Edward Hutton

“ No man but Dante could have loved Beatrice, for he made her; and for Laura, she is so dim, so mere a ghost, I only know her name; but for Fiammetta, which of us would not have staked his eternal good, since in her we recognise the very truth; not "every woman"—God forbid—but woman, and if, as the dissenters would assert, she is a myth, a creation of Boccaccio's, then indeed he was an artist only second to the greatest, for she is only less human, less absolute than Cleopatra. ”

“ That he always loved his mother, dead so long ago, better than his father goes for nothing; that he loved his father as all men love him who has given them life is certain, he could not choose but love him. But in spite of the easy laugh, too like a sneer to be quite true or sincere, at the beginning of the Decameron, the wound he felt most nearly, that he never really forgot or quite forgave, was the death of Fiammetta, whom he had loved at first sight, with all the eagerness and fire of his youth, with all his heart, as we might say, ruthlessly keeping nothing back. ”

“ But as a work of art the Filocolo is now intolerable, and is, in fact, even in Italy, quite unread. For when we have followed the hero in detail from birth to the unspeakable happiness which is the finality of all such creations, we know nothing of his character. He is not a man, but a shadow; the ghost of a ghost. And as it is with Florio, so it is with Biancofiore: they are pure nothing. But, as it seems, Boccaccio was too young and too eager to care about anything but flattering Fiammetta and telling her he loved her. ”

“ I speak fully of the Decameron elsewhere, and have indeed only mentioned it here for two reasons—to fix its date in the story of his life, and to contrast it and its mood with the work which immediately followed it, the Corbaccio and the Vita di Dante.
We cannot, I think, remind ourselves too often in our attempts—and after all they can never be more than attempts—to understand the development of Boccaccio's mind, of his soul even, that he had but one really profound passion in his life, his love for Fiammetta. ”

“ An agreeable and eloquent orator, philosophy has for him no secrets. His spirit is of a superhuman perspicacity; his mind is tenacious and full of all knowledge that man may have. It is for this reason that his writings, both in prose and in verse, numerous as they are, shine so brilliantly, breathe so much charm, are adorned with so many flowers, enclosing in their words so sweet a harmony, and in their thoughts an essence so marvellous that one believes them the work of a divine genius rather than the work of a man. In short he is assuredly more than a man and far surpasses human powers. ”

“ It was then into a city where learning and the arts were the fashion that Boccaccio came in 1323.
There were other things too: the amenity of one's days passed so much in the open air, the splendour of a city rich and secure, the capital of a kingdom, and the residence of a king—the only king in Italy—above all, perhaps, the gaiety of that southern life in the brilliant sunshine. Boccaccio never tires of telling us about this city of his youth. "Naples," he says in the Fiammetta, "was gay, peaceful, rich, and splendid above any other Italian city, full of festas, games, and shows." ”

“ INTRODUCTION Of the three great writers who open the literature of the modern world, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, it is perhaps the last who has the greatest significance in the history of culture, of civilisation. Without the profound mysticism of Dante or the extraordinary sweetness and perfection of Petrarch, he was more complete than either of them, full at once of laughter and humility and love—that humanism which in him alone in his day was really a part of life. ”

“ As a work of art the Fiammetta is the best thing Boccaccio has yet achieved. The psychology is fine, subtle, and full of insight, but not so dramatic nor so simple and profound as that in the Filostrato. He shows again that he understands a woman's innermost nature, her continual doubts of herself, her gift of introspection. The torment of soul that a deserted woman suffers, the helpless fury of jealousy, are studied and explained with marvellous knowledge and coolness. ”

“ But if these young and fair protagonists soon pass from our remembrance in the infinitely vivid and living stories they tell, yes, almost like a phonograph, the setting, the background of a plague-stricken and deserted city, the beauty and languorous peace of the delicious gardens in which we listen, always remain with us, so much so that tradition has identified the two palaces which are the setting of the whole Decameron with two of those villas which are the glory of the Florentine contado. ”

“ It is dramatic, ironic, comic, tragic, philosophic, and even lyrical; full of indulgence for human error, an absolutely human book beyond any work of Dante's or Petrarch's or Froissart's. Even Chaucer is not so complete in his humanism, his love of all sorts and conditions of men. Perfect in organism, in construction, and in freedom, each of these tales is in some sort a living part of life and a criticism of it. Almost any one could be treated by a modern writer in his own way, and remain fundamentally the same and fundamentally true. ”

“ In Boccaccio's definition of the poet, which owed very much to Petrarch we may think, he comprehended the philosopher, the mystic, the prophet—especially the mystic; for he is much concerned with allegory and the hidden meaning of words. For him the work of the poet, and truly, is with words, but with words only. He must find new material if he can it is true, but, above all, he must dress it in long-sought-out words and rhythms [247] that shall at once hide and display the real meaning. He seems to leave nothing to the moment, to spontaneous feeling. ”

“ That love of children so characteristic in an Italian, and yet so surprising in Boccaccio to those who without [215] understanding the real simplicity of his nature have been content to think of him as a mere teller of doubtful stories, is one of the most natural and beautiful traits in his character. The little Eletta, "my delight," appears like a ray of sunshine in a lonely and even gloomy old age, which we may think perhaps, had Violante lived, might have been less bitter, less hard to bear than it proved to be. ”

