Boccace's Decameron

“ But whatever may be the final verdict of criticism upon these minor works of Boccaccio, it is impossible to imagine an age in which the Decameron will fail of general recognition as, in point alike of invention as of style, one of the most notable creations of human genius. Of few books are the sources so recondite, insomuch that it seems to be certain that in the main they must have be merely oral tradition, and few have exercised so wide and mighty an influence. ”

“ Apart from the merits of his writings, Boccaccio might rest a claim to no ordinary renown as the creator of classic Italian prose; and even if he had found this instrument ready to his hand, his work with it might alone have assured him immortality. Perhaps he has a still higher title to fame in his quality as a great originator, achieving, indeed, no consummate work except the Decameron, but reconnoitring the unknown world through which the human spirit travels, and opening out new paths on every side as he steers "bound upon beating wing to golden bough." ”

“ The Proem to the Decameron shews us the after-glow of his passion; the lady herself appears as one of the "honourable company," and her portrait, as in the act of receiving the laurel wreath at the close of the Fourth Day, is a masterpiece of tender and delicate delineation.
Boccaccio appears to have been recalled to Florence by his father in 1341; and it was probably in that year that he wrote L'Amorosa Fiammetta and the allegorical prose pastoral (with songs interspersed) which he entitled Ameto, and in which Fiammetta masquerades in green as one of the nymphs. ”

“ To the Divine Comedy he seems to oppose the Human Comedy, the Decameron, in which he not only created for Italy a classic prose, but gave the world an ever-living book full of men and women and the courtesy, generosity, and humanity of life, which was to be one of the greater literary influences in Europe during some three hundred years.
In England certainly, and indeed almost everywhere to-day, the name of Boccaccio stands for this book, the Decameron. Yet the volumes he wrote during a laborious and really uneventful life are very numerous both in verse and prose, in Latin and in Tuscan. ”

“ Like all Italians—the great exceptions only prove the rule—she is without a fundamental moral sense. She sins lightly, easily, without regret, dazzled by life, by the pleasure of life.
Such, then, was the attitude of Boccaccio towards woman at the time when he was writing the Decameron, that is to say, from his thirty-fifth to his fortieth year. ”

“ Boccaccio celebrates the apotheosis of natural appetite, of il talento, stigmatized as sin by ascetic Christianity. [87] His strongest sympathies are reserved for those who suffer by abandoning themselves to impulse, and in this self-abandonment he sees the poetry of life. This is the very core of the antithesis presented by the Human to the Divine Comedy. The Decameron is an undesigned revolt against the sum of medieval doctrine. Like all vehement reactions, it is not satisfied with opposing the extravagances of the view it combats. Instead of negativing asceticism, it affirms license. ”

“ In the Decameron, though we are not justified in interpreting all the sentiments and opinions there expressed as necessarily his own, the evidence is too strong to be put altogether [176] aside. He loves women and would pleasure them, but he is a sceptic in regard to them; he treats them always with an easy, tolerant, and familiar condescension, sometimes petulant, often ironical, always exquisite in its pathos and humanity; but beneath all this—let us confess it at once—there is a certain brutality that is perhaps the complement to Petrarch's sentiment. ”

“ In reading the early romances of Boccaccio, it must be confessed that while his attitude towards woman is not so [179] assured, nor so masterful in its realism and humour as in the Decameron, it is nevertheless much the same in character. In the Filocolo, as in the Ameto, he thinks of her always as a prize, as something to be hunted or cajoled, yes, like a barbarian; nor are his early works less sensual than the Decameron. The physical reality is for him—and not only in regard to woman—so much more than the spiritual. ”

“ We do not expect to find woman treated on a very high plane by Boccaccio, but we recognise that, in a way, this work forms a fresh starting-point in the eternal controversy. Perhaps we should not have had this curious collection of stories of women, virtuous and vicious, mythological and historical—stories which are certainly very inferior as art to those of the Decameron—had not a crisis occurred in Boccaccio's life. One day a Carthusian monk came to him with a warning message from the dead, and, much troubled in mind, he resolved to try to begin life afresh. ”

