THE _RIME_--THE SONNETS TO FIAMMETTA
Fiammetta was dead. It must have been with that sorrow in his heart
that Boccaccio returned once more from Naples into Tuscany, to settle
the affairs of his father and to undertake the guardianship of his
stepbrother Jacopo. That the death of Fiammetta was very bitter to
him there are many passages in his work to bear witness; her death
was the greatest sorrow of his life; yet even as there are persons
who doubt Shakespeare's love for the "dark lady" and would have it
that those sonnets which beyond any other poems in any literature
kindle in us pity and terror and love are but a literary exercise,
so there is a certain number of professional critics who would deny
the reality of Boccaccio's love for Fiammetta. I confess at once
that with this kind of denial I have no sympathy whatever. It seems
to me the most ridiculous part of an absurd profession. We are told,
for instance, in the year 1904 that Sir Philip Sidney, who died in
1586, did not love his Stella; and this is suddenly asserted with the
air of a medieval Pope speaking _ex cathedra_, no sort of evidence
in support of the assertion being vouchsafed, and all the evidence
that could be brought to prove the contrary ignored in a way that is
either ignorant or dishonest. Sidney spent a good part of his life
telling us he did love Stella; his best friend, Edmund Spenser, in
two separate poems on his death asserts in the strongest way he can
that this was true; and all this apparently that some hack in the
twentieth century should find them both liars. Such is "criticism"
and such are the "critics," who do not hesitate to explain to us
as fluently as possible the psychology of a poet's soul. The whole
method both in its practice and in its results is a fraud, and would
be dangerous if it were not ridiculous.
This very method which in regard to Shakespeare and Sidney has
brought us to absurdity has been applied, though with some excuse, to
Boccaccio in regard to his love for Fiammetta. It has been necessary,
apparently, to defeat the heresiarchs with their own weapons, to
write pamphlets to prove that Boccaccio's love for Fiammetta was a
real passion[361] and not a figment of his imagination, and this
in spite of the fact that he tells us over and over and over again
almost every detail of that love which was the sunlight and shadow
of his youth, the consolation and the regret of his manhood and
age. Yes, say the dissenters, we must admit that; but on the other
hand you must allow that Boccaccio carefully wraps everything up in
mystery; he gives us not a single date, and in his own proper person
he says nothing, or almost nothing, about it. Well, there is some
truth in that; but Boccaccio did not write an autobiography, and if
he had, it would scarcely have been decent then, whatever it may be
thought now, to proclaim himself, actually in so many words with
names and dates, the lover of a married lady, and this would have
been almost impossible if that lady were the daughter of a king.
Thus on the face of it, the last thing we ought to expect is a frank
statement of such facts as these.
But then, the dissenters continue, none of the contemporary
biographers, such as Villani and Bandino,[362] say anything of
the matter. Our answer to that is that they had nothing to say
for the same reason that a modern biographer would have or should
have nothing to say in similar circumstances. But in spite of the
diversity of opinion which we find for these and similar reasons,
we must suppose, that even to-day, to every type of mind and soul
save the critic of literature it must be evident that the love of
Boccaccio for Fiammetta was an absolutely real thing, so real that it
made Boccaccio what he was, and led him to write those early works
which we have already examined and to compose the majority of the
poems which we are now about to consider and to enjoy.[363]
[Illustration: THE KNIGHT WHO THOUGHT HIMSELF ILL-REWARDED. (DEC. X,
1)
_From a miniature in the French version of the "Decameron," made in
1414 by Laurent le Premierfait. MS. late XV century. (Brit. Mus.
