Giovanni Boccaccio, Leonardo Bruni, & Filippo Villani

“ When we hear a man praised for his learning or for his letters, do we not ask, 'Is he producing anything? Will he leave behind any work of his own making?'
A poet, then, is the maker of any work. Some one may say that, according to this statement, the merchant who makes up a book of accounts is a poet, and that Livy and Sallust were poets, for each of them wrote books, and made works for perusal. To this I reply that one does not speak of making poetic works, unless they be in verse. Now verse results from excellence of style, for syllables, measure, and sound pertain to poetry alone. ”

“ For the better understanding of the reader, I say that one becomes a poet in one of two ways. The first is through his own genius, excited and aroused by some inward and hidden force, termed frenzy and possession (occupazione) of the soul. To give an illustration of what I mean—the Blessed Francis, not through knowledge or scholarly discipline, but by possession and abstraction of mind, applied his soul so intensely to God, that he became as it were transfigured beyond human sense, and knew more of God than do the theologians through study and letters. ”

“ Of the Life, Habits, and Studies of the Famous Poet Dante. Although I had previously read this work with great diligence, yet on the present examination thereof I felt that our gentle and sweet Boccaccio had written the life and habits of that sublime poet as though he were writing the Filocolo, the Filostrato, or the Fiammetta. For it is filled with love and sighs and burning tears, as though man were born into this world for no other purpose save to find himself in those ten amorous Days, wherein enamored ladies and gallant youths recount the Hundred Tales. ”

“ So in poetry, one becomes a poet through an inner excitement, and through a certain application of the mind. This is the highest and most perfect kind of poetry; whence some say that poets are divine, others call them sacred, and others prophets, by reason of this abstraction and the frenzy whereof I speak. We have examples of this kind of poet in Orpheus and Hesiod. ”

“ And Hesiod, though a rude, untaught shepherd, by merely drinking of the waters of the Castalian fountain, without any study whatsoever, became a supreme poet. We possess his works to-day, and they are of such sort that no lettered or scholarly poet surpasses them.
One class, then, is formed of those who become poets through an inner abstraction of the soul. The other class create their poetry by means of knowledge and study, by discipline, art, and forethought. Of this second sort was Dante. ”

“ Dante was born in the year of our Lord 1265, shortly after the return to Florence of the Guelfs, who had been in exile because of the defeat at Montaperti. In his boyhood he received a liberal education under teachers of letters, and at once gave evidence of a great natural capacity equal to excellent things. At this time he lost his father, but, encouraged by his relatives and by Brunetto Latini, a most worthy man for those times, he devoted himself not only to literature but to other liberal studies, omitting nothing that pertains to the making of an excellent man. ”

“ For the truth is that our poet's strength lay in vernacular rime, wherein he has no peer. But in Latin verse and in prose he barely reached mediocrity. The reason of this is that his own age was given up to the writing of rime, but of prose as a fine art or of Latin verse, men of that period knew nothing, being rude, uncultivated, and without literary skill ”

“ This Messer Piero had a son named Dante, who in turn had a son Lionardo, who is still living and has several children. A short time ago Lionardo came to Florence with other young men of Verona, well and honorably appointed, and visited me as a friend to the memory of his great-grandfather, Dante. I showed him the houses of the poet and of his ancestors, and called his attention to many things that were new to him because he and his family had been estranged from their fatherland. And thus Fortune turns this world, and shifts its inhabitants with the revolutions of her wheel. ”

“ Therefore to estrange and absent one's self from society is peculiar to those whose poor minds unfit them for knowledge of any kind.
It was not only in social intercourse with men that Dante moved, since in his youth he took to himself a wife. She was a lady of the Donati family, called Madonna Gemma. By her he had several children, as we shall see in another part of this work. At this point Boccaccio loses all patience, and says that wives are hindrances to study, forgetting that Socrates, the noblest philosopher that ever lived, had a wife and children, and held public offices in his city. ”

“ Moreover, Cicero, Varro, and Seneca, all consummate Latin philosophers, had wives, and held offices of government in the republic. So Boccaccio may pardon me, for his judgments on this matter are both false and feeble. Man, according to all the philosophers, is a social animal. The first union, by the multiplication whereof the city arises, is that of husband and wife. Nothing can be perfect where this does not obtain, for only this kind of love is natural, lawful, and allowable. ”

“ His invention, which was marvelous, was laid hold of with great genius, comprehending, as it does, description of the world, the heavens and the planets, of men, the rewards and punishments of human life, happiness and misery, and the middle way that lies between these two extremes. ”

“ Some men are readers of the work of others, and originate nothing themselves; this is the case with most people. Others are the makers of these works: as Virgil, for example, made the Æneid, Statius the Thebaid, Ovid the Metamorphoses, and Homer the Iliad and the Odyssey. These men who made the works were poets, that is makers, of these works which we others read. ”

“ Of the Bianchi faction were Messer Gentile and Messer Torrigiano de' Cerchi, Guido Cavalcanti, Baschiera della Tosa, Baldinaccio Adimari, Naldo di Messer Lottino Gherardini, and others. These men were confined within bounds at Serezzana.
This action caused much trouble to Dante. Although he defended himself as a man without a party, yet it was thought that he inclined to the Bianchi, and that he disapproved of the scheme proposed in Santa Trinità of calling Charles of Valois to Florence, believing that it was likely to bring discord and calamity on the city. ”