Giovanni Boccaccio
The Decameron, Book I
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Table of contents
INTRODUCTION
PROEM
NOVEL I.
NOVEL II.
NOVEL III.
NOVEL IV.
NOVEL V.
NOVEL VI.
NOVEL VII.
NOVEL VIII.
NOVEL IX.
NOVEL X.
NOVEL I.
NOVEL II.
NOVEL III.
NOVEL IV.
NOVEL V.
NOVEL VI.
NOVEL VII.
NOVEL VIII.
NOVEL IX.
NOVEL X.
NOVEL I.
NOVEL II.
NOVEL III.
NOVEL IV.
NOVEL V.
NOVEL VI.
NOVEL VII.
NOVEL VIII.
NOVEL IX.
NOVEL X.
NOVEL I.
NOVEL II.
NOVEL III.
NOVEL IV.
NOVEL V.
NOVEL VI.
NOVEL VII.
NOVEL VIII.
NOVEL IX.
NOVEL X.
INTRODUCTION
Son
of a merchant, Boccaccio di Chellino di Buonaiuto, of Certaldo in Val
d'Elsa, a little town about midway between Empoli and Siena, but
within the Florentine "contado," Giovanni Boccaccio was
born, most probably at Paris, in the year 1313. His mother, at any
rate, was a Frenchwoman, whom his father seduced during a sojourn at
Paris, and afterwards deserted. So much as this Boccaccio has himself
told us, under a transparent veil of allegory, in his Ameto. Of his
mother we would fain know more, for his wit has in it a quality,
especially noticeable in the Tenth Novel of the Sixth Day of the
Decameron, which marks him out as the forerunner of Rabelais, and
prompts us to ask how much more his genius may have owed to his
French ancestry. His father was of sufficient standing in Florence to
be chosen Prior in 1321; but this brief term of office—but two
months—was his last, as well as his first experience of public
life. Of Boccaccio's early years we know nothing more than that his
first preceptor was the Florentine grammarian, Giovanni da Strada,
father of the poet Zanobi da Strada, and that, when he was about ten
years old, he was bound apprentice to a merchant, with whom he spent
the next six years at Paris, whence he returned to Florence with an
inveterate repugnance to commerce. His father then proposed to make a
canonist of him; but the study of Gratian proved hardly more
congenial than the routine of the counting-house to the lad, who had
already evinced a taste for letters; and a sojourn at Naples, where
under the regime of the enlightened King Robert there were coteries
of learned men, and even Greek was not altogether unknown, decided
his future career. According to Filippo Villani his choice was
finally fixed by a visit to the tomb of Vergil on the Via Puteolana,
and, though the modern critical spirit is apt to discount such
stories, there can be no doubt that such a pilgrimage would be apt to
make a deep, and perhaps enduring, impression upon a nature ardent
and sensitive, and already conscious of extraordinary powers. His
stay at Naples was also in another respect a turning point in his
life; for it was there that, as we gather from the Filocopo, he first
saw the blonde beauty, Maria, natural daughter of King Robert, whom
he has immortalized as Fiammetta. The place was the church of San
Lorenzo, the day the 26th of March, 1334. Boccaccio's admiring gaze
was observed by the lady, who, though married, proved no Laura, and
forthwith returned his love in equal measure. Their liaison lasted
several years, during which Boccaccio recorded the various phases of
their passion with exemplary assiduity in verse and prose. Besides
paying her due and discreet homage in sonnet and canzone, he
associated her in one way or another, not only with the Filocopo (his
prose romance of Florio and Biancofiore, which he professes to have
written to pleasure her), but with the Ameto, the Amorosa Visione,
the Teseide, and the Filostrato; and in L'Amorosa Fiammetta he wove
out of their relations a romance in which her lover, who is there
called Pamfilo, plays Aeneas to her Dido, though with somewhat less
tragic consequences. 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. The Amorosa Visione, written about the same time, is not
only an allegory but an acrostic, the initial letters of its fifteen
hundred triplets composing two sonnets and a ballade in honour of
Fiammetta, whom he here for once ventures to call by her true name.