Rothschild Bequest. MS. XIV.)_]
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. So the French have made of Poe a
very great poet because they, being foreigners, can hear, and not
too easily, his melody; while the music of Herrick, for instance, is
too subtle for them in the foreign tongue. No, for us there remains
the received canon of Boccaccio's _Rime_ to which no doubt can
attach, and that consists of one hundred and four sonnets, namely,
Nos. 1-101 and 107, 109, and 110 in Baldelli's edition,[364] and a
poem which Baldelli refused to print because he thought it obscene,
though in fact it is not, _Poi, Satiro se' fatto sì severo_--all
these conserved in Prof. Cugnoni's codex of the _Rime_.[365] We may
add the two _ballate_, the first _madrigale_, the _capitolo_ on the
twelve beautiful ladies, and the _ballata_ which Baldelli mistakenly
calls a _canzone_ from the Livorno collection. To these we may add
again four sonnets and a _ternario_ from the codex Marciana (Venice,
it cl. ix. 257), and finally the madrigal _O giustizia Regina_ in
codex Laurenziana (Florence, xl. 43).[366]
Having thus decided on our text, let us try to get it into some sort
of order. Baldelli's collection, which has been twice reprinted, is
itself an utter confusion,[367] a mere heap of good things. If we
are to make anything of these poems we must arrange them in some
sort of sequence, either of date or of contents. No one can possibly
arrange them in the order in which they were written, and therefore,
though there are _lacunæ_, for we cannot suppose that we are in
possession of all Boccaccio's verse, or if we were that he would
consciously have written a story in sonnets, we shall try to arrange
them in accordance with their subjects. In this I follow for the
most part the work of the Signori Manicardi and Massera. They were
not, however, the first to try their hands at it. The learned Signore
Antona Traversi[368] had already suggested a method of grouping these
sonnets, when they began to bring a real order out of chaos.
To make a long story short, Signor Antona Traversi thought he could
distinguish four sonnets which were written before any of those
he wished to give to Fiammetta. He found seventy-eight which were
inspired by her, nine of which were concerned with her death. Two
others he thought were composed for the widow of the _Corbaccio_.[369]
The sonnets to Fiammetta, sixty-nine of which were written to her
living and nine to her dead, he arranges in a sort of categories,
thus: twenty-six sonnets he calls "ideal"--these were written to
her in the first years that followed Boccaccio's meeting with her;
nineteen he calls "sensual"--these were composed before he possessed
her at Baia; twenty-three he calls "very sensual"--these were written
in the fullness of his enjoyment, when his most impetuous desires
had been satisfied. Finally, Signor Antona Traversi finds one sonnet
where we may see his sorrow at having lost his mistress.
But this method is almost the same as that we found so absurd in
the dissenters, who eagerly deny the reality of any love which man
has cared to express. Its success depends entirely on our absolute
knowledge of the psychology of man's heart, of a poet's heart. What
knowledge, then, have we which will enable us to divide what is ideal
love here from what is base love, the false from the true? Is the
parable of the tares and the wheat to go for nothing? And again,
can we divide love, the love of any man for any woman, if indeed it
be love, into "sensual," "ideal," and so forth? Indeed, for such a
desperate operation one would need a knowledge of man beside which
that of Shakespeare would be as a rushlight to the sun. Canst thou
bind the sweet influences of Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion?
Who shall divide love into periods of the soul? These are things
too wonderful for me, which I know not. Are not "idealism" and
"sensuality" moods of the same passion, often simultaneous and always
interchangeable? Or do the critics speak of affection? But I speak
not of affection. I speak of love--a flame of fire. And whatever
Boccaccio's love may have been, good or bad as you will, I care not
what you decide to think, this at least it was, a passion, a passion
which mastered him and destroyed in him much that was good, much that
was bad, but that made of him a poet and the greatest story-teller
in the world. Such a passion was composed of an infinite number of
elements spiritual and physical, in which the sensual presupposes the
ideal even as the ideal does the sensual. Who may divide what God has
joined together? And if one might--what disaster!
