THE HEAVEN OF ELEGANCE
It was in Italy first that the language of the people became the
language of culture, replacing Latin; and the two greatest writers of
this age afford us an interesting contrast between the Art of Beauty and
the Art of Power.
The favorite ruling-class poet and novelist of medieval Italy was the
illegitimate son of a merchant, who was recognized by his father and
given the best education of his time. He chose as his mistress the
natural daughter of a king; with this married lady he carried on an
intrigue for many years, and wrote to her long epic poems about Greek
heroes, weaving into the poems elaborate acrostics and secret codes. The
first letters of the lints, taken according to certain numerical
systems, made three other separate poems; other letters, chosen
according to other systems, spelled the names of other lady loves. In
such ways the skillful artists of the Italian courts were accustomed to
beguile their leisure, wrung from the toil of a wretched enslaved
peasantry.
This poet rose to fame, and became the darling of the ruling classes. He
was sent as an ambassador on various important missions to popes and
princes; he became the favorite of a queen, and did not reject her favor
even when she turned into a murderess. He learned to write beautiful
Italian prose, a great service to his country. He used his skill to
compose a collection of short stories dealing with the sojourn in a
country villa of a number of Italian ladies and gentlemen of wealth and
charm, the occasion being an outbreak of the plague in Florence. These
ladies and gentlemen did not feel impelled by their religion to nurse
the suffering; they were of too great importance to be risked in such
crude fashion, so they retired, and passed their time listening to
charmingly narrated tales of sexual promiscuity.
I do not mean to imply that there is nothing but smut in the “Decameron”
of Boccaccio. We shall find it a rule throughout history that
leisure-class ladies and gentlemen do not spend their entire time in
trying new sexual combinations. They have to eat, and so their artists
give us delightful, appetizing accounts of banquets. They have to drink,
and so their artists give us an entire lore of intoxicating liquors.
They have to cover their nakedness, so we have a complicated art of
dress, a mass of subtlety constantly changing, and affording traps to
catch the feet of the unwary, so that the sacred inner circles may be
protected from those individuals who have disgraced themselves by doing
useful work, or by having parents or grandparents who did useful work.
Also, the ladies and gentlemen have palaces to live in, and country
estates to which they may flee from pestilence, famine and war; so we
have the art of architecture. Because these homes have walls which must
be decorated, we have the art of painting; and so on through a long list
of cultural accomplishments. Moreover, not all ladies and gentlemen have
been able to exclude the natural human emotions from their hearts; so in
leisure-class art we have sentiments and sentimentalities. We like to be
sorry for the poor, provided they are “worthy”; so we have “idylls” and
other sad, sweet tales. When we are sick with ennui, we like to imagine
going back to the country; so we have a long line of “return to nature”
arts--eclogues and bucolics and pastorals, with beautiful shepherds and
shepherdesses dancing on the green, and country lads and lasses giving
touchingly quaint imitations of the manners of their betters.
Also we have in this leisure-class world vestigial traces of the sense
of duty. We take this sense and refine it or exaggerate it, making it
into something fantastic, stimulating to jaded tastes. So we find in
Boccaccio the famous story of the “patient Griselda,” a leisure-class
model of wifely fidelity and humility. She is married to a monster, who
subjects her to every indignity the perverted imagination can conceive;
but she endures all things, and continues to be his patient and devoted
slave, and in the end she conquers her tormentor, and brings about the
necessary happy ending. The legend of this most convenient lady
represents a popular form of masculine wish-fulfillment.
Giovanni Boccaccio died in ripe old age, and the Catholic Church took
cognizance of his popularity among the Italian people by preparing an
expurgated and authorized edition of his “Decameron.” From this edition
they omitted no word of the obscenities, but they changed each of the
stories so that wherever Boccaccio described indecencies committed by
priests and monks and holy popes, the said indecencies were transferred
to laymen! The tales of this darling of the Italian leisure class remain
today one of the most popular of books, which every dirty old boy keeps
hidden in his trunk, and every dirty young boy reads under his desk
while the professor of moral philosophy is lecturing on the social
responsibilities of great wealth.