“ He was the Pope's friend, and was honoured and welcomed in every court in Italy—at the court, for instance, of King Robert of Naples, where he had left so splendid a memory on his way to the triumph of the Capitol, at the courts of the signorotti of the Romagna. The youth of Italy had his sonnets by heart; all women read with envy his praise of Madonna Laura; the learned reverenced him as the most learned man of his time and thought him the peer of Virgil and of Cicero. ”

“ As a creative artist, as the author, to name only the best, of the Fiammetta and the Decameron, Boccaccio is the master of a world Petrarch could not enter; he takes his place with Dante and Chaucer and Shakespeare, and indeed save Dante no other writer in the Italian tongue can be compared with him.
It is seldom, however, that a great creative artist is also a great scholar, for the very energy and virility and restless impatience which have in some sort enabled him to create living men and women prevent him in his work as a student, as an historian pure and simple, in short, as a scholar. ”

“ But Boccaccio was just the son of a small Florentine trader; and he was a Poet. To proclaim himself—half secretly—illegitimate was a gain to him, a gain in romance. How could a youthful poet, in love with a princess too, announce himself as the son of a petty trader, a mere ordinary bourgeois, to a lady so fine as the blonde Fiammetta? Of course he could not absolutely deny that this was so, especially after his father's visit (1327) , and also we must remember that the Florentine trader held, or is supposed to have held, quite a good social position even in feudal Naples. ”

“ Driven by poverty outside the city, deprived alike of its pleasures and the excitement and distractions of his love, he had nothing left but his art, and for the first time in his life he seems to have set himself to study and to practise it with all his might. Deserted by his companions, he reminded himself that he was a poet and that solitude was his friend. ”

“ Fiammetta's death is nowhere directly recorded in the sonnets, but in those which he made for her dead we find, as we might expect, that much of his bitterness is past, and instead we have a sweetness and strength as of sorrow nobly borne. Was not death better than estrangement, for who will deny anything to God, who robs us all? And so in that prayer to Dante we have not only the best of these sonnets, but the noblest too, the strongest and the most completely human. No one will to-day weep with Dante for Beatrice, or with Petrarch for Madonna Laura, but these tears are our own ”

“ It would seem, then, that we have here under our hands a history, logical and inevitable, developed by the character of the man in the circumstances which befell him. Like all the men of his day, he was in love with love. Without the profound spiritual energy of Dante, but with a physical vitality greater far than Petrarch's, Boccaccio was inevitably in youth at the mercy of the lust of the eye, following woman because she was beautiful and because he desired her with all the fresh energy of his [180] nature. He met Fiammetta and loved her. ”

“ The book is full of people, of living people, that is the secret of its immortality. Fra Cipolla, whom I especially love, Calandrino, whom I seem always to have known, poor Monna Tezza, his wife, whom at last he so outrageously gives away, Griselda, Cisti, the Florentine baker, the joyous Madonna Filippa, or Monna Belcolore should be as dear to us as any character in any book not by Shakespeare himself. They live for ever. ”

“ Wicksteed any more ready to believe that Dante was a lover of women. When Boccaccio tells us that Dante fell into the sin of lechery not only in his youth but in his maturity, it is on the face of it certain that he is compelled to say so, that he has irrefutable evidence for it, since he excuses himself for the necessity of his assertion. Nor is there a tittle of evidence to refute Boccaccio. Mr. Wicksteed, like a good Protestant, prefers his own private judgment. He prefers to think of Dante as in all respects what he would have him. ”

“ But Italian prose maybe said to consist of the Decameron alone for a hundred years after Boccaccio's death. It is written in a very beautiful but very complicated style, a sort of poetical prose—exquisite, it is true, but often without simplicity. Yet who will dare to attack it? It has justified itself, if need be, as every great work has done, by its appeal to mankind, its utter indifference to criticism. ”

“ Till now the pagan and sensual character of the book is complete, but here Ameto suddenly sees the error of his ways, all is changed in a moment, the spiritual beauty of the nymphs seems to him to surpass altogether their physical beauty. He understands that their loves are not men; the gods and temples about which they discourse are not those of the Pagans, and he is ashamed to have loved one of them as he might have loved any mortal girl. Then suddenly he breaks into a hymn in honour of the Trinity, and they all return to their own homes. ”

“ But before we proceed to consider in detail these sonnets and songs of Boccaccio, we must decide which of all those that from time to time have passed under his name are really his. And here we will say at once that no English writer, no foreign writer at all, has a right to an opinion. Such a question, involving as it does the subtlest and most delicate rhythm of verse, cannot be solved by any one who is not an Italian, for to us the most characteristic and softest music of the Tuscan must ever pass unheard. ”

“ I who am a Florentine grudge Arquà this shining good fortune that has befallen her rather through his humility than through her merit: the guardianship of the body of the man whose soul has been the favourite dwelling-place of the Muses and of all Helicon, the sanctuary of philosophy, the splendid ornament of the liberal arts,—of the man who above all others was possessed of Ciceronian eloquence as his writings show, has been confided to her. ”

“ And even face to face with antiquity he is not afraid; he is sure of the integrity of his mind; he analyses and weighs, yes, already in a just balance, the opinions of the writers of antiquity; while Boccaccio mixes up in the most extraordinary way the various antiquities of all sorts of epochs. Nor has Boccaccio the courage of his opinions; all seems to him worthy of faith, of acceptance. He cannot, even in an elementary way, discern the false from the true; and even when he seems on the point of doing so he has not the courage to express himself. ”