As though this difficulty were not enough to stagger even the most
precise among us, we have to take this also into account, that for
the first time in modern literature, love, human love, is freely
expressed in Boccaccio's sonnets. It is true Dante had sung of
Beatrice till she vanishes away into a mere symbol, far and far from
our world in the ever-narrowing circles of his Paradise. So Petrarch
had sung of Laura till the coldness of her smile--ah! in the sunshine
of Provence--has frozen his song on his lips, so that it is as smooth
and as brittle as ice. It is not of such as these that Boccaccio
sings, but of a woman mean and lovely, beautiful as the sea and as
treacherous, infinitely various, licentious, sentimental, of two
minds in a single heart's beat, who smiled his soul out of his body
in a short hour on a spring morning in church, who passed with him
for her own pleasure in the shadow of the myrtles at Baia, whom he
took by the hair, and kissed cruelly, thirsty for kisses, on the
mouth, and who, being weary, as women will be, threw him aside for no
cause but for this, that she had won his love. 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.
We may take it then, first, that Boccaccio's love was a reality, and
not a "literary exercise" that he performed in these sonnets; and
then, that if we are to get any order at all out of those which deal
with so profound and difficult a subject as love, we must not hope to
do it by dividing them into certain artificial categories, such as of
"ideal love," of "sensual love," of "very sensual love."
Let us begin with certainties. We can dispose of certain of the poems
at once. Sonnet xcvii. to Petrarch, who is dead, must have been
written after July 20, 1374. Sonnets vii., viii., ix., which deal
with certain censures which had been passed on his Exposition of
Dante, were certainly written after August, 1373, when Boccaccio was
appointed to lecture on the _Divine Comedy_. In sonnets i., xxvi.,
xlii., lxiv., lxviii., and xciii. he alludes to the fact that he
is growing old.[370] In sonnet ciii. he says he is sorry to depart
without hope of seeing his lady again:--
"Ma ciò mai non avviene, e me partire
Or convien contra grado, nè speranza
Di mai vederti mi rimane alcuna.
Onde morrommi, caro mio disire,
E piangerò, il tempo che m' avanza,
Lontano a te, la mia crudel fortuna."
If this refers to Fiammetta, as seems certain, it should have been
written in 1340-1. Finally, it is natural to suppose that the greater
part of the sonnets written to Fiammetta living were composed between
1331 and 1341, while those to Fiammetta dead were written after 1348.
From these facts I pass on to make the only possible distribution of
the _Rime_ that our present knowledge allows.
Let us begin by distinguishing the love poems from the rest, which
for the most part belong to Boccaccio's old age. There are thirty-two
poems which are not concerned with love, namely, twenty-nine sonnets:
Nos. i., vi.-xii., xxvi.-xxviii., xxxvi., xlii., xlix., lvi.,
lxviii., lxxiv., lxxviii., xci.-xcvi., xcix., ci., _Poi Satiro_,
_Saturna al coltivar_, _Allor che regno_, and to these we may add the
_capitolo_, the _ballata_ of the beautiful ladies, and the madrigal
_O giustizia regina_.
There are nine, if not eleven, sonnets written _in morte di Madonna
Fiammetta_: (xix.?), xxi., xxix., li., (lviii.?), lx., lxvii.,
lxxiii., lxxxviii., xc., xcviii.
All the rest are love poems. Let us begin with them. And the
first question that must be answered is: Were they all written to
Fiammetta, or were some of them composed for one or other of the
women with whom Boccaccio from time to time was in relations?
Crescini tells us that it is only just to admit that atleast the
greater part of the love poems of Boccaccio refer to Fiammetta.
Landau is more precise, and Antona Traversi follows him in naming
sonnets c. and ci. (the latter we do not call a love poem) as written
for Pampinea or Abrotonia. To these Antona Traversi adds sonnets xii.
and xvii. (the former we do not call a love poem), which he thinks
were written for one of the ladies Boccaccio loved before he met
Fiammetta.[371] I give them both in Rossetti's translation:--
"By a clear well, within a little field
Full of green grass and flowers of every hue,
Sat three young girls, relating (as I knew)
Their loves. And each had twined a bough to shield
Her lovely face; and the green leaves did yield
The golden hair their shadow; while the two
Sweet colours mingled, both blown lightly through
With a soft wind for ever stirred and still.
After a little while one of them said
(I heard her), 'Think! If, ere the next hour struck,
Each of our lovers should come here to-day,
Think you that we should fly or feel afraid?'