Later came the Teseide, or romance of Palamon and Arcite, the first
extant rendering of the story, in twelve books, and the Filostrato,
nine books of the loves and woes of Troilus and Cressida. Both these
poems are in ottava rima, a metre which, if Boccaccio did not invent
it, he was the first to apply to such a purpose. Both works were
dedicated to Fiammetta. A graceful idyll in the same metre, Ninfale
Fiesolano, was written later, probably at Naples in 1345. King Robert
was then dead, but Boccaccio enjoyed the favour of Queen Joan, of
somewhat doubtful memory, at whose instance he hints in one of his
later letters that he wrote the Decameron. Without impugning
Boccaccio's veracity we can hardly but think that the Decameron would
have seen the light, though Queen Joan had withheld her
encouragement. He had probably been long meditating it, and gathering
materials for it, and we may well suppose that the outbreak of the
plague in 1348, by furnishing him with a sombre background to
heighten the effect of his motley pageant, had far more to do with
accelerating the composition than aught that Queen Joan may have
said.That
Boccaccio was not at Florence during the pestilence is certain; but
we need not therefore doubt the substantial accuracy of his
marvellous description of the state of the stricken city, for the
course and consequences of the terrible visitation must have been
much the same in all parts of Italy, and as to Florence in
particular, Boccaccio could have no difficulty in obtaining detailed
and abundant information from credible eye-witnesses. The
introduction of Fiammetta, who was in all probability at Naples at
the time, and in any case was not a Florentine, shews, however, that
he is by no means to be taken literally, and renders it extremely
probable that the facetious, irrepressible, and privileged Dioneo is
no other than himself. At the same time we cannot deem it either
impossible, or very unlikely, that in the general relaxation of
morale, which the plague brought in its train, refuge from care and
fear was sought in the diversions which he describes by some of those
who had country-seats to which to withdraw, and whether the "contado"
was that of Florence or that of Naples is a matter of no considerable
importance. (1) It is probable that Boccaccio's father was one of the
victims of the pestilence; for he was dead in 1350, when his son
returned to Florence to live thenceforth on the modest patrimony
which he inherited. It must have been about this time that he formed
an intimacy with Petrarch, which, notwithstanding marked diversity of
temperament, character and pursuits, was destined to be broken only
by death. Despite his complaints of the malevolence of his critics in
the Proem to the Fourth Day of the Decameron, he had no lack of
appreciation on the part of his fellow-citizens, and was employed by
the Republic on several missions; to Bologna, probably with the view
of averting the submission of that city to the Visconti in 1350; to
Petrarch at Padua in March 1351, with a letter from the Priors
announcing his restitution to citizenship, and inviting him to return
to Florence, and assume the rectorship of the newly founded
university; to Ludwig of Brandenburg with overtures for an alliance
against the Visconti in December of the same year; and in the spring
of 1354 to Pope Innocent VI. at Avignon in reference to the
approaching visit of the Emperor Charles IV. to Italy. About this
time, 1354-5, he threw off, in striking contrast to his earlier
works, an invective against women, entitled Laberinto d'Amore,
otherwise Corbaccio, a coarse performance occasioned by resentment at
what he deemed capricious treatment by a lady to whom he had made
advances. To the same period, though the date cannot be precisely
fixed, belongs his Life of Dante, a work of but mediocre merit.
Somewhat later, it would seem, he began the study of Greek under one
Leontius Pilatus, a Calabrian, who possessed some knowledge of that
language, and sought to pass himself off as a Greek by birth.Leontius
was of coarse manners and uncertain temper, but Boccaccio was his
host and pupil for some years, and eventually procured him the chair
of Greek in the university of Florence. How much Greek Boccaccio
learned from him, and how far he may have been beholden to him in the
compilation of his elaborate Latin treatise De Genealogia Deorum, in
which he essayed with very curious results to expound the inner
meaning of mythology, it is impossible to say. In 1361 he seems to
have had serious thoughts of devoting himself to religion, being
prodigiously impressed by the menaces, monitions and revelations of a
dying Carthusian of Siena. One of the revelations concerned a matter
which Boccaccio had supposed to be known only to Petrarch and
himself. He accordingly confided his anxiety to Petrarch, who
persuaded him to amend his life without renouncing the world. In 1362
he revisited Naples, and in the following year spent three months
with Petrarch at Venice. In 1365 he was sent by the Republic of
Florence on a mission of conciliation to Pope Urban V. at Avignon. He
was employed on a like errand on the Pope's return to Rome in 1367.
