s crazy about her. It’s the Petarchan motif, just lowered a few octaves. Still, the core of the idea remains the same: the woman exists somewhere beyond the man, someplace purer, in rarefied air. It’s the perfect embellishment to an outlaw country song, where the men often are the most flawed of all us human beings—and not just flawed, but broken, cast off, and just plain sad.

Free to Everyone

Now, I’m guessing we would not have discovered a dog-eared copy of Astrophel and Stella in Johnny Paycheck’s prison cell. His co-writer, Billy Sherrill, may have soaked up every sonnet he could find—but I doubt it. That’s not a knock on Sherrill. This is a guy who had a hand in some of the most successful country songs in history: Paycheck’s “Take This Job and Shove It,” Tammy Wynette’s “Stand by Your Man,” George Jones’s “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” and Charlie Rich’s “The Most Beautiful Girl.” He was a genius.

The point is that you don’t have to immerse yourself in classic poetry to absorb the conventions. They ooze into the atmosphere. All it takes is one writer, musician, or painter to pick up the motif, and then readers, listeners, and viewers of this person’s work start adopting and adapting it.

It’s a Thing, and this Thing is freely available to everyone, even the outlaws.