To whom the others answered, 'From such luck
A girl would be a fool to run away.'"
That might seem to be just a thing seen, perfectly expressed, so that
we too feel the enchantment of the summer day, the stillness and the
heat; but if indeed it be written for any one, it might seem to be
rather for the blonde Fiammetta than for any other lady.
[Illustration: THE STORY OF GRISELDA. (DEC. X, 10)
_From the picture by Pesellino in the Morelli Gallery at Bergamo._
_Anderson_]
Sonnet xvii., however, is, it seems to me as it seemed to Rossetti,
clearly Fiammetta's. Is it not a reminiscence of happiness at
Baia?
"Love steered my course, while yet the sun rode high,
On Scylla's waters to a myrtle grove:
The heaven was still and the sea did not move;
Yet now and then a little breeze went by
Stirring the tops of trees against the sky:
And then I heard a song as glad as love,
So sweet that never yet the like thereof
Was heard in any mortal company.
'A nymph, a goddess or an angel sings
Unto herself, within this chosen place,
Of ancient loves'; so said I at that sound.
And there my lady, 'mid the shadowings
Of myrtle trees, 'mid flowers and grassy space,
Singing I saw, with others who sat round."
Of the rest the following seem to be doubtfully addressed to
Fiammetta:[372] Sonnet xxxv. may refer to his abandonment by
Fiammetta; cix. seems to refer to the same misfortune; lxxxi. was
possibly written before he possessed her; but these two and xlv.,
lxiv., lxv., and c. seem to Manicardi and Massera too much of the
earth for Fiammetta, and they regard them as later work. As we have
already said,[373] in sonnet lxiv. he speaks of growing grey.
When we have disposed of these, the rest seem to belong to
Fiammetta. If we would have nothing but certainties, however, we
must distinguish. In lxvii. and lxx. (the first _in morte_) her name
occurs, while in xl., xli., xlvi., lxiii., in the ternaria, _Amor che
con sua forza_ (verse 18), and the fragment of the sestina, her name
is clearly hinted at, as it probably is in sonnet lxxxiii. (verse
11).[374] Again in iv., xv., xxxiii., lxix., Baia is spoken of; and
in xxxiv., xlvii., xlviii., Miseno. In v. and lii. Naples is named as
Parthenope; in xxxii. and liii. the scene is on the sea, and near it
in xxxi.[375] In sonnet xxxviii. we see him falling in love:--
"All' ombra di mille arbori fronzuti,
In abito leggiadro e gentilesco,
Con gli occhi vaghi e col cianciar donnesco
Lacci tendea, da lei prima tessuti
De' suoi biondi capei crespi e soluti
Al vento lieve, in prato verde e fresco,
Un' angioletta, a' quai giungeva vesco
Tenace Amor, ed ami aspri ed acuti;
Da quai, chi v' incappava lei mirando,
Invan tentava poi lo svilupparsi;
Tant' era l' artificio ch' ei teneva,
Ed io lo so, che me di me fidando
Più che 'l dovere, infra i lacciuoli sparsi
Fui preso da virtù, ch' io non vedeva."
While in sonnets iii., xviii., xxiv., xxv., xxx., xl., xli., lxi. he
praises who but Fiammetta:--
"Le bionde trecce, chioma crespa e d' oro
Occhi ridenti, splendidi e soavi...."
These sonnets were written to Fiammetta before the betrayal, and to
them I would add sonnets xxii. and lxxxvi.--
"Se io potessi creder, che in cinqu' anni ..."
which I have already referred to and used in suggesting that five
years passed between the _innamoramento_ and the possession in
Boccaccio's love affair.[376]
I now turn to the sonnets, which, in their dolorous complaint, would
seem to belong to the period after his betrayal. In sonnets lxxix.
and lxxx. he reproves Love, in lxx. he swears that love is more than
honour, in lvii. he invokes death as his only refuge, in lxxvii. he
burns with love and rage:--
"Ed io, dolente solo, ardo ed incendo
In tanto fuoco, che quel di Vulcano
A rispetto non è ch' una favilla."