In 1368 he revisited Venice, and in 1371 Naples; but in May 1372 he
returned to Florence, where on 25th August 1373 he was appointed
lecturer on the Divina Commedia, with a yearly stipend of 100 fiorini
d'oro. His lectures, of which the first was delivered in the church
of San Stefano near the Ponte Vecchio, were discontinued owing to ill
health, doubtless aggravated by the distress which the death of
Petrarch (20th July 1374) could not but cause him, when he had got no
farther than the seventeenth Canto of the Inferno. His commentary is
still occasionally quoted. He died, perhaps in the odour of sanctity,
for in later life he was a diligent collector of relics, at Certaldo
on 21st December 1375, and was buried in the parish church. His tomb
was desecrated, and his remains were dispersed, owing, it is said, to
a misunderstanding, towards the close of the eighteenth century. His
library, which by his direction was placed in the Convent of Santo
Spirito at Florence, was destroyed by fire about a century after his
death.Besides
the De Genealogia Deorum Boccaccio wrote other treatises in Latin,
which need not here be specified, and sixteen Eclogues in the same
language, of which he was by no means a master. As for his minor
works in the vernacular, the earlier of them shew that he had not as
yet wrought himself free from the conventionalism which the polite
literature of Italy inherited from the Sicilians. It is therefore
inevitable that the twentieth century should find the Filocopo,
Ameto, and Amorosa Visione tedious reading. The Teseide determined
the form in which Pulci, Boiardo, Bello, Ariosto, Tasso, and, with a
slight modification, our own Spenser were to write, but its readers
are now few, and are not likely ever again to be numerous. Chaucer
drew upon it for the Knight's Tale, but it is at any rate arguable
that his retrenchment of its perhaps inordinate length was judicious,
and that what he gave was better than what he borrowed. Still, that
it had such a redactor as Chaucer is no small testimony to its merit;
nor was it only in the Knight's Tale that he was indebted to it: the
description of the Temple of Love in the Parlement of Foules is taken
almost word for word from it. Even more considerable and conspicuous
is Chaucer's obligation to Boccaccio in the Troilus and Criseyde,
about a third of which is borrowed from the Filostrato. Nor is it a
little remarkable that the same man, that in the Teseide and
Filostrato founded the chivalrous epic, should also and in the same
period of his literary activity, have written the first and not the
least powerful and artistic of psychologic romances, for even such is
L'Amorosa Fiammetta.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.
The profound, many-sided and intimate knowledge of human nature which
it evinces, its vast variety of incident, its wealth of tears and
laughter, its copious and felicitous diction, inevitably apt for
every occasion, and, notwithstanding the frequent harshness, and
occasional obscurity of its at times tangled, at times laboured
periods, its sustained energy and animation of style must ever ensure
for this human comedy unchallenged rank among the literary
masterpieces that are truly immortal.The
Decameron was among the earliest of printed books, Venice leading the
way with a folio edition in 1471, Mantua following suit in 1472, and
Vicenza in 1478. A folio edition, adorned, with most graceful wood-
engravings, was published at Venice in 1492. Notwithstanding the
freedom with which in divers passages Boccaccio reflected on the
morals of the clergy, the Roman Curia spared the book, which the
austere Savonarola condemned to the flames. The tradition that the
Decameron was among the pile of "vanities" burned by
Savonarola in the Piazza della Signoria on the last day of the
Carnival of 1497, little more than a year before he was himself
burned there, is so intrinsically probable—and accords so well with
the extreme paucity of early copies of the work—that it would be
the very perversity of scepticism to doubt it. It is by no means to
the credit of our country that, except to scholars, it long remained
in England, an almost entirely closed book. (2) Indeed the first
nominally complete English translation, a sadly mutilated and garbled
rendering of the French version by Antoine Le Macon, did not appear
till 1620, and though successive redactions brought it nearer to the
original, it remained at the best but a sorry faute de mieux. Such as
it was, however, our forefathers were perforce fain to be content
with it.The
first Englishman to render the whole Decameron direct from the
Italian was Mr. John Payne; but his work, printed for the Villon
Society in 1886, was only for private circulation, and those least
inclined to disparage its merits may deem its style somewhat too
archaic and stilted adequately to render the vigour and vivacity of
the original. Accordingly in the present version an attempt has been
made to hit the mean between archaism and modernism, and to secure as
much freedom and spirit as is compatible with substantial accuracy.(1)
As to the palaces in which the scene is laid, Manni (Istoria del
Decamerone, Par. ii. cap. ii.) identifies the first with a villa near
Fiesole, which can be no other than the Villa Palmieri, and the
second (ib. cap. lxxvi.) with the Podere della Fonte, or so-called
Villa del Boccaccio, near Camerata. Baldelli's theory, adopted by
Mrs. Janet Ann Ross (Florentine Villas, 1901), that the Villa di
Poggio Gherardi was the first, and the Villa Palmieri the second,
retreat is not to be reconciled with Boccaccio's descriptions. The
Villa Palmieri is not remote enough for the second and more
sequestered retreat, nor is it, as that is said to have been, situate
on a low hill amid a plain, but on the lower Fiesolean slope. The
most rational supposition would seem to be that Boccaccio, who had
seen many a luxurious villa, freely combined his experiences in the
description of his palaces and pleasaunces, and never expected to be
taken au pied de la lettre.(2)
Nevertheless Shakespeare derived indirectly the plot of All's Well
that Ends Well from the Ninth Novel of the Third Day, and an element
in the plot of Cymbeline from the Ninth Novel of the Second Day.