“ At any rate the repentance of Boccaccio might have arrested his exhumation, and it should have been recollected and told, that in his old age he wrote a letter entreating his friend to discourage the reading of the Decameron, for the sake of modesty, and for the sake of the author, who would not have an apologist always at hand to state in his excuse that he wrote it when young, and at the command of his superiors. ”

“ Unlucky husbands are sneered at; jealousy of honour is censured as stupidity or tyranny. Some of the female characters are even worse than the male; and the world of the Decameron is one which no man of common decency or honour 133could bear to live in. Boccaccio saw the mischief he had done, and was sorry when it was too late. In a letter to Mainardo de’ Cavalcanti, Marshal of Sicily, he entreated him not to suffer the females of his family to read the Decameron ”

“ We cannot trace the story back farther than the middle of the fourteenth century, when Boccaccio incorporated it into his Decameron (day 10, novel 10) ; but it must have had a previous existence in Italy, for Petrarch says in his letter to Boccaccio that when he read it in the Decameron he remembered how pleased he had been with it when he heard it many years before. When his memory was thus revived in the story that charmed him so much he set to work to learn it by heart, so that he might repeat it to his friends. ”

“ So after a while she said:--"And did I not tell you, Fra Alberto, that my charms were celestial? But, so help me God, I am moved to pity of you, and forthwith I pardon you, lest worse should befall you, so only you tell me what more the Angel said." "So will I gladly, Madam," returned Fra Alberto, "now that I have your pardon; this only I bid you bear in mind, that you have a care that never a soul in the world hear from you a single word of what I shall say to you, if you would not spoil your good fortune, wherein there is not to-day in the whole world a lady that may compare with you. ”

“ I shall never be mollified, until I have covered thee with infamy in the presence of all our kinsfolk and friends and neighbours. Am I not, miscreant, as fair as the wife of Ricciardo Minutolo? Am I not as good a lady as she? Why dost not answer, vile dog? Wherein has she the advantage of me? Away with thee! touch me not; thou hast done feats of arms more than enough for to-day. Well I know that, now that thou knowest who I am, thou wilt wreak thy will on me by force: but by God's grace I will yet disappoint thee. ”

“ But one might as well accuse Chaucer or Shakespeare of a want of originality because they took what they wanted where they found it, as arraign Boccaccio for a dependence he was quite unaware of on sources such as these. [664] He has made the tales his own. The Decameron is a work of art, a world in itself, and its effect upon us who read it is the effect of life which includes, for its own good, things moral and immoral. The book has the variety of the world, and is full of an infinity of people, who represent for us the fourteenth century in Italy, in all its fullness, almost. ”

“ NOVEL I. — Madonna Francesca, having two lovers, the one Rinuccio, the other Alessandro, by name, and loving neither of them, induces the one to simulate a corpse in a tomb, and the other to enter the tomb to fetch him out: whereby, neither satisfying her demands, she artfully rids herself of both. —
Madam, since so it pleases you, well pleased am I that in this vast, this boundless field of discourse, which you, our Lady Bountiful, have furnished us withal, 'tis mine to run the first course; wherein if I do well, I doubt not that those, who shall follow me, will do not only well but better. ”

“ So, in the presence of the damsel, and by preconcert with her and Filippo, quoth Bruno to Calandrino:—"Harkye, comrade, this lady has vowed to me a thousand times that she will do as thou wouldst have her, and as, for all that, she does nought to pleasure thee, I am of opinion that she leads thee by the nose: wherefore, as she keeps not her promises, we will make her do so, willy-nilly, if thou art so minded." ”

“ The popularity of Boccaccio was, and is still, enormous, in spite of the immorality of certain of his [Pg 289] stories. He is read to-day in the elementary schools of Italy (in emendated editions) , and his influence on modern literature is incalculable. In English literature alone most of the great writers have found subjects for poems, stories, and dramas in the Decameron, among them Chaucer, Dryden, Shakespeare, Keats, Tennyson, and Longfellow. ”