In sonnets iv., v., xliii., lv., and ballata i. he is altogether
desperate. In iv. we have the splendidly bitter invective against
Baia already quoted.[377]
It is true that we should not have recognised the soul of Fiammetta
as the "chastest that ever was in woman"; but that Boccaccio could
think so is not only evidence that he had been blind, as he says,
but also of the eagerness of his passion. If we had any doubt of the
reason of his misery, however, it is removed by sonnets xliii., lv.,
and ballata i., where his betrayal is explicitly mentioned.[378] In
sonnet xvi. a thousand ways of dying present themselves to him; in
cv. he hopes, how vainly, to win her back again:--
"Questa speranza sola ancor mi resta,
Per la qual vivo, ingagliardisco e tremo
Dubbiando che la morte non m' invole...."
With these sonnets we should compare xxxvii., xxxix., xlvi., lxxv.,
lxxxvii., and ciii. Sonnet lxxxvii. is perhaps the most beautiful of
these poems written in despair: it has been quoted above.[379]
In sonnets xiv. and lxxi. he tries to rouse himself, to free himself,
in vain, from love;[380] while in sonnet lxxii. he likens himself to
Prometheus. He bemoans his fortune again and again in sonnets ii.,
xxx., lii., cx.; while in xx. and cvii. he tries to hope in some
future. Whether that future ever came we do not know. There is no
hint of it in the sonnets, and on the whole one is inclined to think
it did not.[381] His last sight of Fiammetta, recorded after her
death, we may find in the beautiful sonnet so marvellously translated
by Rossetti:--[382]
"Round her red garland and her golden hair
I saw a fire about Fiammetta's head;
Thence to a little cloud I watched it fade,
Than silver or than gold more brightly fair;
And like a pearl that a gold ring doth bear,
Even so an angel sat therein, who sped
Alone and glorious throughout heaven, array'd
In sapphires and in gold that lit the air.
Then I rejoiced as hoping happy things,
Who rather should have then discerned how God
Had haste to make my lady all His own,
Even as it came to pass. And with these stings
Of sorrow, and with life's most weary load
I dwell, who fain would be where she is gone."
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:--
"Dante, if thou within the sphere of love,
As I believe, remain'st contemplating
Beautiful Beatrice, whom thou didst sing
Erewhile, and so wast drawn to her above;--
Unless from false life true life thee remove
So far that love's forgotten, let me bring
One prayer before thee: for an easy thing
This were, to thee whom I do ask it of.
I know that where all joy doth most abound
In the Third Heaven, my own Fiammetta sees
The grief that I have borne since she is dead.
O pray her (if mine image be not drown'd
In Lethe) that her prayers may never cease
Until I reach her and am comforted."[383]
Again in sonnet lxxiii. he sees her before God's throne among the
blessed:--
"Sì acceso e fervente è il mio desio
Di seguitar colei, che quivi in terra
Con il suo altero sdegno mi fe' guerra
Infin allor ch' al ciel se ne salio,
Che non ch' altri, ma me metto in oblio,
E parmi nel pensier, che sovent' erra,
Quella gravezza perder che m' atterra,
E quasi uccel levarmi verso Dio,
E trapassar le spere, e pervenire
Davanti al divin trono infra i beati,
E lei veder, che seguirla mi face,
Sì bella, ch' io nol so poscia ridire,
Quando ne' luoghi lor son ritornati
Gli spiriti, che van cercando pace."
Like Laura, it is true, but more like herself,[384] she visits her
lover in a dream (sonnets xix., xxix., and lxxxviii.).[385] All these
sonnets were not necessarily or even probably written immediately
after Fiammetta's death. The thought of her was present with
Boccaccio during the rest of his life,[386] and it is noteworthy and
moving that at the age of sixty-one he should thus address Petrarch
dead in a sonnet (xcvii.):--
"Or sei salito, caro Signor mio
Nel regno, al qual salire ancora aspetta
Ogn' anima da Dio a quello eletta,
Nel suo partir di questo mondo rio;
Or se' colà, dove spesso il desio
Di tirò già per veder Lauretta
Or sei dove la mia bella Fiammetta
Siede cui lei nel cospetto di Dio ...