— Beginneth
here the book called Decameron, otherwise Prince Galeotto, wherein
are contained one hundred novels told in ten days by seven ladies and
three young men. —
PROEM
'Tis
humane to have compassion on the afflicted and as it shews well in
all, so it is especially demanded of those who have had need of
comfort and have found it in others: among whom, if any had ever need
thereof or found it precious or delectable, I may be numbered; seeing
that from my early youth even to the present I was beyond measure
aflame with a most aspiring and noble love (1) more perhaps than,
were I to enlarge upon it, would seem to accord with my lowly
condition. Whereby, among people of discernment to whose knowledge it
had come, I had much praise and high esteem, but nevertheless extreme
discomfort and suffering not indeed by reason of cruelty on the part
of the beloved lady, but through superabundant ardour engendered in
the soul by ill-bridled desire; the which, as it allowed me no
reasonable period of quiescence, frequently occasioned me an
inordinate distress. In which distress so much relief was afforded me
by the delectable discourse of a friend and his commendable
consolations, that I entertain a very solid conviction that to them I
owe it that I am not dead. But, as it pleased Him, who, being
infinite, has assigned by immutable law an end to all things mundane,
my love, beyond all other fervent, and neither to be broken nor bent
by any force of determination, or counsel of prudence, or fear of
manifest shame or ensuing danger, did nevertheless in course of time
me abate of its own accord, in such wise that it has now left nought
of itself in my mind but that pleasure which it is wont to afford to
him who does not adventure too far out in navigating its deep seas;
so that, whereas it was used to be grievous, now, all discomfort
being done away, I find that which remains to be delightful. But the
cessation of the pain has not banished the memory of the kind offices
done me by those who shared by sympathy the burden of my griefs; nor
will it ever, I believe, pass from me except by death. And as among
the virtues, gratitude is in my judgment most especially to be
commended, and ingratitude in equal measure to be censured,
therefore, that I show myself not ungrateful, I have resolved, now
that I may call myself to endeavour, in return for what I have
received, to afford, so far as in me lies, some solace, if not to
those who succoured and who, perchance, by reason of their good sense
or good fortune, need it not, at least to such as may be apt to
receive it.And
though my support or comfort, so to say, may be of little avail to
the needy, nevertheless it seems to me meet to offer it most readily
where the need is most apparent, because it will there be most
serviceable and also most kindly received. Who will deny, that it
should be given, for all that it may be worth, to gentle ladies much
rather than to men? Within their soft bosoms, betwixt fear and shame,
they harbour secret fires of love, and how much of strength
concealment adds to those fires, they know who have proved it.
Moreover, restrained by the will, the caprice, the commandment of
fathers, mothers, brothers, and husbands, confined most part of their
time within the narrow compass of their chambers, they live, so to
say, a life of vacant ease, and, yearning and renouncing in the same
moment, meditate divers matters which cannot all be cheerful. If
thereby a melancholy bred of amorous desire make entrance into their
minds, it is like to tarry there to their sore distress, unless it be
dispelled by a change of ideas. Besides which they have much less
power to support such a weight than men. For, when men are enamoured,
their case is very different, as we may readily perceive. They, if
they are afflicted by a melancholy and heaviness of mood, have many
ways of relief and diversion; they may go where they will, may hear
and see many things, may hawk, hunt, fish, ride, play or traffic. By
which means all are able to compose their minds, either in whole or
in part, and repair the ravage wrought by the dumpish mood, at least
for some space of time; and shortly after, by one way or another,
either solace ensues, or the dumps become less grievous. Wherefore,
in some measure to compensate the injustice of Fortune, which to
those whose strength is least, as we see it to be in the delicate
frames of ladies, has been most niggard of support, I, for the
succour and diversion of such of them as love (for others may find
sufficient solace in the needle and the spindle and the reel), do
intend to recount one hundred Novels or Fables or Parables or
Stories, as we may please to call them, which were recounted in ten
days by an honourable company of seven ladies and three young men in
the time of the late mortal pestilence, as also some canzonets sung
by the said ladies for their delectation. In which pleasant novels
will be found some passages of love rudely crossed, with other
courses of events of which the issues are felicitous, in times as
well modern as ancient: from which stories the said ladies, who shall
read them, may derive both pleasure from the entertaining matters set
forth therein, and also good counsel, in that they may learn what to
shun, and likewise what to pursue. Which cannot, I believe, come to
pass unless the dumps be banished by diversion of mind. And if it so
happen (as God grant it may) let them give thanks to Love, who,
liberating me from his fetters, has given me the power to devote
myself to their gratification.
—
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!