“ And indeed, I know not any man, however exalted his station, who ought not to be well pleased to have such a sister; much more, then, I, who am but a petty merchant; but, I pray you, resolve me of one thing: how came you to know that I was here?" Then answered she:--"'Twas told me this morning by a poor woman who is much about the house, because, as she tells me, she was long in the service of our father both at Palermo and at Perugia, and, but that it seemed more fitting that thou shouldst come to see me at home than that I should visit thee at an inn, I had long ago sought thee out." ”

“ The lady fell a-smiling and answered, 'It rejoiceth me mightily to see a wise man led by the nose by a woman, even as one leadeth a ram by the horns to the shambles, albeit thou art no longer wise nor hast been since the hour when, unknowing why, thou sufferedst the malignant spirit of jealousy to enter thy breast; and the sillier and more besotted thou art, so much the less is my glory thereof. Deemest thou, husband mine, I am as blind of the eyes of the body as thou of those of the mind? Certes, no; I perceived at first sight who was the priest that confessed me and know that thou wast he ”

“ Whereto he listened with all his ears, and having a great conceit of his person, made up his mind that the lady was in love with him, as if there were ne'er another handsome fellow in Naples but himself; so forthwith he replied, that he would wait on the lady, and asked where and when it would be her pleasure to speak with him. "Sir," replied the little girl, "she expects you in her own house, if you be pleased to come." "Lead on then, I follow thee," said Andreuccio promptly, vouchsafing never a word to any in the inn. ”

“ While he was thus chaffering, and after he had shewn his purse, there chanced to come by a Sicilian girl, fair as fair could be, but ready to pleasure any man for a small consideration. He did not see her, but she saw him and his purse, and forthwith said to herself:--"Who would be in better luck than I if all those florins were mine?" and so she passed on. With the girl was an old woman, also a Sicilian, who, when she saw Andreuccio, dropped behind the girl, and ran towards him, making as if she would tenderly embrace him. ”

“ So they rode on, talking of divers matters, until they came to a deep gorge, very lonely, and shut in by high rocks and trees. The servant, deeming this just the place in which he might without risk of discovery fulfil his lord's behest, whipped out a knife, and seizing the lady by the arm, said:—"Madam, commend your soul to God, for here must end at once your journey and your life." Terror-stricken by what she saw and heard, the lady cried out:—"Mercy for God's sake; before thou slay me, tell me at least wherein I have wronged thee, that thou art thus minded to put me to death." ”

“ He yearned till he all but swooned to go and embrace her, but refrained, for bashfulness, in the lady's presence. And overjoyed as he was, the joy of the damsel was no less. The lady received him with great cheer, and though, when she had heard the story of his adventures from his own lips, she chid him not a little for having set at nought the wishes of his kinsfolk; yet, seeing that he was still of the same mind, and that the damsel was also constant, she said to herself:—To what purpose give I myself all this trouble? they love one another, they know one another; they love with equal ardour ”

“ Foscolo, Discorso Storico sul testo del Decamerone ... premesso all' edizione delle Cento Novelle fatta in Londra (Lugano, 1828) , p. 9.
[432] Cf. Decameron, Proem, where he speaks of his love for Fiammetta and the "discomfort," and "suffering" it brought him, "not indeed by reason of the cruelty of the beloved lady, but through the superabundant ardour engendered in the soul by ill-bridled desire; the which, as it allowed me no reasonable period of quiescence, frequently occasioned me inordinate distress."
[433] We know that Boccaccio had three children, two sons and a daughter. ”

“ How shall I bring forth this child? Whence shall he issue? I see plainly I am a dead man, through the mad lust of yonder wife of mine, whom God make as woeful as I would fain be glad! Were I as well as I am not, I would arise and deal her so many and such buffets that I would break every bone in her body; albeit it e'en serveth me right, for that I should never have suffered her get the upper hand; but, for certain, an I come off alive this time, she may die of desire ere she do it again.'
Bruno and Buffalmacco and Nello were like to burst with laughter, hearing Calandrino's words ”