. . . . .
Deh! se a grado ti fui nel mondo errante,
Tirami dietro a te, dove giojoso
Veggia colei, che pria di amor m' accese."
Such was the poet Boccaccio.
In turning now for a moment to look for his masters in verse, we
shall find them at once in Dante and Petrarch. In his sonnets he
followed faithfully the classic scheme, and only three times did he
depart from it, adding a _coda_ formed of two rhyming hendecasyllabic
lines. Nor is he more original in the subject of his work. Fiammetta
is, up to a certain point, the sister of Beatrice and of Laura, a
more human sister, but she remains always for him la mia Fiammetta,
never passing into a symbol as Beatrice did for Dante or into a
sentiment as Laura for Petrarch.
Finally, in considering his place as a poet, we must admit that it
has suffered by the inevitable comparison of his work with that of
Dante and of Petrarch. Nevertheless, in his own time the fame of his
poems was spread throughout Italy. Petrarch thought well of them, and
both Bevenuto Rambaldi da Imola and Coluccio Salutati hailed him as a
poet: it was the dearest ambition of his life and that about which he
was most modest. Best of all, Franco Sacchetti, his only rival as a
novelist, if indeed he has a rival, and a fine and charming poet too,
hearing of his death, wrote these verses:--
"Ora è mancata ogni poesia
E vote son le case di Parnaso,
Poichè morte n' ha tolto ogni valore.
S' io piango, o grido, che miracolo fia
Pensando, che un sol c' era rimaso
Giovan Boccacci, ora è di vita fore?"
FOOTNOTES:
[361] Cf. ANTONA TRAVERSI, _Della realtà e della vera natura dell'
amore di Messer Gio. Boccaccio_ (Livorno, 1883), and IBID., _Della
verità dell' amore di Gio. Boccaccio_ (Bologna, 1884); also RENIER,
_Di una nuova opinione sull' amore del B._ in _Rassegna Settimanale_,
Vol. VI, No. 145, pp. 236-8.
[362] Villani says B. wrote in the vulgar tongue in verse and prose
"in quibus lascivientis iuventutis ingenio paullo liberius evagavit."
Bandino says almost as little; but see CRESCINI, _op. cit._, p. 164,
n. 3. Manetti says: "in amores usque ad maturam fere ætatem vel paulo
proclivior." Squarciafico speaks of the various opinions current on
the love of B. for Fiammetta, but does not give an opinion himself;
he seems doubtful, however, whether the daughter of so great a king
could be induced to forget her honour by mere verses and letters.
Sansovino, however, thinks B. was a successful lover of Fiammetta.
Betussi came to think the same, so did Nicoletti, and so did Zilioli.
Mazzuchelli, however, does not believe it. Tiraboschi does not
believe the so-called confessions of B. Baldelli, however, does
believe them (_op. cit._, p. 364 _et seq._).
[363] I confess that the dissenters seem to me to be merely absurd.
They are not worth any fuller answer than that given above. Of
course, in speaking of Fiammetta, I mean Maria d'Aquino. It would
seem to be impossible to doubt her identity after the acrostic of the
_Amorosa Visione_. I do not hope to convert the dissenters by abusing
them. I would not convert them if I could. They are too dangerous to
any cause.
[364] BALDELLI, _Rime di Messer Gio. Boccacci_ (Livorno, 1802). This
text was reprinted in _Raccolta di Rime Antiche Toscane_ (Palermo,
1817), Vol. IV, pp. 1-157, which was used by Rossetti for his
translation of six of the sonnets, and again in the _Opere Volgari_
(Moutier, 1834), Vol. XVI.
[365] Cf. MANICARDI E MASSERA, _Introduzione al testo critico del
Canzoniere di Gio. Boccacci con rime inedite_ (Castelfiorentino,
La Società Stor. di Valdelsa, 1901), p. 20. This book contains the
best explanation we yet have of the sonnets and their order. It is a
masterly little work. On it cf. CRESCINI in _Rassegna bibliogr. della
letter. it._, Vol. IX, p. 38 _et seq._
[366] Cf. MANICARDI E MASSERA, _op. cit._, p. 21.
[367] Cf. MANICARDI E MASSERA, _op. cit._, p. 27, note i.
[368] See ANTONA TRAVERSI, _Di una cronologia approssimativa delle
rime del Boccaccio_ in _Preludio_ (Ancona, 1883), VII, p. 2 _et seq._
[369] See _infra_, p. 181 _et seq._
[370] In sonnet xlii. he says the arch of his age is passed:--
"Perchè passato è l' arco de' miei anni,
E ritornar non posso al primo giorno;
E l' ultimo già veggio s' avvicina."
MANICARDI E MASSERA, _op. cit._, think this would mean he was
thirty-five; but in my opinion it would mean he was already forty or
forty-five. For according to an old writer of 1310 (Cod. Nazionale di
Firenze, II, ii. 84), "They say the philosophers say there are four
ages; they are adolescence, youth, age, and old age. The first lasts
till twenty-five or thirty, the second till forty or forty-five, the
third till fifty-five or sixty, the fourth till death. Cf. DELLA
TORRE, _op. cit._, p. 87. In sonnet lxiv. B. says he, growing grey,
"... ed ora ch' a imbiancare
Cominci, di te stesso abbi mercede."
[371] As to sonnet ci., both Crescini and Koerting point out that
it is written to a widow (perhaps the lady of the _Corbaccio_, see
_infra_, p. 181 _et seq._); but they consider it a mere fantasy,
not referring to any real love affair. Cf. CRESCINI, _op. cit._, p.
166, note 2. Cf. a similar question to that put in the sonnet in
_Filocolo_ (Moutier), Lib. IV, p. 94. Sonnet c. also deals with a
widow: "il brun vestire ed il candido velo." Who this widow really
may be is an insoluble problem. If it be the lady of the _Corbaccio_,
she would seem to be the wife of Antonio Pucci, for sonnet ci. is
dedicated "ad Antonio Pucci." Sonnets lxiv., lxv., seem to refer to
the same affair. As to sonnets xii. and xvii., the first is a fantasy
and the second refers to Fiammetta in my judgment.
[372] Cf. MANICARDI E MASSERA, _op. cit._, p. 37.
[373] _Supra_, p. 136, n. 1.
[374] In xl. he writes, "Quella splendida fiamma"; in xli., "Quindi
nel petto entrommi una fiammetta"; in xlvi., "Se quella fiamma"; in
lxiii., "Amorosa fiamma"; in lxxxiii., "Accese fiamme attingo a mille
a mille."
[375] Sonnets xxxi., xxxii., liii. refer without doubt to Fiammetta,
but are indeterminate in time.
[376] See _supra_, p. 38.
[377] See _supra_, p. 55.
[378]
"Dunque piangete, e la nemica vista
Di voi spingete col pianger più forte,
Sì ch' altro amor non possa più tradirvi."
Sonnet xliii.
"Che dopo 'l mio lungo servire invano
Mi preponesti tal ch' assai men vale:
Caggia dal ciel saetta, che t' uccida."
Sonnet lv.
"... Veggendomi per altri esser lasciato;
E morir non vorrei, che trapassato
Più non vedrei il bel viso amoroso,
Per cui piango, invidioso
Di chi l' ha fatto suo e me ne spoglia."
Ballata i.
[379] See _supra_, p. 56.
[380] Note the "occhi falsi" in sonnet xiv.
[381] But see sonnet lviii.
[382] Sonnet lxvii.
[383] Sonnet lx. Cf. DANTE, _Paradiso_, iv. 28-39.
[384] Cf. _supra_, p. 16.
[385] Cf. CRESCINI, _op. cit._, p. 167, note 3.
[386] Cf. sonnets xxi., li., lxxvii., lxxxiii., and cf. MANICARDI E
MASSERA, _op. cit._, p. 50.